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Rural hospitals across the country have been going out of business at an unprecedented pace. Residents are leaving rural areas, and the people who stay don't always have health coverage. These hospitals are struggling to attract insured patients, and they're also facing penalties if the same people show up over and over. Blake Farmer of member station WPLN reports on the readmission conundrum.
BLAKE FARMER, BYLINE: Livingston is a town of 4,000 that's tucked in the rolling Tennessee hills that has attracted a lot of retirees, like Charlotte Potts. She spends much of her day in a recliner, tethered to a pulsing oxygen machine in her cramped apartment.
CHARLOTTE POTTS: I've only had five heart attacks (laughter). I've had carotid artery surgery - just a few minor things.
FARMER: Potts lives within spitting distance of Livingston Regional Hospital, which has a small cardiac unit. But they really don't want to see Potts every time her heart flutters. So last time she landed in the ER, hospital staff linked her up with a home health agency.
POTTS: If I go to have certain things going on here in my chest, I call for help. And they're there.
FARMER: There were days when home health aides might be viewed as a competitor to the hospital - not anymore.
TIM MCGILL: It is ironic.
FARMER: Tim McGill is CEO of Livingston Regional.
MCGILL: When I started this almost 40 years ago, the mission was different. We wanted patients in the hospital. That was the incentive. We were paid for it. Now you're not.
FARMER: This hundred-bed hospital operates on the thinnest of margins, and so-called readmissions have been a sore spot. Under the Affordable Care Act, Medicare began to ding hospitals if too many patients end up back in a hospital within 30 days. In some years, Livingston Regional has lost 3 percent of its Medicare revenue, the maximum penalty. The punishment forced Livingston's leaders to start cooperating with other medical providers in town.
MARY ANN STOCKTON: Hello. Come on in.
FARMER: Hospital nurse Mary Ann Stockton is at the local library where she holds quarterly lunch meetings. She invites home health operators, hospice caregivers, even nursing home leaders. They've cared for the same patients forever but rarely coordinated until now.
STOCKTON: Home health and hospice, we've definitely seen an increase in y'all coming into the hospital, meeting the patients before they go home.
FARMER: On this day, they talk about how all their workers need flu shots. Otherwise, elderly patients can become what Stockton calls frequent fliers.
STOCKTON: Flu starts off and goes into pneumonia, COPD exacerbation, and they are a revolving door at our hospital. They're hitting that ER a couple of times a week.
FARMER: Livingston's parent company has more than 80 rural hospitals and has been experimenting with the co-operative approach. In one Arizona town, for instance, paramedics now check in on discharged patients. It's not just rural hospitals. All hospitals can be penalized for readmissions now, and it's worked. Readmissions are down nationwide. But the smaller, rural hospitals wonder if they'll have enough patients to survive says researcher Michael Topchik.
MICHAEL TOPCHIK: The CEO from Montana said to me - you know, the problem is, when we do the right thing, are we saving ourselves right out of business?
FARMER: The focus on cutting readmissions, by definition, cuts admissions, too.
TOPCHIK: And so this is the real inherent tension and challenge, which is, hospitals get reimbursed for doing sick care. But more and more, they are being asked to do population health and really focus on wellness.
FARMER: And wellness doesn't pay much at the moment. But in the short term, things have improved at Livingston Regional. It's cut readmissions more than any rural hospital in the country. Its latest penalty has dropped from $200,000 to practically zero, all because patients like Charlotte Potts stay home.
POTTS: I've got a real bed tightness in the chest.
FARMER: The last time that happened, she pondered whether to call an ambulance. This time, she phoned her home health agency, took a nitroglycerin pill and went back to sleep.
For NPR News, I'm Blake Farmer in Livingston, Tenn.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE PHOENIX FOUNDATION'S "BUFFALO")
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The world of mainstream consumer brands is in a slow-motion transformation. The companies that make products such as Campbell's Soup, Gillette razors, Crest toothpaste and Dove soap are going through major corporate changes, restructuring and hiring new CEOs. NPR's Alina Selyukh reports these mainstream brands are facing the challenge of adjusting to new shopping habits.
ALINA SELYUKH, BYLINE: Think about the last time you went to the supermarket. You probably spent no more than a few seconds choosing from all the different brands of toothpaste or frozen peas or oatmeal. In retail, this is called, dramatically, the first moment of truth. For brands, these few seconds used to be their Holy grail, but in the past decade, shoppers started saying they'd go by other things.
JULIET MCFADDEN: Usually by what's cheapest. Like, I'm not a brand person.
SELYUKH: That's Juliet McFadden. She's an office manager in Boston, and she's 23. She's just starting to build her finances and lifelong shopping habits. This makes her a huge target for companies like Procter & Gamble, Kraft Heinz or General Mills, but she is not easy to win over.
MCFADDEN: I'm not a cereal person. I just usually don't eat breakfast. I don't really drink soda ever. I don't like the yogurts with a ton of sugar in them that are super sweet. Paper towels are expensive. Stuff like that adds up. We have reusable, like, rags that we use and then wash.
SELYUKH: McFadden's generation often gets the blame here, the tired trope about millennials killing breakfast cereals or napkins or canned tuna. But really, most Americans could make a similar list. Maybe you choose the store brand of toilet paper, buy a fancier condiment instead of Hellmann's mayo, order eco-friendly diapers on the Internet. Here's David Luttenberger of market research firm Mintel.
DAVID LUTTENBERGER: Rather than just relying on brand familiarity, consumers buy today what performs for them. They are much less brand loyal, and they are more driven by performance, by convenience, by price.
SELYUKH: At least two major things have changed us as shoppers. During the last recession, Americans warmed up to cheaper off-brand products like generic or store brands, and then they kept buying them even as the economy improved. And, of course, the Internet has completely shaken up our shopping. Think about how people used to learn about new brands.
(SOUNDBITE OF AD)
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Singing) Oh, I'd love to be an Oscar Meyer wiener.
SELYUKH: Only the biggest companies could afford catchy prime time TV ads.
(SOUNDBITE OF AD)
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Singing) 'Cause if I were an Oscar Meyer wiener, everyone would be in love with me.
SELYUKH: And so the boomer generation of shoppers grew up reaching for classic American brands. Now, Campbell's Soup, that symbol of the postwar era of processed foods, is restructuring as Americans are demanding fresher foods with pronounceable ingredients. Kraft Heinz got rid of artificial preservatives and dyes from its mac and cheese. Procter & Gamble lowered the price of Gillette razors for the first time in years to compete with the online startups like Dollar Shave Club. Unilever bought that startup, Dollar Shave Club. The mainstream brands are being squeezed by rivals that are both cheaper and more personalized.
AMERICUS REED: They're in a bit of a pickle.
SELYUKH: Americus Reed is a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. He says legacy brands have to both stay true for the older, loyal customers but also attract new shoppers.
REED: It is a big challenge to reinvent yourself over and over again, right? You look at just, like, in the music industry, very few artists can continue being successful in the sophomore and junior album. You know, you have iconic artists like Madonna who can just reinvent herself every single time and speak to new audiences.
SELYUKH: But it is extremely hard to do when you're not Madonna, you're Campbell's Soup.
Alina Selyukh, NPR News.
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Local police now have access to a firearms forensic tool that is managed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. But defense attorneys are pushing back against evidence they say is not scientific. Oregon Public Broadcasting's Jonathan Levinson reports.
(SOUNDBITE OF OFFICER PERFORMING FIREARM CHECK)
JONATHAN LEVINSON, BYLINE: Portland Police Officer Jason Hubert is test firing a handgun at the department's North Precinct. Officers recently took it from a suspect.
(SOUNDBITE OF HANDGUN FIRING)
LEVINSON: He then places the casings under a microscope. He's about to enter the shell casing into the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network, or NIBIN, a nationwide database of high-resolution images of shell casings started by the ATF in 1999. Hubert fires two rounds into a large trap filled with a thick sludge.
JASON HUBERT: I'm looking for a good ejector mark.
LEVINSON: That's the mark left on the casing as it's expelled from the gun. He'll pick one to go into NIBIN.
HUBERT: And the ejector mark is basically the fingerprint of the shell casing.
LEVINSON: At the Portland police department, this is all new. Until last July, these casings had to be sent to a crime lab. Results would take months to get back, and they were only used by firearms examiners to testify at trial.
SUZANNE HAYDEN: That's of no help in investigators' use of that technology to try to figure out who shot the gun.
LEVINSON: Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon Suzanne Hayden helped get the NIBIN system into police departments so they could be used in local investigations.
HAYDEN: Each firearm that shoots a bullet leaves an imprint that's unique to that firearm.
LEVINSON: So the idea is - find a casing that matches in NIBIN, and police may be able to connect multiple shootings and make arrests before the gun is used again. But the argument that the imprint is unique, that's a sticking point. Janis Puracal is an attorney and the founder of the Oregon-based Forensics Justice Project.
JANIS PURACAL: The problem is that no one's gone out and actually determined that it could only be matched to that gun to the exclusion of all other guns in the universe.
LEVINSON: Flawed firearms forensics have led to exonerations. In 2013, a Mississippi man's life was spared hours before his scheduled execution after the FBI said experts had overstated the science. In a letter to the district attorney in that case, the bureau said examiners may only testify to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty. Department of Justice guidelines say examiners may only offer an expert opinion. But the opinions that form during an investigation, Puracal says they can be problematic, too.
PURACAL: It's the idea that once we start building that narrative and it starts making sense, the more things that we see that fit into that same narrative.
LEVINSON: Almost 200 agencies own NIBIN terminals and are using the data as an investigative tool.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: We got a (unintelligible) regarding the...
LEVINSON: On a recent night in Portland, Sergeant Steven Wilbon has his eye on a car parked down the street from Jefferson High School. He pulls up and talks to the three people inside about the homecoming game that's just getting out.
STEVEN WILBON: Who won?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Jefferson...
WILBON: Jefferson.
LEVINSON: He drives off and runs the plates.
WILBON: All right.
(SOUNDBITE OF DATABASE ALERT SOUNDING)
LEVINSON: The computer tells him it's been reported stolen.
WILBON: It's a stolen car.
LEVINSON: Officers approach the car from both sides.
UNIDENTIFIED OFFICER: Do have a valid concealed carry permit?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: I don't have (unintelligible)...
UNIDENTIFIED OFFICER: Well - I know you're saying it's not your gun. But...
WILBON: Yeah, it's in the back of this car.
LEVINSON: OK.
WILBON: It's in his waistband - or it's in his pocket. He's not denying it. So...
LEVINSON: Wilbon says they found three loaded guns inside - without the permits required in Oregon. And two of the people had outstanding warrants. Because the Portland police have this new equipment, the casings were immediately entered into NIBIN. Seattle Police use it, too. And the ATF database indicated a match to shootings there. A police department spokesperson in Seattle says it was a lead that moved their case forward, which is exactly how the Department of Justice intends for NIBIN to be used.
For NPR News, I'm Jonathan Levinson in Portland.
(SOUNDBITE OF CLUTCHY HOPKINS' "3:06")
CORNISH: That story comes to us from Guns & America, a public media reporting project on the role of guns in American life.
(SOUNDBITE OF CLUTCHY HOPKINS' "3:06")
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Composers of color have long had to fight for a place in the classical canon and on the concert stage. In fact, many classical musicians and students at all levels are unaware of the wealth of music by black composers. A new project spearheaded by violinist Rachel Barton Pine seeks to correct that, especially, as Tim Greiving reports, for the next generation of music makers.
TIM GREIVING, BYLINE: Growing up in Chicago, Rachel Barton Pine took it for granted that there was a great body of classical music by black composers.
(SOUNDBITE OF RACHEL BARTON PINE'S VIOLIN CONCERTO NO. 4 IN D MAJOR: II. ADAGIO)
GREIVING: She heard it on the radio. She played it in local orchestras as a student. The Center for Black Music Research is in Chicago. So when she recorded her first concerto album in 1997, she naturally included music by Afro-Caribbean and Afro-European composers.
(SOUNDBITE OF RACHEL BARTON PINE'S VIOLIN CONCERTO NO. 4 IN D MAJOR: II. ADAGIO)
RACHEL BARTON PINE: I wasn't thinking about any of the social justice aspects or anything like that. But after the record came out, I started getting a huge number of requests from students and parents and teachers about, you know, where can I find repertoire like this for kids of different levels?
GREIVING: So she began a nearly 20-year quest to catalogue as much of this music as she could find. She had some time on her hands. Two years earlier, she was caught in a closing Chicago train door and dragged 200 feet. She lost one leg and severely damaged the other and had more than 40 surgeries. But during the long recovery process, she devoted some of her spare time to searching for music.
PINE: You know, going to the Library of Congress and digging up the one copy of this and that and going to the Haiti music archives in Montreal, going to the attic of the composer's grandniece to sort through unsorted boxes of papers and manuscripts. I mean, there have been some amazing archaeological adventures.
GREIVING: One of the pieces she found was a 1927 work called "Levee Dance" the Tennessee-born composer Clarence Cameron White.
(SOUNDBITE OF RACHEL BARTON PINE'S "LEVEE DANCE, OP. 26 NO. 2")
GREIVING: It's one of the pieces that Pine has recorded for a new album called "Blues Dialogues" for violin and piano.
PINE: My parents would put on Chicago blues records when they weren't playing the classical station when I was growing up. And it's just sort of been in the air. I mean, I really consider it to be the music of, you know, of where I live.
GREIVING: One of the composers featured on that album, who also serves on the committee for Pine's new educational project, is Billy Childs, a Grammy-winning Los Angeles-based composer and pianist.
(SOUNDBITE OF BILLY CHILDS' "IN CARSON'S EYES")
GREIVING: Childs got a cold dose of how the classical establishment felt about composers of color when he went to the University of Southern California to study classical composition with a side of jazz performance.
BILLY CHILDS: And it seemed as though, often, I wouldn't be taken as seriously as a composer steeped in the European tradition of music because of my jazz background. But that also had kind of a racial overtone to it.
GREIVING: It's this attitude that violinist Rachel Barton Pine is trying to change with her Music By Black Composers Project. She's working with the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, the Dallas Symphony Young Strings program and Project STEP in Boston to introduce young musicians to composers and works that Billy Childs had to find himself.
CHILDS: Jessie Montgomery is a great composer, Valerie Coleman, Tania Leon. You know, one of my favorite pieces ever written is by George Walker, and it's a trombone concerto.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHRISTIAN LINDBERG'S "TROMBONE CONCERTO: III. ALLEGRO")
GREIVING: All of these composers are part of Rachel Barton Pine's free online database, which includes more than 900 works by more than 350 composers from multiple continents. Pine's Music By Black Composers project has also published a new book for beginning violin students, the first in a series, as well as a coloring book and a timeline poster of around 300 composers.
PINE: I am particularly excited to inspire African-American children so that they feel like they're part of classical music's history and future, but also to normalize diversity of repertoire for all students so that they grow up with this stuff and aren't satisfied with having concert experiences that don't reflect the totality of the human experience.
GREIVING: Composer Billy Childs is grateful for the Music By Black Composers project, but he also hopes it makes projects like this obsolete.
CHILDS: And the great wealth and the great legacy of music written by African-American composers is not called music by African-American composers but called Music By Composers so that we are looking at all music just like Duke Ellington said, good or bad.
GREIVING: And available. For NPR News, I'm Tim Greiving.
[POST-BROADCAST CLARIFICATION: In this report, we state that Billy Childs "got a cold dose of how the classical establishment feels about composers of color when he went to the University of California." Childs said during an interview with NPR that he became "aware of race in music" when he studied composition at USC. But since this story aired, he has clarified that he encountered racism in the music world after graduating from the school, not while he was a student there.]
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Emotions play a big role in addressing homelessness because new homeless housing and services are often funded with public dollars, the public needs to feel like they're worth investing in. Around Los Angeles, where about 50,000 men and women live on the streets, some residents struggle to maintain their empathy. Anna Scott from member station KCRW has the story.
ANNA SCOTT, BYLINE: For the past few years, a man has been living in the carport of Shannon Peace's building near West Hollywood.
SHANNON PEACE: I would pull in, and he would be laying, like, right there...
SCOTT: She was a little uncomfortable at first, but eventually thought of him as an unofficial neighbor. Until one morning, she came downstairs...
PEACE: And his eyes were glazed over, and he was muttering to himself. And that was the point at which I went, OK, this is somebody who potentially has mental illness, potentially has a substance abuse problem.
SCOTT: She called the cops, but the man still sleeps in front of Peace's car on and off. She says the experience has made her more wary of homeless people in general.
PEACE: And it's not that I don't have empathy anymore. But when it comes to your own feelings of safety, need for boundaries, suddenly, it influences the way you view the entire issue. And unfortunately, it can influence the way you view individuals.
SCOTT: Two years ago, LA voters overwhelmingly passed Measure HHH, a city bond to fund homeless housing, which it's doing, but tens of thousands of men and women still sleep on the streets which means residents confront the crisis constantly. In some parts of the region, anger over perceived danger has led to explosive town halls, hateful social media posts and even one citizen patrol to monitor encampments. Other times, there's a quieter-but-still-uneasy coexistence like at this park in West LA.
FILIPE CALDERON: I haven't showered in about a month, so I don't feel good.
SCOTT: Filipe Calderon is one of about a half-dozen homeless men here today, and he's spread his belongings across a picnic table. He used to have a carpentry business, but he lost it to drinking.
CALDERON: Once you lose the job, you lose everything - the wife, even the kids.
SCOTT: He still drinks but wants to stop.
CALDERON: I'm going to try this year, you know. This is one of my goals. If I stop, I'm going to get back on my feet again.
SCOTT: It's easy to feel for the financial victim or the person who ended up homeless after a health crisis, harder to feel for someone you think is doing something wrong like the guy hiding a beer cooler near a busy playground.
ANN ENGLISH: That isn't the entire story of that person.
SCOTT: Ann English works at the nonprofit Corporation for Supportive Housing. She directs a program training formerly homeless men and women to share their stories at community events. She says it's about getting the public to see people who need help, rather than people to avoid.
ENGLISH: If they recognize someone who is having difficulties as someone that could be them, they are going to connect with that. And that is what moves people to action.
ERIC GARCETTI: Because a very complex problem didn't go away overnight doesn't mean that things aren't happening.
ENGLISH: LA Mayor Eric Garcetti says the city is housing more people than ever before, but it's not enough to keep up with all the people falling into homelessness. So the situation on the streets hasn't changed much. Still, Garcetti says, he does not see an empathy gap among LA residents.
GARCETTI: Every time I go to a volunteer event, there's more and more people. They still need a lot of help in their neighborhoods, but they're feeling that what they voted for is starting to come to fruition.
SCOTT: But what do you say to the people who say, OK, I voted for Measure HHH, but I thought that I would see a noticeable difference in my neighborhood faster, and now I'm frustrated?
GARCETTI: I would say I'm one of those people, too.
SCOTT: Garcetti says people should stay frustrated because impatience will lead to solutions faster than apathy. For NPR News, I'm Anna Scott in Los Angeles.
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While many federal buildings in Washington, D.C., remain closed due to the shutdown, one government facility will be open for the first time tomorrow. It's a new daycare for the House of Representatives that will cut the wait list for new parents from three years down to one. Lawmakers say they want to make the House a more competitive employer with the private sector. NPR congressional correspondent Susan Davis has this report.
SUSAN DAVIS, BYLINE: In the shadow of the U.S. Capitol dome, a new dome is set to open. It's on the playground of a new day care facility which is designed to look like a mini National Mall, with kid-sized landmarks like the U.S. Capitol and the Washington Monument. And House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy is pretty stoked about it.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KEVIN MCCARTHY: This is the only Washington Monument in D.C. that you can climb up.
DAVIS: The California Republican becomes minority leader when the new Congress begins Thursday. But during his time in the majority, he helped secure the office space in a building adjacent to the Capitol and more than $12 million to build this state-of-the-art day care facility. That use of taxpayer funds could open up Congress to criticism. But McCarthy says the goal here is to keep highly qualified staff on the Hill.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MCCARTHY: If somebody is working for you and wants to continue to serve government but says, I don't have day care, so I can't stay here - the wait list is too long, the quality is not there - then you're disadvantaging who could actually serve and work in government at the same time.
DAVIS: In recent years, the wait list for the House day care became so long that staffers were signing up before they were even pregnant.
MELISSA MURPHY: I've had friends who, the minute they got engaged, they're putting themselves on the list.
DAVIS: That's Melissa Murphy. She's chief of staff to North Carolina Republican Congressman David Rouzer. Her two kids are currently in the House day care. Murphy says it's common for staffers to make a reluctant decision to leave the Hill for more lucrative jobs in the private sector when they decide to start a family.
MURPHY: It's really upsetting to see because they make the decision to leave the Hill and leave public service because the cost of private day care is difficult to maintain on some of the congressional salaries.
DAVIS: The House day care costs between $1,100 and $1,700 a month, a fraction of the cost of comparable private day care in the D.C. area. This modern, 26,000-square-foot facility will be able to care for up to 120 infants and toddlers. It's only a benefit for House employees and members of Congress. But lawmakers get no special treatment over staff. Just ask Washington Republican Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler.
JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER: I never made it off the list (laughter).
DAVIS: Herrera Beutler is one of only 10 lawmakers who have given birth while serving in Congress. She says childcare concerns are one of the biggest deterrents for women to run.
HERRERA BEUTLER: The message is you can make this work for the good of your country and for the good of your family. And so I feel like the day care facility was just another opportunity to give that option so that we get more women who are going to be - so we're going to be more representative of the American people.
DAVIS: Criticism for the new day care could come because lawmakers have worked to provide quality, affordable, subsidized childcare for their own but have done little to ease the same burden on American families. Outgoing Kansas Republican Congressman Kevin Yoder played a lead role in the day care expansion. He says the House is setting a standard for the private sector to match.
KEVIN YODER: Congress is trying to lead and and make it clear that, as a governing body, we think it's important that employers put childcare as a priority.
DAVIS: And as of tomorrow, in the House of Representatives, it is.
Susan Davis, NPR News, the Capitol.
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Sitting in a leather chair in a wood-paneled room, North Korea's leader kicked off the new year with an address to his nation and a warning to the U.S. Kim Jong Un said he's willing to meet with President Trump a second time but threatened that if international sanctions against North Korea continue, he'll have no choice but to take a new path.
NPR's Anthony Kuhn joins us now from Seoul to talk about what this could mean. And, Anthony, since President Trump met Kim Jong Un in Singapore for that historic summit last year in June, the nuclear issue has been somewhat stalled. So can you tell us what new information you heard in Kim's speech?
ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: Actually, most of the speech was not about the nuclear issue. It was for a domestic audience, news about the economy. But he did repeat his pledge to denuclearize and mend fences with the U.S. Now, let's hear one of the more optimistic, upbeat parts of his speech.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SUPREME LEADER KIM JONG UN: (Speaking Korean).
KUHN: "It is our party and republic's unchanging position and my unwavering will," he said, "to establish a new relationship between the DPRK and the U.S. that meets the demands of the new century and to establish a permanent, stable peace regime on the Korean peninsula and move towards complete denuclearization." By DPRK, he meant the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, which is its formal name.
Analysts point out that there was actually something significant elsewhere in the speech. He said that North Korea would stop building atomic bombs, basically cap his country's nuclear program. But as you mentioned, there was also this warning that if the U.S. tries to sanction North Korea into submission or just runs out their patience, then all bets are off, and there could be a return to confrontation.
CORNISH: You mentioned a warning. Did Kim provide any specifics of what he wants from President Trump?
KUHN: I think it's pretty clear that he mostly just wants the meeting at this point, and we know this because North Korea has refused to engage in working-level talks with the U.S., particularly Mike Pompeo and U.S. special envoy Steve Biegun have basically been shut out. So analysts believe that North Korea is betting everything on a second summit with Trump, where they will try to manipulate him into making more concessions.
And the - North Korea's point has been pretty consistent in past months. They say, look, since the summit, we have dismantled some of our nuclear and missile testing facilities, and now we expect the U.S. to reciprocate by providing security guarantees and easing sanctions. The U.S. wants to start off as a first move by providing an inventory of all its nuclear assets, but North Korea refuses to do that.
CORNISH: What about the relationship with South Korea? The two leaders met, I think, about three times in the past year. Did Kim Jong Un say anything about South Korea in his speech?
KUHN: Yes. He talked about continuing the thaw in relations with South Korea. Now, at times, the U.S. has seemed nervous that this sort of inter-Korean rapprochement is getting out too far ahead of the nuclear issue. But lately, they seem to have had a change of heart. They seem to have decided that it doesn't really cost them anything at this point. There's only so far they can go with those sanctions still in place. And they hope that this will just improve the atmosphere and maybe make talks a little bit easier.
And that is why the U.S. gave its blessing to last week's groundbreaking on a project to connect railways between the two Koreas. And the U.S. says it will try to ensure that the sanctions that are in place do not prevent U.S. aid groups from delivering humanitarian assistance to the North.
CORNISH: It's interesting. I understand Kim talked about an end to U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises. And at the same time, the U.S. and South Korea failed to meet a deadline to renew a funding agreement for U.S. forces in South Korea, right? So there's this little dispute going on between the U.S. and South Korea. How does that affect this conversation?
KUHN: Well, these - the two sides were supposed to come up with a new agreement before the old one expired last night. But the U.S. reportedly wants South Korea to increase its contribution by 50 percent, and Seoul says no. The Trump administration wants all U.S. allies to pay more, and it's focusing on South Korea first. The South Koreans are also somewhat unnerved by the resignation of Defense Secretary Mattis because he was a consistent advocate for the alliance. It's not clear that the U.S. Congress would allow any sort of pullout of U.S. troops, but any sign that the U.S. commitment to the defense of South Korea is wavering has Seoul very concerned.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Anthony Kuhn in Seoul. Thank you for your reporting.
KUHN: Sure thing, Audie.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
In December, President Trump said he would shut down the government if Democrats did not agree to fund his border wall.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I am proud to shut down the government for border security.
CORNISH: And 11 days into that shutdown, government workers are anxious and fed up. Wendy Cyprus, whose husband has worked for the Justice Department for more than 20 years, has a message for the president.
WENDY CYPRUS: That is just petty. Like, who turns their back on the people that work for the government?
CORNISH: And many of those people working for the government have felt shamed for not having a bigger financial cushion.
ERIN ROBERTS: People were saying shameful things about we should have a certain amount saved.
CORNISH: That's Erin Roberts in California. Her wife is a recruiter for the Coast Guard, which is not protected from pay freezes during a shutdown. Robert says they got a one-time emergency payment this week, but...
ROBERTS: There's still the threat of not getting paid on the 15.
CORNISH: And the stress stretches from coast to coast.
SARAH WATTERSON: I think a lot of people think, oh, the federal government shut down, that's just Washington - and it's really not.
CORNISH: Sarah Watterson (ph) is the local president for the American Federation of Government Employees in Lenexa, Kan. She says there are restrictions for federal workers looking for extra income.
WATTERSON: You can't do certain jobs if it's connected to what you do for the federal government. It's a violation of ethics.
CORNISH: That's really hard for workers in certain departments like science or medicine.
WATTERSON: It's a very distinct skill set, and it's kind of a small world.
CORNISH: Chris Wall works for the Environmental Protection Agency in Honolulu. He says he's sick of federal workers being used as a political bargaining tool.
CHRIS WALL: It just feels like a kick in the face every time, like we don't matter or something.
CORNISH: Last week, the Office of Personnel Management circulated a letter with tips for federal workers who couldn't pay rent or bills. Tyler Dayne, a government program analyst here in Washington, found it unhelpful.
TYLER DAYNE: It was kind of shocking to see, like, you should offer to trade services to your landlord when it's like, I have a job to pay my rent, and it's working for the federal government.
CORNISH: Dayne says she doesn't have a lot of financial options.
DAYNE: I would have to use credit cards probably or, like, ask family members.
CORNISH: Watterson says there's a feeling of being abandoned in the federal workforce right now.
WATTERSON: To have to go and beg for mercy is kind of insulting.
CORNISH: Congress gets back to work on January 3. Without any kind of deal before then, it will be Day 13 of the government shutdown.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
You wouldn't be the first one to make cooking more and eating right a New Year's resolution. David Tamarkin of Epicurious did that same thing one year and posted his recipes and pictures on social media. And he found...
DAVID TAMARKIN: It took off. You know, people started cooking along with me. I was like, oh, this is a good way to do a New Year, new you challenge on Epicurious that doesn't involve a diet.
CORNISH: Now he calls it the Cook90 challenge. The premise is simple - eat home-cooked meals, from breakfast to dessert, every single day. Tamarkin says he wants to encourage a new generation of home cooks that have fallen hard for takeout, meal kits and protein bars. He says the most daunting part of the process is actually not so much the cooking, but the shopping.
TAMARKIN: One of the biggest benefits of cooking daily or cooking a lot is that one meal can lead to the next. So, you know, we're going to start off on January 1 with a big batch of beans because of course that's the - that's what everyone should be making on New Year's Day. And a big batch of beans can feed you that night, and then it can feed you two nights later in a completely different way.
So you can make enchiladas with beans one night and then a bean soup the next night. And then you can even bring that leftover bean soup to lunch. And things just sort of cycle, and that's the best thing about cooking at home.
CORNISH: What's interesting about this is I think for a lot of immigrant families, a lot of people who grew up with moms who did a lot of cooking, this will feel very familiar, the idea of, like, shopping for the week and also cooking for the week - right? - often on a Sunday.
TAMARKIN: Absolutely. I hear that a lot from - especially from older people, that I've been doing Cook90 my entire life. You know, I cook every meal at home every day. This is nothing special. And they think it's sort of funny that I get applauded for doing this one month out of the year and now that there's a whole book about it.
I feel that, but that's not the way people are cooking right now - I mean, younger people especially. People are going to grocery stores to pick up, you know, prepared chicken salad or chicken cutlets. Sometimes they're even going to the grocery store to have a glass of wine and eat at the grocery store. Grocery stores are sort of becoming restaurants in some places.
CORNISH: Now, some recipes can be daunting to take on - right? - especially if you haven't cooked in a while, or you're kind of brushing up on your technique.
TAMARKIN: I think if you're a beginning cook, and you want to kind of ease into cooking, you can just think about pantry cooking. So pantry cooking to me means you have most of the stuff on hand all the time. And hopefully you have olive oil and vinegar and maybe a shallot or an onion or something. If you have all that stuff, you can come home, and you can cook really quickly, easily, without even thinking about it beforehand.
CORNISH: I tried a recipe this weekend, which - I think it was shrimp with garlicky herb sauce and white beans.
TAMARKIN: Yes. Audie, I - that's so - first of all, it's very sweet that you made the recipe. That makes me very happy if you liked it.
CORNISH: (Laughter).
TAMARKIN: Did you like it?
CORNISH: I did like it.
TAMARKIN: OK.
CORNISH: But I was testing the pantry theory, right?
TAMARKIN: OK, cool.
CORNISH: So I was like, I know I have some frozen shrimp.
TAMARKIN: Right. Yes.
CORNISH: I went and got that from the grocery store. I knew I had some white beans. So I had almost everything - you know, diced tomatoes. I had almost everything.
TAMARKIN: Right.
CORNISH: And I cheated because I think it involves, like, a pesto, which - you have recipe to make the pesto. And I was, like, buying the pesto. Is that OK? Can you cheat?
TAMARKIN: That's not cheating. That's just cooking.
CORNISH: Now I know that with the start of the new year, there are a bunch of people who are going to say, this is the year that I'm going to cook more, or this is the year I'm going to pack a lunch. What trips people up?
TAMARKIN: OK. I think shopping trips people up. There are a lot of people who think, oh, I'm going to cook tonight. And then, after work, I'm going to go to the grocery store and get my groceries. And then I'm going to stand in the checkout line. And then I'll drive home, and I'll unpack my groceries. And I'll start cooking. And it's - now it's 9 o'clock, and this was not a good experience.
CORNISH: Right. Never mind if you have kids.
TAMARKIN: Yeah. Well, exactly. And so I really recommend that people do one big, weekly grocery shop a week. But in order to do that, of course, you have to have an idea of what you are going to cook. It's just about organization. I think cooking on the fly, it's great, but it takes more time than most people have on a Tuesday night.
CORNISH: How should people approach this particular kind of New Year's resolution?
TAMARKIN: What I want people to understand is that cooking is a healthy behavior. I'm not into the idea of a New Year's resolution where you are avoiding grains or avoiding carbs. I'm just more into the idea of avoiding restaurants a little bit, you know, avoiding takeout a little bit and just doing more cooking at home because it's just so good for you in every way.
CORNISH: David Tamarkin is digital director at Epicurious. He's also the author of "Cook90."
Thank you so much for speaking with us.
TAMARKIN: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF WILD YAKS' "PARADISE")
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
While you were ringing in the new year, a spacecraft about the size of a grand piano made history. NASA's New Horizons passed by Ultima Thule. It's the most distant object we've ever visited, over 4 billion miles away, far enough that it took several hours for the good news to reach Mission Control this morning.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ALICE BOWMAN: In lock with telemetry.
COMPUTER-GENERATED VOICE: Good day, Mission room.
(CHEERING)
CORNISH: Joining me now from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in Columbia, Md., is Dr. Heidi Hammel. Welcome to the program.
HEIDI HAMMEL: Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here.
CORNISH: So Ultima Thule sounds like the name of a comic book supervillain.
HAMMEL: (Laughter).
CORNISH: (Laughter) It's actually an oddly shaped icy rock. Right? It looks like a giant space peanut. Why did we want to visit this object that is billions of miles away?
HAMMEL: Well, we think that Ultima Thule is a remnant of the formation of our solar system, an object that is pristine and unprocessed. And so if we can visit this object - but we have visited - we have visited this object, and what we will learn from this is the chemical composition of the very earliest building blocks of our solar system.
CORNISH: You sound stoked, frankly.
HAMMEL: (Laughter).
CORNISH: (Laughter) And I know you're still gathering and analyzing the data. So what do you look for now as you're doing analysis?
HAMMEL: So we have only gotten the very preliminary data. Over the next weeks and months, we will be getting much higher-resolution images and color information. And that will allow us to study the properties of this object to figure out what's happening on its surface, what is its geologic structure, what is it made of exactly.
CORNISH: Now, I understand New Horizons was the same craft that took those amazingly clear pictures of Pluto back in 2015. Can we expect the same kind of high-quality images of Ultima Thule that we saw of Pluto?
HAMMEL: Now, this object, Ultima Thule, is much, much smaller than Pluto, so we don't have nearly as much data. But because it was so small, we were able to fly a little bit closer. So we will definitely get some really spectacular, beautiful images. It's going to be very interesting to see. We've never seen an object like this before, so we really have very little idea of what to expect. It's pure discovery, is what's happening here.
CORNISH: How exciting is this for someone like you who've been - who's been doing this research for so long?
HAMMEL: Oh, every spacecraft encounter we have like this is just as exciting as the previous one. I don't think we ever lose that joy, that excitement that so many people who are here have come just to be here, (laughter) to be with all of our colleagues and friends. It's almost like a grand reunion party. And we can't get enough.
It's just such a wonderful and exciting feeling to know that we and our colleagues at NASA and the Applied Physics Lab are helping to expand the boundaries of human knowledge. I mean, boy, if you could put that in a bottle and sell it, (laughter) you'd be a millionaire.
CORNISH: What a fun way to start the new year. Dr. Heidi Hammel, thank you so much.
HAMMEL: Thank you. It's been a pleasure.
CORNISH: Dr. Heidi Hammel. She joined me from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in Columbia, Md.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
These stories are true. That's what comedian Louis C.K. said in a statement to The New York Times in late 2017 after facing allegations of sexual misconduct. By the end of 2018, he was back performing in a show lamenting how much money he lost over the scandal and taking shots at everyone from nongender-conforming (ph) kids to the teen survivors of the Parkland shooting.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LOUIS C.K.: You're not interesting because you went to a high school where kids got shot. Why does that mean I have to listen to you?
(LAUGHTER)
C.K.: How does that make you interesting? You didn't get shot. You pushed some fat kid in the way. And then...
(LAUGHTER)
C.K.: Now I got to listen to you talking?
(LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE)
CORNISH: Comedian Aziz Ansari, rebuked after a viral essay by a woman who accused him of inconsiderate sexual behavior on a bad date, is also touring again. He, too, is reportedly criticizing political correctness. Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse has written a lot about the #MeToo movement and these men.
Monica Hesse, welcome to the program.
MONICA HESSE: Hi. Thanks for having me.
CORNISH: So I want to start with Louis C.K. and Aziz Ansari. We mentioned that they appeared on stages again. How have they acknowledged their scandals, if at all?
HESSE: They really haven't. And that, I think, is part of the problem for the people who are upset by these returns. Louis C.K., when he was accused of sexual misconduct last year, issued what some people thought was one of the more heartfelt apologies. He really seemed to understand that he had done something wrong. And he said at the time, I'm going to step away and self-reflect and think about this. And instead, he's come back filled with a lot of vitriol and a sense that he's the one who's been wronged. So I think it's a really disappointing moment for people that, rather than take an opportunity for self-reflection, he's on the attack in a really bizarre way.
CORNISH: Ansari and Louis C.K. are also men who, in the past, spoke about sexual politics, dynamics in their work. And they were appreciated by some feminists for doing so. How does that affect how they're looked at now and how their non-apologies are looked at?
HESSE: Well, I think that we have to remember that all comedians are going onstage with a persona where the stories they tell might not be true to their lives. But they're true to how we see them. Louis C.K. and Aziz Ansari had an onstage persona of being feminist allies. And so I think that that's what made accusations against them really disappointing to a lot of people. And it's also what's made Louis C.K., in particular - what's made his recent set so disappointing to a lot of people because it just seems to say everything you thought about him was a lie.
CORNISH: But in that leaked audio we heard, there were plenty of people who are attending this show. And they are laughing. These men have an audience. Right?
HESSE: They do. I think that what is so surprising and jarring to people is that these jokes are very different than the kind of self-effacing, self-aware cultural takes that Louis C.K. became popular for having. He knew to poke fun of people with privilege. He knew to always punch up. And so when you hear people laughing now, you wonder if he's just going after a completely different audience, if he'll become sort of a bannerman for the men who think that this has all gone too far. They have a hero now in Louis C.K.
CORNISH: There was this wave of accusations and then a wave of people having to step back from public life. What is the trend as we see people try to emerge? What is the theme that's emerging in sort of how these men are approaching the public again?
HESSE: Well, I think that in the examples that we've been discussing today, the trend that we're seeing is that the men who have, so far, tried to come back aren't doing so in a contrite sort of I'm-trying-to-learn-from-my-behavior kind of way. They're doing it in a combative way. I think it's probably too soon to know whether that's the trend and that's the way forward or whether it's the way that these particular men have approached things. But I do think it's interesting that there hasn't been a careful tiptoe back into the public light after periods of self-reflection. There's just been a plopping right back where they came from and saying, I'm back, and it was your fault that you made me leave to begin with.
CORNISH: That's Monica Hesse. She's a columnist for The Washington Post.
Thank you for speaking with us.
HESSE: Thanks for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF ASH BLACK BUFFLO'S "BUHO")
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
It's the big goodbye for some small cars. That's as more and more Americans buy larger vehicles like crossovers and SUVs. As Michigan Radio's Tracy Samilton reports, some of the cars going away at the end of this year will be missed more than others.
TRACY SAMILTON, BYLINE: Some people will be sad not to see a new Cruze at the Chevy dealership. A few may mourn the Cadillac CT6, STS and Buick LaCrosse and wonder why Ford is axing nearly all its cars by year's end. And there's certainly nostalgia as Volkswagen ends the Beatle's exceptionally long run, fueled largely by its flower power image from the '60s. But the Chevy Volt? Oh, not you, too. John Schaeffer owns one. So does his wife. So do 3 of his 4 daughters.
JOHN SCHAEFFER: I plan on driving mine till the wheels fall off. I'm not planning on buying any other cars anytime soon. Honestly, you know, people say, well, what about when the battery dies? You know what? I'll put one in it.
SAMILTON: That passion is pretty typical for a Volt owner, but sales were anemic, as was the case for most of the cars being pulled out of production this year. Meanwhile, auto analyst Alan Baum says crossovers like the Ford Escape and Chevy Equinox these days come close to competing with many cars on fuel economy.
ALAN BAUM: The crossovers are very much like the cars they are replacing. The difference being, No. 1, they have more utilitarian value. And, No. 2, they're able to be priced at a higher level which obviously creates more profit.
SAMILTON: The end result? Fewer choices for consumers. Michelle Krebs with AutoTrader says some automakers, though, might see a bump in sales.
MICHELLE KREBS: Consumers who are on budgets, first-time new car buyers tend to go to the small car segment, for example. So they'll be going to things like Toyota Corolla and Honda Civic instead of Chevy Cruze and Ford Focus.
SAMILTON: But will Ford or GM someday regret ditching small cars? Stephanie Brinley with IHS Markit says, probably not.
STEPHANIE BRINLEY: Will they come to a point somewhere down the road where they need to figure out how to build another compact car again? Maybe. It's not likely to happen soon.
SAMILTON: Especially in the era of cheap oil and low gas prices. For NPR News, I'm Tracy Samilton.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Maybe your new year has started with great difficulty after you saw the old year out with perhaps too much drink. It happens, which is why we thought you might appreciate this interview from November. My co-host Ari Shapiro spoke with Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall about his book "Hungover: The Morning After And One Man's Quest For A Cure." It kicks off with a reading from that book, one that really brings the horrors of a hangover to life - if you need a reminder.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
SHAUGHNESSY BISHOP-STALL: (Reading) A headache, but no, oh, no, this is so much more, something terrible and growing. It is like your brain has started to swell, pressing against your cranium, eyes pushing out of their sockets. You cradle your head in shaking hands to keep your skull from splitting. But in truth, your brain isn't growing at all. It is, in fact, drastically shrinking.
As you slept, your body, bereft of liquid, had to siphon water from wherever it could, including from those three pounds of complex meats that hold your messed-up mind. So now your brain, in the awful act of shrinking, of contracting, is pulling at the membranes attached to your skull, causing all this [expletive] pain, tugging at the fibers of your very being.
ARI SHAPIRO, BYLINE: Wow. The writing of this book was so vivid, there were actually moments reading it that I started to feel like I was having the symptoms of a hangover even if I'd had nothing to drink the night before.
BISHOP-STALL: That's what we're going for, even starting with the sort of nauseating green of the cover here.
(LAUGHTER)
SHAPIRO: You point out that even though people have been doing this for thousands of years and suffering from it day after day after day, there's been remarkably little research into how to eliminate it.
BISHOP-STALL: Yeah. And the - so the one constant is not only how little we know, but how much we shrug about it, it seems. For centuries, we seemed to sort of throw up our hands and go, what can be done? Who knows? It's very odd.
SHAPIRO: Why do you think that is? Is there a kind of moralistic sense of people who are hungover deserve it for what they did the night before?
BISHOP-STALL: Yeah. So there's a large part of it is that. I think that there have been no state-sponsored, you know, missions to figure out the hangover or solve it in the medical communities because they see their time, rightly so, as precious. And why would I wasted on a malady that can be so easily solved by just not drinking? But I also think that there's also the underlying thought that hangovers are a source of not just moral, but physical warning - right? - to not go too far.
SHAPIRO: Right. They're a deterrent, that if we didn't have hangovers to stop us, we'd drink everything and make ourselves...
BISHOP-STALL: And we'd all be intoxicated all the time, and society would fall into ruins.
SHAPIRO: Do you think there's actually something to that?
BISHOP-STALL: There may be, but as with everything to do with this mysterious malady and alcohol in general, there's always that flip side, which is that the warning system doesn't really seem to work that well because, as you pointed out, we keep doing it. So I don't really know what to think of that, either.
SHAPIRO: So much of what we think of as symptoms of sickness are actually symptoms of our body trying to fight a sickness, you know, whether that's coughing or swollen glands. Are the symptoms of a hangover directly a result of being poisoned by alcohol or are they a reflection of our body trying to cope with what we did to it?
BISHOP-STALL: You've hit it on the head there. It's really our immune system that causes all the havoc. You know, when it kind of notices the acetaldehyde that is the byproduct of breaking down alcohol in its system, it sends out all these sort of kamikaze troops to sort of try to nullify it. And that starts this whole domino effect of your body going through a whole bunch of horrible processes.
SHAPIRO: OK. So spoiler alert, you actually found a cure.
BISHOP-STALL: Yes.
SHAPIRO: Without getting too deeply into chemistry, one of the interesting things you learned is that if you wait until the morning after, it's pretty much too late.
BISHOP-STALL: Once that whole mechanism starts, perhaps you don't even want to stop it because you could be causing other problems, I think. But no, it really has to do with timing. The concoction I finally settled on, which is a mix of certain amino acids and vitamins and minerals and some natural anti-inflammatory, they have to be taken before you fall asleep - after drinking and before you fall asleep.
SHAPIRO: What impact has that had on your consumption of alcohol?
BISHOP-STALL: Yeah.
SHAPIRO: Which, we should say, is robust, based on this book.
BISHOP-STALL: There were much darker chapters in the book. We decided to cut some of them out because it wouldn't seem to have the same stocking-stuffer ability with those darker chapters in it. But to sort of summarize them quickly for you and your listeners, the more successful I was in eliminating the pain of the morning after, the more complicated, I think, my relationship with alcohol became and the more I think I lost a sense of equilibrium with some degree.
SHAPIRO: Wow. I mean, it almost becomes a morality tale then. Be careful what you wish for.
BISHOP-STALL: Yes, absolutely.
SHAPIRO: My producer and I, before this interview, were talking about the book. And he said, well, the biggest question I had was, are you OK?
BISHOP-STALL: (Laughter) Well, your producer is very kind. I'm doing OK. I'm doing OK. I gained probably about 55 pounds and lost a few friends while writing this book, but I have come out the other side. And I'm - try to be very healthy since finishing it, not drink too much and eat well and things like that.
CORNISH: That's SHAUGHNESSY BISHOP-STALL, author of "Hungover: The Morning After And One Man's Quest For A Cure," from an interview we originally aired in November.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The U.S. and Russia are beginning the new year much as they ended the last one - on a note of friction. Russia has detained an American and accused him of spying. A family member in the U.S. says Paul Whelan was picked up last Friday during a trip to Moscow, where he went to attend a wedding. For more on this case, we're joined by NPR national security correspondent Greg Myre. Welcome to the studio.
GREG MYRE, BYLINE: Hey, Audie.
CORNISH: What more have you learned from Russia and the U.S. government?
MYRE: So this really started to break yesterday, when Russia's FSB, the Federal Security Service, put out a brief statement saying that this man, Paul Whelan, was arrested on Friday for what they called spying activities. But they didn't give any details, so we don't know what they're accusing him of precisely. The State Department has confirmed that an American is being held, but they are not giving a name, citing privacy reasons. The U.S. embassy is allowed to see a person that's being held, and so we expect that to happen any day now.
CORNISH: As we mentioned, the family of this man, Paul Whelan, says he was in Moscow to attend a wedding. Have they said any more about him?
MYRE: Yeah. We have been hearing from his twin brother, David Whelan. And he says his brother Paul is a former Marine who developed an affinity for Russia over the years and had been there a few times, and he'd gone for this wedding. And the wedding was between a former Marine that Paul Whelan knows who is marrying a Russian woman.
And when they didn't hear from Paul Whelan last Friday, they got nervous and didn't really know what had happened, feared he'd been - perhaps something very serious had happened. And they did learn Monday that he'd been detained. He's from the Detroit area, and his family has contacted congressional representatives. They've put out a statement saying they have no doubt about his innocence. He'd have nothing to do with spying or espionage.
CORNISH: That's the personal. What else do we know about Paul Whelan's professional life?
MYRE: Well, apparently, he's been going to Russia since around 2006. Now, he was in the Marine Corps serving in Iraq at that time for a year. But you do get a little break, so he got a couple of weeks off. He was a single guy, so he decided to go to Russia all on the up-and-up. In fact, on the Marine Corps website, there was an article about him, about how some of the soldiers would take their break to go to unusual places. And they actually featured Paul Whelan.
After he got out, he continued to go both on vacation and through some of his work as a businessman. He's also served as a policeman for a while. Currently, he's the director of global security at a company called BorgWarner in Auburn Hills, Mich., which supplies automotive parts all around the world. But brother stressed that this trip was a private trip to Russia, not a business one.
CORNISH: Is there any sense about why the Russians might have picked him up? Why now?
MYRE: We don't know, but certainly, the mind jumps to the case of Maria Butina, the young Russian woman who pleaded guilty on December 13, just a couple weeks ago, of acting as a foreign agent. Important point to note - she's a civilian, and Whelan is a civilian. Countries can hold and charge civilians. Diplomats, if they suspect them of spying, they just sort of kick them out. But they have a lot more authority over civilians.
CORNISH: Have the Russians said that Whelan was arrested in response to Butina, though?
MYRE: No, they haven't said that. And, in fact, Putin addressed this back in - or addressed Butina's case back on December 20. He gives this long annual end-of-the-year press conference. And he said, we are concerned about her. She's a Russian national. But he felt the charges were made up. And it was asked specifically if he might retaliate, and he said, no, we're not going for eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. That was December 20. Eight days later, Whelan is arrested.
CORNISH: That's NPR national security correspondent Greg Myre. Greg, thanks for your reporting.
MYRE: Thank you.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Now to Brazil, where they swore in a new president today. Jair Bolsonaro is a far-right retired army captain. His election was a complete break with the leftist leadership of recent years. In the past, Bolsonaro has praised Brazil's former military dictatorship, defended torture and disparaged gays, blacks and women. Crowds cheered as he addressed the nation...
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD CHEERING)
CORNISH: ...Where he struck a unifying note by declaring war on corruption.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT JAIR BOLSONARO: (Foreign language spoken).
CORNISH: ...And said the government and economy must serve all Brazilians. NPR's Philip Reeves is in the capital, Brasilia, for today's ceremony and joins us now. Phil, first, describe the mood there. What was the scene?
PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: Well, this historic moment took place on a dull day under a dripping gray sky. At first, it seemed as if the crowd would be quite small, but the day gradually gathered momentum, especially after both Bolsonaro and his wife drove in standing up and waving from the back of a vintage open-topped Rolls Royce, accompanied by cavalry on white horses which was a brave thing to do when you consider that Bolsonaro was stabbed during his election campaign.
In the end, though, there was quite a large crowd and a crowd with very high expectations. Almost everyone I spoke to thinks Bolsonaro holds the key to solve Brazil's chronic problems. Listen, for example, to Vanessa Silva, a psychologist who sees Bolsonaro as a change that the country really needs.
VANESSA SILVA: (Foreign language spoken).
REEVES: Because, she says, Brazil's going through a huge crisis and desperately needs better health, education and financial reform. She's also hoping that both Bolsonaro and his Cabinet - a third of whom, by the way, are retired military officers - can fix this despite their lack of experience in government.
CORNISH: How did Bolsonaro address some of those issues in his speech?
REEVES: Well, he talked about unity and protecting democracy, but he also hit on many of his favorite themes, saying that he wants to stop families being, in his words, destroyed by what he calls wicked ideologies. That's a swipe at the left for seeking to educate schoolchildren about gender diversity. And talking about the rights of citizens to defend themselves. That's a reference to his plan to greatly expand the ownership of firearms among the Brazilian public on the grounds that this will help them fight the crime epidemic here.
CORNISH: We mentioned earlier Bolsonaro has made a lot of provocative statements. How does that compare to the actual agenda that he's expected to pursue?
REEVES: We're going to see, undoubtedly, a far closer relationship with the United States. Bolsonaro's a big fan of President Trump. This has implications for regional issues, notably the handling of Venezuela, which Bolsonaro regards with the same kind of hostility as Trump. People will also be keeping a very close eye in coming months on his environmental policy. He's talked about withdrawing from the Paris Climate Change Agreement. And he also wants to loosen environmental laws, a move that makes the powerful agribusiness lobby that supports him very happy but sets alarm bells ringing about the preservation of the Amazon rainforest.
Other things to look out for - will he go ahead with his plan to move Brazil's embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem? Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was here today, and he got a big hug from Bolsonaro. And also, will that plan for widening gun ownership actually go through?
CORNISH: Does he have the support from Congress to do that?
REEVES: Well, it's not going to be easy. He has no experience of high office. And he has a lot of interest groups tugging at his shirt tails - the military, who support him, the evangelical lobby, who support him, the agribusiness lobby. So it's going to be very difficult reconciling their needs and also building the consensus he needs in Brazil's Congress.
CORNISH: That's NPR South American correspondent Philip Reeves.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
To help usher in the new year, our poetry reviewer Tess Taylor wants us to seize the spirit of the day.
TESS TAYLOR, BYLINE: By the time this week rolls around where we all unplug a little and dream a little, I get back into this idealistic space where I just want to be surrounded by wonderful books and start the year surrounded by things that I love to read.
CORNISH: Books of poetry, of course.
TAYLOR: And I was thinking about how poetry is kind of an idealistic space, and so is New Year's. And our ideal selves are maybe a little bit more dreamy than our regular workday selves. And perhaps that's why New Year's Day is a great day to start to think about reading poems.
CORNISH: And while Tess Taylor is a professional poet, she wants us all to remember that poetry is play.
TAYLOR: I was thinking about this Margaret Atwood quote. "I read for pleasure, and that is the moment that I learn the most." So one of my New Year's resolutions this year is just to try to read a poem for pleasure every single day.
CORNISH: To launch this project, Tess has selected some New Year's-themed poetry. First up, Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
TAYLOR: There's such a wealth of New Year's poems. Tennyson is actually the poet who wrote ring out the old, ring in the new. I mean, we say that all the time, but it's from this famous Tennyson poem from the 19th century. And it says, ring out the old, ring in the new, ring happy bells across the snow. The year is going, let him go. Ring out the false, ring in the true.
CORNISH: Up next, "I Am Running Into A New Year" by Lucille Clifton.
TAYLOR: (Reading) I am running into a new year, and the old years blow back like a wind that I catch in my hair, like strong fingers, like all my old promises. And it will be hard to let go of what I said to myself about myself when I was 16 and 26 and 36, even 36. But I am running into a new year, and I beg what I love and I leave to forgive me.
You can just feel that sense of motion and determination. And that poem's on fire. I love it. And they are sort of imaginary states that we're cultivating in our self. And, you know, like I said, the new year is - it's very real in the sense that we've all agreed to it. But on the other sense, there's something totally arbitrary about it. It's this - it's an imaginary ritual that we agree to go through together. And I think, you know, in that, it shares something kind of magical with poetry.
CORNISH: And finally, some warm humor in the form of haiku by Robert Hass.
TAYLOR: It's got this lovely quality of waking up. And the poem is all in Haiku. And he says, (reading) New Year's morning, everything is in blossom. I feel about average. Blossoms at night, like people moved by music. Napped half the day, no one punished me. Fiftieth birthday, from now on, it's all clear profit, every sky.
And then he has this wonderful line that you can just take with you for the rest of the year when you're letting things go. Don't worry, spiders, I keep house casually.
CORNISH: An unexpected image at the end there of welcoming spiders, keeping the house casually, just resolving to embrace life as it is. That was Tess Taylor with some poems to kick off 2019 for you - "After The Gentle Poet Kobayashi Issa" by Robert Hass and Lucille Clifton's "I Am Running Into A New Year" and Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "In Memoriam." Tess Taylor's most recent collection is "Work & Days."
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Last year marked the 50th anniversary of The Byrds' album "Sweetheart Of The Rodeo."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NOTHING WAS DELIVERED")
THE BYRDS: (Singing) Nothing was delivered. And I tell this truth to you.
CORNISH: It was a commercial flop when it was released. Now it's considered a classic. To commemorate it, founding members Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman reunited for a brief tour. And to help them resurrect the album, they enlisted Marty Stuart and his band, who are some of Nashville's most renowned musicians. Meredith Ochs has the story.
MEREDITH OCHS, BYLINE: In 1968, "Sweetheart Of The Rodeo" was too country for rock fans, and the Byrds were too rock for country fans. With steel guitar and banjo, covers of Merle Haggard, the Louvin Brothers and others, they debuted their new sound at the Grand Ole Opry. And it didn't go over very well. "Sweetheart" also stalled at number 77 on Billboard's album chart, a steep decline for a band who'd already hit the top 10.
These days, that kind of crossover can lead to hit records. Americana artists like Chris Stapleton and Jason Isbell have topped both country and pop charts and collected multiple Grammys. But the Byrds were one of the bands that set the template.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YOU AIN'T GOIN' NOWHERE")
THE BYRDS: (Singing) Whoo-ee (ph), ride me high. Tomorrow's the day my bride's going to come. Oh, oh, are we going to fly down in the easy chair.
OCHS: "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" is one of more than a dozen Bob Dylan songs that the Byrds recorded during their career, beginning with their 1965 debut. They established themselves as folk rockers but grew increasingly adventurous over the five albums that followed, exploring psychedelia, jazz, raga and more.
They sort of experimented themselves off the charts, but they kept pushing boundaries. Even though "Sweetheart Of The Rodeo," their sixth album, was unabashedly country, they included a twanged-out version of this R&B hit by William Bell, blurring the lines between country and soul music.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YOU DON'T MISS YOUR WATER")
THE BYRDS: (Singing) But when you left me, oh, how I cried. You don't miss your water till your well runs dry.
OCHS: "Sweetheart Of The Rodeo" is as much a landmark for its groundbreaking sound as it is for introducing singer-songwriter Gram Parsons to a broader audience. He was only part of The Byrds for several months, but it was Parsons who led the band down this country road, his influence deeply felt throughout the album. He called this mix of genres cosmic American music.
Parsons later went on to form The Flying Burrito Brothers with Byrds bassist Chris Hillman and record with Emmylou Harris before his death in 1973 at age 26. He also contributed two of his most memorable songs to "Sweetheart," including this one.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ONE HUNDRED YEARS FROM NOW")
THE BYRDS: (Singing) One hundred years from this day, will the people still feel this way?
OCHS: Recreating an exalted 50-year-old album in concert is risky business. But McGuinn and Hillman pulled it off nearly note for note with help from Marty Stuart, a dazzling showman who seamlessly melds past with present. There was magic in conjuring "Sweetheart's" ghosts, telling the stories behind the songs and reminiscing about late, great colleagues and collaborators, especially Gram Parsons. But there's also magic in the album itself, its long reach still rippling through both country and rock and roll.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MY BACK PAGES")
THE BYRDS AND THE FABULOUS SUPERLATIVES: (Singing) Crimson flames tied through my ears, rolling high and mighty traps.
CORNISH: That's The Byrds with Marty Stuart and his band, The Fabulous Superlatives, recorded live during their 2018 "Sweetheart Of The Rodeo" tour. Our reviewer, Meredith Ochs, is the author of several books. Her latest is "Aretha: The Queen Of Soul."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MY BACK PAGES")
THE BYRDS AND THE FABULOUS SUPERLATIVES: (Singing) Ah, but I was so much older then. I'm younger than that now. In a soldier's stance, I aimed my hand at the mongrel dogs who teach.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
One year ago today, a full-page letter appeared in The New York Times. It was a response to MeToo and began, dear sisters. It was the start of the Time's Up campaign, founded to fight workplace inequality through the legal system. Since then, multiple states have passed laws to combat sexual harassment, including California. New laws go into effect there today.
Earlier, I spoke with Fatima Goss Graves, co-founder of the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund. I asked her on this anniversary why these new laws designed to protect workers' rights are so important.
FATIMA GOSS GRAVES: One of the things that we know is that employers use things like arbitration requirements to prevent workers from accessing justice and that those requirements come as a mere condition of employment before anything terrible has ever happened to you. So doing away with that requirement will be critical.
People will be able to choose the pathway that they want for justice. People will be able to ensure that the harassment and violence that they faced doesn't stay in the shadows. And people will be able to push their employers to be better.
CORNISH: So it's the sense that the employers won't have the option to basically bury an allegation by buying off a victim.
GRAVES: One of the things we know is that both arbitration agreements and non-disclosure agreements have been used to keep harassment and violence in the dark, have been used to silence employees. You might think that you are the only one, even though there have been 10 other people who have had very similar experiences. That is going away, and it's going to be important that that goes away.
CORNISH: Looking back on last year, do you think these new laws will make a difference?
GRAVES: When I think about how much has changed in this last year, there's certainly been cultural change. But there have also been a lot of important policy changes. Over 11 states actually changed their laws in some way this year. We aren't done even in those states. And there were over 100 bills introduced in state and local legislatures. So people understood that this was both a longstanding problem but one that they had to get right.
CORNISH: In the meantime, have you gotten a lot of phone calls? Do you think that there are more women out there with more stories to tell?
GRAVES: There is no question that there are people out there who need help and who have stories to tell. We have heard from 4,000 people at the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund over the last year. And that is just the tip of the iceberg, so we really are just getting started.
CORNISH: What kinds of issues are these callers bringing to you?
GRAVES: We hear from people who've experienced harassment in nearly every setting in over 60 different sectors. Sometimes we hear from people who've experienced harassment, and unfortunately, they have no rights because they are way past the statute of limitations, and it took too long to come forward. They have no rights because they are either an independent contractor, or an intern or some other category that isn't covered by federal law and isn't covered in their state, or they have no rights because they work for a very small employer.
Well, if you were a domestic worker, or you're working for a small business, and you are experiencing harassment or violence at work, you still deserve to be able to work with safety and dignity. These are the types of things that we hear from - at the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund all the time. And these are the types of things that we're counting on our policymakers to fix.
CORNISH: When you talk about fixes, what are some other kinds of legislation or policy changes you think could make a difference, given the kinds of calls you've been getting?
GRAVES: Well, certainly we have to make sure we make harassment less secret. So that is the NDAs. That's the arbitration agreements. We need to look at changing our statute of limitations, period. Right now, a year or two years can be too long for many people.
CORNISH: Have you had pushback from employers, businesses, so to speak? And is there an argument from them that says, look, we also need legal protections?
GRAVES: One of the things that's interesting about this moment is that our culture is dramatically outpacing our laws, and businesses know that. Businesses actually - some of them have been making these changes on their own. We've seen some companies just announce that they're doing away with arbitration rules. They're doing away with NDA requirements. They're looking to train their workers and desperate, I think, in some cases for best practices. So they know that change has already come culturally. What hasn't caught up is our laws.
CORNISH: Finally, what's your response to people who have talked about the idea of a backlash? Because often you hear the phrase that men who are publicly accused of sexual misconduct aren't getting, quote, unquote, "due process." And I use that term because that's, like, a legal term (laughter) that people are using in a cultural conversation.
GRAVES: Yeah. Yeah.
CORNISH: Do you think that that is going on? Do you think it's affecting the ability of people to come forward?
GRAVES: One of the things that's interesting about this moment is the cultural change that is happening, it can seem unsettling, right? For many, many years, conduct that was totally inappropriate, conduct that was actually illegal already, went unchecked. And that shift is going to be uncomfortable for everyone, for the institutions, for all of the individuals involved.
CORNISH: Fatima Goss Graves is president and CEO of the National Women's Law Center. Thank you for coming in.
GRAVES: So glad to be here.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Some federal workers are suing over the government shutdown, saying they're being illegally forced to work without pay. The American Federation of Government Employees, one of the biggest unions, has joined the suit. NPR's Martin Kaste called workers with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to see how they're coping.
MARTIN KASTE, BYLINE: Heidi Burakiewicz is one of the lawyers on this new lawsuit. And she says it's unreasonable what workers in federal prisons are having to put up with.
HEIDI BURAKIEWICZ: This is a situation that the government is putting these people in, and it's through no fault of their own.
KASTE: This is a contingency lawsuit. Her firm gets paid if there's a settlement. But she says the situation is hard for prison workers. Pretty much everybody assigned to a corrections facility, not just the guards, is considered essential and has to keep showing up for work.
BURAKIEWICZ: It's a horrible situation for them to be in because they don't know when they're going to get their next paycheck.
KASTE: To be clear, Bureau of Prisons employees did just get paid a couple of days ago. The real concern is about the next paycheck in two weeks. Angie Acklin is a case manager at the Federal Correctional Institution in Aliceville, Ala. She's trying to pay off medical bills from last year. And she says a delayed paycheck will not help her.
ANGIE ACKLIN: It may hurt me if I get so far behind that, you know, I'm owing a lot more money than they feel I should be.
KASTE: The they she's talking about there is the Bureau of Prisons. That's because the government checks prison employees' credit reports to make sure that they're not so deep in debt that they might be susceptible to bribes. Acklin hopes that the shutdown won't force her to miss a debt payment right before her next review, which is coming up soon.
ACKLIN: Hopefully it can be explained with, well, the government shut down, so I couldn't make this payment because we weren't getting paid.
KASTE: Right now, the prison workers most affected are those who aren't getting their travel expenses reimbursed. Robert Richards is one of them. A hurricane hit the prison where he works in Florida, so he's been working in Mississippi. He's out of pocket on those travel costs as long as this shutdown continues. But he's also torn by the bigger political situation and President Trump's insistence on money for the border wall.
ROBERT RICHARDS: I fully believe in border security. I do. And I'm willing to make a sacrifice for a time, but I can't do it forever.
KASTE: Richards says the previous short government shutdowns have led to a certain complacency.
RICHARDS: We've had it before, never had a missed check. But this one, we're kind of getting the feeling that this may last a little bit longer.
KASTE: He's starting to think that he may not see his next paycheck until February. And he says the mood among his fellow corrections officers is, quote, "doom and gloom." Martin Kaste, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF BASTIEN KEB'S "PICK UP")
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
In Massachusetts, people living on Cape Cod are getting used to a new sound. Actually, it's an old sound - real steam whistles have been added onto the diesel-powered ferries running to Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Island. Monique Laborde reports.
MONIQUE LABORDE, BYLINE: Take a ferry ride anywhere in the country, and the ship will likely signal its departure with this sound.
(SOUNDBITE OF FERRY HORN)
LABORDE: But here on Cape Cod, ferries running with the Steamship Authority to the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, they sound like this.
(SOUNDBITE OF STEAM WHISTLE)
LABORDE: It's the same sound passengers heard in 1925 riding the Nobska steamship to Nantucket Island.
CARL WALKER: We're required to have a whistle on each ferry. We're not required to have two whistles. And we're certainly not required to have a steam whistle.
LABORDE: Carl Walker is the director of engineering at the Steamship Authority. He says the historic steam whistle project started in 2006, and it turns out these whistles aren't so easy to find. After a decade of searching, they managed to find six, one for each of their large passenger ferries. And they include the whistle from the Brinckerhoff, a side-wheel steamship that ran the Hudson River from 1899 to 1941.
(SOUNDBITE OF STEAM WHISTLE)
LABORDE: The whistle from the Sankaty steamer, which served Martha's Vineyard from 1911 until it was requisitioned for use in World War II.
(SOUNDBITE OF STEAM WHISTLE)
LABORDE: And this one, believe it or not...
(SOUNDBITE OF STEAM WHISTLE)
LABORDE: ...Walker founded on eBay for $2,700 and never could track down its origin. Eric Coles is riding the ferry home to Martha's Vineyard. Cole says he can hear these whistles from his house 15 times a day.
ERIC COLES: There's something charming about it, like, living on this island and, like, being able to hear the ferry come in and out. I just get a warm feeling when I hear it. It makes me happy that I live here.
LABORDE: Another ferry passenger, J.D. Garcia, is leaving the island after a holiday.
JD GARCIA: Hearing the whistle reminds me that I'm coming back to reality (laughter). So yeah, it reminds me of music too, of Van Morrison's "Mystic."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "INTO THE MYSTIC")
VAN MORRISON: (Singing) We were born before the wind, also younger than the sun. The bonnie boat was won as we sailed into the mystic.
LABORDE: For NPR News, I'm Monique Laborde on Cape Cod.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Accusations of cronyism and wasteful spending have been made against a little-known federal agency. The Government Publishing Office is in charge of producing official documents from passports and social security cards to tax forms and the 2020 census. NPR's Hansi Lo Wang has obtained an internal investigative report that alleges misconduct by two of the agency's top officials. He joins us now to talk more about it. And, Hansi, first, who conducted this internal investigation at the GPO?
HANSI LO WANG, BYLINE: This is part of an ongoing investigation by the GPO's internal watchdog group. It's called the Office of the Inspector General. We obtained an interim report that was sent to Congress back in June. And the authenticity of the report was confirmed to us by the GPO's current Inspector General Melinda Miguel. And this report says the investigators found what they called the improper hiring of two employees. Both joined the agency in 2014 during the Obama administration. And the report estimated that the cost to taxpayers was more than $400,000.
CORNISH: Who are these workers? And what does the report say was wrong with their hiring?
LO WANG: Well, one of them is the son of the current acting head of the agency Herbert Jackson Jr. And in general, you're not allowed to work at a federal agency where a relative is a supervisor whether directly or indirectly. And this investigation found that Jackson's son was appointed to an internship position at the GPO. And Jackson was indirectly supervising the division where his son was working. And this went on for four years.
This report also focuses on another former employee. She was a family friend of a former congressional staffer involved with GPO funding. And the investigators say this GPO worker did not qualify as an expert or a consultant. And that would have exempted her from the general hiring rules. And the report says a former GPO official Andrew Sherman made sure she was paid through multiple contracts over four years.
CORNISH: Now, what happens next? We're talking about senior officials - right? - at the government publishing office.
LO WANG: Well, I reached out to both of those officials and to the GPO. All declined to comment. The GPO's spokesman says the investigation is still ongoing. And Andrew Sherman, one of those top officials, is no longer with the GPO. But according to a letter he has sent to Congress, he has questioned the credibility of this investigation. And the other thing to keep in mind here is that oversight ultimately falls to lawmakers on a joint congressional committee. And the spokesperson for the House Democrats on the committee says they're playing a, quote, "vigorous oversight regime in the new Congress."
CORNISH: This might be the first time that many people have even heard of the Government Publishing Office. What impact could mismanagement at this small agency have on the rest of the government?
LO WANG: Right. This is a little-known agency. But it does play a critical role especially when it comes to the once-a-decade census. You know, an earlier inspector general investigation found that GPO officials violated contracting rules for the printing of the 2020 census. They still have not announced the new contractor. And the Census Bureau says printing those forms has to start by June to avoid disrupting preparations. So mismanagement at the GPO could have big implications because a 2020 census affects how seats in the House of Representatives are distributed among the states and how federal funding is distributed over the next decade.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Hansi Lo Wang. He's been reporting on an investigation into alleged misconduct at the Government Publishing Office. Hansi, thank you.
LO WANG: You're welcome.
(SOUNDBITE OF COOKIE JAR'S "MAD MAN")
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Crippling drought in the West has caused more than a million dollars in damage. Those trying to manage its effects often turn to a map that gets updated every week regardless of a government shutdown. It's called the U.S. Drought Monitor. Grace Hood of Colorado Public Radio and NPR's energy and environment team explains.
GRACE HOOD, BYLINE: Everyone has a weekly routine. Some check stocks. Others look to weather. For retired schoolteacher Dave Kitts, it's the U.S. Drought Monitor map.
DAVE KITTS: I don't know. I think it's a little obsessive, but, yeah, I check it every Thursday.
HOOD: The past year hasn't been good to Kitts or his 2-acre spread outside Santa Fe. Dry years crust the soil and can kill his pinyon trees.
KITTS: It's just upsetting and depressing to me. And when it moves the other direction, it definitely lifts my spirits.
HOOD: The National Drought Monitor map isn't just for citizen scientists like Kitts. It's for water planners who decide resource allotments, farmers who need water for their livelihoods. Most importantly, it's for federal bureaucrats who use the map to unleash billions in U.S. aid. Each week, they can see the United States. Across the West, yellow, orange and red show just how dry things are, with a big crimson bull's-eye in the Southwest. Mark Svoboda started this map 20 years ago.
MARK SVOBODA: We're covering everything from groundwater to stream flow, temperature.
HOOD: Svoboda is a diet Mountain Dew-drinking scientist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. As droughts become more severe with climate change, he thinks the work deserves more attention.
SVOBODA: Droughts are like the Rodney Dangerfield of hazards. They just don't get any respect.
HOOD: Think about TV crews. They rush out to stand near hurricanes and wildfires, but they rarely flock to desiccated farm fields. Here's what goes into the map. It takes hundreds of people, like Colorado assistant climatologist Becky Bolinger.
BECKY BOLINGER: I'm personally feeling a little bit more hopeful.
HOOD: Because she's seen more snow to start this winter.
BOLINGER: And that we will be able to start chipping away at the drought in the Southwest.
HOOD: That's what Bolinger saw in the data. But she wanted more context from Colorado's farmers and ranchers, so she asked for field reports.
BOLINGER: And we've gotten some very specific examples of, like, well, I went out to put in a wood post, and the surface of the ground was wet. And three inches deep, the soil was bone-dry.
HOOD: That tells Bolinger that recent rain was not enough. She submits her recommendation along with dozens of similar reports from around the U.S. Then it's up to map authors like David Simeral to make sense of it all.
DAVID SIMERAL: It's a physically and emotionally draining process taking those recommendations as well as then starting to dig into the data.
HOOD: He's meticulous because each week's map has the author's name and contact information. He has to justify decisions to everyone, including politicians who want more federal aid and agricultural producers who receive it. Ultimately it's the compilation of reports over time that help people like Colorado rancher Matt Isgar. He uses the tool to figure out where his cows should feed.
MATT ISGAR: It tells you what direction the drought is trending towards. So you know, if you're looking for pasture or forage, you tend to go the other direction.
HOOD: This winter, Isgar will keep an eye on the Drought Monitor, hoping the drought will leave his land as quietly as it came. For NPR News, I'm Grace Hood.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
When it comes to the issue of abortion rights, the U.S. Supreme Court gets a good deal of attention, but states have a lot of power to restrict and regulate abortion. And now with a newly reconfigured Supreme Court, activists say the stakes are even higher as state lawmakers reconvene this month.
NPR's Sarah McCammon has a preview of how the battle over reproductive rights is shaping up in state capitols around the country.
SARAH MCCAMMON, BYLINE: Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is known for his conservative record. With his confirmation, many abortion-rights opponents see new opportunities to restrict the procedure at the state level. Jamieson Gordon is with Ohio Right to Life.
JAMIESON GORDON: The pro-life movement has been talking about a more pro-life-friendly court for years, and we see Kavanaugh really tilting that balance.
MCCAMMON: Activists in Ohio just pushed through a law banning a common second-trimester procedure called dilation and extraction. Gordon says her group is feeling emboldened and working to pass more restrictions in the new year.
GORDON: It really has been encouraging for us, knowing that if our bill was shooed on and it got picked up to go to the court that we would have a more favorable court. So I do think that we've seen the tide turn.
MCCAMMON: Abortion-rights advocates are also expecting a wave of bills to be introduced in statehouses across the country. Elisabeth Smith is chief counsel for state policy at the Center for Reproductive Rights.
ELISABETH SMITH: We think this will be a watershed moment in terms of the number that are filed, and then potentially the number that will actually be enacted in various states.
MCCAMMON: Smith says advocates are working to protect abortion rights, repeal existing restrictions and fight new efforts to limit access to the procedure.
SMITH: I think the specter of the Supreme Court will be behind both the proactive bills, in terms of shoring up the right and access at the state level, and on the other side, I think states that are hostile to reproductive rights are going to be jockeying to be the state that sends a law to the Supreme Court.
MCCAMMON: Abortion-rights opponents are also watching the Supreme Court, hoping to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide. Sue Liebel is state director for the anti-abortion-rights group Susan B. Anthony List.
SUE LIEBEL: Everybody wants - you know, states want their bill to be the one to go to the Supreme Court. They want to be the one.
MCCAMMON: Possible test cases for Roe are already working their way through the courts, including an Iowa law banning abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected, and one in Mississippi prohibiting the procedure after 15 weeks gestation. Liebel says anti-abortion activists want to pass similar bills in as many states as possible.
LIEBEL: And so I think they're hopeful, they're energized and raring to go.
MCCAMMON: If Roe were weakened or overturned, more power for regulating abortion would fall to the states. Elisabeth Smith, with the Center for Reproductive Rights, says lawmakers in several states, including Massachusetts and Virginia, are sponsoring bills to guarantee the right to abortion in state law.
SMITH: State advocates in Texas have also prefiled a Whole Woman's Health Act. It's unlikely that bill will pass. But again, I think more and more state advocates are bringing up this bill either as a messaging vehicle or to actually get it enacted.
MCCAMMON: Abortion opponents say they'll fight those efforts and work to push forward more restrictions on abortion. With the newly configured Supreme Court, those fights are likely to intensify as many lawmakers head back to their state capitols in the coming weeks. Sarah McCammon, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
There's no voice quite like that of Andrea Bocelli.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CON TE PARTIRO")
ANDREA BOCELLI: (Singing in Italian).
KELLY: "Con Te Partiro" - that's Bocelli's hit from 1995. It cemented his status as one of the world's most beloved singers, one who has since collaborated with everyone from Celine Dion to Ariana Grande, one who's earned a Guinness World Record for simultaneously holding the No. 1, 2 and 3 spots in Billboard's classical top 10. Andrea Bocelli sings pop. He sings opera. On his new album titled "Si," he tries something new, something he finds truly daunting - singing with his 21-year-old son Matteo.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FALL ON ME")
ANDREA BOCELLI AND MATTEO BOCELLI: (Singing) Fall on me (singing in Italian)
A BOCELLI: For me, it has been a terrible experience (laughter) because I felt all the responsibility, you know? And I am very worried because I know every kind of difficulties, every kind of problems.
MATTEO BOCELLI: He knows that he's had tough way.
KELLY: That's Matteo Bocelli and his father, Andrea Bocelli, talking about their song "Fall On Me." I talked to them both with the help of a translator about what it means to record together.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FALL ON ME")
M BOCELLI: (Singing) Fall on me with all your light.
KELLY: So, Matteo, this for you is the beginning of a career. This is not just a fun project with Dad.
M BOCELLI: Yeah, for me, it's very fun. And I hope it's going to be...
A BOCELLI: No, now is not the beginning. For now, it's rehearsal, something (unintelligible).
M BOCELLI: Yeah. At the moment, I'm just a student of the conservatory of Lucca trying to get the best technique I can.
KELLY: Lucca, we should explain, is the beautiful walled town in Tuscany.
M BOCELLI: Yeah.
KELLY: I have to ask, Matteo, does it help or is it completely intimidating to try to launch yourself in this business with Andrea Bocelli as your dad?
M BOCELLI: Honestly, for me, it's not intimidating at all because, I mean, I see him as a father. And he's - let's say that he's a big help because I have him 24 hours a day, and so I have the possibility to ask him a question about singing, about the technique, so it's a help.
KELLY: And, Andrea, for you, watching your son launch himself into this business, you said how worried you are and how frightening that can be because you know this world, but there must also be such pride knowing that he's going to come along and that generations from now, there'll still be a Bocelli singing.
A BOCELLI: The only thing I can say is that he has the spirit, a good expression when he sings, and the expression is the only thing that is impossible to learn. So now...
KELLY: And what do you mean by expression?
A BOCELLI: The way you can communicate the feelings, you know? Then, of course, the road is very long and very tough. He has to study a lot because day by day, we - me too. I am 60. And every day, I try to be better, to discover something new in my instrument.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FALL ON ME")
ANDREA BOCELLI AND MATTEO BOCELLI: (Singing) Fall on me with all your light, with all your light.
KELLY: Yeah, Andrea, you know, from the outside, somebody could look at you and it looks as though you've made it. You lived this charmed life. You pack stadiums all over the world. Do you still feel pressure putting yourself out there with new work, new album?
A BOCELLI: I suffered a lot in my life for this because I am very (speaking Italian).
ANGELA: Emotional.
A BOCELLI: Emotional, yeah. Now I am a little bit more tranquil when I go because I'm convinced I've done all my best in order to be perfect shape.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IF ONLY")
A BOCELLI: (Singing in Italian).
KELLY: Another duet on this album, which surprised me, was with Dua Lipa, the British pop star. She's 23. She's not the most obvious person for a - you said you were 60 - 60-year-old world-famous Italian tenor to put - to record with.
A BOCELLI: No, but - she's young, but her voice is very inspired. She did really her best in order to understand the score.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IF ONLY")
DUA LIPA: (Singing) If only we could turn back time, take back the day we said goodbye, maybe your heart would still be mine.
ANDREA BOCELLI AND DUA LIPA: (Singing) My love, if only (singing in Italian).
KELLY: And you said she worked to understand the score. Walk me through that.
A BOCELLI: Every song has a secret language, you know? And you have to understand it.
KELLY: So for this song, what's the secret message?
A BOCELLI: It's impossible to explain. It's secret. It's (speaking Italian).
ANGELA: It's cryptic.
KELLY: Cryptic.
(LAUGHTER)
KELLY: You just have to hear it and get it. Is that what you're saying?
A BOCELLI: Yes. There is a very interesting expression coming from a very famous philosopher about the music. I say it in Italian, then Angela (ph) will translate for you.
KELLY: Please.
A BOCELLI: (Speaking Italian).
ANGELA: He says that music is the hidden, rhythmic practice of the spirit that has no number.
KELLY: That is cryptic (laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IF ONLY")
ANDREA BOCELLI AND DUA LIPA: (Singing in Italian).
KELLY: I've been trying to keep up with your U.S. tour on Twitter, and it looks amazing. City after city after city - the number of people who come to hear you sing. And I wonder, what do you think is going on there? Does this speak to an unmet desire for classical music?
A BOCELLI: I think that classical music - it's something like a paradise of music, you know? People don't have many opportunities to discover this kind of music. But when you can do it, usually remains completely (speaking Italian).
ANGELA: You're enchanted. It stays with you.
A BOCELLI: Enchanted, yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ALI DI LIBERTA")
A BOCELLI: (Singing in Italian).
KELLY: You've talked about doing the work, that you show up, you sing, you do the work every day. What do you still want to do, having done so much by the age of 60?
A BOCELLI: Well, to sing for me is not so hard. It's my job, but it's also my passion. For me, it's much more difficult to speak English for example.
(LAUGHTER)
A BOCELLI: Yes. An interview...
KELLY: This conversation is more challenging than entertaining is to you.
A BOCELLI: An interview like this for me is much, much more different than a concert at the Madison Square Garden.
KELLY: (Laughter) Well, thank you very much for your time...
A BOCELLI: Thank you.
KELLY: ...And for speaking English and sharing this beautiful music with us.
A BOCELLI: My pleasure.
KELLY: We appreciate it. Andrea Bocelli and his son, Matteo Bocelli, both speaking to us from our New York bureau about the new album on which they collaborate, "Si."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ALI DI LIBERTA")
A BOCELLI: (Singing in Italian).
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
We are 12 days into a partial government shutdown, and judging by a meeting at the White House today, there's no end in sight. President Trump sat down with congressional leaders from both parties. They did not come away with a deal. Trump still demanded money for a border wall. Democrats still said they won't give it to him. As of tomorrow, Democrats will have more leverage when they take control of the House of Representatives.
NPR congressional correspondent Scott Detrow is following all this. And, Scott, sounds like not so much progress to report.
SCOTT DETROW, BYLINE: Yeah, not really. Congressional leaders were invited for a briefing on border security. Democrats went into it skeptical, saying this was a stunt from the White House. According to Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen did not get too far into her briefing before Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, cut it off and tried to bargain with the president. Afterward, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did not sound too optimistic about any progress.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MITCH MCCONNELL: I don't think any particular progress was made today, but we talked about all aspects of it. And it was a civil discussion. And we're hopeful that somehow in the coming days and weeks, we'll be able to reach an agreement.
DETROW: One very notable word there - weeks...
KELLY: Weeks?
DETROW: ...Coming weeks. No ends in sight, apparently.
KELLY: And what is the latest on what Democrats are offering and what President Trump says he might accept?
DETROW: Well, tomorrow, there's one big change that happens, that Democrats take control of the House of Representatives. And one of the first things they're going to do is call for a vote on two different bills. One would fund every department affected by the shutdown except for one - Department of Homeland Security - for a full year and then a second short-term Homeland Security funding bill. It would take it into early February. Homeland Security, of course, is the department where the funding for the wall would go.
This short-term measure would not include funding for the wall. The Democratic goal is to get everything else running and just focus on that. Here's what Nancy Pelosi, who's going to be speaker of the House as of tomorrow, said after today's meeting at the White House.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NANCY PELOSI: We're asking the president to open up government. We are giving him a Republican path to do that. Why would he not do it?
DETROW: And what she's referring to there is the fact that the Senate unanimously passed a bill that would have the funding level that Democrats will put in their measure. Before, President Trump reversed course and said, no, he wouldn't sign anything that did not include funding for a border wall. The White House has rejected this approach, saying the president is really dug in here. And he's happy to keep a quarter of the government unfunded and shut down until he gets what he wants.
KELLY: And just to make sure I understand what the Democrats are putting on the table, this would kick the can on Homeland Security down the road a little bit, but meanwhile, would allow the government to reopen while they continue negotiating - or not negotiating, as the case has been.
DETROW: Right. The rest of the affected departments would be funded for a full year and Homeland Security just a matter of weeks. And they could keep going back and forth.
KELLY: OK. I mean, we keep saying this, but it is worth just flagging again that we are now 12 days in, nearly two weeks into this. And until this afternoon, Democrats hadn't even sat down or met with the president in all that time that the shutdown's been in effect.
DETROW: It's very strange and much different than any other sustained shutdown that we've seen in recent history. The last serious negotiation happened one day into the shutdown, when Schumer met with Vice President Mike Pence. And then just nothing happened for more than a week, nearly two weeks. President Trump stayed in Washington, D.C., instead of going to Florida. But he didn't really do much, he just sent out a lot of tweets.
And lawmakers have said one reason why there hasn't been much progress is that it's just hard to negotiate with President Trump because, you know, a White House official, even Vice President Pence will come forward with one proposal, and then President Trump will undercut them days later or sometimes, you know, just a few hours later on Twitter. So Democrats are saying we don't know what the president wants. It's only worth sitting down and talking directly to President Trump.
KELLY: Thank you, Scott.
DETROW: Thank you.
KELLY: NPR's Scott Detrow.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
We want to spend the next few minutes now with Congressman Hakeem Jeffries of New York. He's the incoming chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. Welcome to the program.
HAKEEM JEFFRIES: Thanks for having me on.
CORNISH: So you just heard our reporter Scott Detrow lay out what House Democrats want to do tomorrow - right? - take up bills that would reopen the government but essentially ignore that question of a border wall and funding for a border wall. Now, why move forward with a proposal that the Senate won't take up because the president won't support it?
JEFFRIES: Well, it's not clear to me that the Senate will or will not take it up until they are actually sent over the legislation from the House of Representatives and...
CORNISH: No. Senator Mitch McConnell has said explicitly he will only put a bill on the floor if President Trump says he'll support and sign it.
JEFFRIES: Well, the Senate will be the Senate. The House has to be the House. And at the end of the day, consistent with the Origination Clause in the United States Constitution, the House of Representatives is given the explicit authority to determine initially, in the first instance, how we're going to allocate taxpayer resources. And so that's precisely what we intend to do tomorrow.
CORNISH: You've repeatedly called the president's request for more than $5 billion for the wall a ransom note. Do you see any risk in softening your stance - maybe trying to negotiate with him here?
JEFFRIES: Well, I think the reality of the situation is that at its core the - what we do in government is to manage public money. And we can either manage that money efficiently, or we can waste taxpayer dollars. And what Donald Trump has requested in terms of $5 billion plus for a medieval border wall would be a waste of taxpayer resources.
In the last Congress, we allocated approximately $1.3 billion, and the Trump administration has only spent about 6 percent of that money. So it doesn't make any sense to us that he would be asking for an additional amount - perhaps an excess of $5 billion - when they haven't even spent the resources that have been currently allocated to them.
CORNISH: What's your response to the president accusing Democrats of essentially playing politics - that this is all with an eye towards the 2020 election?
JEFFRIES: Well, we would like to actually reopen government, so we can put aside the political gamesmanship - particularly as it relates to the six appropriations bills, as was pointed out earlier in the show, where there is bipartisan agreement. These are appropriations bills that have already successfully gone through the Senate with Democratic and Republican support.
We should not have those departments that are currently shut down be held as casualties of Donald Trump's effort to shut down 25 percent of the government. Now, he clearly has said that he was going to shut things down, that he was going to own the shutdown, that he was going to be proud to do it. And that is unfortunately why we find ourselves in a situation that we're in right now.
CORNISH: In the meantime, we've got government workers - some of whom we heard on this show yesterday - worried that they're not going to be able to make rent, that they're falling behind financially. What do you have to say to them right now?
JEFFRIES: Well, we're going to do everything possible to get the government reopened, beginning by the steps that we take tomorrow. And hopefully Mitch McConnell and his colleagues in the Senate will realize that they should not function as wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Trump administration.
CORNISH: But do you think the issue of the border wall is worth this price - is that your response to them?
JEFFRIES: Well, my response is that we're a separate and coequal branch of government. We, in the House of Representatives, have a responsibility to be stewards of taxpayer dollars. And what Donald Trump has proposed basically is a 5th-century solution to a 21st-century problem that no legitimate public policy expert believes will actually secure the border. It's Donald Trump who made the decision to shut the government down.
And let's also be clear about something. We still have not assumed control of the House of Representatives. This is a shutdown that took place with Republicans in control of the House, the Senate and the presidency, which is the case until tomorrow January 3.
CORNISH: That's Congressman Hakeem Jeffries. Thank you so much.
JEFFRIES: Thank you.
CORNISH: And we'll be hearing from a Republican on the shutdown elsewhere in the program. Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma will join us.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Tyler Trent was a huge Purdue fan. By the time he died yesterday, people across the country were even bigger fans of Tyler Trent.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Trent was a native of Carmel, Ind. He started his freshman year at Purdue in 2017. Like any superfan, he camped out in front of Purdue's stadium for tickets for a big game against Michigan.
KELLY: That caught the football team's attention, says Gregg Doyel, a sports columnist for The Indianapolis Star.
GREGG DOYEL: Purdue football - not very good last year, and he's camping out before a big game for tickets, and he's the only person there, just him and his buddy.
KELLY: And that school spirit convinced Purdue head coach Jeff Brohm to meet and take a picture with the team's number-one fan. What Brohm didn't know is Tyler Trent had just gone through a chemotherapy treatment.
CORNISH: Trent was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer when he was 15. He was in remission for a couple of years. But by the time he enrolled at Purdue, the disease had returned.
KELLY: The football team's coaching staff learned about Trent's cancer and reached out to him. Eventually they made him an honorary captain. That was just the start of a whirlwind year for Trent, says Tom Schott, senior associate athletics director for communications at Purdue.
TOM SCHOTT: This story just continued to grow. And it went from a Purdue football story to a Purdue athletics story to a Purdue University story to a college football story to a nationwide story.
CORNISH: Sports columnist Gregg Doyel says Tyler Trent's positive attitude in the face of death and his mission to raise cancer awareness really resonated with people, all kinds of people.
DOYEL: He broke down walls that you never thought would get broken down. He got a letter from Donald Trump. He got a phone call one time a few weeks before the Ohio State game. He didn't recognize the number, but he answered it. And the guy said, Tyler, hi. This is Mike. And Tyler said, Mike who (laughter)? And the voice on the phone said, Mike Pence.
KELLY: And Trent was inspirational on the field too. Last October, when he was incredibly ill, Purdue had a massive home game against Ohio State, then ranked number two in the nation. Somehow, Trent made it to West Lafayette in time to see his beloved Boilermakers pound OSU 49 to 20. And then, after the game, the honorary captain addressed his team.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TYLER TRENT: Thanks for leaving your heart out on the field and showing the nation what being a Boilermaker is.
(CHEERING)
CORNISH: Purdue's Tom Schott says their biggest fan will be honored this Thursday night at the men's basketball game against Iowa. Tyler Trent died Tuesday at the age of 20.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BRIDGE TRIO'S "WARRIOR")
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
One chair will be empty tomorrow as the clerk in the House of Representatives gavels in a new session. That chair belongs to whoever represents North Carolina's 9th District. Problem is, coming up on two months after the November election, we still don't know who that is. The election was held, but there were allegations of election fraud, prompting the state elections board to investigate, but that board was just dissolved. Well, to get us up to speed on what is happening in North Carolina, we're joined by Joe Bruno. He's a reporter with WSOC-TV in Charlotte. Hey there, Joe.
JOE BRUNO: Hey there.
KELLY: So to set the stage here, the Republican candidate, Mark Harris, seemed to have won in November by 905 votes. As I mentioned, there were these allegations of election fraud and questions about mail-in ballots. A big investigation was underway. What is the state of that investigation now?
BRUNO: Well, right now, the investigation really is a no man's land because of a court ruling to dissolve the state board of elections. As of right now, there are no board members. And that impacts the investigation dramatically because nobody...
KELLY: Yes, it would.
BRUNO: ...Can order subpoenas to be issued, among other things, and there would be no board members to sit on an evidentiary hearing scheduled for January 11 next week. So what the governor has said is he's going to appoint an interim board of elections that will serve until the end of the month when a new law that was enacted by the General Assembly takes place, which reforms the board of elections.
KELLY: OK. And we should note the board was dissolved for unrelated reasons, right? This had been in the works for a while. There had been litigation involving questions about the makeup of that board. We'll set that bit aside for now. But this hearing that they were supposed to have held on January 11, you're saying that's possible it could still go ahead.
BRUNO: It's possible that this meeting could still be held. The new board of elections would be composed of five members - three Democrats, two Republicans. Republicans have said they don't want anything to do with this board. They don't think Governor Cooper has the legal right to form this board, so they are refusing to participate in it. The governor can still appoint three Democrats and have quorum for the meeting. The problem is it takes a fourth person in order for a new election to be called. So it's possible that we could have this hearing on the 11 where all the evidence is laid out but then no action is taken.
KELLY: I mean, this sounds just like complete chaos. Have you ever covered anything like this?
BRUNO: No. This is complete chaos, and it changes every day and seems like every hour to be honest with you. And then it's possible that the U.S. House could take the findings of whatever the state board determines and incorporate it into whatever decision they make because the U.S. House has the authority to vacate the seat and order a new primary and new election. So it's possible that the state board of elections doesn't order the new election, but the U.S. House then goes ahead and does it.
KELLY: Is that sounding increasingly like a possibility?
BRUNO: We have the incoming majority leader, Steny Hoyer, saying that Mark Harris will not be seated, and the concerns about the seat being vacant are not as heavy as the fact that there was potentially election fraud rampant throughout Bladen and Robeson counties. So it sounds like the incoming Democratic leadership team is certainly trending toward there being a new election.
But again, this isn't an easy thing. This isn't just a simple let's order a new election. They're going to have to make sure they investigate this. And it's no easy task, and I'm sure it's no easy decision for them to come to that conclusion.
KELLY: And meanwhile, what are these two candidates and their camps saying, either Mark Harris on the Republican side or Dan McCready, his Democratic rival?
BRUNO: Well, Mark Harris is demanding certification. He still is holding out hope that he will be sworn in as a member of the 116th Congress. Dan McCready, on the other hand, is preparing for the possibility of a new election. Team McCready has been sending out at least one or two emails a day to potential donors. They're already raising money whereas the Harris team is still holding on to hope that a new election will not be needed.
KELLY: Joe Bruno, a very busy political reporter with WSOC-TV in Charlotte, thanks so much for taking the time.
BRUNO: Thank you so much for having me.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
There's a new test in relations between Russia and the U.S. An American has been jailed in Moscow on espionage charges. Just weeks ago, a Russian woman pleaded guilty to conspiracy here in the U.S., and some experts say Russia may be looking for a trade. So far, the U.S. has been tight-lipped about the espionage case, though diplomats did visit the man in prison today. NPR's Michele Kelemen reports.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says he's seeking clarity from Moscow about the case against Paul Whelan.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MIKE POMPEO: We've made clear to the Russians our expectation that we will learn more about the charges, come to understand what it is he has been accused of, and if the detention is not appropriate, we will demand his immediate return.
KELEMEN: Today, U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman visited Whelan in Moscow's Lefortovo detention facility and spoke by phone with Whelan's family. Whelan is a 48-year-old ex-Marine who did two tours in Iraq before receiving a bad conduct discharge in 2008. He currently oversees security at BorgWarner, an auto parts company in Michigan. His brother, David Whelan, told MSNBC that he was in Moscow for a wedding.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DAVID WHELAN: He has a law enforcement background. He's got his Marine background. He does corporate security. And he's aware of the risks of traveling in certain parts of the world. So it would just never have occurred to me that, A, he would have any sort of trouble in a large metropolitan area or, B, that his background would suggest that he would be willing to commit any crime, let alone an espionage crime.
KELEMEN: Russian officials say he was arrested last Friday while carrying out a, quote, "act of espionage." They've said little else about the case, and that surprises Stanford University's Michael McFaul.
MICHAEL MCFAUL: The fact that we don't know the facts I think is what's most intriguing about this. If the Russians had very concrete evidence of espionage, they have every reason to publicize them, and the fact that they haven't is strange to me.
KELEMEN: McFaul was the U.S. ambassador to Russia the last time an American was arrested and accused of spying there. At the time, in 2013, the Russians showed the accused man, Ryan Fogle, on television with wigs and other gadgets. Fogle worked at the U.S. embassy and had diplomatic immunity, so he was expelled as McFaul recounted.
MCFAUL: That got solved rather quickly. What's different about this case is that Mr. Whelan isn't a diplomat. And so he has a lot less rights in the country itself, and that makes it a lot more complicated.
KELEMEN: McFaul says the Russians may be looking to trade Whelan for Maria Butina, the Russian who pleaded guilty in a U.S. court recently of conspiracy to infiltrate U.S. conservative groups. Russia's foreign ministry paints her as a political prisoner. Its Twitter profile shows a picture of her with the hashtag #FreeMariaButina. McFaul says Americans might want to think twice now about traveling to Russia. The Whelan case, he adds, could also affect business ties.
MCFAUL: The Russians constantly complain, including government officials to me from time to time, about, you know, why aren't Americans doing more business in Russia, incredible investment opportunities here? Well, there's nothing that's going to discourage investors more than what seems to be an arbitrary arrest of an American in Russia.
KELEMEN: The State Department currently advises Americans to exercise caution in Russia due to, quote, "terrorism harassment and the arbitrary enforcement of local laws." Michele Kelemen, NPR News, the State Department.
(SOUNDBITE OF TALL BLACK GUY'S "THE DARK STREETS")
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Millions of American workers celebrated the new year with a pay raise. Minimum wage increased in 20 states and 21 cities. And while that sounds like good news, it may still not be enough. In most cases, a huge gap still exists between the amount of money that minimum wage workers make and what they need to live.
To discuss this is David Cooper. He's a senior analyst at the Economic Policy Institute. Welcome to the studio.
DAVID COOPER: Thanks for having me, Audie.
CORNISH: So can you give us more detail on these minimum wage changes? What's happening where?
COOPER: Sure. So these are increases - anything from a 5-cent increase in Alaska to a $2 an hour increase in New York City. And these raises are going to lift the wages of about 5.3 million workers across the country.
CORNISH: You mentioned a range there in terms of the states. Some of the states just had a cost of living adjustment, right?
COOPER: That's right. There's about eight states where the minimum wage went up simply because there's automatic adjustment built into the law. So each year, however much prices have gone up over the preceding year, the minimum wage is automatically adjusted to account for that increase in prices.
In the other states, we had about six where the minimum wage - the new minimum wage was set by the state legislature, or legislation was passed that established this new minimum wage.
And then in the final six, those were the results of ballot increases. So in other words, voters directly at the ballot box chose to raise their state minimum wage to this new level.
CORNISH: So some research originally found that increasing the minimum wage could lead to job loss - right? - business owners saying, we can't afford to pay this.
COOPER: Yeah.
CORNISH: We're going to let some people go. New research appears to be saying the opposite. What's the conventional wisdom at this point?
COOPER: So at this point, economists generally think that the minimum wage's impact on jobs is fairly small to the point where it's probably going to be economically not that meaningful on the grand scheme of things.
The second piece that's important to recognize is that economics research on the minimum wage has gotten a lot more sophisticated about asking, what's the impact on the welfare of low-wage workers, because it may be that a minimum wage increase leads to a reduction in job growth.
But for a low-wage worker who only works a portion of the year, that may still mean that at the end of the year, they're on net just as well off as they were before because for the weeks or the hours that they're working, they're earning a significantly higher wage than they would have otherwise.
CORNISH: So you talk about the idea that economists' thinking has changed in some ways. There still is a lot of resistance to raising the minimum wage.
COOPER: Yes.
CORNISH: What's driving it?
COOPER: There's a certain group of folks who think that the government simply shouldn't have a say in what businesses choose to pay their workers - that it's purely a libertarian argument that government shouldn't set standards around wages.
Then there's another component of folks who are genuinely concerned about the increase in labor costs that would come from a higher minimum wage because that money does need to come from somewhere, and it is possible that, in some cases, businesses will adjust by having to reduce profits. And business owners don't want to have to do that.
But, you know, to those folks, I would say that in some ways, a minimum wage increase is the most advantageous way that you can raise your wages for your low-wage workers because at the same time that you're doing it, all of your competitors are facing those additional labor costs as well.
CORNISH: What does it mean, at this point, to be making a living wage?
COOPER: Yeah.
CORNISH: Are there places where the minimum wage is actually a so-called living wage?
COOPER: Yeah. So when the minimum wage was first established back in the 1930s, it was intended to be a living wage. The problem is that over the years, we've raised the federal minimum wage so infrequently and so inadequately that the gap between where it is today and where it would need to be to be a living wage is enormous.
CORNISH: Is there a sense of what it would need to be to close that gap, in general?
COOPER: We have a tool at the Economic Policy Institute called the Family Budget Calculator. And that will actually tell you what it takes to have what we would consider a modest but adequate standard of living in pretty much any jurisdiction in the country.
And if you look at that tool, what you find is that even someone working full-time full year is probably going to need more than even $15 an hour basically anywhere in the country over the next few years.
CORNISH: In the meantime, there is new leadership in Congress - in the House, especially. Do you expect to see new efforts to raise the federal minimum wage, right? As you said, it's been at 7.25 for the past decade.
COOPER: I think we can expect that a federal minimum wage bill is likely to be one of the first pieces of legislation that the House Democrats introduce. It could be one of the first ones they try to have a vote on because the minimum wage is so popular nationally.
CORNISH: David Cooper is senior analyst at the Economic Policy Institute. Thanks for coming in.
COOPER: Yeah. My pleasure.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Twenty-one Republican women will be in Congress this coming session, 21 out of 535 members. That is a drop, even though the total number of women lawmakers will hit an all-time high. As NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben reports, some in the GOP are sounding the alarm.
DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, BYLINE: Ashley Nickloes is a busy woman. She's working towards her master's degree. She's a mother of four. And when I caught her, she was on the road for one of her other roles.
ASHLEY NICKLOES: I'm a military pilot. And we have to do our simulator recurrency twice a year. So I'm here now (laughter) and in St. Louis. Yes, ma'am.
KURTZLEBEN: On top of all that, she also ran for Congress in Tennessee last year but lost in the primary. She knows any number of factors played into that. For example, she was deployed for part of the campaign. But she thinks the GOP needs to do more to get women like her elected.
NICKLOES: With only - what? - 13 seats now in the House of Representatives as Republican women, that is not at all indicative of who the Republican Party is.
KURTZLEBEN: Nickloes is one of many frustrated with the Republican Party's track record with electing women. Retiring Florida Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is another, as she recently told NPR.
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN: It is unbelievable. It is astounding. It is eye-popping. And I hope that our Republican leaders see this as a challenge and a problem that we need to fix.
KURTZLEBEN: To be clear, women are underrepresented on both sides of the aisle in Congress. Just under 1 in 4 members will be women next session. But less than 1 in 10 Republican members will be women.
One reason Republican women are poorly represented at the national level is that they're also scarce in state legislatures. That's a traditional training ground for Congress. And at both levels, their numbers will decline this year. Here's Debbie Walsh, director of Rutgers University's Center for American Women and Politics.
DEBBIE WALSH: It's significant that of the one new Republican woman who was elected in this cycle, she came out of the state legislature - Carol Miller.
KURTZLEBEN: Both parties also have different ideas about how important diversity is. One in 3 Republicans believe there are too few women in political office. In comparison, 8 in 10 Democrats think so, according to the Pew Research Center. And then there's money. Here's Walsh again.
WALSH: Women just are usually running for office from less moneyed professions, less moneyed networks.
KURTZLEBEN: That brings us back to Nickloes. She says her lack of connections hurt her fundraising.
NICKLOES: Because the other gentleman had a lot of political influence already, I heard the word retribution continuously. I had a lot of people who were like, I'll give you $175. But these were people who were able to give thousands. And so they didn't want their name coming up on a report so that my competitors could see.
KURTZLEBEN: To boost their women candidates, Democrats have a campaign money juggernaut in EMILY's List. The equivalent groups on the right have much less money. A chief critic of the party's approach to electing women is New York Representative Elise Stefanik. She spoke about her frustration at a December Politico event.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ELISE STEFANIK: I am tired of having this issue within our conference. So I think it's time to roll up our sleeves and try to change the types of candidates we have.
KURTZLEBEN: Stefanik recently stepped down from recruitment at the National Republican Congressional Committee to build up her own group to support women in GOP primaries. And when NRCC Chair Tom Emmer seemed to call that a mistake, she swiped back.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
STEFANIK: I said, news flash. I didn't ask for permission.
(APPLAUSE)
STEFANIK: And I will not ask for permission.
KURTZLEBEN: Emmer later clarified that he thinks it would be a mistake for the party to get involved in primaries. But for her part, Nickloes, the pilot from Tennessee, believes the party should do more for women in primary elections. As for whether she'll run again, she's still deciding. Danielle Kurtzleben, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER ORCHESTRA WITH WYNTON MARSALIS FEAT. BOBBY CARCASSES' "COMO FUE (LIVE)")
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
They're getting their tires slashed, pelted with rocks and run off the road. They are the fleet of self-driving vans from the company Waymo. It's been testing out the vehicles in the suburbs of Phoenix since 2016. Ryan Randazzo reports for The Arizona Republic. He joins us now from member station KJZZ. Welcome to the program.
RYAN RANDAZZO: Thank you.
CORNISH: So these cars are tested in the community of Chandler. And I understand that police have documented more than 20 incidents in the last two years. So what are the other kinds of attacks that are happening on these self-driving vans?
RANDAZZO: Well, the worst would be when a man aimed a gun at one as it drove past his driveway. And he was actually arrested. And they reached a settlement in that case. But, yeah, the slashed tire was striking. The car was actually in traffic stopped, and someone ran from a park and slashed its tire. And then, you know, being run off the road - there was one jeep that ran the self-driving cars off the road at least six times.
CORNISH: And we should note an employee rides in the back of the vehicle. So there's a human backup driver who's onboard.
RANDAZZO: Almost always to take control when needed, and that happened in all these instances. So the jeep would slam on the brakes or run headlong towards the Waymo. And the safety driver would then have to take manual control, which actually creates a pretty dangerous situation because you're handing off control of the vehicle from the robot to the human. And that handoff can be pretty dangerous.
CORNISH: A person quoted in your story said that everyone hates the Waymo drivers because they think that they're dangerous. Is that something that is a kind of common sentiment?
RANDAZZO: Well, I think it's important to note that in almost all of these instances it wasn't the typical kind of road rage that is triggered by an event on the road where someone - you know, a Waymo accidentally cut someone off or took too long to make a turn. These events aren't triggered by mistakes on the roadway or the the way the cars are driving. This is more of a general angst that some people have towards the technology being tested in their community.
CORNISH: When you say anger, do you mean the idea of just the autonomous vehicle? Is it the concern about people being harmed? Obviously there was an incident where a self-driving car killed a pedestrian.
RANDAZZO: Some of these do predate that fatal accident that occurred here. But some of them have certainly occurred since then. And that was another company. It was a vehicle operated by Uber. That definitely changed the tone of the conversation around self-driving cars in Arizona and nationally. And some people, including the man who aimed the gun, reference that accident.
But in other instances, people haven't been as aggressive as to try and run the cars off the road, but they just call the police when they see them in their neighborhood because they just are bothered by this technology circling their homes. They might have privacy concerns because there's cameras on these things.
And these things park for a long time and get new instructions on where to go. So they're often parked in front of people's homes. And people just seem very uncomfortable with this level of technology being tested on their streets.
CORNISH: What's been the response from Waymo?
RANDAZZO: I don't think Waymo is very excited about people throwing rocks at their vehicles or running them off the road. They've really tried to keep this low-key because they're launching a ride-share service. And it's not very good publicity. I mean, who wants to hire one of these cars to drive them somewhere if there's a threat that people are going to try and run you off the road?
CORNISH: Do you think this does reflect a shift in how people think about self-driving cars? Or is this really about one community that's kind of fed up?
RANDAZZO: I think there certainly is a contingent of folks who don't like the idea of robots sharing the roadways with them and maybe taking jobs away from other drivers. I think some people just don't like the idea of what this kind of technology represents for the future.
CORNISH: Arizona Republic reporter Ryan Randazzo, thank you for speaking with us.
RANDAZZO: Thanks a lot.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
In Saudi Arabia, fans of comedian Hasan Minhaj and his Netflix program "Patriot Act" are going to have to find another way to watch one particular episode.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "PATRIOT ACT")
HASAN MINHAJ: Now, if you've been watching the news, then you know that Saudi Arabia has been engulfed in a massive diplomatic crisis...
KELLY: This is an episode in which Minhaj takes on the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the Saudi regime's evolving explanations for how he died.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "PATRIOT ACT")
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Last week, the Saudis said it was an accident after a fistfight.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: And of course, that's a real shift in the narrative from them.
MINHAJ: This is the most unbelievable cover story since Blake Shelton won Sexiest Man Alive.
(LAUGHTER)
MINHAJ: Are you kidding me?
KELLY: The Saudi government was not amused and has demanded that Netflix pull the episode in that country, a demand with which Netflix has complied. Here to talk this through is Michael Schneider. He is senior editor for Variety. Hi there.
MICHAEL SCHNEIDER: Hello.
KELLY: Were you surprised at Netflix's decision to yank this episode?
SCHNEIDER: Honestly, not too surprised. I mean, we're seeing this story over and over again. As these media companies continue to expand globally, they run into these problems all the time in regimes that particularly censor both free speech and also entertainment. So I'm sure Netflix expected something like this to happen. And it will continue to happen.
KELLY: A Netflix spokesperson has put out a statement, which I will summarize. They say they do support artistic freedom, but that they had to remove this episode to comply with local law in Saudi Arabia. What do you make of that?
SCHNEIDER: Well, (laughter) at the end of the day, business comes first. As much as all of these companies enjoy free speech and support free speech to a degree, you know, these are companies that live and die especially on international expansion. Netflix does very well in the U.S., but its big growth is international. And they can't afford to upset these kind of regimes too much. Saudi Arabia, just like any territory, is important to Netflix. And at the end of the day, they'll comply with censorship.
KELLY: Could they have fought this demand? I mean, is there precedent for Netflix or another big company to have done that?
SCHNEIDER: You know, for the most part, these companies try not to fight these things. They bend over backwards sometimes to comply to international regimes. China especially you've seen a number of companies over the years change content. MGM famously digitally altered a movie in 2012 that showed Chinese soldiers as the villains. They changed the movie so that it was North Korea that was the villain.
And we've seen that over and over again both with content in China and, you know, overseas. Netflix has done this in the past in territories like Singapore, where they've changed a number of shows because of drug use, for example. You know, there are all sorts of different things that different territories are really concerned with, and Netflix and other companies tend to comply.
KELLY: What are the consequences as you see them for Hasan Minhaj, either for his career or for the future of this program?
SCHNEIDER: Well, honestly, you know, Hasan actually wrote on Twitter that the best thing to stop people from watching something is to ban it, make it trend online and then leave it up on YouTube. So in some ways, more people than ever are hearing about this episode, which aired way back in October, than they probably did at the time. So this is probably a good thing for Hasan Minhaj.
KELLY: The old all-publicity-is-good-publicity school of thought.
SCHNEIDER: Yeah. And honestly, we're talking about this again today, and we're talking about Jamal Khashoggi again today, you know? So ultimately, this is bringing awareness to both Hasan Minhaj's comedy and also a humanitarian crisis around the world.
KELLY: From a tech point of view, are their workarounds to this? Could a really determined Saudi still find a way to watch this episode?
SCHNEIDER: Well, it sounds like it is up on YouTube. So I think if people are determined, and they hear about it, there's always a way. Content is yearning to be (laughter) spread and be seen.
KELLY: I suppose that speaks to the futility of trying to ban anything in 2019 when there always (laughter) seems to be some kind of workaround.
SCHNEIDER: Absolutely, but people will still try.
KELLY: Michael Schneider is senior editor for Variety. Thanks for your time.
SCHNEIDER: Thanks so much.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KELLY: And full disclosure, the Saudi government is an investor in the parent company of Variety, Penske Media.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
President Trump invited congressional leaders to the White House today to see if they could strike a deal on funding a border wall and pave the way for federal agencies to reopen. No such luck. Here's Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer just after leaving that meeting.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
CHUCK SCHUMER: I said, Mr. President, give me one good reason why you should continue your shutdown while we are debating our differences on homeland security. He could not give a good answer.
CORNISH: And so 800,000 federal employees remain without pay on this Day 12 of the partial government shutdown. We're going to bring in now Senator James Lankford. He's a Republican from Oklahoma.
Welcome to the program.
JAMES LANKFORD: Thank you. Good to be with you again.
CORNISH: So House Democrats say they want to vote on a plan that would reopen government agencies, keep most of them funded through September and the Department of Homeland Security through February 8. It does not have the $5 billion that President Trump wants for the border wall, but it is quite similar to legislation that the Senate approved just last month - right? - clean appropriations without funding for a wall So why not take it?
LANKFORD: So it's interesting. Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell both agreed 10 days ago now to not bring up anything that didn't have the House, Senate and White House approval. And they stuck with that all the way through the last couple of weeks as they try to negotiate together to keep everyone in good faith. And then suddenly now with the transition, I guess, tomorrow and Democrats taking control, Chuck Schumer seems to be walking away from that deal and saying, no, he wants to now bring up things that don't have all three parties.
The best thing that we can do is try to keep all three parties at the table and keep everyone negotiating. I'm a little confused why this wasn't resolved days and days ago. The White House made a proposal to Chuck Schumer and said, this is a reasonable proposal - it wasn't a 5 billion proposal; it was much less than that - proposed that to Chuck Schumer. He said he would get with Nancy Pelosi and counteroffer and then never did counteroffer. And that was now...
CORNISH: I want to...
LANKFORD: ...Eight days ago. And so it's been a little frustrating. It seems to be this has just been a stall to get to a time...
CORNISH: But let me jump in here...
LANKFORD: ...When Democrats control the House.
CORNISH: ...Just for a second because even the president has contradicted, at times his own...
LANKFORD: Sure.
CORNISH: ...Vice president - right? - about whether the White House would accept less money for the border wall. Is he really the only Republican who can do this negotiating?
LANKFORD: Well, when you're...
CORNISH: Would anyone else be undermined?
LANKFORD: When you're going to make law, you've got to have the White House, the House and the Senate agree. That's how it always works. And if any one of those walks away from it, then you've got to be able to keep negotiating till all three are on board.
And at this point, it's been different. Sometimes the House has made a proposal. The Senate's made a proposal, and the White House hasn't been in agreement. We've got to get all three parties. And I'm glad the president got everyone together today at the White House to be able to talk it through.
It's not going to be helpful to have any one party - the Senate propose something and to say that we passed it but the House won't take it up, or the House to be able to pass something and then to stand up in front of the media and say, look, we passed something. The best thing that can happen is to continue to negotiate with all three parties in the room coming to an agreement and then pass it.
CORNISH: Do you still see a clear path to get there, as you said last month? I think this was on Fox News. Today, did that give you any faith?
LANKFORD: You know, what was really funny, some of my public comments the day the shutdown began was - I really saw a clear path on how this could be resolved that day. But if everyone walked away, then this is going to be a very long time. And I still feel that, and it's been way too long.
We were a few million dollars away from trying to be able to get an agreement last time. And it was a little confusing why that couldn't have occurred 10 days ago. But I still think we're very close to trying to get there if everyone would agree to it. Now, I don't know where Leader Pelosi - where she'll fall once she's elected as speaker of the House tomorrow...
CORNISH: Right.
LANKFORD: ...What the negotiation will be. But I think we've been very close in the past.
CORNISH: On one other issue - incoming senator from Utah Mitt Romney today penned an op-ed about President Trump's character - much criticism for the president. Romney also said he's not ready to endorse Trump for re-election in 2020. Are you?
LANKFORD: Well, No. 1, I would say for Mitt Romney, these aren't brand-new comments from him. These are things that, obviously, he put out in a new statement as he comes into the Senate. But he's made those same statements before. And yes, I'd support the Republican nominee as I did in the past.
CORNISH: Even if it's Trump.
LANKFORD: Even if it's Trump, the reason being is that we're going to continue to have a united front as we work through a lot of very difficult issues. And we've got to be able to do that in the days ahead.
CORNISH: Oklahoma Senator James Lankford, thank you for speaking with us.
LANKFORD: You bet. Thank you.
CORNISH: Elsewhere in the program, we'll talk to Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Federal workers around the country who aren't getting paid are watching their spending, and that is having an impact on businesses that cater to those workers. Economists don't expect to see long-lasting fallout so long as the shutdown ends soon, but the U.S. was already facing an economic slowdown, as NPR's Scott Horsley reports.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Two Sisters Deli in downtown Washington ordinarily does a brisk business selling breakfast muffins and deli sandwiches to workers from the nearby federal agencies but not this week.
HEEJIN KIM: Empty, empty.
HORSLEY: Manager Heejin Kim got more bad news today when the Smithsonian's popular Air and Space Museum shuttered its doors a block away.
KIM: Oh, my God, not even half business, not even half a sale because there's no tourists, either.
HORSLEY: Even though there's little traffic, Kim's reluctant to cut back on staff. She knows her workers have their own bills to pay. Museums will reopen when the shutdown ends, and federal workers will be back on the job. But they aren't likely to make up for all the meals and Metro rides they missed during the shutdown. Some of that money is gone for good, but it's not enough to derail a $20 trillion economy.
NARIMAN BEHRAVESH: This is tiny.
HORSLEY: Nariman Behravesh is chief economist for the forecasting firm IHS Markit.
BEHRAVESH: The economic impact is going to be fairly small. Now, obviously there's a big political to-do about this having to do with a wall and so forth. But the economic impacts will be barely noticeable.
HORSLEY: But even before the shutdown, economists had noticed a slowdown in U.S. economic growth from an annual rate of more than 4 percent in the second quarter of last year to somewhere around 3 percent in the quarter that just ended. Behravesh expects that gradual slowdown will continue in 2019 and beyond as the effects of the GOP tax cut and increased government spending wear off.
BEHRAVESH: We think the potency, if you will, of the stimulus is beginning to fade a little bit, but we still expect decent growth. By 2020, we've got growth all the way back down, a trend of around 2 percent, maybe even a little lower because the stimulus is gone at that point.
HORSLEY: Many private economists share that cautious view. Goldman Sachs just revised its forecast for economic growth in the coming year down to 2 percent or less. The Trump administration's forecast is a good deal rosier. White House economist Kevin Hassett expects growth to hold steady at around 3 percent in the coming year.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KEVIN HASSETT: All the anecdotal information we're getting is that the fundamentals remain extremely sound, that Christmas sales are through the roof. GDP in the fourth quarter is looking like it's going to be very close to, if not above three again.
HORSLEY: Unemployment is low, and wages are rising, but consumer confidence took a hit last month as the stock market wrapped up its worst year in a decade. Administration officials boast the U.S. is still outperforming much of the rest of the world, but David Dollar of the Brookings Institution warns ripple effects from slower growth overseas could eventually wash ashore in this country.
DAVID DOLLAR: We're living in a world where if China seriously slows down, that's going to have a big effect on literally more than a hundred different economies. And then of course that affects the whole world.
HORSLEY: Growth in China is slowing partly as a result of deliberate policies in Beijing but also as a result of the U.S. trade war. The administration is threatening to impose even-bigger tariffs on Chinese imports if no agreement's reached in the next couple of months. Dollar says the fallout is hard to predict.
DOLLAR: That's where a lot of the market uncertainty comes from. You could imagine an escalating trade war, or you could imagine a big announced deal between the U.S. and China that would be good for global growth and that would be calming for markets.
HORSLEY: The U.S. trade deficit has been rising despite Trump's tariffs, but the magnitude is not clear. Trade data from November was supposed to come out last week, but it was delayed by the government shutdown. Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
It could be the end of an era for Amtrak's 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. An old flipboard that shows arrivals and departures is slated to be replaced by a new digital screen. It's the last one still in the U.S. run by Amtrak. There's a lot of love in Philly for the old sign. And as Marie Cusick of member station WITF reports, there's a last-minute effort to keep it.
(SOUNDBITE OF SOLARI BOARD FLIPPING)
MARIE CUSICK, BYLINE: For decades, this has been the soundtrack for millions of passengers coming through the nation's third-busiest train station. Since the 1970s, this display board has filled the station with a distinctive clickety-clack sound as hundreds of little letter and number cards flip over to provide updates.
Known as a Solari board after its Italian manufacturer, it sits atop a massive marble information desk in the center of 30th Street Station, a soaring neoclassical and art deco building that evokes the former power and prestige of the railroad. The digital replacement is supposed to be part of a broader effort by Amtrak to modernize stations and improve customer experience.
JOE KOCHUBA: For nostalgic reasons, I'd be disappointed if it were removed.
CUSICK: Joe Kochuba of Morristown, N.J., was in Philadelphia recently for a work training and stepped out during a break to snap a few pictures at the sign.
KOCHUBA: There's not many things I feel that are left that are the way they were in their original state. And what you find is as you get older, you find more appreciation for those types of things in life.
CUSICK: For younger people like 20-year-old Liam Dunn of Dallas, Texas, the board feels like a surprise.
LIAM DUNN: I've never been anywhere else where they have the nondigital board, so I think it's pretty cool.
CUSICK: Other people like Betsi Griffith of College Park, Md., can't quite articulate why they like the sign. It just feels special.
BETSI GRIFFITH: Well, you kind of hear the stuff moving, and it kind of gives you a clue that something's, you know, changing and - I don't know. It just - there's a sentimental feel to it, I think.
CUSICK: Four state legislators recently penned a letter to Amtrak's CEO urging him to keep the board right where it is. Local Congressman Brendan Boyle has also gotten involved.
BRENDAN BOYLE: So I'm in the middle of negotiating/fighting with Amtrak now to satisfy their demand that the entire system of updating passengers in real time happens while at the same time doing that in a way that preserves the sign.
CUSICK: He says he enjoys hearing the sound as he commutes to Washington, D.C.
BOYLE: There is a certain romance about rail and about trains that no other mode of transportation has.
CUSICK: He says Philadelphia's Solari board adds to that romance, and he's convinced Amtrak to be part of a stakeholder meeting soon to discuss its fate. For NPR News, I'm Marie Cusick.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LAST OF THE STEAM-POWERED TRAINS")
THE KINKS: (Singing) Like the last of the good ol' puffer trains, I'm the last...
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Here's some fallout from the partial government shutdown. Garbage has piled up at national parks. Some federal loans have been delayed. And now, the Smithsonian Institution has closed its 19 museums as well as the National Zoo. The Smithsonian had managed to stay open this long thanks to reserve funds. That money has now run out. NPR's Rebecca Ellis has more.
REBECCA ELLIS, BYLINE: Anyone hoping to make it into Washington, D.C.'s, National Zoo today was greeted by a sign that reads...
KYOKO SHIBATA: (Reading) All Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo are closed today due to the government shutdown.
ELLIS: Kyoko Shibata (ph) recently moved from Japan to Bethesda, Md. Yesterday, she took her two daughters, Manami (ph) and Osaki (ph), to the zoo in D.C. for the first time.
SHIBATA: We really enjoyed, so my daughter said let's go today again.
ELLIS: Eight-year-old Manami wanted to see the lions and cheetahs they didn't have time for yesterday.
MANAMI: (Foreign language spoken).
SHIBATA: (Foreign language spoken) She's saying, oh, it's closed (laughter) my daughter was being excited to come again.
ELLIS: The lions and cheetahs are not receiving visitors today, but Linda St. Thomas, chief spokeswoman for the Smithsonian, says there are still 200 people working to make sure the animals are cared for and fed. But people around the world will no longer be able to watch the animals being fed. The zoo's much loved and much viewed giant panda cam, which streams panda footage 24 hours a day, have been turned off. St. Thomas says the operators have been furloughed, as have two-thirds of Smithsonian staff.
LINDA ST. THOMAS: People are upset that they're not staffing the panda cam. I understand that.
ELLIS: But she says people are upset about more than just the zoo.
ST. THOMAS: That's just one part of the Smithsonian. I mean, there are many exhibitions in our museums that people have come great distances to see, so we understand that it's disappointing.
DIONGRI SAGARA: Very, very disappointing, yeah.
ELLIS: Diongri Sagara (ph) and her daughter Cassandra (ph) came to D.C. from Florida for a two-week vacation. It hasn't gone as planned.
SAGARA: The main reason that we came - we came because of the museums.
ELLIS: But when she stopped by the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, she was upset to find a sign telling her it was closed.
SAGARA: Really sad - makes me want to cry.
ELLIS: From there, she headed to the National Museum of African-American History and Culture.
SAGARA: We're going to walk and cross our fingers (laughter).
ELLIS: No luck. That one was also closed. And Linda St. Thomas says there's just no way to know when they'll get it back open.
ST. THOMAS: It really depends on Congress and the White House, so we just don't know.
ELLIS: But she says the Smithsonian will be ready to go shortly after they get funding. She says the museum plans to open by 10 a.m. the morning following the eventual end of the shutdown. Rebecca Ellis, NPR News, Washington.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
In 1939, a 14-year-old Jewish boy escaped Nazi Germany, leaving his parents behind. He brought with him a single toy, a stuffed monkey. And years later, that monkey helped reunite him with family he didn't know he had. We told his story last year, got a huge response. And after it aired, we asked if you had any similar stories.
Loan Pham did. Pham was born in Vietnam 34 years ago. She came to the U.S. for asylum. Her father was branded a war criminal because he had fought alongside American troops during the Vietnam War. Her whole family was punished for that.
LOAN PHAM: Our family didn't have any assets, as in a boat or a home or even a cooking pot. And we just sat out there in the rain, starving, hungry all the time. I kept on stealing bananas from the village market. And one time, I did get caught. The vendor was obviously very unhappy because bananas were her livelihood.
She decided to tie me up. And she spread hay all around me, and she said, I'm going to burn you. I think her emotions got to her. And she started shrieking when the fire got too great, and it was going to get to me. That was when a farmer walked on by, and he saw what was going on. He snatched me and saved me.
When word got to my mom, my mom began to cry. And she broke off a branch of bamboo, and she started whipping me with it. She was ashamed that her child resorted to stealing because she couldn't tolerate the hunger.
In 1991, we went from our village of Quy Lai outside of Hue in central Vietnam to a refugee camp in Thailand and then onto a housing project in Oakland, Calif. I was so excited, was on a train. It was just unbelievable. You might as well take me to Mars.
The whole time, I was in charge of a red backpack filled with loose rice. We were afraid of starving in the United States. We were afraid that there would be no rice. I had never seen this much rice my whole life. It was a really happy backpack.
I grew up without a backpack. I had no idea how to put it on. I had no idea how the buckles snapped or the zippers zipped, but I insisted on taking charge of it. And I never allowed it to escape from my view. And I nibbled at the rice kernels just to make sure they were real. And that's how we sustained ourselves for the first few weeks. And I used that backpack to go to school at Fruitvale Elementary here in Oakland.
Since coming to the United States, my dad is a janitor. My mom paints nails. They don't earn a lot of money, but they're pretty content people. My mom's wish when we were growing up was that she would eventually own a nail salon, and my sister and I would work at the nail salon with her. That was her dream. That was never my dream. And as of last weekend, all five kids have graduated from the UCs.
KELLY: Loan Pham - she's now finishing a PhD in military history. As for the backpack that she carried from Vietnam to the U.S., it was only used for a little while. It was flimsy. And worse, it was red, and the color reminded her father of the communist government. When a charity gave her a new American-made backpack, she threw the Vietnamese one away.
Over the years, her parents sent money back to their village to help pave roads and build an elementary school. And Pham has since returned there for both professional and personal reasons. She says people recognize her and welcome her.
PHAM: Actually, during the last business trip I took, I was walking through the village market. Then this woman said, child, do you want to buy some bananas? And I was like, oh, no thank you, ma'am. And she said, you don't remember me, do you? And I said, I really don't. I'm sorry. And she said, I was the one who tried to burn you. And then I laughed. It was such a small world. It was funny to see that she can laugh about it, and I can laugh about it as well.
KELLY: That was listener Loan Pham.
(SOUNDBITE OF BRUCE BRUBAKER'S "OPENING")
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Mitt Romney will not be sworn in as Utah's junior senator until tomorrow. But he's already launched an opening salvo, an op-ed piece in The Washington Post in which he argues that President Trump, quote, "has not risen to the mantle of his office." Well, the president responded during a Cabinet meeting today.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I wish Mitt could be more of a team player, you know? I'm surprised he did it this quickly. I was expecting something, but I was surprised he did it this quickly.
KELLY: Now, all of this fueled speculation that Romney might be eyeing a primary challenge to Trump in 2020. This afternoon on CNN, Romney denied that's the case.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "CNN")
MITT ROMNEY: No, I'm not running again. And we'll see whether someone else does in a Republican primary or not. But time will tell.
KELLY: He said he wasn't sure who he would vote for in 2020. And as you heard there, he brought up the possibility of a primary challenger, which raises all kinds of questions about how that might work.
Here to answer those questions is Mike Murphy. He's a Republican political consultant. He has worked on campaigns for Jeb Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mitt Romney. Mike Murphy, welcome back to the show.
MIKE MURPHY: Good to be here.
KELLY: Yeah. You talk regularly with Romney. You've tried to convince him to run again. You going to keep working on him?
MURPHY: Well, I think he'd be an excellent president. But I take him at his word today. And it reflects what I've heard from him, that he's not - this op-ed and what he's doing now has nothing to do with the 2020 race. It's more about being consistent to what he's already said. He'll support the president when, you know, they're aligned on policy. But when the president misbehaves, he's not afraid to criticize him.
KELLY: Now, he did not rule out that another Republican might be tempted to run against President Trump. So let me ask you, what is the precedent for that in recent history for challenging a sitting president in the primary?
MURPHY: Well, generally, you lose. (Laughter) That's the history of it. The most spirited...
KELLY: A brief history.
MURPHY: Yeah, so far. But we're in a different era now, so who knows what the future may bring? And I think the president's political troubles are not over. And we know from the midterms that the president has, you know, shown a weakness in leading the party, and there's concern rising.
But that said, Ronald Reagan in '76 came the closest, and he lost. Although, in all these cases - Jimmy Carter with Ted Kennedy on the Democratic side, et cetera - the nominee is often weakened in the general election because the fact they got a primary shows the kind of political weakness they're in versus the general election. So it's not a good sign.
KELLY: Although, is there maybe some advantage to the party to challenging a sitting president, even if the contender doesn't ultimately succeed? It helps sharpen the party's message going into a general election.
MURPHY: Well, it does litigate what a party ought to be. And if the party is on a path of complete political failure - and I think in the Trump era, some - I would be one of them - would argue moral failure - then you got to have the fight to figure out what you are for the future, even if the immediate election is, you know, not the happy result. So long-term, maybe you need it.
KELLY: You said you believe we're - are in a different era now. So let me ask you, does conventional wisdom apply in 2019 going into 2020? The Trump presidency is uncharted waters in so many ways.
MURPHY: Yeah. No, look, we have never had a reality-show president before. And you don't know if it's cyclical, and things will revert to mean, or this is the new normal. That - that's the open question that's going to get litigated. My guess is the future's a bit of a mix. I think there will be a rotation away from Trump towards something a little more normal, a little more grown-up. But, you know, at this point, that's only a guess.
KELLY: If someone were to consider throwing their hat into the Republican primary ring, is there a better time to do it? Is it best to get in there early?
MURPHY: No, I actually believe that early is a mistake. This is all predicated on the president hitting even more trouble within the party after more political failure. That requires time if that's going to happen. So I think the idea of being early gives you any big advantage is not true.
It's much more about maybe Labor Day, you know, at the end of this year where the president is and is there an opening then. I think the early strategy is not appropriate in a situation where you're trying to deal with what could be a political collapse of an incumbent president in your party.
KELLY: I mean, it's something hearing you, a Republican strategist, saying that, talking about potential collapse of the party. Do you really think that the field is not open, in the few seconds we have left, to somebody challenging him?
MURPHY: Oh, I think it's theoretically open. But the reality of the president's strength at the end of the year is yet to be determined. He's definitely on a declining path, though, after the midterms.
KELLY: Republican political consultant Mike Murphy, thanks so much.
MURPHY: Thank you.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
We're going to turn now to one of the Democratic leaders in the briefing this afternoon, Minority Senate Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois. Welcome to the program.
DICK DURBIN: It's good to be with you.
CORNISH: So what was the tenor and atmosphere of this meeting?
DURBIN: Well, it was a pretty interesting gathering. It was in the Situation Room, which is considered to be a room for highly classified, top-secret information to be discussed. But we didn't get anywhere near that. We get into the top political information that was being discussed in Washington. It originally was billed as a briefing from the Department of Homeland Security on the border situation, but we moved almost immediately to the whole question of the government shutdown. It just loomed...
CORNISH: Was it anything like the meeting that we saw a few weeks ago between the president and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer?
DURBIN: I wasn't at the earlier meeting. But from what I gathered in the press reporting - and, of course, it was televised - this was a much different tenor. There were more people involved, including the vice president, of course, and Leader Schumer, speaker-elect - I would guess - Nancy Pelosi is the right title, myself and Steny Hoyer and then many others from the administration, as well as the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate.
CORNISH: You said the president has taken the government, quote, "hostage" over the border wall, but your party hasn't given much ground either. Why not?
DURBIN: Well, I think the starting point, the premise of the meeting was, Mr. President, why do you want to inflict pain on agencies of this government that are not involved in the dispute at hand? And the dispute at hand is over border security and a wall. So why don't you take the eight other federal agencies and allow us to fund them at the levels - the same levels chosen by Senate Republicans?
CORNISH: What was his answer?
DURBIN: It was interesting because when we were saying, why don't you just fund eight of these agencies that are not in controversy - the Department of Homeland Security, the issue of border security, the wall, that's where we're stuck - why do you want to take this out on an agency like the Department of Transportation? There wasn't a good response.
But by the end of it, it was pretty clear - the Republicans and the president believe that they have a stronger hand if there are more agencies at risk because of the government shutdown.
CORNISH: Earlier this week, the president said he was open-minded to linking funding for his wall to the DACA program. Today, he said he'd prefer to wait for a Supreme Court ruling on the legality of that program. He has repeatedly put things on and off the negotiation table. So how does that affect what you guys are trying to do?
DURBIN: I've got to tell you, this is very personal to me. It goes back 17 years-plus when I introduced the DREAM Act. I can't tell you the hundreds, if not thousands, of young people that I've met and their families - they hang on every word, every news report as to their futures and whether they're going to be deported, whether they can legally work, whether they should continue in school.
And I just don't want to open this door and start talking about this issue until there is some assurance that the president is willing to take any immigration reform proposal, including DACA and the DREAMers, in a more serious way than he was a year ago.
CORNISH: But to follow up, you said there were a lot of people in that room. But do you get the sense any of them can really say yay or nay to a deal other than the president? I mean, is it making it complicated to negotiate?
DURBIN: His is this the bottom word, the bottom line in this. He has the last word. He will decide when this government shutdown ends. Nancy Pelosi, tomorrow, believes the first act as speaker will be to have the House send over to Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, a bill that basically funds the eight agencies, leaving only one - DHS - unfunded.
Mitch McConnell said over and over again and again today, I'm not going to pass anything in the Senate till the president says that it's - gets the green light, that he'll sign it. At this point, we don't have that assurance from the president.
CORNISH: Did you walk away from this meeting thinking you were any closer to resolving a government shutdown?
DURBIN: No, unfortunately. And the president had the power to end at least the major part of that shutdown with just a nod in the right direction toward Mitch McConnell. That's what Senator McConnell is waiting for. It's really in the president's hands.
CORNISH: That's Illinois Senator, Democrat Dick Durbin. Thank you for speaking with ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
DURBIN: Thank you, Audie.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Taylor Swift's songs are full of enemies - ex boyfriends, critics, an unnamed nemesis widely believed to be Katy Perry. And then there's her biggest rival of all, the man who infamously stole her moment at the MTV Music Video Awards in 2009...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KANYE WEST: Yo, Taylor.
KELLY: ...Kanye West.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KANYE WEST: I'm really happy for you. I'm going to let you finish. But Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time.
KELLY: NPR's Leah Donnella took a closer look at how these rivalries fuel Taylor Swift's persona for NPR's Turning The Tables project which explores how women and nonbinary artists are shaping the music of our moment. Donnella argues that to understand Taylor Swift, you have to understand the feud.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO")
TAYLOR SWIFT: (Singing) I've got a list of names, and yours is in red, underlined. I check it once. Then I check it twice, oh.
LEAH DONNELLA, BYLINE: So you hear this idea of the feud coming up in Taylor Swift's music all the time. She's always sort of positioning herself as someone who has been the victim of someone else's scheming.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO")
TAYLOR SWIFT: (Singing) I don't trust nobody, and nobody trusts me. I'll be the actress starring in your bad dreams.
DONNELLA: She also has these really specific digs at people that she's been tied to. So she says, I don't like your tilted stage, which is a reference to a stage that Kanye West performed on when he was on tour.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO")
TAYLOR SWIFT: (Singing) I don't like your little games, don't like your tilted stage, the role you made me play of the fool. No, I don't like you.
DONNELLA: And this kind of feud is actually a lot like a hip-hop feud. There are famous rivalries between 2Pac and Biggie, Jay-Z and Nas. And you can actually play her songs right up next to some famous hip-hop songs and see how closely the lyrics match each other. So you can listen to "Bad Blood" by Taylor Swift, and she says, did you think we'd be fine?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BAD BLOOD")
TAYLOR SWIFT: (Singing) Still got scars on my back from your knife. So don't think it's in the past. These kind of wounds - they last, and they last. Now...
DONNELLA: You put that next to 2Pac. In his song "Hit 'Em Up," he says...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HIT 'EM UP")
2PAC: (Rapping) Now it's all about Versace. You copied my style. Five shots...
DONNELLA: You copied my style. I took it and smiled. Now I'm back to set the record straight.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HIT 'EM UP")
2PAC: (Rapping) I'm still the thug that you love to hate.
DONNELLA: In Taylor's song "This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things"...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS")
TAYLOR SWIFT: (Singing) It was so nice being friends again. There I was giving you a second chance. But you stabbed me in the back while shaking my hand.
DONNELLA: And then you listen to the song "Ether" by Nas. He says...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ETHER")
NAS: (Rapping) Talk about me. Laugh behind my back. But in my face, y'all some well-wishing, friendly acting, envy-hiding snakes.
DONNELLA: So Taylor Swift is using this trope of the feud which is used all the time in hip-hop. But it's really interesting when she uses it because hip-hop is a black art form. It's coming from black people, who are perpetual underdogs in the U.S., whereas Swift is white and wealthy. And her music is coming from a very different place.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MEAN")
TAYLOR SWIFT: (Singing) You, with your words like knives and swords and weapons that you use against me...
DONNELLA: There may have been a time when Taylor Swift could have been described as an underdog maybe. But that quickly changed.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MEAN")
TAYLOR SWIFT: (Singing) Someday I'll be big enough so you can't hit me, and all you're ever going to be is mean. Why you got to be so mean?
DONNELLA: Now there is no universe in which Taylor Swift could be considered an underdog. She is one of the most highly paid musicians in the entire music industry. She's also one of the most famous. Her tours sell out immediately. And so every time she continues to position herself as someone who doesn't have power, it's really just an act.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SHAKE IT OFF")
TAYLOR SWIFT: (Singing) I stay out too late, got nothing in my brain. That's what people say. That's what people say.
DONNELLA: Of course there are moments when she is going up against a sort of rival or enemy who can kind of match her. And I think that's when she's taking on sort of ideas or movements or the status quo. So, for example, she recently dealt with a sexual assault case and has talked about fighting for women's rights, fighting for survivors of sexual assault to be believed. And this is her using her power against something that is hugely powerful and has the power of history on its side.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SHAKE IT OFF")
TAYLOR SWIFT: (Singing) 'Cause the players going to play, play, play, play, play. And the haters going to hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.
DONNELLA: Taylor Swift is going to be a really interesting person to continue to watch - who she chooses as a rival at any given time, what that will mean about her, about her music and how we feel about her as an audience.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SHAKE IT OFF")
TAYLOR SWIFT: (Singing) I shake it off. I shake it off.
KELLY: That was Leah Donnella of NPR's Code Switch team. She was talking about Taylor Swift for our Turning The Tables series.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SHAKE IT OFF")
TAYLOR SWIFT: (Singing) I shake it off. I shake it off. I shake it off. I shake it off. Hey, hey, hey.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The new Congress sworn in today is a bit less religious and the outgoing Congress, but the members may not want to admit it. A poll by the Pew Research Center finds the number of self-identified Christians in Congress has dropped slightly. The number of members who refused to divulge their faith identity, meanwhile, is up sharply. More from NPR's Tom Gjelten.
TOM GJELTEN, BYLINE: For the last 20 years, the Pew Research Center and CQ Roll Call have asked members of a new Congress about their religious affiliation. The results this year reflect broader demographic and cultural changes in the country but also the abiding importance of religion in American politics. What's especially notable this year is how few members say they have no religious affiliation. Among U.S. adults as a whole, nearly 1 in 4 say that, but this year's poll found just one member, Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, reporting no affiliation. Political scientist John Green at the University of Akron says some members may think it's bad politically to say they're not churchgoers.
JOHN GREEN: Some of this, I think, is just that politicians change more slowly than the public and don't want to court potential trouble with voters by admitting that they don't have any kind of religious affiliation.
GJELTEN: In other surveys, a majority of U.S. voters have said they'd be less likely to vote for a candidate who doesn't believe in God, so politicians may not want to make any such announcement. It's not necessarily that they're more faithful than the general public. In the latest survey, 18 members simply refuse to answer the question about their religious identity. On the other hand, it's also possible that members of Congress really are more religious than other Americans. John Green, who is also a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, notes that politicians tend to be especially active in community institutions.
GREEN: They're much more likely to go onto the rotary club or members of a charity or a professional association. And in most places in the United States, religious institutions are part of the local community infrastructure.
GJELTEN: The candidates most likely to win elections are the ones who network in their communities, Green says, and churches are a place where they can do that. One other notable finding from this poll - the new Congress is a bit more diverse than the old one, with 34 Jews, three Muslims, three Hindus, two Buddhists and two identifying as Unitarian Universalists. Of those non-Christian members, all but two are Democrats. Tom Gjelten, NPR News, Washington.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The government shutdown began with the president's demand for more border security money. Ironically, the shutdown is now taking a growing toll on immigration enforcement. One casualty - E-Verify. That's a federal program that's supposed to prevent immigrants from working illegally. NPR's Joel Rose reports.
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: Say you're an employer, and you want to be sure that new employee you want to hire is eligible to work in the U.S. Right now, you are out of luck. The government-run system is down. The website warns that E-Verify is, quote, "currently unavailable due to a lapse in government appropriations."
JULIE PACE: At first, people thought it was a day or two or three. Now we're into two weeks.
ROSE: Julie Pace is an attorney specializing in employment and immigration law in Phoenix. Employers can get in big trouble for knowingly hiring undocumented workers. And Arizona is one of several states where they are required to use E-Verify. The longer the shutdown lasts, the more Pace is fielding panicked calls and emails from employers.
PACE: So now the calls are, we've got to onboard these people, so we're just going to move forward; can we do that?
ROSE: Pace says some employers will probably go ahead and hire people anyway. Others will wait until the shutdown is over. And some may even speed up hiring to get people through the process while E-Verify is down.
PACE: It is an irony that the government shutdown is over the wall when we have an electronic wall for E-Verify that should be being used that the government has not funded.
ROSE: The E-Verify outage is just one way the government shutdown - now in its 13th day - is taking a toll on the U.S. immigration system. Border Patrol agents are working, but they won't get paid until the shutdown ends. So are tens of thousands of other immigration agents in the Department of Homeland Security. Tony Reardon is the head of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents about 30,000 Customs and Border Protection officers.
TONY REARDON: They are angry. They are scared. They are doing the work of this country not knowing whether they're going to be able to put food on the table. The morale is as low as I have ever seen it.
ROSE: Thousands of workers, who are considered nonessential, have been furloughed. That means many immigration courts are closed. Some immigration judges are working without pay. But they're only hearing cases where the immigrant is in detention. Heena Arora is an immigration lawyer in Queens, N.Y.
HEENA ARORA: People are totally confused about what to do, about showing up or not showing up.
ROSE: Arora says some of her clients waited years for hearings in the backlogged immigration courts. But when their day came, the hearings weren't held because of the shutdown.
ARORA: And we don't know when it's going to be rescheduled for. It could be rescheduled for next month. It could be rescheduled for next year or even a couple of years later. So we have no idea. It sucks. It sucks for them, and it sucks for me also because, like, you know, I have no work this week.
ROSE: Still, immigration hard-liners think the president should not back down from his demand for a border wall now. Mark Krikorian is the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors lower levels of immigration. He's also a big fan of E-Verify. He would like the program to be mandatory all over the country. But if it has to be shut down for a few weeks to make a point, Krikorian says so be it.
MARK KRIKORIAN: It's unfortunate, but it's just part of the larger problem of playing chicken over parts of the government when there are disputes like this over policy.
ROSE: The White House is supposed to meet with congressional Democrats again tomorrow. But Krikorian and other observers don't see an end to the stalemate anytime soon. Joel Rose, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF EARL HOOKER'S "BLUE GUITAR")
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The government shutdown grinds on over funding for President Trump's border wall. But meanwhile, the Trump administration is moving ahead with plans to construct or upgrade border fencing, some 160 miles along the Arizona and California borders with Mexico. Active duty military will take up the task.
Here to tell us more is NPR's Pentagon reporter Tom Bowman. And, Tom, what exactly is the task? What is the Pentagon going to be doing?
TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: Well, I'm told this fencing - send likely combat engineers for the fencing portion of this effort, but it goes beyond that. Homeland Security is requesting medical units. Of course, two children died along the border in the custody of U.S. officials, so the sense is they need additional help for the migrants coming through.
And I'm also told aviation units would be part of this as well. They'd provide surveillance along the border to help Customs and Border Protection monitor any movements. And again, this is support for that effort. Active duty troops can't get involved in any arrests or detention of any migrants. It's against the law.
KELLY: And to be clear, this is something new. This is on top of the existing troops already deployed to the border.
BOWMAN: Right. So this is new. This is just coming out now. This request was made from Homeland Security.
KELLY: How many more are we talking?
BOWMAN: Well, we don't know at this point. I heard some - one official said maybe thousands of troops. Another said, well, the existing troops might be able to help. There are now 2,300 active troops there on the border along with 2,100 Guard forces. They could provide some of this effort. But clearly, they're going to send additional troops. They could change them out or some could be extended. But acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan hinted about more support at a Cabinet meeting at the White House yesterday. Let's listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PATRICK SHANAHAN: Restoration of the fences, building out of additional mileage for the wall. The Army Corps of Engineers is dialed in on doing this cost effectively, quickly and with the right amount of urgency as to where we can build additional stand-up walls quickly and then get after the threat. The threat is real.
BOWMAN: And he goes on to say that he'll provide assistance to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who's making the request to the Pentagon.
KELLY: Any timeline on how long these active duty troops might be there?
BOWMAN: No idea. I was told it could be months to construct the fencing or shore up existing fencing. You know, we're talking 160 miles or so. Now...
KELLY: That's a lot of fencing.
BOWMAN: Right. Active troops are supposed to end their deployment, by the way, at the end of the month. So some could be extended, maybe other units could take their place. But what we don't know right - well, the Pentagon is working on the specifics, so we don't have a lot of detail at this point.
KELLY: Let me insert a skeptical question here. The president has said if he doesn't get money for a wall from Congress, he might just order the military to build it. Is that what is going on here, the president doing something of an end-run around the border standoff?
BOWMAN: That's quite possible. At this point, the talk's with Congress. The Democrats, in particular, appear to be going nowhere. The Pentagon - the president wants $5 billion for the wall. The Democrats are saying that's far too much. And the standoff continues. The government is shut down. But, of course, the Pentagon has not shut down, and they're ready to take orders from the commander in chief.
KELLY: Thank you, Tom.
BOWMAN: You're welcome.
KELLY: NPR's Tom Bowman.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
In case you didn't know, Bad Bunny is not a new cartoon character. He's a young Puerto Rican rapper who's skyrocketed to international fame online. Now he's released his debut album. NPR's Jasmine Garsd has this profile.
JASMINE GARSD, BYLINE: Before Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio became a star, he was just a kid growing up in Puerto Rico whose mom would blast salsa and romantic Latin ballads on weekends.
BAD BUNNY: (Through interpreter) On Sundays and Saturdays when it was time to clean the house, when I heard those records, I knew I would have to at least mop the floor or something (laughter).
GARSD: He says afterwards he'd lock himself in his bedroom and listen to island rappers Daddy Yankee, Tego Calderon and the godfather of Puerto Rican hip-hop, Vico C.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "EMBOSCADA")
VICO C: (Rapping in Spanish).
GARSD: A self-described class clown, Bad Bunny got his moniker from the time he was forced as a child to wear a bunny rabbit costume and was pretty angry about it. The name stuck.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I LIKE IT")
UNIDENTIFIED SINGER: (Singing) Yeah, baby...
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) I like it like that.
GARSD: In the last year or so, Bad Bunny hopped with ease into the English-language market, guest starring on tracks by such rappers as Nicki Minaj and Cardi B. Here he is on Cardi's hit song "I Like It."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I LIKE IT")
BAD BUNNY: (Rapping in Spanish).
GARSD: Bad Bunny did this on his own. He started posting music on soundcloud, singing pretty much only in Spanish. He now has billions of hits on YouTube and several Grammy nominations. Isabelia Herrera, a music editor at Remezcla, an online Latin culture magazine, says it's a testament to changing U.S. demographics.
ISABELIA HERRERA: Demographically, this country is Latino, and people are no longer, like, we don't understand what that is; we don't understand that this is, like, in the Latino world. There's no longer that barrier.
GARSD: Bad Bunny's success rests on more than his music. In a world of macho rapper caricatures, he boasts about stealing your girl while rocking a gender-bending style, nail polish, flamboyant, colorful jackets and getups that would make David Bowie tip his fedora in admiration.
BAD BUNNY: (Through interpreter) I can simply tell you that since I was a kid, I didn't like to look like anyone else.
(SOUNDBITE OF BAD BUNNY SONG, "QUIEN TU ERES?")
GARSD: And he doesn't sound quite like anyone else, either. His debut full-length album called "X 100pre," or "Forever," stays true to his trap music roots. Those are those dark, deep beats you're hearing; his low, nasty drawl. His rhythmic, choppy Puerto Rican Spanish dance over them, as in the song "Quien Tu Eres?," or "Who Are You?"
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "QUIEN TU ERES?")
BAD BUNNY: (Rapping in Spanish).
GARSD: But there's also plenty of experimentation on the album - folksier guitar, shiny pop and without a doubt the influence of his childhood chore time, forced to listen to his mother's romantic music.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SOLO DE MI")
BAD BUNNY: (Singing in Spanish).
GARSD: But "Solo De Mi," or "Only My Own," is a ballad of independence. The accompanying music video was part of a campaign against domestic violence. It features a battered woman singing the words...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SOLO DE MI")
BAD BUNNY: (Singing in Spanish).
GARSD: I am not yours. I am no one's. I am only my own. Don't call me baby because you already know I'm not here for you, not even a little.
BAD BUNNY: I don't know. I always liked to create things that get attention. It used to be a problem when I wasn't famous. Now I can do whatever I want, and people have to accept it.
GARSD: This from a musician who is able to skip categories with so much ease because he belongs to none. Jasmine Garsd, NPR News, New York.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SOLO DE MI")
BAD BUNNY: (Singing in Spanish, rapping in Spanish).
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
One person who will be looking at the Trump administration's immigration policies is the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, New York Democrat Jerrold Nadler. Welcome to the program.
JERROLD NADLER: Thank you.
CORNISH: Now, your committee has oversight over many key areas - right? - Justice Department, voting rights and immigration, as we mentioned. And on that last issue, you told CBS that the zero tolerance policy that led to the separation of migrant families on the border was a deliberate creation of the White House, that they're trying to make things as miserable as possible, and, quote, "if kids die, they're apparently willing to have that."
NADLER: Yes.
CORNISH: Are you going to investigate the deaths of those two migrant children?
NADLER: Yes, we are. We're going to investigate the deaths of those two migrant children and the entire family separation policy. And there are a lot of questions. How could they, for example, deport parents to foreign countries, making no provision to give the kids back first or even to figure out identification for the kids? So we have kids now months later that may never find their parents again. This is state-sanctioned kidnapping.
CORNISH: Does it feel like investigative actions and oversight - that's really the only recourse Democrats have right now. Does it feel like you have no real ability to change...
NADLER: No, no, no, no.
CORNISH: ...Trump administration policies?
NADLER: No, it doesn't feel that way at all. And you can't talk about that the first day of Democratic control in the Congress. We have leverage. Investigation and publicity and oversight is a major constitutional responsibility and ability that we have. But number two, we have the power of the purse. You can't pass a budget without the House as well as the Senate, and we can put requirements in that budget. We can put limitations on the use of funds. We can put requirements for the use of funds and so forth. So even if you cannot pass a subject matter bill through both houses or the president would veto it, they can't pass a budget without the House consent. So we have considerable leverage.
CORNISH: You've also - on another topic, you've sponsored a bill that would protect the special counsel office, Robert Mueller...
NADLER: Yes.
CORNISH: ...Who's investigating interference in the 2016 election.
NADLER: We reintroduced that bill today.
CORNISH: And you've also threatened to subpoena acting Attorney General Mr. Whitaker. What do you hope to learn from him?
NADLER: We are very concerned about a massive fraud on the American people by the president and by his campaign in order to obtain office through fraudulent means - hush money payments to women, Michael Cohen working with the Russians plus obstruction of justice in the investigation of that. We have to look into all of that. And the special counsel is looking into that or into some of it insofar as they may be crimes.
But we have to look into all of that to protect the integrity of our elections and the integrity of our democratic system and to protect the American people from being defrauded by the Trump campaign or by future campaigns, for that matter. So that is the prime thing that we have to do. We have to put an end to Republican efforts over the last two years to interfere with and undermine the special counsel's investigation.
CORNISH: If the Mueller investigation uncovers evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors, are you prepared to pursue impeachment even if it's politically...
NADLER: Well, it's too...
CORNISH: ...Unpopular?
NADLER: It's too early to talk about impeachment. But what is important at this point is to follow all the facts where they lead, to make sure that those facts are public and to make sure that they're not interfered with by the Trump administration. So if the special counsel issues a report, we have to make sure that that report is - becomes public. If necessary, we'll subpoena it. If necessary, we'll call Mueller to testify in front of the committee about it. We have to make sure that it's not buried by the Trump administration, by Whitaker or by Barr.
CORNISH: But President Trump has been implicated in campaign law violations as part of Michael Cohen's plea. Is something like that an impeachable offense?
NADLER: It could be, but I don't want to get into impeachment now 'cause it's - we're not prepared for that at this point. Some of what he's been accused of could be impeachable offenses. But the real question now is to find out what happened, to find out what frauds were committed, what frauds against American democracy and to make sure the public knows that. And we think the public can judge and we can judge and the Judiciary Committee, et cetera, where we should go from there, whether it should be impeachment, whether it should be protective legislation for the future, whatever it may be.
CORNISH: And you were - earlier you were speaking about William Barr, the White House's nominee for attorney general.
NADLER: Yes, and and the acting attorney general, Mr. Whitaker.
CORNISH: Is it possible that you will overplay your hand? I mean, if everyone with a gavel is interested and pushing for the investigations they've long hoped for, can people go too far?
NADLER: Well, it's theoretically possible that people could go too far, obviously. I don't think we're going to do that. We are very mindful of priorities and of what we have to look into and what we have to do. What we have to do is protect the integrity of our institutions, protect our elections from being subject to fraud or to stealing through fraudulent means, make sure that it didn't happen or, if it did, make sure that people are held accountable and make sure that safeguards are in place so that kind of thing doesn't happen again.
CORNISH: New York Democrat Jerrold Nadler - he's the incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Thank you for speaking with ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
NADLER: Thank you.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
As the partial government shutdown drags on, people across the country are feeling the effects and not just federal workers who aren't getting paychecks.
ASHLEY HINSON: My name is Ashley Hinson. I'm from Calais, Maine, and I'm a web designer.
KELLY: That's eastern Maine on the border with Canada, a very rural part of the country which is key to this story.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
See; Ashley Hinson and her husband were days away from closing on their first home.
HINSON: It was a little bit out of town. It was on the water. You could go fishing off the dock in the backyard, and it was a good size for us - not too small, not too big.
CORNISH: The rural location qualified them for a special loan guarantee program under the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The financial benefits seemed worth all the extra hoops they had to jump through, including inspections of their well and water. Hinson says they thought it would all be over on New Year's Eve, their closing date. And then came the government shutdown.
HINSON: About three days or so into it, I called our loan officer to say, is this going to affect us? He got back to me in about 24 hours and said, no, you know, we think your file is going to be fine. So we proceeded with our move out of our apartment, and about three days before our closing date of the 31st, he called and said, actually, they do have to sign off on the final documents, and we were not able to extend the closing date. So it just all kind of fell apart on that day.
We were definitely disappointed. You know, it was a real good plot of land, and we had already bought things for the House and envisioned ourselves there and everything. And it being our first house and having a baby, it was - you know, we kind of had that vision already in place. But, you know, we actually put in an offer on another house today, so we're hoping that this one works out because we're staying with my parents, and so we're obviously eager to find our next home and just kind of hoping that everything comes together in Washington.
KELLY: That's Ashley Hinson of Calais, Maine, on how the partial government shutdown is affecting her.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
China has landed a rover on the far side of the moon. That is a first for any nation and what you might call a giant leap for China's space program. China lags behind the U.S. and Russia in space technology, but it has long had its eye on this frontier. A few months before he became China's leader in 2013, President Xi Jinping said the space dream is part of the dream to make China stronger.
Well, to tell us more about this dream and what it means for the U.S., I am joined by Joan Johnson-Freese of the U.S. Naval War College. Welcome.
JOAN JOHNSON-FREESE: Thank you.
KELLY: So we're used to Americans being the first to do things in space, and we're used to Russia usually being the competition. So let me start by asking, how significant is it for China to become the first country to land on the far side of the moon?
JOHNSON-FREESE: Well, China has been the country playing catch-up, and so it's been very conscious of trying to incorporate things that give it a place in the record books because China understands that the prestige a country garners from technical capabilities often translates into geostrategic influence. So they've incorporated things like landing on the fire side of the moon. And in the future, it will be combined with their human spaceflight program to announce - officially announce a Chinese astronaut going to the moon.
KELLY: So the next voice transmission we hear from the moon may well be speaking Mandarin.
JOHNSON-FREESE: Mandarin, yes.
KELLY: What kind of disparity is there in space between U.S. and Chinese capabilities particularly when we're talking about defense and potential military ambitions?
JOHNSON-FREESE: Well, again, the Chinese are playing catch-up. And as an example, China has developed maneuverable satellites which are seen as threatening because they can maneuver to get out of the way of debris. But if you can maneuver to do that, you potentially can maneuver to hit another satellite and therefore be a weapon. But we have maneuverable satellites as well. So because of this dual-use nature, pretty much anything China does in space will be considered threatening by the United States.
KELLY: So what do you see as the national security implications for the United States?
JOHNSON-FREESE: For the United States, it's imperative that we stay ahead. And we do that not by trying to keep the Chinese back because physics and engineering is the same in Beijing as it is in Palo Alto. So I think it's - the imperative is on us to keep advancing forward in terms of space security policy. I am very wary of moving towards the overt weaponization of space, which I think is where the United States is headed, because there's just too much potential for misunderstandings and escalations in ways that would not be beneficial to any country.
KELLY: Yeah, I mean, people talk about the fog of war here on Earth. There's always the uncertainty of knowing what your adversaries intent is. I can only imagine that would be multiplied exponentially if you're dealing with communications from space.
JOHNSON-FREESE: Exactly.
KELLY: So as you look out into the future a year from now, five years from now, 10, are there specific mileposts you'll be watching for?
JOHNSON-FREESE: Well, the Chinese have laid out very specific plans for both their Chang'e and their Shenzhou program. So we know, for example, that the Shenzhou program will culminate with a permanently crewed space station about the same time that the International Space Station may be reaching the end of its operations. And so the Chinese space station will become the de facto international space station.
And again, I think this is all going to come together within the next three to five years for the Chinese to announce a human spaceflight program back to the moon. They will face competition not just from NASA but, I think, from the private companies SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and others who have announced similar intentions long-term or short-term.
KELLY: Joan Johnson-Freese, professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, thanks so much.
JOHNSON-FREESE: Thank you.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
In the meantime, China and the U.S. are still waging an economic battle, and it's taking a toll on both sides of the Pacific. The U.S. stock market sank today after Apple warned that slower iPhone sales in China are cutting into the company's profits. Apple shares tumbled nearly 10 percent. NPR's Scott Horsley reports the downturn is one more challenge to President Trump's claim that trade wars are easy to win.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: The Trump administration has often pointed to the economic slowdown in China as evidence that its own tough trade policies are working, but Apple investors may find that hard to swallow. The company's stock dropped sharply after Apple warned iPhone sales in its most recent quarter fell billions of dollars short of expectations. CEO Tim Cook blames most of that shortfall on slowing sales in China.
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TIM COOK: It's clear that the economy began to slow there for the second half. And what I believe to be the case is the trade tensions between the United States and China put additional pressure on their economy.
HORSLEY: Cook told CNBC China's economic downturn depressed demand for smartphones in general, but he also acknowledged some Chinese consumers may have switched to homegrown suppliers like Huawei, shunning the American iPhone because of the trade war with the United States.
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COOK: I'm sure some people did. But my sense is the much larger issue is the slowing of the economy and then this - the trade tension that's further pressured it.
HORSLEY: White House economist Kevin Hassett warned on CNN other American companies doing business in China are likely to suffer a similar fate.
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KEVIN HASSETT: It's not going to be just Apple. I think that there are a heck of a lot of U.S. companies that have a lot of sales in China that are basically going to be watching their earnings be downgraded next year until, you know, we get a deal with China. And I think that that puts a lot of pressure on China.
HORSLEY: It puts a lot of pressure on this country as well. Concerns about China contributed to Wall Street's worst year in a decade in 2018. David Dollar of the Brookings Institution says when China, the world's second-largest economy, hits the brakes, it leaves skidmarks all over the planet.
DAVID DOLLAR: They're the biggest trading partner for more than a hundred different countries. And they're an enormous importer.
HORSLEY: Dollar says the United States is actually less vulnerable to China's slowdown than many other countries that are more export dependent, but no big economy is immune.
DOLLAR: There is some real risk in the world that you get a big slowdown in China, and that's not going to be good for the U.S. or for anybody else.
HORSLEY: But the Trump administration tends to downplay that interdependence as if what's bad for China is automatically good for the United States.
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LARRY KUDLOW: We're in very good shape, China - not so good.
HORSLEY: White House adviser Larry Kudlow argued, before President Trump met with his Chinese counterpart last month, dueling tariffs between the two countries are much tougher on China than the U.S.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KUDLOW: I'm not suggesting there aren't winners and losers in that game. It's a complicated game. But on the other hand, I think we are in far better shape to weather this than the Chinese are.
HORSLEY: Trump echoed that view this morning, tweeting about the billions of dollars in tariffs the U.S. government is collecting during the trade war. Never mind that those tariffs are largely paid by American businesses and consumers. Trump has threatened to increase and expand the tariffs if he can't reach a deal with China in the next couple of months. Syracuse economist Mary Lovely says that would come at a price in this country.
MARY LOVELY: We will see the direct hit to consumers, and that will be pretty hard to hide from folks in the U.S.
HORSLEY: Much like the hit that investors in Apple and many other companies felt today. Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Democrats now officially control the House of Representatives, and Nancy Pelosi is once again speaker of the House. The transfer of power on the Capitol comes in the middle of an increasingly drawn-out shutdown of a quarter of the federal government. Later tonight, some of the first votes of the new Congress will be a Democratic effort to end that shutdown. It's expected to pass the House, but Senate Republicans and President Trump say they won't take it seriously. NPR congressional correspondent Scott Detrow is on the Capitol. He joins us now, and let's start with this big shift. How much of a difference will the new majority make?
SCOTT DETROW, BYLINE: A big difference. Democrats already have the votes to block or approve a funding deal since the Senate needs 60 votes. And Republicans don't have that. But Democrats never had the power to do what they'll do later today. And that's write bills with what they want in them and call for a vote on them when they want. They can now set the agenda, and that's a big difference. So today after winning her election to become speaker of the House again, Nancy Pelosi stuck to big themes talking about broader Democratic priorities. But she did briefly address the funding bill in her speech.
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NANCY PELOSI: We will do so...
(APPLAUSE)
PELOSI: We will do so to meet the needs of the American people, to protect our borders and to respect our workers.
CORNISH: What exactly is in the House bill?
DETROW: So there are going to be two different measures. The first one is a short-term funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security. That's a funding area that's the focal point of this dispute, right? President Trump wants that $5 billion for a border wall. The Democratic bill does not include it, and it would go into early February and give more time for negotiations. The second bill would fund the rest of the unfunded departments through September. That's the rest of the fiscal year. Pelosi is calling this a Republican bill because it passed unanimously in the Republican-controlled Senate last month. Of course that was before President Trump reversed course and decided he wouldn't sign a measure that did not include wall funding. He is sticking to that - and because of that, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in the Senate says he would not call this Democratic bill - these bills to the floor in the Senate.
CORNISH: We're now nearly two weeks into this shutdown. Any signs that either side is seeing any political fallout?
DETROW: You know, for the most part, no. Neither side is acting like it. That's such a big difference from previous shutdowns. Go to the Democratic-forced shutdown from about a year ago which Senate Democrats did in order to try and force some action on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. In that case just days into it, Democrats realized they were getting the blame for the shutdown. And they reversed course. Here, both sides mostly feel confident. But the longer it goes on, the more real-world repercussions there will be. Federal employees will start to actually hit paydays and not get paychecks. More services will shut down. Here in Washington, the Smithsonian museums closed a few days ago. They had been using reserved money up until that point. Most of Republicans are confident. Here's something that Republican Minority Whip Liz Cheney said at the beginning of the congressional session today.
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LIZ CHENEY: Leader McCarthy led us in passing legislation to secure our borders, keep our nation safe, end the devastating practice of sanctuary cities and - yes, madam clerk - build the wall.
(APPLAUSE)
DETROW: But we are starting to see little, tiny cracks on the Republican side, and that's notable. Colorado Senator Cory Gardner and Maine Senator Susan Collins both told news outlets today they want to see a resolution even without the wall funding. And that matters because they are both up for re-election next year in more moderate states.
CORNISH: What happens next?
DETROW: Next thing to look for - there's a meeting scheduled for tomorrow morning at the White House with the president and legislative leaders from both parties.
CORNISH: That's NPR congressional correspondent Scott Detrow. Scott, thank you.
DETROW: Sure thing.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The president delivered a history lesson yesterday that left historians scratching their heads. The lesson was on Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. Here's what he said.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Russia used to be the Soviet Union. Afghanistan made it Russia because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan - Russia.
KELLY: The president went on.
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TRUMP: The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there.
KELLY: President Trump there speaking at a cabinet meeting yesterday. Well, we are going to fact check this point by point with Seth Jones. He is author of a book on war in Afghanistan. He is director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, from where he joins me now. Welcome.
SETH JONES: Thank you for having me on.
KELLY: So a lot to unpack there, but start with the why - why Russia invaded Afghanistan in 1979. The president, as we just heard, says it was to stop terrorists who were attacking Russia. Was that the reason?
JONES: Well, we actually have now declassified Soviet documents, so we can fact check this ourselves. And what Soviet leaders say at the time is that their primary reason for going into Afghanistan was because of concerns that the U.S. government, including the CIA, were having significant influence among Afghan leaders. We know from these documents that the Soviets were increasingly concerned, much like the Soviets had been meddling in the soft underbelly of the United States in Cuba, that the U.S. was now doing the same just south of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
KELLY: And again, just to be completely clear, were terrorists from Afghanistan crossing the border into Russia?
JONES: No, I mean, there were certainly mujahideen operating in Afghanistan at that point. But no, there were no major terrorist attacks. And the Soviet archives are pretty clear about this. The reason was not about terrorism. The reason was entirely about balance of power politics.
KELLY: What about another assertion to fact check here that war in Afghanistan bankrupted Moscow and caused the collapse of the Soviet Union? Do the facts support that, that it was the war in Afghanistan that broke up the USSR?
JONES: No, the facts don't support that the war in Afghanistan broke up the USSR. The USSR had tons of problems. It had overreach globally. Its military industrial complex was way too large. Its economy was in shambles because of a state-run system, and it had numerous ethnic problems both in Central Asia and in its Eastern European flank. So the Soviet Union collapsed for a range of very complex reasons. Virtually none of them had to do with its operations in Afghanistan.
KELLY: One more piece of the president's comments to ask you about - he asserted that the Soviet Union was right to be in Afghanistan, which is an opinion, not a fact to check per se, but - safe to say this is not a view that has ever been staked out by a U.S. president before.
JONES: Well, I think the irony of the comment is that this was entirely about great power competition with the United States. So by saying they were right to be there, either it's a misunderstanding of why the Soviets were actually there, or you're giving them credence to be competing with the United States at that very point and to be worried about the U.S. influence. So it's sort of a strange interpretation.
KELLY: Do we know where the president is getting his information about history in Afghanistan and the Soviet Union?
JONES: I could not tell you on this one (laughter).
KELLY: You're laughing.
JONES: Well, I mean, it's clear that it's not coming from history books. It's not coming from declassified Soviet archives. So I defer to the president's advisers on where he's getting his information from.
KELLY: Well let me push back at you and ask this. Does it matter if President Trump gets the history right or wrong? I mean, these are...
JONES: Yeah.
KELLY: ...Events of decades ago. Why does it matter today in 2019?
JONES: Well, I think it matters a great deal because they affect decisions that are taking place today. But the U.S. strategy is very different. The government in Afghanistan is very different. So if you're trying to use that as a reason for why the U.S. went in and why the U.S. is now leaving, it's not a very good case to highlight.
KELLY: That as Seth Jones of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He's also author of a book on the history of Afghanistan and war titled "In the Graveyard of Empires." Seth Jones, thank you.
JONES: Thank you very much.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Prosecutors in Saudi Arabia today formally requested the death penalty for five unidentified suspects in the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. The Saudi journalist's death in October sparked international outrage and focused a spotlight on the kingdom's powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. U.S. intelligence agencies believe he was behind the killing. As NPR's Jackie Northam reports, the prosecution is unlikely to quell questions about the crown prince's involvement.
JACKIE NORTHAM, BYLINE: The hearing in a Riyadh courtroom comes three months after Jamal Khashoggi disappeared at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The Saudi government changed its story several times about what happened to Khashoggi before announcing they had arrested several people, including members of a Saudi hit team, with his death. Simon Henderson, a Persian Gulf specialist at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, says today's hearing signals the Saudi government is moving the process forward - barely.
SIMON HENDERSON: Sadly, we don't know the identity of the suspects who are at the hearing, nor do we know what happened exactly at the hearing because, as far as I can make out, there weren't any members of the public there, nor any media.
NORTHAM: The kingdom's public prosecutor issued a statement providing some details about the hearing. Eleven defendants were in court today, including the five facing the death penalty. Another 10 people are also under investigation for Khashoggi's death. All those in court today had defense lawyers and were told of the charges against them and asked for time to prepare for their defense. Ellen Wald, author of a book about Saudi Arabia, says this is more than many defendants get in the kingdom's courts.
ELLEN WALD: It's not really an independent judiciary, and they don't really have due process. And so sometimes when accused come before a court, they don't have lawyers or they're not told of what these charges are. But in this case, they were presented with the charges.
NORTHAM: Gerald Feierstein, a senior vice president at the Middle East Institute, says presenting an image that the defendants will get a full and fair trial is an effort by the Saudis to change the narrative over Khashoggi's death, which has hurt the kingdom's image and hampered much-needed foreign investment.
GERALD FEIERSTEIN: I think that, clearly, the desire of the Saudi leadership was that this would satisfy the international demand for justice and that they could get back to business as usual.
NORTHAM: Feierstein says it's unlikely that will happen in the short term and that the calls for justice for the killing of Khashoggi will continue.
FEIERSTEIN: The concern, of course, is that it doesn't really address what is the core element of U.S. concern and that is, why did this happen and where did the orders come from? The people who ordered it, the people who are behind it are not going to ever acknowledge their responsibility.
NORTHAM: And because they'll be seen as covering up for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, commonly referred to as MBS, says the Washington Institute's Henderson.
HENDERSON: There are essentially two views on MBS. One is that they - he did it and must be embarrassed. And the other is that we'll never know whether he did it, and in the meantime, Saudi Arabia is too important a country to ignore completely. And therefore, we have to reluctantly accept what is going - has gone on and continue to deal with MBS.
NORTHAM: Prosecutors did not say when the next hearing would be. Jackie Northam, NPR News.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Today on Capitol Hill, history was made again.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: The Honorable Nancy Pelosi of the state of California, having received a majority of the votes cast, is duly elected speaker of the House of Representatives...
(APPLAUSE)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: ...For the 116th Congress.
CORNISH: The first woman ever elected speaker of the House in 2007 retook the gavel today. Nancy Pelosi is the first speaker since Sam Rayburn in the 1950s to get a second chance to rewrite her final chapter in politics. NPR congressional correspondent Susan Davis has this report on what Pelosi plans to do with that power.
SUSAN DAVIS, BYLINE: It was a familiar scene on the House floor today when Nancy Pelosi invited all the children in the chamber to surround her as she gaveled in the new Democratic majority.
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NANCY PELOSI: I now call the House to order on behalf of all of America's children.
(SOUNDBITE OF GAVEL KNOCKING)
PELOSI: Go, kids. Go, kids. Go, kids.
DAVIS: It was exactly the same way Pelosi first entered the speakership nearly a decade ago. A lot has changed in American politics since then. But Pelosi has remained a constant, as is her ability to get the votes she needs to win. Fifteen House Democrats voted against Pelosi for speaker, but many of her previous detractors, like Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton, voted for her. He now sounds like this.
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SETH MOULTON: But there's a time to vote for captain, and then there's a time to play on the same team. And we're all ready to play on the same team now to get things done for the American people.
DAVIS: In her address to the House, Pelosi outlined a legislative agenda that makes clear Republicans are no longer in charge here. Democrats will prioritize bills to combat climate change, enhanced background checks for gun purchases, protect LGBTQ rights and create a path to citizenship for people brought to the U.S. illegally as children.
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PELOSI: Our common cause is to find and forge a way forward for our country. Let us stand for the people to promote liberty and justice for all.
DAVIS: With Republicans still in control of the Senate and President Trump in the White House, divided government is unlikely to see those bills signed into law. Where Pelosi will be a critical player is overseeing dozens of oversight investigations the Democrats have planned into the Trump administration, as well as how the House will respond to the eventual conclusion of the special counsel investigation led by Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Pelosi has been reluctant to engage on questions about possible impeachment proceedings, but she has not ruled it out. Here she is on NBC's "Today" show this morning.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "TODAY")
PELOSI: We shouldn't be impeaching for a political reason, and we shouldn't avoid impeachment for a political reason. So we just have to see how it comes.
DAVIS: In the same interview, she became the highest ranking lawmaker to date to openly side with legal scholars who have questioned the assertion that a sitting president cannot be indicted.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "TODAY")
PELOSI: I think that is an open discussion in terms of the law.
DAVIS: In recent weeks, Pelosi has helped quash doubts about her political instincts and grip on power - sometimes by accident. She displayed an unflappable reserve in front of President Trump when he decided to broadcast a White House meeting with her and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
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PELOSI: Mr. President, please don't characterize the strength that I bring to this meeting as the leader of the House Democrats, who just won a big victory.
DAVIS: And at 78 years old, she proved she can still resonate culturally when her rust-colored Max Mara coat became a fashion moment in a political meme in one accidental stroke. Pelosi told Elle magazine this week she was just cold and needed a coat. Democrats like New York Congressman Hakeem Jeffries spoke passionately about Pelosi's return to power today.
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HAKEEM JEFFRIES: Nancy Pelosi is just getting started.
(APPLAUSE)
DAVIS: Her final chapter also won't last long. In order to secure the votes for speaker, Pelosi cut a deal with a group of Democrats who want to impose term limits on party leaders. It would give her, at most, four years left to serve as speaker. Pelosi says she'll honor the terms even if the caucus ultimately rejects it. Susan Davis, NPR News, the Capitol.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
It's probably fair to say that ending the shutdown now in its 13th day will be priority number one for the new speaker of the House - also probably fair to say that the Republican Freedom Caucus has very different ideas for how to do that than Nancy Pelosi does. Florida Congressman Ted Yoho is a member of the Freedom Caucus. He joins me now from Capitol Hill. Congressman, welcome.
TED YOHO: Hey. Hello, Mary Louise. How are you?
KELLY: I am very well. Thank you, and thanks for joining us. So Democrats control the House now, as you well know. So let's start with what they have put on the table - a spending bill that would fund most of the government through September, a separate measure that would fund the Department of Homeland Security till next month - so basically buying a few weeks for you in Congress and the president to keep debating the border wall but meanwhile allowing the government to reopen. Why is that not a good idea?
YOHO: Well, you know, right now, close to 75 percent of the government's already open and funded. This is a small portion, 24 percent. In that is DHS.
KELLY: That's thousands and thousands of people not getting a paycheck and not doing their jobs, though.
YOHO: Well, it's - they have over 50,000 people, but only 6,000 I think or 9,000 haven't - they've been deemed nonessential. The goal is to get the government open and running. But this goes back to the previous discussion that the president had and we had on border security. This is something that the American people want - is border security. You know, too much emphasis is being put on the wall versus border security. And we need to focus on - what we're trying to do is keep this country safe. Ms. Pelosi...
KELLY: But if I may inject, it's the president...
YOHO: Sure.
KELLY: ...Who's put the emphasis on border security and specifically on the wall. So why not buy...
YOHO: Yeah, he's talked a lot about the wall.
KELLY: ...Yourself a few weeks to talk about that and let the - let everybody go back to work in the meantime?
YOHO: Well, you're going to see that happen, but there will be an agreement - will have to be made on some kind of funding for border security. She has dug in and said no money for the wall, and I think...
KELLY: Pelosi.
YOHO: ...That's - yeah, you can't go forward if you're going to be that adamant in not moving forward. You know, the American people want border security. When we poll people, across the board, Republicans and Democrats, one of - the biggest issue that comes up is security for their families. And so this is something we want to make sure we do, and this is something that Ms. Pelosi and the Democratic Party is using for a partisan issue. We want border security 'cause it's national security. And a wall will be a portion of that, but it's - doesn't have to be all for a wall. So they need to come to the table and, you know, determine what they're going to do. We would support something between...
KELLY: You're saying everybody wants border security. I think - safe to say...
YOHO: Yeah, everybody. I think...
KELLY: ...Nobody wants to see this partial shutdown last forever, which means somebody's going to have to give a little here.
YOHO: Right.
KELLY: What are you prepared to give?
YOHO: Give a little, and so when Ms. Pelosi says that she's not giving any for the, you know, border security basically...
KELLY: Right. And I would love to put this question to Nancy Pelosi, and she's welcome to...
YOHO: I would, too.
KELLY: ...Come on the show anytime. But let me ask you. From where you sit, what are you prepared to give to move this along?
YOHO: Well, I'd - I would be willing - and we've made this public - is, you know, the president's put out there - he wants $5 billion for border security, whether it's a wall. And he has said the wall, but he also says whatever you want to call it, we need border security. And so I think you'll see something between 2, 2 1/2 to $5 billion for some kind of package that will go to border security. And let the people in control at DHS, the border security people, Custom Border Patrol (ph), determine the best way to utilize that money so that this nation is protected.
How many more times are we going to see a Kate Steinle or the officer that just got shot by the guy that had been coming - came into this country illegally twice and was in a sanctuary city? How many more times are we going to allow that to happen to an American citizen?
KELLY: Congressman, let me ask you this in the moments that we have left. I keep circling back to this point, but it's a big one. We are talking about real people here with mortgages and car payments and child care expenses. And what I don't hear any time we interview a lawmaker is that there's an end in sight. Are you prepared to tell those people this could go on for weeks?
YOHO: No 'cause I don't think it'll go on that long. I think you'll see something come up here in the next couple days. I would be surprised if it went beyond this weekend. But again, they have to be willing to agree. And I think this is something we all agree on.
KELLY: Right.
YOHO: We need border security. And if we can agree on that, we can move forward.
KELLY: Florida Congressman and House Freedom Caucus member Ted Yoho, thanks so much for your time.
YOHO: Yes, ma'am. You have a great day.
KELLY: You, too.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
China has landed a spacecraft on the side of the moon that's never seen from Earth. And NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce reports it's part of a methodical plan that China has laid out for space exploration.
NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE, BYLINE: The moon is a bright, familiar face in the sky. The moon also has another side, but don't call it the dark side.
DAVID KRING: That's a Pink Floyd thing. It has nothing to do with geologic reality.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: David Kring is a lunar geologist with the USRA Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. He says the moon's far side is sometimes dark and sometimes lit by the sun, just like its near side.
KRING: The only thing that distinguishes the far side is it is the part of the moon that we cannot see from the surface of the earth.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: That's why it was a total mystery until 1959, when a Soviet spacecraft flew by and snapped the first fuzzy image. Flybys have pretty much been it. Until now, no probe ventured to its surface.
KRING: We have had 27 successful missions to the surface of the lunar near side and zero to lunar far side. So it really represents unexplored territory.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: State-owned Chinese television reported that the Chang'e-4 spacecraft touched down at 10:26 a.m. Beijing time. The China Global Television Network broadcast remarks by Wu Weirin, the chief designer of the lunar exploration project.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
WU WEIRIN: (Through interpreter) It is of human nature to explore unknown places in the world. That's why we chose to go to the far side of the moon among all the choices we had, even if it means we will face more challenges.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Being on the other side of the moon is challenging for communications, so China had to add a satellite to relay messages back to Earth. The lander also has a rover to explore what scientists say is a more primitive, ancient surface than the near side because it hasn't been flooded by lava eruptions.
Joan Johnson-Freese is a space policy analyst at the Naval War College. She says China is closely following plans that it previously set out for space. It's pursuing this robotic moon program as well as a human exploration program that's building a large space station.
JOAN JOHNSON-FREESE: And it's highly probable that within the next three to five years, when both of these programs are completed, that they will combine the technologies and announce a human program to the moon.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: President Trump has directed NASA to work towards returning astronauts to the moon. No one has been there since 1972. Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF TYCHO'S "GLIDER")
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The U.S. men's national soccer team is in rebuilding mode after failing even to qualify to play in the World Cup last summer. But there is one very bright spot in American soccer, 20-year-old Christian Pulisic. Yesterday, Pulisic became the most expensive U.S. soccer player ever after it was announced that, come August, he'll move to one of the biggest teams in England, Chelsea Football Club. Now, just how much is Chelsea going to pay for his services? That would be a tidy $73 million.
For some perspective on this move, let's bring in NBC sports commentator and former U.S. soccer player Kyle Martino. Welcome.
KYLE MARTINO: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
KELLY: So how big a deal is this for U.S. soccer?
MARTINO: (Laughter) Well, I think you - it wasn't hyperbole. You put it in good context just by listing the facts. Spending $73 million on a player is not unusual for a club that size. It's not even unusual to spend it on a 20-year-old. But to spend it on a 20-year-old American is incredibly unusual, and it makes that the largest and most exciting signing in U.S. soccer history.
KELLY: A little bit of background on Pulisic. He is from Pennsylvania originally. He's been captain of the U.S. men's team. One point I want to draw attention to, which is that he is not moving to Chelsea from an American team. He was already playing in Europe in the Bundesliga in Germany. Is that the path that promising American players still have to take?
MARTINO: It is. It tends to be the path not only for American players. Sometimes you need a stepping stone approach, and you need to climb the ladder, so to speak. And for Christian Pulisic, that meant going from youth teams here with the Youth National Team and youth club teams in the States to the youth team at Borussia Dortmund in Germany and climbing into the first team there. That's a rare occurrence. And he accomplished that, and at the full international level with U.S. men's national team.
KELLY: What do you think? Is he the real deal? I'm remembering a dozen or so years ago when a teenager named Freddy Adu was supposed to be the next big...
MARTINO: Yeah.
KELLY: ...Thing in the future of U.S. soccer. And he ended up bouncing from team to team to team and often on the bench.
MARTINO: You know, there are myriad differences in terms of the comparison. Freddy Adu, the hype was based off of success at a youth level. So the excitement and propelling him into the national and international conversation about phenoms and stars was premature in that he hadn't proven himself on the full professional platform. Christian Pulisic has done that. Christian Pulisic is who we think he is. And I think he will succeed at Chelsea. But whether or not it's there or not, this kid is the real deal for sure.
KELLY: And what's in it for Chelsea for their 73 million bucks? I mean, they're getting a promising young player, as you describe. But this also presumably makes business sense for them.
MARTINO: It makes a lot of business sense. He immediately can help make the squad stronger on the field. Now, off the field, this is where the money really makes sense because Christian Pulisic is a already household name over here in the States. We have an enormous sports landscape with many fans having their allegiance up for grabs or maybe not even soccer fans wholeheartedly yet.
Chelsea now have an enormous asset that will immediately - whether it's through jersey sales or people watching their team - they'll see a return on investment before he even kicks a ball. If he ends up being successful on the field, it will compound and be an incredibly shrewd and solid investment.
KELLY: That's former midfielder for the U.S. national team, Kyle Martino. He's now a commentator for NBC Sports. Thank you.
MARTINO: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF RODRIGO Y GARCIA'S "THE SOUNDMAKER")
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Politicians continue their standoff on border wall funding, and caught up in the shutdown - historic agreements between the U.S. and Native American tribes. Treaties signed generations ago guarantee federal funds for health care and education in those communities. With the shutdown, that money has stopped. Aaron Payment is tribal chairman of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. Their tribal lands are on Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Welcome to the program.
AARON PAYMENT: Thank you for having me.
CORNISH: So to start, give us some examples of where this money is typically used. What areas of life are going to be affected?
PAYMENT: So the largest portion I would say would be Indian Health Service. We're a self-governance tribe, so we get to operate our own programs and services in health from the funding that we receive. We receive $30 million a year. We recapture about $10 million additional in insurances and third-party revenue. Other areas that will be affected are child care, food distribution. We have a general assistance program for people who are looking for work, and this helps to pay their rent. Heating assistance is another area, headstart in education. All of those areas are going to be ill-affected if the shutdown continues past a couple of weeks.
CORNISH: Have you been getting phone calls, or have you been swapping emails with people at other tribes and communities saying, hey, we're starting to panic?
PAYMENT: Yes. So while my tribe has taken some measures to be able to withstand a shorter-term government shutdown - and we're talking maybe up to two weeks. Maybe three weeks we can survive under that before we have to make drastic cuts. But I have talked with some members of my tribe that are health directors under IHS in different communities across the country, and they're already working on furloughs. There's some layoffs that have already occurred. And also some are working without pay.
CORNISH: What does that mean in the long term? I mean, this is not your first shutdown, so what happens after these things occur?
PAYMENT: So in 2013 during the government shutdown, we lost $1 million in federal revenue that we never recovered. We also lost medical providers because they didn't realize their employment was predicated or dependent upon federal dollars.
CORNISH: Do you mean doctors, nurses?
PAYMENT: Yes. We lost one doctor, a nurse practitioner and four other staff. And it's difficult 'cause it has a compounding effect because it's very difficult to recruit and retain medical staff as it is in rural communities. This makes it even more difficult if they think that the funding for their positions is precarious.
CORNISH: I think people forget the extent of this relationship - right? - between people on native lands and the U.S. and these treaties. Can you kind of remind people what that relationship is, how it came to be?
PAYMENT: Absolutely. So across the country, for the 573 tribes, about 500 million acres of land was traded between tribes and the federal government in exchange for health, education and social welfare into perpetuity. And in Michigan, the five tribes that signed the 1836 treaty, of which my tribe is a party, we ceded 14 million acres. And so we just expect the federal government to fulfill their treaty and trust responsibility to follow through. A government is only as good as its word. And some people will ask, why do we follow these antiquated treaty documents? And my response is that they are older, but the Constitution is older. And if we follow and honor our Constitution, we need to also honor the treaties.
CORNISH: What do you want to say to the president and to Congress about this ongoing shutdown?
PAYMENT: Well, I think that a lot of the blame lies in one camp rather than both camps. The president has really backed himself into a corner. And sometimes they say that an animal is most vicious when cornered. But if we're going to survive as a country, our president has to figure out how to compromise and say, for the good of the country, we will move forward on border security, and a wall does not have to be part of that. He's trying to stay good to his base and his campaign promise for this wall, but we need to compromise in order to move past this issue.
CORNISH: Aaron Payment is tribal chairperson of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. Thank you so much for speaking with us.
PAYMENT: Absolutely. Thank you.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The Vespa, that iconic Italian scooter, was once the ride of choice in Pakistan until it was replaced by cheaper Chinese motorbikes. But nostalgia for the little scooter has some Pakistanis restoring their battered old Vespas and heading out onto the highway once again. NPR's Diaa Hadid reports.
DIAA HADID, BYLINE: Mansour Khan was 5 when he stole the keys to his grandfather's Vespa.
MANSOUR KHAN: I was not able to ride it, but we just started it and enjoyed the sound.
HADID: It was imported from Italy in 1969.
KHAN: That Vespa is still in our family, and it's running like a horse.
HADID: Khan's one of the many here who are restoring and riding Vespas in dedicated clubs. They're influenced by global hipster trends and those memories of riding with their parents and grandparents.
KHAN: My grandfather used to have a Vespa. And I'm returning again to the Vespa.
HADID: Khan's is a 1983 silver scooter. He's installed a stereo to play in traffic jams.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
HADID: Another rider, Kashif Malik, says he loves the attention he gets.
KASHIF MALIK: Whenever I'm riding, everybody, you know, look at me. And, you know, they are giving me thumbs-up and stuff like that.
HADID: Malik has a pistachio green 1960s Vespa with its own side car, and he wants you to know it's empty.
MALIK: I'm single and still, you know, ready to mingle (laughter).
HADID: Khan, Malik and their friends peel off on the highway to a mountain resort town.
(SOUNDBITE OF TRAFFIC)
HADID: We're weaving in and out of the traffic. There's other motorbikes around us. There's minivans.
We dodge a few trucks, and motorists slow down to stare. Pakistan has a history with these Italian scooters. They were imported here in the '60s. In the '70s, a local assembly plant was set up. Ali Zafar used to work there.
ALI ZAFAR: (Through interpreter) In the past, there were only Vespas here. It used to be very cheap. They didn't use much gas, and they're very comfortable.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "AN EVENING IN PARIS")
UNIDENTIFIED SINGER #1: (Singing in foreign language).
HADID: They were also modern and dashing like in this classic 1967 Bollywood movie, "An Evening In Paris." Men ride on white Vespas, and their girlfriends ride behind them.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "AN EVENING IN PARIS")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Darling, please go slow. I'm frightened. Please.
HADID: You can also see the Vespa's trajectory to fuddy-duddy. In a Bollywood film from 2008, an old-fashioned husband tries to catch up with his modern wife. So he ditches his battered Vespa and buys a car.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED SINGER #2: (Singing in foreign language).
HADID: Fast forward to now, and Zafar, who used to work in the assembly plant, renovates these old scooters. There's plenty of old-timers who want to sell them, making authentic spare parts pretty cheap. There's a row of rusty Vespas in his workshop.
(SOUNDBITE OF GRINDER)
HADID: Men scrape and clean them up.
ZAFAR: (Through interpreter) We smooth out the dents and paint it the color that the customer requests.
HADID: Zafar sells a renovated classic Vespa for $1,500. And it's not just Pakistanis snapping them up. Julia works at the German Embassy.
JULIA: Actually, find me on Facebook.
HADID: She's bumped into a friend, and they take a selfie with her Vespa.
JULIA: He was so surprised I'm on a Vespa (laughter).
HADID: A month after Julia arrived, she heard about Pakistan's Vespa restoration business and she snapped one up.
JULIA: It's an old-timer (laughter). It's a cream color Vespa from 1974.
HADID: Most Vespa riders are men.
JULIA: In the beginning, I was so worried how people would react, like, me as a woman driving a Vespa. But everyone is smiling and...
HADID: We finish chatting, and Julia rides away.
(SOUNDBITE OF VESPA STARTING UP)
HADID: And it's hard not to smile. This touch of whimsy on Pakistan's roads is delightful. Diaa Hadid, NPR News, Rawalpindi.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
In some ways, 2018 appeared to be a banner year for leading women in Hollywood. Both blockbusters and Oscar bait saw their share of strong female characters on the screen, but it is a different story for women behind the camera. NPR's Colin Dwyer explains.
COLIN DWYER, BYLINE: Take a look at some of 2018's biggest films. Women play military heroes like Danai Gurira in "Black Panther"...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BLACK PANTHER")
DANAI GURIRA: (As Okoye) Take her to the river province to prepare her for the ceremony.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Yes, General.
DWYER: ...Superheroes like Evangeline Lilly in "Ant-Man And The Wasp"...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ANT-MAN AND THE WASP")
EVANGELINE LILLY: (As Wasp) We don't have much time. Watch this.
DWYER: ...And fast-talking thieves, like this one played by Sandra Bullock in "Ocean's Eight."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "OCEAN'S EIGHT")
SANDRA BULLOCK: (As Debbie Ocean) Go home. Get your affairs in order because tomorrow, we begin pulling off one of the biggest jewelry heists in history.
DWYER: Now, look at who's making these films, especially the directors. The Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University looked at the 250 top-grossing films in the U.S. last year, and what they found looked a lot like years past. Women made up just 8 percent of the directors. The numbers are higher when it comes to producers and editors, more around 20 percent. And the numbers haven't changed much for a while.
MELISSA SILVERSTEIN: They've been stagnant for over a decade, so this year's no surprise, right?
DWYER: That's Melissa Silverstein. She did not work on the report, but as founder of another group called Women and Hollywood, Silverstein has long fought to seek greater representation in the industry.
SILVERSTEIN: Studies have shown that the more women you have behind the camera and positions, the more inclusive your film is. So if you want to have an inclusive set, the thing you do is hire a woman director.
DWYER: A study released just last month shows that when a woman stars in a film, it does better at the box office worldwide. And Silverstein says the same success can be achieved behind the camera if only women get the chance.
SILVERSTEIN: Really, what this is is about access to opportunities and access to capital. Women have to be able to operate at the highest levels of the business, and that has been an area that has been very cut off for women and also people of color.
DWYER: The number of women in director and producer roles is a bit higher in television, and the conversation around inclusion has certainly picked up in the last couple years. But as the study's author, Martha laws, points out, conversation is not the same as action. In a statement to NPR, she said the situation is, quote, "unlikely to be remedied by the voluntary efforts of a few individuals or a single studio." Instead, she says, what is needed is the will to change and an industry-wide effort to see it through. Colin Dwyer, NPR News, New York.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
California's largest utility could be on the hook for billions of dollars in liability damages from deadly wildfires these last two years. The fires left more than 130 people dead, wiped out thousands of homes and businesses and destroyed much of the town of Paradise. Pacific Gas and Electric already faces ongoing sanctions following felony convictions for deadly errors and safety violations in its gas division. NPR has learned that utility's parent company has plans to sell off its gas division this spring and use the proceeds to set up a settlement fund for wildfire victims.
NPR's Eric Westervelt broke this story. And, Eric, to start, this seems like the company's internal plan to survive, right? Tell us more about this gas proposal.
ERIC WESTERVELT, BYLINE: Hi, Audie. Yeah, it is what a company source calls the company's only major play to survive. Executives have dubbed this gas sale plan and internal strategy Project Falcon. And the company sources, including senior officials involved in the project and planning and backed up by internal documents, as well as a former employee, show that the plan has been in the works, Audie, for more than a year since after the 2017 wine country fires. But planning was restarted again intensively, we're told, after November's deadly Camp Fire.
And under the current plan, Audie, proceeds from the sale would go into a kind of escrow account, a settlement fund to pay down billions of dollars in potential claims for these wildfires, both the 2017 fires and the Camp Fire which killed at least 86 people, did billions in damage and destroyed most of the town of Paradise.
CORNISH: But PG&E has not been found liable for starting the Camp Fire, right? The investigation is ongoing. What have you learned?
WESTERVELT: That's correct - no cause pinpointed yet. The state is investigating. Cal Fire is investigating. PG&E is fully cooperating. The company did report damage to two transmission lines, one just before the fire was reported and another malfunction a half-hour later in a nearby area. That's seen as a second possible ignition source.
And just today it was announced that several major insurance companies, Audie, have sued PG&E, blaming the company for the Camp Fire. That comes on top of at least 10 major lawsuits representing hundreds of victims that allege PG&E failed to properly maintain, inspect and upgrade all of its equipment. One estimate from Citigroup said the company could be liable for up to 15 billion in fire damages from the last two years. And the company hopes to get, we are told from the sources, between 10 and 15 billion for its gas assets.
CORNISH: Well, what's the company reaction?
WESTERVELT: Well, a spokesman declined to make any executives available to comment on Project Falcon. In a statement, Andy Castagnola said, quote, "PG&E doesn't comment on market rumors or speculations," but he added, "the company is reviewing its structural options to best position the company to meet customer and operational needs and improve safety."
And the company today also said it would be searching for new directors for the boards of both its parent company and the utility. And we know this gas sale isn't some market rumor. As the inside the company source told us, quote, "the only play they see now is sever and sell."
CORNISH: The utility is under no legal obligation, though, to talk about its plans to stave off possible bankruptcy. At the same time, does it seem like lack of transparency is part of the problem?
WESTERVELT: Well, public watchdog groups I've talked with say it's a big problem. I mean, they want more openness. They want a bigger, more substantive focus on safety, not just talk. Remember; this company is already a felon on probation for convictions related to this gas explosion, as you mentioned, in 2010 that killed eight people. Here's Michael Wara, an energy scholar at Stanford. He calls the company's lack of openness extremely disappointing.
MICHAEL WARA: Especially in the current context where there's a lack of trust and so many people that have been harmed by PG&E's infrastructure, they need to be thinking very hard about how to create safety for Californians rather than how to make money for shareholders.
WESTERVELT: And, Audie, some lawmakers and the incoming governor, Gavin Newsom, are likely - very likely to have big questions about any potential gas sale as they look at the future of PG&E.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Eric Westervelt. Thanks for your reporting.
WESTERVELT: Thanks, Audie.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Almost two weeks into the government shutdown, national parks are starting to close. The public had been getting into the parks for free because employees weren't there to collect entrance fees. That also means they weren't there to collect the trash or clean the bathrooms. On the nation's first national park, Yellowstone, local businesses are pitching in to pay park staff to keep it open or at least parts of it. Montana Public Radio's Eric Whitney reports.
ERIC WHITNEY, BYLINE: Despite temperatures that regularly dropped below zero and the park being covered in snow, people still come to Yellowstone in winter time, between 20,000 and 30,000 a month.
(SOUNDBITE OF SNOWMOBILE)
WHITNEY: The snow is actually a big attraction. Snowmobiles like these are as common as cars on the frozen streets of the park gateway town of West Yellowstone, Mont. Dan Gibbons from nearby Bozeman had family in from out of town for the holidays and booked a snowmobile tour from here to Old Faithful geyser.
What do you think was the best part?
DAN GIBBONS: Seeing the kids' reaction. The trees next to the geysers are covered in ice crystals. So I could show you some pictures. It's brilliant.
(LAUGHTER)
WHITNEY: Jerry Johnson owns a business that rents snowmobiles and sends seven guided tours a day into Yellowstone in the winter.
JERRY JOHNSON: It's the trip of a lifetime.
WHITNEY: Johnson got a big spike in calls when news of the shutdown hit, and he really didn't want to tell people that their Yellowstone adventure was canceled because of D.C. politics.
JOHNSON: I mean, it's not cheap. So it's, you know, they had to plan and budget for this. And all of a sudden to get the carpet ripped out from underneath them, I think, is not fair.
WHITNEY: The park is almost entirely closed to cars starting in November, so the only way to get to Old Faithful and most other park attractions is via snowmobile or in big vans with cartoonishly huge balloon tires called snow coaches. They require roads that are groomed daily by the park's fleet of half a dozen big tractors. They're kind of like Zambonis that smooth out ice-skating rinks but a lot bigger.
JOHNSON: If you don't groom them, the trails will get very rough. And you'll get bumps, moguls in them. And it'll be just - it's miserable.
WHITNEY: So, during the shutdown, private businesses that operate inside the park are picking up the tab - about $7,500 hundred dollars a day to groom Yellowstone's 300-plus miles of snow-covered roads and to keep one paved road open to cars. Xanterra Parks & Resorts, which runs the only hotels operating inside the park in winter, is paying most of that. Mike Keller is Xanterra's general manager in Yellowstone.
MIKE KELLER: That is correct. We're funding the National Park Service to perform the grooming duties.
WHITNEY: Xanterra asked guide services that operate in the park to chip in to help pay park employees during the shutdown, and all of them did. It adds up to about 300 bucks a day for each of the guide services. And the Park Service is totally going to reimburse them for paying park employees during the shutdown, right?
KELLER: There is no reimbursement from the government after the shutdown ends. The funds that we've - that we pay operate for those days. We won't be reimbursed the dollars that we've committed for the previous 14 days.
WHITNEY: Nor is Xanterra getting reimbursed for the half-dozen of its employees who are cleaning park bathrooms during the shutdown. And snowmobile guide services like Jerry Johnson's are packing in their own toilet paper and packing out all their trash. He says they're happy to keep the park open and nice because...
KELLER: It should be open, and services should be there because it is the people's park.
WHITNEY: Xanterra resort says they're willing to keep paying park employees to maintain winter access to Yellowstone into February, at which point they'll re-evaluate the funding arrangement with their fellow concessionaires. For NPR News, I'm Eric Whitney in West Yellowstone, Mont.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The partial government shutdown is nearing the end of its second week. And in an effort to keep it from stretching into a third week, President Trump met with congressional leaders for about two hours today. In that meeting in the White House Situation Room, the president threatened to keep parts of the government shuttered for up to a year if necessary to get the funding he wants for a border wall, though the president said he hoped to have a resolution much sooner.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I'm not saying it was an easy meeting or even a kind meeting or a nice meeting. But in the end, I think we've come a long way. We're going to be working very hard over the weekend, and we'll see if we can do something.
KELLY: Democratic leaders, meanwhile, sounded less optimistic. The ongoing tug of war overshadowed what could have been a day of celebration for the White House, with the news that the U.S. economy added more than 300,000 jobs last month. NPR's Scott Horsley joins us now from the White House. Hey, Scott.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Hi, Mary Louise.
KELLY: So unlike some earlier meetings that we've been watching between the president and congressional leaders, this one was behind closed doors. Do we actually know what happened, what they talked about?
HORSLEY: You heard that rosy assessment from the president. He called it a very productive meeting and said they've agreed to continue talks over the weekend. Democrats sounded a little less positive about the prospects for a quick resolution. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi described today's session as sometimes contentious. And she and her fellow Democrats all say it's hard to see a path to compromise unless and until the government is fully reopened.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NANCY PELOSI: Services are being withheld from the American people. Paychecks are being held - withheld from people who serve the needs of the American people. And our border security will suffer if we do not resolve this issue.
HORSLEY: Pelosi stressed that Democrats share the president's concern with border security. They just don't believe that a multibillion-dollar barrier made of steel or concrete is the way to achieve that.
KELLY: And they can't even agree what you call it, whether it's a fence or a wall or a barrier or what. Meanwhile, what is the president saying to make his case?
HORSLEY: He's trying to paint a really scary picture. He's talking about drugs, about criminals, even about suspected terrorists. What he hasn't really done is to connect the dots of how his proposed wall would actually address those threats. Most of the illicit drugs coming into the U.S. from Mexico, for example, actually come through legal ports of entry, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, not the badlands where a wall would maybe stop them.
And while the administration keeps talking about some kind of security crisis, we've actually seen a drop in illegal crossings last fiscal year compared to 2014 and 2016. What we have seen is an increase, Mary Louise, in families coming across from Central America. And they are more challenging to deport. But they're mostly turning themselves into border agents. They're not trying to flee apprehension. So again, it's not clear what a wall would do to stop that.
KELLY: It sounds as though they're not exactly on the verge of a breakthrough, Scott. Although, we did maybe get a little bit of a hint of what the president might be prepared to do if Democrats won't budge.
HORSLEY: Right. You know, the president toggles back and forth between saying he has to have five-plus billion dollars to build the wall and then, in other moments, saying, oh, the wall's well under construction already. So part of the negotiations this weekend might be about trying to find a face-saving way for the president to declare victory and then reopen the government. He also suggested he might use his executive authority to divert money from military accounts.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMP: We could call a national emergency and build it very quickly, and that's another way of doing it. But if we can do it through a negotiated process, we're giving that a shot.
HORSLEY: That would likely invite legal challenges, though, and probably involve just a small section of border.
KELLY: NPR's Scott Horsley at the White House. Thanks very much, Scott.
HORSLEY: You're welcome.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Now to talk about more, we are going to bring in E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and Brookings Institution. Welcome back.
E J DIONNE, BYLINE: Good to be back. Happy New Year.
CORNISH: Yes. David Brooks of The New York Times, welcome back. Happy New Year to you both.
DAVID BROOKS: Thank you. Same to you.
CORNISH: All right, so it's not Groundhog Day yet, just feels like it. And so here we are picking up where we left off in the midst of a government shutdown. As we heard Scott Horsley report, the president is willing to let this shutdown go on for however long. David, what's your reaction?
BROOKS: I'm weirdly hopeful 'cause I live in a different country in which people are rational. And there was a near deal a year ago where the - Trump would get 25 billion in border security. And then in exchange, Democrats and others would get immigration reform, notably a path to citizenship for the DREAMers. That seemed to me like a normal good deal. And I still think that's out there. Now the price is down to 5 billion rather than 25 billion, but I still think that's the deal that I think both sides could live with, and it would be a good deal.
Trump won the election. He's going to get his wall. It's a dumb idea, but he won the election on it. And if we can get something out of it, I think that's something that could make both sides happy. The problem is getting the optics right. So neither side appears to be giving in first, but that's matter of optics, not a matter of substance. In substance, there's a deal sitting out there.
CORNISH: Speaking of optics, no one has seen Senator Mitch McConnell really on camera talking about this. E.J., I don't know. What are you hearing about how he's being part of this conversation or not?
DIONNE: Well, I think Mitch McConnell was notably AWOL at the president's news conference. The House Republican leaders were there. McConnell was gone. I think you're seeing a breakup of Republican solidarity very early on. Two Republican senators who are up for re-election in tough states, Susan Collins of Maine being one of them, Cory Gardner of Colorado the other, have already said, let's pass the House bills and open the government. Seven House Republicans broke with the party and voted for the Democratic bills to open the government.
I think there's a lesson here. You can negotiate and compromise about money. You can even negotiate about health plans, but it's very hard to negotiate about a campaign promise that is almost entirely symbolic and that Mexico was supposed to pay for. And as Scott's piece suggested, it's very hard to negotiate with somebody who keeps changing the ground rules. The wall was supposed to be made out of cement. Then it can be made out of steel. Then it sometimes can be just a series of slats. I don't see this easy solution David suggests partly because it seemed to be ruled out of negotiations today.
CORNISH: Well, let me jump in here because...
DIONNE: But maybe that's where they'll end up.
CORNISH: I was surprised at your optimism given your writing (laughter) the last couple of weeks. You do not sound like a person who is expecting a lot out of this Congress or even the government going forward. You say this will be the year of divided government and unprecedented partisan conflict. Why? I mean, how is this different from, say, the multiple government shutdowns we saw during the tea party years?
BROOKS: Well, I'm relatively optimistic about the shutdown. I'm not optimistic about 2019. It's going to be a year of divided government. It's going to be a year in which the membrane that used to surround Donald Trump to protect him from his worst impulses has worn away because he's fired all members of it. And into this world, the indictments - some indictments will come. There are something like a dozen investigations. Presumably there'll be indictments at some point this year. And in my view, Donald Trump will not - he'll try to save himself by delegitimizing our legal system. He'll attack the prosecutors. He'll attack the laws. And we will get into a violent tussle over the very institutions of our Constitution. And so that's a pretty ugly year. And I do think that's what we're in for and we should buckle our seatbelts for. But the wall - the shutdown is going to end. We're going to have a government. And so it seems to me there's a solution out there sooner or later.
CORNISH: E.J., can you talk to us about Nancy Pelosi - you did an interview with her - and kind of like how she's thinking about going forward?
DIONNE: Boy, is Nancy Pelosi in a very good mood these days. I mean, she was - we didn't talk about this, but she's clearly in a good mood because she really faced down a series of opponents who thought they could knock her out as speaker. And while she theoretically only won by a couple of votes, that was actually a landslide because any member who had to vote against her for political purposes was allowed to vote against her. She is pretty optimistic that the Democrats can put forward a series of proposals, on political reform, on improving the healthcare system, on infrastructure, that at the very least will provide a basis for them to say, this is what we would do if we had real power.
CORNISH: Can they do that without what you described an orgy of investigations kind of taking over the news?
DIONNE: Right. Well, she was very careful about that. She said that there would be - without mentioning Robert Mueller in our interview, without mentioning Mueller or the word impeachment, she said there would be appropriate investigations. But she really pushed back hard on the idea that normal congressional accountability for Trump administration policies and individuals should be labeled investigations. She sees this as normal accountability that has not been happening under the Republicans.
CORNISH: Last topic is going to be about freshman lawmakers. One familiar face this week, Mitt Romney, kicks off his term with an Op-Ed and media tour attacking the president. David, what's going on here?
BROOKS: Well, one senator is saying in public what a lot of senators say in private - that character matters. He didn't really disagree with Trump on a lot of policy issues, but he did on the subject of character. And that means there's an internal Republican opposition. I was struck by the way the RNC, the Republican National Committee, or at least some members of it, reacted, which was to try to lock down the primary process. There were moves to create a series of moves so that Trump would have no opposition in the Republican primaries. That suggests they understand that if a fight is Republicans versus Democrats, Republicans will hang together. But if the fight is Republican against Republican with one standing for character and conservatism and the other, Trump, just standing for conservatism or some version of it, then a lot of Republicans would be tempted to go the other way. And so I think they're so sensitive to the fact there could be fissures in this party.
CORNISH: E.J.?
DIONNE: I think Mitt Romney's problem is that he was for Trump before he was against him. Before he was for him. Before he was against him. He's been everywhere when it comes to Trump. And a lot of times, it's whatever suited his interests. But this was a powerful marker. And it's really striking that the first resort of Republicans would be to close down the democratic process, effectively to say, we are going to declare by fiat that he is our nominee. Fortunately they can't shut down the democratic process. But I think you're seeing an awful lot of Republicans - I think Romney spoke for the feelings of a lot of Republicans, but they still haven't been willing to put any real action behind words of criticism of Trump. And we'll see if Romney is actually willing to do that.
CORNISH: Another thing I want to note, a record 102 women lawmakers in the House, now most of them Democrats, what do you expect out of this freshman class?
DIONNE: Just that visual at the swearing in was extraordinary. The range - not only the large number of women, which is significant, but also diversity of religion, diversity by race, diversity by ethnicity. I think the Democrats' challenge will be to have suburban, more moderate progressives work with the rest. That's why they elected Pelosi because she's very good at banging heads together.
CORNISH: That's E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and Brookings Institution and David Brooks of The New York Times. Happy New Year. Thank you both.
BROOKS: Same to you.
DIONNE: Happy New Year to you.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Although President Trump is pulling the U.S. military out of Syria, the U.S. troops next door in Iraq are expected to stay put. There are about 5,000 of them, and they keep a relatively low profile, mostly sticking to U.S. bases. In fact, it has been years since an American general strolled around downtown Baghdad. Well, that changed today.
And NPR's Jane Arraf was invited along for the walk. She joins us now from Baghdad. Hey, Jane.
JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: Hi, Mary Louise.
KELLY: So how significant is it for a U.S. commander to be out and about, walking the streets of Baghdad?
ARRAF: You know, it's pretty significant because, really, it hasn't happened for a very long time. This particular commander was Brigadier General Austin Renforth. And he's deputy commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. So he was taken along by his Iraqi counterpart, three-star general named Jalil Rubaie.
Now, Iraq for the past three years has been busy fighting ISIS, so it hasn't been really as safe as it is now. And also, you know, the Iraqis aren't so keen to have U.S. generals walking around their streets because there are Iranian-backed groups that think all the U.S. troops should leave. There's the legacy of the war. So to have him walking around amid thousands and thousands of people was kind of a big deal.
KELLY: And did he have a huge security entourage with him? I mean, how was he being protected?
ARRAF: He did have a security entourage. He had a personal security detail, and they were armed. And they were certainly keeping watch. But, you know, at one point we were having tea on this kind of raised platform in the middle of the street, and there were literally thousands of people who were jammed into these narrow alleys doing their shopping, going to the pet market.
He, himself, was wearing a Marine uniform, no body armor, very relaxed. That was kind of the most surprising thing that, in the midst of all this chaos, which you would normally think would be potentially dangerous, they didn't seem to feel there was much of a threat.
KELLY: And you got to talk to them as y'all were out and about walking. What did he say about what he was seeing and how he felt about it?
ARRAF: So we have to remember that this is a guy who has been through Fallujah, you know, the battle for Fallujah in 2004, which was absolutely horrific. This is not his first time around. Here is a little bit of what he had to say.
RET BRIGADIER GENERAL AUSTIN RENFORTH: To be here right now and see the city center thriving, it's like an open market. If you didn't know any better, you'd swear you're in any major city in the United States.
KELLY: Any major city in the United States, Jane? I'm going to be skeptical there. Did it really feel like Boston or LA?
ARRAF: Yeah, maybe not. But I think what he's comparing it to is all the other times he's seen Iraq, and that's what Iraqis compare it to as well. But still, let's not exaggerate. Baghdad has quite a lot of problems. But for the first time in 16 years since Saddam Hussein was toppled, when you talk to most Iraqis, they say this is the safest they've felt in years.
KELLY: Was he getting double takes from Iraqis in the markets and in the streets? What was their reaction?
ARRAF: That was so interesting because, you know, I would have thought that he would, but either people ignored him, which kind of indicates they've moved on, or they wanted to take selfies with him. There were a couple of people who yelled at him about the American presence. But by far, most of the people were either bemused or seemed quite positive to see him walking around.
KELLY: Listening to you, I mean, clearly, this is progress. Clearly, this is something that couldn't have happened even a few years back but also feels so telling that it is still quite such a significant thing 16 years after the U.S.-led invasion for a U.S. commander to be able to walk the streets of Baghdad.
ARRAF: Absolutely. And one of the things it says too is that even though ISIS has been pushed out of the cities, Renforth and his Iraqi counterpart are very clear that does not, contrary to other conceptions, mean that ISIS is defeated.
You know, it takes a lot of effort by the Iraqi military and U.S. advisers to keep it as safe as it has been. So all of those thousands of people, they're also backed by the immense efforts that go into every Friday holiday, making sure that attacks don't happen. They're very aware still that ISIS could still be out there, and they're not letting their guard down.
KELLY: Thank you, Jane.
ARRAF: Thank you.
KELLY: That's NPR's Jane Arraf reporting from Baghdad.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Only hours after Nancy Pelosi took the gavel as speaker of the House, her lawyers intervened in a court case. Democrats aren't wasting any time defending the Affordable Care Act. That's because they say the Trump administration won't. The fate of that health care law is one of the key battles ahead for Douglas Letter, the new top lawyer in the House. NPR's Carrie Johnson has more.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Douglas Letter spent four decades at the Justice Department. For most of that time, his job was to defend the prerogative of the executive branch, no matter which political party held the White House.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DOUGLAS LETTER: My father and several other people in my family were also career public servants. And so I grew up feeling like public service was a calling.
JOHNSON: Letter retired from Justice last year around the time of that interview. Now he's found a new way to serve. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi selected Letter to be general counsel of the U.S. House. Pelosi cited his years of service and legal expertise. Ironically, some of that expertise involves how the executive branch might try to fend off inquiries from Congress. Mary McCord was a colleague of Letter's at the Justice Department and at Georgetown Law Center.
MARY MCCORD: This is a person with 40 years of experience defending the U.S. government. So he knows, frankly, every trick in the book when it comes to litigating against the U.S. government.
JOHNSON: McCord says that insight will come in handy now that Letter is advising lawmakers who want to make a priority investigating the Trump administration.
IRVIN NATHAN: Oversight by the House is a key part of our constitutional system. And it simply cannot and should not be resisted by the executive branch.
JOHNSON: That's Irvin Nathan, a longtime Washington lawyer. Nathan once worked for Pelosi as general counsel of the House, the same job Letter now has.
NATHAN: What's important is it's a nonpartisan job. It's a job that protects the institution of the U.S. House.
JOHNSON: But Nathan says clashes with the White House and Cabinet agencies are inevitable. The administration has already signaled it may try to resist subpoenas and requests for testimony. That's happened before. When Nathan had the job, he wound up suing the George W. Bush administration, which fought efforts to subpoena the former White House counsel Harriet Miers and Chief of Staff Josh Bolten. Lawmakers won in court, but it took a while. Nathan says Democrats are going to have to prioritize and keep an eye on the calendar.
NATHAN: They're going to have to move quickly and ask the court to expedite the proceeding since, you know, there's is only two years in the House, and people can drag out litigation. So that's going to be a key test for Doug and his office.
JOHNSON: Nathan says House leaders could take advantage of other options, hitting pause on the White House's legislative priorities or using their power of the purse to deny funding for some of Trump's plans. For now, a top priority for House leaders is defending the Affordable Care Act. And Letter has enlisted a familiar ally. He's hired President Obama's former solicitor general, Don Verrilli, to back that health care law. Verrilli famously won a Supreme Court case over the ACA in 2012, and Democrats are hoping history repeats. Carrie Johnson, NPR News, Washington.
(SOUNDBITE OF ISAAC HAYES' "HUNG UP ON MY BABY")
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Two years ago, former Montana Congressman Ryan Zinke rode on horseback down the streets of Washington to begin his first day as secretary of the interior. He resigned that post in December, no horse in sight, amid a series of ethics investigations. His replacement took over yesterday. David Bernhardt was the agency's No. 2. He's also a former oil lobbyist. Also this week, there's a new acting head of the Defense Department. He's a former executive at a major defense contractor. In fact, former industry folks hold the top spots in several federal departments. Eric Lipton is an investigative reporter at The New York Times. He's been tracking this. He's here in the studio. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
ERIC LIPTON: Thank you.
CORNISH: Can you start by giving us a snapshot of where some of these cabinet secretaries are coming from and how their previous work intersects with what they're doing now?
LIPTON: The regulated have become the regulators. At Department of Interior, you have a guy whose clients included Statoil and Noble Oil who now sets policies over oil and gas in United States access to federal lands. At EPA, you have a guy who worked for a coal company that now sets policies that radically affect coal companies in the United States. At HHS, Health and Human Services, you have a guy that was a former pharmaceutical industry executive who now sets policies on how much the federal government pays for drugs when it buys billions of dollars of drugs. At the Department of Defense, you have a guy who was a senior executive at Boeing. That's one of the largest - billions of dollars' worth of contracts with the Department of Defense. So each of these guys come from worlds that they now oversee.
CORNISH: What has that meant in terms of policy? We're two years into this administration. What have you seen?
LIPTON: I don't think that you see them doing special favors for their former clients. But they just come into the agencies with the mindset of the world that they come from. And so across the board, there are things happening that benefit the former sectors that they worked for.
CORNISH: So I want to come back to the acting secretary of the interior. What do we know about David Bernhardt?
LIPTON: David Bernhardt's client list is almost like a minefield of conflicts for someone who is running an agency. He represented an industry group that is the trade group for offshore oil and gas drillers. He represented a major utility that uses coal from the coal mines that his agency regulates. He represents an oil and gas company that has huge matters before the agency in terms of access to federal lands for drilling. So he has to work very hard to avoid getting involved in matters that affect his former clients.
CORNISH: Now, I thought there was a two-year ban on federal officials participating in matters where they used to deal as lobbyists or did lobbying.
LIPTON: Yeah, but the ban is a very narrow ban. The specific legal language is a particular matter involving specific parties. So if it's, for example, a regulation that broadly affects the oil and gas industry, and you were a former oil and gas industry lobbyist for one company, you're still allowed to be involved in setting that new rule that benefits your former client.
CORNISH: The flip side of this is that you have people who have a lot of knowledge and expertise in these areas who are now involved in policy.
LIPTON: Well, I mean, the issue is that we have a president who was elected by promising to drain the swamp and to take out special interests in Washington. And he's filled his cabinet - at least in his acting people because many of these are vacancies - with people who come from the same industries that they are now regulating. And so it's a lot like many other things that Trump says. What he says and what he does are often quite different.
CORNISH: For a long time, we were hearing about how difficult it was to fill various positions for this administration. Has that changed? And is this the way it's being dealt with?
LIPTON: Most of the people who are from the industry that are now in the positions leading various agencies were in deputy positions. And they have been elevated because their bosses, who were the secretaries of X or Y, have left. But one of the things that we're seeing is a pendulum swing. I mean, the - you know, during the Obama administration, it was more likely that you would see someone who had worked for a former environmental group or for an academic place. And they have, to some extent, conflicts of interest, as well. They have affiliations with nonprofits that they once worked for. But I have not seen such a radical shift as quickly as in the Trump administration in terms of people who put down their portfolio for the private sector and pick it up on behalf of the government within a matter of days or weeks.
CORNISH: That's Eric Lipton, investigative reporter for The New York Times. Thank you for sharing your reporting with us.
LIPTON: Thank you.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Over the past 10 years, a group of drugs called synthetic cannabinoids, also known as Spice, K2 or synthetic marijuana, have been responsible for mass overdoses and tens of thousands of emergency room visits around the country. Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi of our Planet Money podcast looked into where this wave in synthetic drugs began.
ALEXI HOROWITZ-GHAZI, BYLINE: The story of the modern synthetic drug revolution begins in a scientific lab with a well-intentioned professor.
JOHN W HUFFMAN: Let me explain how we got into the synthetic cannabinoid business.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: John W. Huffman is a retired organic chemistry professor from Clemson University. And his role in the multibillion-dollar synthetic drug market began in the early 1990s. A few years earlier, biochemists had discovered a part of the body called the cannabinoid receptor. In addition to getting pot smokers high, this receptor seemed to be involved with all sorts of important things - sleep, appetite, pain, which meant a whole new horizon of potential medicines. But first scientists had to figure out how the receptor worked.
HUFFMAN: And that sounded like a fun puzzle to attack.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: John Huffman's job was to synthesize brand new chemical compounds to trigger the receptor. And those would be tested on rodent brains to measure their effects. Huffman and his colleagues eventually created more than 300 new compounds. They published their scientific findings and formulas, and for over a decade, that was that. Then around the end of 2008, John Huffman received an unexpected message from a blogger in Germany.
HUFFMAN: They had discovered that one of our compounds had been found in a drug called Spice.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: Spice was the brand name for a new kind of product being sold as herbal incense and labelled as not for human consumption. But humans were, in fact, consuming the stuff, getting high and exhibiting some troubling symptoms. And when authorities analyzed this Spice, they found JWH-018.
HUFFMAN: It was the 18th compound that we synthesized, and it was pretty potent - never thought anything of it.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: Some enterprising chemist appeared to have poached Huffman's recipe straight from his research and mass produced it in China for distribution around the world. In the years since Huffman's compound was discovered in Spice, over 500 new synthetic drugs have been identified as clandestine chemists have continued to poach formulas from scientific and patent literature and tweaked their recipes to stay out of drug scheduling.
Sam Bannister is a medicinal chemist with a group called the Psychoactive Surveillance Consortium and Analysis Network. Bannister says these products have become so profitable that prohibition alone won't stem the flow of new synthetic drugs.
SAM BANNISTER: I think it's just truly ruthless profiteering, and I think that's really what drives it. There's no concern for the people who are actually using these drugs.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: So Bannister and his colleagues have taken a kind of radical approach to the problem.
BANNISTER: We're building a library of the drugs that will probably emerge on the streets in the next few years.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: So you're, like, searching for the street drugs of the future.
BANNISTER: Yeah, yeah, I think that's probably exactly it.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: So when a new potent strain hits the streets, the library can help authorities treat victims and prosecute sellers. It's been over two decades since John W. Huffman created JWH-018, but he says he still gets the occasional email from someone affected by these drugs blaming him for his invention.
HUFFMAN: You've ruined my life. You've ruined my kid's life - that kind of thing. And I feel sorry for them, but it isn't my fault.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: Scientists publish their findings, Huffman says. How could he have known his work might help jumpstart a synthetic drugs revolution? Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi, NPR News.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Since her 2006 debut, the Los Angeles-based singer, composer and multi-instrumentalist Georgia Anne Muldrow has released 17 albums, also a stack of mixtapes. She's collaborated with Madlib, Erykah Badu and Blood Orange, among others. Still, Muldrow remains mostly unknown outside LA's thriving progressive music underground. Reviewer Tom Moon says that should change as word spreads about her latest, which is called "Overload."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "VITAL TRANSFORMATION")
GEORGIA ANNE MULDROW: (Singing) Transforming, changing higher, spiraling higher. We're all meant to be transforming, changing higher, spiraling higher, changing.
TOM MOON, BYLINE: Georgia Anne Muldrow's champions talk about her as an artist whose musical instincts are matched by brazen, free-range curiosity. Georgia Anne Muldrow's discography includes plush R&B jams and records that conjure the unruly spirit of free jazz and hip-hop riddled with apocalyptic overtones. Her new album distills a decade's worth of those experiments into a unified sound.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "VITAL TRANSFORMATION")
MULDROW: (Singing) It ain't hard to tell this world is crazy now, crazier than it's ever been. People feel uncozy with the Internet, don't even have no real friends.
MOON: With "Overload," Muldrow smooths out some of the jagged intensity of her previous works, making room for sweet, ingratiating, airborne melodies like this.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BLAM")
MULDROW: (Singing) I put my faith in you 'cause no one can do the things that you do for me. In overload, in overdrive, I'm overwhelmed in world inside. I built this lifetime dressed up in you. Baby, please believe me. You know, you got it easy.
MOON: Muldrow's original songs look forward and backward at once. They reflect her upbringing. Both of her parents were involved in jazz as recording artists and performers and her mother leads a 200-member choir in Los Angeles. Throughout "Overload," Muldrow evokes the positive vibrations that swirled around jazz in the late 1960s. Her verses celebrate devotion, gratitude, the importance of taking care of family. On this lament, she wonders whether compassion can change the cycle of violence in African-American communities.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BLAM")
MULDROW: (Singing) We play nice while they're stacking up kills. How much we gotta grow before we can learn how to defend ourselves? How much we gotta know that we can't depend on no one else. We don't even know no more.
MOON: There have been scattered flashes of musical brilliance on everything Georgia Anne Muldrow has released. This album is more consistently joyful, even accessible. With these songs, Muldrow taps the progressive spirit of an earlier time and uses it to confront the challenges of our coarse, profoundly overloaded present moment.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BOBBIE'S DITTIE")
MULDROW: (Singing) The melody you sing to me, simple and sweet.
KELLY: The latest from Georgia Anne Muldrow is called "Overload." Our reviewer is Tom Moon.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BOBBIE'S DITTIE")
MULDROW: (Singing) Yeah, yeah.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
And we begin this hour talking numbers.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Let's start with 420,000. That would be the rough estimate of the number of federal employees currently working without pay because the government has deemed them essential.
CORNISH: Three hundred eighty thousand - about that many federal workers are furloughed, which means they're not working, and they're not getting paid.
KELLY: Two - that's the number of times the president has met with party leaders in the White House Situation Room in the last 72 hours.
CORNISH: Sixteen - that's the number of days the 2013 government shutdown lasted. Democrats and Republicans were fighting over the Affordable Care Act and raising the debt ceiling.
KELLY: Twenty-four billion - dollars, that is - that's a Standard & Poor's analysis of how much that 16-day shutdown cost the government.
CORNISH: If the current government shutdown lasts until Monday, it will be the second longest in history.
KELLY: We are going to turn to someone now who played a key role in that 2013 government shutdown. Michael Steel was press secretary for then-Speaker of the House John Boehner. So he had a front-row seat for that standoff. Michael Steel, welcome to the program.
MICHAEL STEEL: Good to be with you.
KELLY: Before we get to 2013 and what happened then, your thoughts on how this one is playing out? Trump is now saying it could last months or even years. What's your reaction?
STEEL: President Trump is a president unlike any other, and this is a shutdown unlike any other. Most government shutdowns result from Congress, which under our Constitution has the power of the purse, trying to force the president to do something. This is exactly the opposite. This is the president shutting down the government essentially trying to force Congress to do something. It's kind of a "Blazing Saddles" approach, taking himself hostage.
KELLY: You said a shutdown unlike any other, but are there lessons we could learn? How did you all find a way out of it in the end in 2013?
STEEL: Well, the 2013 shutdown was ultimately a mismatch between priorities and tactics. People believed that - people opposed the Affordable Care Act at that time. It was not popular by any stretch of the imagination. At the same time, shutting down the government in an attempt to defund it was also not very popular.
And what we ultimately did was weather the political attacks from Senate Democrats, from President Obama until Republicans in moderate seats in the House were willing to join with Democrats to reopen the government and provide funding for the Affordable Care Act.
This is a very different situation in the sense that it's hard to see any coalition coming together in either house, really, that would be able to pass a bill that included funding the government and this additional $5 billion that the president is demanding for his wall along the border.
KELLY: One other thing that seems really different is the lack of urgency that we seem to be seeing now versus in 2013, where, I mean, now we are two weeks in and there really hadn't been any real talks until the last few days.
STEEL: No. It's really strikingly different in two ways from that point of view. The first is that the usual rule of a government shutdown is the way you win a government shutdown fight is by making the public - convincing the public that you don't want to shut down the government. You have to show people that you have gone to every extent possible to avoid shutting down the government, and President Trump went exactly the opposite direction on that. He says that he is responsible for the shutdown. He wears it proudly. He's just - he's accepting responsibility or blame in a way that hasn't been typical.
And the second way is, yeah, as you said, part of it is due to the fact that only a portion of the federal government is shut down. It's not a complete federal government shutdown, so critical areas including the Department of Defense are fully funded. But it is really striking the degree to which there's not a sense of urgency, there's not a sense of emergency. There's not that same sense of crisis that we've seen in past shutdowns.
KELLY: You have a lot of experience working with Republicans on the Hill, so I want to ask you about one of the most, perhaps the most prominent Republican on the Hill this time around, Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, who now is dealing with two Republican senators who have broken ranks and are urging a compromise. Is Senator McConnell arguably now under more pressure than anybody to end this?
STEEL: No. Senator McConnell is actually kind of in the catbird seat. He has, the way he usually does, drawn a scenario where he doesn't think that the Senate should lead on this. There will be no more test votes, no more show votes. Nothing will happen until we have a proposal negotiated between House Democrats, agreed to by Senate Democrats - who have to provide at least ten votes in the Senate in order to get anything done or almost 10 votes in order to get anything done - and President Trump himself.
And, well, that position allows senators up for - Republican senators up for re-election and potentially swing states like Colorado and Maine to favor opening the government, it allows most Senate Republicans who, look, want better border security. They think that an additional $5 billion is probably a pretty reasonable sum. They understand that a physical barrier in some portions of the border makes a lot of sense. But they understand that politically shutting down the government to accomplish that goal is not popular and also unlikely to succeed.
KELLY: That's Michael Steel. He was press secretary for Speaker of the House John Boehner. He's now with Hamilton Place Strategies. Michael Steel, thank you.
STEEL: Thank you.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
All week, we've been hearing from people whose lives have been upended by the partial government shutdown. For Alex Reed, an IT technician in South Carolina, the shutdown is standing in the way of his dream opportunity - an internship at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.
ALEX REED: The internship was actually for research and development of electronic propulsion systems. It was going to be, like, a steppingstone for my career because what I've always wanted to do was be in research and development. And having this opportunity presented to me, I felt like a kid on Christmas morning when he gets his first bicycle. I didn't think it was possible that at my age - that I'd get offered an internship, especially for exactly what I wanted to do.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Alex Reed - his age is 37. The internship was supposed to start this coming Monday, but it is now on hold. Reed had already quit his job, but he says he's picking up some hours of work while he waits. He is hoping to hear good news from NASA soon. But so far, communication has been minimal.
REED: The way that they've worded the emails is that we'll get an email the day after the government opens up. I don't know how much time it's going to give us to report for orientation. I'm hoping it's more than 48 hours, but I have no idea because we don't have any information because they don't have any information.
CORNISH: Reed says he's not someone who follows politics. He had tuned out all the partisan fighting in Washington until now.
REED: You go from not caring, not paying attention, letting agendas be agendas and you just mind your own business and take care of yourself to now you have to try and figure out what's going on, if something's going to change, when it's going to change because now it affects you. It's frustrating, and it creates a lot of stress and anxiety.
KELLY: That's Alex Reed of South Carolina looking forward to the end of the partial shutdown so he can start his NASA internship in Cleveland.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Democrats took control of the House of Representatives this week, and they're already changing the rules. Every new Congress, the majority rewrites the rules that govern the chamber, and this time those rules affect everything from raising the debt ceiling to combating climate change. NPR congressional correspondent Susan Davis is tracking all of the changes. Welcome to the studio.
SUSAN DAVIS, BYLINE: Hey, Audie.
CORNISH: So what are the most significant changes that Democrats are making here?
DAVIS: Two things that Democrats are doing aimed at essentially eliminating two of the major confrontations we saw under the Republican majority - the first is they made it a lot easier to raise the debt ceiling, the nation's borrowing limit. We've seen this fiscal confrontation come up multiple times in recent years. Essentially what House Democrats are saying now is if they just pass a budget, it makes the debt ceiling raise through the fiscal year. It takes away the need to have a separate vote on the House floor to do that.
The other thing they did is they changed the rules to make it harder to question the speaker's grip on power in office, something that threatened John Boehner's speakership, that ultimately forced him out. They changed the rules to say one member can no longer bring that to a question on the floor. You would now need a majority of an entire party ready to throw out the speaker to make it happen. That has the essential effect of neutralizing those two issues in the next Congress.
CORNISH: In the area of climate change, what kind of rule can they make that'll indicate that's a priority?
DAVIS: One thing that's changing legislatively is that Democrats are much more interested in making climate change a driving agenda issue of this Congress. One thing they did in this rules package is they've created a new committee that is tasked exclusively with looking at ways to combat climate change. There's been some grumbling within the party among progressives, notably Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New Democrat from New York, saying the committee doesn't have enough teeth; it won't have subpoena power; it can't bring bills to the floor. But it is tasked with coming up with legislation that Democratic leaders say will get a vote in the next Congress.
CORNISH: I understand there are also stricter ethics rules. What are some of the changes there?
DAVIS: So they are making it an annual requirement for all lawmakers to take ethics training now. Now, it used to be when you were newly elected, you were one and done. Now they say you have to do it every single year, including senior staff. They have also added something that you might have thought was already banned, but it is not. Lawmakers are no longer allowed to sit on corporate boards. Lawmakers had been allowed to do that previously as long as they didn't take any compensation. It's a little bit of a nod to the fact that there is a sitting congressman, Chris Collins from New York, who is under indictment right now for committing securities fraud as he sat on the board of a pharmaceutical company.
It speaks to the fact that Democrats, I think, are trying to make good government, anti-corruption, campaign finance the main symbolic driving issue of this Congress. They've designated H.R. 1, the first bill of the Congress, to addressing all of those issues. And the rules package is a reflection of that. It kind of reflects the priority of where they want the next two years to go.
DAVIS: A little less serious - the dress code. What's going on there?
CORNISH: Yeah, so Ilhan Omar is one of the women that won in the blue wave of 2018. She is one of two Muslim women who - first ever elected to Congress. She also wears a hijab, the head covering traditional in the faith. And House rules had never really accounted for this before. This isn't something that they've had to confront.
Currently the House rules say you can't wear a hat on the House floor. That's come up occasionally when members want to wear a baseball cap or something else, but they hadn't been confronted with the issue of religious freedom. So they have made sure that the House accommodates for the fact that religious headwear can now be wore on the floor of the House of Representatives.
CORNISH: That's NPR's congressional correspondent Susan Davis. Thank you for the update.
DAVIS: You're very welcome. Thank you.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Lots of people have a passport. Some people have two. But four? That is how many Paul Whelan has. He's the American now in a Moscow prison accused of spying. Russia claims that he was caught receiving classified information in a Moscow hotel. Former CIA officers suspect this is a setup by Russian intelligence. NPR national security correspondent Greg Myre looks at how the curious case of Paul Whelan is unfolding.
GREG MYRE, BYLINE: According to a Russian news agency, Paul Whelan met a Russian citizen a week ago at the storied Metropol Hotel right near the Kremlin. The Russian reportedly gave Whelan a flash drive listing all the employees of a Russian security agency. Moments later, Russian authorities arrested Whelan.
This account by the Rosbalt news agency has not been reported elsewhere. And former CIA officer Dan Hoffman says the story doesn't add up.
DAN HOFFMAN: The Metropol Hotel is a swanky hotel overlooking the Kremlin, not exactly the first place you'd pick to run a clandestine operation.
MYRE: Hoffman served as the CIA's Moscow station chief before he retired. He says the Russians have a long history of planting false evidence.
HOFFMAN: This has all the hallmarks of a Russian KGB-style setup.
MYRE: One such precedent was in 1986, when American journalist Nicholas Daniloff was seized in Moscow. Here's what he told NPR this week.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
NICHOLAS DANILOFF: They arrested me after I had been given some material by a person that I thought was a friend and a source that's a Russian. And I was carrying this package with me when they arrested me. It was something that they had clearly planned.
MYRE: Daniloff was picked up just days after the U.S. arrested a Soviet official in New York and accused him of espionage. After several weeks of intense negotiations, Daniloff was released, and so was the Soviet official.
Paul Whelan's family says he first traveled to Russia in 2006. At the time, he was serving as a U.S. Marine in Iraq. He was authorized to take the trip for his vacation. Whelan, now 48, has been back to Russia several times since. Here's his twin brother, David Whelan, speaking to NPR this week.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
DAVID WHELAN: I know that he's traveled there for personal interests, for visiting friends that he's met on social media. And he travels widely. I mean, Russia is just one of many places that he has traveled to over the last 20 or 30 years.
MYRE: Paul Whelan was born in Canada, became a U.S. citizen and also holds passports from Britain, where his parents were born, and Ireland, where his grandparents were born. David Whelan insists that his brother, who works for an auto parts company near Detroit, is not a spy.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
WHELAN: There's no chance that the Russians are making an accurate accusation.
MYRE: Whelan has a Russian lawyer who's already raised the possibility of a trade for a Russian jailed in the U.S. That's an apparent reference to Maria Butina. She pleaded guilty last month to working as a Russian government agent in the U.S. She's also agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department, which could embarrass Russian President Vladimir Putin. Again, Nicholas Daniloff.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
DANILOFF: Obviously the Russians want to get her back as soon as possible. One of their tried-and-true methods is to arrest an American in Moscow, essentially turn that person into a hostage and then try to negotiate a one-on-one exchange.
MYRE: Dan Hoffman, the former CIA officer, says Whelan's visits to Russia put him on the radar of the Federal Security Service, or the FSB.
HOFFMAN: There's no doubt that he came to the attention of the FSB years and years and years ago. And I'm sure that they tracked him very closely and kind of put his case on the shelf and decided to take it off the shelf and use it when it was an appropriate time to suit their tactical advantage.
MYRE: Two figures who could resolve this case, Presidents Trump and Putin, have not yet commented. Greg Myre, NPR News, Washington.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The NFL playoffs start tomorrow, and this week is traditionally when head coaches on bad teams get fired. And true to form, six head coaches lost their jobs this week.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
What is different this year is that four of those coaches were people of color. The Rooney Rule was adopted in 2003 to add racial diversity to head coaches in the league, and for a minute there, the rule looked to be working.
CORNISH: At the start of the season, the league had its highest-ever number of non-white coaches. Jason Reid wrote about this for ESPN's The Undefeated, and I asked him earlier if some of these recently fired coaches will get rehired by other teams anytime soon.
JASON REID: Well, it's possible. Coaches often get what's called recycled, for lack of a better way to put it, that owners will look at coaches who have been in previous jobs elsewhere throughout the league, and they'll make their own determination on whether or not they think those people should get another opportunity. So coaches often do get other jobs once they lose a job. Now, for African-American coaches, the feeling is that they are not really looked at the same way all the time as all of their colleagues.
CORNISH: What makes people say? Is that based on the length of season they get? What happens?
REID: Well, the Rooney Rule has been in place since 2003 for coaches. It was expanded to 2009 to include general manager and front office-equivalent positions. So the feeling among black assistant coaches in the league is that, OK, this has been around for this long, yet you look at the overall landscape. When you have 32 jobs, and coaches of color have never filled more than eight of those, there is a feeling among that group that more still needs to be done.
CORNISH: So let's help people understand, though, what the Rooney Rule was supposed to accomplish because I'm under the impression that all it says is that you have to bring in potential candidates, not that you have to hire them.
REID: Right. That's correct. But there is a misconception within the public that the Rooney Rule is about affirmative action or a quota system. No, all it says is that team owners should have an open mind going into the hiring process. And during the hiring process, interview a candidate of color. Not that they have to pick that person. Just be open-minded and talk to that person. And so what the league is hoping that happens is that if the interview process is opened up to more people that the best candidate will emerge. And at times, the best candidate will be a coach of color.
CORNISH: What's the NFL saying, though, about this most recent development? Essentially, it looks like the Rooney Rule isn't working - right? - if you just go by the numbers.
REID: The league is not currently saying anything about the African-American coaches who were fired this season. I think what the league is hoping is that as this hiring cycle plays out and is completed that there will be more coaches of color who wind up with head coaching positions. And that would be a much stronger platform from which the league could then comment on the situation. So they're looking at the situation, saying, OK, let's wait and see what happens before we have to weigh in on something that's clearly negative at this point.
CORNISH: We're looking at a league that 70 percent of the players are black, then you have three-quarters of starting quarterbacks that are white - obviously, a majority of coaches, general managers. Is it still the sense that the NFL has a problem with minorities in leadership positions in general?
REID: Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the NFL, addressed this last year. He acknowledged that, with regard to NFL head coaches, that the league needs to have more coaches of color in the pipeline on offense because owners now overwhelmingly, in terms of the hiring process, are selecting from that pool of candidates because of scoring, the fact that scoring touchdowns and doing those sorts of things to generate points, that's exciting to fans, and it drives TV ratings. So owners are picking from that side of the ball, yet Eric Bieniemy of the Kansas City Chiefs, entering the year, he was the only offensive coordinator of color in the league. So as you look at the situation, yes, the league acknowledges that more needs to be done, but it's, how does that happen?
CORNISH: Jason Reid of ESPN's The Undefeated. Thanks for your reporting on this.
REID: Thank you.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
And we're going to take a moment now to examine the NRA's efforts to go global. The American lobby group, first chartered in the state of New York in 1871, is today forging ties in Brazil, in Australia, in Russia. Polly Mosendz writes about this for Bloomberg in an article titled "NRA Goes International In Its Mission To Defend Guns." Polly Mosendz, welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
POLLY MOSENDZ: Thank you for having me.
KELLY: So walk us through some of your reporting. Take Brazil, where a new president, Jair Bolsonaro, has just taken office having made gun rights a big part of his campaign platform. Did he specifically embrace the NRA?
MOSENDZ: I think Bolsonaro was a great example of the internationalization of the National Rifle Association because Bolsonaro and his son in fact, who was part of his campaign, have really made an effort to make gun rights a tangible concept in Brazil, a country that does not have a Second Amendment the way that the U.S. does. So Bolsonaro said that guns are a guarantee to freedom. And this week, President Bolsonaro actually announced that Brazil will move to make it easier to purchase a firearm there. That's going to be a really big change for that country which leads the world in the rate of firearms deaths right now.
KELLY: And then let's touch briefly on Russia, where ties between the government and the NRA have been controversial, to say the least. The case of Maria Butina, the Russian national who cozied up to NRA leaders and who now admits that she was trying to influence Americans on behalf of the Kremlin, has made huge headlines here. Has the whole Butina episode harmed NRA outreach in Russia?
MOSENDZ: I think the Butina episode has brought a lot of attention to what that outreach looks like. And for a lot of people, that can be considered harmful because it's something that was really sort of happening under the radar before. And now that there's so much focus on this, now that she has plead guilty, people are really scrutinizing what the NRA's relationship looks like with Russian every different way - what it looks like at conferences, what it looks like with business dealings, what it looks like with Butina herself as well.
KELLY: Right, a lot of questions being raised here in the States about what the NRA knew and when about Russian efforts to influence U.S. politics. It's interesting because the NRA presents itself as all-American. It is the National Rifle Association, and the National refers to the nation of the United States. But can anyone anywhere in the world join the NRA?
MOSENDZ: So within reason, anyone can attempt to join the NRA. But donations are a little bit trickier.
KELLY: Ah, so you can join, but giving money to the NRA is tricky. Go on.
MOSENDZ: Exactly, specifically typically for political purposes. So if you're trying to influence an election from abroad as an NRA member, that's not allowed. But if you just want to join and receive their reading material, that is a much easier thing to do. And what we found out earlier this year because of a Senate inquiry is that there were in fact Russian nationals with Russian addresses that did have memberships to the NRA.
KELLY: The NRA, of course, advocates for the rights of gun owners. To what extent are the interests of gun manufacturers also a factor in this trend?
MOSENDZ: I think the interests of gun manufacturers are very notable to the NRA because that is an extension of gun ownership. No one will have a gun unless these companies are producing these firearms. And one thing to really keep in mind here is that about a third of the American gun market is not actually all-American. It's imports.
KELLY: And are there any numbers that we can put out there to contextualize this when we talk about the NRA's rising global reach?
MOSENDZ: Absolutely. We can look at Beretta, which is Italian, which pledged $1 million to the NRA starting in 2008. You can also look at Glock, the Austrian company, which also donated a really sizable amount. And executives from those two companies were actually brought into the Golden Ring of Freedom program, which is part of the NRA that's really reserved for their megadonors. And if we look at a small but really notable donation, we should look at Brazil's Taurus. With every firearm that's purchased in the United States, they give that firearm purchaser an NRA membership. So in 2017, there were 760,000 Taurus guns bought in America. That's 760,000 Taurus-purchased NRA memberships.
KELLY: Have you reached out to the NRA for comment on their global ambitions?
MOSENDZ: We always do. We have not heard back.
KELLY: Polly Mosendz, she writes for Bloomberg. Thanks very much.
MOSENDZ: Thank you.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
President Trump says his border wall is a fix for the country's broken immigration system, but the standoff to fund that wall has shuttered the very courts tasked with hearing immigration cases. Some immigrants have waited years for a court appearance. And until the partial shutdown ends, they'll keep on waiting indefinitely. Jeremy McKinney is an immigration attorney. He's also a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Welcome to the program.
JEREMY MCKINNEY: Thank you very much.
CORNISH: So how are you explaining this shutdown to your clients? Because I assume some aren't familiar with U.S. policy, may not know what's going on.
MCKINNEY: The way that we've explained it is to say that, due to the government shutdown, only detained cases are being heard. But there is a unprecedented backlog of about 800,000 cases before the immigration court. And so right now, the courts are only hearing a little more than 5 percent of cases that they could hear during this shutdown.
CORNISH: Well, let me jump in here. So is this the phone call that's like, hey, Jeremy - a panic? Or is it like - what do these call sound like?
MCKINNEY: These calls sound like, I'm supposed to get the decision on my asylum application on Thursday. Is that going to happen? And then I had to explain that this case that has been going on for two and a half years will continue to go down the road to some unspecified date. It's a really tough conversation to have when that person and her minor children really don't know what the next chapter of their lives is going to look like.
CORNISH: It's a lot of question marks, it sounds like, these conversations.
MCKINNEY: Right.
CORNISH: So you're talking about this massive backlog. What does that mean for these cases right now? I mean, do they go to the back of the line? What happens here?
MCKINNEY: We're not exactly sure because we don't even know yet the exact number of hearings that have been canceled. We're waiting to hear about that. But, for example, in Charlotte, N.C., that court is 100 percent non-detained, and therefore, it is completely shut down. Hundreds of hearings have already been canceled, to be rescheduled once the government reopens. I imagine that most of them will be moved to 2020 because the 2019 docket is already full.
CORNISH: How does this affect your clients' daily lives in terms of their ability to plan for work or does it benefit them in some cases?
MCKINNEY: There is a resolution that is desired on both sides. The government, in many cases, has an interest in quick deportations. That's certainly what this administration has stated in the past. And my clients seek resolution of their case, and now that resolution is going to be prolonged by a year, in some cases, two years. In other courts, it could be even longer.
CORNISH: What's it like for you personally to hear this discussion coming out of Washington, knowing that, essentially, the standoff is about immigration, is about border security?
MCKINNEY: From what I hear, both political parties and virtually every major politician in Washington is in favor of border security. It's all about, what are we going to call it, right? I believe Senator Graham referred to the wall the other day as a metaphor. So we're really shutting down over 90 percent of pending immigration cases over a metaphor. It offends me personally. The situation was already dire, and now this shutdown is just making it all the worse.
CORNISH: Jeremy McKinney is an immigration attorney in North Carolina. He's a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Thank you for speaking with us.
MCKINNEY: Thank you.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
There's rent-to-own furniture, where you make a monthly payment towards a new couch or dining set. There are also rent-to-own houses. This is an option for homebuyers who don't qualify for a mortgage or can't afford one. Consumer advocates say these deals come with lots of risks, as Ben Paviour of member station WCVE in Richmond, Va., reports.
BEN PAVIOUR, BYLINE: Dawn Devine was sick of sleeping on couches. She had a little savings and wanted to retire in her own house. So a couple years ago, she and her dog, Chimney, moved into a little place in Petersburg, Va.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOG BARKING)
DAWN DEVINE: No barking. Hey - no.
PAVIOUR: When she moved in, she found lots of surprises - holes in the walls, gaps in the floorboards and leaks in the roof.
DEVINE: That part of the ceiling, if you push on it, it's like a waterbed.
PAVIOUR: And then there was the neighborhood.
DEVINE: You'll hear dogs start going off. And then, all of a sudden, you hear pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. It's a lot too. It's not just, like, a gunshot or two.
PAVIOUR: Devine thought a rent-to-own-home would be a good deal. It seemed simple - make a payment every month, and after 10 years, she'd own a home. But she didn't realize she was responsible for repairs. And unlike a traditional mortgage, if she misses just one payment, she can be evicted and lose all of her investment. Sarah Mancini of the National Consumer Law Center has seen this happen again and again.
SARAH MANCINI: You've been investing all of this time and money and hours of your labor to make this home habitable. And there's nothing that protects you from losing it in the blink of an eye.
PAVIOUR: Rent-to-own homes are officially known as land contracts or contracts for deed. And they've been around since at least the 1940s. It's hard to know how widespread they are now because most states don't track them. But legal aid attorneys say rent-to-own deals became more common after the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, when millions of Americans lost their homes.
The most rundown of these homes were sold in bulk to investors. They were clustered in struggling neighborhoods in places like Toledo, Ohio, and Birmingham, Ala. Rather than fix the places, many investors offered them up as rent-to-own. That includes Zack Broaddus, who sold Devine her home. Here he is talking to the "Investor Army" podcast in 2017 about a contract he'd signed in Alabama.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ZACK BROADDUS: That's good for me because I don't have to worry about it. I don't have to worry about fixing up the house. I don't have to worry about what's going in - on in Alabama. All I have to worry about is if that check shows up in my bank account each month.
PAVIOUR: Broaddus didn't respond to requests for comment. His business partner, Zach Weatherspoon, said they'd given Devine a shot at owning a home when no one else would. Consumer advocates like Mancini say it's rare these deals have a happy ending. They say these contracts have contributed to evictions in places like Detroit, where they're especially common.
That's all the more reason to do your homework, says Jeffery Watson, an attorney with the National Real Estate Investors Association. He says these contracts can work out well if sellers follow the law and buyers do their research.
JEFFERY WATSON: This is an important purchase. You're not buying a pack of bubble gum. You're not even buying a car. You're buying something that you and maybe your family's going to be residing in for years.
PAVIOUR: In the last couple years, these deals have come under scrutiny from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and drawn lawsuits from the attorney generals of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Several states are also considering new regulations, including where Dawn Devine lives in Virginia. Devine's still trying to settle into her house. It needs a lot of work, and her disabilities make repairs hard.
DEVINE: It's creating a lot of stress living here and a lot of pain, unnecessary pain.
PAVIOUR: Still, she's determined to fix the place up, beat the odds and finally own a home of her own. For NPR News, I'm Ben Paviour in Richmond, Va.
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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Something remarkable happened last night in women's college basketball. The University of Connecticut lost.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: For the first time, Kim Mulkey's got a win against number one. A signature upset in Waco, Texas.
(CHEERING)
CORNISH: Baylor managed to do something no team had done in years during the regular season - beat the mighty UConn Huskies. The streak ended at 126 games. Connecticut Public Radio's Frankie Graziano was on campus today getting a reaction.
FRANKIE GRAZIANO, BYLINE: It was quiet at UConn's student union. Students are on winter break. But junior Rushil Thakkar was there studying for a science test.
RUSHIL THAKKAR: One of the greatest dynasties in sports. But last night, they lost their streak after 126 games, which is pretty tragic. But still regular season.
GRAZIANO: For the students that were still on campus, there wasn't a lot of concern about the basketball squad. Emily Reid is a junior who plays on the ice hockey team.
EMILY REID: It's definitely the best team in the country. So it's a really big deal, I'd say, when they lose just because it's not frequent.
BOB JOYCE: To go that long over four years without a regular season loss is extraordinary at any level.
GRAZIANO: That's Bob Joyce, the voice of the UConn women for 18 seasons. That includes a time the team went on another unbelievable run - four consecutive championships, 111 straight victories. No other team, men or women, had won that many games in a row in the history of NCAA Division I basketball.
JOYCE: It starts at practice. Their work ethic is extraordinary, and this is the result you get. And not only just this win streak, but all the national championships they've garnered over the last - the quarter-century, it's just some amazing numbers that people can throw out at you.
GRAZIANO: UConn missed 70 percent of its shots in the loss against Baylor last night. No Huskies team had done that poorly since the 1990s. Mechelle Voepel covered the game for ESPN.
MECHELLE VOEPEL: To put this together and not really have very many nights - oh, heck - over the last 25, 30 years like they did last night just speaks to how incredibly consistent that they have been. And I think that's something everybody who follows sports has to just sort of marvel at.
GRAZIANO: Voepel says there's no reason for UConn fans to panic just yet. The team will be a favorite when the NCAA tournament starts in March. Despite UConn's regular-season success, the school has gone several years without winning a national title. The team made it to the Final Four without losing a game in its last two years but lost both times in the semifinals. Back on campus, Rushil Thakkar, the science student, isn't worried that the team's dynasty is over, not with Geno Auriemma as head coach.
THAKKAR: I guess it's just a credit to Geno to say that two losses in two years is something for concern for UConn women's when, you know, there's other teams out there that have lost much more than that.
GRAZIANO: The UConn Huskies get a chance to start another streak Sunday. That's when they play the University of Houston. For NPR News, I'm Frankie Graziano in Hartford, Conn.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
It is Friday, and we tend to dress down on Fridays here in the NPR newsroom. So I will disclose that I am at work today wearing jeans, which I mention because it is directly relevant to our next story. As we were scouring the fashion columns to see what trends the fashion gods may have in store for us in 2019, we came across a flurry of reports that this year is going to be all about boot cut. Well, Sarah Spellings writes about fashion for The Cut at New York magazine. And she is here to give us the lowdown - or the low-rise as the case may be. Hey, Sarah.
SARAH SPELLINGS: Hi, Mary Louise.
KELLY: So there are actually a couple of denim developments that I want to get to with you. But start with word that these skinny jeans I am sitting here wearing are about to become a fashion faux pas - if they are not already - because this year is going to be all about boot cut.
SPELLINGS: I don't think they're going to be a fashion faux pas. But I think if you wanted to be on the real cutting edge, you might want to swap for a lower rise...
KELLY: OK, persuade me (laughter).
SPELLINGS: ...Kind of bootcut-y (ph) jean.
KELLY: And they last were seen in high fashion when?
SPELLINGS: In kind of 2000 to 2005. But low-rise jeans have been around since 1993 when Alexander McQueen first showed a pair of jeans that had a three-inch rise.
KELLY: Three-inch rise, which not to get too detailed a picture in people's minds, but basically you're showing off quite a lot of real estate of your rear-end in a three-inch rise jean.
SPELLINGS: Yes, you are.
KELLY: Why? I mean, does anyone actually look good in super low-rise jeans?
SPELLINGS: I think super low-rise jeans are a different story. But low-rise are pretty versatile across the board. I'm not a huge fan of low-rise jeans. But when I was working on a piece I did about low-rise jeans, I spoke to one designer who shows them a lot. And he says that he just doesn't buy it that people are comfortable wearing high-waisted jeans and having a non-stretch piece of fabric across their midsection, which is a pretty compelling point to me because often I'm sitting in my high-waisted, wide-leg, cropped pants that are really stylish right now and thinking, man, these are not comfortable at all.
KELLY: These are killing me.
(LAUGHTER)
SPELLINGS: But a lot designers right now want to go for something that feels new and fresh and will get attention. And one of the ways to do that is to bring back things that have fallen out of fashion. That will get a reaction. And as we've seen, it's a pretty good way. People hate it when people do stuff to jeans is what I've realized.
KELLY: Right, because you get sentimentally attached to your jeans, and you don't want them to grow out of style once you finally get a pair that you love.
SPELLINGS: Yeah. And the real lesson is to never throw out a pair of jeans that you love and to just keep them. You know, my mom still has a pair of 501 Levi's...
KELLY: As do I.
SPELLINGS: ...Back from the '80s.
KELLY: I'm right there with your mom, right.
SPELLINGS: And they're so stylish now. Like I want a pair of 501s.
KELLY: Any trends that we should hope just never, never to see reemerge in denim - acid wash, for example. That's not coming back, is it?
SPELLINGS: Oh, I think the acid wash might be making a comeback.
KELLY: Oh, no.
SPELLINGS: I saw a pair of jeans recently that were acid wash and then tie-dyed over them, which were pretty interesting. But last spring, we were seeing jeans that were clear, jeans that had detachable pant legs, that were held up by a kind of garter-looking things, jeans that had zippers going all the way up the legs rendering them useless. You know, there's a lot of ugly jeans trends that have come around in the past year that I think I would like to not see again.
KELLY: Jeans aside, what's the biggest trend for 2019 - or the craziest trend for 2019?
SPELLINGS: I think we're going to see a lot of tie-dye, which is a pretty normal trend but it's one that I like because it's for men and women, and it's something you can do at home.
KELLY: This is beyond T-shirts? What else would be tie-dyed?
SPELLINGS: Yeah, you can tie-dye pants. You can tie-dye jeans. At Eckhaus Latta, they showed a tie-dye that looked kind of like a cow print, which was very cool. It's a fun trend. I think it's really going to be something very colorful that we're going to be seeing a lot.
KELLY: That's Sarah Spellings. She writes about fashion for The Cut at New York magazine, getting us ready there for all the trends in 2019. Thanks, Sarah.
SPELLINGS: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF DJANGO REINHARDT'S "BRAZIL")
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Dom Flemons has built a career on exploring the lesser-known corners of American music. A founder of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, he released his second solo album, "Black Cowboys," this year and now has been nominated for a Grammy in the Best Folk Album category. Ryan Heinsius from member station KNAU in Flagstaff, Ariz., spoke with Flemons about the album.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "KNOX COUNTRY STOMP")
RYAN HEINSIUS, BYLINE: Dom Flemons' newest album is a collection of seldom-heard stories about the roles played by African-Americans in settling the West after the Civil War. Flemons wanted to return to his Western roots. The inspiration came on a road trip back home, where the fifth-generation Arizonan became enamored with an obscure collection of stories.
DOM FLEMONS: I came across a book called "The Negro Cowboys" that talked about how about 1 in 4 cowboys who helped settle the West were African-American cowboys, and being an African-American person that's half African-American, half Mexican-American from the Southwest, I just found that to be a fascinating story.
HEINSIUS: Many songs on "Black Cowboys" will be new to most listeners, but a handful are instantly recognizable. Flemons, however, presents a new image of the American cowboy, one that isn't exclusively white.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HOME ON THE RANGE")
FLEMONS: (Singing) Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam, where the deer and the antelope play.
You have people coming from slavery and emancipation, and then through their hard work and perseverance, in spite of the obstacles they had, they were able to create a new social order that still influences us to this day.
HEINSIUS: The former slaves-turned-settlers Flemons sings about were able to transcend segregation in the western states. One was Bass Reeves, the first African-American deputy U.S. marshal in the West and likely the towering inspiration for "The Lone Ranger."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HE'S A LONE RANGER")
FLEMONS: (Singing) There was a man way out West, rode around this country with the snow (ph) on his breast, every white man and the Indian tribe, he was the baddest man that ever was alive. Now he's a...
HEINSIUS: Working on the album "Black Cowboys" over the course of two years became a deeply personal pursuit for Flemons. His African-American grandfather was a saw mill worker, preacher and World War II Army veteran from East Texas.
FLEMONS: I was able to see in these cowboy stories a lot of my family's history and my grandpa's history even though I had never really talked to him about it. So I found that there was just a really big piece of the history of African-American culture out West.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "STEEL PONY BLUES")
FLEMONS: (Singing) Getting far too old to follow this here herd. Good lord, I caught the first thing smoking down the road somewhere, caught the first thing smoking down the road somewhere. Now, I caught a steel pony, and boys, I'm going to ride.
HEINSIUS: Another song, "Steel Pony Blues," chronicles Nat Love, who was born into slavery, worked on an Arizona ranch and then became a railroad porter. That legacy, as Flemons says, would eventually influence the early leaders of the civil rights movement.
FLEMONS: When you think about people like A. Philip Randolph, who started the first all-black working union for Pullman Porters, he was one of the people that helped change the course of African-American history by mentoring people like Martin Luther King Jr.
HEINSIUS: If Flemons wins, this would be his second Grammy. The award ceremony is February 10. For NPR News, I'm Ryan Heinsius.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We're going to talk a bit more about the partial shutdown of the federal government, which is entering its third week. We've talked earlier this hour about workers not receiving their pay. But that also means garbage piling up at national parks, taxpayers not getting questions answered from the IRS. We'll have more on that tomorrow. But the shutdown also has repercussions for businesses that federal workers use, like restaurants. This week, Colorado Public Radio's Dan Boyce checked in during what's normally the lunch rush just outside of Denver.
DAN BOYCE, BYLINE: The Denver Federal Center in the suburb of Lakewood houses 28 government agencies in 44 buildings. It's a big complex. And call around those offices right now...
(SOUNDBITE OF VOICEMAIL RECORDINGS)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: You have reached the public room at the Bureau of Land Management.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Due to the lapse in appropriation...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Due to a lapse in funding of the federal government budget, I am out of the office.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: We are prohibited from conducting work as federal employees.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: But we'll return your call upon our return to the office. Thank you, and sorry for the inconvenience.
BOYCE: Colorado has about 6,500 Department of Interior employees, 3,700 Department of Agriculture employees, 1,400 Department of Transportation workers. A lot of them are out of work and are not going out to lunch.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: You're up on one.
BOYCE: It's being felt.
NICK ANDURLAKIS: I think we've lost, you know, maybe 20 percent of our business, 25 percent of our business.
BOYCE: Nick Andurlakis runs Nick's Cafe down the street from the federal center.
ANDURLAKIS: I've had the cafe for 32 years. It's an Elvis cafe.
BOYCE: Boy, is it - walls adorned with photos and Elvis album covers. And Nick's specialty sandwich...
ANDURLAKIS: We have the Fool's Gold Sandwich. It's a peanut butter, jelly and bacon sandwich.
BOYCE: He says he normally sells a dozen of those Fool's Gold Sandwiches, give or take, every day. On this lunch day, it's pretty quiet. Andurlakis says his slower business is probably partially from a government shutdown. A lot of people are also still out for the holidays, right?
ANDURLAKIS: So it's hard to say.
BOYCE: He says everybody suffers a little with these government shutdowns. Still, he thinks they usually happen for a reason, and he supports the cause of more border security.
ANDURLAKIS: I'm the kind of guy that wants the country to be safe. I can understand where the president's coming from.
BOYCE: He calls the shutdown a little political fistfight.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: Order up.
BOYCE: Right across the street from the federal centers, it's the local Tokyo Joe's franchise. Cooks pull from plastic bins of fresh stir fry vegetables near a line of grilling chicken breasts. Manager Jolie Voss says 30 to 40 percent of her customer base comes from the federal center.
JOLIE VOSS: You kind of just get used to seeing the same faces. Bob from accounting's going to come in and get his white chicken bowl. So to not see those faces as often - you really notice.
BOYCE: Managing a franchise, she's expected to meet certain sales quotas, and her business is down thousands of dollars this week.
VOSS: We have to start sending people home earlier. Some people are losing hours. We're starting to waste more food product, which means we're spending more money on things that we're just not going to go through. And, in general, it just decreases the morale of my store.
BOYCE: Meanwhile, Washington is keeping the federal government closed, Voss says squabbling over petty affairs. For the customers who are in Tokyo Joe's, the bright side - maybe they get through the line faster. Jeda McKenney is sitting at a table outside. He's not a federal employee, and he's not paying much attention to the shutdown.
JEDA MCKENNEY: Yeah, I guess when stoplights stop working and, you know, they don't shovel my snow, I'll - you know, I'm that guy.
BOYCE: Those, of course, not federal obligations - point taken, though. None of the lunch customers I spoke with had really noticed any effects of the shutdown. But again, the businesses federal workers use - they certainly are. And while the furloughed workers are likely to get back pay, a sandwich shop is not going to get paid for a sandwich not eaten.
For NPR News, I'm Dan Boyce in Lakewood, Colo.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We've been checking in every so often with Boyan Slat. He's the CEO of The Ocean Cleanup. That's an environmental organization he founded to develop technology to clean up plastic in the ocean. Now, we spoke with Mr. Slat back in September, just after his team launched a floating device designed to clean up that Great Pacific garbage patch. You'll remember that's a small island of trash between California and Hawaii. This is what he told us then.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
BOYAN SLAT: Now the real test starts. And we're now, you know, in the next days few - and weeks will really decide whether we can prove the technology because that's really what's required to scale up and rid the oceans of plastic boy.
MARTIN: Boyan Slat is with us now via Skype. Welcome back. Thanks so much for talking to us once again.
SLAT: My pleasure. Thanks.
MARTIN: Could you just remind us of what the goal is here?
SLAT: Yes. So halfway between Hawaii in California is this area that's about twice the size of Texas, contains 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic. And we hope to clean it up, removing about half of this patch every five years. We just launched this first system really to prove the technology, and if that works well, we hope to scale.
MARTIN: So could you just describe the device itself for people who haven't had the opportunity to see it yet? It's like, what is it? It's like a boom, like a big rope or what is it?
SLAT: So the device is a 2,000-feet-long floating barrier that's in a U-shape. And underneath there is a 10-feet-deep screen that's designed to capture the plastic that's not exactly at the surface. The plastic gets drawn towards the center like a funnel. And that way we first concentrate the plastic before we take it out.
MARTIN: So we've been hearing there have been some troubles. What's been going on the past couple of weeks?
SLAT: The pulmonary results have been that, on one hand, we have been able to see that the system is indeed propelled by the wind, that it can catch and concentrate plastic. But so far, we've seen two main issues that we hope to resolve in the coming months. The plastic occasionally drifts out of the system. And just last week, we noticed that a 60-feet-long end section of the cleanup system has separated from the rest of the system. So therefore we decided to bring back the system. It's on its way to Hawaii now for both repairs and upgrades.
MARTIN: Do you have any sense of what is working as you hoped, and do you have any sense of what the problem is?
SLAT: I think we are relatively close to getting it working. We have been able to already catch and concentrate plastic with the system. It's just that it's - sometimes the plastic is also escaping again. So likely what we have to do is we have to speed up the system so that it constantly moves faster than the plastic. And with regards to this material failure, likely we have to locally reinforce the system a bit. But I'm confident that the team will be able to design the appropriate solutions for this, and they'll have the system back in the patch in a few months from now.
MARTIN: All right. Well, we'll check back in with you then. That's Boyan Slat, founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup. Thank you so much for talking to us once again.
SLAT: My pleasure. Thank you.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We're going to start our program here in Washington, D.C., where a new Congress was sworn in even as the partial government shutdown dragged on into its third week. Earlier this week, the House of Representatives, which is now controlled by the Democrats, passed legislation to reopen the government. That legislation did not include the $5 billion the president has demanded for a border wall, so the president has insisted that he will keep the affected agencies closed until it does.
Now, while the votes were mostly along party lines, which has been a typical scenario over the last few years, several Republicans broke with Trump and voted with the Democrats to reopen the government. One of them was Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick from Pennsylvania. You might remember that we visited Congressman Fitzpatrick in his district in advance of the election. His was one of the most hard-fought races in the country, but he prevailed to win his second term.
Congressman Fitzpatrick, as we said, is a Republican, but he's highlighted his membership in the Problem Solvers Caucus. It's a bipartisan group that aims to work across the aisle. He's also the only former FBI special agent currently serving in Congress, and he's with us once again from Langhorne, Pa.
Congressman, thank you so much for joining us, and congratulations on your re-election.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: Thank you, Michel. How are you?
MARTIN: I'm very well. You know, it was a big week for you along with the other members who were sworn in, and it was a hard-fought race, as we said. And I just wanted to ask, like, what are your thoughts on returning to Washington now at a time like this, when things are tense, as they have been?
FITZPATRICK: Yeah. No, it's an honor to serve at any point that I think, especially now, Michel. Given the status of everything going on in our country, I'm very - looking very much forward to serving with our new colleagues. We have probably the most diverse Congress ever, which is a great thing. And it's an interesting scene.
You know, when you get sworn into a new Congress, particularly with as many new members as we have - we have close to 100 new members - trying to put the names to the faces and the districts and getting to know all of them. And I really look forward to getting to know all of them and working with each and every one of them on different issues.
MARTIN: Do you broadly have any advice for your colleagues about how to move forward together, since this is a theme that you stressed during your campaign?
FITZPATRICK: Absolutely. Look at everybody who may think differently than you and try to learn from them. Don't judge them. Understand that everybody thinks differently based on our life's experiences, where we grew up, what we studied, pain that we may have felt that other people haven't. Everything factors into why people approach problems and try to solve problems in a certain manner. And I think the most important thing we can do is view differences of opinion as strengths to be harnessed and not weaknesses to be criticized.
And I look forward very much to working with all my colleagues, Democrat and Republican alike. And that's, I think, the most important thing, is tone and civility and demeanor and treating everybody with respect and watching the words you use and wanting to learn from people, wanting to work with people from all parts of the country and all walks of life.
MARTIN: You were one of a handful of Republicans, as we said, that went against the party on Thursday and voted for legislation to end the government shutdown. What were some of the factors in your decision there?
FITZPATRICK: Well, I think it's the most basic job of any elected official, including a member of Congress, is to fund our government. You know, I can tell you firsthand, Michel. I lived through the government shutdown of 2013 as an FBI agent. I was a supervisor. We had to make incredibly tough decisions on designating essential versus non-essential police. Support employees that are incredibly important to the ongoing investigative process were furloughed, and it was incredibly disruptive. I thought it jeopardized our national security. And I will always vote to fund the government.
And I - you know, as important as these debates are on a lot of critical issues - and they're certainly important - government shutdowns are not the venue where we should be debating and discussing these things. I think we need to fund our agencies. We need to make sure that these people, many of whom are living paycheck to paycheck - the air traffic controllers, Customs and Border Protection, Border Patrol, Coast Guard, my colleagues at the FBI - these people have very important jobs to do, and we have to fund them, and we have to support them.
MARTIN: Just to clarify, do you take issue with the border wall itself? Because a number of your colleagues have gone so far as to call it stupid or just ineffective. Or is it you just disagree fundamentally with using this tactic to - as a negotiating tool?
FITZPATRICK: Well, No. 1, I don't like the term border wall because I think it conjures up images of a brick and mortar structure across all 800 or so miles of the southern border. I think that when we talk about securing our border, we need to defer to the experts - CBP, the Coast Guard, the Border Patrol - who will tell you that, depending on the sector of the border, depending on the terrain, different things are needed.
Many stretches require technology like infrared and heat sensors and motion detectors and infrared. Some stretches require physical barriers which slow down the - you know, the drug runners, the drug cartels, the MS-13 gang members, whoever it may be - and give the Border Patrol additional time to interdict. But it's really specific to the terrain and the sector.
But, more importantly, Michel, I don't think that any one issue like this should be the cause of a government shutdown because government shutdowns are incredibly costly. They're incredibly inefficient. It's not the way to govern. There's no reason why, and it makes zero sense that in the name of border security we should be defunding CBP, Border Patrol and the Coast Guard, who are the three entities responsible for securing our border.
MARTIN: Are you hearing from any of your former colleagues in the FBI about this?
FITZPATRICK: I have. I have. And they know that I lived through the '13 shutdown, and they are struggling right now. You know, we're coming up on periods of time where their paychecks are going to become due, and there's not going to be paychecks coming to them. And many of these public servants and law enforcement and in these federal agencies - they live paycheck to paycheck, and this is a major concern for them. You know, I saw some stories today about TSA screeners calling in sick. These are national security concerns, and they're very serious concerns.
And government shutdowns are no way to function. We need to reopen the government, and then we can have these discussions. And, again, they really ought to occur in a manner where everybody wants to come to the table and compromise and build consensus because we have a divided government right now. That's what the public voted for. And they want us to work together.
MARTIN: That's Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick. He's a Republican from Pennsylvania.
Congressman, thanks so much for joining us once again. And we do hope we'll be talking throughout the year.
FITZPATRICK: Anytime, Michel. Thank you.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Even as the government in Washington, D.C., is mostly shut down, the 2020 campaign is well underway in Iowa. Democrats there will not pick a presidential candidate in the caucuses for 13 months. But, this weekend, Elizabeth Warren, the senator from Massachusetts, is making her first trip across the state since announcing her exploratory presidential committee on New Year's Eve. NPR political correspondent Asma Khalid is in Des Moines, where Warren is appearing today.
Hi, Asma.
ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: Hey, Michel.
MARTIN: So what are the voters hearing from her?
KHALID: Well, I would say if you were to drill down Sen. Warren's campaign message to really just one central theme, it is this idea that the middle class is under attack, you know, largely because of corporate greed and corruption. She told the crowd, actually, at one stop that pretty much all of her adult career has been spent around trying to figure out this one question - that what is happening to working families in America.
You know, Michel, I think, you know, she is probably best known as a senator from New England, but what I've seen here in Iowa is that she's really getting a chance to introduce herself as she wants. And so she's been talking a lot more about her childhood in Oklahoma, how her dad had a heart attack. And she describes this as being what she thought was a personal story but years later realized it was actually a story about government because she says, you know, back when her mom got this job, minimum wage job, you could support a family of three.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ELIZABETH WARREN: You could pay a mortgage, you could keep the utilities on and you could put food on the table. Today, a minimum wage job in America full-time will not keep a mama and a baby out of poverty. And that is wrong, and it's why I'm in this fight.
(APPLAUSE)
KHALID: And, Michel, really that is kind of the crux that we've been hearing from her in Iowa. You know, she talks for about 15-20 minutes and then takes questions from the audience. She's been fairly open about taking a whole wide range of questions from people in the crowd.
MARTIN: Including from reporters.
KHALID: Including from reporters, which is rather notable because I would say she is one senator who's been rather notorious for her aversion to talking to the press as a senator.
MARTIN: Well, one of the other things that she's known for is her willingness to take on President Trump. And the two of them have had some notable scuffles, particularly on Twitter. How is she handling that on the trail?
KHALID: You're right. You know, Michel, the president, President Trump, has this history of calling Elizabeth Warren Pocahontas, right? These are over her claims of native ancestry. And so she did this DNA test that really sort of backfired on her. She was slammed by some tribal leaders for this. This morning in Sioux City was the first time I'd really directly heard this. A question was asked by a woman in the crowd to Elizabeth Warren. And this person asked, you know, why would you do this DNA test and give Donald Trump more fodder to be a bully?
And the senator reiterated the fact that she is not a person of color. She is not a citizen of any tribe. But she says she put this all out there because it's a line of attack Republicans have been using, and she feels like she just needed to address this. And then she said this, actually, though, more specifically about President Trump.
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WARREN: Now, I can't stop Donald Trump from what he's going to do. I can't stop him from hurling racial insults. I don't have any power to do that.
MARTIN: OK, Asma. And she doesn't seem to be talking to the president sort of directly that often. But was this an unusual approach for her?
KHALID: You know, I would say that in general, it was kind of an unusual approach because she doesn't really - she hasn't actually attacked the president directly since she announced her intention to run for president. You know, she's constantly - I would say consciously been distancing herself from this and really just been trying to focus on the economy and how bad things are in the economy and how they can be fixed.
MARTIN: We only have a couple of seconds left, though. I just wanted to ask you whether the Democratic voters there seem excited about what's - what is to come. She's certainly not the last candidate they'll be hearing from.
KHALID: No. I mean, there's going to be some two dozen candidates who are Democrats likely to jump in. And, Michel, I would say the constant thing I've been hearing from people is they're looking for someone who's electable, somebody who can beat Donald Trump. That is probably the most constant response.
MARTIN: All right. That's NPR's Asma Khalid on the campaign trail in Des Moines, Iowa, using that good campaign trail technology. Asma, thanks so much for joining us.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Now we're going to head into the Barbershop. That's where we invite interesting people to talk about what's in the news and what's on their minds. And today, we wanted to dig deeper into the subject of women in leadership. And we were thinking about this because the 116th Congress, which was sworn in this week - if you even glance at the coverage, you could see that it is an historic Congress. Record numbers of women were seated, including the first Muslim women, the first Native American women, the first woman who identifies as bisexual. I mean, the list goes on.
And yet, trouble signs are emerging. The Women's March has become an annual protest since 2017, but it's hit some snags. There are accusations of anti-Semitism in the national leadership, and some marches around the country have been canceled because of internal disagreements or lack of funds. So, as we said, we thought this would be a good time to talk about how women are thinking about and taking leadership heading into 2019. With us now in our Washington, D.C., studios is Karen Finney. She was spokeswoman for the Clinton 2016 presidential campaign. She's now a political contributor at CNN.
Welcome, Karen. Thanks so much for joining us once again.
KAREN FINNEY: Thanks.
MARTIN: With us from Dallas, Texas, is Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa. She was the founder of New Wave Feminists, which describes itself as a pro-life feminist organization.
Destiny, welcome back to you as well. Thanks so much for joining us.
DESTINY HERNDON-DE LA ROSA: Thank you for having me.
LINDA SARSOUR: And last, but certainly not least, organizer and activist Linda Sarsour. She is one of the national co-chairs of the Women's March on Washington.
Linda, welcome to you as well.
SARSOUR: Thank you.
MARTIN: So, Karen, let me start with you because, as we mentioned, there are a record number of women seated in the new Congress - 127 women compared with 110 in the previous Congress. Now, representation by itself is a big deal. But is there any indication that having more women is going to change the way Congress does its job?
FINNEY: Well, I certainly hope so. I mean, you know, there's a great deal of research, certainly from the corporate side, that when you have - that better decisions get made when there's more diversity around the table. And I think we've got a lot of women and diverse women. And so - and what that means is they're going to bring different perspectives to decision-making. So I think there's not a way that it can't have an impact, frankly.
And I think one of the things we're seeing that I hope - I feel like we're starting to see Nancy Pelosi and the leadership of the Democrat Party certainly trying to do this. You know, it means - when I say the decision-making table, that's really the key thing. It's got to be, let's bring in these diverse voices and faces when we're trying to make decisions on strategy of how we're going to pursue a piece of legislation or what ought to be in a piece of legislation. And certainly, I think the fact that women are - tend to be more collaborative leaders - we know that famous story from the budget impasse, where it was really the Republican and Democratic women of the Senate who kind of helped broker a deal.
So I think if you just look at the nature of women's leadership, the nature of the diverse experiences and backgrounds that these women are bringing to Congress and the opportunities that I think they will have, particularly under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi, to be part of decision-making - like I said, I don't see how we couldn't - it couldn't have a positive impact.
MARTIN: Now, Linda, I'm going to you now because I noted that you certainly support elected leadership. You attended the swearing in ceremony for Rashida Tlaib on Thursday, the new congresswoman from Michigan. She's also the first Palestinian-American congressperson, one of the first Muslim women to be elected to Congress. But I find myself kind of wondering, what do you see as your role as an activist now?
I was thinking about how the election of, say, Barack Obama as the first black president - I mean, he started as an outside activist, and then he decided to move to elected office. What do you see as your role now that these barriers to groups who haven't participated before are falling?
SARSOUR: I'm very proud of Rashida's win as the first Palestinian-American woman in Congress. And I see my role right now and as - have always seen my role as an outside activist who builds relationships with people on the inside of government. And I - this is an opportunity for us not just to be proud and celebrate the Rashida, the Alex, the Ayanna Pressleys, the Ilhan Omars, the Jahana Hayes.
It's an opportunity for us to also hold them accountable to our communities. It's not enough just to elect people of color and women of color and progressives. We need to make sure that they have a work plan and that they are - continue to align with the communities that helped get them to where they're at.
MARTIN: And, Destiny, really, it's the same question to you, is how do you see your role? I mean, I think many people may remember your story - that you founded the group New Wave Feminists, which opposes abortion rights and the death penalty. Then after the group became an official partner for the first Women's March, New Wave Feminists were removed from the list, but you still marched anyway. How do you see your role? I mean, you obviously agree with many of the march organizers on some issues. You disagree with others. How do you see your role right now?
HERNDON-DE LA ROSA: Absolutely. You know, we did march back in 2017 and 2018. We plan on marching again this year. It's always been a wonderful experience because there are so many platforms that we absolutely do agree on. You know, the focus of our group is to fight injustice and make sure that all human beings are not being humanized from the womb to the tomb. And so we plan on continuing that message into this January with the march in D.C. and really kind of calling some of the leadership with the women's march to speak out more.
You know, there has been that controversy with Louis Farrakhan, and they have said that they, you know, do not support anti-Semitism in any way. But I think we want it to go deeper than that. We want them to actually denounce Louis Farrakhan himself.
MARTIN: Well, Linda, what about that? I mean, we don't - I apologize to listeners who are not familiar with this entire controversy, but that in a nutshell is it - is that there are people who say they can no longer participate in the Women's March because they feel that you've not gone far enough to denounce Louis Farrakhan for comments that he has made that many people say are not just anti-Semitic but misogynist, anti-woman and so forth. And, you know, and as briefly as you can - I know it's complex - what do you say about that?
SARSOUR: It's actually not very complex at all. Minister Farrakhan absolutely says anti-Semitic, misogynistic and homophobic remarks. And we have unequivocally rejected all forms of racism and hate including anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, etc. What people need to understand - that is the organizers of the Women's March, those of us who are seasoned organizers - we are trained in Kingian (ph) nonviolence. And those are the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King, and one of the most important teachings is go after the forces of evil, not those doing evil. And it is very complex and complicated to denounce black - to ask a black woman to denounce a black man.
And, in fact, it's actually from those people calling themselves feminists - we have to really step back and reflect that we are being asked to respond to and to apologize for something that we did not say, and that we are being asked to respond to something that a man says. We should be held responsible for our actions and our words, and our actions have been very clear. We have built the boldest and most intersectional platform, including one that is pro-choice. And when we say pro-choice, it is not pro-abortion. It is pro the woman - a woman's right to choose whether or not she wants to keep her child or does not want to keep her child for many, many reasons, and then we all know what those reasons are.
So we are proud of the organization that we are a part of, which is a startup organization. But we've only been around for two years, and we're still building. We are also flawed leaders. We are people who are going to make mistakes, and this movement has to have room for us - restorative justice, redemption and allowing people to learn and have the hard conversations.
And one of our missions is to eradicate all forms of hate. But in order to do that, we must have courageous conversations and understanding and actually understand what is in fact anti-Semitism. And this for me has been a blessing because it has allowed us to have these relationships and these conversations with Jewish leaders across the country. And we're very proud of that work and proud of the people who have called us in instead of calling us out.
MARTIN: So, Karen, let me ask you about this. How do you see this discussion? Because I could see on the one hand a lot of people who are in traditional political organizations would see something like this as messy, right? Now, Linda's saying, look - this is actually a blessing because...
SARSOUR: Yeah.
MARTIN: ...This gives us a chance to actually have some hard conversations. I was curious - as a person who's spent much of your adult life trying to get people elected, how do you see it?
FINNEY: (Laughter) Well, look - I'm also someone who considers herself an activist on the inside because, like I say, you know, we've got to have more women at these tables. You know, I think this is an important conversation to have, but I think there's a couple of things that I think we need to do here. I think we need to separate out what is happening with the Women's March as an organization and as an event from what is happening with feminism and the women's movement in this country.
MARTIN: And what - how do you see that?
FINNEY: And the way I see that is that, as a movement, we are becoming a - intersectional with - you know, I happen to be biracial. I don't - some people would consider that intersectional. Point being (laughter), you know, there's lots of labels we can use and words we can use. But the point is, we need to - we are expanding as a movement of women in terms of how we fight for our rights, where we fight for our rights and the rights that we're fighting for. And I think, you know, that growth is important.
And if you - you know, there are a number of different groups, and we do need to have room for different types of groups who have different agendas. I think, with regard to the march itself, you know, that is a place where I think as an organization, they get to say, here's who we are. Here's our platform. Here's what we support. And people can decide if that's right for them or not.
MARTIN: Are you going?
FINNEY: I haven't decided yet, to be honest.
MARTIN: Really?
FINNEY: (Laughter) Because...
MARTIN: Because...
FINNEY: Only because it's the first weekend in January, and I have - and I'm still kind of getting back into, you know...
MARTIN: OK.
FINNEY: ...My life.
MARTIN: All right.
FINNEY: I just got back from vacation yesterday. But I think it's really important, though - there's one thing that I think is the most important. Let's not shy away from having these conversations...
MARTIN: OK.
FINNEY: ...Because...
MARTIN: Yes.
FINNEY: Too often, they get - you know, we get told we can't because, oh, that's racist, or it's this-ist (ph). And if we - you know, the greatest challenge our country has is going to be our - is our diversity and how we learn to live together.
MARTIN: OK.
FINNEY: So I think we've got to have these conversations.
MARTIN: All right. And we're - and I'm sorry we don't have more time for this one. Let's get back together in the future and keep talking about this.
That's Karen Finney, longtime political consultant, political contributor at CNN, Linda Sarsour, national co-chair of the Women's March on Washington, Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa, the founder of the group New Wave Feminists.
Thank you all so much for starting the conversation.
SARSOUR: Thank you.
HERNDON-DE LA ROSA: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF GOLD PANDA'S "MARRIAGE")
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Now to Brooklyn, N.Y., where vivid details of the infamous Sinaloa drug cartel's day-to-day operations have been coming to light in the courtroom. You might remember that Joaquin El Chapo Guzman has been on trial since November 14. He's facing 17 charges, including drug trafficking, money laundering, conspiracy to murder rivals and firearms violations to name just a few. Witnesses have been providing a look into one of the world's largest drug-trafficking organizations. The trial took a break for the Christmas and New Year's holidays but started up again this week and jumped right back in with insider testimony from a so-called cartel prince.
Alan Feuer has been covering the trial for The New York Times, where he reports on courts and criminal justice. And he's with us now. Alan Feuer, thanks so much for talking to us.
ALAN FEUER: My pleasure.
MARTIN: So just to backtrack a little bit for people who have not been following this story, how much of the operations of this kind of infamous drug cartel are coming to light in this trial?
FEUER: Everything is coming out, Michel. This is really the first time that we've seen what the American government knows about the full operations of the Sinaloa drug cartel. And this is all coming out not just through a vast amount of documents and photographs and recorded phone calls and drug ledgers, but by an incredible cast of witnesses from within the cartel, people who worked for many years with Chapo Guzman.
MARTIN: And this week, the trial resumed with what had to have been just a very explosive witness. It was Vicente Zambada Niebla. You called him a cartel prince in your report because he's the son of El Chapo's former partner in the cartel. What are some of the things that we learned from his testimony?
FEUER: I mean, we learned everything from the fact that his father, Mayo Zambada, Chapo's partner, regularly had a monthly bribery budget of $1 million - I'll say it again, that's monthly - to pay off corrupt officials in Mexico. We learned how the cartel used submarines to smuggle drugs up from Colombia to Mexico. We learned that they then crossed those drugs into the United States in everything from trains with secret compartments to tractor trailers where the drugs were stuffed in between pallets of frozen meat. He took the jury through virtually every aspect not only of the cartel's operations but even down to the level of its kind of petty politics and personal vendettas.
MARTIN: You know, one of the things I was struck by in your report was how you described Zambada as smirking at Guzman and having an air of, quote, "bravura" on the witness stand. And the reason I'm struck by that is I think many people will remember that Guzman has previously escaped prison a number of times, the fact that this cartel is known for being, I don't know how else to put it, murderous. What do you make of his - is it eagerness to testify or his confidence in testifying? I was just wondering what you make of it.
FEUER: It was a remarkable moment. He got onto the witness stand, and within seconds of sitting down, he looked over at Chapo. And he kind of raised his head, put a big smile on his face and nodded kind of in this like cocky gesture that said partly hello old friend to, you know, like, got you now. Hard to know. But to your point, yes, I mean, Chapo did escape twice from prison in Mexico, famously once in a laundry cart, once through a tunnel that his associates dug literally into the shower of his cell in prison. And so there's been a lot of concern on the part of the authorities here in New York to prevent that from happening again.
MARTIN: You've been covering courts of criminal justice for 20 years. Just as briefly as you can, how would you compare this to other trials that you've covered?
FEUER: Well, I mean, this one is more than most a really, truly immersive experience. Part of that is just the logistics involved because of the intense security and because of the number of reporters who are covering the trial. We all have to get there by 6:30 in the morning to be assured of a seat inside of the courtroom.
It's a very challenging atmosphere in which to work. I mean, there's a team of drug-sniffing dogs. There are police snipers deployed around the courthouse. And there's even - I have never seen this one before - there's a federal marshal with some sort of like radiation sensor who goes through the floor - not just the courtroom itself, but the entire floor - making sure there's no radiological devices.
MARTIN: That's remarkable. So before we let you go, what do you expect in the next days and weeks? How much longer do you expect this to go on?
FEUER: Well, it's definitely going to go for, I would guess, at least another month. And what we can expect is more sort of ghosts from El Chapo's past to appear in the courtroom and testify against him.
MARTIN: That's Alan Feuer. He covers courts and criminal justice for The New York Times. He's been covering the trial of Joaquin El Chapo Guzman. Alan, thanks so much for talking to us.
FEUER: Oh, well, it's a pleasure to be here.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Finally today, a disturbing story about an R&B superstar. For years, Robert Kelly, better known as R. Kelly, was at the top of the R&B charts. Many of his songs were raunchy, and his performances were infused with sexual overtones, but some of his other hits were so popular, so mainstream, they became a staple of graduations and church services.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) I believe I can fly. I believe I can touch the sky. I think about it...
MARTIN: But there was a side to R. Kelly that was not an act, and that is the focus of a three-part documentary that started airing this week on Lifetime. It's called "Surviving R. Kelly," and it describes in graphic detail the singer's alleged pursuit of teenaged girls over decades, with painful accounts of the physical and psychological abuse they say they experienced from him. R. Kelly was prosecuted in 2008 in connection with one such allegation involving a 14-year-old girl. He was acquitted after the alleged victim refused to testify.
And to this day, R. Kelly continues to deny allegations of such conduct. Lifetime has aired two episodes, with the third and final installments set to air tonight. And we should mention here, as the filmmakers do, that this subject matter may be very upsetting for some listeners.
Having said that, I started my conversation with executive producer Dream Hampton by asking her why she wanted to make this film. And she talked about the #MeToo movement.
DREAM HAMPTON: We've watched, like, really powerful men be taken down by really credible allegations about decades of really bad behavior. I'm talking Roger Ailes, Bill O'Reilly, obviously Harvey Weinstein.
MARTIN: But Dream Hampton says R. Kelly's name has not come up, and it should.
HAMPTON: And for those of us who are from that generation, that is remarkable that one of our most egregious offenders is just not in the conversation at all. And I thought it was important that he, you know, that we have a reckoning with who he has been and continues to be.
MARTIN: There are a number of explosive allegations in this film. And I do want to point out that the Chicago Sun-Times, for example, has very aggressively covered R. Kelly over the years. But it's your contention that most people still don't know the full picture of this person.
HAMPTON: Well, it's Jim DeRogatis who has been - and relentless and was publishing in places outside of the Sun-Times when they became disinterested. To this day, these girls are still not able to talk to their parents. And we know that they are being abused, that they are being denied food, denied movement, denied contact with their families. And that's happening right now in 2019.
MARTIN: You are referring to the fact that girls who are of age, even though they are the legal age of consent, it is alleged that they are being essentially held as captives. It's almost like a cult-like situation.
HAMPTON: Yes. And, Michel, one of the girls, Azriel Clar, who he still has to this day, was 17, which is not the legal age of consent in Florida and may be the only possible case against him in the present.
MARTIN: Now, I'm going to hold that thought for a minute and get to the allegation that he has pursued very young girls for a very long time, almost throughout his adult life. And you speak to one woman named Lisa Van Allen who says that she, from the age of 17, was basically used as - what would you say? - a sex slave of his or she was induced into sexual relationships with an under-aged girl.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "SURVIVING R. KELLY")
LISA VAN ALLEN: When I figured out that I had had sex with a 14-year-old, it made me feel betrayed because he lied to me and told me she was 16, which would have been close to my age. And it also made me question his motives. I mean, the fact that he lied about her age to me told me that he obviously knew that wasn't OK for her to be younger.
HAMPTON: That girl ended up being the girl on the tape.
MARTIN: And the tape is what, for those who don't know?
HAMPTON: It's a horrific tape. It's one that I avoided when it went kind of viral in the streets in 2000, 2001 because I knew that it was child pornography.
MARTIN: Dream Hampton says she set out to document how R. Kelly lured aspiring singers into inappropriate sexual relationships through their mutual love of music, a pattern she suggests may have begun with Aaliyah, a rising star who tragically died in a plane crash in 2001. R. Kelly married Aaliyah when she was only 15, and he was 27. The marriage was later annulled. Dream Hampton notes, though, that not all the young women were superstars in the making.
HAMPTON: While, yes, he did target aspiring singers, he also basically has a pattern of choosing regular black girls who don't look, you know, who aren't the most glamorous, who aren't coming in, like, super sexy. In fact, we have, you know, stories from Jim DeRogatis's reporting and from the girls' testimony of him as actually making them dress less sexy. And he operates - you were talking about a cult. I would say it's far closer to like a sex-trafficking ring.
So, you know, he chooses girls that a lot of his fans dismiss and disbelieve. And for all kinds of complicated and historical reasons, we don't believe. We don't necessarily believe that, you know, black girls - we don't afford them innocence in the same way we don't afford black boys innocence. And, you know, police will tell you that they thought Tamir Rice was 16 instead of 12. We do the same thing to black girls.
MARTIN: The other thing that the film does is describe the network of people who enabled the behavior. I mean, in the film, we hear how staff members used to go out and give his number to certain girls whom he had identified. And I wonder, what do you hope that people will learn from your discussion of their conduct?
HAMPTON: Well, on one hand, it's more evidence of how he, himself, has created an ecosystem. I mean, the girls talk about receiving rules. And very quickly, they understand who's in the ecosystem. But it made me think of men who are abusive, men who are guilty of statutory rape, men who prey on young girls belong to families. You know, they are our cousins, our brothers, you know. And we just have not had the conversations about what it looks like. And, quite frankly, this is a conversation that, you know, men need to be having with one another about what it looks like to hold each other accountable.
MARTIN: You know, we've been following Twitter, of course, over the last couple of days. Some people are saying it just doesn't matter. You know, there's the art and then there's the artist, and his behavior shouldn't be part of the equation. And what would you say to people who believe that?
HAMPTON: With music in particular, unlike other art forms, we connect it not to the artist necessarily but to moments in our life - you know, to our graduation, to our wedding, to our family reunion. And I get that. But what we'd like to do is deny them this ability to say that he's innocent, so that if you're going to be a supporter of him, then you're not going to be able to tell us he's innocent.
MARTIN: That was Dream Hampton, the executive producer of the Lifetime documentary "Surviving R. Kelly." Dream Hampton, thank you so much for talking with us.
HAMPTON: Thank you, Michel.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Switching gears now, one of the world's most common and stubborn tropical diseases is called schistosomiasis. The potentially fatal parasitic infection affects millions of people in poor countries with poor sanitation. But new research shows that the parasites can be killed off with a particular type of homegrown herbal tea. NPR's Jason Beaubien has this report.
JASON BEAUBIEN, BYLINE: In parts of Africa and Southeast Asia, schistosomiasis affects up to 200 million people annually. And, often, those people can be infected for years before they start feeling sick.
PAM WEATHERS: It's a disease that doesn't kill people right away, but it weakens them, makes them unable to have the energy to work or deal with life very well.
BEAUBIEN: That's Pam Weathers. She's a biologist at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. Weathers spends a lot of time studying plants. She'd been looking at how sweet wormwood can be used to kill malaria parasites, and she figured wormwood might also work against the flatworms that cause schistosomiasis.
WEATHERS: You know what? The plant's name is wormwood. It was known, over the centuries, to treat worms.
BEAUBIEN: So Weathers and her colleagues set up a study to test wormwood against the one drug that's commonly used to treat schistosomiasis - praziquantel. They recruited 800 people with schistosomiasis in an eastern province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Half were treated with the drug praziquantel and half got sweet wormwood tea.
WEATHERS: They had to drink these tea infusions daily for seven days. And then, you would see what happened to their worm infestations, which is not a pretty thing to do, because it means looking at fecal samples to see if the eggs are gone. I'm glad I wasn't in that lab (laughter).
BEAUBIEN: But it worked. Actually, both methods worked. The researchers found that the worms had been cleared from all the patients, but the group sipping the tea got rid of the parasites faster and reported fewer side effects than those taking the standard drug. Another potential upside of using wormwood against schistosomiasis is that the bushy plant is already being cultivated in many parts of Africa to produce artemisinin for malaria medications.
WEATHERS: It grows quite readily around the world.
BEAUBIEN: She imagines people growing a few of these shrubs in their gardens and then a few times a year, making tea from the leaves to cleanse themselves of the parasites. The World Health Organization's approved treatment for schistosomiasis, however, remains praziquantel. The study Weathers co-authored on this appears in the journal Phytomedicine.
Dr. Sue Montgomery, who heads the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's parasitic disease branch, says purging people of the parasites only deals with half of the schistosomiasis problem. The parasites also thrive in freshwater snails. In places where human waste contaminates local waterways, the parasite cycle between the people and the crustaceans. So treating someone with drugs or herbs doesn't do any good if they get reinfected the next day by contaminated water.
SUE MONTGOMERY: It's almost impossible to get rid of it just by treating, repeatedly. What it really requires is improvements in water and sanitation.
BEAUBIEN: Upgrading an entire community's water and waste systems, however, is a lot harder than giving a patient a pill or some tea. Jason Beaubien, NPR News.
[POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: The audio version of this story incorrectly refers to snails as crustaceans. Snails are in fact part of the mollusk family, along with slugs, clams, mussels and octopuses.]
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
And we have another story about government at work. We're talking about turnover at the top of police departments. In many major cities, it's high, but Baltimore is looking for its fourth chief in just a year. It's a tough job. The city has topped 300 homicides every year for the past four. Here's NPR's Brakkton Booker.
BRAKKTON BOOKER, BYLINE: First, a look back at how Baltimore got to this point. After years of mistrust between residents and Baltimore's cops, tensions ignited riots in 2015.
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BOOKER: The spark - Freddie Gray, a young black man who died of his injuries sustained while in police custody.
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BOOKER: The police commissioner during that time was later fired. In 2016, the Justice Department found the city's police routinely violated the civil rights of its residents and ordered changes. In 2017, homicides in Baltimore hit a per capita record - 343 deaths. So, by January 2018, Baltimore mayor Catherine Pugh decided the police department needed new leadership again.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
CATHERINE PUGH: My decision is because I'm impatient. My decision is based on the fact that we need to get these numbers down.
BOOKER: Over the rest of 2018, things didn't get much better. Her next pick for the city's top cop lasted less than four months. That commissioner is now awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty for failing to pay years' worth of federal taxes. The current interim police commissioner took himself out of the running for the permanent job. Enter the mayor's next candidate, Joel Fitzgerald, the first black police chief in Fort Worth, Texas.
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JOEL FITZGERALD: Really an honor to be here, an honor to be a part of the process but also an honor to be ultimately the mayor's selection as a candidate for the police commissioner position.
BOOKER: Experts say the average tenure for police chiefs in many cities is about three to five years. But should Fitzgerald get the job, he'd be Baltimore's fourth police commissioner in the span of a year.
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FITZGERALD: I am committed to seeing this change process through.
BOOKER: Fitzgerald declined to be interviewed for this story. He was scheduled to have a confirmation hearing next week, but it was postponed due to a family emergency.
Lester Davis is spokesperson for the head of the Baltimore City Council.
LESTER DAVIS: This is a troubling time in Baltimore for policing, just like it is in a lot of areas around the country.
BOOKER: Davis is telling me all this not in Baltimore but in a church parking lot in Fort Worth, Texas, last month. Why? Several Baltimore City Council members traveled to Texas to conduct their own investigation into Fitzgerald.
DAVIS: Baltimore has a lot of work to do, and so we want to make sure that every stone is unturned
BOOKER: That work Davis is talking about has a lot to do with moving beyond the most recent scandal - a dozen cops convicted of building their own criminal enterprise. They stole large sums of money from Baltimore residents, sold drugs and committed other serious crimes. This week, the city council released transcripts of interviews conducted with community members, elected officials and police officers offering a mixed review of Fitzgerald's time in Fort Worth, including...
BETSY PRICE: Betsy Price, and I'm the mayor of Fort Worth.
BOOKER: And how long have you been mayor?
PRICE: Seven and a half years - a while.
BOOKER: Price says yes, it's been awkward having officials from another city poking around about her police chief. But she gets it, given all Baltimore has been through.
PRICE: They asked about what he had done, what successes he'd had, how was his relationships with his troops, how was this relationship with the community. I was impressed with their - they've done their due diligence.
BOOKER: Price praises Fitzgerald's leadership of the Fort Worth Police Department at a time when racial divisions reached a boiling point a few years ago. It happened after a video of a white police officer arresting a black mother and her two daughters went viral.
PRICE: Chief Fitzgerald came in at a very difficult time in Fort Worth. He's done a nice job handling that.
CHUCK WEXLER: You know, when a department is in trouble, traditionally, they will go outside.
BOOKER: That's Chuck Wexler. He heads the Police Executive Research Forum, which helped recruit candidates for the Baltimore job. He says videos of encounters between police and citizens can also have the opposite effect. Because of those videos, he says, there's been rapid turnover at the top of many police departments. Wexler says going outside often signals a new start.
WEXLER: An outside individual has the benefit of not having any relationships with anyone inside. But it's also the challenge of getting to know a department.
BOOKER: Leonard Hamm served more than 30 years in the Baltimore Police Department, including commissioner from 2004 to 2007. He says an outsider like Fitzgerald may not be what the city needs right now.
LEONARD HAMM: Someone coming from outside - it's going to take them at least three years to find out where streets are. And while that person is learning and finding out about the city, they still have to address these other issues - crime and all the rest of that stuff.
BOOKER: He says what residents ultimately want is for the killing to stop and for a police force they can trust.
Brakkton Booker, NPR News, Baltimore.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
And, finally, today, we're going to hear the voice of a civil rights icon.
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BAYARD RUSTIN: If I've learned anything, it is that people, by helping others, grow in strength to help themselves.
MARTIN: No, that's not Martin Luther King Jr. or Ralph Bunche or John Lewis. That's the voice of Bayard Rustin speaking to a reporter from The Washington Blade in the mid-1980s. Bayard Rustin was a leading figure in the civil rights movement, an adviser to Martin Luther King Jr., the organizational genius behind the 1963 March on Washington. But he was also the target of homophobic attacks that caused him to be sidelined at key moments. Now we can hear Rustin talk about that period in his life in his own words.
Eric Marcus is the host and founder of Making Gay History, a podcast featuring interviews of people who were instrumental in the movement for the rights of LGBTQ people. He's airing Rustin's interview for the first time on an episode of the podcast this week. And he's going to share some of that tape with us now.
Eric Marcus is with us now from our studios in New York. Eric, thanks so much for joining us.
ERIC MARCUS: Such a pleasure, especially to talk about Bayard Rustin.
MARTIN: Well, tell us about this remarkable tape. I mean, Rustin died in 1987, long before your podcast. How did you find this tape?
MARCUS: Well, it was a bit of a search. My producer knew that Bayard had talked about the - his experience of being gay and the impact of that on his role in the movement. And there were two specific speeches that she was looking for. One was called From Montgomery to Stonewall, which he gave at the University of Pennsylvania in 1986. And then, he did an interview with The Village Voice, and we hoped those had been recorded.
Well, it turns out that Walter Naegle, his surviving partner, lives eight blocks north of where I live and where my producer lives. And we were introduced to him, and he recorded backups. During the last 10 years of Bayard's life, when he was with him, he did backup recordings of all the interviews that Bayard did.
MARTIN: That's amazing.
MARCUS: Yeah. So it turned out he had those two interviews, but they weren't usable. And, if you can imagine, there was a handoff of cassette tapes on the corner of 23rd Street and Eighth Avenue in New York to my producer. But each time, Sara came back and said, we can't use them. The tapes are not good enough to use. And he said, oh, I've got more. And that's how we came to be in possession of this extraordinary interview.
MARTIN: So people who are immersed in the history of the civil rights movement will have heard of him. But a lot of people have not heard of him, and that's probably because his - being an out gay man was considered a problem for the movement. And there are even other black leaders who used his sexuality against him. I just want to play a clip where he talks about that. And here it is.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
RUSTIN: At a given point, there was so much pressure on Dr. King about my being gay and particularly because I would not deny it that he set up a committee to explore whether it would be dangerous for me to continue working with him.
MARTIN: And King did eventually ask Rustin to step down or at least to take a low profile. How did he - how did Bayard Rustin respond to that?
MARCUS: That's one of the questions I would love to have asked, but I didn't do this interview. But I - what I've come to understand about Bayard from listening to him and from reading about him, he didn't hold grudges, and he kept his eye on the prize. And I think in no small part because of his Quaker upbringing and his Quaker beliefs, he turned aside. He knew the movement was more important than he was. But he always found a way to get back in.
And the remarkable things about 1963 - a year later, he's organizing the March on Washington and, yes, in the background. But you see him in all the pictures. And I feel like I wish I had known about him. My education about the civil rights movement was pretty thin back in the 1960s and '70s because, as a gay kid growing up, I would've loved to have known that there was this extraordinary hero who had done these things against all odds during a period when the gay rights movement itself was so weak and, really, at its very beginning.
And, here, he had managed even though he was gay, even though the FBI was keeping an eye on him. And even though he had an arrest record - because he was caught in the backseat of a car with two men in 1953 in California and then jailed for two months - he still managed to be a key figure in the black civil rights movement and organized the March on Washington.
MARTIN: Well, you know, one of the things that I think people appreciate now is that he was open about his sexuality at a time when that was, in fact, quite dangerous. I mean, he was - as you just noted, he was arrested several times, both for protesting and for charges related to his sexuality. And I just want to play a clip of the part of the interview where he talks about why being out was so important to him. And it's related to the fact of his identity as a black man...
MARCUS: Yes.
MARTIN: And he talks about - now, I can't play all of it because it's - they'll have to listen to your podcast for that. But he talks about his experience as a black man in the '40s in the South, going into the back of a segregated bus. And a child reached out to kind of touch something shiny on his necktie, which he was attracted to, and his mother, using the N-word, said don't touch that, you know, N-word. And...
MARCUS: It was breathtaking, yes.
MARTIN: Yeah. And then, he says he decided not to go to the back of the bus, but that's related to his feeling about his - let me just play that part here. And then, you can tell us more about it. And here it is.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
RUSTIN: So I said I owe it to that child, not only to my own dignity but I owe it to that child that it should be educated to know that blacks do not want to sit in the back. And, therefore, I should get arrested, letting all these white people in the bus know that I do not accept that. Now, it occurred to me shortly after that that it was an absolute necessity for me to declare homosexuality because, if I didn't, I was a part of the prejudice that was a part of the effort to destroy me.
MARCUS: I moved to tears every time I hear him say that.
MARTIN: Tell me more.
MARCUS: Well, if you think about the time in which that - it's the 1940s. I've interviewed a lot of LGBTQ people from those years, from the '40s, '50s and '60s, who somehow, despite the crushing burden of a society that condemned them, still believed, fundamentally, that they were - there was nothing wrong with them, that they were good people. He wound up paying a high price for his openness. But he was determined and felt that it was his responsibility to be out.
And it's something that I felt as a young person that I was - my grandmother once said to me, why do you have to - you know, it's OK that you're gay. But why do you have to tell anybody? And I said, well, I'm in a position where I feel that I can set an example. I feel like I have a role in this life. And while my role was much - certainly a much smaller scale than Bayard Rustin's, I can relate to what he's talking about.
But he was doing it at a time when the price that one would pay for being out was so high. Most gay people who were involved in the movement in those years - which wasn't even called a movement yet in the '50s and '60s - used pseudonyms. He didn't. He used his name, and he was out there and proud.
MARTIN: Do you have any sense of how his family felt about his identity as a gay man?
MARCUS: So you're determined to make me cry on this episode, Michel. His grandmother, who raised him - he thought his grandmother was his mother. He was an illegitimate child. His sister, it turned out, was his mother. His grandmother dealt with him in such a lovely way. She was concerned about protecting him. At one point, she says that - told him that he should only go with people who had as much to lose as he did. And then, she would inquire, in later years, if he had any - a special friend that he might have met.
RUSTIN: Yes, a special friend. That was the euphemism, wasn't it?
MARTIN: Yeah. I think his grandmother went to the same school as my grandmother (laughter) because my grandmother used special friend, also. And that was so lovely and also so true of people in those days in ways that I could never have imagined until I started interviewing people and discovered that families were supportive, often, not always but often of their loved ones and fearful of the danger they were in because they were gay and lived in a world that was so dangerous for gay people.
MARTIN: Finally, what do you see as Bayard Rustin's legacy?
MARCUS: His life had such meaning. He found a way to live in a world that didn't accept him on so many levels and, really, to thrive and teaches all of us that - even when we're thwarted in what we want to accomplish, that there are ways to do it but not to do it with bitterness, not to do it with anger but to find the path forward that will let you accomplish what you need to do. He had his eye on social justice on equality for all people. He brought that to his talks about gay people very late in his life. But it was always about equality and about respect and about empathy for people who are different.
MARTIN: That's Eric Marcus of the podcast Making Gay History. His episode on Bayard Rustin is scheduled to air this coming week on January 10. Eric Marcus, thank you so much for joining us.
MARCUS: Thanks, Michel. I really appreciate it.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We're going to start the program discussing the partial shutdown of the federal government, which is entering its third week. It's now tied for the third longest in history, with the president demanding billions for the border wall he once said Mexico would pay for and Democrats refusing. There is little hope for an end to the shutdown soon. President Trump said today that federal workers will, quote, "make an adjustment because they want to see the border taken care of" - unquote. Throughout the program today, we're going to hear from some of those federal workers and also people who rely on federal services.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GABRIELLE LOPEZ: My name is Gabrielle Lopez (ph). I work for a technology company over in Pennsylvania. The shutdown has been really, really stressful for me. I've recently finished college, and I'm trying to enroll in an income-driven repayment plan. But that requires information from the IRS. Obviously, I can't get that. So, in the meantime, the interest is just rising and rising.
This is also putting a damper on me trying to purchase my first home. I'm looking to see if I can find maybe a part-time job to try to make up the interest because I need to have that debt to income ratio at a certain level before I can purchase my first home. I thought, you know, I graduated. I'm going to get my first house early and do what I have been told will make me successful. Now I feel kind of deflated, like everything I've been told, everything that I'm supposed to do still equals out to the wrong thing.
So now I'm just at this point where I'm checking every day to see, when are they open? When are they open? I'm feeling really uncertain. I feel like I'm a huge planner, and, like, I make plans about planning. And I feel like I've followed my plan. I've graduated and have my savings together and did all the research to figure out housing loans, and now I'm being punished.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The ranks of federal workers going without pay include the nation's approximately 20,000 Border Patrol agents. Still, three national leaders of the agents' union, the National Border Patrol Council, stood next to President Trump at the White House last week as the president insisted he would resist any effort to reopen the affected agencies and start paying federal workers' salaries if Congress does not meet his demand for money for a border wall. But those union leaders did not take any questions, so reporters weren't able to ask them how their members feel.
So we decided to call an agent we know. He's a 20-plus-year veteran of the Border Patrol whom we met on assignment in San Diego. He previously served as president of the National Border Patrol Council Local 1613 in San Diego - Terence Shigg.
Agent Shigg, thank you so much for joining us.
TERENCE SHIGG: Oh, thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure.
MARTIN: Well, we appreciate that. At the White House briefing, the Border Patrol Council president, Brandon Judd, gave this very full endorsement of President Trump's position. I'll just play a little bit of what he said.
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BRANDON JUDD: Walls actually work. I promise you that if you interview Border Patrol agents, they will tell you that walls work.
MARTIN: So, Terence Shigg, from your understanding of things and from your representation of the folks you work with, is that the position of most of the agents you know? Is that your position?
SHIGG: Yes, that is my position. And the wording changes from walls to barriers to fencing. And I think barriers work, and that's been proven, especially here in San Diego. You can come here, and you can see the places that are more secure due to the fact that we have barriers here. So I agree with that statement, and I think most Border Patrol agents know that that is a fact - that they do help and that they do work.
MARTIN: What - are there any other measures that Border Patrol agents would like to see funded?
SHIGG: Yes. And that's the thing - walls and barriers don't work on their own. They need boots on the ground. So we need increased staffing. We need radios that are up to date. We need the infrastructure as far as the roads to get to those barriers. So there's a lot of other things that need to be built as well as the barriers. And I think that's what sometimes we feel as though the focus goes away from because there's much more to this picture than just a, quote-unquote, "wall."
MARTIN: This morning, we heard from the mayor of McAllen, Texas, Jim Darling, who said that the crisis on the border now with so many asylum seekers presenting themselves to border patrol agents is that you really need more people, and in part what you need is more social workers to process these claims and to, you know, work with people who in some cases are in dire circumstances. And you actually are a counselor yourself, and I wanted to ask if you think that that might be true.
SHIGG: Yes, I do agree with that. And that's what I was saying - that big picture. Those are the things that need to be part of this conversation. There need to be, yes, more social workers. There need to be more immigration judges because those are the ones that are processing all these claims. And all of the numbers that are coming over are overwhelming to us. But on the back end - we just do the front end. Now, the back end where the investigation has to be done, where the paperwork has to be processed, where the people have to be interviewed - they haven't increased their staffing at all. So that's another thing that has to be part of this conversation and should be a part of this budget.
MARTIN: The agents are due to get their paychecks this coming week on January 11, and it looks as though - I mean, if the talks continue as they have been, without any apparent progress, it looks as though you and fellow agents won't be getting paid. But, as essential personnel, they are expected to stay on the job. And I wanted to ask, you know, how is morale?
SHIGG: Well, morale has definitely taken a hit. The guys and gals that I work with - they really - one, they appreciate the support, and they appreciate this topic being at the forefront of the discussion. But it is something that does weigh in the back of your mind because our guys and gals have families. They have bills to pay. They have things that need to be done. And, on top of that, they still have to work and put their lives on the line without receiving any compensation. And that goes against every labor union rule that I've ever heard of.
MARTIN: That's Terence Shigg. He has served as a Border Patrol agent for more than 20 years. He is also a counselor in private practice, and he was kind enough to join us from his home in San Diego.
Agent Shigg, thank you so much for talking to us once again. We appreciate it.
SHIGG: Well, thank you very much. I appreciate you having me.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We're going to turn now to what may or may not be a new third rail in the new Congress. It is the question of impeachment. Congressman Brad Sherman quietly reintroduced articles of impeachment against the president, while the president and some Republicans seized on newly-elected Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib's ad-libbed call for impeachment at a reception where she was speaking to lambaste the Democrats as unserious and uncouth.
Meanwhile, Democratic leaders are advocating a cautious approach. Today on "CBS Sunday Morning," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Congress needs to wait to see what comes out of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "CBS SUNDAY MORNING")
NANCY PELOSI: If and when the time comes for impeachment, it will have to be something that has such a crescendo in a bipartisan way.
MARTIN: Yesterday, though, New York Times columnist David Leonhardt added his name to the list of those calling for impeachment - or at least for the Democrats to hold aggressive hearings to make the public case for it. In a lengthy op-ed he wrote that, quote, "waiting to remove President Trump from office is too dangerous and that the cost of removing a president from office is smaller than the cost of allowing this president to remain" - unquote. And David Leonhardt is with us now.
Welcome. Thank you so much for talking with us.
DAVID LEONHARDT: Thank you for having me.
MARTIN: As I said, it's a lengthy piece, and we don't have time to discuss all of the details of it. But it addresses two issues - why impeachment and why now. So I'm going to start by asking you, why now?
LEONHARDT: I think the answer to why now is that the dangers that President Trump presents to the country are growing. You can see that the moderating influences in his administration like Gen. Mattis are leaving. You can see him acting on more of his impulses, like pulling troops out or shutting down the government. And so we have long known that he is unfit for office, but Republicans are starting to have a sense for the political costs he creates for their party.
MARTIN: And, as you know, that this isn't going anywhere without congressional Republicans getting on board, either publicly or privately. So what's your evidence that a focus on - I mean, for you, this is a matter of substance. This is a matter of fact. But for other people, you know, whether or not it is a matter of fact, it's a matter of facts that they can or cannot explain to their supporters, right? So what is your evidence that congressional Republicans would be amenable to these facts as you understand them?
LEONHARDT: Yeah. So, in the end, politicians almost always act in their own personal self-interest (laughter), their political self-interest. And I think that when Republicans look at the reality - they just lost the popular vote in the House midterms by almost 9 percentage points. President Trump's approval rating is just 40 percent. And maybe it's not going to go a lot lower, but it shows no evidence of going higher. And so I just think that if Democrats are able to keep - try to keep some attention on how unpopular his agenda is and how corrupt he and his administration have been and the many ways he is acting like no president before him, I think there is a significant chance. It's not guaranteed, but I think there's a significant chance that his support starts to weaken.
And the only other thing I'd add to that is that he already has less support from his own party in Congress than any other president in memory. So Republicans have not defied him the way I wish they would, the way I think it's their patriotic duty to do. But they have also not supported him the way Obama or Bush or Clinton or Bush or Reagan - and I could go on - were supported by members of their own party. I think his support right now is broad but shallow, and it would not shock me if he struggles to keep that support as Robert Mueller issues his report and as the year goes on.
MARTIN: And, finally, many Democrats and many other outspoken individuals like, for example, the former FBI director, James Comey, who is no fan of this president, you know, obviously...
LEONHARDT: Yeah.
MARTIN: ...Have argued that, you know, impeachment is a distraction from credible opponents to get themselves sorted out in advance of the 2020 election, including some of your own colleagues on the New York Times editorial board. Why are they wrong?
LEONHARDT: Well, I'm sympathetic to a couple of parts of their argument. I agree with the idea that impeachment right now would be a distraction. I think that impeachment right now would be a mistake. But I think Democrats should continue making the case for removal from office. The reason why I don't think it's OK just to wait for 2020 - I think people are underestimating the potential for a true crisis. Imagine if there were a war somewhere in the world, and the United States had to decide whether to get involved. It would be really irresponsible to leave Trump in office knowing he is unfit for the presidency.
The second reason why I don't think we should just passively wait for 2020 is the precedent. He, again, has acted the way no president in our lifetimes has. He's treated the presidency as a branding opportunity. He's broken campaign finance law. He's obstructed justice. I don't think that we want to set a precedent that as long as you win election, you're allowed to complete your term no matter what.
MARTIN: That was New York Times op-ed columnist David Leonhardt talking to us about his piece, "The People Vs. Donald J. Trump."
David Leonhardt, thanks so much for talking to us.
LEONHARDT: Thank you very much for having me.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
And now we'll return to our Troll Watch series.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MARTIN: That's where we bring you stories of cybersecurity attacks, bots and, of course, Internet trolls. This week, we're going to hear about a report from the international human rights organization Amnesty International that focused on online abuse directed at women. Their report, called "Troll Patrol," analyzed millions of tweets sent to women last year, and it found what many people already suspected - that women and particularly women of color are targeted for abuse on Twitter.
Tanya O'Carroll is one of the report's authors, and she directs Amnesty Tech. That's an arm of the organization focused on the intersection of technology and human rights. And I started our conversation by asking her what made the organization decide to look at the environment for women on Twitter.
TANYA O'CARROLL: Well, I think that just the space that we've been operating in as a human rights organization has changed so much in the past 10 years. So in the last couple of years, we've been documenting everything from the use of surveillance, spyware attacks against human rights defenders. And, on the other hand, it's stuff like manipulation of social media. So we tracked in Mexico, for example, the use of trolls to undermine and discredit very prominent critical voices of journalists and human rights defenders. And so it's about trying to upscale ourselves in order to really understand the way that state control and repression actually takes place now that the Internet is here.
MARTIN: So tell us about some of the findings from the report that stood out for you. I just want to mention here that the model estimated that of the 14.5 million tweets mentioning women, a million of them were abusive or, as you describe them, problematic. But you also said that some of the findings on race really stood out. Tell me a little bit more about that.
O-CARROLL: Yeah. So we found that women of color were targeted more. So they were, in general, 34 percent more likely to receive abuse than white women, and black women particularly. So I think the most striking finding really is this - 84 percent more likely to receive abuse than white women. Asian women - 70 percent more likely to receive racist or ethnic slurs. I think this is not shocking to a lot of people in the sense that it's what we've been anecdotally hearing for a very long time. But what it is this time, we have now the evidence base to say that this is not - you know, this is not perception.
MARTIN: Can I talk to you about the methodology from it? I understand that there was a combination of machine learning and crowd sourcing - that you got input from more than 6,000 online volunteers from around the world. The data is very compelling. But what about men? Did you compare to men? Because I can imagine where some might argue, fairly or unfairly, that is the Twitter-verse. That is, unfortunately, the culture of the place, and that men are equally likely to be attacked. And it may be unpleasant, but at least it's equal opportunity. What would you say to them?
O-CARROLL: Yeah. We didn't actually look at men in this study. And this is partly because this study is the third big piece of research that we've done on the phenomenon of violence against women online. And so it's based off the fact that we already knew and we know that the way that women are targeted online is very different, and it's very gendered. It's stuff like doxing and hacking and violent rape threats. And so, in this case, we are very specifically interested in the experience of women because we know, just as offline discrimination and violence against women is rife.
MARTIN: We reached out to Twitter for comment on the report, and an official responded via email - and I'll just read here, quoting - "Twitter has publicly committed to improving the collective health, openness and civility of public conversation on our service" - unquote. They added that abuse, malicious automation and manipulation detract from the health of Twitter and that we are committed to holding ourselves publicly accountable towards progress in this regard.
I understand that members of the Amnesty International team have spoken with a Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, about the report and its findings. Can you share any more information about that? Was there any meeting of the minds about what might happen going forward?
O-CARROLL: Yes. I mean, this is the interesting thing, right, which is that normally when amnesty are calling out a company, we're very much on the other side of the table. In this case, what we find from Twitter is that they get that this is a big issue. They acknowledge that this is happening on their platform. The question next is, how? How do we address it? How does Twitter address it? A lot of the abuse that we detected and that many people report should be taken down from the platform.
The second issue is transparency. They've started to release some data, but the data isn't currently dis-aggregated. It doesn't tell us much about the number of tweets in total that are sent to women that may be abusive every year, how many of them are removed. And it was a - where those moderators are based? What languages did they speak? You know, Twitter is a global platform, and the abuse is global, too.
MARTIN: I want to drill down just a little bit more on what you think the practical effect of what you've found is that causes us to rise to the level of a human rights issue.
O-CARROLL: Yeah. I mean, the practical effect is censorship. You know, I think when we talk about censorship, so often people's instinct is to think about the protected speech - so the ability to offend, the ability to even abuse. We don't think very often about, what the censorship consequences for people who are regularly abused and intimidated and have essentially become scared over time to speak out online, to express themselves freely.
Really, anytime a woman has the audacity to hold an opinion and express it in a proud or confident way online, they may become victim to a backlash and potentially an orchestrated backlash. So I think when we talk about this issue and think about the freedom of expression consequences, it's really important to realize whose freedom of expression are we prioritizing.
MARTIN: That's Tanya O'Carroll, director of Amnesty Tech at Amnesty International. We reached her in Oxford.
Tanya, thanks so much for talking with us.
O-CARROLL: No worries. Thanks so much.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We're going to spend some time now hearing about the experiences of homeless college students. Some campuses around the country have made special efforts to give these students a sense of belonging, a feeling at home, in some cases, for the first time in their lives. We have reports now from two of those campuses. We begin in Georgia with Martha Dalton of member station WABE.
MARTHA DALTON, BYLINE: Nikki Hamel is a senior at Kennesaw State University, northwest of Atlanta, and she's been homeless since high school.
NIKKI HAMEL: I started bouncing around at different friends' houses. And I was like, oh, I don't have it so bad. Like, I don't live outside. I have somewhere to stay.
DALTON: Once she got into Kennesaw State, she knew she'd also have a place to stay after high school.
HAMEL: I graduated on Friday and moved in Sunday.
DALTON: The university has a program to help students like Hamel There's a resource center and a food pantry, and students can live on campus year-round. It was the first time Hamel had had stable housing in a while. It was a relief, and it allowed her to focus on school. But, then, the holidays came around.
HAMEL: My freshman year, I cried. I didn't have anywhere to go for Thanksgiving.
DALTON: She spent the week hanging around her dorm room and eating food from the school's pantry. And, by Christmas, friends started inviting her to their homes for the holidays. Hamel also participates in Kennesaw State's Holiday Giving Tree. Students submit a wish list of gifts, things like gift cards, clothes and even smartphones. Then, the items are posted online, where donors can buy them for students. Hamel's on-campus case manager, Carrie Olsen, says she had to talk her into signing up.
CARRIE OLSEN: She's very much like other students in our program that will say, give it to somebody else. Somebody else needs it more than I do.
DALTON: But Olsen wants the program's students to indulge a little during the holidays.
OLSEN: This is their chance to kind of think beyond survival and basic needs to, like, what would be really fun. And some of them - this is what they're getting.
DALTON: For NPR News, I'm Martha Dalton in Atlanta.
AVI WOLFMAN-ARENT, BYLINE: And I'm Avi Wolfman-Arent of WHYY in Philadelphia. Princess Hill is a college sophomore. She loves school and not just because of the classes or campus life.
PRINCESS HILL: I have a roof over my head, and I have food. And nobody's telling me, you have to get out.
WOLFMAN-ARENT: Hill grew up in Philadelphia. She says, for most of her life, she bounced around the homes of relatives and friends. After high school, she worked for a while. Then, at age 22, she got accepted to West Chester University, a large state school in the Philadelphia suburbs. She had no idea if she could pull it off.
HILL: As far as books and as far as, like, tuition, I really didn't know what I was going to do. I just was going with the flow.
WOLFMAN-ARENT: Luckily, West Chester has support for students like Hill. The school's Promise Program offers scholarships and year-round housing to homeless students or students transitioning from foster care. Hill says college wouldn't have been possible without permanent housing.
HILL: This is the first time in my life I don't have to worry about where I'ma (ph) live or if I'ma be living in the house where somebody who may rape or hurt me, you know? Like, this is literally the first time I'm, like, safe.
WOLFMAN-ARENT: Hill and Nikki Hamel in Georgia aren't what most people think of as typical college students. But that notion of typical is changing. Sara Goldrick-Rab is a higher education policy professor at Temple University.
SARA GOLDRICK-RAB: We continue to think everybody's 18 years old with you know 2.0 parents and some 1.0 sibling, helping them go to school and bringing them care packages of groceries. It's just not true.
WOLFMAN-ARENT: Goldrick-Rab says colleges like West Chester realize they have to change their thinking to help these students make it to and through college.
GOLDRICK-RAB: It's not because colleges are becoming social service agencies and trying to become the parents of these students. It's because they want them to graduate.
WOLFMAN-ARENT: Princess Hill says winter breaks on campus can be lonely for her, too. And, given her turbulent family life, she's never been a big fan of the holidays.
HILL: I'm kind of getting numb to it now. So when the holidays come, for me, personally, it means it's another day.
WOLFMAN-ARENT: But unlike a lot of other days in her life, Princess Hill has a solid place to stay. And for her, that's a gift.
For NPR News, I'm Avi Wolfman-Arent in Philadelphia.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The Golden Globes are tonight. And, usually, the spotlight is on the movies, especially the nominees for Best Actor and Actress and Best Picture. This year, though, the best original song category is making a serious bid for your attention.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ALL THE STARS")
SZA: (Singing) This may be the night that my dreams might let me know all the stars are closer, all the stars are closer...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "REVELATION")
TROYE SIVAN: (Singing) It's a revelation. There's no hell in what I found...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "REQUIEM FOR A PRIVATE WAR")
ANNIE LENNOX: (Singing) Underneath the shooting stars...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SHALLOW")
LADY GAGA: (Singing) I'm off the deep end. Watch as I dive in. I'll never meet the ground.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIRL IN THE MOVIES")
DOLLY PARTON: (Singing) Popcorn, soda, box of Raisinets...
MARTIN: Those five songs up for the top award not only bring the star power, they're songs that make deep impressions in their own right. They are, in reverse order, Dolly Parton's "Girl In The Movies," from the movie "Dumplin'," Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper's "Shallow" from "A Star Is Born," Annie Lennox's "Requiem For A Private War" from "A Private War," Troye Sivan and Jonsi's "Revelation" from "Boy Erased" and "All The Stars" by Kendrick Lamar and SZA from "Black Panther."
We wanted to talk more about those and also look - have an excuse to play the songs. So, of course, we called NPR Music's very own Stephen Thompson. Stephen, thanks so much for joining us.
STEPHEN THOMPSON, BYLINE: Oh, it's my pleasure.
MARTIN: Well, talk about the list of the nominees for Best Original Song this year. What stood out to you?
THOMPSON: Well, I think there's somewhat of a two-horse race here when you're talking about what's actually going to win. The song from "A Star Is Born" really captured people's, I think, attention and imagination. It's a big booming ballad. But you also have "All The Stars" from "Black Panther." When you listen to these five songs back-to-back, that one really has a little bit of crackle to it. And it's my favorite of the five. But I think it's going to come down to those two songs.
MARTIN: It's my understanding just from reading the coverage that Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper are favorites to win for the song "Shallow." You think that's merited?
THOMPSON: Yeah. I mean, I think that's what's going to happen. I think it's a good example of a song that is actually integrated very well into the movie from which it comes. A lot of times, these Best Original songs are just popular songs that are tacked onto the end of movies that run over the closing credits, including - "All The Stars" isn't actually integrated into "Black Panther."
MARTIN: But it is fair to say, though - isn't it? - that the songs that were nominated weren't just background music. They do have sort of a power in their own right.
THOMPSON: Well, and, thematically, they fit into the themes of the movie. If you listen to "Revelation" from "Boy Erased," "Boy Erased" is - it's a very painful movie and Troye Sivan, who appears on "Revelation," actually acts in the movie "Boy Erased." This is a subject matter that is very close to the heart of not only Troye Sivan but also Jonsi, who performed those songs.
"A Private War" is - you know, is a very intense movie about a private war. And Annie Lennox related very closely to that material. And Dolly Parton has a close kind of personal connection to the story of "Dumplin'" and wrote a lot of original songs for it. So I do think you have a little bit more of a connection between the artists and the material than you sometimes have.
MARTIN: Is there a song that you think should have been nominated that wasn't?
THOMPSON: Well, I'm not necessarily on the record as a huge fan of "Mary Poppins Returns," but I do think several of the songs from that film would have been natural replacements for - I found the Annie Lennox song a little flat for me. And I was surprised not to see anything from "Mary Poppins Returns" given that "Mary Poppins Returns" received so many other Golden Globe nominations. You had original songs from that film. "Trip A Little Light Fantastic" would have, I think, injected a little bit of energy into this mix. I was really surprised not to see any representation from that movie in the songs list given how integral music is to that movie.
MARTIN: All right. Then, we'll go out on "Trip A Little Light Fantastic."
THOMPSON: Not nominated for a Golden Globe tonight.
MARTIN: Not nominated for a Golden Globe tonight. That's NPR's Stephen Thompson talking about the nominees for Best Original Song at tonight's Golden Globes. Stephen, thanks so much.
THOMPSON: Thank you, Michel.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TRIP A LITTLE LIGHT FANTASTIC")
LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA: (Singing) Now when you're stuck in the mist, sure, you can struggle and resist or you can trip a little light fantastic with me. Now, say you're lost...
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We've been asking listeners how the partial government shutdown is affecting them. We have received a lot of responses from federal workers facing eviction to students unable to access federal aid and many others. We're going to hear a couple more of those stories now.
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JOSHUA HENSON: I'm Joshua Henson (ph). I'm transitioning into work as an engineer for the Department of Homeland Security with the Coast Guard, and I live in Washington, D.C. The shutdown put me into a really tenuous place personally and financially. I am transitioning into a new role with federal work for the Coast Guard, something that I've looked forward to for a long time. I went ahead, and I gave my previous employer notice that I would be resigning. And, the very next day, the shutdown happened and threw all of those plans into disarray.
I've heard a lot of talk about how federal workers are going to receive back pay, and this shouldn't really be a big deal for everybody. But people need to understand that there are those of us who are technically unemployed. I have not started work yet. I will not receive back pay. I'm trying to stay optimistic and positive, but I think a lot of people need to recognize that politics and policy is ultimately about people, and we need to remember the people who get caught up in these arguments.
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MATT LOCKE: My name is Matt Locke (ph). I am opening up a meadery in Nashville, Tenn. We'll be the first one in town. But the final hurdle for us is getting our recipes and labels approved. So with the government in shutdown, there's a big question mark as to when we'll actually be able to sell our first bottles. You know, this has been a dream of me and my partners. And, you know, if we run out of money, and we have to go belly-up, I don't even want to think about that.
MARTIN: That was Joshua Henson, a Coast Guard engineer in Washington, D.C., and Matt Locke, a mead maker in Nashville, Tenn.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
China is a major world player with commercial and strategic influence around the globe. It wants the roughly 60 million ethnic Chinese living outside China to recognize its growth. NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports on one way the government is trying to attract Chinese-Americans and others in the diaspora.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: In the southern city of Taishan, a group made up of mostly Chinese-American middle and high school students and a few of their parents attends culture classes at a local school. The music class focuses on one song.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Chinese).
KUHN: "With brown eyes, black hair and yellow skin, we are forever descendants of the dragon," say the lyrics. In other words, all ethnic Chinese are part of the same nation, no matter what citizenship they hold.
This tour group is part of a program that the Chinese government has run for nearly two decades. It helps foreign nationals of Chinese descent to trace their roots with culture and language classes and visits to historical sites. The students pay for the airfare to China. The Chinese government covers the rest.
Zeng Xiaoxian, a Taishan city official in charge of the program, says it helps to dispel overseas Chinese kids' misconceptions about China.
ZENG XIAOXIAN: (Speaking Chinese).
KUHN: "In order to give China some positive publicity," she says, "I think it's really necessary to bring these kids back to have a look and let them see exactly how we have become wealthy and powerful."
In 2013, State Councilor Yang Jiechi addressed kids participating in the program and called them descendants of the dragon.
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YANG JIECHI: (Speaking Chinese).
KUHN: "We all share the same ancestors, history and culture," he says. "I hope you will aspire to lofty ideals and become builders of our national renaissance."
Taishan is known as one of the earliest and biggest sources of Chinese emigration, including to the U.S. Almost all the monuments here commemorate Taishanese sojourners who went overseas, then returned to help their hometown with their newly acquired skills and wealth.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking Chinese).
KUHN: A tour guide shows the kids a monument to Chinese-Americans who fought as fighter pilots with the famed Flying Tigers unit in World War II. Many of the kids, though, appear listless in the subtropical heat. Some admit that they're on this trip because their parents signed them up for it.
Seventh-grader Theresa Pham gives the trip mixed reviews.
THERESA PHAM: The school was sort of cool. But, like, there was this one restaurant that we ate at that sort of - the bathrooms were sort of nasty. And I don't like to squat in toilets because it's so hard to pee in.
KUHN: Pham came here with her mother, Judy Ng. Ng says that her ancestors left Taishan to go build the transcontinental railroad in the U.S. over a century ago. She and her daughter came on this trip, she says, because she believes China is becoming a force to be reckoned with.
JUDY NG: I do see the impact, and that's why I want my kids to learn to speak Chinese. How good they are - they can decide later if they want to continue. But I think China, because of the population and the impact on industry in the world, they're going to be a significant power.
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KUHN: You can see this in downtown Taishan. It's been turned into a brightly lit pedestrian mall with shops and restaurants. When Ng's ancestors left here, it was poor, and most immigrants were uneducated farmers. China's new immigrants are increasingly well-educated and middle-class. And China is trying to woo them back and leverage them to help develop the country and advance its national interests.
Leo Suryadinata is an expert on the Chinese diaspora at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.
LEO SURYADINATA: Now, China is building up, rising. Xi Jinping's proposed what you call the China Dream, (speaking Chinese). And he wants the Chinese overseas to become part of this (speaking Chinese), the Chinese nation, in support of this China Dream.
KUHN: One problem, Suryadinata says, is that China's government sometimes fails to distinguish between Chinese citizens living overseas and foreign nationals of Chinese ancestry. And these two, he points out, have very different cultures and views.
SURYADINATA: For the Chinese overseas, who are the nationals of their adopted lands, China Dream is, in fact, a foreign dream.
KUHN: The other is that in many countries, ethnic Chinese face strong anti-immigrant attitudes, and that includes questioning their political loyalty. Suryadinata says that by demanding their political loyalty, China would be putting emigrants and their offspring in a difficult position.
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KUHN: Back at the school in Taishan, the Chinese-American kids are wowed by a kung fu demonstration. There's no explicitly political content in this particular tour, and that's exactly what Leo Suryadinata advises China to do. If you want to attract foreigners of Chinese descent, focus on the Chinese culture, and skip the politics. Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Taishan, China.
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ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Natural disasters pose a particular risk for the elderly regardless of whether they leave for safer ground or stay put. Researchers in Florida recently found that seniors who evacuated for a hurricane were more likely to end up hospitalized than those who never left their nursing homes. But sometimes a storm is coming, and residents just need to get out of its way. That's been happening a lot in Charleston, S.C., Carolina as NPR's Rebecca Ellis reports.
REBECCA ELLIS, BYLINE: Ninety-one-year-old Joyce East can't quite recall when the hurricane season in Charleston got so bad.
JOYCE EAST: In 2016 I believe. No, what was it?
ELLIS: East lives in a retirement community called Bishop Gadsden, which is located on a barrier island three miles from downtown Charleston. In the last three years, the community has weathered one snowstorm, one ice storm and three hurricanes. Kimberly Borts has worked at Bishop Gadsden for 11 years. She and East reminisce on the latest string of storms.
EAST: Last year...
KIMBERLY BORTS: Sixteen, we went to - for Matthew.
EAST: Sixteen was for Matthew.
BORTS: And then '17 - Irma.
EAST: And then Irma.
BORTS: And we stayed.
EAST: Yes.
BORTS: And then Florence was this year.
EAST: And then Florence - this last one.
ELLIS: Here on on James Island, evacuations had become a yearly consideration. Again and again, extreme weather has forced the staff to weigh moving their 115 frail residents to higher ground. Bishop Gadsden is spread out over a hundred acres of marshland. East adores the landscape, which is dotted with oaks and palm trees and Spanish moss. But like many senior living communities on the coast, Borts says the area is vulnerable.
BORTS: We are in what we call the low country of Charleston, S.C., and that is literally the truth.
ELLIS: Twice in two years, the governor has mandated that residents evacuate. By now East as a seasoned evacuee.
EAST: Now that we've done it this much, it's more of a routine.
ELLIS: Nearly 30 years ago, East and her husband decided they wanted to retire someplace warm on the waterfront, so they moved from St. Louis to a retirement community on Charleston's Seabrook Island. Four days later, Hurricane Hugo struck the coast. There was no evacuation plan in place. The couple was just told to hit the road.
EAST: It was absolute chaos because we were on highway 26 leaving Charleston along with I think everybody in Charleston.
ELLIS: Twenty years later, East moved to Bishop Gadsden, where evacuations are planned down to the luggage residents bring with them. East now has a special navy evacuation suitcase with her name stamped on it.
EAST: It's unbelievable. It must take them a year to plan.
ELLIS: Borts says that's about right.
BORTS: We sort of plan 12 months a year.
ELLIS: This year, getting residents away from Florence and safely into their shelter, a lakeside inn on the mountain tops, was a time-intensive $350,000 operation. Staff arranged for ambulances to take seniors too frail to sit up straight. They had a bus to carry the 18 pets of Bishop Gadsden and another one filled only with oxygen tanks. During evacuations, Borts says nervous residents who normally need one oxygen tank a day will go through two tanks or more. She says that's because seniors are particularly vulnerable to changes in routine.
BORTS: When that schedule is altered, that's when you begin to have some challenges. And that, again, could be an increase in oxygen needs or an increase in, you know, frequency of going to the bathroom, a potential for increase in falls.
ELLIS: Residents who had risen in the same bedroom for decades were waking up in strange rooms, disoriented. Borts recalls many upset stomachs. When the staff returned home, they met to recap the evacuation. Without intending to, Borts says staff was already planning for what they expect to come in 2019.
BORTS: We would say to our fellow staff members, well, next time we do this or next year, we need to do X, Y, Z. And we kind of said it repeatedly.
ELLIS: These evacuations are happening far beyond the marshy coast of Charleston, says Susan Burns.
SUSAN BURNS: There definitely has been an uptick.
ELLIS: Burns works at Sedgwick, a company that deals with insurance claims for senior living communities across the U.S. After nursing home owners in Louisiana made the fatal decision not to evacuate residents in advance of Hurricane Katrina, Sedgwick decided to begin reimbursing facilities for part of their evacuation costs. But until 2017, Burns says not a single facility had filed an evacuation-related claim.
BURNS: Since I have worked at Sedgwick, I had not seen this coverage triggered at all until last year.
ELLIS: She thinks these new claims from Florida, California, Missouri means facilities are being hit with new vigor.
BURNS: In 2017, we had an amazing number of natural disasters back to back and then again in 2018. It's like there was a repeat.
ELLIS: For residents like Joyce East, this is just the reality of retiring on the coast.
EAST: I have to kind of look at it as a mini vacation now.
ELLIS: She already knows what suitcase to pack in. Rebecca Ellis, NPR News.
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SHAPIRO: That story is part of a reporting partnership with Kaiser Health News.
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ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Now it's time for All Tech Considered.
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SHAPIRO: New technologies have already disrupted the lives of taxi drivers, secretaries and business owners. We're going to spend the next few weeks looking at what's ripe for disruption next. We start in Germany. It's Europe's largest economy, and it could lose its edge because of sluggish internet connections. From Berlin, Esme Nicholson reports on the growing frustration with one of the world's biggest telecoms.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Foreign language spoken).
ESME NICHOLSON, BYLINE: The flourishing tech scene here in Berlin attracts talent from across the globe. At a startup incubator in the west of the city, an international team has just launched an app called SPRT, which, as the name suggests, connects sports enthusiasts. Amy Cooper, who came here from Britain in June, is editing a promotional video with her colleagues. Cooper, who's 20, says that Berlin's internet speed feels like the dial-up days her parents reminisce about.
AMY COOPER: We're working in a co-working office where there's loads of startups. Everything's online. We use it, like, every second of the day, so it's so important for us that it works, and it's reliable. And most of the time, it's not, and that can be really frustrating.
NICHOLSON: Claudia Engfeld from the Berlin Chamber of Commerce and Industry says 70 percent of the capital's businesses have complained to them about inadequate broadband. Engfeld says it's not only an issue for new tech companies but also for the city's established engineering firms.
CLAUDIA ENGFELD: If you're doing 3D printing in an industrial level, you'll need to be fast. You can't wait two days till your machine has communicated to the printer to do something. This is a disadvantage that Berlin-based entrepreneurs have in comparison to other cities throughout the world.
NICHOLSON: Engfeld says connections are so patchy in some parts of the city, companies have had to move premises or ask the staff to work from home. Many CEOs point the finger at Deutsche Telekom, the former state provider which still dominates the domestic market. Instead of installing fiber-optic cables, Deutsche Telekom decided to optimize the old copper telephone-wire system.
ENGFELD: It's the technology that's the problem. In Germany, you will find almost everywhere copper cable that's not capable to go faster than 250 Mbit per second. The average reality is about 50 Mbit per second. That's quite poor.
NICHOLSON: According to the OECD, less than 2 percent of Germany's broadband connections are carried by pure fiber-optic systems. Deutsche Telekom spokesperson Georg von Wagner insists that most customers don't need anything more.
GEORG VON WAGNER: (Through interpreter) Of course, we could have concentrated on fiber-optic cables and given some people in Germany broadband speeds of up to a gigabit. But the rest of the country would only have an average connection of 16 megabits.
NICHOLSON: Wagner says Deutsche Telekom compromised by improving its copper wire system, giving the majority of customers access to speeds of up to 50 megabits per second. Tech policy journalist Tomas Rudl says Telekom's fiber-optic strategy, or lack of one, was short-sighted. And He says that the government also has to take its share of the blame.
TOMAS RUDL: (Through interpreter) Although Deutsche Telekom was privatized, the state is still one of its major shareholders. So it's within the government's own interest to ensure that its infrastructure policies and funding benefit a major German job provider.
NICHOLSON: But it seems the government is catching on. Chancellor Angela Merkel, who only five years ago was mocked for describing the Internet as uncharted territory, has promised to help subsidize the rollout of fiber-optic broadband by 2025. For Amy Cooper at the Berlin startup SPRT, it's too little, too late.
COOPER: Should you really have to think about those things in Berlin - you know, in one of the biggest and most important tech cities in Europe?
NICHOLSON: And she says when the Internet invariably goes down, it's no use turning your mobile. She says Germany's cellphone system is just as bad. For NPR News, I'm Esme Nicholson in Berlin.
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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Alzheimer's disease poses a special risk to African-Americans. Studies show they're up to twice as likely as white Americans to develop the disease. Now NPR's Jon Hamilton reports scientists have found evidence of a biological difference that might help explain the racial disparity.
JON HAMILTON, BYLINE: Most of what scientists know about Alzheimer's comes from studies of white people. And that's a problem, says John Morris, a researcher at Washington University in St. Louis.
JOHN MORRIS: We know relatively little about whether Alzheimer's disease is manifested in a identical way in underrepresented groups, such as African-Americans or Latino or Asians.
HAMILTON: So Morris and a team of researchers have been reaching out to the African-American community in St. Louis. And that effort led to a study that included 173 black participants as well as more than 1,000 whites. Morris says about a third of all patients were in the early stages of dementia.
MORRIS: So we set out to see if the disease process seems to be the same in both racial groups.
HAMILTON: The study used brain scans and samples of spinal fluid to look at the biological hallmarks of Alzheimer's, amyloid plaques and tangles made up of proteins called tau. Morris says blacks and whites were no different when it came to plaques.
MORRIS: However, the tau proteins were notably different.
HAMILTON: Spinal fluid from African-Americans contained lower levels of tau protein. And yet, these lower levels do not appear to indicate a lower risk of Alzheimer's in a black person the way they do in a white person. Morris says the finding, which appears in the journal JAMA Neurology, could be a big deal.
MORRIS: It implies that the biological mechanisms underlying Alzheimer's disease may be very different in racial groups. And if so, the way we try to diagnose and treat may be race-dependent.
HAMILTON: Morris says a biological difference might also help explain why African-Americans appear more likely to develop Alzheimer's. The study was accompanied by an editorial from Lisa Barnes, a researcher at Rush University in Chicago.
Barnes says she's excited that the research was done at all. However, she says the results need to be confirmed by a study that includes many more African-Americans. And that will be a challenge.
LISA BARNES: When you try to go to populations that have been sort of marginalized and abused by past research, it becomes very, very difficult.
HAMILTON: Barnes says one way to increase the numbers is for research centers to work together on studies.
BARNES: If we start to pool our numbers together, we'll be able to do more than just one center alone.
HAMILTON: And Barnes says researchers will also have to reach out to groups that have been hesitant to take part in scientific studies.
BARNES: We really need the minority communities to be involved as well and to really, you know, have a voice in what we're finding and to really walk this path with us. You know, we can't do it by ourselves.
HAMILTON: Barnes hopes the new study represents a step toward better collaboration. Jon Hamilton, NPR News.
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The IRS is one of the federal agencies affected by the partial government shutdown. And many taxpayers may feel it's not too big a loss, but it's causing a lot of uncertainty as tax filing season approaches. NPR's Brian Naylor reports.
BRIAN NAYLOR, BYLINE: It's nearing the time of year when many of us start receiving our W-2 forms and begin to search through the files, or shoeboxes, for the receipts and other documents in that annual chore known as filing our taxes. The big tax-preparing companies are already running TV commercials promoting their services despite the shutdown.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Hi, Lina (ph). Is now a good time to go through your tax return line by line together?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As Lina) Yeah, line by line sounds awesome. And please take your time.
NAYLOR: But this tax filing season may not be all that awesome for many taxpayers. The partial government shutdown has furloughed some 70,000 IRS employees at a crucial moment.
STEVEN MILLER: It always was going to be a stretch for a very stretched IRS to meet this date. This can't help.
NAYLOR: Steven Miller is a former IRS commissioner. Remember that big tax cut approved by Congress and the president? This is the first time it will be reflected in most people's tax returns. Miller says the IRS already had its hands full preparing for all the changes - updating its computer software and writing new paper forms. And while that work is likely being done by the IRS personnel who remain on the job, Miller says there is a lot of other work that isn't.
MILLER: The other piece that will harm folks is the readiness of forms, the readiness of guidance, the readiness of people on the phone. Even if the phone's open, whether those people will be sufficiently trained to help folks or not is a real issue in my mind.
NAYLOR: Another thing the IRS isn't doing now is conducting any audits or other types of enforcement. But Miller says fear not. The agency is taking your money.
MILLER: For example, if you paid - or were about to pay your January 15 estimated tax payment, as I did this past weekend, they are more than happy to accept that money. If you were owed a refund of some kind because your tax year ended, and this is the time for that refund - not so fast getting that money back out.
NAYLOR: Last year the IRS paid more than $212 billion in refunds in the first three months of the year - an average of almost $2,900. OMB acting director Russell Vought told reporters today that tax refunds will go out despite the shutdown. Former IRS Commissioner John Koskinen says for many people receiving a timely refund may not be a matter of life or death. But for some low-income taxpayers, their refund is a big deal.
JOHN KOSKINEN: Obviously if it goes for some period of time, and lower-income people are denied their refund, which are oftentimes the biggest financial event in the year for them, you may create a crisis in particular situations. But for the vast majority of people who receive refunds, the delay is not a life-threatening issue.
NAYLOR: The IRS may decide to bring back some of their furloughed workers as the tax filing season nears. But so far the agency has been tight-lipped about its plans. The House plans to bring up a measure tomorrow to fund the agency through the rest of the fiscal year - a move likely to be opposed by Senate Republicans and the White House. Brian Naylor, NPR News, Washington.
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Federal workers affected by the partial government shutdown will miss their first paychecks this week if President Trump and lawmakers don't figure out a way to reopen the government soon. Trump and Democrats appear no closer to resolving their differences. The president demands more than $5 billion for a border wall, and Democrats say no. Now Trump is planning a prime-time Oval Office address tomorrow. NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith joins us from the White House. Hi, Tam.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Hi.
SHAPIRO: Tell us about the White House's plans here.
KEITH: Yeah So this is a - sort of a PR offensive, you might say. The president's going to give a speech from the Oval Office prime time tomorrow night. This will be his first speech from the Oval Office. And usually that imbues a certain significance to one of these addresses when other presidents have done it from the Oval.
And what we're told he will say is that there's a humanitarian and security crisis along the border and call on Democrats to negotiate with him on that in order to reopen the government. Also, on Thursday he'll be going to the border, according to a tweet from Sarah Sanders.
SHAPIRO: You say this is a PR offensive. Ordinarily you would expect that to go hand in hand with intense negotiations. But it doesn't look like those intense negotiations are happening, right?
KEITH: The negotiations have not been particularly intense. But today, the vice president held a briefing with about 50 reporters, including me. And he says that they have made some concessions, not on that $5.7 billion figure for wall construction, but on other things, saying that the wall doesn't have to be concrete. It could be steel slats. Now, that isn't exactly new. The president has talked about having a wall that you could see through for about a year. But they are playing that up as a concession.
They're also asking for more money for medical aid for migrants, more immigration judges and additional spending on technology to detect narcotics at ports of entry. They say those are things that Democrats asked for and that they want too. But the big message coming from Pence was that they want Democrats to start negotiating.
What Democrats are saying, Democrats in Congress, is they would like to open the government and then start negotiating on the wall, border issues sort of separately and later. So the thing that the president has to do in this prime-time address is make a case that there really is a crisis at the southern border and also make the case that the wall is a critical part of that solution. That's not something that Pence - he didn't really fully connect those dots today in the briefing.
SHAPIRO: This idea of a crisis at the southern border connects to something we've heard the president float recently, which is the possibility of his declaring a national emergency, which would be a pretty unusual way for him to go around Congress and get the wall built. Is the White House still considering that?
KEITH: Yes. Vice President Pence said that the White House counsel's office is looking at it. The president is considering it. He said that - however, that they don't see a reason for that to have to happen because Congress should be able to work this out with them and that they shouldn't have to declare an emergency, but that they are considering it.
Experts I've spoken to about it say that the president has broad powers to declare a national emergency. And he did so with tariffs on steel and aluminum. But that - many other experts, including some of them, say it would be an abuse of power and would certainly trigger legal and other pushback.
SHAPIRO: That's NPR's Tamara Keith speaking with us from the White House. Thanks, Tam.
KEITH: You're welcome.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
As it becomes harder to claim asylum in the U.S. at ports of entry, more migrant families are taking other and more dangerous routes into the country. It's how both of the children who died last month in Border Patrol custody entered the U.S. Molly Hennessy-Fiske is a reporter for the LA Times. She recently visited the southernmost tip of New Mexico. That's where one of the children, Jakelin Caal Maquin, crossed with her father.
MOLLY HENNESSY-FISKE: It's a big expanse of desert surrounded by the Little Hatchet and Big Hatchet Mountains. And the border itself is really just marked by barbed wire fence. It's a very wild place with sort of that Old West frontier feel to it.
CORNISH: The headlines to your stories use terms like dangerous, desert crossing, forbidding terrain. Can you describe why? What makes it feel different from maybe the traditional, kind of more well-traveled border crossing areas?
HENNESSY-FISKE: Well, part of the issue, as we've seen with the death of this 7-year-old girl, is that you're so far from any kind of medical help or civilization, that a small amount of time can make an enormous difference in terms of saving your life. And I had talked to a Border Patrol agent who had worked out there, and some of them are concerned as well and said that they have been talking for years about getting added medical resources out there and wanting to get added medical training themselves because they were concerned about not only the people who they encountered out there - the migrants - but also fellow agents in what to do in an emergency.
CORNISH: What do we know in terms of the data? Are there numbers showing that there is a shift as well?
HENNESSY-FISKE: Yes, and we've seen that over the course of the past year - that in the El Paso sector, which includes these stretches of New Mexico, they caught about 11,600 people this past November. And that's 20 times the number that they caught the previous November, about a fifth of all the migrants apprehended on the southern border.
And I had talked to some of the people who were crossing in the El Paso sector - a Guatemalan migrant father and his son. And I talked to them about the death of these children recently and asked if they would make the trip again knowing that. And they said not only would they make the trip again knowing that, but they have the rest of their family, the mom and another small child, at home who they plan to to help bring up in coming months after they've paid off their debt to the smugglers.
CORNISH: Talk about why. Why are families taking this route when U.S. policy is now clearly please go to a port of entry?
HENNESSY-FISKE: Well, there's a couple of contributing factors. While the policy says it's legal for you to claim asylum at a border crossing, Border Patrol and Customs have enforced this new system during the past year of metering at more crossings, including El Paso. They station Customs officers at the midpoint of the bridges. And if a family like these families who are seeking asylum approaches the midpoint of the bridge, they'll be turned
back. And Mexican officials will ask them to join a waiting list. If they're unable to claim asylum at the crossing, some of the families might try to cross in other places. Or smugglers may be diverting them out to these other areas where they can more quickly either claim asylum or cross between the bridges.
CORNISH: For asylum seekers who are crossing illegally and then presenting themselves, does it seem like a border wall would be a deterrent?
HENNESSY-FISKE: Well, it depends on who you ask. I went and spent some time living on the border in the Rio Grande Valley this summer with a photographer. And we talked to residents there, Border Patrol agents, to commanders. And you have some who say yes, a wall would not only deter people, but it would slow down people who are crossing. And others said they'd rather see the money spent on adding more Border Patrol agents, added lights, sensors, technology, things like that.
And then other people we talked to, especially the organizations that work with migrants there, said none of that is going to really stop people, that it would be better to, you know, devote the resources to the families that are coming who are seeking asylum.
CORNISH: Molly Hennessy-Fiske of the LA Times, thank you for sharing your reporting with us.
HENNESSY-FISKE: Thank you.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
President Trump's dream of a steel wall along the southern U.S. border is still a long way from reality and may never become one. If it were built, it would be a project of enormous scale and a boon to the American steel industry. President Trump is a fan of Big Steel, and his trade policies have benefited some of the largest steel producers. NPR's Jim Zarroli reports.
JIM ZARROLI, BYLINE: President Trump says one of the advantages of building his border wall would be its impact on U.S. companies that manufacture steel. Here he was Friday at the White House.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And here's the other good thing. I'll have it done by the United States Steel Corporation, by companies in our country that are now powerful, great companies again. And they've become powerful over the last two years because of me and because of our trade policies.
ZARROLI: Trump has spoken for years about the importance of a strong domestic steel industry. He has said that without one, you don't have a country. He has talked about unfair trade practices by other steel-producing countries.
Dan Ikenson, director of trade policy studies at the Cato Institute, says Trump often goes to bat for the American steel industry.
DAN IKENSON: His administration is loaded with former steel executives and former steel trade attorneys. And that was a priority of his to impose duties on steel to help them be able to raise the prices and produce more.
ZARROLI: Trump has sometimes claimed that as a result of his trade policies, seven new steel mills are being built in the United States. That's not true, but there is at least one new plant being built, and some others are being upgraded.
There is little question that because of the tariffs on steel imports that Trump imposed last year, Big Steel companies like Nucor and U.S. Steel have seen their profits rise. Scott Paul heads the Alliance for American Manufacturing.
SCOTT PAUL: No matter which metric you look at, the steel industry is unquestionably doing better than it has been for the past couple of years.
ZARROLI: Because of the tariffs, imported steel is more expensive, and domestic suppliers no longer face much pressure to keep their prices low. But higher prices have also hurt a lot of manufacturers of numerous other products, including many in major industries like autos and housing.
Again, Dan Ikenson.
IKENSON: The problem, of course, is that as you lend a hand to particular producers - producers of upstream products like steel - you raise the costs of production for steel-consuming industries and steel-consuming firms.
ZARROLI: Companies can ask for an exemption from the tariffs, but the Commerce Department has been slow to grant them. Meanwhile, prices continue to creep up.
Steel industry officials acknowledge that some manufacturers are being hurt by price increases, but they say the increases for most are insignificant. Here was U.S. Steel CEO David Burritt in an interview on Fox Business channel last month.
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DAVID BURRITT: If you look at the total increase in that price, it's really not substantial. For an automobile, for example, the average cost of car - $30,000. The steel in that is around a thousand dollars. It's not a big number.
ZARROLI: But President Trump has repeatedly said that steel is at the heart of a robust American economy. It's a view that's not widely shared by economists. They say the benefits of tariffs to steel companies aren't worth the price being paid by other manufacturers. Jim Zarroli, NPR News, New York.
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ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
President Trump has said twice in the past year that U.S. troops will be leaving Syria quickly. There are about 2,000 of them there. Here he is in March.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We're knocking the hell out of ISIS. We'll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now.
SHAPIRO: Then again, just last month.
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TRUMP: So our boys, our young women, our men - they're all coming back, and they're coming back now. We won.
SHAPIRO: Now Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, says the withdrawal of U.S. troops will not happen as quickly as the president promises. Here to help us sort this out is NPR's Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman. Hi, Tom.
TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: Hey, Ari.
SHAPIRO: So is Bolton overriding Trump? Is Trump reversing himself? What actually is happening here?
BOWMAN: Well, it's kind of fluid, and it's kind of confusing. I mean, clearly, the latest is John Bolton, once again, among the advisers, has talked him out of pulling the troops out too quickly. And Bolton says, unlike the president's assertions, ISIS is not defeated, so those U.S. troops have to stay and complete the collapse of the caliphate.
And secondly, those American troops have to remain for a time to make sure the Kurdish rebels who are helping defeat ISIS are not attacked by Turkey. Turkey sees these rebels as aligned with Kurdish terrorists inside Turkey.
And National Security Adviser John Bolton laid out the way ahead just yesterday when he was speaking in Israel.
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JOHN BOLTON: We're going to be discussing the president's decision to withdraw, but to do so from northeast Syria in a way that makes sure that ISIS is defeated and is not able to revive itself and become a threat again, and to make sure that the defense of Israel and our other friends in the region is absolutely assured.
BOWMAN: So there's no sense from Bolton that those U.S. troops will leave anytime soon, or very soon, as the president said. And Bolton also said to make sure ISIS is, quote, "defeated." The president has repeatedly said in tweets and on videos that ISIS already has been defeated.
SHAPIRO: OK, so Bolton is saying President Trump's promise to withdraw U.S. troops will be kept, but only once conditions are met that may take some time to meet. How do you square Bolton saying, we'll do it once ISIS is defeated, with the president saying they already are defeated?
BOWMAN: Well, again, the president has said this before - ISIS is defeated. No military official has said that. Now Bolton is saying that they have not been defeated. The U.S. is still bombing areas in Syria, going after ISIS fighters. So, clearly, they have not been defeated.
SHAPIRO: Do you ascribe any significance to the fact that Bolton made these remarks in Israel? What are Israel's interests with the U.S. presence in Syria?
BOWMAN: Well, Israel is very concerned that U.S. troops could leave and leave Israel vulnerable to the Iranian forces who are moving in, of course, to prop up the Assad regime. Israel has been bombing some of the Iranian targets in Syria, and they feel if the U.S. pulled all its troops out, more Iranian forces will move into the area, further destabilize Syria and make attacks on Israel.
SHAPIRO: And what about Bolton's guarantee to the Kurdish rebels that he'll keep them safe from Turkey?
BOWMAN: Well, that's something he's going to have to work out with Turkish officials. You see, Turkey sees these rebels working with the U.S. as aligned with Kurdish terrorists inside Turkey. Turkey has threatened to attack these U.S.-backed rebels repeatedly over the past couple of years.
So the assurances they would have to get from Turkey would be, we don't want you to attack these Kurdish rebels who are helping us. And that's something that Bolton, again, has said he would make sure that they are safe. And he'll have to work that out with Turkey.
SHAPIRO: This president changes his mind so often. Is there a chance of his overriding what his aides have said? How can allies count on what Bolton is saying today - that that will actually be the policy tomorrow?
BOWMAN: They simply can't. This is the second time in less than a year that the president has said, all troops out of Syria. He said it in March, and he said it again just last month. So military officials, really, are disturbed. They're worried about the way ahead.
And you're right. The president could say a week from now, a month from now, a month and a half from now, we're leaving Syria now.
SHAPIRO: That's NPR's Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman. Thanks, Tom.
BOWMAN: You're welcome, Ari.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The Federal Reserve is being closely watched these days for its decisions on interest rates. But there was something else notable about its most recent meeting. Four of the 10 voting members were women. From member station KQED in San Francisco, Lily Jamali reports on the push to break up the boys club at the Fed.
LILY JAMALI, BYLINE: No group influences the U.S. economy, even the world economy more than the Fed. And for most of its existence, its been dominated by men. That's why it was such a big deal when Janet Yellen ran the Fed from 2014 until last year. It was a first in the institution's century-long history. Even today, much of the economic policy world is overwhelmingly male. But there's a group of women among the highest ranks of U.S. economists who are working to change this.
LAEL BRAINARD: I think the Federal Reserve has a lot of work to do to have a truly diverse set of leaders.
JAMALI: That's Federal Reserve governor Lael Brainard, who served with Yellen until President Trump replaced Yellen as chair. Brainard has spent much of her career as one of the few women in the room when major policy decisions are made.
BRAINARD: So I think part of the challenge is just becoming aware that when you're sitting around a decision-making table, you look around, and you say to yourself, this table doesn't look like a typical classroom in America. And until it does, we're not going to be getting the best possible outcomes that this country deserves.
JAMALI: Brainard says things are starting to change as a growing body of research suggests that diversity leads to better decision-making. And that matters for a powerful institution like the Fed. A government watchdog report on the Fed's lack of diversity found that more of it would strengthen its legitimacy.
AMANDA BAYER: This is having an impact - an adverse impact on our profession.
JAMALI: Swarthmore College Professor Amanda Bayer advises the Fed on all forms of diversity. She says step one of finding a solution is admitting there's a problem. And it's clear that the field of economics has one. At a time when more women than men are graduating from college and earning doctorates, just a third of Ph.D.s in economics go to women. And Bayer's research shows that figure has hardly budged in decades. Plus the share of female professors in economics lags even math and computer science.
BAYER: As we try to develop knowledge for the use of policymakers and as we try to develop specific policies, we're hindered by the lack of diversity in our ranks.
JAMALI: Championing this cause is Mary Daly. She took over as president of a San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank in October. That gave her a vote in the most recent Fed meetings. Like the few other women at the top, Daly routinely offers encouragement through speeches, as she did at this Fed-sponsored Women in Economics Symposium last year.
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MARY DALY: When you show up, you are female. And bringing that to the table is just as important as bringing your skill set to the table. And that's what I'm going to try to convince you of tonight.
JAMALI: A labor economist, Daly has looked at why more women aren't in the U.S. workforce. Rising through the ranks over two decades, she also grew interested in why there were hardly any women even in entry-level roles at the Fed itself.
DALY: I called over 250 colleges myself - placement directors, chairs of departments - and said, what do you think of the Fed? And they said, it's an old boys club where women wouldn't be welcome. And I said, let me talk to you more about the Fed.
JAMALI: Her approach worked. The proportion of women in research associate roles in San Francisco more than doubled, going from 20 to 50 percent. But bringing them in is one thing. Now the task is getting them to stay and helping them one day rise to the top of an institution where women remain scarce. For NPR News, I'm Lily Jamali.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
In November, Missouri was one of four states that voted to change how political boundaries are drawn in order to limit gerrymandering. The constitutional amendment passed in all corners of the increasingly conservative state. Now some members of both political parties want to scrap the new system before it even launches. St. Louis Public Radio's Jason Rosenbaum reports.
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UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Chanting) Yes on 1, yes on 1, yes on 1.
JASON ROSENBAUM, BYLINE: A bowling alley in St. Louis was the scene of a raucous election night celebration. On a night where Democrats saw an incumbent U.S. senator lose, many in the party like St. Louis Treasurer Tishaura Jones were heartened by the passage of Amendment 1, which overhauled state legislative redistricting.
TISHAURA JONES: And so Amendment 1 gives a voice back to the people who elected legislators to go to Jefferson City to represent their interests.
ROSENBAUM: But supporters had little chance to exhale. Just a couple of days after Election Day 2018, Republicans, like incoming Senate Leader Dave Schatz openly talked about repealing the new system.
DAVE SCHATZ: I think it's a major concern for this majority and how that is going to impact the future. And I do think that there's issues that are going to be addressed there.
ROSENBAUM: Schatz and other top Republicans want to either alter or repeal the voter-enacted redistricting plan. That plan takes much of the power away from a commission of politically connected people and places it in the hands of an independent demographer. Maps would have to emphasize competitiveness and partisan fairness.
But Republican critics see Amendment 1 as an attempt by Democrats to chip away at huge GOP majorities in the state legislature. And since Democrats are largely clustered in St. Louis and Kansas City, Senator-elect Cindy O'Laughlin says Amendment 1's criteria will create weirdly shaped districts that will be extremely difficult to represent.
CINDY O'LAUGHLIN: I see no reason for, you know, a largely Republican area to be all of a sudden connected to something that's distant from there to try to engineer the results. I think that's wrong.
ROSENBAUM: Any change or repeal to the redistricting process would have to go before Missouri voters again. But Sean Soendker Nicholson says these complaints are sour grapes. Nicholson was the campaign manager for Amendment 1, which also included curbing lobbyist gifts and making legislative emails open records. He says Amendment 1's changes will give political parties a chance to compete in parts of the state where they had a huge disadvantage.
SEAN SOENDKER NICHOLSON: Everyone believes in a fair shake, and everyone believes in competition. And everyone believes a system that's transparent. Those are universal values. There aren't - those aren't partisan values.
ROSENBAUM: But it's not just Republicans who are up in arms. African-American Democrats like State Representative-elect Maria Chappelle-Nadal contend the only way to create more competitive political maps will be to reduce the percentage of black residents in those districts. Chappelle-Nadal believes this will lead to more white politicians winning in districts with sizable minority populations, which she says will hurt communities like Ferguson that need strong black representation.
MARIA CHAPPELLE-NADAL: After what has happened in St. Louis County and the state of Missouri, I cannot by any means give up the opportunity for African-Americans to represent or any other minority to represent other minorities.
ROSENBAUM: Amendment 1 proponents point to language in the amendment aimed to protect minority voters. The measure also has support from a number of civil rights groups. Nicholson points out that the voters in Republican and Democratic parts of the state backed the initiative, and lawmakers should pay attention.
NICHOLSON: I think the governor and other legislators who are thinking about undoing the will of the voters should look long and hard at those numbers and think about the message that voters are trying to send.
ROSENBAUM: Even if the legislature acts this year, it likely won't be known if voters decide to stick with the new system until 2020 just before the new round of redistricting starts. For NPR News, I'm Jason Rosenbaum in St. Louis.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Actor Kevin Spacey appeared in court today on the Massachusetts island of Nantucket. Spacey faces a charge of indecent assault and battery on an 18-year-old man. A plea of not guilty was entered on Spacey's behalf. WBUR's Fred Thys was in the courtroom.
FRED THYS, BYLINE: Dressed in a gray suit, print shirt and polka-dot tie, Spacey walked calmly. He smiled wanly as he looked around the courtroom packed with about 40 people - mostly press but also some Nantucket residents and even some tourists from Cape Cod, curious about the proceedings. It was in the summer of 2016 that Spacey allegedly groped an 18-year-old man at a party at a local restaurant. This is the only criminal charge against Spacey, but he faced several accusations of sexual assault two years ago when the #MeToo movement swept Hollywood and the country. The clerk addressed Spacey by his legal name.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: OK, Mr. Fowler, this complaint charges that, in the town of Nantucket on July 8, 2016, you did commit indecent assault and battery on a person 14 or over.
THYS: A plea of not guilty was entered on Spacey's behalf. He was not asked to make a verbal plea. The Cape & Islands District Attorney's Office made only one request for Spacey's probation, relayed by Judge Thomas Barrett.
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THOMAS BARRETT: You'll be required to stay away and have no contact, direct or indirect, with the alleged victim, all right?
THYS: Spacey nodded. The judge granted a request from Spacey's attorney to require the prosecution to preserve texts between the alleged victim and his girlfriend starting on the night of the alleged assault. The attorney said these texts would likely help Spacey's case. Spacey made no remarks in court other than to say thank you to a court officer who showed him to a seat.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Everyone's staying back.
THYS: He said nothing to reporters outside either as he walked from the courthouse to an SUV, waiting to take him to the private jet that had brought him to the island. For NPR News, I'm Fred Thys in Nantucket.
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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
It was a night of surprising wins and snubs at the Golden Globes, leaving many viewers either puzzled, outraged or both. Now, to help us make sense of last night, we brought in NPR's Linda Holmes. Hey there, Linda.
LINDA HOLMES, BYLINE: Hi, Audie.
CORNISH: And joining us also is Aisha Harris, culture editor of The New York Times. Hey there, Aisha.
AISHA HARRIS: Hi, Audie.
CORNISH: So to start, Linda, every year people are like, what were they thinking at the Golden Globes?
HOLMES: Yeah.
CORNISH: Who votes? And why is it always puzzling to us what they like?
HOLMES: Well, it's a fairly small group of 90 or so journalists from outlets not based in the United States. And none of them are Oscar voters, which explains kind of part of why it often isn't a good predictor of the Oscars.
CORNISH: But it's still part of an Oscar campaign, right? Like, people wanna do well there because it puts your name out there in the conversation all over again. Or you can be snubbed, like apparently "A Star Is Born," which is kind of what happened last night.
HOLMES: Right. Other than "Shallow," the song, it did not - didn't really make any big ones.
CORNISH: So here's actor Bill Murray announcing the award for best picture, musical or comedy.
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BILL MURRAY: Oh, God. The winner is "Green Book."
(APPLAUSE)
CORNISH: OK so I'm not going to try and translate what that, oh, God meant.
HOLMES: Never try and translate Bill Murray.
CORNISH: I do know "Green Book" has been criticized for its portrayal of the black concert pianist Donald Shirley. His family says the movie doesn't reflect his story. There's been criticism of the politics of the film. Aisha Harris, are you surprised?
HARRIS: I'm not too surprised just because I do think that this kind of plays into a lot of the things we've seen in the past that voters tend to go for. It has this faux progressive tone to it about the way in which race can be overcome by just becoming friends with a person of another race. And I think Peter Farrelly, the director, his speech compounded that last night when he talked about how we all have something in common, and we should be able to get over these things. I don't think that helped his case. But I do think that that probably played into a factor of why it won.
CORNISH: The second film that did well last night was "Bohemian Rhapsody," which is about the band Queen. It had to cut ties with its director Bryan Singer before production ended. He has been accused of sexual misconduct. And he made a statement of sorts - right? - after the winners were announced. Linda, tell us what happened.
HOLMES: Well, he had a picture of himself that he posted saying, you know, thank you for recognizing me. And he's sitting in a director chair. It's really unusual to have the lead actor in a film, Rami Malek in this case, accept an award for his lead performance, and the film accept for best drama picture, and nobody mentions the director.
CORNISH: Right. And he sort of drew a line under it by making this kind of public comment.
HOLMES: He sure did.
CORNISH: On a more positive note, actress Regina King won best supporting actress for her performance in the film "If Beale Street Could Talk." And she went up on stage and made a pledge that women would make up 50 percent of her productions for the next two years.
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REGINA KING: Anyone out there who is in a position of power - not just in our industry, in all industries - I challenge you to challenge yourself and stand with us in solidarity and do the same.
CORNISH: Aisha Harris, looking back at 2018, was it a good year for women behind the camera?
HARRIS: I think there were definitely some some highs and then also some disappointing lows. I think when I think about some of the movies that were most praised especially by critics - even if they didn't necessarily find an audience, all of those films were directed by women. I think about something like "The Rider," which was directed by Chloe Zao, and Tamara Jenkins, who directed a "Private Life." There were a lot of movies that I think were critically praised. And then you also had something like "A Wrinkle In Time," which was directed by Ava DuVernay. She was the first woman of color to direct a $100 million-budgeted movie. And unfortunately it just didn't quite connect with audiences. And so I think there were definitely some high points but also some low points as well.
CORNISH: When it comes to Sandra Oh and Andy Samberg hosting, I'm not hearing bad news, so to speak, right? People are kind of like, you know, no news is good news in this situation.
HARRIS: Hosting is really hard.
CORNISH: It's such a hard gig, which brings me to the Oscars because for the last month people have been debating the host there. Kevin Hart stepped down after a big outcry when people brought up his past homophobic tweets. Ellen DeGeneres tried to step in with a lengthy interview and trying to revive the effort to have him host. Aisha, where do things stand now?
HARRIS: It seems like the Oscars still does not have a host. My sense is that when they do, if they were to have a host, they would immediately announce it because it is kind of embarrassing at this point to be so close to the Oscar nominations and not have anyone who will be hosting.
CORNISH: Linda, do the Oscars even need a host?
HOLMES: I think it's less that the Oscars need a host and more that going without a host this year would indicate basically that they couldn't find anyone...
CORNISH: Who would even want to do it.
HOLMES: ...Who would even want to do it. And I think it doesn't necessarily hurt the Oscars not to have a host. But it would hurt them to have it appear to be a gig that nobody wants because it's supposed to be this really high-profile, kind of cherry on top of your career to host the Oscars. And to get to the point where nobody wants to do it, when the Oscars are kind of dropping in relevance anyway for a variety of reasons, I think it's a blow to them on a PR level if they come out and just say, we're just going to not have a host because we can't find anybody who's not going to get us in trouble who wants to do it.
CORNISH: That's Linda Holmes, host of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. Thanks, Linda.
HOLMES: Thank you, Audie.
CORNISH: And Aisha Harris, culture editor for The New York Times, thank you for joining us.
HARRIS: Thank you.
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ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
For those counting, we are on Day 17 of the partial government shutdown. About 800,000 federal employees are still going without pay, and there is no end in sight.
President Trump says he'll deliver an Oval Office address tomorrow night to explain why he's continuing to demand $5.7 billion for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. He plans to visit that border Thursday to talk about security issues with local officials there.
NPR congressional correspondent Scott Detrow's here in the studio. Hi, Scott.
SCOTT DETROW, BYLINE: Hey, good afternoon.
SHAPIRO: OK, so over the weekend, there were some talks between Vice President Mike Pence and congressional staff. Any common ground come out of that?
DETROW: Those talks boiled down to this - Vice President Pence sticking to the insistence on $5.7 billion and Democrats saying, nope, they're not going to give that money. They did not - so no real progress.
In some letters to top lawmakers, the White House also asked for $100 million increase to hire more border patrol agents and $800 million in additional funding to add 52,000 beds to these detention centers.
SHAPIRO: Does that mean the White House number is going up, not down? As usual, in negotiations, the number would go down.
DETROW: I believe that's - yeah. Yeah, they're adding to this a little bit - things in addition to the wall.
Now, Democrats have said all along they're happy to have negotiations and be flexible on all these different fronts. They're for border security. It's just the idea of the wall itself. Nancy Pelosi is repeatedly calling this immoral lately. It's hard to budge on something you view as immoral.
SHAPIRO: So if there doesn't seem to be any progress on negotiations, this week might be the first time federal workers don't get a paycheck since the shutdown started. What happens next? Where does that leave things?
DETROW: We are seeing a ramped up public push from President Trump to make his case. So far, he has not really had a focused PR effort. We had a couple last-minute public appearances at the White House last week - no real sustained push or strategy here.
But the president says he's now going to do what is traditionally the most powerful tool that a president has, and that is the prime-time Oval Office address. This would be President Trump's first one. The question is, though, President Trump is someone who is constantly in the news, saturating coverage tweet by tweet, rally by rally. How much value does that Oval Office address have when the president is out in public so much every day, as President Trump is?
After that speech, he's going to the border, as you mentioned. And I think that makes it clear that the White House doesn't expect this to end anytime soon.
SHAPIRO: If that's what we're seeing from the White House, what about from the Democrats?
DETROW: They are getting a bit more aggressive as well and using some of the tools that Democrats have to increase leverage. Last week, you may remember, the House of Representatives passed a funding bill that would reopen the government without that wall funding. Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, says he would not call that to a Senate vote because President Trump has said he would veto it.
So several Democratic senators have said, OK, if he's going to do that, Democrats should push back and block every bill from coming to a vote in the Senate until McConnell holds a vote on that funding. Democrats would have the power to do that because he needs 60 votes to advance a bill in the Senate.
Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, has not fully committed to that blanket strategy yet, but it's pretty notable. Top Democratic aides are telling us that Schumer has told Democrats he is going to vote against the next bill that comes up in the Senate tomorrow, and that's a bill that would provide defense support - national security support for Israel.
So Trump - rather, Schumer is indicating that he is going to start going along with this shutdown campaign in the Senate. So we could have a shutdown Senate in addition to a shutdown federal government.
SHAPIRO: Scott, I also want to ask you about this trial balloon threat option - call it what you will - that President Trump has raised. He says he may declare a national emergency in order to get the wall built, going around Congress. How likely does that look right now?
DETROW: Well, Vice President Pence spoke to reporters today at the White House. He said that option is still under consideration. Top Democrats, as you'd expect, have said that the president does have this authority, but they would challenge it right away. They would challenge this in court and question whether or not there is a true emergency, as President Trump would be declaring.
I'd say that's the key thing to listen for in this Oval Office speech tomorrow night - whether or not President Trump talks about that or even goes as far as to declare that emergency. So far in public appearances, the president has repeated the same arguments he's been making in favor of the wall, and they haven't seemed to convince any Democrats.
SHAPIRO: NPR's Scott Detrow, thank you.
DETROW: Thank you.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The shutdown might be causing longer security lines at airports around the country. The Transportation Security Administration confirms that a growing number of its employees are calling in sick. But the president and the Department of Homeland Security deny a sickout is having much of an effect on air travel.
NPR's David Schaper is at O'Hare Airport in Chicago. Travelers there are increasingly concerned about their plans as the shutdown drags on. And, David, first, can you describe the situation at O'Hare? Are security lines actually longer?
DAVID SCHAPER, BYLINE: Actually, Audie, today, they're not noticeably so. This was a busy weekend of travel. And over the weekend, I've heard lines were a little bit longer. You know, it was the end of the holiday season, and a lot of people are getting back to work, so they're traveling for work purposes, possibly. But the major airlines that operate here at O'Hare say they haven't had any major problems.
There have been problems reported elsewhere around the country. There have been some delays and long lines and a few people even missing flights because of the long lines, so they say. And some airline officials told me they are getting increasingly concerned about the impacts of this shutdown on operations in the future if it continues.
Illinois Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth was here at O'Hare today talking with reporters. And she says she, too, is increasingly concerned that air travel will be affected.
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TAMMY DUCKWORTH: I'm very concerned about security. It's not affecting O'Hare as much, but at other airports around the country, many TSA agents are calling off sick in order to go work other jobs because they have to put food on the table. They have to meet rent - all of that. And so at a time when the nation's security is at stake, we're actually losing the number of TSA agents that are on the job, and that is deeply concerning to me.
CORNISH: David, what about that? What about TSA agents themselves? What are you hearing from them?
SCHAPER: Well, none of the TSA agents I did talk to today were willing to go on tape. And they haven't missed a paycheck yet, but they will Friday if this shutdown continues. And a lot of them are getting nervous about that. They say they can't really afford to miss a couple of weeks' pay, even if it's going to be made up later.
There is one gentleman who told me he doesn't agree with the president and is not willing to go without pay to get the wall. He says he wants secure borders, but he needs to be paid.
CORNISH: And passengers - are they feeling the effects or maybe changing their travel plans because of the shutdown?
SCHAPER: Well, I did talk to one gentleman from Boston who was flying here to Chicago. He said he had smooth sailing this morning in the airport in Boston. And he has a lot of travel planned early in this new year and trips, really, the next couple of weeks in a row. So while he says he's not feeling the effects yet, he is getting increasingly nervous that there may be some impacts in the future.
Another passenger I talked to, Mary Rose Alexander of here in Chicago, was headed to Phoenix on business. And she, too, is getting increasingly concerned.
MARY ROSE ALEXANDER: I'm concerned about the lines. I'm concerned about the safety. And I'm definitely - yeah, I'm definitely concerned about it. I'd like the shutdown to end.
SCHAPER: And she and others say that they're going to start trying to plan to get to the airport earlier in case these lines get longer.
CORNISH: Are there any other signs of, I guess, government functions at the airports that have been affected?
SCHAPER: Well, air traffic controllers are on the job, and they will continue to be so. But like the TSA agents, they are not getting paid, so there could be problems as they go without paychecks if this shutdown continues.
Also, a lot of the airlines need inspections, safety certifications and even training programs. A statement from the group Airlines for America, which represents airlines of Washington, D.C., says that some carriers are beginning to see the effects of the government shutdown, specifically regarding the certification of new aircraft and the implementation of new training programs for pilots.
And so they are increasingly concerned that their operations could be affected in the very near future. And they're urging elected officials to reach an agreement to reopen the government as quickly as possible.
CORNISH: That's NPR's David Schaper at O'Hare Airport in Chicago. David, thank you for your reporting.
SCHAPER: My pleasure, Audie.
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ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
A suspect in the drive-by shooting of a 7-year-old girl appeared in a Houston courtroom today. The girl's death captured national attention just before New Year's, when the family said a white man had fired into their car. This suspect is African-American, and some people are saying the initial calls of a hate crime were irresponsible.
Florian Martin of Houston Public Media reports.
FLORIAN MARTIN, BYLINE: Jazmine Barnes died in the car she was riding in with her mother and three sisters. The family described the shooter as a white man in his 30s or 40s driving a red pickup truck. The Harris County Sheriff's Office released a composite sketch and video of a truck racing away from the scene.
For nearly a week, authorities were on the hunt for the alleged white killer. Civil rights activists got involved, some offering large rewards. At a rally held on Saturday, much of the conversation revolved around race. Here's Texas Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee.
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SHEILA JACKSON LEE: And do not be afraid to call this what it seems to be - a hate crime.
MARTIN: But the next morning, the sheriff's office announced the arrest of Eric Black Jr., a 20-year-old African-American. He's charged with murder in Jazmine's death. Prosecutors say Black and an accomplice mistook the family's car for that of someone they had gotten into an argument with the night before. To a reporter's question on Sunday whether her comments were irresponsible, Congresswoman Jackson Lee said absolutely not.
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JACKSON LEE: It would be the kind of thing that lends itself to thinking if this description came in however way from a frightened car full of young girls, baby girls and their frightened mother.
MARTIN: Other questions have bubbled up. Some are wondering if authorities should not have released an image of a suspect that turned out nothing like the alleged perpetrator. Sheriff Ed Gonzalez was asked about it on "Houston Matters," a public media talk show.
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ED GONZALEZ: Sometimes the information that comes forward initially - I mean, that's what you have to go by unless you have other descriptors or information simply because if you have somebody that's out there firing upon families or children, we need to identify those persons or individuals as quickly as possible.
MARTIN: Gonzalez says it's possible the driver of the pickup truck was the last person the family saw before the shooting, and they simply believed him to be the shooter. Kevin Buckner teaches criminal justice at the University of Houston-Downtown. He says witnesses can make such mistakes. He cites one case where a woman was sexually assaulted in her apartment.
KEVIN BUCKNER: The person who was being assaulted actually described for police a news person that she saw on the television set while the assault was taking place.
MARTIN: The sheriff says the case isn't closed yet. He says there's one additional suspect, and authorities would still like to speak to the driver of the red pickup truck to see if he can provide more details about the incident. For NPR News, I'm Florian Martin in Houston.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The U.S. and China resumed trade talks in Beijing today. Negotiators picked up where President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping left off on December 1. The leaders agreed to a 90-day truce in the trade war, a temporary hold on any additional tariffs. If there's no deal, Trump says he'll increase tariffs on a bunch of Chinese goods March 1. Over the weekend, he sounded optimistic.
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PRES DONALD TRUMP: The China talks are going very well. I spoke to President Xi recently. I really believe they want to make a deal. The tariffs have absolutely hurt China very badly.
SHAPIRO: Wendy Cutler is a former U.S. trade negotiator and now vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute. Welcome.
WENDY CUTLER: Thank you.
SHAPIRO: What's the goal of the U.S. delegation in Beijing this week?
CUTLER: I think their primary goal will be to assess the seriousness of the Chinese delegation in addressing the range of U.S. concerns with respect to China's market. Now, those include the lack of market access, high tariffs, high bilateral trade deficit, forced technology transfer, lax intellectual property protection enforcement and other issues as well.
China has rolled out in the past few weeks a number of measures and have made a number of announcements about increasing purchases of U.S. soybeans, temporarily reducing the U.S. auto tariff and stepping up IPR enforcement.
SHAPIRO: That's intellectual property rights.
CUTLER: Correct. And at this meeting, I think the United States will be very interested on hearing more details and more specificity and the time frames for these announcements that China has made. And I think they'll also be looking for additional concessions by China as well.
SHAPIRO: So we just heard President Trump say he thinks China has a vested interest in cutting a deal because U.S. tariffs are hurting them. Do you see evidence of that? Do you think that's true?
CUTLER: Absolutely. I think the tariffs are having an effect on the Chinese economy, but I also think they're affecting the U.S. economy. So I think both sides are coming to the table, trying to strike a deal, wanting a deal, but I don't think a deal at any cost. And so we'll have to see if they can find common ground if both sides have the flexibility to move off their positions and to find a negotiated solution.
SHAPIRO: And how absolute do you think that March deadline is? If the two sides are close to a deal, do you think it could move?
CUTLER: Oh, I think that if substantive progress is made and some breakthroughs are made on certain issues, that we may see a rollover of the talks and the continuation of the tariff truce while both sides continue to negotiate. That's normal.
SHAPIRO: You know, President Trump can be so impulsive. He often undermines aides and contradicts advisers. Do you think the parties can negotiate in good faith here, or is there a risk that Trump might blow up whatever they might agree to?
CUTLER: As we've seen, there's always a risk, as you mentioned. That said, I think the fact that Ambassador Lighthizer is leading these talks is very important. I think the president has a lot of confidence in Ambassador Lighthizer, particularly...
SHAPIRO: This is Ambassador Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. trade representative.
CUTLER: Correct, particularly given Lighthizer's success in negotiating the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement. And so I think that Lighthizer goes into these talks with a lot of credibility and the backing of the president.
SHAPIRO: And what are the stakes here if the two sides can't reach a deal?
CUTLER: The stakes are extremely high. I think if the tariffs go up to 25 percent on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports into the United States, the U.S. is going to be feeling this very quickly across our economy. And I think there'll be quick reverberations in our markets. And I think that the Chinese markets in other corners of their economy will respond as well. And I think overall global economic growth will sink. And so the stakes are very high.
SHAPIRO: That's Wendy Cutler, former acting deputy U.S. trade representative during the Obama administration, now with the Asia Society Policy Institute. Thanks a lot.
CUTLER: Thank you.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Last night, the Chicago Bears fell victim to one of the most debated tricks in the coaching book - icing the kicker. Here's what happened. With seconds to go in their NFL playoff game against the Philadelphia Eagles, Bears kicker Cody Parkey lines up for a field goal. They're down by one, so the game is riding on this kick, OK? The ball is snapped. The kick goes up and sails through the uprights, except that it doesn't count. The NBC announcers don't sound surprised. They know exactly what happened.
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AL MICHAELS: Doug Pederson knowing - yep, getting that timeout just before the snap.
CORNISH: The Eagles' coach called a timeout right before the play. That's icing the kicker. It's supposed to rattle his nerves, get in his head. So Cody Parkey has to do it over again. And this time, the announcers are surprised.
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MICHAELS: And - oh, he hits the upright again. That's impossible.
CORNISH: Ouch - the kick bounces out. Bears lose. Eagles win. A debate is reignited because people keep talking about this idea. Does icing the kicker work? Well, joining us now is Toby Moskowitz. He investigated this question in his book "Scorecasting." Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
TOBY MOSKOWITZ: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
CORNISH: All right, so to begin, I try and put myself in the mind of a kicker. Is this something that would, you know, rattle one? It's a high-stakes moment of the game.
MOSKOWITZ: Well, you know what? You would be rattled. I would be rattled. But a professional football kicker shouldn't be rattled. I think nowadays most kickers fully expect to be iced, meaning that they know the opposing coach is going to call a timeout right before they kick, and they're mentally prepared for that.
The other thing is these kickers have kicked thousands and thousands of kicks. I don't even think they're aware of what else is going on in the field. They're just - it's like asking Roger Federer, are you nervous when you hit a second serve? I don't even think he thinks about it. It's just so automatic.
CORNISH: Now, let's get to the numbers. Is it effective?
MOSKOWITZ: So we crunched the numbers several years ago. We added up all kicks over about a decade worth in the NFL, and we looked at times when the kicker in pressure situations was iced versus not iced. And what we found was the success rate was really no different between the two situations. Suppose I hit my kicks from that distance about 70 percent of the time. You'd expect me to miss 30 percent of the time. Well, icing the kicker doesn't cause you to miss. It's just that kickers will miss that kick about 30 percent of the time. And some of those times, about half the time, the coach will call a timeout.
You know, it feels like you're getting in the kicker's head. But at least if you look at the numbers on the field - and again, you're controlling for distance and the difficulty of the kick. Whether or not a timeout is called right before the kick doesn't really make much of a difference.
CORNISH: So why do coaches like it?
MOSKOWITZ: So that's an interesting question, and we thought about this as well. One aspect is, you know, I think at that point in the game - and you take last night as an example - what's a coach supposed to do? Doug Pederson's options are to sit there and wait while the final 10 seconds tick and he sees whether the ball goes through the uprights or not. Or he's got some timeouts left at his disposal. His fans want him to do something. His players might even want him to do something. Even he might feel like he wants to do something. So why not try it, right?
Imagine the ball goes through the uprights and he didn't call the timeout. The Philadelphia fans are now going to be screaming, oh, if you'd only iced the kicker, whereas I think if he does it and Parkey hits it last night - he ices him, but he makes it anyway - no one's going to blame him. There's nothing else he could have done. But leaving something on the table that people feel like you could have done - psychologically, we just don't like that.
CORNISH: Toby Moskowitz is professor of finance at Yale University. He's co-author of "Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played And Games Are Won." Thank you so much, Toby.
MOSKOWITZ: Thank you.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Cyntoia Brown is getting out of prison in Tennessee. Brown was 16 years old when she was convicted of killing a man who had paid to have sex with her. The case drew national attention after the Supreme Court ruled that most juveniles should not be sentenced to life without parole. Today, the governor of Tennessee granted her full clemency. Sergio Martinez-Beltran of member station WPLN reports.
SERGIO MARTINEZ-BELTRAN, BYLINE: You are getting out in August. Those were the first words Cyntoia Brown heard from her lawyers today when the governor granted her clemency.
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KATHRYN SINBACK: I've known Cyntoia for - since the day after she was arrested, and I've never seen the peace and joy on her face that I saw today.
MARTINEZ-BELTRAN: That's Kathryn Sinback, Brown's attorney in juvenile court, explaining how Brown reacted when her lawyers went into the Tennessee prison for women and told her about the decision of Governor Bill Haslam. Brown has already served 15 years of a life sentence for the murder of Johnny Allen, who she claims paid her for sex. Brown was 16 at the time, and she contends she killed him in self-defense.
The governor praised Brown's rehabilitation in his decision to grant her clemency. Brown is 30 now and mentors troubled youth. She already completed a college degree while behind bars and is working on a second one. In a written statement read by Sinback, Cyntoia Brown said she will do everything she can to justify the governor's faith in her.
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SINBACK: (Reading) My hope is to help other young girls avoid ending up where I have been.
MARTINEZ-BELTRAN: The outgoing governor's decision to commute her sentence comes after mounting national pressure from celebrities, politicians and criminal justice advocates. And a federal appeals court has been considering whether Tennessee's requirement that Brown serve at least 51 years of a life sentence is too harsh.
In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled most life-without-parole sentences for juveniles are cruel and unusual. Brown's case could serve as a legal precedent for others involving sex trafficking and minors, says Derri Smith, the executive director with End Slavery Tennessee.
DERRI SMITH: The U.S. Supreme Court has already made several key rulings saying that it's not reasonable to sentence a minor with a life sentence. And the fact that we have a cultural mind shift, obviously recognizing the effects of trauma and the exploitation that's involved, has got to have an impact on future legal decisions.
MARTINEZ-BELTRAN: In the meantime, Brown's own future post-release is still in question. She'll get out of prison in August. And State Senator Brenda Gilmore says she wants to make sure Brown has the appropriate support once she's out of prison.
BRENDA GILMORE: When she's released, I think she's going to need a lot of resources so that she will not ever have to look back and think that I will have to resort to prostitution to put bread on my table or have a roof over my head.
MARTINEZ-BELTRAN: Brown will be on parole for the next 10 years. As part of her commutation, she'll need to complete her bachelor's degree, maintain employment and continue her community service. For NPR News, I'm Sergio Martinez-Beltran in Nashville.
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AUDIE CORNISH (HOST): Authorities in Thailand say a young Saudi woman who faced deportation can stay for now. The 18-year-old was detained on Saturday while trying to get to Australia, where she planned to seek asylum. She said her family was abusive and that she feared being harmed or even killed if forced to go back to Saudi Arabia. Michael Sullivan reports from Bangkok.
MICHAEL SULLIVAN (BYLINE): It was touch and go this morning for Rahaf Mohammed Alqunun, who began the day wondering if she would be deported back to Kuwait and on to Saudi Arabia, her home. After Thai authorities told her she'd be on the 11:15 a.m. Kuwaiti air flight, she hunkered down in the transit hotel room, barricading the door, furiously sending out tweets about her plight, including this defiant one also posted by Human Rights Watch.
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RAHAF MOHAMMED ALQUNUN (ASYLUM SEEKER): I'm not leaving my room until I see UNHCR. I want asylum.
SULLIVAN: She got half her wish. The flight left without her. And in the early evening, United Nations refugee officials were finally allowed in to meet with her and take her from the airport under their care. The asylum request will take more time. And even though the Thai government appears to have given in to international pressure not to force her to return...
PHIL ROBERTSON (DEPUTY ASIA DIRECTOR, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH): Let's see how it plays out. I mean, ultimately actions speak louder than words.
SULLIVAN: Phil Robertson is the Bangkok-based deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch. He says it's too early to celebrate given Thailand's mixed record when it comes to asylum-seekers since the military seized power in 2014.
ROBERTSON: We have had cases where Han Chinese who were supposed to resettle to Canada on a Monday were sent back to China on a Saturday. There have been Cambodian refugees, people who are recognized as persons of concern by UNHCR, who were sent back across the border. So I think caution is the watchword that we have to really sort of keep focused on.
SULLIVAN: Robertson is worried about the Saudi response in particular. He doesn't think Saudi Arabia is going to let this go quietly because of the precedent it might set for other Saudi women who might also want to break free of a system that doesn't even allow them to travel abroad without permission from a male relative. For now, Rahaf Mohammed Alqunun and her supporters will celebrate the victory however small and hope that she can be allowed to continue her journey interrupted Saturday evening to Australia and, she hopes, to freedom. For NPR News, I'm Michael Sullivan in Bangkok.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Law enforcement officials across the country have relied on DNA to help catch criminals for years. Now a volunteer group is applying it in a different way. They are using DNA and genealogy to help identify unknown crime victims, so-called John and Jane Does. From member station WBOI in Fort Wayne, Ind., Barb Anguiano reports.
BARBARA ANGUIANO, BYLINE: In 1988, John Miller murdered 8-year-old April Tinsley in Fort Wayne, Ind. Police at the scene recovered DNA samples, but they weren't able to do much with them back then. Fast-forward to last spring when Fort Wayne investigators were finally able to process the collected DNA samples from a 30-year-old crime scene and find genetic matches to two brothers living near Fort Wayne. After an exact DNA match, they arrested and charged John Miller, who was convicted in December and is now serving an 80-year prison sentence. The technology that helped them find Miller is being used by genealogists to identify crime victims across the country. Margaret Press helped set up the group DNA Doe Project. She says her motivation came from helping adoptees find their birth parents.
MARGARET PRESS: Because in both cases, the parents are not known or anything about the ancestry, and once you know the parents, you can figure out where the Doe fits in the tree.
ANGUIANO: Last year, her group helped police in Ohio identify Marcia Sossoman King, whose remains were found in a ditch nearly 40 years ago.
PRESS: You really need to look at all the ancestors and all the cousins in order to narrow down on the actual person.
ANGUIANO: Working with law enforcement, DNA Doe was able to locate one of King's first cousins using a public database called GEDmatch. That's where people upload their DNA information in hopes of extending their family trees. Here's how it works. When you buy a DNA test kit like 23andMe or Ancestry, the companies also allow you to download your genetic code, which you can then upload to GEDmatch. GEDmatch gathers data from lots of DNA websites. Press says access to private databases like 23andMe or Ancestry would make the search process much quicker. But private databases are closed to law enforcement. Mark McKenna practices privacy law and teaches at the University of Notre Dame. He says those restrictions make sense.
MARK MCKENNA: On the one hand, you get this kind of information that has a lot of potentially positive uses, right? It lets you solve crimes. But there's always - there are dark sides to all of these things. And, you know, so most people who work in the privacy area would say there are questions about, like, how do you collect the data in the first place?
ANGUIANO: McKenna says right now, people are enthralled with how easy this is to do. And searching databases is increasingly common for hints into the lives of John and Jane Does. So far, the group has helped identify six people that are among the thousands that go missing each year. In Steuben County, Ind., not far from the Tinsley and King cases, detective Chris Emerick is heading an investigation to find the identity of a Jane Doe found in 1999.
CHRIS EMERICK: We get really hopeful. We're hoping, hey, maybe we finally identified her. Maybe we can finally put this case to rest and give the family closure.
ANGUIANO: Emerick says his motivation comes from the thought that if she was his relative, he'd want to know what happened to her. For NPR News, I'm Barb Anguiano in Fort Wayne.
(SOUNDBITE OF MANU DELAGO'S "BIGGER THAN HOME")
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Going all the way back to Harry Truman, presidents have used a televised Oval Office address to underline the seriousness of an issue. Take John F. Kennedy speaking on the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
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JOHN F KENNEDY: The presence of these large, long-range and clearly offensive weapons of sudden mass destruction constitutes an explicit threat to the peace and security of all the Americas.
SHAPIRO: Or here's Ronald Reagan speaking after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986.
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RONALD REAGAN: Today is a day for mourning and remembering. Nancy and I are pained to the core over the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger.
SHAPIRO: Many of these speeches have shaped history. And with President Trump's first Oval Office address tonight, NPR senior Washington editor and correspondent Ron Elving is here. Hi, Ron.
RON ELVING, BYLINE: Hello, Ari.
SHAPIRO: So let's go back to the beginning. President Truman was the first in 1947, when not many people in the country even had television sets. What was he talking about?
ELVING: Even then, it was a way of signifying special seriousness. And in this case, he was talking about the famine conditions in Europe in the aftermath of World War II.
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HARRY S TRUMAN: An essential requirement of lasting peace is the restoration of the countries of Western Europe as free, self-supporting democracies.
ELVING: Fewer than 1 home in 10 at the time had a television. And of course, there was a radio hook-up to take care of everyone else.
SHAPIRO: We also heard President Reagan there using the Oval Office address as a way to console the country, sort of the role of consoler in chief that presidents so often play. What other presidents have used the address in that way?
ELVING: George W. Bush was not the communicator Reagan was perhaps, but he had great sympathy in September of 2001 after those terror attacks that have weighed, ever since, so heavily on our foreign policy and our national life.
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GEORGE W BUSH: Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.
SHAPIRO: Ron, what other ways have presidents used the Oval Office address?
ELVING: Both Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon announced their departures, if you want to put it that way, from the Oval Office, Johnson saying that he wouldn't run again that year.
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LYNDON B JOHNSON: I shall not seek, and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president.
ELVING: And Nixon saying that he was about to resign that week.
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RICHARD NIXON: I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent every instinct in my body.
ELVING: And doing it from the Oval, as they did, had a kind of solemnity and finality, almost a legal sense of commitment about it.
SHAPIRO: Technology has changed so much and so quickly, it now seems that we are inundated with news, including news of the president. He can speak to the public directly through Twitter and other channels. Does an Oval Office address carry the same kind of weight for President Trump that it might have for earlier presidents? Why would he choose this medium?
ELVING: It's a bit surprising. He is such a creature of the social media platforms, as you say. It just seems quaint to see him in a setting so associated with the nation's past.
But because of that, because of the ghosts in this space, if you will, the White House hopes that this rather jarring image and this association of Trump with these past presidents will help accentuate the sense of crisis about the border that the president is trying to convey.
SHAPIRO: Does an Oval Office address carry the weight and gravitas that it used to? I mean, when I was a White House correspondent covering the Obama administration and you were my editor, Obama only delivered three Oval Office addresses in his eight years. More often, he would speak from the East Room or the Grand Cross Hall that connects the East and West Wings of the White House. He used that venue when he announced the death of Osama bin Laden.
ELVING: That's right. Obama never seemed to get comfortable with the desk shot. And indeed, he had the same kind of relationship to speaking that Donald Trump has, that assumption that if there's a big audience, you ought to be doing something other than sitting down.
SHAPIRO: NPR senior Washington editor and correspondent Ron Elving. Thanks, Ron.
ELVING: Thank you, Ari.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
After several years of decline, carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. are on the rise. That's according to a new report out today. NPR's Geoff Brumfiel has more on what it could mean for the planet.
GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: Here's the upside of an economic downturn. Greenhouse gas emissions also go down. Factories are using less electricity. There are fewer trucks and planes shipping goods and people. And that's exactly what happened after the financial crisis of 2008. Carbon dioxide emissions plummeted.
They've been bouncing up and down since then, but last year, the economy was on a roll. Output was up. And now an estimate by the Rhodium Group, an independent research firm, shows that CO2 emissions were way up.
TREVOR HOUSER: It appears based on preliminary data that emissions in the U.S. grew by the highest rate since 2010 when we were recovering from the Great Recession.
BRUMFIEL: Trevor Houser is an author on the new estimate. He says carbon dioxide emissions are up roughly 3.4 percent over last year. The big drivers were increases in electricity demand, which burns natural gas and coal, and big growth in trucking and aviation.
HOUSER: All those Amazon packages, all those holiday vacations...
BRUMFIEL: That come with a booming economy. Now, there were some areas where decisions by government and industry made a difference. A record number of coal-fired power plants closed in 2018, and emissions from passenger automobiles dropped slightly due to better fuel economy standards. But it was not enough, and Houser wants more aggressive policies to drive down CO2.
That seems unlikely for now. Policies to limit greenhouse gas emissions started under the Obama administration are now being halted and even reversed under President Trump.
HOUSER: What we've seen is backsliding in federal policy, and we're starting to feel the effects of that now.
BRUMFIEL: So is Houser rooting for another recession to bring emissions down again?
HOUSER: I (laughter) - I am not. I am not. Over the long term, short-term emissions decline as a result of a recession is not something anyone's cheering for.
BRUMFIEL: What's needed, he says, is a strong economy and the right incentives to invest in green technologies. Geoff Brumfiel, NPR News.
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ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Today is the eighth anniversary of the 2011 Tucson shooting that gravely injured former Democratic Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. She's in Washington lobbying with other gun control advocates for a new bipartisan background check bill.
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GABRIELLE GIFFORDS: Now is the time to come together, be responsible Democrats, Republicans, everyone. We must never stop fighting. Fight. Fight. Fight.
SHAPIRO: NPR congressional correspondent Susan Davis is following the gun debate and joins us now. Hi, Sue.
SUSAN DAVIS, BYLINE: Hey, Ari.
SHAPIRO: This is just the second week of the new House Democratic majority. And after the government shutdown, gun legislation is already right near the top of the agenda. What does this say about the changing attitudes of Democrats on the gun issue?
DAVIS: I think it says Democrats aren't really afraid of the issue anymore. You know, a lot has changed since Democrats last controlled the House, including the Senate, under President Obama. They had control of everything about a decade ago, and they chose to do nothing on the issue of guns. Some things have changed. I mean, first, the sheer number of these mass shooting events that have occurred since the 2011 Tucson shooting has changed the national conversation. There's also just a political reality that there aren't that many Democrats left in Congress who don't support new restrictions on guns. The midterms - the 2018 midterms saw a lot of Democrats actually running on this issue, saying elect me to vote for gun control. And this new freshmen class of lawmakers see their majority as a mandate to vote for things like universal background checks.
SHAPIRO: Tell us about this new bill that was introduced today. It calls for universal background checks. How would it work?
DAVIS: So it would essentially extend current law for gun purchases - when you go to a store and buy a gun, you have to have a background check - to all gun sales and most gun transfers. This includes things like Internet sales, purchases at gun shows and person-to-person sales. There would also be some exemptions. It would not include, for instance, if you have an immediate family member who wants to gift a firearm to another member of the family. That kind of exchange would still be exempt.
SHAPIRO: The Senate has repeatedly considered passing tougher background checks and repeatedly failed to pass those bills. Do you think this changes the calculation on what could actually become law?
DAVIS: It doesn't seem likely that it's going to become law, but there's still some interesting movement about this bill. One of the authors of the Senate background check bill that has failed in the past, Pat Toomey - he's a Republican from Pennsylvania - called the new Democratic majority in the House a silver lining on the issue of gun legislation here. The House bill is also bipartisan. There's five Republican lawmakers already behind it, people like Peter King of New York and Brian Mast of Florida. He's an Afghan war veteran - Afghanistan War veteran who lost both of his legs in combat.
And the House itself is going to be pretty notable. If they vote on this, it will be the first major gun bill to get a vote since the 1994 crime bill, which included the so-called assault weapons ban. We just haven't had to see lawmakers go on the record for their - where they are on the issue. I talked to one activist to say - who said they're clear-eyed about the prospects, but they want to see where members are, so they, in her words, will show us who's with us and who's against us going into 2020.
SHAPIRO: That's NPR congressional correspondent Susan Davis. Thank you.
DAVIS: You're welcome.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
President Trump will do something tonight he has not done before. With a partial government shutdown in its third week over his demands for a border wall, the president is making a national address from the Oval Office. Democratic leaders have demanded equal time. They'll respond after the president speaks.
NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson joins us now for a preview. Mara, what is the president trying to accomplish with this Oval Office speech?
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: The president's goal is to convince voters beyond his base of supporters that shutting down the government in order to get funding for a wall is the right thing to do. That's the only way that he can put pressure on Democrats to accommodate him. He has to convince people outside of his hardcore base.
So to do that, the White House has been expanding the justification for the wall. Instead of just talking about rapists and drugs and criminals coming across the border, they're also making the argument that women and children are being hurt.
So if the president can convince enough people that it's a border security and humanitarian issue, he could win this fight. But if it's just a debate about whether it's worth shutting down the government to build a wall, he'll lose.
CORNISH: As of right now, where do the negotiations stand between the White House and Congress?
LIASSON: What's been happening is instead of moving towards the Democrats, the president has been asking for more and more money for the wall than he did a few weeks ago. In the latest ask from the White House, they're requesting $5.7 billion for 234 miles of new steel wall. That's in addition to other money for detention centers and judges and technology, things that are not that controversial.
But what's interesting about this is that supporters of the president point out that in the last continuing resolution that the president signed, where Democrats agreed to $1.6 billion in steel fencing while they explicitly ruled out a concrete wall, the president's supporters are saying that the materials should make a difference. Democrats agree - agreed to steel fencing in the past. They don't want concrete. But that so far is not moving Democrats.
And the other problem is because the president has made the wall such a potent symbol of his presidency - his kind of No. 1 issue - it makes it harder for Democrats to compromise because they have a base, too, and those base voters - Democratic base voters see the wall as a symbol of everything they hate about Donald Trump.
CORNISH: Now, the president has been suggesting that one way out of this is to declare a national emergency, maybe use military funds to build the wall. Any chance that will come up tonight?
LIASSON: It might come up, but I haven't talked to anyone who predicts that the president will actually call for a national emergency tonight. He does have the power to declare a national emergency, to do an end run around Congress.
But the people I've talked to, including former advisers of the president, say he could do that. But it's too soon to do it. He first has to convince the public that the Democrats are unreasonable and won't negotiate because he's the one who initiated this shutdown. A national emergency has to be a last resort. Otherwise, it would look like a political stunt.
Now, some members of Congress would be just as happy for the president to do that because it gets the problem off their plate at a moment when Republicans are worried about some of their members abandoning ship and starting to vote with Democrats to open the government. Other Republicans feel very strongly about congressional powers of the purse. They say Trump would be usurping Congress's power to appropriate funds and act unilaterally on immigration policy - something they didn't like when Obama did it.
But the reason it's so appealing to some members of Congress - it would end the shutdown. And this strategy of declaring a national emergency, which is being pushed by some of the president's advisers, is, it allows the president to act his own - act on his own, using his legal authority and showing his supporters that he did everything he could to build the wall even if he ultimately loses in court. And believe me. There would be a court battle on this.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Mara Liasson at the White House. Mara, thank you.
LIASSON: Thank you.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
One argument the Trump administration has made is that a wall on the southern border would keep out terrorists. The argument has changed over time. Here was White House press secretary Sarah Sanders speaking with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday.
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SARAH SANDERS: We know that, roughly, nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists come into our country illegally. And we know that our most vulnerable point of entry is at our southern border.
CHRIS WALLACE: Wait. Wait, 'cause I know this statistic.
SANDERS: Yeah.
WALLACE: I didn't know if you were going to use it, but I studied up on this. Do you know where those 4,000 people come - or where they're captured? The airports.
SANDERS: Not always...
WALLACE: At airports.
SANDERS: ...But certainly a large number.
WALLACE: The State Department says there hasn't been any terrorist that they've found...
SANDERS: Certainly it's...
WALLACE: ...Coming across the southern border of Mexico.
SANDERS: It's by air. It's by land, and it's by sea.
SHAPIRO: NBC then reported that the actual number of suspected terrorists detained at the border was six, not thousands, according to data that Customs and Border Protection gave Congress for the first half of fiscal year 2018. Presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway then said the press secretary had made a misstatement.
Well, our next guest has firsthand knowledge of the terrorist threat and whether it is centered at the border, airports or someplace else altogether. Nick Rasmussen ran the government's National Counterterrorism Center for three years through 2017. Welcome.
NICK RASMUSSEN: Thanks for having me, Ari.
SHAPIRO: So you briefed top government officials up to and including the president on the state of the terrorist threat. Did the southern border factor into those briefings?
RASMUSSEN: It did, but only episodically and not in a really prominent way. It was a logical question for people to be asking, Ari, you know, given the concerns about vulnerability at the southern border. There were often members of Congress or other senior officials who would ask, hey, how are terrorists thinking about the southern border? Are they trying to infiltrate operatives? Are people traveling across the southern border who are of terrorism concern?
And what we would say in the intelligence community is, to the best of our knowledge, the answer is largely no, they're not. It is certainly a concern. It is certainly a potential vulnerability. But it was a vulnerability that was not translating into actual numbers of terrorists crossing into the country and certainly not the kind of volume that you've been hearing administration officials refer to.
SHAPIRO: One detail I found interesting in that document that Customs and Border Protection provided to Congress is that last year, more suspected terrorists were apprehended on the northern border with Canada than the southern border with Mexico.
RASMUSSEN: And again, it just goes to the problem that we've seen in terms of marshalling facts and supportive arguments here because, again, the facts would suggest that we don't face a crisis at the southern border in terms of terrorists trying to cross into the United States.
We have an effective watchlisting system. It can always improve, but it's not as if we are somehow at the mercy of terrorist organizations and that there are large numbers of terrorists at the southern border crossing into the United States or waiting to do so. It just simply isn't the case.
SHAPIRO: So when you look at where the threat actually is today, what is the weakest point, and where would you funnel money to address that?
RASMUSSEN: Well, as my colleagues in government and in the intelligence community have said in public testimony, the most serious threat we face from a terrorism perspective here in the United States right now comes from homegrown violent extremists. And those homegrown violent extremists tend to be individuals who've been here for a long time in the United States. They may even have been born here. They have become radicalized or potentially attracted to terrorist ideologies over time, but it's not something that attaches to their particular immigration status or when they arrived or something like that.
That homegrown piece of it is really the piece we should be funneling resources at, working with communities to try to find ways to reach vulnerable individuals before they become radicalized, before they become a potential terrorist in a community somewhere here in the United States. That's not a border security problem. That's more of a community policing and a community resilience problem.
SHAPIRO: It's an interesting conclusion that al-Qaida, ISIS and other similar groups have found it is easier to radicalize people who are already in the country than it is to get people into the country - says something about the strength of the border and airports already in the present day.
RASMUSSEN: And again, you know, I'm not here to tell you that our border security is perfect from a terrorism or counterterrorism perspective. And there's always ways we can improve and get better.
But the degree of progress that we've made since 9/11 in making our borders more secure is something that's not to be understated and certainly shouldn't be - shouldn't be thrown around in political debate in a way that somehow undermines the American public's confidence in our border security. At least with respect to terrorism, it just simply isn't the case that we are vulnerable at the southern border in the way that - that some officials are describing.
SHAPIRO: That's Nick Rasmussen, former head of the National Counterterrorism Center, who worked in counterterrorism under three administrations. Thanks for joining us today.
RASMUSSEN: Thanks very much, Ari.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Over the past couple of weeks, we've heard from many government employees frustrated by the ongoing partial government shutdown. Some of them are taking their frustration to court.
A group of federal employees is suing the Trump administration over the shutdown, claiming the administration has acted in conscious or reckless disregard of labor laws. Heidi Burakiewicz is a lawyer representing the plaintiffs in the suit. She joins me now in the studio. Welcome to the program.
HEIDI BURAKIEWICZ: Thank you for having me.
CORNISH: So I understand of the 800,000 federal workers kind of affected by the shutdown, a good number are considered essential, right? Can you talk about who your clients are because they're part of this group?
BURAKIEWICZ: We filed a case with two plaintiffs, although we've been contacted by thousands of people who want to join the case. The two named plaintiffs both work for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. So all of the employees, for example, that work at the Federal Bureau of Prisons at an institution are deemed essential. Even during a government shutdown, we need someone at those prisons taking care of the inmates.
There's a wide variety of essential employees around the country - Border Patrol, federal firefighters, the people who we traditionally think of as first responders, the people who are important to truly keep the rest of us safe.
CORNISH: So what are your plaintiffs asking for in this suit?
BURAKIEWICZ: Well, first of all, all of the plaintiffs with whom I'm working, all the federal employees that have been in touch with us, the No. 1 thing that they want is for the shutdown to end. Right now, they're living in a state of turmoil. They don't know how long it's going to last or when they're going to get their next paycheck.
CORNISH: But they're also asking for financial compensation, right? I mean, what are they looking for?
BURAKIEWICZ: Well, absolutely, and they're entitled to it. So in the complaint, what we're seeking - hopefully, Congress will pass legislation and retroactively pay all of the employees. On top of that, however, they're entitled to liquidated damages. Liquidated damages, it's a payment equal to the amount of the wages that were not paid on time. When the...
CORNISH: So essentially you get paid because you experienced the delay.
BURAKIEWICZ: Yes. When the law was passed, the lawmakers determined this isn't supposed to be punitive towards the employer. But it's to compensate the employees for the interest charges, the late payment penalties, the cost, the harm that they've suffered by not getting paid on time.
CORNISH: So the government has argued in the past that law prohibits them. Federal law prohibits them from spending money that Congress has not allocated. And you've dealt with this in the past, right? And a judge ruled against them. What was the argument from the judge?
BURAKIEWICZ: Yes. In 2013, we filed a similar lawsuit on behalf of essential employees who worked during the October 2013 government shutdown. The government filed a motion to dismiss, claiming that their hands were essentially tied because of the Antideficiency Act. The judge ruled against them and confirmed that, in fact, the government had violated the Fair Labor Standards Act and still should have paid these essential employees on time during the shutdown.
CORNISH: I understand that the damages awarded in the 2013 case, it took them four years - right? - to win that in court. Was it worth all the effort?
BURAKIEWICZ: Well, the government is still in the final stages of calculating the damages in the 2013 case. The damages...
CORNISH: So people still haven't been paid who sued in 2013.
BURAKIEWICZ: Yes. Litigation is unfortunately never fast. And we had to resolve legal issues that I spoke about earlier. So from my perspective, those legal issues are identical. And I'm optimistic that this case will move much faster.
Quite frankly, none of my plaintiffs, none of my clients, we shouldn't have to sue to get them this back pay or this liquidated damages. The government just shouldn't have shut down. They shouldn't put the federal workforce in this position that they have to file a lawsuit to recover money owed to them.
CORNISH: Do you think these lawsuits are aiming also to send that message?
BURAKIEWICZ: Absolutely. All of the clients that I've worked with, that's their primary No. 1 goal, that this is not a way to treat the federal workforce. This is having real-life consequences on hardworking, blue-collar families, people who work in, often, very dangerous jobs.
For example, on Friday alone, in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, there was an inmate who was murdered. Two staff were injured responding when that inmate was getting stabbed. There were a total of, at least that I know of, eight staff injuries in the Bureau of Prisons at various institutions around the country.
So these people are going to work at very dangerous jobs, and they should get paid on time.
CORNISH: Heidi Burakiewicz, thank you so much for speaking with us.
BURAKIEWICZ: Thank you for having me.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
People who don't work for the federal government are also noticing the impact of the shutdown. We sent NPR's Jeff Brady to the Pennsylvania Farm Show to talk with people there about the government closures, the border wall and President Trump's Oval Office speech tonight.
JEFF BRADY, BYLINE: The Farm Show is a big deal in Pennsylvania. And one of the popular events is the livestock auction.
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UNIDENTIFIED AUCTIONEER: OK, folks, it's auction time at the Harrisburg Farm Show.
BRADY: Behind the auctioneer is a barn where animals wait in pens.
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BRADY: Katie Hutton of Mechanicsburg, Pa., is a stay-at-home mom and is holding one of her children. She says the shutdown hasn't affected her personally, but...
KATIE HUTTON: I have seen a lot of the effects as far as the national parks go, and it's disappointing. Like, if we wanted to take the kids to D.C., I know that we couldn't go to any of the museums or the zoo. And that's disappointing for us, but really for everybody that - all the workers that have been affected.
BRADY: Hutton is a Democrat and not a fan of President Trump. She thinks he should begin his address tonight with an apology for the shutdown. The effects of the shutdown are less of a concern for President Trump's base in Pennsylvania, though.
DAVE ARNDT: My opinion about the wall is it probably should be built.
BRADY: Republican Dave Arndt is retired and echoes the arguments the president and his supporters concerned about immigration often mention.
ARNDT: I look at it like they're coming in here, taking the American people - or the citizens especially, taking their jobs and costing us money. I think the president needs to hold his ground.
BRADY: Nearby, Sharon Marsteller says she also supports the president. Still, when he addresses the nation tonight, she wants a message of compromise that will lead to an end to the shutdown.
SHARON MARSTELLER: I would like to hear him say that the Democrats and him are working together, and it's going to be resolved soon.
BRADY: And what would you like to hear from people in Congress then? Because that's kind of...
MARSTELLER: I would like to hear people in Congress say, we recognize that it is important to have a secure border, and we will work with the president.
BRADY: For some here, the immigration issue is secondary. One couple didn't want to talk on the air. They're federal workers on furlough and say they just want to get back to work. They were among the few here who say they're personally affected by the shutdown. Still, nearly everyone hopes it will end soon.
KAYLA JONAS: I'm Kayla Jonas. I'm from Wayne County. And here I am today with Brutus, my pig.
BRADY: Jonas is waiting to take Brutus to the auction. She doesn't seem at all squeamish about what's going to happen to Brutus soon. But ask her about the president's wall proposal and immigrants at the border, and her concern is obvious.
JONAS: I don't think it's a good idea. I think we're all put on this earth to all - as a community and everyone - to love each other, and we're all just trying to make a living in the world, our family. So I think that that's something that shouldn't even be done to begin with.
BRADY: Jonas also says she's concerned about federal employees who aren't receiving paychecks. Our conversation is interrupted when the announcer calls her name.
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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Kayla Jonas.
BRADY: And with that, Jonas is off to the auction arena with Brutus.
Good luck.
JONAS: Thank you.
BRADY: Jeff Brady, NPR News, Harrisburg, Pa.
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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
When House Democrats brought up a stopgap funding bill last week to end the partial government shutdown, the vote fell mostly along party lines. But seven Republicans broke ranks to side with Democrats in favor of the bill. One of them was Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania. He joins us now from his Capitol Hill office. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
BRIAN FITZPATRICK: Thanks Audie. How are you?
CORNISH: So the bill you voted for did not contain funding for a border wall. Do you still support the president's desire to build a wall?
FITZPATRICK: Well, what I support, Audie, is robust border security. I don't like the term wall. I think it's become a very toxic and divisive term. I think there are a group of centrist lawmakers in our Problem Solvers Caucus - our bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus - centrist Democrats, centrist Republicans who have come up with an immigration plan last year, which we still would like to see get advanced. And it includes both robust border security. That's smart. That's...
CORNISH: So you're making the case that just because you voted with Democrats just to open the government, it doesn't mean you're against the wall itself.
FITZPATRICK: Well, I'm a - I don't like the term wall, Audie, because it conjures up images of a, you know, brick-and-mortar structure across all 1,900 miles of the border, which I don't think is appropriate.
CORNISH: But for the sake this discussion, you know, President Trump has spoken about declaring a national emergency, so he might be able to bypass Congress or use the Defense Department funds for a wall. Is that something you would support?
FITZPATRICK: Well, there's two issues there. Number one, can he legally? And number two, should he? As far as it can goes, that's a question under Article 2 of the Constitution and Title 50 of the U.S. Code, and that's a matter of constitutional law. I personally think that if he went that path, it would get tied up in litigation.
As far as should he, I think this decision should be made by Congress. I think we are the ones that - we need to reopen the government, number one. And we need to solve the immigration issue once and for all. And that includes not only border security but also dealing with the DACA issue and protecting our DACA kids. We had a piece of legislation that was on the floor of the House about six months ago that could not get enough votes to pass the House, and it included - it was a compromise provision that included both protection for our DACA kids and robust border security.
And border security, by the way, Audie - that's smart. It's not a brick-and-mortar structure across 1,900 miles of the border. What it is is it gives the funding and the flexibility to DHS, to the Coast Guard, to CBP and the Border Patrol, the three entities that are responsible for border security, to make decisions based on the sector and based on the terrain. So in certain stretches, physical barriers make sense. In other stretches, technology makes sense - infrared, heat sensors, motion detectors. In some other sectors, aerial surveillance makes sense. But it gives them...
CORNISH: I want to jump in here because I think you are speaking to an issue about security itself and what makes sense if you want to keep this perimeter secure. Vice President Mike Pence went on TV today to explain the White House's stance. Here's some of what he said to NBC.
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VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: The American people want us to address this issue. It is a matter of national security. It is a matter of addressing human trafficking, the flow of narcotics into our country.
CORNISH: What is your response to that argument?
FITZPATRICK: I think that's an argument for robust border security, but I think the differentiator here is, what do we mean by that, and how do we define it? The way I define border security is providing the funding and also the flexibility, and that second piece is key, Audie, because the Border Patrol agents, the CBP officers and the Coast Guard know what they need during what sectors and what stretches of the terrain.
A big stretch of the of the southern border is waterways including the Rio Grande river. A big stretch is desert. A big stretch is mountainous terrain. Physical structures don't make sense along those sectors. There are other places - for example, the southern Texas border - where it does make more sense. But what we can't talk about, you know, intelligently unfortunately around here is how to best secure the border. And operational control of the border is the issue. It's not...
CORNISH: Let me jump in because we have just a few seconds left. What are you...
FITZPATRICK: Sure.
CORNISH: ...Hoping to hear from the president tonight?
FITZPATRICK: Well, I'm hoping that he's honest, and I hope that he's willing to compromise. You know, every single functioning relationship that we have in our lives, Audie, is a product of consensus building and compromise, and Congress should be no different. People need to come to the table. Nobody is going to get everything of what they want, but everybody's got to give up a little in order to get this government open.
CORNISH: Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, thank you for your time.
FITZPATRICK: Thank you so much.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Many presidents have addressed the nation from the Oval Office, and in many cases, the major TV networks gave them the prime-time slots they asked for. President Trump's request for airtime tonight has led to a debate about how the networks should handle his desire for unfiltered access to millions of viewers. It's not clear he'll make news, and he is known for straying from the truth in public speeches.
NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik has talked with people at the networks today and joins us now from our New York studios. Hi, David.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: Hey, Ari.
SHAPIRO: Explain the argument some journalists have made that the big TV networks should not be broadcasting Trump's speech tonight.
FOLKENFLIK: Well, you know, to the extent that there's a national security crisis that the president has invoked a lot in recent weeks and months and the past couple of years, it seems to be something of a manufactured one or - or a self-generated one. There's not real belief among network executives that he's going to make news tonight. They have not shared in any real detail anything that would suggest that.
And, of course, there's the president's estrangement from facts - hostility to facts and estrangement from the truth. And in fact, The Washington Post compiled some charts showing that his misstatements, his misleading statements, statements even one could consider deceitful, have only grown in recent weeks and months as we come to this point in the debate on border security and the border wall.
And so those are some real issues if you're trying to make sure that your audience is - millions of people walk away more edified after watching a presentation rather than less.
SHAPIRO: And yet the networks have decided to carry the speech live. So explain what they're going to do tonight.
FOLKENFLIK: Well, I think we're going to see how they treat it. The president will get his address. It will be eight to 10 minutes. They are offering, of course, the Democrats in response a couple of minutes from Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.
And then I think you're going to see a lot of fact-checking unfold. They all say they're going to fact-check in real time. But what you're going to see is the fruits of that after the president has had the chance to make his case to the public. And I think that's the way that'll play out.
SHAPIRO: NPR's also carrying the address live. We'll have special coverage later this evening. You spoke with the head of our newsroom about that decision. Explain the reasoning.
FOLKENFLIK: Nancy Barnes said, you know, we've done this going back almost two decades, every single Oval Office address, which are the ways in which presidents often mark importance. And she noted that, essentially, there's going to be a sandwich. That is, there's going to be a half hour of special coverage leading into the president's address, not just leading out of.
So people who are tuned in to NPR stations are going to hear context and texture about what's going on even before the president starts to speak - in that way, setting the table for what he says rather than simply accepting the message he's offering.
SHAPIRO: Now, as you mentioned, top Democrats asked for equal time to rebut the president's remarks. The networks granted that request. So we'll hear from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer after the president. How unusual is that?
FOLKENFLIK: Pretty rare. Oftentimes, the crises that are being addressed by presidents - Hurricane Katrina, the invasion, the financial crisis - don't have immediate partisan responses. This is seen as more political, and network executives felt, heck, we should really accede to this if we're going to go ahead.
SHAPIRO: We have seen a lot of hand-wringing from network executives over this decision, some of it anonymous, both before and after they announced that they would carry the speech. Do you think that not carrying it was a realistic option for them?
FOLKENFLIK: I think that networks had to think harder perhaps than they did in this case. It was his first request. They didn't want to be seen, including NPR, as rejecting that first request.
But there are other ways of doing it. You could do it on delay. You don't have to do something live to actually cover something. You could, you know, make sure to fact - if you did on delay, make sure to fact-check it visually on the screen. You could offer a series of ways of doing it that aren't the way in which we're doing it now, which is to say a very conventional approach to an address by very unconventional president.
SHAPIRO: NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik. Thank you.
FOLKENFLIK: You bet.
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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
From the Oval Office, President Trump tonight is expected to talk about immigration and the border wall he promised to build when he was campaigning. The White House says Trump is still considering whether or not to declare a national emergency that would let him go around Congress and have the military build the wall. NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith has this look at whether Trump can do that.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: The short answer is yes he can, but should he? Would it face a legal challenge or cause a government crisis? Those questions have more complicated answers. It's something administration lawyers are vetting, and President Trump said this past weekend that he's considering it.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We have a crisis at the border of drugs, of human beings being trafficked all over the world. They're coming through. And we have an absolute crisis - and of the criminals and gang members coming through. It is national security. It's a national emergency.
KEITH: The Trump administration frequently uses misleading statistics to back up these claims. Illegal border crossings are significantly lower than historical levels but have bumped up recently. And many of those arriving are in families and unaccompanied children seeking asylum. But here's the thing - it doesn't matter whether Congress or the American public see it as rising to the level of a national emergency. Elizabeth Goitein is at the Brennan Center for Justice.
ELIZABETH GOITEIN: The way it works is he declares the emergency. There are basically no limits on that. He just issues a declaration with his signature on it. He doesn't have to make any showing. There are no requirements that have to be met. He just says there's a national emergency.
KEITH: That's right. The first step is shockingly easy.
GOITEIN: There aren't a lot of legal limits on his ability to do that, frankly, even if there isn't a real emergency happening.
KEITH: But Goitein argues it would be an abuse of power.
GOITEIN: Needless to say, emergency powers are intended to be used for emergencies, not to settle political disputes or to shortcut the political process.
KEITH: The second step, once an emergency is declared, Goitein says the president gets access to special powers granted by Congress over the years. Trump's lawyers would pick from about 100 laws to justify using the military to build a barrier along the southern border. But she says none of the statutes are a perfect fit. Bruce Ackerman at Yale Law School cites different laws and legal precedent to argue that the military can't be used that way.
BRUCE ACKERMAN: They would have to choose between a obeying the law or obeying the commander in chief. That choice represents a profound crisis.
KEITH: There is another precedent Ackerman cites from the Bush administration. After Hurricane Katrina, Congress passed a law allowing the military to go in. But then in 2008, they had second thoughts.
ACKERMAN: They said, oh, no, that's really a very dangerous precedent to allow the military simply to intervene whenever the president declares a state of emergency, and they repealed it.
KEITH: Democratic Congressman Adam Smith chairs the House Armed Services Committee, and he earned some unintended praise from the president for saying he could declare an emergency.
ADAM SMITH: The honest answer to the question could the president do this is yes. There'd be a fight afterwards, but he could, which is why I think what we need to emphasize is how wrong it would be for him to do it. It's bad policy.
KEITH: There would certainly be backlash in Congress and not just from Democrats. They could try to reverse the president's action. Court challenges are a sure thing, which means wall construction could hit a wall. Tamara Keith, NPR News.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Every year in a different city, thousands of people in the world music community gather to celebrate and search for up-and-coming artists. That includes our music reviewer Banning Eyre.
He traveled to the Canary Islands for the most recent expo which is known among insiders as WOMEX. He says that competition for the delegates' attention is always stiff. But one young musician from Mali stood out to him above the rest.
BANNING EYRE, BYLINE: Over four days and nights, we heard classic rumba from the Congo...
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UNIDENTIFIED SINGER: (Singing in foreign language).
EYRE: ...Anatolian psychedelia from Turkey, vocal harmony from France and from Mali, Harouna Samake, showing off his new band and promoting their debut album, "Kamale Blues."
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HAROUNA SAMAKE: (Singing in foreign language).
EYRE: Samake grew up in a village in the south of Mali. That's Wassoulou country. From childhood, he showed unusual skill at playing a local six-string gourd harp called kamale n'goni, literally young man's harp. It's a featured instrument in the bluesy Wassoulou sound.
Samake explains that his instrument is a close relative of the donso n'goni, or hunter's harp, which has been used in ritual settings going back to the hunter-gatherer culture of ancient West Africa.
SAMAKE: (Through translator) The kamale n'goni and the donso n'goni, they're basically the same. But the difference is the tuning. The donso n'goni is tuned very low. The kamale n'goni is tuned high. The donso n'goni is played for the hunters, but then the young people thought, can't we do something to bring the music to the youth? So the kamale n'goni is for the youth.
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SAMAKE: (Playing kamale n'goni).
EYRE: Samake has long been recognized as a virtuoso player, nimble, fast, creative and skilled and flashy techniques that produce thrilling pops and slides. He showed off his prowess on an instrumental number in the WOMEX radio studio.
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SAMAKE: (Playing kamale n'goni).
EYRE: Samake's wife sings in the band. And on this song, they exchange playful banter, evoking the dramas of marriage, an institution Samake offers sage advice about, carefully noting the responsibilities of a husband and wife.
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ASSETOU DIAKITE: (Singing in foreign language).
SAMAKE: (Singing in foreign language).
DIAKITE: (Singing in foreign language).
SAMAKE: (Singing in foreign language).
DIAKITE: (Singing in foreign language).
SAMAKE: (Laughter).
EYRE: I've attended eight or nine WOMEXes over the years, and the buzz around Samake's group was palpable. That means we may well see them on an American stage this summer. For NPR News, I'm Banning Eyre.
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SAMAKE: (Singing in foreign language).
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
President Trump says there's a humanitarian and national security crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border. This idea of a border emergency can be traced back to the reports that began a few months ago of a caravan of Central American migrants traveling up through Mexico to the U.S. Many of those migrants are now stuck in Tijuana, Mexico, just south of the border from San Diego. And that's where NPR's John Burnett joins us from now. Hi, John.
JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: Hey, Ari.
SHAPIRO: We've heard about thousands of migrants stuck in Tijuana. What are you seeing there?
BURNETT: Well, you know, this is ground zero of what the president considers the migrant crisis. I mean, you've got Central Americans who are waiting in all the major Mexican border cities, but Tijuana is where you really see them. You know, we started out with somewhere between, you know, 5,000, 6,000 migrants who'd come up in the caravan. The numbers are definitely down to perhaps 2,000, 3,000, even (inaudible) migrants now that are still here.
Some have gone back to Honduras. Some have been deported by Mexican authorities. Some have crossed into the U.S. to request asylum. And then others, you know, crossed the border illegally. They climbed the fence, and they were arrested. And then, still others went to other Mexican border cities where there's less of a wait to cross. So, you know, they have - the numbers are trickling down.
SHAPIRO: So the numbers are down, but still a lot of people for Tijuana to deal with. How is the city coping?
BURNETT: You know, it's just - it's sort of chaotic what we've seen today. There is more than a dozen shelters here. The big one, El Barretal, you know, it's the best organized. It's run by the federal government. And then you have all these others. We went to one that was run by the Ambassadors of Christ evangelical church, where you had people living in tents inside the church sanctuary. But outside was this squalid drainage ditch with hogs all rooting around and children around there playing.
And yet, people in Tijuana are trying to help the migrants. And so you have these shelters that have just kind of sprung up in houses and with different, you know, do-gooder groups and with churches. And, really, you just get this sense that they still don't know what to do with this crush of people who are here.
SHAPIRO: What about Americans? You're right over the border from San Diego. Do you see many U.S. people there trying to help out?
BURNETT: You do. There's lots of volunteers. They're over here. They're offering legal advice. They're bringing food. They're bringing medicine. Some are bringing, you know, knitting needles and yarn for them - you know, give them something to do while they're waiting. I mean, this morning they called number 1,627. That's how many migrant families have gotten into the U.S. to ask for asylum. And there are still many, many more waiting weeks.
SHAPIRO: What are you hearing from the migrants themselves you've spoken to?
BURNETT: Well, these are single men. These are families. They're grandmothers. And, you know, they've been here waiting for so long, some for six to eight weeks. And they seem to be, you know, very frustrated. Some are still waiting in line for their numbers to be called. And others are deciding to take jobs here in Tijuana. There is a labor shortage, and so some are working as masons. Others are going to work in these fabrication plants, the maquilas.
And then, still others have decided to brincar el muro, to jump the wall. And so they go to this area where they can crawl over one of the lower fences, where they're promptly arrested by the U.S. Border Patrol. But they know that that's a rash decision, that they're going to be detained if they do that. And so many want to wait, but they're really getting frustrated here because the times are so long.
SHAPIRO: Yeah. Just in our last 30 seconds, President Trump last month announced a policy called Remain in Mexico, where asylum seekers would have to wait in Mexico for an immigration hearing in the U.S. Any sign of that taking shape?
BURNETT: You know, that policy has been suspended, Ari. I spoke to a senior government official familiar with border security plans. And because of the complexities of the diplomacy between Mexico and the U.S., they are not returning immigrants seeking asylum to Mexico to await their immigration cases. The ones who are going to the border largely are being allowed to ask for asylum and then being either detained or released with a notice to appear in immigration court.
SHAPIRO: All right. NPR's John Burnett in Tijuana, thanks so much.
BURNETT: You bet, Ari.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
We have been talking about it all evening, and now at the top of the hour, President Trump will deliver a primetime speech from the Oval Office. It is the first time he has done this. He's making the case for a border wall. The White House wants $5.7 billion to pay for a physical barrier on the southern border. Congressional Democrats have resisted that request, and they will have a rebuttal after the president speaks. This standoff has forced a shutdown of parts of the federal government now in its 18th day.
The administration has made a number of arguments in support of the wall. And in these final moments leading up to the president's address, we're going to examine some of those claims with NPR White House correspondent Scott Horsley. Hi, Scott.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Ari.
SHAPIRO: The White House says it needs the wall to address what the president calls a humanitarian and national security crisis along the U.S. border with Mexico. So to begin, is there a crisis?
HORSLEY: You can certainly make the case that there is a humanitarian crisis, Ari, somewhat of the administration's own making. The argument for a security crisis is a lot more tenuous. On the one hand, illegal border crossings in the most recent fiscal year were actually down from both 2014 and 2016 and way down from their peak around the year 2000.
But we have seen an uptick in the last few months in border crossings, and we're especially seeing more children and families coming from Central America, which presents a - more of a challenge for the Border Patrol than single adults crossing over from Mexico. A lot of the Central American migrants are seeking asylum, citing a fear of violence or persecution back home. And because the Trump administration is reluctant to release those migrants while those asylum claims are processed, we are beginning to see overcrowding in detention centers, and the presence of those young migrants also creates a lot of complications.
SHAPIRO: So that speaks to the claim of a humanitarian crisis. What about the argument that there is a national security crisis? Let's listen to part of what the president said last Friday.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I talk about drugs. I talk about gangs. But a lot of people don't say, we have terrorists coming through the southern border because they find that's probably the easiest place to come through.
SHAPIRO: Scott, is there a national security threat at the southern border?
HORSLEY: Ari, it has to be said the Trump administration has a long history of exaggerating claims about crime and terrorism to justify its immigration policies, and we're certainly seeing that in this fight over the border wall. On "Fox News Sunday," the White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, tried to argue that nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists were stopped in 2017 and therefore we need a border wall, and she was challenged on that by the host, Chris Wallace, of "Fox News Sunday," who said, look; most of those folks are being stopped at airports, not crossing the southern border.
The Homeland Security Department has refused to say how many individuals who might be on a terror watch list, for example, have actually been apprehended on the southern border. They say that figure is sensitive. But NBC News reports that during a six-month period, the number was six. By comparison, something like seven times that many people were stopped who are on terrorist watch lists along the northern border in Canada.
Now, as for crime, studies have shown immigrants who live in the U.S. illegally commit crime at a lower rate than native-born Americans. And the president also mentioned drugs in that Friday quote. The Drug Enforcement Administration says most of the drugs that come over the border illegally from Mexico come through the ports of entry. They're smuggled through the ports of entry, so they're not something that would be stopped by a wall.
SHAPIRO: Tell us more about what the administration is asking for because there has been talk of concrete versus steel, a wall versus a security system. What is this request exactly?
HORSLEY: The latest request is for $5.7 billion for 234 miles of new physical barrier. That works out to about $24 million per mile. And in addition, the administration is asking for hundreds of millions of dollars to hire new border guards, more immigration judges, to build new detention beds and to, quote, "ensure the well-being of those migrants who are taken into custody."
SHAPIRO: And are Democrats resistant to any wall at all?
HORSLEY: You know, they have really kind of dug in their heels. Last week, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, called the border wall costly, ineffective and immoral. But we should say there are nearly 700 miles of border wall that's been built since '06, and Democrats voted for some of that construction.
SHAPIRO: NPR White House correspondent Scott Horsley, thank you.
HORSLEY: You're welcome.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The Trump administration is promising to coordinate with partners as it withdraws from Syria. It's not an easy task. Turkey's president snubbed national security adviser John Bolton today while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo began a week-long reassurance tour in the Middle East. NPR's Michele Kelemen is traveling with the secretary.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: Pompeo's first stop is Jordan, a country that borders Syria and houses hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees. The secretary of state calls Jordan a durable partner, adding that he doesn't think a change in the U.S. tactics in Syria should affect the U.S.-led coalition's fight against ISIS.
MIKE POMPEO: There is enormous agreement on the risk that that poses to Jordan and to other countries in the neighborhood. And that battle continues. Our - the president's decision to withdraw our folks from Syria in no way impacts our capacity to deliver on that.
KELEMEN: Jordan's foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, says he's counting on close coordination with the U.S., especially in sensitive border areas.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
AYMAN SAFADI: We've always coordinated, and we trust that we will continue to coordinate. And our security is something that has always been taken into account by our allies in Washington. This is a solid partnership, particularly when it comes to defense and security against ISIS.
KELEMEN: While Jordan and the U.S. tried to get on the same page, Turkey's president was railing against Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton. Bolton had warned Turkey not to mistreat Kurdish fighters who Turkey considers terrorists but who help the U.S. battle ISIS in northern Syria. Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, accused Bolton of making a serious mistake by demanding such concessions. Pompeo has been far more careful in public not to talk about timelines for a troop withdrawal or any conditions for it. Speaking to reporters on his plane on the way here, he denied that Bolton and Trump are giving mixed messages.
POMPEO: The president said we're going to do it in an orderly fashion that achieves our objective and that the - our mission set in the region remains unchanged. Those seem pretty consistent to me.
KELEMEN: The mission is not just about countering ISIS. It's about building up pressure on Iran. That will be a major theme as Pompeo continues his swing through the Middle East. He was promising this at his news conference here in Jordan.
POMPEO: And you'll see in the coming days and weeks, we are redoubling not only our diplomatic but our commercial efforts to put real pressure on Iran.
KELEMEN: He's going to be visiting Iran's main regional rival, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf countries. In Riyadh, his aides say he will also press the Saudis to establish a, quote, "credible narrative" about the death of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and hold those responsible to account. Michele Kelemen, NPR News, Amman, Jordan.
(SOUNDBITE OF BOMBA ESTEREO'S "TAMBORA")
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The U.S. steel industry was already enjoying a boost in profits after the Trump administration slapped a 25 percent tariff on their foreign competitors. Now the steel industry is back in the spotlight. The president says he'd like an artistically designed steel slat barrier rather than a concrete border wall between the U.S. and Mexico.
With negotiations over the wall at a stalemate, it's not clear whether it will come to fruition. But if it did, it would require an enormous amount of steel. For some reaction to this, we turn to Tom Gibson. He's president and CEO of the American Iron and Steel Institute, represents the steel industry. Welcome to the program.
TOM GIBSON: Good afternoon, Audie.
CORNISH: So first, were you actually surprised by the president's suggestion that he wanted this American-made steel barrier rather than concrete?
GIBSON: No, we were not surprised. The topic of a barrier has been under discussion since the early days of the administration. Prototypes have been constructed, and there are versions of this that were made out of steel. So we fully expected steel to be in the discussion as a solution for a barrier.
CORNISH: Given what you know about the idea of this project, how much steel would be required? Would the industry be able to meet that demand?
GIBSON: The industry's ready to meet that demand. We estimate a barrier of about a thousand miles would require about 3 million tons of steel. And the industry is ready to meet that demand, to produce the steel that's required for the project.
CORNISH: In layman's terms, is that a drop in the bucket, or is that something that could have substantial impact on the steel market and prices?
GIBSON: I'm going to refrain from talking about prices, but let's talk about steel production. Last year, in the United States, we produced about 90 million tons of steel. We're talking about 3 million tons here. We are operating at 81 percent capacity utilization. But that means we still have a lot of unused capacity that can be dedicated to this and other projects.
CORNISH: The border wall is an extremely controversial political issue at this point. How would that affect the thinking of steel companies about whether or not to get involved with a project like this?
GIBSON: Well, I think steel companies will be ready to respond to a project like this if the government puts it out for bid. Obviously, there's a political discussion going on right now between the Congress and the president. But if a barrier is built, it should be built out of steel. And the industry's ready to respond with the steel that's needed.
CORNISH: The Trump administration has very much been supportive of this of the steel industry, right? This is why you see a tariff as high as 25 percent on foreign competitors. And he has very much touted the state of the industry at this point. Are the president's claims about how the industry is doing overblown?
GIBSON: I think that there is definitely momentum in the industry. We're seeing announcements on new investment in the industry. Just yesterday, Nucor announced a $1.35 billion expected investment in the Midwest. We've seen restarts at U.S. Steel, at idled facilities.
But we still have not reached levels of production, levels of capacity utilization that we saw as recently as just prior to the Great Recession. This industry has never fully recovered from the Great Recession. We're now at 81 percent capacity utilization, but it's not where we were before the Great Recession. It's not at typical levels we see when we have an economy that's healthy.
CORNISH: Tom Gibson is president and CEO of the American Iron and Steel Institute, represents the steel industry. Thank you for speaking with us.
GIBSON: Thank you.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
More than 30,000 teachers in Los Angeles could strike as soon as Thursday. It's the second-largest school district in the country. Teachers are fighting for a pay raise and for students services like counselors, nurses and librarians. Howard Blume covers education for the LA Times, and he joins us now. Welcome.
HOWARD BLUME: Hi.
SHAPIRO: There have been efforts this week to reach an agreement, and it looks like they've failed. The teachers union even went to court today. So at this point, how likely does a walkout seem?
BLUME: It seems very likely. Actually it seemed kind of likely even before they did their last-ditch negotiations. The teachers union has pretty much assembled an army of enthusiastic, energized strikers. And it's hard to demilitarize at this point in the process. They did have a negotiation session Monday, and they're going to try again tomorrow. But it seems very unlikely that a strike will be prevented.
SHAPIRO: Tell us about the demands that the teachers are making.
BLUME: Well, the teachers want more money, for one thing, but they actually fundamentally present this as a fight for the future of traditional education. I mean, they want...
SHAPIRO: Traditional education versus charter schools.
BLUME: That's right - or what they would call privatization - right? - where corporate interests have more control and where you have more of a business model over education. And they also see this as an extension of the movement around the country because, as NPR reported, there were teacher strikes in many places. In fact, a lot of them were in red states, in places where it was illegal to strike, Republican-dominated states. And now we have this effort, in a way, moving into a liberal state where it is legal to strike. And the issues are a little different but a continuum, they think.
SHAPIRO: Yeah, I want to get into the comparisons nationally. But first tell us about how the school district is responding to those demands from the teachers.
BLUME: Right, and to finish answering your other question, they also want lower class sizes, more librarians, nurses, counselors. And they also want something done, even symbolically, about the growth of charter schools. So they have a range of demands, and the district says it's just too much - A, we can't afford it, and, B, your agenda here is too broad.
SHAPIRO: And how does this potential walkout compare to the actions we saw in, as you mentioned, red states like West Virginia, Arizona, North Carolina and others?
BLUME: Well, one disadvantage that they have in California is that those actions took place - they were targeted at the state legislature, which was the source of funding in those states. And so they were getting right at the source, and in many cases, they were successful in loosening up the coffers where - and there was - it was kind of documented that the funding had been very tight in those states and been held down.
Now, in California, spending on education has increased, although it's debatable whether they've recovered from the Great Recession. And this is not a statewide action. It's the second-largest school district. I mean, there are more students here than in the entire state of West Virginia. But it's still one district. It's not the entire state. So in some ways, it might be more difficult here.
SHAPIRO: We're talking about nearly half a million students. What impact would a strike have on them?
BLUME: Well, the schools will still be open, but there are some 31,000 union members. And recently the district said it had secured 400 substitutes, so that's going to be a problem even though they're offering a much increased substitute pay. They think they can free up 2,000 administrators and managers who are qualified to teach who can move back into the classroom. So they are trying to get substitutes, qualified substitutes, but obviously instruction will be affected.
Now, you know, a lot of families rely on schools for food. There are students who eat three meals a day that are based in their schools. Now, those meals will still be served if those families are willing to cross the picket lines. But obviously it's going to be a big disruption.
SHAPIRO: Yeah, and how likely is it that if a strike happens, it would go on for a while?
BLUME: That's anybody's guess. I mean, the danger here is that it could go on for a while because the gulf in what the two sides are seeking in their proposals is just huge. And it's the visions of education. It isn't just about the proposals. It's about a vision of education going forward.
SHAPIRO: Yeah, and you've talked about some of the preparations that are being made with substitute teachers and so on. What other steps are being taken for this possibility?
BLUME: Well, OK, so they're trying to get substitute teachers. They're also sending the message out to parents to expect it. And actually, even though these messages have certainly gone out, we find that parents know very little about the strike, by and large, or they think it's going to be a very short strike. The - what the schools are trying to emphasize is safety first, and they want the kids come to school.
SHAPIRO: Thank you. That is LA Times education reporter Howard Blume.
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Find a compromise and immediately end the partial government shutdown - that's the call from the National Governors Association in a bipartisan letter addressed to the White House and to leaders of Congress. The governors say their national parks are overflowing with trash, that coastal safety is at risk because of a reduced Coast Guard and that states could end up losing money as well. Joining us now is the chair of the NGA, Steve Bullock. He's the Democratic governor from Montana. Welcome to the program.
STEVE BULLOCK: Audie, it's great to be with you.
CORNISH: So have you gotten a phone call or a response from the White House or from any of the congressional leaders listed in the letter?
BULLOCK: We have not. We just put out this letter, but really hoping because this - you know, this isn't a partisan issue. Governors all across our country are encouraging the president and Congress to find a compromise, immediately end the government shutdown. And as we can - uniformly, Democrats and Republicans say that this is a real failure in governance and becoming a weight on our economy and American people, that they need to get something done.
CORNISH: I want to talk about Montana for a second. Is there anything that your state has had to cover that would normally be paid for by the federal government?
BULLOCK: Well, I think from the perspective of we have local business people in West Yellowstone, as an example, that are cleaning toilets and providing supplies. We're getting to the point my own executive assistant may lose the ability to buy a house because the seller's relying on an FHA loan. So the impacts of people are real.
CORNISH: What actions are you taking to make sure that federal employees in your state are looked after?
BULLOCK: Well, one - and I think every governor is coming together in saying that we as governors have to deal with the real-life impacts of what does happen or doesn't happen in Washington, D.C. While they might think this is all just negotiating tactics, we're on the front lines. So part of it is coming together, all of us, and elevate it in saying, this has to stop now.
CORNISH: I guess what I'm trying to understand is is there anything that you can do as a state leader to mitigate the shutdown from your state, from the state level, or are you stuck?
BULLOCK: By and large, we're stuck. I mean that we can't carry the burden of the federal government. If we get to the end of this month, as an example, when it comes to SNAP benefits, we can't be providing the dollars to keep the Small Business Administrations open. That's what we rely on, in this system of federalism, that - for Washington, D.C., to work. And it ain't working right now.
CORNISH: You write that the debate over the wall can be dealt with at another time. But you have, let's say, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling the idea of a wall immoral. Right? So it's a nonstarter for her. What's your response to a White House that says, look, this is the only way we can force this discussion? It's the only way it'll happen?
BULLOCK: But these are - at this point, have that discussion not without impacting, though, like, 800,000 federal workers and people in every community across this - across the country. I mean, these are negotiating tactics as opposed to saying, let's be responsible. Let's get government back open immediately and then get everybody around the table.
CORNISH: You are, as we mentioned, a Democrat in a state that has gone for President Trump. What is your message for Democrats in Washington who are trying to negotiate with this president?
BULLOCK: (Laughter) I don't know that I could give Democrats in D.C. sort of guidance on how to negotiate with this president. I don't know that I could give Republicans guidance. I mean, you saw before Christmas when the Senate unanimously passed an extension, and then this president walked back on it. So it may be a daily thing.
It - but the perspective is that, no matter what, I mean, both sides - the Republicans in Congress, the Democrats in Congress and the president - should realize that people's lives shouldn't be the negotiating chip. Let's get government running because folks all across this country expect it.
CORNISH: Montana Governor Steve Bullock. He's a Democrat. Thank you for speaking with ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
BULLOCK: Thanks so much for having me.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Israel has arrested five teenagers suspected of killing a Palestinian woman. The teens are students at a religious school in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank. Their arrest has caused anger in the Jewish settler community. NPR's Daniel Estrin spoke to relatives of the victim and the accused. Here's his report from the West Bank.
DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: Late one Friday night back in October on a road in the West Bank, a Palestinian man named Yaakoub Rabi was driving. His wife was in the passenger seat. Their small child was in the back, and an enormous rock hit their windshield. Rabi spoke to NPR about the attack.
YAAKOUB RABI: (Through interpreter) My wife received in her face a 2 1/2 kilo stone that was thrown at our car from Israeli settlers.
ESTRIN: Rabi says his wife, Aisha, died from the five pound stone. He says he heard Hebrew being spoken through the window. This week, Israeli security officials said they arrested five young Israeli suspects from a Jewish religious school in the area. Rabi was glad to hear the news.
RABI: (Through Interpreter) The fact that they were arrested and the fact that they are made to be accountable makes the streets, the roads, safe.
ESTRIN: But many in the Jewish settler community are angry. The teens were interrogated for days without access to a lawyer. Israeli security officials said that's the practice with, quote, "severe terror cases." The Israeli legal organization representing the suspects directed us to one suspect's father, Michael. We can't identify his son or his full name due to an Israeli gag order. He said his son was mistreated by his Israeli interrogators, the kind of abuse Palestinian detainees also complain about.
MICHAEL: They cuff him with handcuffs to the chair, yelling at him, pushing him, smoking in his face, telling him he was a killer.
ESTRIN: The Shin Bet security agency has been under fire from settler groups and their supporters. This week, the security agency put out an unusual statement defending itself, saying it's thwarted hundreds of attacks in the West Bank, among them, quote, "Jewish terrorist attacks." Just today, Israeli troops arrested a Palestinian man they said carried out a recent deadly shooting on Israelis. Michael says his son is innocent and that Israelis are the victims of Palestinians, not the opposite.
MICHAEL: We are the one that are afraid in the road. We are the one that they shooting on. We are the one that they stab. What Jewish terror are you talking about?
ESTRIN: It was during an uptick in violence after a Palestinian killed two Israelis in a nearby settlement that the stoning attack occurred. Officials say the day after the stoning attack, settlers coached students at the religious school where the suspects study in how to handle Israeli interrogations. It's unclear if the suspects were present. Yesterday, Israel's justice minister, who's pro-settler, met with the parents of the Israeli suspects. Michael was there.
MICHAEL: We talk. It was a good meeting between us.
ESTRIN: Rabi, the Palestinian whose wife was killed, said that meeting worried him.
RABI: (Through interpreter) We cannot impact Israeli justice system. All I can say now is that I hope that the Israeli justice system will be fair to people like me.
ESTRIN: He said his wife, Aisha, left behind eight children, most with university degrees. He said they taught their children to believe in peace. Daniel Estrin, NPR News, the West Bank.
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The lineup for this summer's Coachella festival is making fans of K-pop and J-pop smile. Korean and Japanese pop music groups feature prominently. Many people have heard about K-pop, the Korean boy band BTS. They topped the U.S. charts last summer. Many fewer people know the blueprints for the genre mostly came from Japan. A group there called SMAP played a big role in shaping the pop idol landscape across Asia. SMAP broke up but remains a huge influence. Naomi Gingold reports.
NAOMI GINGOLD, BYLINE: This has to start with a bit of a confession. I'm kind of a Japanese teeny-bopper. When I was 16, living in the Japanese countryside as an exchange student, I fell in love with the boy band SMAP. And like most of Japan, I never fell out of love with them.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YOZORA NO MUKOU")
SMAP: (Singing in Japanese).
GINGOLD: SMAP, Sports Music Assemble People, debuted in 1991. They came from Johnny's Entertainment, this male pop idol factory in Japan. But unlike most Johnny's groups, when SMAP came out, they were kind of a flop.
RYOKO OSANAI: (Speaking Japanese).
GINGOLD: So SMAP's manager took a new approach, says Ryoko Osanai, a reporter who's covered SMAP extensively.
OSANAI: (Through interpreter) She started putting SMAP on comedy variety shows. It was a first for pop idols, and it was really popular.
GINGOLD: Now, to anyone familiar with pop groups in Asia now, this seems typical. But in the '90s, pop idols were too cool for this. SMAP's popularity on these shows, though, changed the game for everybody.
OSANAI: (Through interpreter) After SMAP, idols all started being on variety shows. They had to be able to do comedy, act, sing, dance.
GINGOLD: In the mid-'90s, SMAP upped the ante again.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LA LA LA LOVE SONG")
TOSHINOBU KUBOTA: (Singing in Japanese).
GINGOLD: One member, Takuya Kimura, starred in a TV drama called "Long Vacation" that exploded in Japan and across Asia. Overnight, he became Japan's No. 1 star, and the show's success cemented the superstar acting careers of all group five members.
FABIENNE DARLING-WOLF: "Long Vacation" really kind of sparked a wave of Japanese transcultural influence, and SMAP became associated with that wave.
GINGOLD: Fabienne Darling-Wolf is a professor of global media at Temple University in Philadelphia. Today, we talk about the Korean wave. But back then, it was the Japanese wave.
DARLING-WOLF: Before K-pop, there was J-pop. (Laughter) I mean, it's a format, right? And the format was developed in Japan.
GINGOLD: How agencies are run, what activities idols do. The same year as "Long Vacation" debuted, SMAP got their own TV variety show on Monday nights. Now, the truth is they weren't particularly good singers or even dancers. But they did have big hits.
(SOUNDBITE OF SMAP SONG, "SEKAI NI HITOTSU DAKE NO HANA")
GINGOLD: And this song became particularly important. It's called "One And Only Flower In The World." The lyrics basically say you are the only one of you. You are special. It's OK to be you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SEKAI NI HITOTSU DAKE NO HANA")
SMAP: (Singing in Japanese).
GINGOLD: It was a megahit and later kind of became a rallying cry of Japanese pride. So in 2016, when rumors started that SMAP might be splitting up after 25 years, it created this earthquake of tabloid gossip and fan pandemonium. Then, one Monday night, SMAP came on their show in black suits, bowed deeply and apologized...
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "SMAPXSMAP")
UNIDENTIFIED SMAP MEMBER: (Speaking Japanese).
GINGOLD: ...And said they were continuing. Twitter crashed in Japan. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he was glad the group was staying together. Then, half a year later, SMAP said they would be calling it quits. Fans took out full-page newspaper ads, signed online petitions. And today, they still call for them to return because although individual SMAP members are still active, something in Japan is missing.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LION HEART")
SMAP: (Singing in Japanese).
GINGOLD: The institution of SMAP may not be there, but the way they helped shape Japanese and Asian pop culture writ large is everywhere. And because this is my story, we're going out on my favorite song, "Lion Heart."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LION HEART")
SMAP: (Singing in Japanese).
GINGOLD: For NPR News, I'm Naomi Gingold in Tokyo.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LION HEART")
SMAP: (Singing in Japanese).
CORNISH: And this story came to us from the podcast Not The Hello Kitty Show.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LION HEART")
SMAP: (Singing in Japanese).
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The partial government shutdown is making more people anxious every day, including those in the arts. Theaters, dance companies, symphony orchestras, nonprofit arts organizations worry about the impact on themselves and their audiences, including school kids and families. NPR's Elizabeth Blair has more.
ELIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE: Dorothy Ryan is managing director of Theatre for a New Audience, based in Brooklyn. For more than a decade, they've been taking Shakespeare to dozens of New York's poorest schools through a program partly funded by a federal agency, the National Endowment for the Arts. This spring, they're planning to introduce students to Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar."
DOROTHY RYAN: They start by learning the story of the play and learning how to understand and read Shakespeare. And then they come to see the play in special morning matinees that we do.
BLAIR: But Ryan's concerned now that the NEA is closed during the shutdown. Theater for a New Audience has already been awarded a $25,000 grant from the NEA. But here's the thing. They don't get the money until after services have been delivered.
RYAN: We don't have the money in hand. As you can imagine, any nonprofit cultural organization struggles with cash flow if they really need to expend funds before funds are received. And the question about when the National Endowment for the Arts will be distributing funds is - it really hits home for us.
BLAIR: On its website, the NEA says, despite the shutdown, it will honor all of its fiscal year 2019 grants and that it's still accepting applications for 2020. But there's nobody working at either the NEA or the humanities endowment to answer questions. Both agencies give money to thousands of small and large arts and cultural organizations across the country, including NPR. Getting a grant from the NEA or NEH helps them raise funds from other sources. But fundraising is a delicate, time-consuming process. Bob Lynch is head of the advocacy organization Americans for the Arts, which also contributes to NPR.
ROBERT LYNCH: It's a fragile industry too. It's not a rich, moneymaking thing. So any little crack potentially affects people and their planning and their ability to attract other funders - all of that kind of thing. It's a ripple effect.
BLAIR: Visits from international artists could also be in jeopardy.
BRIAN GOLDSTEIN: You know, it's show business. It's already fraught with risk. And this is one more complete unpredictable process that could blow up at any moment.
BLAIR: Brian Goldstein is a lawyer with GG Arts Law, a firm that helps international artists secure visas to perform in the United States, mostly in classical, jazz and world music. Goldstein worries a slowdown in an already complex process will make American venues nervous about programming foreign artists altogether.
GOLDSTEIN: We already have the venues calling our office every day. What's going to happen? What do we do? When do we pull the plug?
RYAN: For now, visa and passport services remain open. According to a State Department spokesperson, they'll stay open, quote, "as long as there are sufficient fees to support operations." Art lovers have had to cancel trips to those free museums and galleries that are federally funded. That includes "The Art Of Burning Man," a blockbuster show at the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery and a show of works by photographer Gordon Parks at the National Gallery of Art. Both are closed during the shutdown. Jill Rorem and her family spent months planning a trip to Washington, D.C., from their home in Chicago during her daughter's winter break.
JILL ROREM: We decided not to go after the shutdown because we didn't need to travel and spend all that money on hotel rooms and fancy meals if we weren't going to get the cultural and educational aspect of it.
BLAIR: Rorem says they lost about $1,000 rescheduling their trip to D.C. for April. She's optimistic the shutdown will be over by then. If not, she hopes they'll at least get to see the cherry blossoms. Elizabeth Blair, NPR News, Washington.
(SOUNDBITE OF MEAN LADY SONG "I WILL MARRY YOU")
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Democrats know why voters sent them to Washington this year - health care. In their campaigns, they promised to protect the Affordable Care Act and the access to coverage that are guaranteed for many people. Many went even further, promising Medicare for everybody. Now that Democrats have control of the House, those ambitions are meeting up with reality. NPR's Alison Kodjak reports.
ALISON KODJAK, BYLINE: In her first speech as speaker of the House last week, Nancy Pelosi made it clear that she knows health care is why voters sent Democrats to Congress.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NANCY PELOSI: In the past two years, the American people have spoken. Tens of thousands of public events were held. Hundreds of thousands of people turned out. Millions of calls were made, countless families. Even sick little children, our little lobbyists. Our little lobbyists bravely came forward to tell their stories, and they made a big difference.
KODJAK: Their mandate, she says...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PELOSI: To lower health care costs and prescription drug prices and protect people with pre-existing medical conditions.
KODJAK: On their first day, Democrats made their first move. They voted to allow the House to intervene in a lawsuit to protect the Affordable Care Act. The House will join several state attorneys general in appealing a Texas judge's ruling that the law is unconstitutional. But with control of just one chamber of Congress and with a hostile president, Democrats' power to influence health policy may be limited.
Congressman Frank Pallone is head of the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over parts of the Affordable Care Act. In an interview, he acknowledged that Democrats will likely have to settle for hearings and lawsuits because it will be hard to pass substantial legislation.
FRANK PALLONE: You know, at a time when the administration is doing all this sabotage of the ACA, I mean, I think the focus really has to be on trying to prevent the sabotage and making sure the ACA is strengthened.
KODJAK: According to Pallone, that sabotage includes Trump's decision to stop reimbursing insurance companies for discounts they're required by law to give to their lowest-income clients and the Department of Health and Human Services change to the guidelines that allow people to buy insurance policies that don't carry the full benefits required by the ACA.
PALLONE: I think a lot of it is not even legal, right? In other words, it violates the law.
KODJAK: So he's planning hearings to examine whether the changes are legal.
PALLONE: I think if you do some good oversight and find out what the sabotage consists of, then you can say, well, this isn't allowed under the law. And then you either take it to court or you, you know, try to get legislation passed.
CHIQUITA BROOKS-LASURE: I don't think we can underestimate how important that is when decisions that are being made are questioned and officials have to defend them.
KODJAK: That's Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, a managing director at Manatt Health Strategies. She says for the last two years, the focus in Washington has been on repealing the Affordable Care Act.
BROOKS-LASURE: That energy can now shift to examining what the administration is doing and putting forth other ideas and other proposals, some of which might generate bipartisan agreement.
KODJAK: There may be some Republican support for shoring up the ACA. In the last Congress, Republican Senator Lamar Alexander proposed some bills to stabilize the ACA marketplaces. Pallone acknowledges Democrats' plans are much less ambitious than the Medicare-for-all proposals that many of his colleagues touted during their campaigns.
PALLONE: I just think it's unlikely that we could ever pass it, so I don't want to prioritize that.
KODJAK: That, he says, is the reality of a divided Congress. Alison Kodjak, NPR News, Washington.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Centuries ago in the Middle Ages, religious scribes labored over lavishly illustrated books. Most of these illuminated manuscripts were made by anonymous artists. Now scientists say they have a new kind of evidence that could reveal who made these sacred texts. NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce reports that the researchers found this evidence by accident in a medieval woman's teeth.
NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE, BYLINE: There is some hard stuff that forms on teeth - maybe even your teeth - called tartar.
CHRISTINA WARINNER: It's the thing you go to the dentist to have cleaned off of your teeth, but it's really an extraordinary material.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Christina Warinner is a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany. She says sticky plaque traps microscopic bits of food, bacteria, even pollen. All of that is preserved as the plaque mineralizes and hardens into tartar.
WARINNER: It's actually the only part of your body that fossilizes while you're still alive.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Recently, she was studying teeth from a medieval cemetery in Germany. The cemetery was pretty much all that remained of a small religious community of women.
WARINNER: There's no books that survived. There is no art that survives. It's known only from a handful of scraps of text that mention it in passing.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: The research she was doing had nothing to do with art or books. She was interested in oral health during this historical period. Her colleague, Anita Radini, was analyzing dental samples under the microscope and spotted something blue. She showed Warinner, who was floored.
WARINNER: It was absolutely unbelievable. It almost looked like there were robins' eggs in the (laughter) - on the microscope slide. They were such vibrant, blue particles.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Warinner joked that maybe they'd found an artist who painted with lapis lazuli, a stone that was ground up in the Middle Ages to produce a vivid, blue pigment.
WARINNER: And I just sort of threw that out there because I knew it was an absurd supposition.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: After all, lapis lazuli was rare. Back then, it came from only one place in Afghanistan and was as precious as gold. To solve the mystery, the researchers looked at the particles' composition and mineral structure.
WARINNER: And ultimately, we did find that it was indeed lapis lazuli, which was really, really surprising.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: In the journal Science Advances, the researchers say this woman was likely a scribe and an artist. Alison Beach is a professor of medieval history at Ohio State University. She hopes this find will make historians think twice about old assumptions.
ALISON BEACH: There's quite a bit of evidence of female contributions to book production, and it's gotten more attention in the past 20 years. But I still think that image of the monk as the producer of books is very central and very resilient.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Only a tiny fraction of the scribes who put their name on a book were female, but most scribes did not sign their name.
BEACH: Was anonymous a man or a woman? And we really just don't know for most of them.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: The new find has impressed Cynthia Cyrus of Vanderbilt University. She's studied medieval scribes associated with women's convents. She notes that the lapis lazuli residue seemed to be concentrated in this woman's front teeth, suggesting that the artist put her brush into her mouth.
CYNTHIA CYRUS: As you put the tip of the brush into your mouth to bring it to a point, a little bit of the pigment residue then makes its way into the dental structure. And that would explain the differential between back of mouth and front of mouth.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: She says this looks like a new way of telling who was a scribe and who was not. And historians will now be on the lookout. Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Bye-bye. That, according to a tweet from President Trump, is how a meeting between the president and Democratic congressional leaders ended late this afternoon. It was yet another meeting to try and find a solution to the partial government shutdown over a wall at the southern border, now in Day 19.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer added some detail to what happened at the contentious meeting as he and Democrats were leaving the White House.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
CHUCK SCHUMER: Well, unfortunately, the president just got up and walked out. He asked Speaker Pelosi, will you agree to my wall? She said, no. And he just got up and said, then we have nothing to discuss. And he just walked out.
CORNISH: NPR's Kelsey Snell has been following these developments. She joins me now. Hey there, Kelsey.
KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Hi there.
CORNISH: So this was supposed to be a chance to make progress - right? - on ending the shutdown. Where does it leave things?
SNELL: Well, basically nowhere. This is actually worse than where we were yesterday when they were pretty much dug in on both sides. The meeting lasted about half an hour, which is far less than the last several meetings that they have had.
And Republicans at the meeting kind of disputed Schumer's characterization there. Schumer said that the president slammed his hands on the table and walked out. The vice president says he doesn't recall that happening - the slamming or the raised voices. And they said Trump brought everyone candy.
But at the end of the day, he did walk out, and they are not negotiating anymore.
CORNISH: This wasn't the only meeting today in Washington, right? I mean, is there a path forward?
SNELL: Well, it's really hard to see how they resolve it. It's - it - this is - this kind of new frustration is a departure from where things were at that meeting. Trump sat down with Senate Republicans. And during that lunch, he talked a lot about unity. And when I talked to Republicans leaving the meeting, they said they thought the only way for this to end is for both sides to compromise in some way.
And I thought it was really interesting that Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, who's really not somebody we usually know for his willingness to compromise, was pretty clear about what he wanted.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
RAND PAUL: I like the middle ground, frankly, splitting the difference. I think 2 1/2 billion, and the government opens back up. And he doesn't get everything he wants, and the Democrats don't get everything they want. I mean, really, I think it's an untenable - both are untenable positions.
SNELL: Right. So he's saying $2 1/2 billion for border security and the wall, which is down from President Trump's ask of $5.7 billion. But that is not at all what Republicans were talking about after that White House meeting. So it sounds like we're back to square one.
CORNISH: Does it mean that there is a greater chance that the president could still decide to declare a national emergency to build the wall?
SNELL: Well, that came up at the lunch between the president and Republicans. And senators, including Tim Scott of South Carolina, said that Trump indicated that he isn't interested in going down that route at this time. And Trump himself had softened his position on it when he talked to reporters today.
But he said that if Democrats won't deal, that the national emergency is an option. And I think that there is a really strong chance that he could return to that now that this meeting fell apart.
CORNISH: How is Congress responding to that idea?
SNELL: Well, some notable Republicans, like Mac Thornberry, who is the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said that they don't support it. There are other Republicans who say it could turn into a legal challenge - that this could drag on, and the wall could never be built if, you know, the president goes down the route of a national emergency that Congress doesn't approve of.
And mostly until now, they've been able to avoid the question as a hypothetical. But as things go forward, and as this digs in further, it gets really hard for them to avoid the question - right? - because people are asking the president about it, and the president keeps addressing it himself.
CORNISH: Is there anything that could bring people back to the table?
SNELL: Well, there are a couple of things that are still floating around, and one of those is that, you know, there are 800,000 employees out there - federal employees who either aren't working or are working without a paycheck. And this coming Friday is the first time that that paycheck won't get paid.
And, you know, one person who kind of explained it is Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, who said she's really, really worried that this Friday is the exact moment when things get tough.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LISA MURKOWSKI: I was certainly one who has expressed clearly that I don't like government shutdowns. I don't think that they are a good way to govern.
SNELL: And that - that's her kind of softening, right? She's saying that, you know, she wants to get out of this somehow. And later, she told us that she raised the issue with President Trump, and she said he listened and urged unity on the entire strategy, but he really didn't say much more than that. So it's unclear what will really get people moving.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Kelsey Snell. Kelsey, thank you.
SNELL: Thank you.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Today, all-female bands are an established part of the musical landscape. In the late 1960s - not so much. Before Fanny, The Runaways and The Slits, there was Ace of Cups. The band played the same San Francisco concert stages as Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix and The Grateful Dead but never made an album until now. Allyson McCabe has their story.
ALLYSON MCCABE, BYLINE: Music journalist and author Joel Selvin remembers the San Francisco music scene of the late 1960s as an especially fertile time for experimentation.
(SOUNDBITE OF ACE OF CUPS SONG, "CATCH YOU LATER")
JOEL SELVIN: There was tremendous hunger and openness for musical influences - world musics, Indian music, rhythm and blues, jazz. And that was all new in the world of popular music.
MCCABE: Selvin says one band stood out for its talent and its unusual lineup.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CATCH YOU LATER")
ACE OF CUPS: (Singing) They say that Jesus walked upon the water. You can do anything if you really want to. Say that you can be just like him, but you got to have the faith or be prepared to swim.
MCCABE: Ace of Cups didn't just feature a powerhouse female vocalist in the mold of Grace Slick or Janis Joplin but five women who sang, played their own instruments and wrote their own music.
SELVIN: Ace of Cups played their instruments with the same kind of accomplishment that the male musicians did. And they were on so many bills starting in the summer of '67, but they were a complete anomaly in San Francisco hippie world.
MCCABE: Selvin says Ace of Cups built a considerable following, playing high-profile venues such as The Fillmore, the Avalon Ballroom and Winterland. Mary Gannon, Marla Hunt, Denise Kaufman, Mary Ellen Simpson and Diane Vitalich met in Haight-Ashbury.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WALLER STREET BLUES")
ACE OF CUPS: (Singing) Sitting in a tenement and got no bread to pay the rent, somebody roll up a smoke.
MCCABE: They had all been in other bands, but bassist Mary Gannon says they weren't always treated as equals.
MARY GANNON: I had been in a band called The Demon Lover and, like, I was just supposed to be a backup singer, play the tambourine. It was like it was the man band.
MCCABE: She knew right away Ace of Cups was going to be different.
GANNON: We approach songs differently, each other's music. Like, I can remember the first day that Denise showed up and played a song. Like, she was already a songwriter. And I just think the fact that we were girls and she was a girl, that we weren't going to step on her music.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SIMPLICITY")
ACE OF CUPS: (Singing) You light, you are simplicity, close my eyes. If you're not there, then I don't want to see.
MCCABE: The band informally recorded its rehearsals and shows, and several labels expressed interest, but nothing ever happened. After a few years, Ace of Cups called it quits. They certainly never expected to reach faraway fans like Englishman Alec Palao.
ALEC PALAO: Growing up in the late '70s and early '80s, I got fascinated with the San Francisco sound, so I scoured every book I could find. And, you know, I'd keep seeing this name mentioned, this all-women band that played under the name Ace of Cups.
MCCABE: Palao eventually got his hands on a few bootleg tapes, and he became smitten.
PALAO: They had a sense of poetry. The word I always think of is joy. I mean, they had the joy of making music.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CIRCLES")
ACE OF CUPS: (Singing) Well, it's so easy to let love die or get a little lazy and let it pass on by.
MCCABE: When Palao became a scout for a U.K.-based reissue label coincidentally called Ace Records, he collaborated with Ace of Cups to release the band's rehearsals and live recordings. And they caught the ear of New Yorker George Wallace.
GEORGE WALLACE: They were definitely unafraid to go into different directions and to have soul mix with psychedelia mixed with a capella backed with, you know, really beautifully arranged harmony. And it was all live, too.
MCCABE: When Wallace started his own reissue label, High Moon Records, in 2008, he reached out to Ace of Cups in search of more archival material. There wasn't any, but the band still played from time to time, so Wallace flew out to hear them. Guitarist Denise Kaufman says he offered to record a new album.
DENISE KAUFMAN: Because we never got to go into the studio and didn't have that opportunity, he decided he wanted to give us that gift.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MUSIC")
ACE OF CUPS: (Singing) When it gets so black, you think the end is near, so near, that's when all the stars appear. Like music, they light up the land. Music, snap your fingers, clap your hands. Music, laugh and let your heart feel glad. Everything will be all right. Just keep playing, girl.
MCCABE: Ace of Cups' newly released debut is a double album, featuring four of the band's original members plus contributions from longtime friends, including Taj Mahal, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead. But journalist Joel Selvin says the talent and energy that set the band apart 50 years ago still shines through.
SELVIN: Ace of Cups today are this vibrant, exciting time capsule that lives in the contemporary world.
MCCABE: They've come full circle, says Mary Gannon, to where Ace of Cups began.
GANNON: We just happened to be girls playing music, having fun.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FEEL GOOD")
ACE OF CUPS: (Singing) I really like it because it makes me feel so good.
MCCABE: For NPR News, I'm Allyson McCabe.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FEEL GOOD")
ACE OF CUPS: (Singing) All these judgments you're hearing, don't let them get you down. Every generation carries something new to turn this world around.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Tomorrow, President Trump travels to McAllen, Texas, to visit those he says are on the front lines of what he calls a growing national security and humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. NPR's Carrie Kahn has been in Reynosa, Mexico. It's right across the Rio Grande from McAllen, Texas. She watched the president's Oval Office speech last night with a group of migrants. And she has been gathering reaction in Reynosa. Today, she joins us from the town's central square, just about a block from the border. Hi, Carrie.
CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: Hi.
SHAPIRO: A lot of immigrants who are deported from the United States are taken to Reynosa. What are you hearing from folks in that community?
KAHN: There are a lot of deportees here and migrants in this city. And officials are concerned about that situation. If you look at the migrants - Mexicans that are deported from the U.S., the majority of them come to this northern Mexican state. And a lot of them come here to Reynosa. Officials tell me they're just not equipped to really handle the large number of deported migrants and the migrants coming from Central America. There isn't a strong enough industrial base to give them jobs. They become targets and victims of crime by gangs that are actually targeting them directly to kidnap them, get ransom money from them - all sorts of things. So people and officials here in the city are very worried and concerned about the situation with the migrants right now.
SHAPIRO: I understand you spoke with Reynosa's mayor today. How did she react to what we heard from President Trump last night?
KAHN: She was interesting. She was very outspoken. I caught her at an event she was going to celebrate the police force here in Reynosa. And I asked her about what she thinks about him coming tomorrow and the wall and everything. And she went into this long discussion about how walls don't work and went through a history lesson of walls around the world that don't work between countries. It sounded a lot like she was saying the same Democratic talking points that we heard last night too.
She said the wall is too expensive. It doesn't work. There's more modern technology that could be used. There's more cooperation. And she said what really needs to happen is the root causes of immigration - more jobs, better jobs, more opportunities for young people - needs to take place in Mexico and also in Central America, which is sending a lot of the migrants here north into Mexico. So that's her point. And she was very firm about that.
SHAPIRO: And what has Mexico's new president said today? How did he respond?
KAHN: It's interesting. He has had a very hands-off non-confrontational relationship he's trying to build with President Trump. And he was true to form this morning. Every morning, he holds a press conference. And he was asked, you know, right off the bat, what did he think of President Trump's speech. And he just didn't want to engage in it at all. He said, these are internal political situations in the United States, and it's not our place to enter. He wants - they're having a quiet relationship now, and he wants to keep it that way. And that was clear today.
SHAPIRO: Has this event been getting the same kind of attention in Mexico that it's been getting in the U.S. over the last day or so?
KAHN: You know, actually, Ari, I'm going to tell you. It is not. The biggest problem right now and the biggest worry that Mexicans have right now is about getting gas. There is a tremendous gas shortage as the new president is trying to crack down on fuel theft, which is huge in this country. And here in Reynosa, there's very few gas stations open, and the lines are immense. People were sleeping in their cars overnight. So that's really what people are talking about. Not very many - even here at the border - really aren't focused on President Trump. We'll have to see tomorrow when he comes to McAllen, Texas, right across the Rio Grande.
SHAPIRO: That's NPR's Carrie Kahn taking the pulse of the community in Reynosa, Mexico, just over the border from Texas. Thanks, Carrie.
KAHN: You're welcome.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
We're going to take the next few minutes to remember the woman being called the godmother of Title IX. Bernice Sandler died this past weekend at the age of 90. She was the catalyst for the landmark civil rights legislation that made it illegal for schools receiving federal funds to discriminate on the basis of sex. NPR's Tom Goldman reports.
TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: Title IX was passed in 1972, but the seed for that momentous law was planted about 40 years earlier in an elementary school in Brooklyn. That's when young Bernice Sandler was offended by the way the boys got to do all the classroom activities.
MARTY LANGELAN: For example, running a slide projector.
GOLDMAN: Marty Langelan was Sandler's friend and colleague for nearly 50 years.
LANGELAN: You know, I mean, simple everyday things. You know, oh, we'll have the boys do this. If it was important, the boys did it. And she told her mother back then when she was a schoolgirl that she was going to change the world, that this was wrong. And, boy, she sure did.
GOLDMAN: But not until the late 1960s. Sandler was teaching part time at the University of Maryland and was told she wouldn't be considered for a full-time position because she came on too strong for a woman. Langelan says Sandler decided this had to be illegal. But back then, discrimination in education was rampant - departments refusing to hire women, grad programs denying admission to women, scholarships for men only. Sandler was a meticulous person, and so she started doing research and found presidential Executive Order 11246. It prohibited federal contractors from discriminating in employment on the basis of race and nationality.
LANGELAN: And then she found a footnote that said it had been amended by President Johnson in 1968 to include discrimination based on sex. She literally yelled, eureka, eureka - because most colleges had federal contracts.
GOLDMAN: Over the next two years, Sandler filed around 250 complaints demanding the government enforce its regulations. This led to dramatic congressional hearings and, ultimately, the signing by President Richard Nixon of Title IX. The law's initial focus was on academic hiring and admissions, but Title IX's impact spread to all areas of discrimination - to sexual harassment on campus, and its most visible manifestation, sports. I interviewed Sandler in 2012, and she laughed about how she never really thought about causing a sea change in athletics.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
BERNICE SANDLER: And I remember saying, isn't this great news? On field day or play day, that's a day when schools cancel classes and they have athletic relays and games and stuff while outside. And I'm saying, on field day, there's gonna be more activities for girls. Isn't that nice?
GOLDMAN: Marty Langelan says when she first met Sandler in the early 1970s, she was struck by this little, tiny person who was incredibly cheerful. Langelan says she never saw Sandler angry at anyone, but she had moral anger about injustice. Langelan says, near the end of her life, Sandler recognized she'd lived up to her schoolgirl promise. Bernice Bunny Sandler leaves behind two daughters, three grandkids and countless girls and women in sports and academia forever indebted. Tom Goldman, NPR News.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
In Phoenix, police are collecting DNA samples from all male employees of a long-term care facility. A patient there gave birth to a child. The woman's tribe says she has been in a persistent vegetative state for more than a decade. Stephanie Innes is a health reporter for the Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. And she has been covering this story, which may not be appropriate for some listeners. Thank you for joining us.
STEPHANIE INNES: Thank you for having me.
SHAPIRO: The facility where this took place was called Hacienda HealthCare. Tell us about what happened there.
INNES: On December 29, the Phoenix Police Department got a call that there was an infant in distress at Hacienda HealthCare's Hacienda de los Angeles facility. And when they arrived, they found that there was a woman who was incapacitated, and she had recently given birth.
SHAPIRO: The police held a press conference that you attended today. They are calling this a case of sexual assault. What else did you learn there?
INNES: They are asking for the public's assistance. They said that this is a highest priority for the department, and they would like the public's assistance. But they also have a wide scope out of people that they are testing for DNA samples. They wouldn't specify who, but they said it's a large number of individuals.
SHAPIRO: Tell us about the condition of the mother. What do you know?
INNES: Well, the mother is still in the hospital with her baby, and they are both recovering.
SHAPIRO: And she is a member of the San Carlos Apache tribe in southeastern Arizona.
INNES: That's right. And the tribe issued a statement saying that they are working with Phoenix police on this case, and the family has a lawyer. They released a statement saying that the baby was born - it's a baby boy born into a loving family and that the baby will be well cared for.
SHAPIRO: What has the response been from the facility that was supposed to be caring for this woman who was impregnated while apparently in a persistent vegetative state?
INNES: Well, one thing we don't know is whether staff knew that she was pregnant before she gave birth. I mean, the police didn't get the call until the baby was born. So we don't know whether the staff knew or if they just found out then. We also know that the CEO who was in charge at the time when she became pregnant and gave birth stepped down on Monday.
SHAPIRO: What kind of a facility is Hacienda HealthCare?
INNES: Well, the facility this woman was in is an intermediate - it's described as an intermediate-level facility for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Hacienda also cares for - it's got several programs to provide medical and therapeutic services for medically fragile infants, children and young adults.
SHAPIRO: Obviously, there are legal considerations here. Police are investigating. But there are also medical oversight questions here. This was a facility that was supposed to be caring for its patients and appears to have egregiously failed at that responsibility. What are the implications there?
INNES: Well, that's a good question that we are trying to find out ourselves. It's part of our coverage. And the police are working with several state agencies, including Adult Protective Services, the Division of Developmental Disabilities and the Arizona Department of Health Services. But we're trying to find out who is actually watchdogging for these vulnerable patients in these facilities. I mean, is it just their families or who from the state is watching out for them? And that's something we're trying to figure out.
SHAPIRO: And just briefly, how unusual is it for all the male employees of a facility like this to be asked to give a DNA sample to the police?
INNES: How precedented is that or...
SHAPIRO: Exactly, yeah.
INNES: Yeah. You know, I don't know the answer to that question, but I do know that they can compel the employees to give their DNA. They're asking them to do it voluntarily, but if they don't, they can get a court order and force them to do that. That was something that came out of the press conference today.
SHAPIRO: Stephanie Innes is a health reporter for the Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. Thank you.
INNES: Thank you.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
President Trump's choice to be attorney general was on Capitol Hill today. He met with senators who will preside over his confirmation hearing next week. William Barr is getting ready to lead the Justice Department, just as Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is preparing to exit. To talk through the changes at Justice and what they mean for the Russia investigation, NPR's Carrie Johnson's here in the studio with us. Hey, Carrie.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Hi, Ari.
SHAPIRO: What kind of reception did William Barr get from senators today?
JOHNSON: Mostly a warm one. Bill Barr met with Republican lawmakers, including Lindsey Graham, the incoming chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Lindsey Graham told reporters he asked Barr a lot of questions about the Russia investigation and the man leading it, Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Barr and Mueller are apparently good friends. Mueller attended the weddings of Barr's children. And Lindsey Graham says Barr told him Mueller is not on a witch hunt, and Barr said he would make sure Mueller can finish the job. And according to Graham, Barr also said he would, quote, "lean on the side of transparency" in terms of releasing any public report that Mueller prepares. All this new information may be coming out now to make Barr's nomination more attractive to Democrats.
SHAPIRO: OK. So it's clear what the central tension point in this confirmation fight will be, given that the Justice Department is changing leaders in the middle of this contentious investigation. Will his confirmation really be that easy?
JOHNSON: You know, there are a few complicating factors here. Whether or not these guys socialize with each other, Barr has been critical of some parts of this Russia probe. Democrats have been asking Bill Barr to recuse himself from overseeing it. That's because he wrote a memo last year to the Justice Department arguing that obstruction of justice should be out of bounds when it comes to Trump's firing of former FBI director Jim Comey. In that memo, Bill Barr essentially said the firing was within the president's power, not a crime.
But Barr has not agreed to recuse himself. In fact, it's hard to imagine why he would do that and take this job. Remember, President Trump had a vendetta against the guy who used to be attorney general, Jeff Sessions, for recusing himself and leaving the Russia probe in the hands of the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein.
SHAPIRO: And there is news about Rod Rosenstein's future today. Tell us the latest there.
JOHNSON: NPR's confirmed Rosenstein plans to leave the Justice Department sometime after Bill Barr is confirmed. By that time, Rosenstein will have been on the job nearly two years. That's a long tenure for a deputy AG. It's probably the hardest job in the department in normal times. These are not normal times.
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
JOHNSON: I'm told Rosenstein's leaving on his own terms. He's not being pushed, even though the writing's kind of been on the wall since the New York Times reported last year at one point he had discussed wiring President Trump. Rosenstein says he was being sarcastic. They never went ahead with that idea.
SHAPIRO: As long as you're in the studio, I want to ask you about a development in the case against President Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. This looks like some self-inflicted damage perpetrated by his own legal team.
JOHNSON: Yeah. Paul Manafort's lawyers filed papers in court this week, but the parts they tried to redact were visible if you cut and pasted them into a new document. And guess what? A lot of people did.
SHAPIRO: Yeah, I did it (laughter).
JOHNSON: (Laughter) Yeah. Those parts told us prosecutors suspect that Paul Manafort shared Trump campaign polling data during the campaign with a business associate of his. The special counsel has linked that man, that business associate, to Russian intelligence. Manafort also allegedly lied to prosecutors about a meeting he had with that business associate in Madrid where these two men supposedly discussed a peace plan for Ukraine, which has interests relevant to Russia.
The bottom line is Manafort may have lied about his contacts with a figure linked to Russian intelligence both during the campaign and after the election. That's a pretty big fact for people investigating whether anyone in the Trump inner circle coordinated with Russia. What we don't know right now, Ari, is what candidate Donald Trump knew about all this at the time, what was in his head, his intent.
SHAPIRO: NPR Justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, thank you.
JOHNSON: My pleasure.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
It was a stunning upset in a deeply red state. Democrat Doug Jones beat his Republican opponent, Roy Moore, in the 2017 Alabama Senate race, a special election held to fill former Attorney General Jeff Sessions' seat. The contest drew national attention after Republican candidate Roy Moore was accused of sexual assault and misconduct with teenage girls. Now, reporting following the race has focused on the controversial strategy used by one pro-Jones group called Project Birmingham.
The Washington Post's Craig Timberg has been looking into this. He joins me now. Welcome to the program.
CRAIG TIMBERG: Thank you.
CORNISH: In a nutshell, can you describe exactly what is Project Birmingham?
TIMBERG: This was a disinformation campaign that really resembled some of the tactics that were used by the Russians in 2016 involving fake Facebook messages. Twitter was used as well. And the idea was to undermine the support for Roy Moore and to bolster the support for Doug Jones using social media in a way that was, frankly, quite deceptive.
CORNISH: Can you give a description of the more controversial approaches that the group allegedly used?
TIMBERG: So the definitive account of this, at least as far as we've been able to turn up, is a document that was handed out at a secret meeting here in Washington back in September. And what they were trying to do is figure out, you know, what would make people vote either for Jones or against Roy Moore? For example, arguably the most controversial tactic that's in the document speaks about creating fake evidence - what they call a false flag - that Russian bots were supporting Roy Moore.
So they put out some sort of hints about this on Twitter. There are some tweets out there that have Cyrillic characters - the Russian language - suggesting that they were Russian, and then it was spread around. It actually generated some headlines at the time. A couple of news organizations bit on this and reported that Roy Moore was being supported by Russian bots.
CORNISH: As this reporting has come out, what have we learned about any kind of relationship between this group and the Jones campaign or Democrats in Alabama?
TIMBERG: There's no evidence of a relationship with Senator Jones or, really, with any Democrats in Alabama that would be found. What we do know is that the money for this - about a hundred thousand dollars - came from the Internet billionaire Reid Hoffman. He, like the other people who have any affiliation with this, say they had no idea that his money was being used in this way.
The other key actors are a Democratic operative here in Washington named Mikey Dickerson. He is best known for fixing the healthcare.gov web portal. He also says that he didn't know what was going on. And then there is a security company called New Knowledge based down in Texas. And they've acknowledged some limited experimentation with these kinds of tactics but says that they didn't do the stuff that's described in the document that we have.
CORNISH: All of these guys, though, are saying, look, I didn't know where the money was going. I didn't know what was going on. Does that sound realistic?
TIMBERG: Well, it certainly seems like somebody isn't telling the truth. It's very hard to square the various denials we've gotten from the people who acknowledged playing some kind of role in this with the denials of the other people who have acknowledged playing a role in this. There's been a lot of finger-pointing. There's been a lot of - let's just say lack of clarity about who did what. It's clear nobody wants to own Project Birmingham at this point.
CORNISH: Is there any way to know what kind of effect it had on the election? I mean, that race in particular, given the allegations about Roy Moore, had a lot going on.
TIMBERG: Indeed. And as political scientists have pointed out to us, Roy Moore was an incredibly well-known character with some incredibly well-known weaknesses as a candidate. It's clear that whoever, you know, was pushing Project Birmingham was attempting to push on those issues. They talk about - in the document - trying to provoke disgust among evangelical Christians, for example, over those allegations of sexual misconduct.
But in the end, we don't know what effect it had in the same way we don't really know what effect the Russian disinformation had in 2016. There's no way to run these elections again. And that's what's so troubling in a way, right? Like, once it's happened, how do we keep it from happening again?
CORNISH: Craig Timberg covers technology for The Washington Post. Thank you for sharing your reporting with us.
TIMBERG: It's my pleasure.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
President Trump is threatening to cut off FEMA money to California communities that were devastated by the recent deadly wildfires. Trump tweeted that he's ordered FEMA to send no more money unless California changes the way its forests are managed. Like most Western states, the bulk of California's forests are actually federally owned and managed, so it's not clear whether the government will follow through on the president's threat.
NPR's Kirk Siegler is in Chico, Calif. That's where FEMA is helping people recover from the Camp Fire that was the most deadly and destructive in California history. And, Kirk, I understand you're standing outside one of the agency's main Disaster Recovery Aid Centers. What are you seeing there?
KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE: Well, there's a very big FEMA presence here, Audie. And it's a very busy recovery center, even two months now after the Camp Fire ignited. I'm told that on some days, upwards of 700 people are still coming in and out of here. FEMA has spent $54 million so far, just since November here. You know, and this is going to critical programs like temporary housing assistance, aid with rentals, hotel vouchers.
FEMA is looking more to the long term to get about 2,000 trailers or mobile home units placed. And some of them - some fire victims have already been put in them in a town about 40 minutes away from here. So this is very much still a very active recovery situation, and FEMA has a large presence on the ground.
CORNISH: So what are people in California saying about the president's threat?
SIEGLER: Well, people right here in Chico - you know, a lot of people don't have time to respond or speculate about what the president is claiming he may do. I mean, these are families in crisis, living day to day. I just watched a group of folks get in and out of a car. Their kids were still with them. It's clear that they don't have - can't go to school right now. They don't have any housing.
More officially, the new governor of California, Gavin Newsom, has strongly condemned the president's tweets, saying he's playing games with people's lives and that Paradise shouldn't be victims of partisan bickering.
You know, if this were to happen, simply put, the consequences would be dire. These are people with, you know, hardly any options. There are hundreds of people still sleeping in RVs out at the fairgrounds, assuming they were lucky enough to have an RV, or one that didn't burn.
And, you know, I think there would also be a pretty big political fallout if this were to happen. It's worth noting that two of the hardest-hit counties from California's wildfires voted solidly for Trump in 2016, including the county that I'm talking to you from.
CORNISH: You mentioned partisan bickering. We should note that this whole conversation is separate from the partial government shutdown, right? What do we know about how that's impacting things so far?
SIEGLER: Well, so far, FEMA is telling me that there's no effect on the money and its programs here on the ground because the agency is considered an essential operation. But, you know, there are some lesser-profile things that are starting to worry local officials, especially if this drags on.
I was at a Paradise Town Council meeting last night. And, in fact, we heard there that the town had been planning to apply for disaster recovery grants that they are really going to rely on in terms of planning and other things, but they can't right now because the Department of Commerce is mostly closed.
I think you might continue to see the state of California step in when it can, but there's a concern here if this stalemate drags on.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Kirk Siegler reporting from Chico, Calif. Thank you.
SIEGLER: You're welcome, Audie.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The partial government shutdown is at Day 19 and counting. This week, federal workers will miss their first paycheck. Republicans and Democrats are still deadlocked.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
And after a meeting at the White House this afternoon, chances of a deal look more remote than ever. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer accused the president of having a temper tantrum.
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CHUCK SCHUMER: When Leader Pelosi said she didn't agree with the wall, he just walked out and said, we have nothing to discuss. so...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Said it was a waste of his time.
SCHUMER: He said it was a waste of his time. That is sad and unfortunate.
SHAPIRO: Vice President Mike Pence later disputed that description. Republican South Dakota senator Mike Rounds met with President Trump on Capitol Hill earlier this afternoon and joins us now. Welcome to the program.
MIKE ROUNDS: Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity to visit with you.
SHAPIRO: That was quite a display on the White House driveway earlier today. Clearly, we're no closer to resolution. Have you heard anything from anyone that gives you hope of a resolution here?
ROUNDS: You know, I was not available during the time in which that meeting occurred. I was in a classified briefing, but I can tell you this. There's a real interest in trying to find some common ground, at least among the rank-and-file.
What we do know is it's going to take Republicans and Democrats to agree that compromise is the only way we're going to come out of this with a successful outcome. And that means Democrats are going to have to recognize that we control the Senate, and we control the presidency. Republicans are going to have to recognize that the Democrats control the House. Neither is going to be happy with the final outcome, but we need to come to a resolve.
SHAPIRO: So...
ROUNDS: And that means answering part of what both parties want.
SHAPIRO: And so when you say there's interest among the rank-and-file in finding common ground, are there actually talks happening behind the scenes that we're not seeing in the headlines?
ROUNDS: What it is is a recognition that this takes not just the House and Senate, but also the president to agree to something. And that means that, as our leader, Mitch McConnell, has said, Democrats and the White House have got to come together. And once they've come to an agreement that they can both come out and say will work, we're more than willing to step in and participate.
What I found from my colleagues is the desire to do it in the following manner. No. 1, you're going to have to do something to satisfy what the president believes is a very important issue on the border. No. 2, government needs to get reopened, but you can't do one without the other. There's got to be a compromise that allows both sides to move forward and feel like they came out with somewhat of a victory.
SHAPIRO: So does that mean something like DACA allowing people who are brought to the country as young immigrants to stay in the country legally permanently?
ROUNDS: You know, we actually talked about that today. And as you know, last February, Senator King, who's an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, and myself were the two - the two lead sponsors on a bill that would have provided $25 billion in funding for border security at $2.5 billion a year, authorized and appropriated. Along with that, there was a DACA fix included along with a limitation on what we call chain migration. Now...
SHAPIRO: There were enough votes to pass that, but the White House said no.
ROUNDS: Actually, we got 54 votes in the Senate, and we need 60. But the White House was concerned because, at that point, they were working through a court challenge on whether or not the president actually had the legal right to begin the DACA process in the first place. There may very well be something in the near future that might allow us to move forward with something along that line as an alternative.
When you get to one of these impasses, it's a matter of adding more in to come up with a final outcome. We actually had a discussion with some members today that suggested perhaps this is the time in which we start talking about adding in the budget process for the coming year...
SHAPIRO: Senator...
ROUNDS: ...Talk about top-end numbers and so forth.
SHAPIRO: ...Just in our last minute, I know that this week you met with workers at a Sioux Falls airport who are not getting paid. There was a fatal plane crash in Sioux Falls over Christmas, and people working at the airport have not been able to take any leave to process the trauma. What message do you give those workers about why they are being forced to work without pay for 19 days now?
ROUNDS: Yeah. First of all, I'd tell them, look, in South Dakota, we just don't consider that to be acceptable at all. Second of all, we have to realize that it's not just South Dakotans that are making this decision. But these individuals, not only went through a very traumatic time in which they were providing services, and they were actively involved in doing their job during the Christmas holiday time with no pay. And they were involved, and they were observing a fatal plane crash. So my message was, we remember you. We appreciate you. We're going to do everything we can to try to find a resolve to this situation.
SHAPIRO: Senator Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota. Thanks so much.
ROUNDS: Thank you.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The partial government shutdown means that most museums and monuments in downtown Washington are closed. One that's open is at President Trump's hotel, a few blocks from the White House. It's a small historic site that is staffed by the National Park Service. NPR's Peter Overby reports.
PETER OVERBY, BYLINE: Tourists today were trickling in and out of the clock tower at the Trump Hotel. Sven Moeller is from New Jersey, visiting D.C. with friends from Germany.
SVEN MOELLER: It feels a little bit weird to be in the Trump Hotel (laughter). Yes, it does.
OVERBY: Trump's hotel is in what's called the Old Post Office Building, which was built in 1899 and belongs to the government. The hotel is there on a lease. The one part of the building not leased to Trump is the majestic clock tower. It's a separate historic site.
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OVERBY: It has 10 bells, replicas of a set in Westminster Abbey in London. Also, an observation deck, second only to the Washington Monument in height. The federal General Services Administration oversees the Old Post Office, and since 1983, long before the hotel arrived, GSA has paid the National Park Service for three rangers to staff the tower. So when the shutdown hit last month, here's what happened. GSA and the National Park Service both had to close the park rangers at the clock tower were sent home. But then GSA, even though it was still shut down, found money in a separate account that it could legally use to pay the rangers at the clocktower. GSA and the Park Service, also still closed, signed an agreement. GSA has said it was, quote, "unrelated to the facility's tenant."
BETTY MCCOLLUM: Boy, do I have a lot of questions.
OVERBY: This is Congresswoman Betty McCollum, a Minnesota Democrat, the incoming chair of a House subcommittee that oversees the National Park Service. McCollum said the agreement seems to benefit the president's business.
MCCOLLUM: The fact that it's a short-term agreement, the fact that there was a scramble to do it during a government shutdown just has all the makings of, you know, why did this happen? Is this legal? Is it ethical?
OVERBY: To reach the tower, you go through special door at the back of the hotel. Long corridors lead to the elevator. They have historical exhibits about the district and the Old Post Office Building - George Washington choosing the site of the capital city, Ivanka Trump inspecting blueprints for the hotel conversion. A tiny souvenir shop sells Trump chocolates, Trump hoodies, but no campaign items. Two watchdog groups have filed Freedom of Information requests for documents about the agreement. Noah Bookbinder is director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington or CREW.
NOAH BOOKBINDER: Were there communications between the White House and these agencies about whether this facility should be opened up? What was the legal basis? What was the thinking?
OVERBY: But Jeremy Stein, visiting the clock tower from Sydney, Australia, was just happy it was open.
JEREMY STEIN: You know, politics will sort itself out. But, you know, once you're at the top there, you get to enjoy a nice view. So you can't really complain about that.
OVERBY: Peter Overby, NPR News, Washington.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Iraq today, part of an extensive trip around the Middle East. He's spending a lot of time trying to reassure allies that withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria won't change the U.S. mission in the region. Pompeo and his entourage are now in Cairo, along with NPR's Michele Kelemen. We have a little delay on the line. Can you hear me, Michele?
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: Yes, I can, Audie.
CORNISH: So, first, tell us about Pompeo's day in Iraq.
KELEMEN: Sure. The visit came just, you know, a couple of weeks after Trump visited troops but didn't take the time to meet Iraq's prime minister, so Pompeo seemed to be making up for that. Security was really tight because - in part because the White House had previously announced that he was going to go. They said January 11. The State Department changed the date around and tried to keep a tight lid on things, only bringing in a much smaller pool of journalists into the visit. But he really did make the rounds. You know, he met with Iraq's prime minister and president, and then he flew to the Kurdish region up north. They talked about continuing the fight against ISIS, about Iraq's relationship with Iran. You know, the U.S. wants Iran to wean itself off - wants Iraq to wean itself off Iranian energy supplies.
CORNISH: I want to focus on Syria for a minute because it's the question that's hanging over this whole trip, right? Turkey's president yesterday rejected U.S. calls to protect Kurdish fighters who fought against ISIS in Syria. How did Pompeo address that when he met Kurds in northern Iraq?
KELEMEN: You know, he was really trying to downplay that dispute with Turkey. Turkey sees the Kurds as terrorists, but they've been partners for the U.S. in northern Syria. So take a listen to what Pompeo had to say when he was in the Kurdish area in Irbil today.
MIKE POMPEO: These have been folks that have fought with us, and it's important that we do everything we can to ensure that those folks that fought with us are protected. And Erdogan has made commitments. He understands that - I think he uses the language - he talks about - I mean, he has no beef with the Kurds. And we want to make sure that that's the case. And I'm confident that as Ambassador Jeffreys (ph) and others travel through the region in the days ahead, we'll make real progress on that.
KELEMEN: So he was talking there about his envoy on Syria, Jim Jeffrey, who's staying on the job and working this issue.
CORNISH: And now Pompeo is there in Cairo. What's planned in Egypt?
KELEMEN: Well, he's giving a big speech tomorrow. I'm expecting to hear a lot about Iran. He often criticizes the previous administration for putting too much emphasis on the nuclear negotiations with Iran and not enough on everything else Iran does. So expect to hear him continue with those themes. And remember, Audie, it was in Cairo where President Obama outlined his approach to the Muslim world back in 2009. Pompeo's trying to draw a sharp distinction from - with this administration's approach.
CORNISH: Egypt's president, though, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, is blamed for jailing thousands of activists and others who are just suspected of speaking out. So should Sissi and Pompeo meet, do you expect Pompeo to talk about this.
KELEMEN: Well, Pompeo may raise those concerns. I'm not expecting him to push too hard. His State Department has actually been praising Sissi recently on something else, that is on religious freedoms and support for Christians in Egypt. So I'm expecting to hear a bit more about that. And by the way, he's also going to be visiting other Arab partners with very poor human rights records this week, including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
CORNISH: Michele, thank you.
KELEMEN: Thank you.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Michele Kelemen in Cairo with the secretary of state.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The special train that carries North Korean leader Kim Jong Un left Beijing today. Kim met with Chinese President Xi Jinping. And for the Trump administration, this visit could complicate matters on two fronts - the U.S.-China trade war and discussions to end North Korea's nuclear program. Jung Pak is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Center for East Asian Policy Studies and joins us now in the studio. Welcome.
JUNG PAK: Thank you.
SHAPIRO: Because of international sanctions, more than 90 percent of North Korea's trade goes through China. And this is the fourth time in less than a year that Kim has visited China. What can you tell us about why he made this trip?
PAK: We can broadly see it as a sign that North Korea wants to revive ties that had really plummeted since he came to power in December 2011. Normally, when we see the North Korean leaders go to Beijing, it's a way to shore up ties, to make sure that Beijing has not abandoned them and to tell the Chinese that they believe in economic reform and development and profess their alliance with each other and to make nice with the Chinese leaders.
SHAPIRO: Explain what is going on in the world, and specifically with the United States, that would make Kim Jong Un want to strengthen ties with China.
PAK: The fact that Kim Jong Un went to Beijing just seven days after in his New Year's speech saying that he's going to continue diplomacy and that he looks forward to meeting with President Trump again, I saw that as bracketing and to preview whatever he's going to discuss with President Trump, so that he can say I have the backing of Beijing, who wants sanctions to be loosened so that we can have peace on the Korean peninsula. And that would bolster Kim's position in advance of the Trump meeting.
SHAPIRO: One description of this meeting that I read described it as a veiled warning to President Trump. Do you think that's true? And if so, what is the warning?
PAK: We can see it as a warning, but shoring up ties to Chinese leaders is a tried and true tactic by North Korean leaders to maintain their support, to get Chinese investment and economic aid and political aid. And so far, that's worked. Last September, China and Russia at the U.N. said we should loosen or lift sanctions because Kim has shown a lot of restraint and that he is engaging in dialogue.
SHAPIRO: So if we look at President Trump's effort to get North Korea to give up its nuclear program, for that to be successful, it will require cooperation and support from China. Does this meeting between the leaders of China and North Korea tell us anything about China's willingness to stand with the United States on this?
PAK: Right. I think for China and the fraught relationship with the United States, it doesn't help that there's a trade issue going on with the U.S. that might hamper its cooperation on North Korea. On the bright side, I would say that Beijing has an interest in prodding and encouraging North Korean denuclearization, so that's where our interests converge. And I think Chinese leaders, for their part, are in no mood to completely lift all the sanctions and all the pressure because Kim Jong Un has been so provocative over the past year and the fact that they just don't trust Kim to begin with.
SHAPIRO: So let's talk about where the trade war fits into all of this because the timing is really interesting. American and Chinese negotiators were talking at the same time that Kim and Xi were meeting. Do you expect this to cause American officials to adjust their approach or respond differently than they might have without this Kim-Xi meeting?
PAK: I don't think so. I think the fact that Kim went so early on in 2019, and reinforcing what he said in the New Year's speech about diplomacy, we should be getting used to these types of visits. Kim's engagement over the past year has been not just about China but about South Korea, potentially Russia and with the United States. And so Kim's visit is not throwing all of his eggs in one basket. We're likely to see meetings with President Moon, maybe a Putin summit that's been talked about.
SHAPIRO: Moon Jae-In of South Korea, yeah.
PAK: That's right. There might be a Putin visit. There might be a Xi Jinping visit to Pyongyang. There are lots of things and opportunities for Kim to practice his hub and spokes model of engagement to try to divide the regional parties and to make sure that there's no unity of action on whatever punishment there is.
SHAPIRO: Jung Pak, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, thanks for coming into the studio today.
PAK: Thank you so much.
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ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
A total waste of time - that's how President Trump is describing the talks he had with congressional leaders at the White House this afternoon. The only thing the two sides seem to agree on is that the meeting was not productive, and there's no deal in sight. Here's Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
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CHUCK SCHUMER: He sort of slammed the table. And when Leader Pelosi said she didn't agree with the wall, he just walked out and said, we have nothing to discuss.
SHAPIRO: Nothing to discuss. So where do things go from here? We're going to talk about that now with Maryland Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen, who joins us from Capitol Hill. Thanks for being with us.
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: Ari, good to be with you.
SHAPIRO: Well, far from getting closer to a resolution, it sounds like today's meeting drove the two sides farther apart. So where do you see things going next?
VAN HOLLEN: Well, that's a good question. It was a disappointing meeting. The president invites you over, then walks out of his own meeting. I do think it's time for Republican senators to step up at this point in time.
In the Senate, we have two bills that were passed by the new House of Representatives as their first order of business. And they would reopen the government. Both bills have had support from Republican senators before, and so they really have no excuse for not taking up bills that they've supported in the past simply because the president says he doesn't want them to act on them. We're...
SHAPIRO: When you ask...
VAN HOLLEN: ...A separate branch of government. We're a separate branch of government. We shouldn't be contracting out our votes to the president of the United States.
SHAPIRO: When you ask Republican senators to, in your words, step up, you're asking them to defy the president and the leader of their own party. That doesn't seem likely, does it?
VAN HOLLEN: Well, we're asking them to do their jobs. And many of them have said in the last several days that they agree with us that the first order of business is to reopen the government. About four to five Republican senators are on the record now saying that's what we should do. And then we can continue discussions with the president over the most effective way to provide border security.
This is not a dispute about the need for secure borders. There's agreement on that. This is a dispute over whether or not paying tens of billions of dollars ultimately for a 2,000-mile wall is the best way to do that. It's not. And that's what the experts say. But let's reopen the government, and then we can have that discussion.
SHAPIRO: The president says he is willing to let this shutdown go on for months or years. He is not known for backing down. Your state, Maryland, has more federal government employees than most. Are you willing to wait this out if you can't get the Republicans on board to join you and defy the president?
VAN HOLLEN: Well, this is why we're working overtime to try to resolve this with our Republican Senate colleagues. You're absolutely right, Ari. People are already suffering. Senator Cardin and I are going to be meeting again with federal employees this Friday, which will be the first time when they miss a full paycheck. I had meetings with federal employees yesterday. And these are folks who are one paycheck away from missing a mortgage payment or a rent payment.
I heard President Trump say he could relate to his federal employees. I can tell you that that is not the case. The president doesn't know what it's like to have to skip his mortgage payment. If he did, he wouldn't be holding the country and 800,000 federal employees hostage in the way he is.
SHAPIRO: The president has left open the possibility of declaring a national emergency at the border and acting to build the wall without support from Congress. How would Democrats respond if the president takes that move?
VAN HOLLEN: Well, that would be an abuse of power. And based on what I've been reading and my reading of the statutes and listening to experts, that could very well run afoul of the law. It's true that the president can declare a national emergency. What is not at all clear is whether he can use that declaration to deploy the military to build a wall along the southern border.
I don't think he has that authority. And I've been listening to Republican House members, including the senior Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, who says he would oppose the president's misusing his authority in that way.
SHAPIRO: All right. Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, thank you for joining us.
VAN HOLLEN: And thank you.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
We're going to talk now about one consequence of the partial government shutdown - a slowdown in scientific research. Three major scientific conferences are taking place this week, but absent from the gatherings of meteorologists, astronomers and climate scientists are hundreds of government scientists whose work is crucial to those fields.
For more, we're joined by Keith Seitter. He's executive director of the American Meteorological Society. It's holding its 99th annual meeting in Phoenix this week. Welcome to the program.
KEITH SEITTER: Oh, it's nice to be here.
CORNISH: So there are scientists there from all over the country, but does the atmosphere actually feel different? Do you notice some empty chairs?
SEITTER: It does feel different. It's still a very energetic meeting. There's still terrific science that's being presented, but we are missing one component of our community, and that's the government scientists who are typically an important part of this meeting.
CORNISH: How are they important? What kind of work do they typically do, and for what kinds of agencies?
SEITTER: Most of the people who are missing from here are from NOAA, and many of them from the National Weather Service. But we're also missing many of our colleagues from NASA and a few of the other government agencies that are affected by the shutdown. So it's a broad spectrum.
And an important component of this is that our community depends on a really strong collaboration between the folks in the private sector, the academic research community and the government. And it's a huge loss for our community. It's a loss for the scientific work that's being done. And it's an enormous loss for the country itself.
CORNISH: Can you describe any specific presentations or panels that had to be canceled as a result of the shutdown?
SEITTER: There actually were several panels having to do with how to better prepare for severe weather events, dealing with air pollution and health issues. There are a lot of presentations that are happening here that really directly impact the health and well-being of the general population and how to deal with those issues.
So, certainly, the lack of ability for those presentations to occur means that the scientists who normally would be here taking advantage of those and using that information in their own research, really, are not able to do that.
CORNISH: Scientific research is a long game, right? Does it really matter to have a shutdown of a few weeks? Does it have a significant impact?
SEITTER: It does have a lingering impact because a lot of this work is work that's ongoing at such an incredible pace right now that interrupting that really sets a lot of that work back. And also, just recovering from the lost opportunities for people to get together, it's going to take some months to really be able to rebuild some of those opportunities in new and different ways.
The other aspect of this that I think is a lingering impact is government research labs and government opportunities really look for the best and brightest of those in our community who are entering career paths. And right now, we're in a position where a lot of students are at this meeting, a lot of people who are going to be looking for jobs soon. And they're seeing an environment where it may not be, you know, the most attractive career path these days to go into government service, whereas in the past, those were considered some of the best jobs and really were very competitively sought by the best and brightest within our field.
So that's, I think, an impact that may linger for years.
CORNISH: Keith Seitter is executive director of the American Meteorological Society. Thank you for speaking with us.
SEITTER: Happy to do so. Thank you.
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ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
One industry that's been a key supporter of President Trump is no fan of the federal shutdown. Oil and gas drilling is booming, but much of that production is on federal lands, and operators worry about a slowdown. Cooper McKim of Wyoming Public Radio reports.
COOPER MCKIM, BYLINE: Tom Meites heads a small oil and gas company in Casper, and he's planning a new project. He's begun the lengthy process with the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, to find new parcels for development but has had to put that on hold.
TOM MEITES: With the BLM shut down, the studies on parcels that we've nominated are not happening.
MCKIM: Meites is still hoping to buy that land this year, but now he's not sure when it will happen. BLM is responsible for that environmental review, but most employees are on furlough.
MEITES: The longer the shutdown goes on, the longer we all will be unable to go ahead with the work we want to do.
MCKIM: Meites says there's enough uncertainty trying to predict when the price of oil will be right. He says this shutdown is really hard for a small company like his.
MEITES: We're paying a price for it. And no business likes being told you can't operate.
MCKIM: The oil and gas industry has been doing well in recent years for lots of reasons, including the Trump administration's push to open up vast areas of public land for drilling and to speed up the permitting process. Kathleen Sgamma is with the Western Energy Alliance, a group of oil and gas companies. She says if the shutdown goes on much longer it threatens to slow all that down and not just in Wyoming.
KATHLEEN SGAMMA: Colorado, Utah, New Mexico - same kind of situation.
MCKIM: There's also a lot of confusion. The BLM says it is still processing online applications to drill. That's prompted criticism that the Trump administration is favoring the energy industry. But it's not clear these applications are being acted on. And Sgamma says having only limited staff will slow down processing. In the 2013 government shutdown, a federal report found the BLM did not process 200 applications to start drilling. Sgamma expects that to be even higher this time.
SGAMMA: Companies are waiting for leases. If you don't have your full lease hold, it's hard to do the exploratory work or the full development work that you're planning on. And it just causes your development to slip.
MCKIM: That could mean a hit for a place like Wyoming, where taxes from oil and gas make up a third of state revenue. Nada Culver of The Wilderness Society says she's more concerned about places where drilling is already happening. She worries about a lack of oversight if there's a spill or a leak from a well pad. the BLM's shutdown plan says there are essential employees on the ground for inspection, enforcement and emergency response, but...
NADA CULVER: I would definitely worry that that is something right now with the shutdown that BLM is not paying any more attention to than it ever does and would probably be paying less attention to than it does. You know, workers are not being paid there's. Nobody to supervise. And certainly, there's not a lot of incentive or ability to get out and about right now.
MCKIM: Meanwhile, more oil and gas lease sales are slated for February and March, but some in the industry worry that if the shutdown drags on, they won't happen. For NPR News, I'm Cooper McKim in Laramie, Wyo.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
There was a traffic accident Saturday night on Route 35 in Cherokee County, Ala. An 18-wheeler ran off the road and was badly damaged. Not really the stuff of national news, except for what happened next.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
For an eyewitness report, we called the Cherokee County Emergency Management Agency.
SHAWN ROGERS: Cherokee County EMA, this is Shawn.
SHAPIRO: Shawn Rogers, director of Emergency Management, was one of the first to arrive on the scene.
ROGERS: The truck overturned, and the load spilled out the top of the truck.
SHAPIRO: And what a cargo load that trailer was carrying.
ROGERS: Chicken fingers that had been prepackaged. They were shrink-wrapped.
SHAPIRO: Frozen chicken fingers, a lot of them.
ROGERS: I mean, it was, you know, tens of thousands of pounds, probably, you know, 40,000 pounds or more.
CORNISH: And word of this 40,000-pound chicken finger bounty spread fast.
ROGERS: There was chicken that had spilled out, and it was on the side of the road. And it was free.
CORNISH: But the chicken was not free for the taking. And Rogers says, even if it was, taking it was not exactly a good idea.
ROGERS: At that point, the chicken had been there for about 24 hours. It was about 65, 70 degrees Sunday during the day. So it was no longer safe.
SHAPIRO: Still, the scene drew a crowd of the curious or hungry or both.
ROGERS: The chicken sitting on the side of road was not a traffic hazard initially. It's the people that was stopping that created the traffic hazard.
SHAPIRO: So Shawn Rogers directed his public information officer to post this on Facebook.
CORNISH: The Cherokee County Sheriff's Office is asking that no one try to stop to get the chicken tenders that were spilled from the 18-wheeler accident last night on Highway 35.
SHAPIRO: The highway is now reopened, but Facebook users are still having a field day posting a string of comments that, frankly, we could not improve upon. So here's a sampling.
CORNISH: So the five-second rule doesn't apply to this?
SHAPIRO: That gives new meaning to crash diet.
CORNISH: I guess the chicken didn't cross the road safely.
SHAPIRO: And our favorite, chicken tender fender bender.
CORNISH: Remarkably, Shawn Rogers tells us this is not an isolated incident for Cherokee County.
ROGERS: We have a lot of 18-wheelers overturned here in our county. I mean, we've had anything from live chicken trucks where there's live chickens running around the road all the way to beer trucks, pizza trucks. So it's not uncommon.
SHAPIRO: Sounds like dinner.
CORNISH: (Laughter).
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Some form of a border wall has existed for years in urban areas along the southern border. In some neighborhoods, the wall has helped reduce foot traffic and crime. Elsewhere, it's made a less tangible impact. And not everyone is convinced that the wall has made them safer. Monica Ortiz Uribe reports.
MONICA ORTIZ URIBE, BYLINE: At Ardovino's Desert Crossing, an Italian restaurant in southern New Mexico, it's not unusual for diners to look up from their gnocchi and see Border Patrol outside, aiming flashlights at the ground.
MARINA ARDOVINO: Say - sometimes it definitely feels like a movie out here.
URIBE: Maria (ph) Ardovino co-owns the restaurant, which is within sight of a border wall. The barrier cuts down a desert mesa like an iron ribbon. The old chain-link fence that used to separate the two countries was recently replaced by a tall curtain of steel slats, the kind President Trump proposed in his Oval Office address. Ardovino is not impressed.
ARDOVINO: It's hard for me to be polite with what I truly think about that. I just think the border wall is such a ridiculous waste of money.
URIBE: In her 21 years running the restaurant, Ardovino says she's never felt unsafe. The restaurant has an open-air deck for marriage ceremonies where couples say their vows overlooking the border wall. Despite the wall, Ardovino says migrants still make it over.
ARDOVINO: I know the people that - they're still crossing through. The Border Patrol is still here. The people that I've come in immediate contact with, which throughout the years has declined - they want some water and a phone.
URIBE: Just down the road from Ardovino's, Isabel Marshall lives along a row of trailer homes about a two-minute jog from the border. Twenty-five years ago, she floated into the U.S. from Mexico on a tire over the Rio Grande to clean American homes and pick American crops. She later married an American and is now a naturalized citizen.
ISABEL MARSHALL: (Speaking Spanish).
URIBE: "A lot of money is spent on the wall," she says, "when there's other things, like schools and hospitals, that benefit us more." Marshall says she'd also prefer access to more affordable healthcare. A congressional delegation visiting the border this week characterized the situation here not as a security crisis but a humanitarian crisis. The latest arrivals are mostly families fleeing violence and poverty.
VICTOR MANJARREZ: We confuse border security and immigration as one and the same, and they're not.
ARDOVINO: Victor Manjarrez is a retired Border Patrol agent in El Paso. He worked at national headquarters in the early 2000s when the border was more porous and the agency asked the president to double its manpower and build 700 miles of fencing. Back then, apprehensions at the southern border topped a million people per year, among the highest ever recorded.
MANJARREZ: The problem we've faced since then - no one defines what success looks like.
URIBE: Today, apprehensions are at a 20-year low. The State Department reports there is no credible evidence of terrorists moving across the southern border. And the more harmful narcotics, like meth, are smuggled mostly in vehicles through the official ports of entry. For Manjarrez, expecting a fully sealed border is as unrealistic as expecting a city to eliminate all crime. Building a wall, he says, is not a blanket solution.
MANJARREZ: There has to be a right mix. And it's really three things. It's a mix of that infrastructure, personnel and technology.
URIBE: This week, all nine House representatives who serve the southern border, including one Republican, told CBS News that they oppose funding President Trump's border wall. For NPR News, I'm Monica Ortiz Uribe in El Paso.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
New research finds that pregnant women who get so sick from the flu they're hospitalized in an intensive care unit are at high risk of having a baby with health problems. NPR's Patti Neighmond reports on the study in the journal Birth Defects Research.
PATTI NEIGHMOND, BYLINE: Women's immune systems change when they get pregnant, and they're more susceptible to complications from the flu. Dr. Sonja Rasmussen with the University of Florida College of Medicine.
SONJA RASMUSSEN: That means they're more at risk of getting pneumonia. They're more at risk of needing to be hospitalized and even being admitted to an intensive care unit.
NEIGHMOND: As a pediatrician, Rasmussen wanted to know how this might affect newborns. She compared 490 pregnant women with the flu to more than 1,400 who did not have the flu. She found those who got severely ill from the flu and were hospitalized in intensive care units were significantly more likely to have babies with health problems.
RASMUSSEN: More likely to deliver their babies too early - prematurely - more likely to have a baby of low birth weight and were more likely to have babies with low Apgar scores. And that's those scores that tell how a baby's doing after birth.
NEIGHMOND: Measuring things like heart rate, reflexes and breathing. Women who got the flu but were able to stay at home and even those who were hospitalized but not admitted to the ICU had no increased risk of health problems for their newborns. Rasmussen says it's not clear how being in the ICU affected newborns. She doesn't think it's the flu virus itself.
RASMUSSEN: When moms are in an intensive care unit, they oftentimes are needing help with breathing. They're needing to have a ventilator breathe for them. So it may be that they had some period of time that they weren't getting good oxygenation - you know, weren't breathing well enough to get good oxygen to the baby.
NEIGHMOND: And when patients have trouble breathing, they're likely to have trouble eating, which could mean they weren't getting adequate nutrition. Rasmussen says the findings highlight the need for pregnant women to get vaccinated against the flu. OB-GYN Dr. Denise Jamieson with Emory University School of Medicine says only about half of all pregnant women today get the vaccine.
DENISE JAMIESON: We've been recommending the vaccine since the 1960s, yet we have not been able to increase the vaccination rates to protect most women.
NEIGHMOND: And their babies. Jamieson says some of her patients think the vaccine will make them sick. It can't, she says, because it's an inactive killed virus. Others think it's not safe. Not true, says Jamieson.
JAMIESON: This is a vaccine that we have been giving in pregnancy for many decades, and there's no indication that there are specific concerns in pregnancy. It's a safe vaccine.
NEIGHMOND: When women get vaccinated, they make antibodies to fight the virus. Those antibodies can cross the placenta and protect the baby, which is important, says Jamieson, because infants' immune systems are just beginning to develop. And they can't get the flu vaccine until they're 6 months old. Patti Neighmond, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF YASUAKI SHIMIZU SONG, "108 DESIRES")
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Eyebrows went up when a New York Times profile suggested that legendary opera soprano Renee Fleming would be retiring. Luckily for fans, that turned out to be wrong. But if Fleming ever does start to ponder retirement, she may want to consider a move to Milan, Italy. That's the home of Casa Verdi, a retirement community for opera singers and musicians Founded by Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi more than a hundred years ago. Rebecca Rosman paid a visit and sent this report.
REBECCA ROSMAN, BYLINE: Lina Vasta is a soprano who spent her career performing in Italian operas around the world.
LINA VASTA: (Speaking Italian).
ROSMAN: Twenty years ago, she settled here at Casa Verdi.
VASTA: (Speaking Italian).
UNIDENTIFIED TRANSLATOR: She doesn't want to tell me how old she is.
ROSMAN: While she's reluctant to reveal her real age, she admits to being over 65. She's tiny and uses a cane to get around, but age hasn't stopped her from wearing her favorite black heels or from doing this...
VASTA: (Singing in Italian).
ROSMAN: The soprano says singing makes her sorrows go away. Vasta came to Casa Verdi with her husband when they both retired from singing. Since he died, she says this is all she has.
VASTA: (Speaking Italian).
UNIDENTIFIED TRANSLATOR: She has a beautiful house. She can play the piano. She can...
VASTA: (Speaking Italian).
UNIDENTIFIED TRANSLATOR: There's a very nice garden at Casa Verdi. She said that, like, nothing is missing here. It's perfect.
VASTA: Grazie Verdi.
ROSMAN: Italian composer GIUSEPPE VERDI founded the Casa di Riposo per Musicisti, simply known as Casa Verdi, in the late 19th century.
BIANCAMARIA LONGONI: In Italy, Verdi isn't considered even today only a composer, only a musician, but a kind of national hero.
ROSMAN: Biancamaria Longoni is the assistant director of Casa Verdi. We're standing in front of Verdi's crypt. Verdi is buried at the retirement home alongside his second wife, Giuseppina Strepponi.
LONGONI: He used the music, he used the operas to give voice to people - to humble people, to modest people, to poor people, to dominated people.
ROSMAN: Many of Verdi's own former colleagues found themselves living in poverty towards the end of their lives. At that time, there were no pensions for musicians in Italy.
LONGONI: Verdi perfectly knew this situation. And when he was about 82, he wanted to use his patrimony to make a rest home for his colleagues less favored by fortune.
ROSMAN: Using his own fortune, Verdi built the retirement home for opera singers and musicians, a neo-Gothic structure that opened in 1899. Verdi died less than two years later, but he made sure the profits from his music copyright kept the home running until the early 1960s, when they expired.
Today, guests pay a portion of their monthly pension to cover basic costs like food and lodging, while the rest comes from donations. Bissy Roman is a maestra who has been living at Casa Verdi for nearly three years now.
BISSY ROMAN: I don't have family. I don't have sons. I have Casa Verdi. I have here. I'm very grateful because, if not, I will be lonely and very, very upset. Here, I cannot be upset because there are a lot of people around. We are talking. We have music. We have guests.
ROSMAN: Guests of all ages. Casa Verdi has an extra 20 rooms set aside for conservatory students aged 18 to 24.
ROMAN: (Speaking Italian).
ROSMAN: Today, the 93-year-old Romanian born Roman is giving voice lessons to a young woman from China, one of the six students she sees on a weekly basis.
UNIDENTIFIED SINGER #1: (Singing in foreign language).
ROSMAN: The sounds that fill these hallways are what make Casa Verdi feel sacred, like moments that belong in a time capsule.
ARMANDO ARIOSTINI: (Vocalizing).
ROSMAN: Armando Ariostini is a baritone in his early 60s. He comes to Casa Verdi every Wednesday to visit the guests, some of whom are his former colleagues.
ARIOSTINI: (Vocalizing).
ROSMAN: And while Ariostini himself is still several years away from retirement, he says he knows exactly where he'll be hanging up his hat once he leaves the opera stage for good. For NPR News, I'm Rebecca Rosman in Milan, Italy.
UNIDENTIFIED SINGER #2: (Singing in Italian).
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
This is what Day 20 of the partial government shutdown sounds like.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) End the shutdown.
SHAPIRO: Hundreds of federal workers are protesting here in Washington. Around the country, many more will miss their first paychecks tomorrow. At the heart of the conflict remains President Trump's insistence that Congress appropriate billions of dollars to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, a promise Trump made repeatedly during his campaign but failed to fulfill when his party controlled all of Congress. Now that Democrats hold the House, they are refusing to supply the funds.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
So the president has floated the idea of skirting Congress by declaring a national emergency to build the wall. Today, before leaving on a trip to the border, Trump doubled down on that threat.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I have the absolute right to declare a national emergency the lawyers have so advised me. I'm not prepared to do that yet, but if I have to, I will. I have no doubt about it. I will.
CORNISH: For more on the president's legal authority to make such a declaration, we're joined by Steve Vladeck. He's a law professor at the University of Texas. He specializes in national security and military law. Welcome to the program.
STEVE VLADECK: Thanks, Audie. Great to be with you.
CORNISH: To start, how would declaring a national emergency give the president access to funds to build the wall, especially if Congress wouldn't otherwise approve those funds?
VLADECK: So I think the important thing to understand here is that Congress has approved in advance access to a specific limited set of authorities in times of emergency. And the trigger for those authorities - the key, if you will - to unlock access to them is a declaration of a national emergency by the president. Basically, the idea is Congress can't anticipate in advance all of the national emergencies that might arise. But it can say, if the president finds a national emergency, here are the special authorities we'll give him that he wouldn't otherwise have. Using military construction funds for projects other than those that were appropriated is one of those authorities.
CORNISH: What are declarations of national emergency typically used for?
VLADECK: So I think the three categories where we tend to see them are when you have some kind of natural disaster - President Bush issued such a declaration after Hurricane Katrina - where you have some kind of manmade catastrophe, a terrorist attack. President Bill Clinton issued one after Oklahoma City, President Bush after 9/11. And then the third kind and perhaps the more - the most obscure category is national emergencies with regard to asset blocking. These are authorities that the federal government uses to try to interdict the flow of money to drug cartels, to terrorist groups overseas. So those are the three different kinds that we have on the books today.
CORNISH: Looking at what's going on in this moment, where would this fall among that list?
VLADECK: So I think there's actually no question that if the president does declare a national emergency, it would be unprecedented in the sense that we've never had one quite like it. Presumably the president would try to analogize it to a terrorist attack, that this is defending the country from, you know, threats from abroad. But we've never really seen it in this mode where it's proactive as opposed to reaction. And I think that's why one of the things Congress ought to consider once we're on the far side of this is whether we really want to give the president such open-ended authority or whether to define the categories, to set out at least some parameters for when a president can declare a nation emergency.
CORNISH: If the president does declare a national emergency and directs funds to be used to build a wall, could that be challenged in court in any way?
VLADECK: So I think we would see court challenges. The key is that the challenge would not be to the emergency declaration on its face. The fight would be over the specific authorities. For example, using military construction funds - the statute that allows that is supposed to be limited to construction projects for the use of the armed forces - not hard to imagine if the wall is built outside of military bases that someone who either lost out on a government contract because of this or a private landowner whose property value is affected might very well march into court and argue that the president is exceeding the terms of that statute.
CORNISH: What are you going to be listening for in the next few weeks?
VLADECK: The big question on the national emergency front is not whether the president is going to declare one but, if he does, which specific authorities he says he is now calling up? Is it just going to be the statutes folks have been talking about with regard to military and civil construction, or are there other authorities he's going to try to adapt for these purposes?
But I think the larger point, to step back for a second, is all of this is an end run around the fact that he can't get Congress to appropriate funds for the wall directly. The irony is, at the end of the day, Audie, if he can do it through this backdoor, there was never any need for the shutdown in the first place.
CORNISH: That's Steve Vladeck. He's a law professor at the University of Texas. Thank you for speaking with us.
VLADECK: Thank you.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Now that many federal workers are about to go without a paycheck, stress is growing. As NPR's Tovia Smith reports, there are also offers to help.
TOVIA SMITH, BYLINE: Rita Silva Martins thought she'd finally made it. After years working as a janitor, she landed an airport security job with the TSA. And she and her husband bought their first house outside Boston, where they squeezed in with four kids.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: What's these?
RITA SILVA MARTINS: Do you want some mac and cheese?
SMITH: With her husband's job at a car dealership, Martins was managing to scrape by until the shutdown.
MARTINS: It's weighing heavy, where I'm having panic attacks not knowing what's going to happen.
SMITH: Martins is still working - overtime, actually. But if and when that pay comes, Martins worries it'd be too late for her next mortgage payment. And the little cushion she has will be spent.
MARTINS: It's just going to get worse. I have no jewelry. I have nothing to pawn - nothing to just cash in.
SMITH: Martins is looking for a second job. Her husband already took one, desperately trying to hold on to their house.
MARTINS: It's your dream. You know, I'm 34 years old. I don't know when I'm going to be able to buy something else. How can I save if I'm living paycheck to paycheck right now?
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Excuse me. He's coming through. Let him through.
SMITH: At Logan Airport, TSA security officer Tom Dasher can relate. Both he and his wife are working for the TSA without pay.
TOM DASHER: You can see it in everyone's faces. It is hard.
SMITH: To make ends meet, Dasher's using gift cards he got for Christmas. Then, it's savings. But even that won't last long with a 2-year-old in day care and a medical condition that means loads of doctor's bills.
DASHER: It will eventually get ugly. The math will break down.
SMITH: Their only option then, Dasher says, will be asking relatives for a loan.
DASHER: It is very tough to even think about asking for any kind of handout. But, you know, it comes down to sucking up your pride and taking care of your family.
LORI TRAHAN: I so appreciate you coming in and sharing how hard it is on you all personally.
SMITH: In Lowell this week, newly elected Massachusetts Congresswoman Lori Trahan met with EPA employees feeling the pinch. Even higher earners like Steve Calder are feeling it. It's not just cash flow issues, Calder says. He's borrowed against his retirement fund, and his loan payments come out of his paychecks. But if he's not getting paychecks...
STEVE CALDER: The loan becomes in default. It becomes income by IRS rules. And then there's also a 10 percent penalty associated with taking it out. So that's money that I would never see again.
TRAHAN: You know what? That...
SMITH: Trahan promises to help.
TRAHAN: Certainly, if there are things that we can do to be helpful to kind of ward off the collectors, we'd like to do that.
CALDER: Right.
TRAHAN: This is not your burden alone, and we want to be helpful.
SMITH: In Boston, for the Coast Guard, the only military branch unpaid through the shutdown, help comes in the form of a new pop-up food pantry. Hundreds helped themselves this week to groceries, medicine and more brought in by the Massachusetts Military Support Foundation. And President Don Cox says an existing pantry on Cape Cod handed out more in two days than it usually does in a month.
DON COX: We've been hit hard with the baby food, the diapers - that reminds me I'm out of diapers again. So, I mean, it's just - it's a tidal wave.
JENNY JAMES: Honestly, I was really blown away because it's actually very relieving.
SMITH: Jenny James, wife of a Coast Guardsman and mother of two, first came to the pantry a few days into the shutdown hoping to save her cash just in case. And she's been back several times.
JAMES: It's very comforting. A little bit of the weight's lifted off of me having to worry about putting the food on the table, especially when you don't really know what the future holds.
SMITH: It's certainly more comforting than the advice recently posted on a Coast Guard employee assistance website. That suggested families try creative ways to make cash, like holding garage sales. Yesterday the Coast Guard pulled that offline, saying it, quote, "doesn't reflect current efforts to support its workforce." Tovia Smith, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF SHARON JONES AND THE DAP-KINGS SONG, "WINDOW SHOPPING")
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Father Jerome LeDoux, one of the most beloved and colorful Catholic priests in New Orleans, has died at age 88. NPR's Karen Grigsby Bates met Father LeDoux when she visited the city a few months after Hurricane Katrina. She has this appreciation.
KAREN GRIGSBY BATES, BYLINE: Anyone who met Father Jerome LeDoux was going to get a history lesson. That was certainly the case if you visited him at St. Augustine, the nation's oldest black Catholic church. He'd proudly explain that when it was founded, St. Augustine began as an integrated space.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
JEROME LEDOUX: We had one whole aisle of free people of color. They had bought those pews for their families to worship in on Sundays. They had also bought the short pews. They didn't need those, so they gave those to the slaves. And for the first time in their existence, the slaves had their own place of worship.
BATES: Eventually, St. Augustine's became completely black and Creole, free and enslaved. And the service reflected the parishioners' African roots.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
LEDOUX: They simply combined the Old Testament and the New Testament with their African ceremonies and chants. So the Old Testament came out with a new ring unheard of in the entire world. (Singing) When Israel was in Egypt land, let my people go.
BATES: Father LeDoux opened St. Augustine's to whoever was in need. Sandra Johnson Gordon, a St. Augustine's parishioner since 1968, says Jerome LeDoux had a bedroom on the rectory's second floor. But he never used it.
SANDRA JOHNSON GORDON: Father LeDoux slept on a pallet on the first floor because so many people would come during the night because they knew he would give them shelter and food or whatever they need. And he slept on that pallet on the floor so he could be readily available to reach the door in a timely manner.
BATES: His attachment to his parish was completely mutual. When the archbishop of New Orleans announced he was going to merge St. Augustine with another nearby black Catholic Church, the St. Augustine's congregation was up in arms. They waged a fierce campaign to keep St. Augustine's separate and open. Ultimately, they were successful, but at a cost. The archbishop removed Father LeDoux from the church, saying he'd reached mandatory retirement age. Parishioners saw this as a retribution for their victory.
Sandra Johnson Gordon says Father LeDoux officiated at her marriage, christened her children and buried many of her family members. She says the charismatic priest never put himself first.
GORDON: He was never first, second, third, fourth. He was 100th. He was fine with that. He will be greatly, greatly missed by so very many.
BATES: Many celebrations of Father Jerome LeDoux's life will be next week, first in Opelousas, La., and then in Bay St. Louis, Miss., where he'll be buried. Karen Grigsby Bates, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF TREME BRASS BAND'S "AMAZING GRACE")
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
In Egypt today, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a stinging rebuke of the Obama administration's approach to the Middle East. And he says the Trump administration is doing things differently. For one, says Pompeo, gone are the attempts to negotiate with Iran while allowing it to expand its influence, and the U.S. is committed to defeating ISIS even as it pulls out U.S. forces from Syria. NPR's Michele Kelemen has been traveling with the secretary and has our report.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: In 2009, President Obama gave a speech in Cairo calling for a new beginning with the Muslim world. Secretary Pompeo chose the same city to deliver his rebuke, though the secretary of state pointedly didn't mention Obama by name.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MIKE POMPEO: It was here, here in this city that another American stood before you. He told you that radical Islamist terrorism does not stem from an ideology. He told you that 9/11 led my country to abandon its ideals, particularly in the Middle East.
KELEMEN: When Obama spoke, it was in the wake of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the revelations of torture at the Abu Ghraib detention center. He also proposed an economic revival for the region. Pompeo didn't mention any of that but argued the U.S. became too timid. He told the audience at the American University in Cairo that the previous administration allowed ISIS to gain ground and Iran to expand its influence in the region.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
POMPEO: We learned that when America retreats, chaos often follows. When we neglect our friends, resentment builds. And when we partner with our enemies, they advance.
KELEMEN: While Pompeo didn't lay out many clear policy plans, he says the Trump administration is reasserting America as a force for good in the region.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
POMPEO: The good news is this. The age of self-inflicted American shame is over, and so are the policies that produced so much needless suffering. Now comes the real new beginning.
KELEMEN: Secretary Pompeo is on a weeklong swing through the Middle East to shore up old alliances with Arab partners and put more pressure on Iran. But the visit comes at a time when the U.S. is withdrawing forces from Syria. And Nabil Fahmy, a former Egyptian foreign minister who was in the audience, took note of that.
NABIL FAHMY: So how exactly are you going to assist dealing with these major threats if you're not going to be there is a question.
KELEMEN: Fahmy, the dean of the School of Global Affairs at the American University in Cairo, says he would have liked to have heard less domestic American politics and more about the Trump administration's approach to Egypt. Another missing piece of the speech, he says, was any serious talk about resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Fahmy says Pompeo barely mentioned that.
FAHMY: The longest ongoing conflict in the region is the Palestinian-Israeli one. It took less than 30 seconds. Iran took much longer. OK, I understand the message, but give us some more meat on the other things.
KELEMEN: A former Obama administration official, Rob Malley, issued a statement describing the speech as a, quote, "self-congratulatory delusional depiction of the Trump administration's Middle East policy." He said it was like listening to someone from a parallel universe not mentioning Washington's complicity in the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen or the administration's indifference to human rights abuses by allies.
Pompeo says he did raise human rights in his talks here in Egypt, where activists say there are tens of thousands of political prisoners. But he also praised Egypt's hardline president, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, for supporting Christians. Here's Pompeo touring a massive cathedral in the Egyptian capital.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
POMPEO: You can see religious liberty, religious freedom at work in this special country. President Sissi clearly made a point by putting this, this largest cathedral in the Middle East, here in this place.
KELEMEN: Pompeo, who started his speech by noting that he's an evangelical Christian and keeps a Bible open on his desk at the State Department, also visited a mosque nearby. He heads next to Arab Gulf countries where he's again likely to keep the focus on Iran. Michele Kelemen, NPR News, Cairo.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Now we're going to talk about a glaring absence in the secretary of state's Middle East tour. Of the nine countries Secretary Pompeo was visiting this week, five don't have a Senate-confirmed U.S. ambassador. We're talking about countries that are crucial to U.S. foreign policy like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Former U.S. Ambassador to Kuwait Richard LeBaron spent decades as a diplomat mostly in the Middle East, and he's now with the Atlantic Council. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
RICHARD LEBARON: Thank you, Ari.
SHAPIRO: Begin by explaining why it matters whether any given country has a Senate-confirmed U.S. ambassador or not. The White House often says that, in these countries, a highly qualified career diplomat is serving as acting ambassador. So what's the difference?
LEBARON: Well, Ari, there are several factors at play. I think it's good to keep in mind that ambassadors are the president's personal representatives. They're appointed by the president, given consent by the Senate, and the absence of them just removes a tool for any president's foreign policy. Secondly, when there's not an ambassador in place, sure, there's a very capable staff at our U.S. embassies. And I've been a charge, so I don't want to diminish the importance of a charge in the field.
SHAPIRO: Charge is the term of art for the acting ambassador, the career diplomat.
LEBARON: Yes, it is. And that's the person who is in charge when no ambassador's around. But that person almost inevitably doesn't have quite the influence of an ambassador because he or she is not the president's personal representative. Thus, the host government tends to look upon that person as a lesser interlocutor. And that person may not have the same level of access to information and to people as a sitting ambassador. So that's really important.
SHAPIRO: So let's take a specific example - Saudi Arabia. There's been a lot of U.S.-Saudi diplomacy about the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, about the war in Yemen. In that specific example, how might things go differently if there were a Senate-confirmed U.S. ambassador in that post?
LEBARON: Well, I think one thing that might be different is that an ambassador would be able to interpret for the Saudis just how seriously we take some of these irresponsible actions by the Saudi government. If he has or she has the authority of the president behind them, that might make the Saudis take another look at some of these policies. I can't guarantee that. And much of the relationship with the Saudis is directly with Washington. But I think it does make a difference to have an empowered representative of the president on the ground, not only to represent his views but to inform the president and the secretary of state of what's going on at the highest levels of government in Saudi Arabia.
SHAPIRO: Can you tell how much of this is a result of the White House failing to nominate people versus the Senate not acting to confirm people once they're nominated?
LEBARON: Well, I don't want to assign blame, but the administration is two years in. So it seems to me that there are a disproportionate number of vacancies. And it reflects, I think, a certain attitude on the part of the president that he doesn't need help. That's unfortunate because there are - these ambassadors are perfectly willing and able to help him succeed in his policy.
And I would add that this is a president who wants the United States to do less in the Middle East. And in that case, ambassadors need to do more because they need to convince other countries in that region to take on more of the burden themselves. So there's a role here that's unique to this administration as well.
SHAPIRO: This problem started when Rex Tillerson was secretary of state, and Pompeo was asked about it during his confirmation hearings. He said he would address the large number of vacancies. Why do you think that hasn't happened?
LEBARON: Well, I think secretaries of state tend to get caught up in policy matters. And he lacks some of the key appointments in the State Department that would help facilitate the appointment of ambassadors. But I can't really assign blame. I think it's just a matter of putting a priority on the matter of getting a full representation abroad.
SHAPIRO: Ambassador Richard LeBaron of the Atlantic Council, thanks for joining us today.
LEBARON: My pleasure.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
President Trump traveled to Texas today to keep making his case for a barrier on the southern border. His trip comes with Republicans and Democrats no closer to an agreement to end the partial government shutdown now in its 20th day. And its effects are even being felt at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Thank you for calling the White House comment line.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Due to the lack of appropriations - funding from Congress, the federal government has shut down.
SHAPIRO: That's the message you get if you call the White House switchboard. With no end in sight, federal workers will officially miss their first paycheck on Friday. And Trump is warning Democrats to negotiate with him or he will try to build the barrier without Congress's approval. NPR's Ayesha Rascoe covers the White House and is here in the studio with us. Hi, Ayesha.
AYESHA RASCOE, BYLINE: Hello.
SHAPIRO: I'm tempted to ask what the state of play is on negotiations, but are there even negotiations happening at this point?
RASCOE: Well, there have been some negotiations, but things are really where they have been for the past few days or maybe even where they've been since the start of the shutdown. Basically, there seems to be no real movement toward some type of compromise right now. Vice President Mike Pence talked to reporters today. And he said at this point, the White House is not open to a big deal that would exchange some concessions on the so-called DREAMers, for money, for a wall or a barrier. And he also shot down the Democrats' plans to open parts of the government while lawmakers continue to debate how to handle border security. Pence said the White House will not agree to sign off on any bills in kind of a piecemeal fashion.
There was this little burst of activity with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. He was trying to put together a bipartisan compromise. And Graham was in some talks with leadership today, but those talks quickly fell apart. And now Graham is urging Trump to use his emergency powers to build the wall. And with that, the Senate is adjourned for the week. So barring something extraordinary happening, this shutdown is going to drag into next week and on Saturday will be the longest shutdown ever.
SHAPIRO: And President Trump took his message to the border today - to McAllen, Texas. What did he say there?
RASCOE: Well, he was really trying to drive home this idea that there is a crisis at the border and that a barrier is necessary to deal with it. He had a roundtable where he had family members, who had loved ones killed by someone in the country illegally, talking. And he really pushed back against the Democrats' arguments that this is a manufactured emergency.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: What is manufactured is the use of the word manufactured. It's manufactured by them - every single of the negatives. But they're not winning because it's common sense.
RASCOE: So at this roundtable, Trump had these firearms and bags of what looked like drugs and money. They were on display in front of him. I guess this was seemingly to represent the contraband that is being seized at the border. But it's worth noting that out - that government figures show that most of the heroin that comes across the border into the U.S. actually comes through legal ports of entry and not through parts of the border without barriers.
SHAPIRO: Just in our last minute, what about the possibility of declaring a national emergency and building the wall that way without congressional support?
RASCOE: So we don't really have a timeline on when that decision will be made, but it's still on the table. And Trump is making clear that this is the path he intends to take if he can't cut a deal with Congress. It would cause this legal and political firestorm, but Trump seems to kind of view this - or may seem to view this as a way for him to agree to reopen the government. And then he could still tell his base that, we're fighting for this war. He actually said it would be surprising if he doesn't - if he doesn't declare a national emergency if there's no compromise.
SHAPIRO: NPR's Ayesha Rascoe. Thanks.
RASCOE: Thank you.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
This is the week that many government workers will miss their first paycheck. And as the shutdown has gone on, we've been hearing from a lot of them who say they are living from paycheck to paycheck. For some, the promise of back pay doesn't solve the problem of paying your phone bill or your mortgage or putting dinner on the table for your family today. We wanted to better understand why so many people live paycheck to paycheck in America, so we've called on Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute. She studies wages, poverty and inequality. Welcome to the program.
ELISE GOULD: Thank you so much.
CORNISH: So for economists, what's the definition of living paycheck to paycheck?
GOULD: That's a great question. I would say there's not a uniform understanding among economists. But one thing I would say is that there's a Federal Reserve study that asked families whether or not they could cover an unexpected expense of $400. So if all of a sudden you had to pay $400, would you have enough money to be able to cover that? And 4 in 10 adults, if faced with an unexpected expense of $400, would either not be able to cover it or cover it by selling something or borrowing money, such as putting it on a credit card.
So I think the idea that they don't have enough money to cover that, that is pretty widespread. So that suggests about 40 percent of Americans have that problem.
CORNISH: We've been hearing from a lot of federal workers who are worried about missing a paycheck. And, you know, some of these people have good jobs, full-time work, long-term employment. Can you be middle class or even wealthy and still live paycheck to paycheck?
GOULD: Yes, absolutely. We know it costs a lot to get by across this country when you figure in things like housing costs, food, medical care, maybe child care, transportation. And every day, there are families that go without. But if you don't have that paycheck, that shock - it could be a paycheck, it could be a health shock, it could be a large car repair - any of those things can lead to total financial destabilization for many workers and their families. And we're not just talking about poor families. These are middle class families that could be destabilized by not having that paycheck.
CORNISH: But you have the president touting the strength of the U.S. economy, right? The unemployment rate has been at a historic low. Why are so many people still running out of money every month?
GOULD: Well, it's really harder to saving the economy today because most workers haven't seen significant increases in their pay to be able to increase their standard of living, giving them any sort of cushion to save. So yes, it's true, we have seen the economy improve. And the statistics that I cited before, those are better than they were at the depths of the Great Recession.
And so more people have jobs, and that's all great. More people are returning to the labor force. But we have seen stagnation in pay. We have seen that, you know, workers - they need both parents to support a family, right? Those are longer-term trends because we have seen stagnation in worker pay and in family incomes.
So without additional resources to draw on, families often to have to resort to suboptimal solutions such as payday lending or going without recommended medical treatment or leaving school without a degree but racking up lots of debt. So these are lots of problems that middle class families face today.
CORNISH: What's interesting about this is here we are all these years after the economic meltdown and that conversation about people needing to save and create a financial cushion, but you're saying it's actually harder to do that even if more Americans wanted to or tried?
GOULD: Yes, absolutely because people's pay is just barely enough to make ends meet, and for many people it's not enough to make ends meet. And so being able to afford child care, there's been a lot information about, you know, how expensive it is for many families. So that one expense can really make or break what it takes to, you know, put food on the table.
So I think that there are a lot of things that are happening to families today. They're being stretched incredibly thin. And losing this paycheck for these federal workers - not just the federal workers, also the federal contractors, federal contractors that are out of work because of the partial government shutdown won't be getting that backpay.
So it's not even a question of putting off getting that money. It's a question of never getting it in the first place.
CORNISH: Elise Gould is a senior economist with the Economic Policy Institute. Thank you for speaking with us.
GOULD: Thank you so much for having this important conversation.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
One of the Soviet Union's lasting legacies in Moscow was a dense network of hundreds of public libraries. After Russia's rocky transition from communism and the rise of the Internet, the city's libraries looked like they were doomed to become relics of an analog past. But as NPR's Lucian Kim reports, Moscow's libraries are experiencing an unexpected revival.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAR HORN)
LUCIAN KIM, BYLINE: Moscow is a noisy place, its boulevards jammed with impatient drivers. But it's still possible to find some peace and quiet.
I'm at the Dostoevsky Library in one of Moscow's hippest neighborhoods. The main reading hall has wooden floors, white walls and large windows facing the street. But what's most impressive is that every seat here is taken, and almost everybody looks like they're under the age of 35.
ALSU GORBATYUK: It's one of the best libraries here in Moscow just because it has changed so much.
KIM: Alsu Gorbatyuk is an English teacher and a frequent visitor.
GORBATYUK: I suppose that right now, Moscow is one of the centers of library culture.
KIM: The Dostoevsky Library is a showcase for the sweeping overhaul of Moscow's libraries from musty houses of Soviet learning into bustling workspaces for 21st century city dwellers. Andrei Akritov, an aspiring stand-up comedian from out of town, says he spent three to four hours a day in the library.
ANDREI AKRITOV: (Speaking Russian).
KIM: He says he lives in a hostel, so he appreciates the solitude to concentrate on his work. Russian designers based in the Netherlands were responsible for the library's renovation. Students and freelancers tap away on their laptops by day. Young professionals attend foreign language clubs, readings and lectures in the evenings. Maria Rogachyova, a 39-year-old musician by training, is the city official in charge of rejuvenating Moscow's libraries.
MARIA ROGACHYOVA: (Through interpreter) Our job is to develop the most democratic and accessible cultural locations for Muscovites. This isn't about libraries for the sake of libraries as it sometimes seemed in the past. We need to listen to what Muscovites' needs are so they start loving us.
KIM: Rogachyova says that's meant expanding opening hours to accommodate working people and families, putting catalogs online and even opening coffee shops on site. There were certainly employees who preferred knitting in empty libraries, she says. But most of the changes have taken place thanks to the initiative of the librarians themselves and not because of any extra funding.
ROGACHYOVA: (Speaking Russian).
KIM: Rogachyova says the rise of electronic media shouldn't spell the death of libraries as public spaces where people can experience, as she puts it, living literature.
ROGACHYOVA: (Through interpreter) We have a different idea from the way things used to be. A library can be a loud place. Of course there should be some quiet nooks where you focus on your reading, but our libraries also host a huge amount of loud events.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character, speaking Russian).
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character, speaking Russian).
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character, speaking Russian).
KIM: Back at the Dostoevsky Library, a theater group is rehearsing in one of the halls.
LIDIYA AREFYEVA: (Speaking Russian).
KIM: Actress Lidiya Arefyeva says the library is a wonderful location to practice because of its intimate atmosphere.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (Vocalizing).
KIM: A few years ago, a boisterous rehearsal would have been unheard of in a Moscow library.
(LAUGHTER, CROSSTALK)
KIM: Now it's as normal as surfing the Internet, drinking a coffee or checking out a book. Lucian Kim, NPR News, Moscow.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
President Trump visited McAllen, Texas, today to continue to press his argument for a wall at the southern border. McAllen is one of the safest cities in the U.S. Across the border, however, sits one of the most dangerous cities in Mexico - Reynosa. It's become an unintended home for a growing number of migrants. NPR's Carrie Kahn reports.
CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: Josue Edgardo Baquedano arrived here in Reynosa two months ago with his 5-year-old son. They fled the violent city of San Pedro Sula in Honduras, where he says it's nearly impossible to keep your children out of the gangs. "They steal them from you or lure them away with fancy shoes and cellphones," he says.
JOSUE EDGARDO BAQUEDANO: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: "And then they tell you, you have a problem because your child isn't yours anymore. He now belongs to the gang," says Baquedano. Baquedano says he tried to cross the international bridge into McAllen, Texas, to ask for asylum back in November but was stopped by a U.S. immigration agent.
BAQUEDANO: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: "He told me to wait behind a blue line on the bridge, which at the time I didn't know put me back in Mexico," he says. And within a few minutes, Mexican immigration officials arrived and took him and his son away. They were detained for three days but luckily not deported back to Honduras. He says he's since found a job and a house and is staying put for now. Baquedano is lucky. Officials here say many migrants stuck in the city fall prey to the criminal groups that dominate this northern Mexican border city.
Reynosa's mayor, Maki Ortiz Dominguez, says it's not just U.S.-bound migrants that are concentrating in the city. She's dealing with thousands of migrants deported from the U.S. as well. She says 150 to 180 each day are deported to the region.
MAKI ESTHER ORTIZ DOMINGUEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: "The fact that there is such a concentrated number of migrants in cities along the border could give rise to another type of organized crime," she says. She's worried about gangs easily recruiting desperate migrants. And she says her police force is already stretched thin. I caught her outside a hotel ballroom before she went into a celebration for National Police Day, which included a full breakfast for all the cops in town and raffle prizes. A local commander walked away with a new refrigerator.
ORTIZ DOMINGUEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: "I'm so proud of all of you," Ortiz Dominguez told the crowd. And she's tried to increase their salaries and give them the best tools they need to do their jobs, but it's tough. Reynosa has some of the most lucrative drug routes into the U.S. Two cartels battle for the region. Last year, more than 250 people were murdered here, thousands more went missing. And mixed in with all that violence are the migrants, says Mariana Calderon, a psychologist with the state's institute to assist migrants.
MARIANA CALDERON: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: "Reynosa's one of the places with the highest number of kidnappings, extortions and murders," she says. Migrants are a big target to those criminals. Josue Edgardo Baquedano, the migrant from Honduras who's stuck in Reynosa for now, says he doesn't think President Trump's wall will keep migrants out of the U.S. He says, people crave a safe place to live.
BAQUEDANO: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: "You can build a wall 30 feet high with a line of snakes below it, but people's needs are much greater," he says, "they'll get around it." Carrie Kahn, NPR News, Reynosa, Mexico.
[POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: We mistranslate a comment by Josue Edgardo Baquedano. He referred to a 30-foot wall topped with concertina wire, not a 30-foot wall with a line of snakes below.]
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Back on the U.S. side of the border, the president sees McAllen, Texas, as the heart of what he calls a humanitarian crisis.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We have people that have been so horribly hurt, families that have been so horribly hurt by people that just come in like it's - like, just come into the United States, do whatever they want. In many cases, they leave, and then they'll come back. Or in many cases, they stay.
SHAPIRO: When I visited McAllen last August, I met an immigration lawyer named Carlos Garcia. He's lived in the city all his life. And with the president's visit today, we decided to check back in with him. Hi, Carlos.
CARLOS GARCIA: How are you doing, Ari?
SHAPIRO: All right. So when you hear the president describe a crisis, does that match with what you see in your hometown?
GARCIA: Not at all. It's very disheartening to listen to him use the words that he uses to describe the place that I grew up in and that I love because it's very peaceful, quiet, calm. And this is a place where we help each other out in everything. And so listening to him is just very offensive at times.
SHAPIRO: There are also people in McAllen who support the president, and he had fans there cheering him on today. How much would you say your view is reflective of the city as a whole?
GARCIA: Yeah, there's no doubt that there was a large number of Trump supporters there today. But it's evident in the voting results in our county what people think. And a lot of people do believe that this wall is unnecessary, but there are others who don't agree with us. And so that's the complex part of living in South Texas - that we have all of these different views, but we still respect each other.
SHAPIRO: The mayor of McAllen says crime rates have gone down in the city. I went on a ride-along with Customs and Border Protection when I was there. And even though there were sections of wall, there were also plenty of people trying to cross the border. So it does seem that there is some issue that needs to be addressed, no?
GARCIA: There's definitely an immigration issue that does need to be addressed at our highest level of politics. There's no doubt that people are coming into the country unlawfully. But the rhetoric he uses to argue for building a wall is that criminals are coming in and that the wall is going to stop that. The reality is that those really bad drugs that are coming in - the majority of them are coming in through the ports of entry.
SHAPIRO: I know you were in immigration court this morning. We've heard a lot about the backlogs in those courts. Tell us about your experience.
GARCIA: So I went to immigration court, and it was dead. The reason I went was to review some files because there's some downtime right now because all of our non-detained docket has been canceled. And really, it's a skeleton crew working...
SHAPIRO: Because of the government shutdown.
GARCIA: That's correct.
SHAPIRO: So in addition to the debate over the situation on the border, the government shutdown is affecting the people you work with. What impact is that having on your clients?
GARCIA: Well, it's just a lot of confusion. Also, for instance, a final hearing that I had scheduled for a couple of days ago - there's uncertainty as to when that case will be rescheduled. That case has already been pending for about four years, so it may be another year or two down the line before that gets heard for the final time.
SHAPIRO: What's it been like today to have the president visit your hometown and describe it in a way that doesn't match your experience of the city you live in?
GARCIA: Well, it's mixed feelings because I went to the protests that were occurring when the president was landing here in McAllen. And it was very emotional. I was very proud of the community who was out there to have their voices heard in opposition to not only the wall but some of the rhetoric that the president uses. But it's also disappointing if the president doesn't really come and talk to the people who are impacted, who live in this community and who really live this life every day - whether you're a government official or an undocumented immigrant or just a regular person living here and how we live in harmony and in peace here on the southern border.
SHAPIRO: That's Carlos Garcia, an immigration attorney in McAllen, Texas. It's good to talk to you again. Thanks for joining us today.
GARCIA: Thank you, Ari.
(SOUNDBITE OF MICHAEL BROOK'S "THE MINING DAYS")
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Today the president toured the southern border outside McAllen, Texas. Flanked by Border Patrol agents and local officials, Trump repeated his demand for a wall between the United States and Mexico.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Congress, as you know - the Democrats are holding this up because they don't want it. They think it's good politically. I think it's a disaster for them politically, but I'm not doing it for politics. I'm doing it because it's right.
SHAPIRO: This is as the partial government shutdown approaches three weeks. NPR's Wade Goodwyn was with the president this afternoon. Hi, Wade.
WADE GOODWYN, BYLINE: Hello.
SHAPIRO: Tell us more about what the president did today at the Texas border.
GOODWYN: Well, the first thing the president did was hold a sort of roundtable meeting at a U.S. Border Patrol station. He had Texas Senators Ted Cruz, John Cornyn and an assortment of congressmen, local officials, Border Patrol agents, you know, that kind of thing. President Trump said he'd be happy to build a steel barrier instead of a wall, that that would do it. And he criticized the media for not sufficiently covering crime and violence by undocumented immigrants.
Then he had family members of officers who were killed by undocumented immigrants. There was a brother of a law enforcement officer and a mother of an off-duty Border Patrol agent. And they gave testimony about their lost loved ones. I mean, there was a very definite theme to the event, and that was, there's crisis here that needs to be acted upon immediately.
SHAPIRO: You are there on the border, and you've been covering this state for decades. Does it feel like there's a crisis, an emergency?
GOODWYN: Well, it does not feel like, you know, someplace that's just been hit by some sort of catastrophe. It's not like the Gulf Coast after a hurricane or, say, Joplin, Mo., after that EF5 tornado tore the place to pieces or Oklahoma City after Timothy McVeigh visited. And it doesn't feel like a town where there's been a mass shooting. Lord knows I've covered enough of those.
I mean, when those kinds of things happen, it does feel like a crisis, you know? Tragedy hangs in the air. It's tense. It's sad. That's not what McAllen feels like. That's not to say that there's not trouble in River City, that there's not a serious problem here. And with the government shutdown, it's a very definite crisis for the hundreds of thousands of federal workers who aren't getting paid and, you know, anyone who relies on the federal government. The parks that are shut down, things like that - they're out of luck.
SHAPIRO: How is the president's visit being received there in McAllen?
GOODWYN: It's being received well. People along the border are, I think, you know, inherently hospitable. I think they generally welcome visitors. Politics are not the main factor, which is not to say that, you know, they're any less divided than the rest of the country on the subject of the border wall. It's predominantly Democratic down here, but there are plenty of Republicans, too, you know, especially the winter Texans, retirees who come down from the Midwest. They spend the winters here. And there's a significant group of folks who are really of two minds about a wall.
This morning, I talked to a Balde Guerrero (ph), who's the owner of the oldest restaurant in McAllen. He's one of those who does have mixed feelings. But you know, he also has a fair amount of compassion for his fellow business owners across the border in Reynosa, Mexico.
BALDEMAR GUERRERO JR: Some of these people are good people. They're just trying to run from their problems that they have in their country. You know, the cartel is scaring off business people that I know of that had businesses over there that - the cartel go in and say, we want your business; we want - you're going to start paying us, you know, $1,500 a month. And then if you don't pay it, you know, they start killing your family.
GOODWYN: You know, it's easy to forget there are people out here like Balde who have mixed feelings about it. It's probably more than we think.
SHAPIRO: That's NPR's Wade Goodwyn, who was with the president today in McAllen, Texas. Thanks a lot, Wade.
GOODWYN: It's my pleasure.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Immigration has always been President Trump's signature issue, from the day he rode down the golden escalator at Trump Tower and talked about Mexican rapists to his warning about approaching caravans of migrants during the midterm campaign. Most importantly, for the president, he sees it as the issue that motivates his core support. NPR's Mara Liasson has this report.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Donald Trump always trusts his gut, and he believes he has a keen understanding of the political perils for him in this latest debate about immigration. In the Oval Office yesterday, he spelled them out.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: If I did something that was foolish, like gave up on border security, the first ones that would hit me are my senators. They'd be angry at me. The second Hmongs would be the House. And the third ones would be, frankly, my base...
LIASSON: His base, as he often points out, is behind him all the way. And he does have very strong approval ratings among Republicans. Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, says a big reason for that support is immigration.
MATT SCHLAPP: The base of the party actually wants to see security first. And they want to see that southern border sealed. And so Donald Trump is the candidate, and now the president, who identifies with that very strong conviction for Republicans and for conservatives. He has a great deal of credibility on the issue of immigration with these folks.
LIASSON: A great deal of credibility, but apparently not unlimited credibility. In private, several of the president's advisers state flatly that Trump can't win re-election if he doesn't build the wall or at least do everything in his power to get it done. Back in December, when the president indicated he might sign a budget bill without wall funding, he got tremendous pushback from conservative talk show hosts, who Trump's advisers believe speak for a lot of Trump supporters.
It turns out his base took him literally and seriously when it came to the wall. Fox News host Laura Ingraham reacted against Trump's assertion that the wall was already being built. In her view, merely renovating current border barriers just wouldn't cut it.
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LAURA INGRAHAM: That's not a wall. Stop saying it's a wall. There's no wall. If you want a wall, say we don't have the wall and - I know it's bad because he made the promise, but they're not building the wall.
LIASSON: But now, President Trump has come up with a way to keep faith with his base even if he can't convince Democrats to fund a wall. If a compromise is impossible, the president said today, he'd, quote, "definitely" do an end run around Congress, declare a national emergency and build the wall with unobligated Pentagon funds. And even if that gambit is stopped in court, he'll have shown his supporters he did everything he could. Pollster John McLaughlin, who worked for Trump during the 2016 campaign, says in that case, his base will be satisfied.
JOHN MCLAUGHLIN: They see him fighting. And if they realize the Democrats don't give it to him, they've seen him fight the good fight.
LIASSON: Polling on immigration depends a lot on how the questions are worded, but almost every poll shows that while border security is broadly popular with voters, the wall and shutting down the government to get a wall is not - except among Trump's core supporters. And now that Trump is promising to act alone if necessary, he's getting praise from some of the same conservatives that previously attacked him for waffling on the wall. Over the weekend, Rush Limbaugh told his listeners that Trump has to do this all by himself.
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RUSH LIMBAUGH: It remains a one-man show, Donald Trump against the Democrat Party and the media. We are very fortunate the guy does not cave.
LIASSON: Regardless of how the shutdown and the battle over the border is resolved, this fight will not end in 2019. Today, on his way out of the White House, Trump made sure to describe the border issue as more than just a wall. The Democrats, he said, don't care about crime.
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TRUMP: I really don't think they care about crime. And, you know, sadly, they're viewing this as the beginning of the 2020 presidential race. And that's OK with me.
LIASSON: It's OK with him because he sees it that way too, as he tweeted in December, quote, "we have the issue - border security 2020 - exclamation point." Mara Liasson, NPR News, Washington.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Thousands of government scientists aren't working because of the government shutdown, and that's affecting university researchers they collaborate with, as NPR's Rebecca Hersher reports.
REBECCA HERSHER, BYLINE: Jacqueline Campbell, Ph.D., works at Iowa State University.
JACQUELINE CAMPBELL: My mom introduces me as, this is my daughter. She's a doctor, but not the type that helps people. And I generally get that look of like, what?
HERSHER: Dr. Campbell studies legumes. Specifically, she works on making genetic information about beans and peas available to scientists around the world to help them help farmers increase yields and feed people.
CAMPBELL: So usually when people ask, you know, what do you do, the first thing I ask is, do you enjoy that three-bean salad that you have? And in a very tiny way, I helped with that.
HERSHER: But since the government shutdown in December, Campbell's life has been totally upside down. First, she works in a building that's leased by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It now has a sign on the front door.
CAMPBELL: Due to the government shutdown, this USDA office is closed.
HERSHER: Campbell is 1 of 4 workers out of 40 who aren't federal employees, so the office has been pretty lonely. And normal office stuff has gotten really hard, too. She has to use her personal cellphone. And the poster printer is useless because the people who know how to use it are furloughed, which is a problem because there's a huge research meeting next week that Campbell now has extra work to prepare for.
CAMPBELL: One of my other colleagues, I am giving her a presentation.
HERSHER: Because USDA researchers won't be there to present their latest findings about the best way to raise and grow the food we eat, research that's paid for by taxpayers. And there is one more way that the shutdown is affecting Campbell and her family.
CAMPBELL: Every day that the shutdown goes on, the probability of me losing my job at the end of March increases.
HERSHER: Her job is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation. That money runs out in March. The NSF is shut down. Days that could be used to apply for more NSF funding or find new money are ticking by.
CAMPBELL: I love science. I love my job. There's not a day when I don't come in, I'm just like sitting at my desk, and I'm just like, yes, what's next? And I sit at my desk now, and I kind of just look around going like, OK, what's next - in a different sense? Because now, everything is up in the air.
HERSHER: Rebecca Hersher, NPR News.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Allegations of sexual abuse have followed Robert Kelly, better known as R. Kelly, for years, but he's remained one of the most powerful and popular figures in R&B music. After the "Surviving R. Kelly" docuseries aired on Lifetime this weekend, things may be changing. A prosecutor in Chicago is asking victims to come forward. Music stars are distancing themselves from Kelly.
Journalist Jim DeRogatis has spent nearly two decades investigating allegations against R. Kelly. He joins me now. Welcome to the program.
JIM DEROGATIS: Hi, Audie.
CORNISH: And as we start this discussion, we should say some content here is - may be disturbing to some people. We want to let you know at the start.
Now, R. Kelly has been accused of a number of instances of abuse, especially for very young women. Can you describe the biggest allegations?
DEROGATIS: You know, Audie, the very first story I published in the Chicago Sun-Times in December of 2000, I think that the nut graph of that story on Day One has been true now for 18 years. R. Kelly has consistently abused his position of wealth and fame to pursue illegal sexual relationships with underage girls.
CORNISH: And throughout this time and now especially with the docuseries, R. Kelly has denied these allegations. One thing that the documentary revealed were the number of people around who helped bring young women into his inner circle. Can you talk about what you encountered in your reporting along these lines?
DEROGATIS: There are any number of enablers around Kelly, everybody from studio tape operators to managers and the record industry - he's still signed, as of today, to RCA Records, Sony Music - the concert industry, the radio industry, publicists, lawyers. I mean, it's been an incredible gravy train that has enabled a pattern of predation that I think is rivaled only in pop culture by the allegations against Bill Cosby. And what's more horrifying in this case is there are 14, 15, 16-year-old girls.
CORNISH: Now, our colleagues on weekend ALL THINGS CONSIDERED spoke with "Surviving R. Kelly" executive producer Dream Hampton over the past weekend. She shared her thoughts on why people have been so slow to care about these allegations.
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DREAM HAMPTON: He chooses girls that a lot of his fans dismiss and disbelieve and, for all kinds of complicated and historical reasons, we don't believe. We don't necessarily believe that, you know, black girls - we don't afford them innocence in the same way we don't afford black boys innocence.
CORNISH: Can you talk about some of the victims that you have met, what they said about what happened when they tried to tell people what was going on?
DEROGATIS: You know, look, the one quote that crystallized it for me in November 2000, which seems like my entire life ago, was an associate of Kelly's who had walked away because he could no longer live with seeing the behavior he was seeing - said, night after night after night, there are 20 beautiful young women in the green room backstage. And 19 of them are 21 years old. And night after night after night, Robert goes after the little teenage girl with acne staring at her shoes in the corner, too shy to talk to anyone. And those girls were not going to be believed.
CORNISH: Now, Dream Hampton has also said that she asked a number of celebrities for interviews, including Jay-Z and Dave Chappelle, that they turned those interviews down. In the end, only one major musician agreed to speak. It was John Legend. Why is it so hard for people in the music industry to speak up?
DEROGATIS: Because he has generated a quarter of a billion dollars of income with his record sales. You know, the list is extraordinary. I mean, it runs from Celine Dion, who recorded with him, to Lady Gaga, who only came out this morning to say she regretted having done a song called "Do What U Want With My Body" (ph) with R. Kelly. She said that today, in the midst of her campaign for an Oscar for "A Star Is Born." I had called, you know, six times since July of 2017 to ask her for a comment. She said it today. You know, one of the reasons he was such a lucrative star is he not only sold 100 million copies of his own records, but he sold tens of millions of copies for the artists he produced.
CORNISH: You've seen a few cycles now of people turning against Kelly and then kind of forgetting about the allegations. Does this time feel different?
DEROGATIS: I wish I could say this time feels different, Audie. You know, he's at a different point. You know, he's a 51-year-old aging R&B star, and no one's buying his records anymore. And the Mute R. Kelly movement of activist black women has effectively shut down his ability to perform in concert. But I don't know - if law enforcement finally acts, and the courts bring Kelly to justice, I honestly don't know.
It's - you know, I'm a student of popular music. (Laughter) And I don't think any story in the history of popular music compares to this. And I well know the history, from Chuck Berry to Jimmy Page. But we're talking here, Audie - you know, I think I'm being conservative - but the women I've spoken to on the record and the women who've talked to me off the record, I believe 60 women over 30 years. And I'm probably being conservative.
CORNISH: Jim DeRogatis is host of the public radio show "Sound Opinions." He has reported extensively on the allegations against R. Kelly. Thank you for speaking with us.
DEROGATIS: Oh, you're most welcome.
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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
President Trump spent the afternoon at the border in McAllen, Texas, trying to illustrate the need for a border wall.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: If we don't have a barrier - a very substantial barrier of some kind, you're never going to be able to solve this problem.
CORNISH: Here in Washington, hundreds of federal workers marched on the Washington Mall to protest the ongoing partial government shutdown. Key parts of the federal government have now been closed for 20 days.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Over the past couple of days in a series of votes, Illinois Republican Adam Kinzinger has joined Democrats voting to reopen parts of the government. And Congressman Kinzinger joins us now. Welcome.
ADAM KINZINGER: Hey, thanks. Thanks for having me.
SHAPIRO: You've said that you support building a border wall, so explain why you are voting to reopen parts of the government even without that border wall funding.
KINZINGER: Yeah, it's pretty simple - 'cause I think shutdowns are stupid. It's a dumb way to govern. It's, you know, us not being adults and being able to get past our disagreements. And it's kind of become a weapon now for both parties. And so for me, you know, if I can vote to reopen parts of government, frankly, that don't have anything to do with this wall argument, I'm going to vote for it because, in essence, we're holding hostages. And the more we can release those hostages in this negotiation, the better.
SHAPIRO: Do you think that argument is persuasive to other members of your own party, or are they just going to be feeling more pressure as the shutdown continues day by day?
KINZINGER: Yeah, I don't know. It's going to be hard to tell. This is approaching the longest shutdown in the country. So, you know, what kind of pressure that is, I don't know. I don't fault anybody on either party for how they voted in any of this because each member has to take that into account. I just look at it and I go, we've got to get past, in this country, the point to where we use a lapse in appropriations as a way to do something. And I'll tell you, this is a really easy - immigration, I think, is a really easy issue to solve. But there's one key thing that has to happen. Both sides have to be OK with losing a little something. And both sides have to be OK with giving the other side some kind of win. And unfortunately, our politics is such now that it's only winners and losers, and that's how we see it.
SHAPIRO: I want to ask you about the president's proposal to declare a national emergency in order to use the military to build a wall. This morning, he repeated the idea. And this afternoon, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said he believes Trump should do it. Here's how House Speaker Nancy Pelosi responded to that idea today.
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NANCY PELOSI: I think he's going to have to answer to his own party on usurping that much power.
SHAPIRO: Answer to his own party on usurping that much power. Do you agree with that assessment, that the president would pay a price among Republicans if he does that?
KINZINGER: Yeah. I don't - again, I - not trying to equivocate. I just don't know. And it depends what a declaration of emergency looks like. It depends what kind of - you know, are resources coming from military readiness? What are they - you know, how is that going to be utilized? I do think the southern border is a - look, I have worked the southern border as an Air National Guard pilot. It is not secure, and it needs to be secure. And we can solve all these other major issues when we secure it. Whether a declaration of emergency is the case, I'd have to see the details of that. I would much rather Congress actually do the role that we are supposed to in the Constitution, which is to be adults, grown-ups and figure out how to get through this without having to go to such big measures.
SHAPIRO: As an Air Force veteran, do you think it's an appropriate use of the military to build a wall on the southern U.S. border?
KINZINGER: Yeah, I don't have - I actually don't have a problem with the use of the military on the border. I actually - in a couple weeks, I'm going to the border with the Air National Guard to do some border missions down there. So I think there's a place where it's appropriate. Now, that is not an armed situation. It's not, you know, standing there with guns and guarding. But I think there's an appropriate use. Again, a lot of that devil, in my view, is going to be in the details. What does a declaration look like? I'd much rather Congress, Republicans, the Democrats for once give each other the opportunity to have a win, take a little loss and actually fix this for the American people.
SHAPIRO: Just in our last minute, tell me about what you're hearing from your constituents as this shutdown drags on.
KINZINGER: Yeah, they're not happy. I mean, you have folks on all sides of this debate - you know, some that want to just keep it shut until this whole thing gets done. I look at the people that aren't going to be getting a paycheck, and it's sad. You know, they'll get paid. But many people live paycheck to paycheck. And I look at the greatest country in the world with a representative democracy that is a model for everybody, and we are going into shutdown as a way to do stuff. And I don't like it. And I didn't come out here to play shutdown politics. I came out to actually get some things done. Whether you agree or disagree with me, that's the purpose of being out here.
SHAPIRO: Congressman Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, thanks for joining us today.
KINZINGER: Any time. You bet. Take care.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was sworn in today for a second term. He now has six more years of power over a country that was once Latin America's wealthiest and is now devastated by economic and social collapse. Many countries, including the U.S. and neighboring Brazil and Colombia, refuse to recognize his leadership. They say he won an election that was neither free nor fair.
Journalist Mariana Zuniga covered Maduro's inauguration in Caracas today. She says two types of people showed up to witness it.
MARIANA ZUNIGA: There were Maduro supporters. And some of them were there 'cause they truly supported President Maduro and they voted for him. Others said that they were kind of obliged to be there because they are state workers. In Venezuela, it's not uncommon that state workers are obliged to go to these rallies or vote in elections.
CORNISH: Tell us a little bit about what Maduro had to say in his inauguration speech.
ZUNIGA: Well, to be honest, he didn't say much. People - they were expecting some economic measures. I think that's why some people were attentive today. He is expected to raise the minimum wage or maybe to say something about the increase of gasoline. But he kind of postponed these economic measures for Monday.
CORNISH: I understand there were only a handful of other heads of state there, right? He doesn't have very many allies in the region.
ZUNIGA: Yes, he doesn't have many allies in the region. From the region, we found Cuba, El Salvador and Honduras, which is atypical because for Hugo Chavez's inauguration, you could see almost the whole region being here in Venezuela.
CORNISH: How did his speech compared to the reality of what's going on in Venezuela right now?
ZUNIGA: Well, he didn't address, like, any of the problems of Venezuela. Many companies have leave the country. Also many people have leave the country. We're talking about more than 2 million people in the past three years. Only this week, for example, the bolivar lost about half its value on the streets. So it is a very different country than when he took the office the first time. And you can notice that. And he didn't address any of these problems during this speech.
CORNISH: Protests used to draw thousands of people into the streets daily, right? Where is the opposition now?
ZUNIGA: Well, in 2017, Venezuela had a huge wave of protests, but those protests were kind of broke out by the government. Many people now fear going to the streets, and they don't feel the motivation anymore because the opposition has kind of broken out. They are divided. So many people who identify with the opposition - they don't feel represented anymore. Now you can see some kind of protest in the streets, but they are not political or against the government. There's more, like, people complaining about the quality of life, people complaining about the scarcity of food, about the lack of electricity, of water. It's another kind of protest different from 2017.
CORNISH: With six more years under Maduro ahead, what do people say they want now?
ZUNIGA: Well, this morning, I had the opportunity to talk with some people that weren't participating in the swearing in, and they had - and they kind of felt hopeless. Many people say that or hope that Maduro won't finish this term. They said that it is - their situation is unbearable. Some that - some of people - they are not even willing to wait to see what will happen. Many said they are planning to leave the country. They are packing already their stuff. And to be honest, in my opinion, if he doesn't change the economic policies, I don't see how his government could stay in power longer.
CORNISH: Mariana Zuniga is a freelance journalist in Caracas. Thank you for speaking with us.
ZUNIGA: Thank you.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
We go now to Congo, where provisional election results have handed the presidency to an opposition leader for the very first time. Another opposition frontrunner has rejected the outcome. And as NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton reports from Kinshasa, Congo's powerful Catholic Church immediately disputed the results.
OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: It's important to note how well respected the Roman Catholic Church is in Congo, Africa's leading Catholic country. So when bishops raise a red flag, people listen. And today's statement was highly anticipated. Last week, the bishops announced that the 40,000 observers they deployed for the December 30 vote indicated a clear winner, though they did not name that person. They urged Congo's election commission to ensure that its results were true and reflected the will of the voters.
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DONATIEN NSHOLE: (Speaking French).
QUIST-ARCTON: On Tuesday, spokesman for the Catholic Bishops' Conference, Reverend Donatien Nshole, said that did not happen. He said the electoral commission's declaration of opposition leader Felix Tshisekedi as the provisional winner of the presidential vote did not tally with the church's own results.
(APPLAUSE)
QUIST-ARCTON: His remarks prompted spontaneous applause among the Congolese journalists at the media briefing. But Reverend Nshole declined to name the candidate they'd identified as the winner of the vote. He appealed to all Congolese to demonstrate civic maturity and, above all, refrain from resorting to violence.
Many in and outside Congo are concerned that continued uncertainty could trigger deadly violence, as happened after the 2006 and 2011 elections. This time, the Electoral Commission said Tshisekedi barely beat businessman and another opposition candidate, Martin Fayulu. Fayulu is disputing what he says are rigged results and has 10 days to launch a legal challenge.
DENDE ESAKANU: Martin Fayulu will give our position.
QUIST-ARCTON: Dende Esakanu is a spokesman for the camp. It claims Tshisekedi made an 11th-hour deal with outgoing President Joseph Kabila because Tshisekedi is deemed the least-threatening option, since the president's preferred successor came a distant third in the election. Esakanu repeats confidently that Fayulu is the true winner.
ESAKANU: Martin Fayulu - it's not just for Kinshasa, it's good for all Congo. OK?
QUIST-ARCTON: It should be a busy Thursday evening here in Kinshasa, but there's barely anybody around. People have stayed home today. They're nervous. They're uncertain because of these election results.
Madame, what's your name, please?
ORHLY MWAYI: My name is Orhly, Orhly Mwayi.
QUIST-ARCTON: Kinshasa is very quiet. Are people fearful?
MWAYI: There's a little fear about the results. Many people was thinking that today would be violent, but it's OK. It's OK.
QUIST-ARCTON: Mwayi she says she voted for opposition frontrunner Fayulu, but if Tshisekedi has won, that's fine too because she says either one represents an alternative for Congo after 18 years of Kabila.
MWAYI: Because people don't want to continue with the same government. They want a change.
QUIST-ARCTON: No major violence was reported by nightfall. And if Mwayi's feelings are widespread, it could mean the Congolese choose stability over electoral uncertainty and witness their nation's first-ever peaceful and democratic transfer of power. Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, NPR News, Kinshasa.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
There are a number of ways the partial government shutdown is affecting businesses throughout the country. We're going to take the next couple of minutes to talk about one of them - the craft beer industry. Brewers of craft beer won't be rolling out new beers in bottles or cans. That's because the agency that approves brewery labels can't do its job. Hope Kirwan of Wisconsin Public Radio reports.
HOPE KIRWAN, BYLINE: One job of the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau is to approve labeling on beer, wine and spirits sold in the U.S. Officials check the labels for things like alcohol content or fluid ounces in a bottle. It's a busy agency. It received more than 192,000 label applications in 2018. That breaks down to about 3,000 applications coming in every week.
But due to the shutdown, new labels aren't getting approved right now. And that's a problem for beer makers like Joe Katchever. He owns Pearl Street Brewery in La Crosse, Wis., which is celebrating its 20th anniversary next month. Katchever and his team brewed something special for their big anniversary party. He shows it off as we toured the brewery's basement.
JOE KATCHEVER: So this is bourbon barrel-aged beer right here on these racks. This is the 20 year beer, sitting, waiting patiently to be bottled.
KIRWAN: But Katchever can't bottle more than 500 cases of beer until his label gets approved by the bureau. Paul Gatza of the Brewers Association estimates that half of all craft breweries in the U.S. find themselves in the same dilemma.
PAUL GATZA: Any products that need those government approvals are just kind of frozen on hold. I think about all the spring releases that are going to be coming out soon. Well, a lot of them won't be coming out.
KIRWAN: Beer labels are generally approved within five to seven days, but brewers are not counting on the process to move quickly when the government finally reopens. The agency will be facing a huge backlog of applications.
GATZA: For beers that brewers want to release sometime in February or March, a lot of them are trying to rush their paperwork in now just so they don't get stuck having to wait months when the shutdown ends.
KIRWAN: And it's not just craft breweries that are being affected by the shutdown. Craig Purser heads the National Beer Wholesalers Association and says large beer makers in the U.S. are also worried about the bureau being furloughed.
CRAIG PURSER: Doesn't matter what the size of the company is. When nobody's answering the phone, the work stops. And it really puts the beer industry at a disadvantage as it relates to innovation, as it relates to new products being introduced, new labels being approved. It really makes it very difficult.
KIRWAN: So difficult that it could easily start to affect the bottom line as breweries across the country worry about what to do with all of their craft beer if they can't bottle and sell it. For NPR News, I'm Hope Kirwan in La Crosse.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The partial government shutdown has put many low-income renters and their landlords on edge, and here's why - they rely on money from the Department of Housing and Urban Development that amounts to subsidies. But HUD told property owners that they won't be getting that money during the shutdown, and they should use their own funds to compensate. With no end in sight, housing advocates say hundreds of thousands of Americans face the risk of being evicted from their homes. NPR's Brakkton Booker reports.
BRAKKTON BOOKER, BYLINE: HUD has more than 20,000 contracts with owners of multifamily housing developments. When it comes to payments, HUD is typically reliable. This is how it usually works. The property owner houses multiple low and very low income residents, charges them modest rents, and HUD kicks in subsidies to make up the difference. But at the start of the new year, HUD said roughly 1,150 property contracts were not renewed as a result of the shutdown. And that has Diane Yentel very concerned.
DIANE YENTEL: Funding these contracts is necessary to keep about 150,000 deeply poor, mostly seniors and people with disabilities, safely and affordably housed.
BOOKER: Yentel is the president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. She worries that with President Trump and congressional Democrats at an impasse over border wall funding, the government won't open anytime soon.
YENTEL: And eventually, these owners will have to resort to either really significant rent hikes or evictions of these lowest income renters.
BOOKER: HUD says the vast majority of project-based rental assistance projects are funded through February, but acknowledges, as the shutdown continues, more contracts will expire. Eric Johnson is the executive director of the Oakland Housing Authority. He works with two properties in the region, one in San Jose and the other in Sacramento, with about 75 housing units between them. He says neither got a January payment from HUD.
ERIC JOHNSON: And so they're functioning right now without having really any income from the program to help support their efforts.
BOOKER: HUD is asking these and other owners to dip into the reserve accounts to cover any money that HUD is unable to release. Johnson adds, many property owners won't be able to operate indefinitely from their reserve funds. This puts owners of low-income housing units between a rock and a hard place. Johnson says that's bad for the stability of the housing market overall.
JOHNSON: I'm more concerned about them ending up going into foreclosure and bankruptcy on these properties than I am really about them evicting residents.
MARY CUNNINGHAM: I think that's right. I think this shutdown sends a very dangerous message to landlords, which is the government doesn't pay its bills.
BOOKER: That's Mary Cunningham, a housing expert at the Urban Institute. She says if landlords can't make up the shortfalls and residents are unable to turn to the government for help, there won't be many options for low-income tenants.
CUNNINGHAM: And they'll be turning to family and friends, but also homeless shelters, living outside.
BOOKER: Officials say, after past shutdowns, property owners have always been reimbursed. HUD adds they've had no tenant evictions due to funding interruptions. But we're in uncharted territory here. Starting tomorrow, this shutdown will be the longest in U.S. history. Some 500 HUD agreements will end by January and another 550 next month. Brakkton Booker, NPR News, Washington.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
As of midnight tonight, the current partial government shutdown will be the longest in U.S. history. At the heart of it is a fight over whether to fund a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Democrats are refusing, and President Trump is refusing to reopen the government until they do. He's been talking about declaring a national emergency to go around Congress and fund the wall. But today, Trump took his foot off the gas on that one.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Now, the easy solution is for me to call a national emergency. I could do that very quickly. I have the absolute right to do it. But I'm not going to do it so fast because this is something Congress should do. And we're waiting for the Democrats to vote. They should come back and vote.
CORNISH: NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith was in the room for that. She joins us now. Hey there, Tam.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Hello.
CORNISH: So why is the president backing away from an emergency declaration?
KEITH: Yeah. You know, it had seemed like he was headed directly for the emergency declaration, that he was almost in a hurry to do it. And then, earlier today, he met with Senator Lindsey Graham, who is a close ally of his. Graham came out of that meeting and said, Mr. President, declare a national emergency now. Build a wall now. That was a statement from Graham. So we all went into this meeting thinking the president was well on his way to making this emergency declaration.
But instead, he said that it's not something he's looking to do right now. Asked why, he raised the specter of legal challenges. He said that he feels like he's on totally solid ground. But he pointed out what happened with the travel ban early in his administration, where it got hung up in various legal challenges and went to multiple levels of appeal. And he said that he would rather just have Congress do this. He said it could be done in 15 minutes. I'm not sure anybody agrees that it could be done in 15 minutes.
CORNISH: Can you bring us up to date on negotiations?
KEITH: Right. So negotiations are not happening as far as we can tell. I asked a White House official about negotiations. He said I should go talk to Democrats in Congress. And the House and the Senate left for the day earlier today. They left for the weekend. They won't be back until Monday. So we are guaranteed that this will be the longest government shutdown in U.S. history and counting.
CORNISH: Before they left, they did take some action, right? What happened?
KEITH: They did. They passed legislation to provide backpay for federal workers. Today is the first day that a lot of workers are missing out on paychecks. Eight hundred thousand or so federal workers are affected by this. Some are working without pay. Some are not working at all and also not getting paid. The president weighed in on this bill that was passed and says that he will sign it. So that means that once this thing finally ends, and the government reopens - and we have no idea when that will be - those federal employees will get backpay for the time that the government was shut down.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Tamara Keith. Thank you.
KEITH: You're welcome.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Well, as this shutdown approaches record length, we're going to talk now about the politics of the standoff with our Friday analysts Mary Katharine Ham of CNN and Jonathan Capehart of The Washington Post. Thanks to you both for being here in the studio today.
JONATHAN CAPEHART: Thank you, Ari.
MARY KATHARINE HAM: Sure thing.
SHAPIRO: OK, so when the clock strikes midnight, this will be the longest shutdown in history. And all three of us have been in Washington for other government shutdowns, but this is the only one I've ever seen where as the days and weeks go by, the two sides don't appear to get any closer together. So how do you each see this ending, Mary Katharine?
HAM: Well, I think the national emergency solution - and I'm making air quotes (laughter) - is what would end it quickly. But I think - here's the problem - is that it's sort of a copout for both parties. Democrats could say, hey, we didn't give him any money for the wall, and Trump can say, hey, I got the wall. But it makes problem solving in the future so much harder. It's genuinely bad for society. Executive overreach will not help them solve problems in the future, and they need to be able to do that. I think in the end - and this - I think this is why Trump is backing off it. I think he thinks he has an edge here and that they - Democrats may come down and just have to relinquish their point on a little bit of physical barrier.
SHAPIRO: Jonathan, do you see that happening, and how would it happen without any actual negotiations?
CAPEHART: Right. I see no end in sight. To your point, Ari, about being in this situation before, at least we knew that there were honest brokers on all sides and, despite the rhetoric coming out publicly, behind the scenes, they were all feverish - feverishly working to come to a solution but also working off the same set of facts. That's not what's happening here.
And so I think that as long as the president keeps saying that he wants a border - wants the border wall a - excuse me - a physical wall, that is going to be a problem for Democrats. If they are able to have a conversation about border security writ large, which Democrats are more than happy to have...
SHAPIRO: You're talking about a package of measures...
CAPEHART: A package of...
SHAPIRO: ...Including staffing and...
CAPEHART: Sure.
SHAPIRO: ...Other - yeah.
CAPEHART: And when you talk to the - when you talk to people on the House side, they will tell you, you know, the first bill that Speaker Pelosi passed was the old Senate bill that passed unanimously in the old Congress which had money for the wall, other border security things but also something dealing with other immigration issues.
SHAPIRO: But it didn't have all the money for the wall that President Trump wanted.
CAPEHART: Correct - not all the money that the president wanted, but it went down because the president at the last minute pulled the rug out from under it in the last Congress. That's the impasse that we're at here.
SHAPIRO: So I...
HAM: Well...
SHAPIRO: Mary Katharine, yeah.
HAM: Yeah, I mean, the reason that I think this is because if you look at the pure political calculus - and that's - political pressure is what ends these things...
CAPEHART: Right.
HAM: ...Donald Trump's pressure point is not federal workers being out of their paychecks. It's just not. I'm not taking a position on that morally, but that's not his pressure point. It is a pressure point...
CAPEHART: Agreed.
HAM: ...For Democrats. So if...
SHAPIRO: But we've also seen a few Republicans in Congress join Democrats in voting to reopen the government. Could those numbers grow as the shutdown stretches on?
HAM: They could. I do think Trump is pretty dug in on this. On - I do think they - he has to get some sort of physical barrier money in a package. I think a package could work, but there has to be some give on the physical part of it.
SHAPIRO: It could (laughter)...
HAM: Although I have been wrong a thousand times before about Donald Trump, so...
CAPEHART: Well, right.
SHAPIRO: Because president - go ahead, Jonathan.
CAPEHART: Well, I was going to say here's the thing about his saying in the clip that you played he's not going to do it so fast, meaning declare a national emergency. If he were to - I am not convinced that he's not actually going to go through and do it.
SHAPIRO: Yeah. I want to ask about that because he has not totally ruled out declaring a national emergency. Let's listen for a moment to what both he and Nancy Pelosi have said about that this week.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: In many ways, it's the easy way out. But this is up to Congress, and it should be up to Congress, and they should do it.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NANCY PELOSI: I think he's going to have to answer to his own party on usurping that much power.
SHAPIRO: That idea that Republicans would make him pay a price if he did that - how persuasive do you think that is to him, Mary Katharine? Do you think that's true?
HAM: I don't think he cares that much about what many (laughter) Republicans think, as he has shown over and over again. And look; executive overreach is an issue, and it is the easy way out, but it is a short-term solution, and it is a long-term, very big problem. And it was, by the way, something that conservatives pointed out when Obama did the DACA action - would not actually solve that problem and is a problem moving forward.
SHAPIRO: And Jonathan, would this then be a green light for a future Democratic president to declare a national emergency for something like climate change?
CAPEHART: Something like climate change, something like gun safety. I mean, I don't think Republicans truly appreciate the Pandora's box that they are about to open up if they watch the president declare a national emergency and then don't scream with one unified voice, Mr. President, this is wrong.
And I don't take - I don't trust the president's words here that he won't actually do it. This is a man who has pushed the envelope on so many things that we thought would never happen. And yet he's done it, and he keeps pushing because there's never any consequence. There's never any - he's never held accountable for it. If he declares a national emergency and if Republicans on Capitol Hill believe that it is the wrong thing to do, it would be imperative upon them to say so.
HAM: He also likes expediency, and he likes to be the person who made it happen. So I think that appeals to him.
SHAPIRO: This week, the White House has staged so many events to try to sell this wall to the American people or to Republicans and Democrats in Congress. We've seen the president go to the border. We've seen him have congressional leaders to the White House and then walk out on them. He's had his first primetime Oval Office address. Do you think any of this has moved the needle at all?
HAM: I - the primetime addresses were just the exact same arguments with no movement...
CAPEHART: Right.
HAM: ...On - and no new ideas whatsoever. So I'm not sure where that got us other than that we all had to watch the primetime addresses.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter).
CAPEHART: Right. It didn't move the needle, and - but this is all - it was theater. The Oval Office address was theater. The trip to the border was theater. And we know it's theater because reports have come out saying that the president thought that it was a waste of time and pointed to aides who were, he said, making him...
SHAPIRO: These people want me to do this.
CAPEHART: These people...
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
CAPEHART: ...Want me to do this.
SHAPIRO: We, every time there's a shutdown, talk about the political consequences, and it seems that every time an election rolls around, people have forgotten about the shutdown. So this time we're talking about whether Democrats or Republicans in Congress or the president will pay more of a political price. Do you think ultimately when this is said and done and it's time for another election two years from now, this will have long-term political consequences for anyone?
HAM: I think it depends on how long it goes on. If it goes on for truly, like, even more dysfunctional amount of time than usual, than it may have some consequences. But frankly, each one has fewer consequences than the last, as we have seen moving through all of these.
CAPEHART: Right. And then if you throw - I agree with Mary Katharine. And then if you throw in the X-factor, which could be a true national emergency, a natural disaster, something so cataclysmic that it requires the government to jump into action - and if the government is in shutdown and it can't jump into action and more Americans are impacted, that is when people's long-term memories will kick in.
SHAPIRO: Could this actually help a politician who wants to argue that government is broken; Washington is dysfunctional; here's exhibit A?
HAM: I mean, that's how they will position. But many people are getting to a point where - and it covers both parties - where they say, like, this is just - you're not being grownups. No one there is being grownups. And I don't think this is helping that at all.
SHAPIRO: Jonathan, I feel like people have been saying that about Washington for a very long time now.
CAPEHART: Right, but there's a difference between government is broken, which is the decades-old argument. And then there's the other argument that there is no governing happening. And I think that's where we are right now.
SHAPIRO: Jonathan Capehart of The Washington Post, thanks very much.
CAPEHART: Thank you, Ari.
SHAPIRO: And Mary Katharine Ham of CNN, great to have you here.
HAM: Appreciate it.
SHAPIRO: Have a great weekend to both of you.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Let's check in on one of the busiest parts of the southern border between Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego. Thousands who trekked north from Central America have spent about two months in Tijuana waiting to enter the U.S. and ask for asylum. NPR's John Burnett has this report from both sides of the border.
JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: For Tijuana, the Central American caravans have become a humanitarian challenge. For the Trump administration, they're a potent and convenient symbol of why the United States needs stronger border security.
RODNEY SCOTT: We don't know who else is in that group. But statistically it would indicate to me that there are some people that want to do harm to this country, who are coming in not to claim asylum.
BURNETT: Rodney Scott is chief of the San Diego Border Patrol sector. In the weeks since the caravan arrived, hundreds of migrants have lost patience and illegally jumped the border fence. He says his agents have arrested more than 2,500 of them in the no man's land between border barriers.
SCOTT: And the sheer numbers just statistically indicate there are nefarious people within that organization.
BURNETT: I cross into Tijuana through the well-guarded port of entry to meet some of the migrants, who look more bedraggled than nefarious. Their numbers have dropped dramatically from around 6,000 when they arrived in early November to under 2,000 today. They're staying in makeshift shelters throughout the city, waiting week after week to hear this announcement, which is made every morning in a small park near the U.S. port of entry.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Speaking Spanish).
BURNETT: On this day, number 1,627 comes forward to start the ragged line of caravan migrants who will cross the border and request asylum from U.S. immigration agents. Forty to 60 people every day are allowed in. Darling Adalid Mercado is a clean-cut 19 year old in a ball cap with a crucifix around his neck. He says he left his home in Ocotepeque, Honduras, three months ago to flee town thugs who wanted to recruit him. He's angry at volunteers who organized the caravan, who he says gave them bad advice.
DARLING ADALID MERCADO: (Through interpreter) Village Without Borders is an organization that told us to join the caravan, that everything is going to be easy. But then you're on the road, and it's really hard, really difficult. They deceive you. They say, we're going to the Mexico-U.S. border, and we'll all cross together. But the truth is you can't do this. It's illegal. Activists have urged me, come on, Darling; just jump the fence. But it's better to return to my country because that's against the law. They'll punish you. It's better to wait in line.
BURNETT: If he's not sent to a migrant detention facility, Darling Adalid Mercado wants to join his brother in San Antonio, Texas, and find work. Pueblo Sin Fronteras, a Mexico-based immigrant solidarity organization, posted a response to recent criticism of its actions on its Facebook page. They emphatically reject the, quote, "defamation of our work of accompanying the caravan." The group vows to continue to support and protect the human rights of Central American migrants in transit.
(SOUNDBITE OF ROOSTER CROWING)
BURNETT: The waiting game in the squalid shelters in Tijuana is grating on everyone's nerves. Blanca Irias and her family from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, are cooling their heels at a shelter run by an evangelical church called the Ambassadors for Christ. She's a heavyset woman with weary eyes. They're staying in a camping tent set up in a church sanctuary.
BLANCA IRIAS: (Through interpreter) We're frustrated. We've been here a long time. We're discussing the possibility of staying here in Tijuana because there's work, and it pays well. But there are days when we also wonder if we should jump the fence. We don't know what we'll do.
BURNETT: More and more Hondurans who came in the caravan are deciding to stay in Tijuana. Mexico has issued more than 2,000 humanitarian visas that allow them to work in this booming border city on the Pacific coast. Foreign-owned assembly plants, construction sites, fruit vendors - they're all hiring. Santos Favian Gomez, who says he fled marauding gangs in Choluteca, Honduras, has taken a job washing dishes for a humanitarian group, World Central Kitchen, that prepares hundreds of meals for the migrants daily.
SANTOS FAVIAN GOMEZ: (Through interpreter) I'll remain in Tijuana because I hear if you cross into the United States, they put you in jail. It's better to work here than to be a prisoner over there.
BURNETT: Favian Gomez says he traveled alone. He'll save a little money to send home to his wife. He'll try to find a house to move out of the crowded shelter, and he'll make his home in Tijuana.
FAVIAN GOMEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
BURNETT: "It's pretty here," he says, scrubbing beans from a pan, "and the people are nice, and anything is better than returning to Honduras." John Burnett, NPR News, Tijuana.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The third season of HBO's anthology crime drama "True Detective" debuts on Sunday. NPR TV critic Eric Deggans says the latest installment might not completely redeem the series' reputation, but it's a very good start.
ERIC DEGGANS, BYLINE: The strongest reason to watch HBO's latest installment of "True Detective" is Oscar-winning star Mahershala Ali. He's playing Arkansas State Police Detective Wayne Hays, a black man in the Ozarks struggling for fulfillment. It's a trippy tale from creator Nic Pizzolatto, who tells the story in three different time periods. In 1980, Hays is trying to find two kids - brother and sister - who disappeared from a poor neighborhood in the Ozarks, but he fears superiors aren't listening to him because of his race. He complains to his partner, a white man named Roland West, played by Stephen Dorff.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "TRUE DETECTIVE")
MAHERSHALA ALI: (As Detective Wayne Hays) I knew they wouldn't listen to me, but you should have stopped that.
STEPHEN DORFF: (As Roland West) What am I supposed to do?
ALI: (As Detective Wayne Hays) I talk, it don't mean anything - don't matter if I'm right. You at least, you talk, it means something to them.
DEGGANS: Ten years later, the case is reopened. Hays' career is sidelined, and he's filled with bitterness, trying to decide if he'll join a task force run by his former partner who's been promoted to try closing the case.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "TRUE DETECTIVE")
ALI: (As Detective Wayne Hays) That promotion for merit or did it come with the pigmentation?
DORFF: (As Roland West) Well, I think, unlike some others, I lack the big mouth. Hell, with affirmative action, you could have been my boss by now.
DEGGANS: A quarter-century after that, a true crime TV producer interviewed Hays while reinvestigating the case, but he now suffers from dementia, having conversations with his dead wife.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "TRUE DETECTIVE")
ALI: (As Detective Wayne Hays) Please, God. I don't deserve this. Whatever happened, I don't deserve this.
CARMEN EJOGO: (As Amelia Reardon) No, you don't, but it's happening anyway.
ALI: (As Detective Wayne Hays) How much do I have to lose?
EJOGO: (As Amelia Reardon) Everything, same as everybody else.
DEGGANS: Ali's Wayne Hays is a taciturn man, so his more talkative partner, Dorff's Roland West, tells other cops - and the audience - why Hays is sometimes so emotionally shut down and why he's so good at tracking people.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "TRUE DETECTIVE")
DORFF: (As Roland West) The man was a LRRP in 'Nam. You know what that is? Long-range reconnaissance. Drop him in the jungle alone, come out two or three weeks later with scalps. He's like a pathfinder, tracks wild boar for fun.
DEGGANS: Mahershala Ali has said that producers initially wanted to cast him Dorff's role, but he insisted on the lead part. That change saved this season, giving audiences a type of anti-hero we've rarely seen on TV. There's lots of themes here, like the struggle of proud men to return home from war with a quiet prejudice of small towns. It's a bleak, sometimes too deliberate story that recalls the promise of the show's blockbuster first season in 2014 with Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey.
Frankly, I thought "True Detective" was dead in 2015 after a disastrous second season starring Colin Farrell. But there's life in this show yet, so long as the story's tied to a mesmerizing performance by a master actor playing a singular character. I'm Eric Deggans.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The Pentagon early this morning announced U.S. forces were beginning their withdrawal from Syria. That's all a spokesman would say out of concern for what he called operational security. President Trump took many people including his own military leaders by surprise last month when he ordered the withdrawal. He tweeted that ISIS had been defeated, and the U.S. would be getting out now. Since then, others in the administration have said it could be months or when ISIS is defeated - so, yes, mixed messages with real repercussions in the region.
We're going to hear from one of the Kurdish allies of the U.S. who could be in danger as troops leave. But first we're going to bring in NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman here with me in Washington. Hey there, Tom.
TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: Hey, Audie.
CORNISH: And NPR's Ruth Sherlock - she's speaking to us from Beirut. Hey there, Ruth.
RUTH SHERLOCK, BYLINE: Hello.
CORNISH: So Tom, let's start with you because the president's announcement, needless to say, caused confusion - right? - the resignation of the defense secretary. Was there a policy or strategy behind that tweet?
BOWMAN: No, it all seemed very knee-jerk. And I'm told it's - continues to cause confusion in the White House and also at the Pentagon. I'm told the president wanted all U.S. troops out within a month. The military said, we can't do it that quickly. And also, ISIS has not been defeated even though the president of course said they have been defeated. Now, the order to leave now has changed. There are estimates it will take at least several months to defeat the remainder of ISIS, so that's where we are now.
CORNISH: On the ground, what does that mean? We've been told - right? - that this is the beginning of the withdrawal.
BOWMAN: Right. The military put out a statement today saying they're beginning what they call a deliberate withdrawal from Syria. Colonel Sean Ryan, a spokesman, said he would not talk about timelines or locations, troop movements. But there's a report from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights - that's a monitoring group based in London - their people on the ground in Syria say they saw 10 American vehicles heading out of Syria to Iraq, and they estimated about 150 U.S. forces leaving. That's out of 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria. But one military officer I spoke with said, hey, this is cosmetic. The bulk of the U.S. troops will remain to defeat ISIS. And again, you're looking at perhaps several months.
CORNISH: All right, Ruth, so you and Tom have been to the part of Syria where U.S. troops have been fighting ISIS. Can you give us the lay of the land? What is the situation at this point?
SHERLOCK: Well, in some areas, ISIS still has territory, and the fight is ongoing against them. And then the other areas that the Kurds have managed to take control of - you know, there's so much destruction there - entire cities and towns destroyed that need rebuilding, many thousands of people who've been displaced from their homes and are still living in camps.
And these Kurdish allies who have lost thousands of people fighting alongside the U.S. against ISIS - they're now worried that Turkey is going to attack them as it's done in other areas. You know, Turkey sees them as terrorists because they're aligned to Kurdish militants that fight the Turkish government. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been in the Middle East this week trying to reassure allies here. He talked about the Kurds and the threats that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made against them.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MIKE POMPEO: These have been folks that have fought with us, and it's important that we do everything we can to ensure that those folks that fought with us are protected. And Erdogan has made commitments. He understands that - I think he uses the language - he talks about - he has no beef with the Kurds. We want to make sure that that's the case, and I'm confident that as Ambassador Jeffreys (ph) and others travel through the region in the days ahead, we'll make real progress on that.
CORNISH: OK, so earlier today, I ran that by a representative from one of the Syrian Kurdish groups, the Syrian Democratic Council. Her name is Sinam Mohamad. She spoke to us on a pretty rough line from Dubai. She told us that they are very worried about Turkey. But first let's listen to her reaction to that pledge from Secretary Pompeo.
SINAM MOHAMAD: This is really good news to hear about it. But still we are even in need to know. How could the U.S. convinced Turkey not to attack our people, and how could we know about the mechanism of doing all these things to guarantee the safety of the allies of the United States, which is the SDF?
CORNISH: But is there confusion? Are you hearing the same thing on the ground that you're hearing, say, from Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, or what you're hearing out in the news from the U.S. president?
MOHAMAD: No, we are hearing something better, something different now. They are telling we are going to withdraw as soon as possible; we are going to withdraw very slowly until we guarantee the safety of the Kurdish people or the Kurdish allies or our people - is the SDF.
CORNISH: What are you asking the Trump administration to do specifically?
MOHAMAD: We are asking them to include us in the political process in Geneva talks.
CORNISH: And this is regarding the peace negotiation with Syria.
MOHAMAD: Yes. And we are asking also to be included in the committee which is being established for the constitution of the Syria and to protect us from the Turkish - to stop Turkish from attacking our region or to create a new conflict part in the area.
CORNISH: You mentioned wanting to be a part of the conversation about the constitution in Syria after the war. Is the solution for you to be back fully under the government of Syria? Have you given up on trying to maintain autonomy?
MOHAMAD: We - you know, from the beginning, we are not planning for separating from Syria or dividing Syria. We want to have a new Syria for all of the Syrian people, a democratic system in Syria.
CORNISH: Is there a scenario where you can count on Syria to protect you from Turkey?
MOHAMAD: You mean the regime of Syria.
CORNISH: Yes.
MOHAMAD: Yes, we would like to have such (unintelligible) if they accept this on the new Syria, new democratic Syria, not as they wanted to have like their mentality before 2011.
CORNISH: Again, that's Sinam Mohamad from the Syrian Democratic Council. That's a U.S. ally. And she's saying that the Kurds are trying to make a deal with the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. This is a leader that has been called the butcher of Damascus. The U.S. has asked him to step down. The U.S. has attacked his regime with missile strikes.
So Ruth, are we seeing a realignment of loyalties here, one that essentially gives Assad the upper hand?
SHERLOCK: This is complicated because the Kurds don't immediately want to jump into bed with the Syrian government. You know, they were historically marginalized as an ethnicity in Syria, and there are thousands of people living in these areas that are actually wanted by the Syrian government. But I think they realize that if the U.S. leaves, they'll be exposed. And they do need to strike a deal with some power to ward off a Turkish offensive, and the Syrian regime is winning this war in Syria. It's retaken much of Syrian territory, and it's doing so with the help of Russia and Iran.
CORNISH: Tom, where does this head next in the Pentagon and Washington?
BOWMAN: Well, the Pentagon will carry out the order from President Trump to leave. And again, it will take a few months, it looks like. And on Capitol Hill, the incoming chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Democrat Adam Smith, is expected to hold hearings in the coming weeks on Syria because, again, Audie, this is all very confused. We don't know the way ahead. He's going to try to get to the bottom of it.
Here's another thing. The Pentagon has long said it will train a local security force of some 30,000 to 40,000 to help patrol after the U.S. leaves. We don't know if that will still happen. And it may be that the Syrian regime will take over this area.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Tom Bowman. Tom, thank you.
BOWMAN: You're welcome.
CORNISH: And NPR's Ruth Sherlock speaking to us from Beirut - Ruth, thank you.
SHERLOCK: Thank you.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Australia's foreign minister, Marise Payne, has praised Thailand's government for its decision to allow a young Saudi woman fleeing her family to seek asylum in Australia instead of deporting her as originally planned. But Payne also made it clear that Australia wants to see the release of a Bahraini soccer player granted asylum in Australia currently in a Thai jail. Michael Sullivan reports on Thailand's mixed record when it comes to asylum-seekers and refugees.
MICHAEL SULLIVAN, BYLINE: Hakeem Al-Araibi is a Bahraini football player granted asylum in Australia two years ago. Late last year, he got married, got a visa and got on a plane for Bangkok with his wife for their honeymoon.
NADTHASIRI BERGMAN: He was planning to go to Phuket to see a beautiful beach - you know, just take some time off from his football playing in Australia.
SULLIVAN: He didn't make it. His Thai lawyer Nadthasiri Bergman says when he stepped off the plane in Bangkok, Thai police were waiting for him.
BERGMAN: And a Thai authority told him that because he's wanted from another a country for an alleged crime, he was denied entering into Thailand.
SULLIVAN: He's been in jail awaiting possible extradition to Bahrain ever since. Never mind his refugee status in Australia. Never mind the crime he allegedly committed - vandalizing a police station - occurred at the same time he was finishing a live televised soccer match. Never mind his claims he was tortured in Bahrain before fleeing to Australia.
PHIL ROBERTSON: It's been a very, very bad four years for refugees and asylum-seekers in Thailand.
SULLIVAN: That's Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch. He says the military government that seized power here in 2014 hasn't been shy about doing deals with authoritarian governments to send people back. Eighteen-year-old Saudi Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun was headed in that direction before she seized the social media spotlight and created a PR nightmare for the Thai government. But he says others have fared much worse.
ROBERTSON: We have seen Uyghurs sent back to China. We saw an ethnic Han Chinese activist couple sent back to China despite the fact that Canada had already informed Thailand that they were going to be resettled to Canada. We've seen human rights activists who are registered with the U.N. Refugee Agency sent back to Cambodia, sent back to Vietnam.
SULLIVAN: And he's worried it won't stop. But the military doesn't get all the blame. Things weren't that great before the coup either.
MATTHEW SMITH: We have documented how the Thai authorities have not only failed to protect refugees but have in some cases bought and sold tens of thousands.
SULLIVAN: Matthew Smith of the human rights group Fortify Rights.
SMITH: The authorities were involved in the trafficking of huge numbers of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar. And so protection for refugees has been a really serious issue in this country for a long time.
SULLIVAN: His colleague Puttanee Kangkun says there's a reason for that.
PUTTANEE KANGKUN: Thailand has - until now, still have no actual protection of the law. Let's say a law or policy that really gives protection to the refugees.
SULLIVAN: But rights groups also say Thailand deserves credit for taking in refugees at all in a neighborhood where many have fled their countries fearing for their safety. More than 100,000 from neighboring Myanmar are still in camps on the Thai-Myanmar border. Earlier waves included Vietnamese boat people, ethnic Hmong fleeing persecution in Laos and Cambodians trying to escape the Khmer Rouge - Matthew Smith of Fortify Rights.
SMITH: There are people in the government who want to do the right thing, and they want to protect refugees. But there's still a lot of work to do.
SULLIVAN: For NPR News, I'm Michael Sullivan in Bangkok.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BETA BAND'S "B+A")
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Today's a big day in Puerto Rico. The musical "Hamilton" is opening tonight, and its creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, is on the island to reprise the title role during the show's three-week run. His family is from Puerto Rico. And when he announced the production a year ago, Miranda envisioned it as a way to lift people's spirits after the devastation of Hurricane Maria and to raise millions of dollars for arts on the island. But the show's arrival has also brought some controversy.
We're joined now by NPR's Adrian Florido, who is in Puerto Rico's capital, San Juan. Hi, Adrian.
ADRIAN FLORIDO, BYLINE: Hi, Ari.
SHAPIRO: A lot of cities are waiting for Hamilton to arrive. How do people in San Juan feel about its opening there tonight?
FLORIDO: Oh, there's a lot of excitement. This is one of the biggest artistic events in recent memory, and there are also a lot of big names expected to attend including more than 30 members of Congress. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former President Clinton, Oprah Winfrey - they're all expected to attend sometime in the next few weeks.
SHAPIRO: Is it crass to ask whether those people visited the island after the devastation of Hurricane Maria?
FLORIDO: Yeah, I mean, it's hard to know how many of those did because the list of attendees hasn't been confirmed, but that is a question that a lot of people on the island have been asking. I've actually seen it floating around quite a lot on Twitter today and yesterday. For his part, Lin-Manuel Miranda announced the production soon after the hurricane and also that the money raised from the ticket sales would go to arts organizations here.
The Mirandas - Lin-Manuel and his father, Luis, who is running the production - they invested about a million dollars to renovate the theater at the University of Puerto Rico so that it could stage the show. But then a couple of weeks ago amid the threat of protests, the Mirandas abruptly announced that they were going to move the production from the university to the fancy Fine Arts center in San Juan.
SHAPIRO: Explain what those protests were about.
FLORIDO: Well, as you know, Puerto Rico is in default on more than $70 billion in debt. And a couple of years ago, the U.S. Congress created an oversight board to basically take control of the island's finances and renegotiate this debt. That law was called PROMESA. And both Lin-Manuel and his dad, Luis, supported it at the time. I actually sat down with Luis Miranda yesterday at the theater, and this is what he had to say about that.
LUIS MIRANDA: I supported PROMESA. It was the only way that we saw at that point - Lin-Manuel and I and the family and, quite frankly, many others to - make sure that Puerto Rico can restructure the debt. The unintended consequences of that junta that has become a pseudo government, it's something that clearly everyone should be against.
FLORIDO: He now says that he opposes what this board is doing, and a lot of people here do. They see it as a kind of colonialism. And the irony that "Hamilton" is a musical about a response to colonialism has not been lost on people here.
SHAPIRO: Explain why those protests over that law would lead for the Mirandas to pull the production out of the university theater, where, presumably, it could have done a lot of good for the university financially and move it to this other performance venue.
FLORIDO: Yeah. Well, I mean, it's because some of the steepest cuts that are being imposed by this oversight board, they're falling on the University of Puerto Rico. And so recently, a union of university employees threatened to strike over these cuts. And so the Mirandas, they decided they didn't want to risk the possibility of their production being disrupted.
SHAPIRO: What are their hopes for what this three-week production accomplishes on the island?
FLORIDO: Well, you know, after Hurricane Maria, you know, there's been a lot of progress made in the reconstruction. But there's still a lot of rebuilding left to do. And so what Luis Miranda told me was that he hoped that these visits from all these elected officials will help move that along.
MIRANDA: And what I hope will happen is that they will see firsthand what happened to Puerto Rico after Maria, the progress that has been made and everything that still needs to happen to build a island that is more resilient than before Maria.
FLORIDO: As in the States, Ari, the tickets for the show have sold out completely. Some of them were really expensive. But the Mirandas are also doing a lottery for 10,000 tickets at $10 a piece, which is a lottery that I think anyone in the States who's trying to get tickets to "Hamilton" is probably very, very familiar with.
SHAPIRO: That's NPR's Adrian Florido in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Thanks so much, Adrian.
FLORIDO: Thank you, Ari.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
After three weeks, the partial government shutdown is about to become the longest in U.S. history. Hundreds of thousands of federal employees are not getting their scheduled paychecks this week. President Trump has been considering declaring a national emergency to get funding for the wall. Today he said he's not ready to do it yet, but the option remains under consideration. To get a sense of the president's perspective on this standoff, we're joined by Corey Lewandowski. He's a consultant who served as Trump's presidential campaign manager. Welcome.
COREY LEWANDOWSKI: Thank you for having me.
SHAPIRO: Well, based on your conversations with people at the White House, how likely do you think an emergency declaration is at this point?
LEWANDOWSKI: I think we're getting closer and closer. Obviously Congress, both the House and the Senate, have left for the weekend, ensuring that this shutdown is going to continue. And the border crisis is not getting any better, and the president has been very clear that if he doesn't get a resolution from Congress, which is acceptable, he will implement the same powers which have been implemented 52 times since 1974, and the president will declare an emergency.
SHAPIRO: Why wouldn't he have done this at any point in the last two years when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and he still couldn't get funding for the wall?
LEWANDOWSKI: Well, let's be clear. Republicans and Democrats alike have failed on this issue and should have given the president the financial resources necessary to build the wall on the southern border, something that Barack Obama voted for, something that Hillary Clinton voted for and many other Democrats, including Chuck Schumer. But now this is a partisan issue. And what we have seen unfortunately over the last multiple weeks are additional Americans being killed by illegal aliens. And the president has made a trip to the border this week, and he's heard directly from the border guards.
SHAPIRO: But the question is, why would the president have done this in the last two years? He had the opportunity. The money wasn't forthcoming. Why wouldn't he have done this at any point before now?
LEWANDOWSKI: You know, the Congress allocated about $1.2, $1.4 billion for the maintenance of the wall, and they were - and they told the president that they would give him his funding prior to the election if he didn't close the government. That didn't happen. They told him they would give him the funding after the election. That's not happening. And this president is resolved to making sure that Americans are safe from people coming across the border illegally.
SHAPIRO: What do you say to concerned Republicans who fear that if President Trump does go through with this, then a future Democratic president could declare a national emergency on climate change or health care?
LEWANDOWSKI: Well, it's a significant question. It's a real question. And the question is, does the president have the authority to use the military to construct the wall. And if so, does this constitute an emergency? And I think right now it's an open legal question. But if he does declare that emergency, I think this is something that will go directly to the Supreme Court. And they will weigh in on it.
SHAPIRO: Other administration officials as senior as the vice president have tried to negotiate with Congress, and the president has publicly undercut offers that those advisers have made. Do you think he's made things harder for himself by not ensuring that he and his advisers are all on the same page?
LEWANDOWSKI: Well, the most disappointing part - and if you look at who was negotiating on behalf of the administration - the president, the acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, and the president's son in law were on Capitol Hill last week, but they weren't meeting with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. They were meeting with younger junior staffers who wanted to ask technical questions about opening the government and the security of the wall. And so I think this president, his team have put forth the most senior team, but we have not seen that same resolve from the Democrats.
SHAPIRO: But what happens when that senior team makes an offer that the president then says was not a real offer and doesn't stand behind?
LEWANDOWSKI: Well, I think it's a negotiation. It's back and forth. I think Vice President Pence knows exactly where the president stands. I think his team knows exactly where he stands, which is, we need to have money to build the wall. And if you're not willing to put that money forth, then we will look at other opportunities to make that happen.
SHAPIRO: I'd like to play you a cut of tape from the president yesterday speaking about Democrats on his way out of the White House.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I really don't think they care about crime. And, you know, sadly they're viewing this as the beginning of the 2020 presidential race. And that's OK with me.
SHAPIRO: Whether or not this is about the 2020 presidential race for Democrats, how much of this do you think is about re-election for President Trump?
LEWANDOWSKI: Well, I clearly think that the building of the wall was a pledge that he made on the campaign trail in 2016 and a pledge that he has promised to fulfill. But it's the same pledge that the Democrats made when they voted for the legislation in the last 10 years to have a border - a boundary, a wall, a - you know, a barrier, whatever you want to call it, on the southern border. Some of that has already been installed. As you know, the Democrats voted for that, but now they continue to fight, to put up an additional barrier to protect Americans.
SHAPIRO: Corey Lewandowski was 2016 campaign manager for President Trump. Thank you very much.
LEWANDOWSKI: Thank you.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Let's get some context now from NPR White House correspondent Scott Horsley, who's here in the studio with us. Hi, Scott.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Ari.
SHAPIRO: So we just heard Corey Lewandowski say he thinks the president is getting closer to invoking his emergency powers to sidestep Congress and move ahead with the wall. What signals are you seeing from the White House?
HORSLEY: The president and his aides have actually been sending sort of mixed signals. Trump is certainly holding out the possibility that he will invoke these emergency powers. But late today, in fact just about the time that that interview with Corey Lewandowski was recorded, the president told reporters he's not looking to go the emergency route just yet. Trump says he is concerned about legal challenges, and he added he would rather work with Congress to get the wall funding approved.
SHAPIRO: But Lewandowski suggested Democrats are not interested in that negotiation. Certainly we haven't seen many negotiations happening this week.
HORSLEY: That's true. Although I do want to correct Lewandowski's account of the meeting last weekend that was led by Vice President Pence. If listeners got the impression that Democratic lawmakers boycotted that meeting, they were never expected to show up. That was a meeting that was specifically designed for Hill staffers. But it is true Democrats are not eager to negotiate with the president so long as the federal government is partially shut down. They think the president is using the shutdown as an extortion tactic. Trump has acknowledged as much. And the Democratic feeling is, if you negotiate under those circumstances, you're just going to get more extortion in the future.
SHAPIRO: What about this idea we just heard that Congress promised Trump they would consider while funding if he didn't shut down the government before the election and then backtracked?
HORSLEY: It is certainly true that Republicans urged the president not to push for a government shutdown back before the midterm elections, and he didn't. The Republican leadership on the Hill knew that a shutdown would be unpopular. And sure enough, it is proving to be unpopular. Even without a government shutdown, you saw Republicans in the House lose 40 seats. The president's campaign rhetoric against the caravan didn't help with that. And so now we have newly empowered Democrats who see no reason to give ground on this issue.
SHAPIRO: That's NPR White House correspondent Scott Horsley. Thank you, Scott.
HORSLEY: You're welcome.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
So what do Americans make of all this - the government shutdown, the border wall impasse? Well, a new Ipsos/NPR poll finds that nearly three-quarters of respondents think the government shutdown is embarrassing for the country, and they want the government reopened while budget talks continue. Joining us now to discuss the new findings - NPR correspondent Leila Fadel. Hey there, Leila.
LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: Hi.
CORNISH: So what does this poll find when it comes to how people feel about the shutdown?
FADEL: Well, it's not popular. I mean, the poll found that 7 out of 10 Americans think the shutdown is going to hurt the country, hurt the economy. And it's not just Democrats. It's also a majority of Republicans and independents that feel this way. Also while most of the people surveyed said they aren't directly affected by the shutdown, the majority are frustrated. They think the government's wasteful, that it should give federal workers back pay for this time. And 4 in 10 people think it's never OK to shut down the government.
Now, where you do see the partisan breakdown is who people blame for what could soon be the longest government shutdown. And the big takeaway really is that no one - not Democrats, not the president - is winning real political points here. So 45 percent of the about 1,000 people surveyed across the country think Congress and the Democrats are doing too little to work with the president to end this and about the same number, 48 percent, think the Trump administration is doing too little.
CORNISH: The president gave a speech on Tuesday. He was on the border this week to build support for his plan. I mean, has he convinced people that funding for a wall is urgent?
FADEL: Well, it seems his speech really didn't sway anyone, so his base of support stayed on his side. And the rest - well, only 1 in 10 people said the president's speech brought the country closer to ending the shutdown. Nearly a quarter said the speech had no impact at all. And 39 percent just didn't watch. And one of those people is Alicia Smith of Aurora, Colo. She identifies as an independent and said she just didn't want to hear it.
ALICIA SMITH: He's just making excuses and coming up with more lies, you know, to try to get something that we don't need and that's not going to be effective anyway. It didn't keep the people from crossing from East Berlin to West Berlin, did it? Of course, it did not. It never does work. And it's just a big expense.
FADEL: So she says the shutdown needs to end, that Congress needs to make that happen and that there is no national emergency. She also says she's frustrated with Washington. And as this poll shows, she's in the majority with that opinion. And she says it's been two decades of fighting between the two parties with no solutions for the country.
CORNISH: But there is some support for this wall and for this shutdown. Can you talk about what you learned?
FADEL: Yeah, absolutely. The president has a pretty consistent base of support that ranges from 30 to just over 40 percent depending on what's asked. So nearly 1 in 3 Americans want the government closed until there is funding for this wall. Now, that number is largely driven by Republicans but also 21 percent of independents and 14 percent of Democrats. And that's how Jeremy Hunley feels. He's from Winchester, Va., and he describes himself as a conservative-leaning independent.
JEREMY HUNLEY: It's a bit embarrassing to have our government not do its job, but its job is to protect this country. So we need the wall. This is what Donald Trump ran on in his campaign. And for a lot of people, it's why they elected him.
FADEL: So now, Hunley says he'll support the shutdown until there is funding for a wall even if it's difficult or, as he calls it, inconvenient for federal workers. And while President Trump says he doesn't plan to declare a national emergency to get funding for his border wall just yet, if he does, he has Hunley's support.
CORNISH: That's NPR correspondent Leila Fadel. Thank you.
FADEL: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SIMON AND GARFUNKEL'S "ANJI")
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Let's turn now to two very different visions for the U.S. role in the Middle East, both laid out in speeches in Cairo, Egypt, almost a decade apart - one in 2009 by then-President Barack Obama.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BARACK OBAMA: America is not and never will be at war with Islam.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
And a second, yesterday, by the current secretary of state, Mike Pompeo.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MIKE POMPEO: We grossly underestimated the tenacity and viciousness of radical Islamism, a debauched strain of the faith that seeks to upend every other form of worship or governance.
SHAPIRO: The two visions couldn't be more different, and the second, a repudiation of the first.
CORNISH: Dan Shapiro was President Obama's ambassador to Israel. He also consulted on Obama's speech. He joins us now from Tel Aviv. Ambassador, welcome to the program.
DAN SHAPIRO: Thank you. Good to be with you.
CORNISH: Now, we'll get to some of the specific points of contention in a minute, but let's remind people some context for President Barack Obama's speech because the Middle East looks very different in 2009. Can you talk about what was going on at the time? You were helping to craft the vision of what the president was trying to accomplish with that speech.
SHAPIRO: President Obama took office with still very heavy echoes of events of the previous decade - of course, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq. And then the deterioration that happened in Iraq after the war, with the occupation, the Abu Ghraib prison torture photographs and other torture scandals. And what it led to was kind of a serious deterioration of the U.S. reputation in the region.
So what he was trying to do was describe a basis for a new set of relationships against the extremists of the region, of course, while empowering people in the region and showing mutual respect to their traditions. That's what he sought as the basis for the speech he delivered.
CORNISH: What did you hear in this speech from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that struck you?
SHAPIRO: Well, it was a strange speech. First of all, he seemed far more interested in criticizing President Obama before a foreign audience than laying out a coherent vision of a U.S. strategy in the Middle East. But the speech had bigger problems. One was a mismatch between goals and means. Secretary Pompeo included some expressions of strength. He included a pledge for the United States to finish off ISIS and to expel Iranian troops from Syria. But that pledge came at the exact same moment that the United States is withdrawing its troops from Syria. And in that regard, I think countries hear that inconsistency and it affects whether or not they take seriously the ideas that are being presented.
CORNISH: But to jump in here, when it comes to Syria, that is one of the more probably legitimate critiques of the Obama administration, right? People do not look back on the policy approach favorably. They often point to, for instance, President Obama's red line moment on the issue of Syria using chemical weapons.
SHAPIRO: There's probably more in common between the Obama administration than the Trump administration wants to acknowledge, and that's a desire ultimately to reduce the U.S. military footprint in the region, to encourage other nations to carry more responsibility. Just as President Obama decided to limit U.S. involvement in Syria, President Trump has made clear that he wants to declare the end to the war against ISIS and leave, despite the fact that various partners in the region - such as Israel, such as the Kurds - are feeling somewhat abandoned by that decision.
CORNISH: Had the Obama administration been more successful in places like Syria or, for instance, with the Middle East peace process, would it be more difficult now for the Trump administration to come in and impose a drastically different vision?
SHAPIRO: Every administration wants to distinguish itself from the administration before it, but he's describing a policy that he contrasts to a vision of President Obama 10 years ago. A lot has changed in the region. And it should require a very careful and a very thoughtful policy process to decide exactly what is the right approach for this moment.
There was nothing in the speech that sounded like it was the product of a serious policy development problem. There were no new initiatives. There were no new programs, no follow-up, nothing that suggests President Trump is really committed to any strategy in the region beyond the desire to limit U.S. involvement. And I doubt very seriously whether President Trump, who's tied up right now in a fight over the government shutdown and the wall, has even read the speech or that anybody in the region will take seriously that this represents a strategy and a vision that he is going to carry forward.
CORNISH: One final thought. Mike Pompeo said in his speech that the age of self-inflicted shame is over in terms of talking about U.S. policy. Can you respond to that? Because some people have for a long time talked about the Obama administration as being kind of apologetic on behalf of the U.S. and that that stance was damaging.
SHAPIRO: There was nothing apologetic about President Obama's approach. In fact, I think it was quite the opposite. I think that's a bit of a canard that Secretary Pompeo used, and it may satisfy a certain constituency that he's speaking to in the United States. But I don't think it particularly resonates. Overall, Secretary Pompeo's speech was not a memorable speech. My guess is that most Middle Easterners are going to nod politely, but that the speech will be forgotten within a matter of days.
CORNISH: Dan Shapiro was President Obama's ambassador to Israel. He spoke to us from Tel Aviv. Thank you for speaking with ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
SHAPIRO: Thank you, Audie.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The photo is one of the icons of the 1960s civil rights struggles in Jackson, Miss. - two women and a man sitting at a lunch counter while hatred and condiments pour over them. The man in that photo, John Gray, died on Monday. NPR's Karen Grigsby Bates has this appreciation.
KAREN GRIGSBY BATES, BYLINE: He began life as John Salter Jr.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JOHN GRAY: I started out in a tough northern Arizona town with an Indian father and a white mother. The town was tough, the setting was tough, and the times were tough. And I went on from there.
BATES: That's John Gray talking to Studio One at the University of North Dakota in 1994. His father was a Native American who was adopted by the Salter family as a small child. John Salter Jr. grew up aware of social injustice. He saw it up close with Native Americans and Mexican Americans in his hometown of Flagstaff. He earned two degrees at Arizona State University, worked for several years as a labor organizer in the Southwest, then taught sociology.
Salter and his wife Eldri made the decision to travel south from the Midwest. He taught sociology at Tougaloo, a historically black college in Mississippi. While there, he worked closely with the NAACP's Medgar Evers. In the early '60s, black and white college students sat at lunch counters to protest stores no-Negroes-served policies. When his students were set upon by furious segregationists after they sat down at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Jackson, Salter joined them.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GRAY: My students were attacked. I felt that the only place for me to be was with my students.
BATES: Salter's son Peter, a newspaper reporter in Lincoln, Neb., says his father appreciated that infamous photo.
PETER SALTER: He used it on the cover of his book because it conveyed worldwide just the brutality and the hatred of Jackson, Miss., in the early 1960s.
BATES: John Salter Jr. worked in a number of civil and human rights organizations and taught in several universities around the country. He was a widely popular professor, whether the classes were sociology, social justice or extraterrestrial life. Yes, Professor Salter believed we are not alone. Later in life, after his father retired, Peter Salter says his father changed his name.
GRAY: He felt the need to return the family name to us, and so he changed his name to John Gray.
BATES: John Gray died on Monday at his home in Pocatello, Idaho. At his request, his ashes will be scattered in Arizona later this year. Karen Grigsby Bates, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOLLAR BRAND'S "SALAAM-PEACE-HAMBA KAHLE")
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
There's only been one other time in U.S. history that the government was shut down for 21 days. In 1995, the government had similar dilemmas with different players.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BILL CLINTON: Congress has failed to pass straightforward legislation necessary to keep the government running.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NEWT GINGRICH: ...Among House Republicans a very deep commitment to staying here and getting the job done.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LEON PANETTA: But the House Republicans have basically been in a lock. They're on a revolution.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: There is no real desire on the part of this administration to do anything except play politics.
SHAPIRO: That shutdown was caused by a deadlock between President Clinton, a Democrat, and congressional Republicans over balancing the budget. And Donna Shalala was President Clinton's secretary of Health and Human Services at the time. She oversaw 125,000 government workers. Now she is a newly sworn-in Democratic congresswoman from Florida looking at the shutdown from the legislative instead of the executive branch. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
DONNA SHALALA: My pleasure.
SHAPIRO: Back in 1995, what challenges did you face overseeing 125,000 workers in the Department of Health and Human Services?
SHALALA: Well, it was devastating. And I of course had Social Security and Medicare. We were having conversations about how we were going to deliver Social Security checks and serious conversations about what we were going to do about Head Start, about the National Institutes of Health. But it was tragic. Employees - federal employees expect security in their jobs. But more importantly, every single one of them is a patriot. Every single one of them is dedicated to their positions, and doing it partially or doing the entire government, as we experienced - there - it's just irresponsible.
SHAPIRO: Are you hearing stories from your constituents today that remind you of what you went through more than 20 years ago?
SHALALA: I am. And so many of my constituents - both the husband and the wife work for the government. So it's even a double-whammy for those families. Air traffic controllers, people that get food stamps - a quarter of the people in my district get food stamps. They are scared to death.
SHAPIRO: In the last couple of weeks, we've seen government agencies put out guidance to furloughed employees on how to negotiate delayed rent payments or suggesting that people not getting paid could hold garage sales to make ends meet. Did you have to make similar suggestions for HHS employees who weren't getting a paycheck in 1995?
SHALALA: I did not.
SHAPIRO: You did not.
SHALALA: I did not. I simply said to them, we're fighting as hard as we can to get this government open. I did reach out to each one of them and communicated with them and asked their - the middle managers in the department. We had a little bit of an option. We had about 40 percent of the money to pay them. So we figured out that we didn't have to take the deductions out of that money. So I actually got some salary out to my employees by not taking the deductions out.
SHAPIRO: You know, it seems like 1995 was a real turning point, kind of the first time a shutdown was weaponized as a way for politicians to try to get their legislative way. And since then, it seems to have become more common. Do you have ideas about what can be done to prevent hundreds of thousands of federal workers from being used as political pawns in this way going forward?
SHALALA: Yeah, elect grownups to Congress and to the presidency. And the people that run our government ought to care about people, whether they're elected officials or they're appointed officials and members of the Cabinet. I mean, there's no excuse for this. There literally is no excuse. This is not a financial crisis in the United States. This has to do with ego. And we ought to get this settled as quickly as possible.
SHAPIRO: Congresswoman Donna Shalala, Democrat of Florida and former secretary of Health and Human Services, thanks for talking with us.
SHALALA: You're welcome.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Now to Mexico, where the president's war on corruption has made it hard for people to fill up their cars. For years, Mexico has lost billions to fuel theft by criminals hacking into pipelines. In response, the government has shut down key pipelines and ordered fuel transported now by trucks - the result, severe gas shortages and long lines at the pump. NPR's Carrie Kahn reports.
(SOUNDBITE OF TRUCK STARTING UP)
CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: A gasoline cargo truck pulls into a station in the northern state of Reynosa. Such an event wouldn't usually draw large crowd, but residents in this border city had been lining up for hours on rumors that a gas delivery was coming.
AGUSTIN BARRIOS: Probably going to be another hour just to discharge that whole truck.
KAHN: Agustin Barrios, a local tattoo artist, is clearly bored and tired of sitting in his car. But he said he's resigned to wait it out.
BARRIOS: We know this is what we gotta go through right now. We ain't got no other choice.
KAHN: The shortages started earlier this week when the government shut down key distribution pipelines hoping to thwart the fuel thieves. For decades, robbers have drilled directly into pipelines, siphoning off nearly $3 billion a year. Gas now is being trucked to fuel depots, greatly slowing down distribution and raising the cost.
(SOUNDBITE OF ATTENDANT PUMPING GAS)
KAHN: As a gas station attendant fills up Brenda Jaramillo's tank in Reynosa, she visibly relaxes. She says people are bringing on a lot of the problems themselves. Before, she says, we'd just buy five or 10 bucks of gas.
BRENDA JARAMILLO: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: "Now everyone is filling up their tanks. We've brought this chaos upon ourselves," she says. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has been urging motorists not to panic-buy and insists there is no gas shortage. Today he acknowledged people's patience is wearing thin.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT ANDRES MANUEL LOPEZ OBRADOR: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: "We have to resolve this problem, all of us together," he said after presenting a slideshow highlighting what he said were successes in his new anti-fuel-theft fight. A poll in today's Reforma newspaper showed a majority of Mexicans seemed to be sticking by the new president. Sixty-two percent of those polled believe shutting off the pipelines was a good move to thwart the thieves. But it's unclear how long that support will last and most importantly when supplies will go back to normal. Dwight Dyer, an energy consultant and former government official, says economic losses are enormous and mounting. He says it's admirable of the government to go after corruption.
DWIGHT DYER: It's a tough problem, but I think the strategy that's deployed right now is shortsighted.
KAHN: That plan is sending workers out to repair the tapped pipelines and stationing thousands of troops to guard against any new illegal drilling. But Dyer says past administrations have tried similar strategies. Once the soldiers leave though, the thieves always return, he says.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KAHN: Banda Cruz De La Candelaria serenaded distressed motorists at a gas station in Morelia, Michoacan. They used empty plastic gas containers as drums.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KAHN: But Mexico City taxi driver Christian Camacho says he can't take much more of this. He got up at 1 this morning to line up. He says he didn't get gas until 4:30 am.
CHRISTIAN CAMACHO: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: "Lopez Obrador should have thought this out better and put a better plan in place," he says, "so not all of us would be suffering now." Carrie Kahn, NPR News, Mexico City.
(SOUNDBITE OF BLAKROC FT. JIM JONES & MOS DEF SONG "AIN'T NOTHING LIKE YOU (HOOCHI COO)")
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
A temporary detention center for unaccompanied minors in Tornillo, Texas, plans to close by the end of the month. This follows the deaths of two Guatemalan children in U.S. custody at the border. They were seeking asylum. Concerns remain that migrants, particularly children, remain at risk in U.S. detention.
Dr. Carlos Gutierrez is a pediatrician in El Paso. He volunteers regularly at shelters near Tornillo. Migrants are placed there after they've been released from detention. He joins us now. Welcome to the program.
CARLOS GUTIERREZ: Thank you for having me.
CORNISH: Can you talk about what kind of condition some of these migrant travelers are in, especially children, once they're released from detention and enter these shelters?
GUTIERREZ: We go to the shelters, and we check out the individuals who need immediate care - people who may be dehydrated, severe diarrhea, pneumonia, bronchitis, whatever. And we evaluate them. And we have some basic medical equipment. So we try to get these individuals as soon as they can get off the bus so that we can make sure that they're not so acutely ill that they have to be shuffled to a local emergency room or hospitalized.
CORNISH: You mentioned dehydration. Are there other kinds of illnesses that you're seeing develop? And is this something that's happening because of the travel in the trip or while being held in U.S. custody?
GUTIERREZ: Well, for the most part it's because of the long trip that these individuals have undertaken. And by the time they're put into custody by the federal government, by the Border Patrol, they're already pretty sick. And the Border Patrol is not trained to pick up medical signs and symptoms of somebody who's acutely ill. And especially in kids, kids can look OK initially, and within hours, they can become deathly ill. So it's important for a professional health care provider, be it a pediatrician, an adult physician, to be able to recognize these things.
CORNISH: Now, I understand that back in 2014, when President Obama warned of a humanitarian crisis at the southern border, you provided medical screenings for those who were in Border Patrol custody. Is this something that you would volunteer to do again? Is it something that you at all have been asked to do?
GUTIERREZ: When the immigrants started coming in again in October, I gathered a group of about over 100 providers. We were willing to go in and provide care for these individuals early on, pro bono, as we did in 2014. And we were not allowed. We ended up setting up our little medical facilities at the different shelters around town.
CORNISH: Do you think the administration is making changes that will make a difference?
GUTIERREZ: Yes. The administration has finally made sure that while they are in Border Patrol custody, that there will be access to good medical care. But once those individuals are released from custody and they are transferred to the shelters, their responsibility is completely gone. And that's where we as the community - physicians and health care providers - have taken over.
CORNISH: As we mentioned earlier, you have been doing this work certainly back to 2014. When you look at the condition of the migrants you're seeing now, what does it tell you about the difficulty of the trip, of the process?
GUTIERREZ: We'll see them with blisters on their feet. They literally hiked the whole way from Central America all the way to the U.S. These individuals go through hell just to try to get away from the horrific experience that they have endured in their home countries.
CORNISH: Dr. Carlos Gutierrez is a pediatrician in El Paso, Texas. Thank you for speaking with us.
GUTIERREZ: You're welcome.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BAD PLUS' "ANTHEM FOR THE EARNEST")
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The Florida sheriff whose department was widely criticized for its handling of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last year has been suspended. Seventeen people died in the shooting in Broward County. Florida's new governor, Ron DeSantis, said the change was needed to hold government officials accountable.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
RON DESANTIS: The massacre might never have happened had Brower had better leadership in the sheriff's department. The Parkland families, the people of Broward and the broader Florida community want accountability, but I think just as important - or more important - they want the problems fixed going forward.
SHAPIRO: A state investigation found many failures by Sheriff Scott Israel's department. Most glaringly, deputies didn't enter the school to stop the shootings. NPR's Greg Allen joins us now from Fort Lauderdale. Hi, Greg.
GREG ALLEN, BYLINE: Hi, Ari.
SHAPIRO: The sheriff had been criticized for months. The governor just took office this past week. What was his reason for dismissing the sheriff now?
ALLEN: Well, as you say, there were many calls for removal. Former Governor Rick Scott didn't act despite those calls for several months. Florida's constitution says the governor can remove officials but only for malfeasance, misfeasance or neglect of duty, which usually has meant they were just removed when they have been charged with crimes. But DeSantis says when he took the oath of office this week as governor, he knew he had to act. Former Broward Sheriff Scott Israel held a news conference of his own today after his governor announced his suspension. He said he's going to fight it, possibly going to court, and he's going to run for re-election in 2020.
SHAPIRO: What else did the governor say about the reasons he thought the sheriff needed to be suspended? There were obviously lots of failures to recognize the threat from the gunman beyond the sheriff's office.
ALLEN: Right. It was school officials and the FBI. And they were called out by the governor today at his news conference as well. But the investigation found systemic problems in Broward Sheriff's Office's response that day and really beforehand when Nikolas Cruz, the shooter, was - you know, called - police deputies came to his home repeatedly because of problems. But deputies that day, when they were interviewed after a shooting, couldn't recall when if ever they'd had active shooter training.
There's a well-documented failure of the deputy and school resource officer Scot Peterson to enter the school and try to engage the shooter that day. The investigation also found several other deputies failed to move toward the gunfire and try to stop the shooting. I talked to Fred Guttenberg, the father of Jaime Guttenberg, one of those who died that day. He talked about those failures, especially Scot Peterson.
FRED GUTTENBERG: All he had to do was shoot some bullets in the air so that the shooter knew there was another active shooter who was likely a police officer. That would have given my daughter the time - it might have stopped the shooter. The failure of those who stayed outside fumbling through their trunks, you know, cost lives.
ALLEN: You know, you contrast that with the officers from the Coral Springs Police Department who also responded to the shooting that day. They had recently had active shooter training, and they were the first law enforcement to enter the school.
SHAPIRO: Just in last 30 seconds or so, any word on who the replacement might be?
ALLEN: Yes. At the news coverage, we had a former Coral Springs Police Sergeant Gregory Tony. He'll be the acting new Sheriff's - head of the Sheriff's Office. He left the department a few years ago, has his own company, which does threat assessments and school shooter training. He's well-liked in the community and got high marks from the Parkland families who were at the news conference.
SHAPIRO: That's NPR's Greg Allen in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Thanks, Greg.
ALLEN: You're welcome.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Cyber hacks are getting so common that companies are turning to something called cyber insurance. NPR's Dina Temple-Raston of our Planet Money team explains why insurance companies are writing about a thousand new cyber insurance policies every day.
DINA TEMPLE-RASTON, BYLINE: The email arrived last October, and it seemed innocent enough.
MAVIS: And I replied to the email. And I said, are you sure this was meant for me? And it came back and said, oh, yes, it's for you. And that's when I clicked on their email.
TEMPLE-RASTON: It wasn't until a few days later that this woman - we'll call her by her nickname, Mavis - opened up her sent email folder, and then she saw it - her computer spitting out emails as if it had a mind of its own.
MAVIS: And you're just seeing sent, sent, sent, sent, sent, sent, sent, sense, sent, sent, sent, sent.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Seeing that was particularly scary because Mavis worked for a financial services company, which means her email contains all kinds of confidential information.
WENDY: Social Security numbers are on everything.
TEMPLE-RASTON: That's Mavis's boss, Wendy.
WENDY: Bank account information in many cases, you know, their spouse's information, beneficiary information.
TEMPLE-RASTON: So this was bad. That's why we're using first names in this story. The company doesn't want to be identified because it might cause them to lose some of their clients. The good news is Wendy had a plan. She went to her office, pulled a big black binder off the credenza and started flipping through the pages.
WENDY: It was buried in there on about page 6 or 7.
TEMPLE-RASTON: She was looking for a very specific phone number.
(SOUNDBITE OF VOICEMAIL MESSAGE)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: You have reached the data security event hotline for...
TEMPLE-RASTON: About a year ago when she signed up for something called cyber insurance, and that gave her access to a host of experts who were supposed to help her when something like this happened.
CHRIS DILENNO: We get a call a day at least. It's just happening all the time.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Chris Dilenno is a data privacy lawyer with Mullen Coughlin in Pennsylvania. There's a reason why lawyers billing hourly rates are answering the phone.
(SOUNDBITE OF VOICEMAIL MESSAGE)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: The initial discussion will be protected by the attorney-client privilege. Thank you. And someone from Mullen Coughlin will be in touch with you shortly.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Wendy could be more honest this way. In this case, Dilenno brought a second key player onto a conference call.
DEVON ACKERMAN: My name's Devon Ackerman. I'm an associate managing director with Kroll Cyber Risk. And I lead two of our incident response teams for North America.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Incident response team, that's like a SWAT team for cyber?
ACKERMAN: (Laughter) You certainly could think of it like that, yes, ma'am. We conduct digital forensics-related investigations for companies or clients that have had some type of a cyber-related event.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Ackerman used to be an FBI agent, chasing hackers for the Feds. And now he's doing that for people like Wendy.
ACKERMAN: What we look for are kind of - what I would equate to the fingerprints of the actor or the bad guy when they're in the account.
TEMPLE-RASTON: The cyber equivalent of dusting for fingerprints is isolating IP addresses. In Mavis's account, his team turned up an IP address from Lagos, Nigeria. It had been active in Mavis's account for four days. And Ackerman could trace exactly what they were searching for in Mavis' emails, words like...
ACKERMAN: Payment, wiring instructions, wire transfer.
TEMPLE-RASTON: And a host of other financially related search terms. The hackers read her mail for four days, hoping to intercept a message that could get them some cash, but it didn't happen. So they left. Still, the hack was expensive. It cost about $200,000 to pay for legal counsel, the investigation and notifying clients.
Now, cyber insurance covered most of that, but it doesn't come cheap. It costs about $15,000 a year to get about a million dollars in coverage. In addition to that, the insurance seems to be doing a second thing - addressing the Mavis problem everyone has. You know, the employees who click on the wrong thing.
DILENNO: The process of getting an insurance policy that covers cyber requires you to ask some hard questions about your data security knowledge.
TEMPLE-RASTON: That's lawyer Chris Dilenno again.
DILENNO: And that has to make you want to change your behavior.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Your behavior changes because insurance rewards you if you're safer. For that reason, cyber insurance may become one of the best defenses against hackers because it gives companies a financial incentive to focus on the most-vulnerable part of cyberspace - the humans. Dina Temple-Raston, NPR News.
SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
Finally today, to say Mike Posner's career has been unpredictable is an understatement. In 2010, his song "Cooler Than Me" hit the charts worldwide, selling more than 2 million copies.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "COOLER THAN ME")
MIKE POSNER: (Singing) You got designer shades just to hide your face. And you wear them around like you're cooler than me. And you never say hey or remember my name. It's probably because you think you're cooler than me.
MCCAMMON: Not long after that success, Mike Posner's career stalled. He took that time to cooperate with other artists including Justin Bieber, the producer of Avicii and this mega hit with Maroon 5.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SUGAR")
MAROON 5: (Singing) You're sugar. Yes, please. Won't you come and put it down on me?
MCCAMMON: And then in 2016, Mike Posner made a solo career comeback in a big way. A remix of his song "I Took A Pill In Ibiza" was nominated for a Grammy and has been streamed more than a billion times.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I TOOK A PILL IN IBIZA")
POSNER: (Singing) You don't want to be high like me, never really knowing why like me. You don't ever want to step off that roller coaster and be all alone.
MCCAMMON: Mike Posner is about to release his third solo album, and this one was written in the aftermath of his father's death. When we spoke, I asked if he felt like he had to write in order to process his grief.
POSNER: I don't know if I felt I had to. The songs, they just kind of pop in my head, and I feel like I have to write them down and record them as close to how they sound in my head. I'm sort of nervous if I don't write them down or don't record them, that whoever is putting them in my head will stop whispering those melodies to me. Maybe that's superstitious and silly, but...
MCCAMMON: They'll stop coming to you.
POSNER: Yes. I have a little superstition about that.
MCCAMMON: Well, let's listen to another song. This is the song "Move On." And, first, let's listen to some of it, then we'll talk about.
POSNER: OK.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MOVE ON")
POSNER: (Singing) Beginnings always hide themselves in ends. At some point, that will be OK. I got high when I met you. I got high to forget you. I feel pain. I don't want to, but I have to. Yeah, I have to if I want to move on, move on, move on, move on.
I love that song.
MCCAMMON: What was going on when you wrote it? I like it, too.
POSNER: It reminds me of Graceland.
MCCAMMON: How so?
POSNER: The bass.
MCCAMMON: OK.
POSNER: (Imitating bass line). When I wrote it, I was at the end. I was in a really beautiful relationship, and it ended. This was just sort of a song about that, maybe one of the best lines I've written, I don't know. But not a stinker (ph) line is on this song. I said, beginnings always hide themselves in ends. And I knew that, at the time, that in the future, I would look back on this moment, this breakup, this pain and be grateful for it and know that it helped me get to whatever was coming. But I wasn't there yet. I was still just in the pain. So I was really just trying, I think, to help myself move on.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MOVE ON")
POSNER: (Singing) So I got high when I met you. I got high to forget you. I feel pain. I don't want to, but I have to. Yeah, I have to if I want to move on.
MCCAMMON: Now, the video for this song, "Move On," is intensely personal. And it features a home video of your dad and also your close friend and music producer Avicii who died by suicide last year. When he was alive, Avicii talked openly about his anxiety and his loneliness. And you've been open about your own challenges with mental health. How did you decide how much to share?
POSNER: I would share even more. My own sort of borderline is when stuff involves other people. Like, if you ask me a story and the story involves someone else. But I try not to have, like, really any secrets about my life. It takes a lot of energy to have categories of private and public, you know. And it's a dangerous game to internally go, OK, I'm going to let people know about this stuff that I think is nice about me, and I'm not going to let people know about this stuff which I think is icky. That takes a lot of energy to keep that up in all your interactions. And I've found it's a lot more liberating - scary, but liberating - to just go, it's all public domain. There's no secrets here.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SONG ABOUT YOU")
POSNER: (Singing) Since you've been gone, ain't got nothing to do. I sleep in till noon. I wake up and feel bad. I think I miss something I never had.
MCCAMMON: You've co-written some mega-hits for other artists. I mentioned just a few collaborations in the intro, but you've written so much more. Is it tough ever to watch a singer or a band have a huge hit with something that you, yourself, have written?
POSNER: No, it's pretty cool (laughter). It's pretty cool, actually. Most of my songs that have been successful for other artists came at a time when my career, you mentioned in the intro, was sort of at a standstill. And there was a period where I was what we in the record industry we call shelved. And that means that I'm making music, I'm making albums. But because I'm so ice cold, they're not going to ever come out.
The record label can't justify the marketing budget to even put this stuff out. And so they just sort of cut their losses on me. And I'm, like, stuck in a holding pattern. So there have been times where I've been in a situation like that and I'm still writing what I think are great songs, and another artist will come along and help me get that song off of my laptop and out in the world. So that's pretty cool.
MCCAMMON: I want to ask you, in addition to your solo work and co-writing writing for other artists, you're part of a duo that goes by the name Mansionz. And you put out an album in 2017. I was listening to some of the songs, and I have to say that some of the lyrics and images could pretty easily be described as misogynistic, some of the ways you talk about women and some of the ways they're portrayed. And I wonder now that we've entered the #MeToo era, do you think differently about anything you've put out in the past?
POSNER: Yeah. And not just Mansionz, a lot of my solo stuff too is, I think, overtly misogynistic and regretable. And a lot of my behavior, when I look back, I could use the same adjectives to describe...
MCCAMMON: With women you knew?
POSNER: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I definitely - definitely womanized. And it's a sick thing I look back on now. And I'm grateful that the things that have transpired in the public arena the last year or so have really entered my own psychology and allowed me to see the grossness of some of my lyrics and my behavior in the past.
MCCAMMON: I got to ask, though, why should it take a movement like #MeToo for so many men to sort of see what women have seen for so long?
POSNER: It shouldn't. It shouldn't. But that's what it did take for me personally. But the answer is, no, it shouldn't take that. I should have known that my whole life - I didn't. I wish I did. And it doesn't make it any better. I'm not, you know, I'm not asking for sympathy or anything.
MCCAMMON: That was Mike Posner talking about his latest album, "A Real Good Kid."
SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
We're going to take you now to a bookstore in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It's called the Ateneo Grand Splendid, and National Geographic just named it The World's Most Beautiful Bookstore. This may be news to some people, but ALL THINGS CONSIDERED was seriously ahead of the curve on this one. My colleague Bob Mondello did a report 18 years ago, shortly after Grand Splendid Theater, built in 1919, was converted into a bookstore.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: Impresario Max Glucksman wanted his new theater, the Grand Splendid, to remind people of the Paris Opera. He had it built with three ornately decorated balconies hugging the back wall of an auditorium decked out with gilded statues, marble columns and a ceiling mural celebrating the end of World War I. In the days before air conditioning, the domed roof actually opened in good weather to give theater audiences a glimpse of the stars. It is a spectacular space, no less so today after a $3 million renovation than at any time in the more than 80 years since it was built.
But there is one difference today - where once the vast auditorium was filled with rows of theater seats, it now has rows of bookshelves. The Grand Splendid has been converted into what is quite possibly the most spectacular bookstore on Earth. The transformation, the brainchild of Adolfo de Vincenzi, who has loved this theater since his student days and still recalls the films he saw here whenever he could take a break from his accounting classes three blocks away.
ADOLFO DE VINCENZI: It's a movie of Liv Ullmann and Ingrid Bergman. "Sonata Otonal" was in Spanish. Every time I finish with my exams, I said, that's my vacation. I come here.
MONDELLO: The Grand Splendid was seriously rundown when it was acquired by de Vincenzi's company, El Ateneo, a bookstore chain, sort of the Barnes & Noble of Argentina. The theater had succumbed to the same trend towards suburban multiplexes that has made downtown movie palaces obsolete in the U.S. So when de Vincenzi heard the lease was available and looked around to what was happening to the other theaters that once lined the nearby avenues, he says he didn't have any second thoughts.
DE VINCENZI: We didn't decide to stop with this building being a theater. Business made that it was not profitable like a theater or like a cinema. So we did is put a bookstore instead. A block from here, there were two other cinemas that finished. They were just launched a month ago like a parking lot (laughter).
MONDELLO: Because this particular theater was an architectural treasure, the Ateneo chain had some trouble at first with city hall, but opposition melted away when the public got a look at the refurbished Grand Splendid - brighter, cleaner and with plenty of activities to guarantee that it would still attract crowds. New uses were found for almost every inch of the building. The broad stage that was always there behind the screen is now a bustling cafe.
The orchestra section and first balcony are packed with bookshelves. And the box seats, once the most expensive in the house, have been outfitted as private reading rooms with cushy armchairs and a great view. The top two balconies which look down on all this have been turned into an art gallery filled with colorful paintings and sculptures. And past the art, way up near the ceiling dome behind a locked door, there's something the public doesn't see - the room where tango singer Carlos Gardel made his first recordings.
DE VINCENZI: Here we are over the (unintelligible). This is the place where the tango singer - working here. It was really the only use this floor had.
MONDELLO: Was for the recording?
DE VINCENZI: Yeah. And it was 90 years ago. It's a kind of magic, this place.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CHORRA")
CARLOS GARDEL: (Singing in Spanish).
MONDELLO: Gardel is only the most famous of the artists associated with the Grand Splendid. During the theater's early years, international ballet companies and theater troupes played here. And for decades, it was one of the city's premier movie houses. So it's not surprising that in its new incarnation, it's the end spot for visiting authors who flock to the stage cafe for book signings and discussions.
Which is not to suggest that the dramatic arts are no longer represented at the Grand Splendid. In fact, there is one actor who is present here every day, though not on stage. Natalio Povarche, whose art gallery commands a terrific view from the top two balconies, has appeared in more than a dozen Argentine films. So he feels right at home in this theater, especially, says his daughter Mariana, because it was here that his very pregnant wife dragged him one fateful day some 42 years ago.
MONDELLO: And she came to see the - can you help me with the title? - (speaking Spanish) - the "Cat On A"....
MONDELLO: "On A Hot Tin Roof," right?
MONDELLO: ..."On A Hot Tin Roof." And she told my father that she thought that it was about - to born. And he said, well, let's go to hospital just now. She said, no, I'm not going to leave the cinema until they see the very end of the film. When the very end came, she was feeling really very, very bad. And his neighbors told her not to wait a taxi, he was going to take both of them to the hospital because, if not, I was going to get born here.
MARIANA: Now, Mariana feels she's been reborn here in an artistic sense, working in her father's gallery even as she advances her own acting career. Because her mother is an astrologist, she laughs that the stars must have had a hand in bringing her back here. The stars that audiences could once see through that open dome - and that can now be found on the astronomy shelves on the right side of the first balcony, or the astrology section on the main floor. Does Mariana miss what once was here? Of course, but she notes that the old mix of performing arts has been replaced by a new mix that also has value.
MARIANA: You can have your coffee right on the stage, on the real stage. And while you're reading or having your coffee, you can see the paintings from downstairs. I think that it's very magic. And it's a privilege to be in a place like this, a very, very special place. I don't know if there's another one like this one in the rest of the world.
MONDELLO: At the Ateneo Grand Splendid in Buenos Aires, I'm Bob Mondello.
SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
We're going to start the program today with a bombshell article from The New York Times. The paper says after President Trump fired James Comey from his post as FBI director in 2017, the agency opened a counterintelligence investigation into whether Trump might have been acting on Russia's behalf against the United States. On Twitter, Trump attacked former leaders of the FBI and the newspaper. The president has repeatedly denied any involvement with Russia on the part of his 2016 campaign. The New York Times' Adam Goldman has the lead byline on the story and joins us now.
Hi, Adam.
ADAM GOLDMAN: Hey. Thanks for having me.
MCCAMMON: Thanks for being here. What have your sources told you about how this FBI investigation into whether President Trump might have been acting on behalf of Russia came about?
GOLDMAN: Well, the way it's been explained to me is that in 2016, Trump had made a - you know, a number of statements, you know, asking Russia to give - you know, provide - make public Hillary Clinton emails that had been deleted. And there were another series of events - you know, Trump's meeting with former director James Comey and asking him to end the Flynn investigation. And so this reaches a crescendo with the firing of Mr. Comey on May 9, 2017. And in the letter that the president drafts, you know, he talks about the Russia investigation. And then, the very next day, he does an interview on NBC News with anchor Lester Holt and tells the American public and the FBI, I did it because of Russia.
And that was the tipping point for the FBI. And then, shortly thereafter, they opened an investigation into the president. And the investigation had two elements - a criminal element, which was the actual obstruction, right, and whether the president was obstructing a national security investigation. And then there was a counterintelligence element, and that involved whether the president himself had witting or unwittingly, you know, worked on behalf of Russia.
MCCAMMON: Right. And if your sources are correct, how unusual would it be for a sitting president to be investigated by the FBI as a possible foreign agent?
GOLDMAN: I guess unprecedented.
MCCAMMON: And how was the focus of this investigation different from that of special counsel Robert Mueller's continuing probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia?
GOLDMAN: Well, I - it's my understanding that special counsel Bob Mueller - he inherited this FBI investigation and would be looking at both elements of it, right? We know the obstruction and the counterintelligence aspect of it.
MCCAMMON: Do we know anything about what the investigation turned up and whether or not it's continuing?
GOLDMAN: Well, we know he continues to investigate obstruction. We do not know if the CI component has run its course.
MCCAMMON: The element focused specifically on the president.
GOLDMAN: Right.
MCCAMMON: And, finally, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders has called this story absurd and said in a statement that Comey was fired, quote, because he's a disgraced partisan hack. What is the president's legal team saying about this?
GOLDMAN: They - I mean, they were downplaying it. But it shouldn't be any news to them that the - you know, the FBI might have opened this investigation. I think the American public - if you were to ask somebody on the street, what is Bob Mueller doing, I think that expectation of the American public is, well, he's trying to figure out if President Trump colluded with the Russians, right? Isn't that sort of what this is all about, this particular investigation? It's not just whether Comey obstructed - sorry, President Trump obstructed the Russia investigation when he fired Mr. Comey.
MCCAMMON: Right. We have to leave it there. That's Adam Goldman of The New York Times.
Thanks so much.
GOLDMAN: Thank you.
SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
We're going to turn now to the partial federal government shutdown, which is now the longest in history as we've entered day 22. We're going to hear from voices across the country during the program today about how the shutdown is affecting their lives. But we're going to start first in the Washington, D.C., area, which is disproportionately feeling the effect. Montgomery County, Md. is adjacent to Washington, D.C. It's home to over 75,000 federal employees. On Friday evening, hundreds of these furloughed workers packed into a local high school to share a meal. NPR's Rebecca Ellis reports from Montgomery Blair High School.
MCCAMMON: The line of furloughed workers and their families sneaks across the cafeteria. Six hundred people have RSVP'd for tonight's potluck, but even more have showed up. Roberta Long came to get out of the house.
ROBERTA LONG: Oh, and it's been mad. It's just been, like, utter chaos.
MCCAMMON: Long works as an IT specialist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Her youngest son attends daycare on the property. A government shutdown means no work and no daycare. Long says 24/7 with the energetic youngster is stretching her thin.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: Can I run around?
LONG: Well, why don't you...
REBECCA ELLIS, BYLINE: After three weeks without work, many of those at the potluck are reaching their limits. Earlier that day, Melinda Batson, who works at the Food and Drug Administration, received a paystub with zeroes on it.
MELINDA BATSON: I mean, it does something to you mentally to look at a paycheck, and all you see is zeros.
ELLIS: Batson's worried what all these zeros mean for her mortgage, car payment and utility bill.
BATSON: I don't have no one to support me. I'm my own support system.
ELLIS: County Council member Tom Hucker organized the potluck. He says he was shocked at just how many federal employees poured in with their families. Tonight, county residents made it clear to him. The alternatives are grim.
TOM HUCKER: They are staying home every night. They haven't gone out to dinner, or they're eating the fish sticks in the bottom of the freezer, one of them told me.
ELLIS: Hucker says he wanted to provide his county with one night of levity. High schoolers were brought in on the drums.
(SOUNDBITE OF DRUMMING)
ELLIS: A local musician crooned Elvis Costello.
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Singing) I walked on through troubled times.
ELLIS: And U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen blew out candles on his 60th birthday cake.
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: So I want to thank Tom (ph) for not putting as many candles as years there so I can actually...
ELLIS: With so many federal employees living in the county, everyone knows someone impacted by the shutdown. Neighbors of furloughed workers streamed into the high school, food donations in tow.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: I bought a can - a can of ravioli.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: This is a vegan pizza.
PETER KARPOFF: OK.
ELLIS: Peter Karpoff (ph) is collecting and serving the donated food. There've been so many desserts handed over there's no room for them. Firemen gifted most of the pizza, which Karpoff now gives out.
KARPOFF: I'm a retired federal employee just trying to help out and give solace to these people. Pizza plain or pepperoni? I'll serve it.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Thank you. I'm sorry.
ELLIS: Mohammed Siddique (ph), another retired federal employee, sits at a table with workers he's just met. He came to show support.
MOHAMMED SIDDIQUE: We have their back, and that's why I am here for them.
ELLIS: To his right's a furloughed contractor and his wife, a hairstylist who says her business is drying up. Local clients aren't spending any money. Siddique says this is how it works in Montgomery County.
SIDDIQUE: I have lived in this community for over 25 years, and these people suffer. The community suffers.
ELLIS: For better or worse, he says the county's livelihood is intertwined with the fate of the furloughed.
Rebecca Ellis, NPR News, Montgomery County, Md.
SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
We want to turn now to a city that's becoming a growing symbol of the partial government shutdown and the fight over a border wall. On Thursday, President Trump visited the border city of McAllen, Texas. And just yesterday, he tweeted that the situation there is worse than almost anyone could understand. We wanted to learn a bit more about the city and the situation there, so we called Jim Darling. He's the mayor of McAllen, Texas.
Mayor Darling, thank you for joining us.
JIM DARLING: You're welcome. Good afternoon.
MCCAMMON: So what did you make of President Trump's visit and his reaction?
DARLING: I've got to tell you, you know, when the president went through our city, it was pretty well half and half people saying build the wall and that are saying we don't want a wall. And it's much more complicated than that. The president said two things this week. He said it was a humanitarian crisis. And I think he was referring to the asylum seekers. And, of course, the crisis is whatever conditions are in the country making them want to leave and then the trip through Mexico. And I've always said since 2014, the crisis kind of ends for them when they get to the United States - at least, until they have a deportation hearing, and they have to get sent back. But, until that happens, the crisis is over for them.
The other thing that he said that we thought was important - it's not just a wall. It's border protection. It's more boots on the ground, more Border Patrol men, more technology, roads that they need, etc. And I think if you ask the average person, instead of saying, do you want a wall or not, but you want enhanced border protection along with some immigration reform, I can't imagine anybody would say no, we don't want that because that's really what's needed.
MCCAMMON: Recently, you spoke with our colleagues at Weekend Edition and mentioned that you didn't think a wall across the whole Mexican border is the right answer for added security. So what do you think is the answer?
DARLING: The way the river is situated in our area for hundreds of miles is it meanders all over the place. So the wall or the fence or whatever we're going to call it is not right on the river. So if the idea of a wall stopping the number of illegal aliens is what we're trying to accomplish, it doesn't work because those people are trying to get apprehended. And they - as soon as they cross the river, they're in the United States and are eligible. So they're north of the river, eligible for asylum south of the wall.
MCCAMMON: But you're saying that because of variations and in the physical terrain there in places like your city, McAllen, Texas, that border wall from sea to shining sea is just not practical, if I'm not - if I'm understanding you.
DARLING: That's correct. I think it - the barrier or the border wall makes sense where the Border Patrol thinks it makes sense, where you have local government input. Just throwing up walls to have walls would not meet the national security criteria, I think.
MCCAMMON: You mentioned division of people supporting the wall and opposing the wall when President Trump came to visit your area. I mean, as you talk to residents of your community, Mayor, what do you hear about this debate and about the asylum seekers that are coming through your region?
DARLING: Yeah. When you went down the street, there was clearly divided and was divided on one word called the wall. And I think that's a problem in Washington because nobody's accomplishing anything. We're not accomplishing immigration reform, which we need. We have 800,000 people waiting for hearings, etc. That number is not decreasing. And, on the other hand, you know, border security needs to be - there's no question - more efficient. And it should be more efficient from a national security standpoint. But because we're hung up on a word, and you're either for or against it, and people are getting elected on that basis, we're not accomplishing anything in Washington.
MCCAMMON: That's Jim Darling, mayor of McAllen, Texas near the U.S.-Mexico border.
Mayor Darling, thank you for speaking with us.
DARLING: You're welcome.
(SOUNDBITE OF MAYBESHEWILL SONG, "HE FILMS THE CLOUDS PART 2")
SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo continues his tour of the Middle East this weekend at a time when the Trump administration is sending some mixed signals about its intentions in the region. The Pentagon said yesterday the U.S. has begun withdrawing troops from Syria, as promised by President Trump.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And we have won against ISIS. We've beaten them, and we've beaten them badly. We've taken back the land, and now it's time for our troops to come back home.
MCCAMMON: But the announcement last month of plans to withdraw from Syria was followed by these messages from national security adviser John Bolton, Secretary of State Pompeo and the president himself.
(SOUNDBITE OF NEWS MONTAGE)
JOHN BOLTON: We're going to be discussing the president's decision to withdraw but to do so from northeast Syria in a way that makes sure that ISIS is defeated. And...
MIKE POMPEO: Let me be clear - America will not retreat until the terror fight is over.
TRUMP: We are pulling back in Syria. We're going to be removing our troops. I never said we're doing it that quickly.
POMPEO: There's no contradiction whatsoever.
MCCAMMON: If you're confused, well, so are others, including our next guest. He's Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel and former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Welcome.
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Good to be here.
MCCAMMON: So Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a speech in Cairo this week which was billed as a major address on the Trump administration's Middle East policy. You issued a critical statement in response. You cited a lack of policy consistency. What's the impact both on our allies and our foes of what seemed to be mixed signals from the president and his administration?
WILKERSON: That's a good question. Pompeo's attempt to stitch together what has become very clearly a disorganized, even in shambles foreign policy with regard to the Middle East was not successful. One of the things that he did and that he's going to do again in a ministerial in Poland 13 and 14 February, accordingly - the State Department released a statement yesterday - is go after Iran, which is becoming the focus, as John Bolton might say he wanted it to be, of U.S. foreign policy in the region.
And it's absurd. We're looking at, for example, Pompeo saying things about Iran that are true about Saudi Arabia - in fact, more true about Saudi Arabia than they are about Iran. Furthermore, he didn't even mention the bloodiest, most brutal war we have in the region in a long time in Yemen which the United States is complicit in along with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, his host, the UAE and others in the coalition. And the complicity there is Saudi Arabia, not Iran. In fact, Iran was not even in Yemen before Saudi Arabia attacked the Houthi.
So focusing on Iran is debilitating. It's subtracting, detracting from our ability to have a coherent policy. And, ultimately, it is becoming the end all and be all for the Trump administration with regard to this region.
MCCAMMON: Where should the focus be?
POMPEO: The focus should be on stability and a return to stability after the U.S. destabilized the whole region in the greatest strategic mistake the U.S. has made in this century. And that is the invasion of Iraq in 2003. And, frankly, I'm no fan of Donald Trump, but his decision to withdraw the 2,000-some odd U.S. ground forces from Syria was a good decision, not a bad one. And now we're looking at John Bolton trying to pull that decision back and others too, and Pompeo caught in the middle trying to stitch it all together.
MCCAMMON: You said you think that withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria is a good move. But there is concern that with the absence of U.S. troops, ISIS could return. We saw a similar return in Iraq after the U.S. pullback there. Why do you think that wouldn't happen in Syria?
WILKERSON: First of all, ISIS has been pretty roundly defeated in most areas and in composite. Second, I think the real reason for ISIS's resurgence, as it were, in the previous occasion was because the government in Baghdad was treating the Sunnis so badly post our withdrawal. So we have a different government in Baghdad now. So I don't think we have the incentive for ISIS to resurrect itself other than as an Islamic Jihadist organization. If that can't be defeated by four and a half, five million men and women under arms in the region, then they don't deserve the United States to try and help them. I don't think ISIS will be resurrected. If it is, the - it'll be defeated by the local troops.
MCCAMMON: You referred earlier to the widely acknowledged failures of the Iraq war, including intelligence failures. I think a lot of people who remember that war will remember that you helped Secretary Powell make the case for going to war against Saddam Hussein to keep him from using weapons of mass destruction - which, of course, was later regarded as a major intelligence failure. How does that experience affect your thinking now?
WILKERSON: Well, guilty as charged. First of all, one of the lowest moments of my life. I think it's - I could say for Colin Powell, it probably was a low moment, too. It affects my thinking now in that I see the very same thing happening with regard to Iran. I see a collection of intelligence being orchestrated, engineered and then cherry-picked to be - to lead us to ultimately a regime change in Tehran, just as we did in 2003. And that - I've written op-eds in The New York Times, I've talked about on radio and TV. I think that is the last straw for the Middle East if we get involved in a war with Iran in terms of U.S. policy. We'll never be able to go back there again.
MCCAMMON: That's retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. He was chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell and currently serves as an advisory board member for an advocacy group called Foreign Policy for America.
Thanks so much.
WILKERSON: Thanks for having me.
SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
This weekend, the Los Angeles Unified School District inches closer and closer to a teachers' strike on Monday morning. Over 30,000 members of United Teachers of Los Angeles have been working without a contract for over a year. On Friday, the school district made a new offer with an increased budget, but the union rejected it as not being enough to address their concerns over class size and funding for school nurses, librarians and counselors. While the two sides could come to an agreement at any time before the start of the next school week, that possibility is looking less and less likely.
We wanted to hear from a teacher about all of this, so we called up Joel Laguna. He's a sixth grade history teacher at Thomas Starr King Middle School in Los Angeles, and he joins me now.
Hi, Joel.
JOEL LAGUNA: Hi. How are you?
MCCAMMON: Great. Thanks for being with us. LAUSD is the second largest school district in the country with close to half a million culturally and economically diverse students, as you know. Tell us a little bit about the middle school where you teach, Thomas Starr King.
LAGUNA: So Thomas Starr King Middle School is in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. And we are one of the most diverse middle schools in all of LAUSD, ethnically, culturally, geographically as well as financially.
MCCAMMON: And so how does that feel different when there's a teacher strike for different groups of people?
LAGUNA: You know, some - a lot of parents from the richer neighborhoods can keep their kids at home. They can hire babysitters. They've been talking about doing strike camps to - you know, that they can do...
MCCAMMON: Kind of like summer camp only strike camp.
LAGUNA: Exactly. And on the other end, you know, we have parents who work two, three jobs, right? And this is, like, the possibility of, a, not having child care or having your kid in school during this time and then B, food. It's a serious challenge. Right.
MCCAMMON: Right. And, as you allude to, right, so many parents in these neighborhoods rely on the school for child care at least part of the day and for free or reduced meals for students. You've taken it on yourself to provide some backup options for these kids. Can you tell me more about that?
LAGUNA: At our school, about 70 percent of our students are on free and reduced lunch. And, believe it or not, that's actually on the lower end of most LAUSD schools. A lot of LAUSD schools are in the 80s and 90 percent. And so, considering that we're estimating about half of the students are not going to be showing up to school, that's going to cause some serious issues in terms of food security.
So in our school, we're going to be providing meals to students who are not going to be going to school during this time to make sure that they do not have to worry about proper health and nutrition. And they can come and pick it up - we'll be striking on the line 7:00 a.m. beginning Monday morning if there's no agreement. I'll be out there from 7:00 a.m. all the way to 1:00 if anybody, parents or students, want to come by and pick it up. And then, when we are not striking, we're going to just be making bag lunches. So it's going to be a full-scale process but I - this is definitely worth it.
MCCAMMON: And I've heard that there's some concern about students - because these schools will stay open, right, during a strike, so there's concern about students having to cross picket lines of their own teachers.
LAGUNA: Not at all. In fact, the students have asked me last week about it, and all of our teachers are not going to put anything negative or shame any students for crossing the picket line. If you need to be at school, or your parents have to send you to school, like, that is totally understandable.
MCCAMMON: What do you say to those who say, look - there just isn't enough money for what you're asking for?
LAGUNA: The biggest thing that I want to say that every single teacher in Los Angeles will say is this entire strike that's happening on Monday is not about pay. The strike that's happening on Monday is completely about the classroom sizes, the learning conditions in our classroom. Right now, LAUSD, the district, has almost a $1.9 billion reserve. So we're saying, you have the money, and let's invest it in our schools when we have students in our classroom right now who need those resources.
MCCAMMON: Joe Laguna, sixth grade history teacher at Thomas Starr King Middle School, part of the LA Unified School District, which is facing a possible teacher strike on Monday morning.
Joel, thanks for speaking with us.
LAGUNA: Thank you so much.
SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
We're going to turn back now to the partial government shutdown. And, as we mentioned, it's now the longest in U.S. history. For many federal workers, that means payday has come and gone with no check. Many of those workers belong to the American Federation of Government Employees, and a lot of them have been showing up to work for weeks now without pay. Mike Gayzagian is acting president of AFGE Local 2617. It covers hundreds of TSA workers in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine. He's also a TSA agent at Logan International Airport in Boston, and he speaks to us now from Boston.
Welcome.
MIKE GAYZAGIAN: Thanks for having me.
MCCAMMON: So up until now, federal workers have held out hope that the shutdown might end before they miss a paycheck. That did not happen. How are your members reacting?
GAYZAGIAN: Well, that hope has been dashed, and our members are very disappointed. Up in Boston now, I think the temperature outside is around 17 degrees, so we're all burning up gas and oil, and we don't have our paychecks to pay for it. It's a really unfortunate situation.
MCCAMMON: What's the mood been like lately among TSA workers at Logan knowing that this might be coming?
GAYZAGIAN: Anxiety and frustration, mostly, a lot of the workers continuing to come to work. But, you know, people are very frustrated and very anxious and really, really disappointed in the way this whole thing has played out.
MCCAMMON: Who do they blame?
GAYZAGIAN: Both sides, really. I think that the Congress could probably get sufficient majorities to get together and make a deal and open this up, but they've decided they want to use us as political pawns. And now we've essentially become collateral damage in their battle. But I do want to say that we have gotten enormous support from the public.
MCCAMMON: And if this shutdown does continue, what's your strategy for helping your members deal with those bills?
GAYZAGIAN: That's in the works. We're hoping this gets resolved before we have to get into that. But, you know, we are going to have to sit down, particularly with my executive board, and see what we can do.
MCCAMMON: I mean, do you have thoughts on how you might advise them - you know, what kind of resources you might be able to pull together?
GAYZAGIAN: Really, I mean, particularly people with part-time jobs, I'm sure they're going to have to make a decision as to, you know, which job they're going to stay with. They're going to stay with the one that's paying them, or are they going to go to the one that's not? You know, the people who have been with the agency longer - they may be able to ride it out a little longer. But we're in uncharted territory at this point. And, really, we're kind of making it up as we go.
MCCAMMON: We've heard some reports about TSA workers calling in sick instead of working during the shutdown. What are you telling members who might be thinking about doing that?
GAYZAGIAN: Don't do that. You're obligated to come in. This will end at some point. You know, what goes on at other airports I can't speak to, but I know that at our airports, that really isn't happening.
MCCAMMON: And, finally, is there anything that you'd like to say to lawmakers, to the president who cannot seem to figure out a way to end this shutdown?
GAYZAGIAN: They're forcing a choice between aviation security and border security. I think it's 8 million people a day fly, and these 8 million people we are keeping safe. And by putting this kind of pressure on the front line of aviation security - god forbid, if something were to happen, who's going to take the blame for that? I mean, I can tell you that those who have presidential fantasies, if something were to happen, they can all stay home. The same thing with the professional politicians. They can't figure out a way to make a deal, and something were to happen, they're all going to be tossed out.
MCCAMMON: That's Mike Gayzagian. He's a TSA agent and acting president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 2617 from Boston.
Thanks so much.
GAYZAGIAN: Thanks for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF DAMU THE FUDGEMUNK'S "LEO PART 2")
SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
The Consumer Electronics Show, or CES, just wrapped up this week in Las Vegas. It featured the usual assortment of virtual reality goggles, smart cars, next generation smartphones. But arguably, the biggest buzz was about a product geared toward women that was conspicuously absent from the showroom floor. And here's where we want to mention that the conversation we're about to have may not be appropriate for younger listeners. For more, we turn now to Emily Dreyfuss, a senior staff writer for Wired.
Emily, thanks for joining us.
EMILY DREYFUSS: Thanks for having me.
MCCAMMON: OK, so here's the big reveal, now that hopefully all the little ones are out of the room. The banned product was a robotic vibrator. And before it was banned, it actually won an innovation award. For those who haven't been following this story, Emily, can you tell us what all went down?
DREYFUSS: Yes. So the product is called the Ose, and it's a vibrator that uses micro-robotics and biomimicry. Now, the creators of this device, Lora DiCarlo, had submitted this to CES robotics category, into which it was accepted, and then they actually gave it an innovation award. And that's an award that is given by a jury of experts before you show up to the show.
But then, before the company was able to show up to exhibit at CES in Las Vegas, CTA, who are the leadership behind CBS, changed their mind, sent the company an email saying that actually, they had decided that this device did not fit into the robotics category and, in fact, was going to be excluded from the show floor because it was deemed to be either immoral, obscene, indecent or profane.
MCCAMMON: And that has struck people as a sexist move, right, given that one of the most talked about products at last year's CES was, to put it bluntly, a sex robot. And virtual reality pornography has been featured in the past as well. What do you make of all this?
DREYFUSS: Exactly. I think that the hypocrisy is one of the biggest reasons why this has gotten so much attention. They have gone out of their way over the years to not be a sex device show. It's not like every year there are tons of sex gadgets. But they have over the years had some, especially if they had some sort of interesting technology to offer, which this device clearly does. It has, you know, a lot of interesting 3D printing and rapid prototyping that went into it that really does justify it as a technology device.
MCCAMMON: The health category at CES includes lots of products geared toward pregnancy, motherhood, early parenthood. I mean, how much of the blowback here is about what was allowed in the show compared to what was actually banned?
DREYFUSS: Yeah. So I think that's another double standard. You know, five years ago, you really wouldn't have found hardly any devices that were specifically tailored to women. But now there has been this change. You know, the market has recognized that mothers and new parents represent a very lucrative category for innovation. This year, there were all sorts of devices catering specifically to women as mothers. And that's on the one hand wonderful.
But, on the other hand, the double standard that there were breast massagers on the show floor this year that were geared toward treating women who are breastfeeding and experiencing mastitis, which is a absolutely legitimate and important device - that is allowable, whereas a device that gives pleasure is not allowable. It really does just play into existing stereotypes. Shows like this have the ability to legitimize a topic so that scientific grants can give money toward the study of female sexuality and venture capitalists feel comfortable giving money to companies that are geared toward women and their pleasure.
MCCAMMON: Emily Dreyfuss, senior writer for Wired.
Thank you so much.
DREYFUSS: Thank you.
MCCAMMON: And we should add, Emily Dreyfuss tells us the Consumer Technology Association, which runs the CES, did not respond to her requests for comment.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MCCAMMON: This is NPR News.
SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
The popular indie rock band Deerhunter is back with a new album titled "Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?" It's an eclectic record written by a pretty cerebral guy, the band's frontman, Bradford Cox. We spoke with Cox about what was going through his head when he wrote the album. And he took us on a winding path that gave us insight into, not just the songs but himself. We started with the song "Plains."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PLAINS")
DEERHUNTER: (Singing) I was listening to the trains. I was up all night, and something glistened in the strange blood-diffused light. My friend was missing.
BRADFORD COX: Well, it's actually - the song's roots were a sort of stream-of-consciousness demo that I made at home years ago. And it kind of reminds me of sort of like a garage rock kind of song.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PLAINS")
DEERHUNTER: (Singing) Oh, James. You've got no reason to stir...
MCCAMMON: Much of Deerhunter's new album was produced in the small artsy town of Marfa, Texas. It's a haven for coastal hipsters who fly in for art and music festivals. It also served as the backdrop to James Dean's final movie "Giant," which Cox said inspired this track.
COX: I thought of this song "Plains," which is quite sad. It's quite a melancholy song, but it didn't really have a total context. I guess being in Marfa, I was reminded quite a lot of - there's this sort of haunted - I don't know - feeling about James Dean's last stand, you know?
MCCAMMON: And those darker themes can also be felt throughout Cox's work.
COX: I think, you know, if you look at Deerhunter's catalog, it's impossible to ignore morbid depression and anxiety. I mean, I think it's just - I think it's something that I levitated toward music to work out. And, certainly, you know, on this album, it comes from listening to, you know, the news and being surrounded by a sense of more common and universal unease. It's not just in my head anymore.
MCCAMMON: I asked about another track, "Death In Midsummer," which paints a picture of a place where workers struggle to carve out a living in factories and what the song describes as poisoned hills.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DEATH IN MIDSUMMER")
DEERHUNTER: (Singing) There was a voice that called me. There was a light that burned me.
COX: This song, really, to me, is not a political song as much as it might seem. It's more of a song about the people who are caught - the people that suffer the consequences of these political push-and-shoves, which is - I guess is particularly poignant at this moment, where the government's shutdown, and a lot of people are kind of caught in the crossfire.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DEATH IN MIDSUMMER")
DEERHUNTER: (Singing) ...They just fade away. Some worked the hills...
MCCAMMON: Cox likes to talk in abstractions. But when I asked about the sense of fading away that permeates his work, he got a lot more specific and pointed back to his childhood, which was marked by serious illness.
COX: I spent a lot of time in hospitals growing up. I was born with the disease - a genetic disease, a mutation called Marfan syndrome. And so I spent a great deal of time in and out of children's hospitals, and I had spinal surgery. I had chest surgery. I had a lot of - and I just remembered, you know, being 16. And that's the time you're supposed to be, you know, getting into trouble and driving, getting your driver's license. And, you know, the summer of your 16th year is supposed to be this magical time. And I just remember spending it on the edge of consciousness, constantly on morphine and epidurals, you know, catheters being changed and just a completely desexualizing and, mentally, very disturbed and uncertain states.
And I think, ever since then, I've been traumatized. I think one of my biggest fears is consciousness fading. I cannot stand when I go to bed at night that weird - in between sleep and wake, I hate it. I just - I could throw up thinking about it, you know?
MCCAMMON: I mean, 16 is a really crucial age when a lot is happening, and you're kind of crossing over I think for a lot of people from young person to adult.
COX: Yeah. I was completely derailed. I fell off the bridge.
MCCAMMON: How do you think that, I mean, shaped you going forward?
COX: Well, I think it protected me from a lot of things. It protected me from a lot of emotional injury. I certainly never tried to have any relationships because I was sort of desexualized. I was unsexed by it all, you know? Having nurses poking and prodding at you kind of makes you hate your body. And, you know, I don't mean to sound overly dramatic. I also, you know, was quite privileged to be in a country where I could receive the medical attention I needed, even if it did nearly bankrupt my parents.
MCCAMMON: Yeah, I wanted to ask - I mean, you said you were sort of desexualized as a teenager, and I guess relationship's not really on the table. I mean, you're an adult now. Has that changed?
COX: Oh, certainly not. But I'm very happy. I'm very satisfied, you know? The things that bring me a lot of joy are vacuuming and cleaning things, simple tasks, my dog. My dog brings me more joy than I can describe. And as Duke Ellington said, music is my mistress.
MCCAMMON: Deerhunter's new album "Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?" is out January 18. But before I let him go, Bradford Cox apologized for his accent, which didn't exactly remind me of his native Georgia.
COX: I've been watching all these John Huston movies at night to unwind. And so the only thing I can do to unwind is watch, like, Humphrey Bogart. And you have the villain come in. He's - well, I suppose you think you've got it figured out, don't you, you know? I just can't help - I can't help it. I always mimic whatever it is I'm exposing myself most to at the moment.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NO ONE'S SLEEPING")
DEERHUNTER: (Singing) No one's sleeping. Great unrest in the country...
SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
As the name of our show suggests, we do like to consider all things on this program, which is why we want to warn listeners that the conversation we're about to have might not be appropriate for all listeners because we'll be spending a few minutes talking with Nadia Bolz-Weber about her new book. It's called "Shameless: A Sexual Reformation." In it, Bolz-Weber takes on a big question with no easy answers - how does religion affect people's sex lives? A Lutheran pastor based in Denver, her arguments come from firsthand experience, from stories shared by parishioners at her former congregation and from the text of the Bible itself. She takes a bold look at how conservative Christian norms around sexuality affect worshippers in every aspect of their lives. Nadia Bolz-Weber joins me from Colorado Public Radio. Thanks for joining us.
NADIA BOLZ-WEBER: Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks.
MCCAMMON: OK. So, first of all, a Lutheran pastor and a sex book are maybe not ideas that typically would go together. How did you decide to write this?
BOLZ-WEBER: It was deeply personal in the sense that - connecting to my own sort of story as a sexual person and as somebody connecting to themselves as somebody who was divorced and sort of negotiating that part of my life as an adult sexual being who's divorced and, also, a pastor - I had to really reflect on what are the teachings of the church, you know? Were the things I learned in youth groups still rules that apply to me now, you know? Like, trying to navigate that and connecting with the person I'm with now, my boyfriend, and realizing that this is - you know, what kind of flourishing people are experiencing in their life as sexual people is something that the church doesn't seem to care about. The church just cares that they're not doing the naughty things.
Nobody seems to really care, hey, are people flourishing in that part of their lives. And so I just started interviewing my parishioners with three questions, just saying like, what message did you receive from the church about sex and the body and gender? And how did that message affect you? And then, how have you navigated your adult life? And I took what I learned in those interviews and what I was sort of exploring in my own life and in my own spirit and ended up offering this book.
MCCAMMON: You write about some of those answers, and you also tell a story early in the book about looking down out of your airplane window while flying over farmland and seeing crop circles. And that's an image you use throughout the book to talk about human sexuality. Tell me more about that.
BOLZ-WEBER: Well, OK. As, like, a very urban girl, I just have always been puzzled by why farmers would plant crops in circles in lots that are square because when you fly above them, you're like, that makes no sense. But then, I realized it's not that they're planted in circles. It's that they're watered in circles. The water just never gets to the crops in the corners. And I realized that's the way it feels about - the church's teaching around sex is that if you happen to be planted in the center, if you happen to be a cisgender heterosexual person who didn't have sex before marriage and has only had sex with their one true love and you're totally flourishing within that, then the teachings of the church are really OK for you. But so many of us were planted in the corners, and the teachings of the church around sex and sexuality and gender never get to us.
MCCAMMON: What kinds of stories did you hear from people in your church about how they had been formed?
BOLZ-WEBER: Oh, my goodness. I mean, I heard stories of women who experienced marital rape, and the church told them that it wasn't actually rape because of a verse in the Bible that says that women have to be subject to their husbands. I heard stories of gay men who experienced sexual assault within the church and would never report it because they were told being gay was a sin.
The most common type of story was just people who were told from the time they were teenagers that God wants them to not connect to themselves as sexual beings right at the point where our bodies are literally designed to start connecting in a very particular way to our sort of erotic desires and our sexual natures. The church says, yeah, you might have been created by a god in order for your body to be experiencing that. But, if you love God, you will not think sexual thoughts. You will not, you know, do anything but hold hands with your girlfriend. It's like the creator of the universe designed a passive-aggressive test of our willpower into creation.
MCCAMMON: What do you want people who don't come from your background to learn from this book?
BOLZ-WEBER: Even if you weren't raised as, like, a church girl like I was, conservative Christianity has permeated so many aspects of our culture that it's just in the ether in terms of the way people think and the way we talk about morality and ethics. There's a whole conversation that we could be having around this that people aren't having. And I think more than anything I'm just inviting people to be brave enough to start talking about this stuff. It's all I've ever done, really, in my career. I'll talk about difficult things or vulnerable things, really, just to try and create a space around me other people could step into to start talking about what those things are for them. It's a form of leadership I call, screw it, I'll go first.
MCCAMMON: And you do get personal in this book. You write about an experience you had of having an abortion as a younger woman. Why did you decide to open up about that?
BOLZ-WEBER: Well, because I wasn't hearing the conversation I was wanting to have. And I wanted to tell my own story as a way of going - you know what? - this experience I had almost destroyed me. Like, it was a really difficult thing, and it really laid me out. And I never once thought it was the wrong decision. So I think, sometimes, people on one side of that conversation don't want you to say one thing, and people on the other side don't want to hear the other. And so to be able to have a conversation about it that's sort of both and rather than either/or I felt like was really critical.
And, also, just a theological aspect of it that's woven throughout that story is that, for a very long time, the Judeo-Christian thought held that life began with breath. In Genesis, it says that God breathed into dust to create humanity, that that was the moment that we had a living soul. So this idea of life and breath being connected is something that people can sort of hold onto if they're - still have an attachment to Judeo-Christian thought and still allow for, hey, women need to be able to have the decision around family planning and whether they're going to go through with a pregnancy or not.
MCCAMMON: How do people respond when you talk about the fact that you are both a minister and someone who has had an abortion yourself, as you write about in this book?
BOLZ-WEBER: Honest to God, this is - the first time I've talked about it in public is this interview (laughter). So it's not something that we've sort of told people was in the book, and there's part of me that is a little terrified because people have extremely vigorous views about this issue. But, again, it was just one more example of, like, taking a deep breath and going, I think my job is to go first. Not that I'm the only one to have ever talked, publicly, about this but to be a clergy person and talk publicly, I had to trust - and I have to trust - that it's going to be important for other women out there who have a similar story.
The fact that I was willing to tell mine, that - if, in some way, that's healing for them or makes them feel less alone, then I've done my job. If people criticize me for it, that's actually none of my business. Who is it going to help for me to say this thing? That's the only focus I can really have.
MCCAMMON: Nadia Bolz-Weber. Her book "Shameless: A Sexual Reformation" comes out at the end of the month. Nadia Bolz-Weber, thank you so much.
BOLZ-WEBER: My pleasure. Thanks, Sarah.
SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
Two reports over the weekend raised new questions about President Trump's relationship with Russia. Last night, The Washington Post reported that President Trump sought to conceal details of his meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Post said that on one occasion, Trump took away the notes of his interpreter and instructed the linguist not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials.
Earlier, The New York Times reported that the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into the president to determine if he was acting on Russia's behalf. On Twitter and in a Fox News interview, the president dismissed the reports and again called special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation nonsense.
Members of Congress want to know more. The Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Eliot Engel of New York, says he will be holding hearings on what he called mysteries swirling around Trump's bizarre relationship with Putin and his cronies. And Congressman Engel joins me now.
Welcome.
ELIOT ENGEL: Thank you.
MCCAMMON: What was your reaction to seeing this weekend's reports?
ENGEL: You know, part of it was shock. But part of it is we're so numb that we're not shocked by anything we hear anymore. I mean, I just think that ever since the presidential election in 2016, when it became apparent that the Russians were interfering in our election, the question was, was the Trump campaign in collusion with the Russians? We really still don't have the answer to that. The president had a meeting with Putin in Helsinki many, many months ago. Nobody knows, as far as I know - I certainly don't know - what happened there, what they discussed. I mean, Putin is not a friendly person.
And from the beginning of the presidency, President Trump has seemed to hold Putin in high regard. It's just absolutely amazing. So I think that it's very important that the Congress - and I always point this out - we're not subservient to the president or the chief executive. And I think that it's important enough that we try to get to the bottom of it.
MCCAMMON: And, Congressman, you've said your committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee, will hold hearings to investigate the president's relationship with Russia and Putin. What witnesses do you expect to call?
ENGEL: Well, we haven't really decided on it because the committees are a little bit late - all the committees - in getting organized. So we don't yet know all the members on our committee. So we're going to wait until we can constitute the whole committee, which should be a matter of days, I hope. And then we're going to move.
MCCAMMON: As you noted, after the president met with Putin in Helsinki this summer, the administration didn't give very much information about what was discussed. U.S. officials appeared to be in the dark themselves. There was talk about having the American interpreter at that summit testify before Congress. Might you subpoena her?
ENGEL: Well, I would do that really as a last resort. We don't want to really get into a situation where it becomes a precedent for interpreters to give in their notes. I would hope we wouldn't have to do that.
MCCAMMON: Whoever you call to your committee, Congressman, are you worried about hitting a wall if the White House decides to cite executive privilege and prevent administration officials from testifying or complying?
ENGEL: Well, I think if we hit a wall, and it became obvious that the administration was stalling, I would let the American people be the judge. I would hope, if there's nothing to hide, that they would care about Congress doing its job.
MCCAMMON: And finally, Congressman, do you have any worries that constant oversight hearings in the House might feed into the president's narrative that Democrats are just out to get him because they're angry that he won the 2016 election?
ENGEL: Well, I know he's said that before. But that's really nonsense. I mean, the narrative from the White House or from the president has always been that the Democrats just want impeachment. And I can tell you that's not the truth. My attitude is, let Mueller do his work. Impeachment is certainly not a goal of mine. It's a last resort. Of course, one of the ways we could avoid even any talk of that is if the president cooperated with Congress and didn't try to block everything that Congress wants to do. And, you know, it just - it doesn't pass the smell test. The Putin-Trump connection - it just makes you scratch your head. We're going to get to the bottom of it.
MCCAMMON: That's New York Congressman Eliot Engel, now chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Thank you.
ENGEL: Thank you.
SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
The Senate Judiciary Committee, meanwhile, opens hearings Tuesday on President Trump's nomination of William Barr as attorney general. Democrats want Barr to commit to protecting special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. Lawyer Harry Litman has some reassuring words for them. He worked in the Justice Department when Barr first served as attorney general in the early '90s. I asked Litman why he wrote a Washington Post op-ed under the headline, "Count Me As One Democrat Who Thinks Trump Made An Excellent Choice In William Barr."
HARRY LITMAN: Well, first of all, I think he is a huge step up from the current unstable and, I would say, dangerous situation of having the acting attorney general, Matt Whitaker, who is both not very qualified and, more importantly, seems to be in the pocket of Trump himself - you know, whose main qualification is being the eyes and ears of the president. That would never be Bill Barr. He's a institutionalist. He understands the important values of the Department of Justice. He has integrity. He has stature. He's nobody's toady.
That's my sense in particular from having worked for him. I was a Democrat in the department, and I can attest that he was apolitical in the way he ran things, and it was about the department's law enforcement mission. And that's, I think, what you need.
MCCAMMON: Now, two weeks after your first article, you wrote a second op-ed expressing alarm at what you called a constitutionally dubious memo that Barr wrote to the Justice Department. In that memo, Barr criticized Mueller's investigation into possible obstruction of justice by President Trump. What do you think Barr's motivation was in writing the memo? And do you worry that Barr would fire Mueller?
LITMAN: Right - two parts. I think his motivation was really to just lay out his views. I don't think - I know people are concerned about this - that it was some kind of audition for the job or anything that indicates he, you know, would put his thumb on the scale. What worried me wasn't even the main analysis in the memo but rather, along the way, he articulated some constitutional views of executive power that were really very expansive and might suggest - you know, I'm not sure. The Senate should ask about this on Tuesday - but might suggest that a president can't obstruct justice if he's exercising enumerated powers - appointment, removal, pardon. And that, I think, would be wrong and worrisome if that, indeed, is his view.
MCCAMMON: Should Barr recuse himself from oversight of the Mueller investigation because of this memo?
LITMAN: Yeah, it's a really good question. And, you know, Whitaker faced it. Sessions faced it. So I think the right thing to do is to serve it up to the professional staff in the Department of Justice. And my best guess would be Bill Barr would think that and do that. That's going to be one of the first questions to ask him on Tuesday - whether he would - not commit to recusing. I think he could really say, look, I've expressed views. That happens a lot. That doesn't mean you have to recuse. But the question is, would there be appearance of partiality? And I think they should ask him if he will commit to abiding by the recommendation of the professional staff.
MCCAMMON: Barr has written that he's been in the dark about many of the facts of the Mueller probe. If he were to learn that there is serious evidence against the president - and, of course, that's not something that we know right now. But if that turns out to be the case, based on what you know of William Barr, would he stand up to Donald Trump?
LITMAN: Yeah, I think so. And this is sort of reason number one that I'm bullish, you know, overall, notwithstanding my skittishness about his constitutional views. Barr is a grownup - and not simply because he's been around before. But he's just a strong person of principle. I think he would have no hesitation in telling the president, this is the law, and this is how it's going to be, and, if it came to it, resigning before knuckling under to a view that he saw as against the law.
MCCAMMON: That's Harry Litman, former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania who also worked for the Justice Department under attorney general nominee William Barr. He's now an attorney in California with the firm Constantine Cannon.
Thank you.
LITMAN: Thanks for having me.
SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
Now we turn to the government shutdown. We're on Day 23, making it the longest in American history. Today, we're going to hear from Kami of Texas. She's asking that we don't use her last name because of the nature of her husband's job. He's an essential federal employee and is currently working without pay.
KAMI: We've used whatever we had in our bank account to pay our last mortgage payment and our last car payment and our last utilities payment and, of course, to go to the grocery store and stuff. So we're just - it's the stress right now. In the week after the shutdown started, I had to have an HVAC repair person come out because our heater quit working, and that was $500 we didn't see having to spend. So hopefully, nothing like that will come up again while this is going on.
A couple days ago, we sent off paperwork to borrow some out of his retirement to cover ourselves since we don't know when this shutdown will end. We will be penalized. In the past, I believe they've offered a penalty-free withdrawal. We haven't seen that letter come across yet. And we're withdrawing 11,000 at this point. I work for our local school district, and my income alone cannot support our entire family.
Our kids - we have an older son who understands what's going on. We have a younger son who doesn't really understand. And, unfortunately, he's overheard me on the phone leaving messages for members of Congress. And he twisted what I said in his head, and he was worried that he mentioned to a friend of mine that we weren't going to have food to eat. And that made me more upset. So we just really need a resolution.
MCCAMMON: That was Kami talking about how the government shutdown was affecting her family.
SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
On Tuesday, the British Parliament will cast one of its biggest votes in decades - the decision whether to support Prime Minister Theresa May's deeply unpopular deal to leave the European Union or reject it, as expected, and risk plunging the United Kingdom into political chaos or more chaos than it's already in. For more on the vote and the stakes, we turn now to NPR's Frank Langfitt in London. Hi, Frank. Thanks for joining us.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: Hi, Sarah.
MCCAMMON: So remind us why is the prime minister's Brexit divorce agreement expected to fail?
LANGFITT: Well Sarah, most members of Parliament are against it. And the biggest reason is that it could keep the United Kingdom closely aligned, practically, in some ways, in the European Union for years to come and prevent the U.K. from moving forward. Now, the reason May has had to cut this deal is because the European Union says it can't leave until it solves the biggest sort of conundrum, which is how to avoid a border on the island of Ireland.
MCCAMMON: And if the deal does fail, what's likely to happen next?
LANGFITT: You know, it really depends on the size of the defeat and their whole range of possibilities, which is what makes this so uncertain and risky. If it's 20 to 30 votes, May is hoping that the EU might offer some words of assurance that the U.K. won't be trapped inside the EU for years. But that's unlikely to win over many members of Parliament. If it's a big loss, Jeremy Corbyn - he's the head of the opposition Labour Party. He could call for a vote of no confidence in the U.K. government - in May's government. And what he wants to do is force a general election, try to topple May and her Conservative Party.
Now, Parliament could also move to seize control of the whole Brexit process and hold what are called nonbinding votes on what's next. And that could include everything from another type of deal with the EU, a vote to delay Brexit or even a call for second referendum.
MCCAMMON: So what is the likelihood that voters in the U.K. will get a second chance to vote on Brexit?
LANGFITT: It's probably more possible now than it's been before because the U.K. political system could be headed for paralysis, and it appears there's almost no majority in Parliament for anything else. Many people, though, would be wary about taking this back to a popular vote. Now, on Friday, I was in this place called Lowestoft. It's a town on the east coast of England. I was talking to Peter Aldous. He's a member of Parliament and May's Conservative Party who represents the area. And he actually voted to remain in the EU in 2016. But he told me a second referendum could really undermine faith in the democratic system.
PETER ALDOUS: To suddenly turn around within 2 1/2, 3 years and say, we're not going to do this, I think a lot of people will be seriously aggrieved and will say, what is that about? What is democracy about? We voted for that? It didn't happen.
MCCAMMON: OK. So he's kind of getting out that between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place feeling.
LANGFITT: And, also, Sarah, the idea that, you know, with democracy, you don't get do-overs on votes you don't like.
MCCAMMON: Right. And there is talk - right? - of just the U.K. walking away from the European Union on the Brexit deadline at the end of March with no future agreement as to what comes next. What's the likelihood of that happening? And what would that even mean?
LANGFITT: You know, Sarah, that's the one thing that most of Parliament can actually agree on because it would be seen as a self-inflicted economic wound. You could get tariffs, customs checks, health checks popping up on the border with Europe for the first time in decades because, up until now, it's been seamless trade - could get miles of trucks lined up at the Port of Dover to get across the channel. And they could really damage U.K. and European businesses. Now, I was talking to a guy named James Hookham. He's with the U.K. Freight Transport Association, and I asked him if the government or business were really prepared for what people call here a no-deal Brexit.
JAMES HOOKHAM: None of us are ready. Business isn't ready. The honest thing is government is ready, and it will be government agencies of one sort or another that will dictate what goes through the borders. We may well end up having to have a more formalized border arrangement. We would just like a little bit more time to get ready for it.
LANGFITT: And if that were to happen, Sarah, which I got to say does not seem likely, many here would see it as a complete failure of the British political system.
MCCAMMON: Well, Frank, thanks for following this. Thanks for talking with us.
LANGFITT: Happy to do it, Sarah.
SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
Teachers in Los Angeles are set to strike tomorrow after the teachers' union and the district failed to negotiate a new contract. The strike would impact about half a million students in the nation's second-largest school district. It would be the city's first teachers' strike in nearly 30 years. NPR's Elissa Nadworny has been in LA talking with students.
ELISSA NADWORNY, BYLINE: One of the main points of contention in LA's contract negotiations is class size. This issue - it's one that's very familiar to high school senior Marshe Doss (ph). She's lived it.
MARSHE DOSS: My math class was, like, way too packed.
NADWORNY: For that class at Dorsey Senior High School, the staff added extra chairs to the rows of desks so students could share.
MARSHE: Even if - like, if your friend or something, it's just not enough room. And it just makes you feel uncomfortable. It makes me feel like I don't need to do anything because I don't have a desk.
NADWORNY: Marshe is part of Students Deserve, a group that advocates for social justice and better schools. When she's been talking to her classmates about the strike, she's heard a lot of this.
MARSHE: I want to the strike to happen so I don't got to go to school. That's what a lot of people are, like, thinking and where their mindset is.
NADWORNY: So she and some other Student Deserve members have made it their mission to educate their peers about why their teachers are striking.
AMY MON-ROY: And it's, like, so much bigger than a pay raise. And, like, I feel like a lot of students don't understand that.
NADWORNY: That's Marshe's classmate, junior Amy Mon-Roy (ph). Amy says she has friends in other districts, and they have a lot more resources.
AMY: Why do we have to fight for the things that other students get in other districts?
NADWORNY: The reason from the LA Unified School District - they just don't have the money. The last offer from the district, which upped its spending by about 25 million, didn't satisfy the union. In addition to smaller class sizes, the union is asking for full-time nurses and librarians, among other things. Dorsey senior Saisha Smith (ph) wants people to know she's paying attention.
SAISHA SMITH: We are black and brown children who care about the conditions we're in and how we're being treated. And we know the reasons why, and we're not naive.
NADWORNY: During the strike, the district is keeping schools open, staffed by administrators, volunteers and newly hired substitutes. Despite Saisha, Amy and Marshe's excitement to be part of a movement for change, they're bummed to be missing their regular Monday classes. For Saisha, the class she'll miss the most is AP English.
SMITH: The book we're reading right now is "Native Son" by Richard Wright. And that book is - have you read it? Oh, my gosh. That book is crazy (laughter). Like, it's reigniting my love for reading because I'm like, oh, this is so good.
KIMBERLY ESCOBAR: Usually, on Monday, we would have orchestra.
NADWORNY: For Kimberly Escobar, a fifth-grader at Alta Loma Elementary, Monday is the one day she has music class.
KIMBERLY: That's something I was kind of looking forward because we were going to learn a new song.
NADWORNY: But now, with the strike...
KIMBERLY: We would be staying in the auditorium, and they'll try to entertain us.
NADWORNY: The district says learning will still take place, but some parents are opting to keep their kids home. For other parents, bringing their kids to school is the better option. And, for working families, it may be the only option. Kimberly's mom, Rosa, who's sitting next to her - she's still figuring out what she'll do.
ROSA ESCOBAR: I'm not really sure yet if I'ma (ph) send her to school or not, yes.
KIMBERLY: But I have one thing to say. I'm the vice president, and I need to support the school and the student council.
NADWORNY: Kimberly wants to support her teachers, too. But school is her main priority.
KIMBERLY: So I need to be here that day.
ESCOBAR: She's really responsible.
KIMBERLY: I want to be included in all, like, the school decisions, and I need to make sure the school is fine.
NADWORNY: Whatever they decide tomorrow morning, they've offered up their home just around the corner from school for picketing teachers to use the bathroom. Rosa Escobar says she's stocked up on toilet paper, ready for Monday's strike.
Elissa Nadworny, NPR News, Los Angeles.
SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
And now we'll return to our Troll Watch series.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MCCAMMON: That's where we bring you stories of cybersecurity attack, bots and, of course, Internet trolls. This week, we're going to focus on a new study out of Princeton and New York Universities that found older Americans are more likely to share fake news on social media than their younger counterparts. So if you've noticed it's your great aunt or uncle who most often shares dubious news stories on Facebook, well, you might be onto something. Our next guest is Andy Guess, assistant professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University and the lead author of the study.
Welcome.
ANDY GUESS: Thank you. It's great to be here.
MCCAMMON: So why'd you decide to look into this?
GUESS: Well, I can't say that we were completely clairvoyant in knowing that fake news and online misinformation would be the thing that everyone would talk about after the 2016 presidential election. But it turned out that as more people were discussing this as something that they were concerned about, we realized we were sitting on this treasure trove of data that we'd been collecting the entire year. So it seemed a natural thing to study.
MCCAMMON: And how did you define fake news?
GUESS: We actually used a number of different sources - both peer-reviewed lists that people collected and crowdsource efforts to collect web domains and producers of false and dubious content. So we wanted to really triangulate into as narrow and rigorous a definition of fake news as possible without getting into the sort of gray area of what constitutes truth, what's the difference between news and opinion and that sort of thing.
MCCAMMON: And as you looked over the data that came back, I mean, what are your more significant findings?
GUESS: I think the first big takeaway is that, given the popular narrative around fake news and social media in 2016, the overall prevalence of fake news sharing on Facebook was pretty low. We're talking about something that was driven by a relatively small share of users who just had sort of disproportionate weight in our data.
MCCAMMON: Did your research give you any insight into why older social media users were more likely to share fake news?
GUESS: We can't answer the why question with the data that we collected. What we can do is establish as best as we can that this is a real relationship. And so that relationship is, on average, people who were over 65 were associated with sharing more articles from fake news-producing domains on Facebook in 2016. The fact that this doesn't seem to be driven by older people being more conservative or other factors that are also associated with being older was really striking to us. So we found this independent age effect - independent of partisanship, independent of ideological affiliation, independent of all of these types of factors. Now I think the task is to really adjudicate between the different possible explanations for what's driving this.
MCCAMMON: Yeah. And I don't want to ask you to speculate beyond what the data show, but at the same time, do you wonder if this might have anything to do with younger generations grew up with the Internet, older generations didn't? I mean, how much does that come into this?
GUESS: So there's been a lot of talk about digital media literacy. And there have been a number of efforts around the world to try and boost teaching of digital literacy skills, especially in schools. So we've seen efforts like that, for example, in France. Especially in the past couple of years, as concerns over online misinformation have grown, I think our findings suggest that really a lot of the action is going on not among students and teenagers in schools but among people who are at the other end of the age scale. And so digital literacy education is great, but that's not necessarily going to solve the problem that we identified in our study.
MCCAMMON: So you found that the older person was, the more likely they were to share fake news. And you said this is true regardless of partisan identity or ideological affiliation. But you also did look at partisan affiliation, right? What did you find there?
GUESS: We found a relationship between being more conservative or more Republican and also on average sharing more fake news articles. And that was a clear relationship as well and one that we weren't necessarily as surprised by because we know that most of the false content that was being disseminated during this period was strongly pro-Trump and anti-Clinton in orientation. And it makes sense that people would be more likely to share and engage with content that they're predisposed to agree with.
MCCAMMON: After the 2016 election, there was a lot of finger-pointing at Facebook, at Facebook users sharing fake news. From your findings, do you think older Facebook users helped elect Donald Trump?
GUESS: No, I don't think the evidence that we've shown here, you know, supports such an interpretation. I think that connecting, you know, fake news on social media with the election outcome is highly speculative. And, personally, I find that to be pretty implausible given the weight of the evidence that we've seen so far.
MCCAMMON: Your study did find that a relatively small percentage of people shared fake news. I mean, is there - are there things to feel good about here?
GUESS: So it's true that most people, including, you know, most people over 65 were not doing this. It's also the case that plenty of people were sharing corrective information. So we also find that lots of people were sharing links to fact checks of fake news. So, you know, while it's easy to sort of focus on the problem, and I think the problem is real, it's also the case that potentially more people than the ones who are sharing fake news are also sort of vigilant and paying attention to the possible problems with the information that they're encountering online.
MCCAMMON: That's Andy Guess of Princeton University. He was the lead researcher on this study.
Thanks for talking with us.
GUESS: Thank you very much.
SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
Native American residents on the remote Wind River Reservation in central Wyoming already say the federal government neglects promises made to help them survive. Over half the population lives below the poverty level. Now, with the government shutdown, people are bracing for even harder times. Wyoming Public Radio's Melodie Edwards reports.
MELODIE EDWARDS, BYLINE: Eastern Shoshone member Jean Harris is a single mom with three children working as a part-time accountant at a health clinic. But her paycheck isn't covering the bills these days. The shutdown coming on the heels of Christmas - it hit her hard. In fact, she's already way behind on rent and expects eviction any day now.
JEAN HARRIS: I'm currently packing and getting things prepared just in case. And, at this point, we don't really have anywhere to go.
EDWARDS: Next month, she won't get her per capita check. That's her cut from oil and gas profits on her tribe's land. These checks aren't much - about $200. But Harris says they do help.
EDWARDS: Normally, a per capita check would be something that I would pay my utilities or use for extra gas or extra groceries or something like that.
LESLIE SHAKESPEARE: That distribution isn't going to take place until the government's restarted.
EDWARDS: That's Eastern Shoshone councilor Leslie Shakespeare. He says the shutdown kept the Bureau of Indian Affairs from meeting this month to decide the amount of those checks. It's not only families that won't get those funds. His tribe's government won't either.
SHAKESPEARE: People start really struggling, and then it becomes a real life and public safety issue.
EDWARDS: Literally a public safety issue since the tribe uses those funds to provide food, shelter and emergency assistance to its members. Jean Harris would have been one of those receiving emergency help. And the public safety issue - Shakespeare says tribal police are federal employees. And, despite the shutdown, they're still on the job.
SHAKESPEARE: That gets tough on them as, you know, they're working and providing the service for our communities, and they're not getting paid. And they have their own families to worry about as well.
EDWARDS: Shakespeare says if the shutdown goes on much longer than a month, people will begin to truly suffer. At the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Arapahoe and Shoshone member James Trosper directs the High Plains American Indian Research Institute. He says government services for tribes aren't just handouts. They're payment for vast amounts of land given over to the U.S. government.
JAMES TROSPER: My great-great-grandfather signed a treaty, and there were agreements in that treaty. We've lived up to our end of it. Chief Washakie gave up a lot of land. My personal opinion is that the federal government needs to live up to their end of it.
EDWARDS: And their end of it was to take the land in exchange for health care, education and other basic needs. Trosper says the law needs to change to protect tribes from government shutdowns. He says the per capita checks paying for oil and gas extracted on Indian land are a good example.
TROSPER: You know, they got the oil. They have the land. And so we're expecting the payment for that oil and gas.
EDWARDS: Meanwhile, single mom Jean Harris continues to pack her family into boxes with no idea where she's going to go next.
HARRIS: Right now, I'm just praying, and I'm just waiting for a miracle and just kind of leaving that in God's hands right now.
EDWARDS: In God's hands and federal lawmakers'.
For NPR News, I'm Melodie Edwards.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Two years ago this week at the first women's march on the National Mall amid a sea of pink pussyhats, a song suddenly went from speaking for one to speaking for many.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "QUIET")
CHOIR! CHOIR! CHOIR!: (Singing) I have to do this. I can't keep quiet, no, no, no.
SHAPIRO: "Quiet" by the artist MILCK - that's M-I-L-C-K. It's being sung here by the Canadian group Choir! Choir! Choir! The tune became a rallying cry for women around the world who were tired of keeping quiet about sexual harassment and abuse. For our series American Anthem, NPR's Elizabeth Blair reports on how "Quiet" became a global phenomenon.
ELIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE: Connie Lim, who goes by MILCK, co-wrote "Quiet" in 2015 to help her cope with being sexually assaulted and abused when she was a teenager. It's a song about speaking out no matter what people might think.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "QUIET")
MILCK: (Singing) They may see that monster. They may run away. But I have to do this. I can't keep quiet.
BLAIR: MILCK says she always views "Quiet" as her personal therapy song. Then the 2016 presidential election happened.
MILCK: You know, the rhetoric that was used to describe women really enraged me and just kind of brought me back to those feelings of when I was younger and I was told I need to sit properly and I need to speak less and smile more and lose weight and just be this perfect little girl.
BLAIR: She says she channeled her rage with an idea. Teach quiet to other singers, and perform it at the women's march the day after President Trump's inauguration. MILCK lives in Los Angeles, so about a month before the march, she recruited a cappella singers in D.C. to perform it with her. After lots of emailing and Skyping to learn the song and some in-person rehearsing, she and 26 other women put on their winter coats and pink hats and headed to the march.
MILCK: We had no idea how crowded it was going to be.
BLAIR: On January 21, 2017, an estimated 470,000 people flooded the National Mall and the areas around it.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GLORIA STEINEM: You look great. I wish you could see yourselves. It's like an ocean.
BLAIR: Dozens of artists and activists were there, including Gloria Steinem, who told the crowd people were marching in streets all over the world.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
STEINEM: In every state in this country and on six continents.
BLAIR: MILCK, an unknown artist, and her group of singers from D.C. were not on the main stage. They squeezed their way through the crowd, finding different spots to sing for anyone who would listen. And they did. A filmmaker captured their last performance of the day on her iPhone.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "QUIET")
MILCK AND UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) 'Cause no one knows me. No one ever will if I don't say something, take that dry blue pill.
BLAIR: Tessa O'Rourke is a soprano with the George Washington University Sirens, one of the groups MILCK recruited. She said she's never experienced anything like it.
TESSA O'ROURKE: And every time we sing and we saw people watching - and there would be people, like, looking right at us, crying.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Crying.
O'ROURKE: And then we would look at each other and - started crying. And it was all just so emotionally charged.
ALMA HAR'EL: This was one of those moments that I think - everybody that was around just felt something very extraordinary is happening.
BLAIR: Filmmaker Alma Har'el was trying to make her way through the crowd when she stumbled upon the singers. That night, she shared her video on social media. Within two days, it had some 8 million views. Commenters wrote that the song gave them the chills and called it an anthem for the women's march.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "QUIET")
MILCK AND UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Let it out. Let it out. Let it out now.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Come on.
MILCK AND UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) There must be someone who understands. Let it out. Let it out. Let it out now.
BLAIR: Now, remember; the women's march of 2017 was several months before the #MeToo movement hit the mainstream. Har'el says MILCK's song was exactly what was needed at the time.
HAR'EL: MILCK really gave voice to a lot of women with that song, and that's why it became so viral.
BLAIR: So viral so quickly around the world. The singers were invited to perform on the show "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee." MILCK was inundated with requests for the sheet music, which she posted online. Soon people were recording their own versions of "Quiet." The Austonettes from Austin made "Quiet" sound almost sacred.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "QUIET")
AUSTONETTES: (Singing) But no one knows me. No one ever will if I don't say something, if I just lie still.
BLAIR: There were flashmob performances, including one in Sweden that attracted hundreds to the Stockholm train station.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "QUIET")
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS #1: (Singing) I can't keep quiet, no, no, no.
BLAIR: And a group of women in Ghana standing in a circle, facing each other, sing "Quiet" like it's the release they've been waiting for.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "QUIET")
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS #2: (Singing) I can't keep quiet for anyone, no, not anymore.
BLAIR: In Ghana, activist Love Nyaaba says it was a thrill to find a song with the words I can't keep quiet, especially for women like her who live in Northern Ghana. Via Skype, Nyaaba says women there do not have the same political or economic opportunities as men do.
LOVE NYAABA: For the most part, we are told to keep quiet, and make it work.
BLAIR: She and her fellow activists even translated "Quiet" into the local language Dagbani.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "QUIET")
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS #3: (Singing in Dagbani).
BLAIR: As for MILCK, she still can't quite believe the life the song has had since she performed it that day at the women's march two years ago. She believes it shows what can happen when people sing together.
MILCK: They can feel completely immersed as a collective, but they also can feel like an individual at the same time.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "QUIET")
CHOIR! CHOIR! CHOIR!: (Singing) I can't keep quiet. Let it out. Let it out. Let it out now.
MILCK: And there's space for this cathartic release.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "QUIET")
CHOIR! CHOIR! CHOIR!: (Singing) Let it out. Let it out. Let it out now. Must be someone who will understand.
BLAIR: Without any promotion or marketing, MILCK's "Quiet" filled an enormous space full of people who wanted to be heard. Elizabeth Blair, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "QUIET")
CHOIR! CHOIR! CHOIR!: (Singing) Let it out. Let it out. Let it out now.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Los Angeles public schools opened today without their teachers. Instead, classrooms were staffed by administrators, volunteers and newly hired substitutes. For the first time in nearly 30 years, teachers in the nation's second-largest school district were on strike. NPR's Elissa Nadworny went to the picket lines when the school day began and filed this report.
ELISSA NADWORNY, BYLINE: So it's 8:05. I'm outside Kingsley Elementary School in East Hollywood. Teachers are out front with red umbrellas and picket signs, and they're greeting parents and students as they're arriving for school Monday morning. And they're letting them know they're not going to be inside.
SONIA SALGADO: Hi. We just want to let you know that teachers are on strike today. Habla Espanol?
NADWORNY: That's kindergarten teacher Sonia Salgado greeting parents and students as they arrive. She and other teachers are outside braving the heavy rain because of failed negotiations between their union, United Teachers Los Angeles and the city's public school district, which enrolls about half a million students.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL RINGING)
NADWORNY: As the school day starts, just a handful of students head inside. The school building is staffed by administrators, volunteers and newly hired substitutes. Outside, some of the union's more than 30,000 members are chanting and singing.
UNIDENTIFIED TEACHERS: (Chanting in Spanish).
NADWORNY: On salary, the district and the union are actually pretty close. The main reason teachers are striking today - they want smaller classes and nurses in schools five days a week, among other things. The district says it just doesn't have the money to pay for all that. The last offer from the district, which upped its spending by about $25 million, didn't satisfy the union. LA Unified Superintendent Austin Beutner called parents on Sunday night with this message.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
AUSTIN BEUTNER: We did not want a strike. We tried our best to avoid it, and we will continue to work around the clock to find a solution to end the strike.
NADWORNY: But there aren't any negotiations scheduled for today. The union says it's focused on the strike. Parents we've spoken to over the last few days have mixed reactions. Some parents are opting to keep their kids home. For other parents, bringing their kids to school is the better option. And for working families, it may be the only option. Some teachers say they understand.
MARIA GONZALES: My name is Maria Gonzales. I teach kindergarten. It's my 21st year teaching in LAUSD.
NADWORNY: Gonzales grew up in LA and went to public schools here.
GONZALES: My grandfather came to this country from Mexico at the age of 9, and he stopped going to school at 9 to pick lemons and avocados. He never let us forget that education was his dream.
NADWORNY: Her parents both taught in the district. Her father texted her last night, be strong. We're with you.
GONZALES: We have to care. We have to acknowledge that these are children of color. These are children that - they receive free, reduced lunch. The nurse and the psychologist are oftentimes the only health care professionals they're in contact with.
NADWORNY: As she looks back at where her classroom is, she feels torn. She'd much rather be inside, teaching her kindergartners.
GONZALES: I hope they really relate this the strike to the fact that this city cares about them.
NADWORNY: After drop-off ended, teachers carpooled, took buses and trains and made their way downtown to meet up en masse with other teachers and supporters.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Singing) Mighty, mighty teachers...
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Singing) Mighty, mighty teachers...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Singing) ...Fighting for justice.
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Singing) ...Fighting for justice.
NADWORNY: So we're here in Grand Park in downtown Los Angeles right in front of city hall, and it is just a sea of umbrellas and ponchos and signs as far as the eye can see. Teachers and parents and students are out here supporting the strike. It's hard to know how long this strike will last. The last LA teachers strike in 1989 lasted nine days. Elissa Nadworny, NPR News, Los Angeles.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
President Trump says he never worked for Russia. That denial after a pair of explosive news reports over the weekend - reports that have landed the Russia investigation right back on top of the agenda in Washington.
NPR national security editor Phil Ewing is here in the studio to help jog our memories on what we do know, and what we don't, about the investigation unfolding and how these new developments may or may not advance our understanding of all this. Hey, Phil.
PHIL EWING, BYLINE: Hi, Mary Louise.
KELLY: So can we just start by pausing and noting what a remarkable moment we find ourselves in. The president of the United States, two years into his term, finding himself in the position of needing to explicitly say, no, I am not a Russian agent.
EWING: It's extraordinary. And in short, the reason is people inside the United States government thought he was, or he thought he may still be, depending on...
KELLY: Thought it was worth posing the question.
EWING: Correct, depending on where this leads. This is all from a New York Times story that appeared on Friday that said the FBI began investigating that question explicitly - that it opened a counterintelligence investigation into whether Trump might have been acting on Russia's behalf when he fired the FBI Director James Comey in 2017.
Then The Washington Post followed in short order with a report that said the president has taken unusual actions to keep people inside the government from knowing the substance of his conversations with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and including in one case, according to The Post, he took the notes away from an interpreter who was in a meeting with the two leaders.
The bottom line is that people inside the government don't know what Trump has been saying to Putin, and they were suspicious about that.
KELLY: Safe to say this pair of news reports landed like grenades over the weekend - grenades blowing up the news agenda. How - walk me through just how the White House has reacted.
EWING: Well, they reacted very strongly. But actually, you know, initially, there wasn't a denial. They called it absurd. And then on Monday, when the president talked with reporters, he made the denial, so there was a little bit of news in that.
KELLY: Today, yeah.
EWING: He also said the head of the FBI at the time this might have taken place was the then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who also was later fired after Comey. McCabe has been a villain for Trump and Republicans through this whole story. And he mentioned a top special agent and a top lawyer who exchanged text messages inside the FBI about how much they hated Trump. That story has really embarrassed the FBI.
And the president says this is all about bias. He called the people in the FBI, known scoundrels - that was his phrase - and, quote, unquote, "dirty cops."
KELLY: One question on my mind raised by these stories over the weekend, which is this - if the FBI runs a counterintelligence investigation against the sitting president of the United States, what kind of hurdles does that present?
EWING: That's a great question, and I don't know if anybody knows the answer. And I don't know if the FBI knew the answer. But this could explain some of the what appeared to be craziness leak out of the FBI over the past two years or so - people at the top of this bureau struggling with what they should do.
There's no rule for this, most likely. And the president, as you know, was the top consumer by, say, of intelligence he's built into the building. You know, he's the keystone of the arch.
KELLY: They report to him, ultimately.
EWING: That's correct. And if they needed to look into him, do they have the authority to do that? Can they do it without him knowing? No one knows, but that's what makes the stakes for this story so high.
KELLY: So looking ahead to what might be the next shoe to drop, Democrats are making noise about hearing from this interpreter who was at the Helsinki summit with Trump and Putin. In the past, Democrats have wanted to hear from her. They may be making a further push.
EWING: That's right. The change now is Democrats have a majority in the House. They have the ability to call hearings and compel witnesses, potentially. So if they start up that push again, it could have a different result from the last time we went through this.
And the other thing is there's a hearing tomorrow in the Senate Judiciary Committee with William Barr. He's the president's nominee to become the new attorney general. This, very likely, will come up. And who knows what other kinds of questions may get asked or answered when Barr goes before the Judiciary Committee?
KELLY: NPR's Phil Ewing, thank you.
EWING: Thank you.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
As the government shutdown enters its fourth week, furloughed federal workers and government contractors are struggling to pay bills. Grocery stores and restaurants are now handing out free food. And some employee unions are negotiating for more time for members to pay their utility bills, as NPR's Yuki Noguchi reports.
YUKI NOGUCHI, BYLINE: Brittany Sears' name is often confused with Britney Spears. But Sears is no multimillionaire popstar. In fact, money is tight for Sears, who's a federal correctional officer in Safford, Ariz. At home, she bundles in warm clothes as she shuffles over to check her thermostat.
BRITTANY SEARS: So right now it is at 60.
NOGUCHI: It's snowed since the shutdown began, but Sears keeps the heat off, hoping to save a hundred dollars this month while she isn't getting paid.
SEARS: If it gets to about, like, 50 degrees or something, it gets really cold in here, so I'll turn it on and get it up to maybe, like, 60 or 65, and then I'll turn it off again.
NOGUCHI: In the background, there is a persistent beep of the low battery indicator on her smoke alarm.
SEARS: I just haven't had the time to really think about something like that.
NOGUCHI: She's still working 10-hour shifts at the prison. When she's not, she's calling her mortgage and car lenders about deferring payments. She's also scouring the house for things she could sell, including a prized camper van she just paid off.
Sears is a single mom raising a 6-year-old boy on her own. Since the shutdown began, she's switched to cheaper grocery stores and buys frozen, not fresh. She drives less and explains to her son why a $3 video game isn't in the budget.
SEARS: Mommy doesn't have money right now. You know, I can't get that right now. I'm not getting a paycheck. And he's like, but you go to work, Mom. And I'm just like, yeah, I know, baby, I go to work. And he's like, well, when I get older, I'm going to work, and I'll help you.
NOGUCHI: Ted Rossman is an industry analyst with creditcards.com. He says with no end in sight, the current shutdown poses new kinds of challenges for workers.
TED ROSSMAN: I think we're really in uncharted territory here.
NOGUCHI: He says people who miss paying their bills this month will still have 30 days until their credit scores are affected.
ROSSMAN: So we're nowhere near that point yet. Hopefully that gives people a little bit of comfort.
NOGUCHI: Some credit unions, including Navy Federal, are offering short-term, no-interest or low-interest loans. Some banks are offering to work with furloughed employees to waive late fees on mortgages or car loans, although at present, most lenders are only offering a one-month reprieve.
MEGAN FITZSIMMONS: Having to make all these calls - like, that's going to take a lot of time.
NOGUCHI: Megan Fitzsimmons teaches GED classes at a federal prison in Elkton, Ohio. She's required to work, so managing her late bills is like having a job on top of that.
FITZSIMMONS: You have your gas company, light company, car payment - all these things, you know? And so I'm going to have to get the numbers, call all these people and, you know, try to put that off.
NOGUCHI: Fitzsimmons says she might have to put the bills on her credit card to buy extra time. Congress passed a bill that would provide backpay once the shutdown ends. But in the interim, she notes, there will be extra costs she'll never recover.
FITZSIMMONS: With a credit card, like, they charge interest usually on the average daily balance. So even if we were to get paid, like, toward the end of the month or something, I'm still going to be paying a bunch of interest on bills.
NOGUCHI: More fortunate workers like Michelle Arsenault can dip into savings. Arsenault hasn't been going to her job at the Department of Agriculture as an organic certification adviser since December 21. She's spending her free time on inexpensive ventures like hiking and studying French. But she says she feels especially sorry for the many federal contractors she works with.
MICHELLE ARSENAULT: I think about the people that work in our cafeteria in our building who aren't getting paid. And they're not going to get paid retroactively. You know, they're just out three weeks' salary or however long this goes on.
NOGUCHI: Arsenault postponed a $1,000 gardening project and isn't going out much.
ARSENAULT: I think about the ripple effect in the community, like me canceling work that I had to have done in the yard, or I'm not eating out. I'm not downtown patronizing restaurants.
NOGUCHI: And that is playing out not only in the Washington, D.C., area but all over the country. Yuki Noguchi, NPR News, Washington.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Tonight, House Republicans took a rare step to punish one of their own, Iowa Republican Congressman Steve King. Here's Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KEVIN MCCARTHY: We will not be seating Steve King on any committees in the 116th Congress.
KELLY: This action follows comments that King made last week in The New York Times in which he was quoted questioning why the terms white supremacy and white nationalist became offensive. At the same time, House Democrats are moving forward with plans of their own for a resolution to rebuke King on the House floor.
NPR's Susan Davis joins us now from the Capitol. Hey there, Sue.
SUSAN DAVIS, BYLINE: Hey there.
KELLY: So this vote tonight by House Republicans to strip Steve King of his committee assignments - they say the messages these kind of racial comments will not be tolerated, but - worth noting King has been making these kinds of racial comments his whole career on Capitol Hill, 16 years now. So what took Republicans so long?
DAVIS: You know, I asked a lot of lawmakers this question today because as you know, Steve King has a very long history of making racially insensitive or racist remarks. I talked to one top Democrat, Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat from New York, who said he really thought a tipping point for Republicans was when South Carolina Republican Tim Scott, an African-American and a rising star in the party, wrote an editorial in The Washington Post calling King out and saying the party has problems when they stay silent on these matters.
I also talked to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and put this very question to him tonight about what took him so long, and this is what he told me.
MCCARTHY: I have not been in Congress for those 16 years. I have just now become the leader of the Republican Party. Maybe I had not seen those, but I'd - I heard these. I disagree with these. These are reckless. These are wrong. These are nothing associated with America.
DAVIS: Clearly the leaders trying to set a new tone here in this Congress. We should note, Mary Louise, that King did put out a response to the decision to strip him of his assignments. He said the leader's decision was a political decision that ignores the truth. And King has said his comments were taken out of context. He has denied allegations that he is a racist, and he has simply described his own views as being an American nationalist.
KELLY: Now, meanwhile, I mentioned that Democrats are working on their own plans. Can you give us any more detail on what they might have up their sleeve?
DAVIS: They're updating how far they want to go on this. One thing is certain. James Clyburn - he's the House majority whip. He's expected to introduce a resolution of disapproval. Congress has done this before. You might remember they did this in 2009 against South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson for shouting you lie at President Barack Obama during his State of the Union address - similar kind of reprimand. It's essentially just a public rebuke. The House could vote on that as soon as tomorrow. Some Democrats want to go further. People like Tim Ryan of Ohio, Bobby Rush of Illinois say they want to go so far as to censure the congressman. That is about shy of expulsion. It's a pretty serious reprimand. But Clyburn has been hesitant to say they should go that far.
KELLY: One prominent new voice on Capitol Hill who's arguing that they should go even further - I'm talking about Utah Republican Senator Mitt Romney. He has called on Congressman King to resign outright from Congress. Are you hearing other voices calling for that?
DAVIS: You know, it is worth noting that Romney is one of many, many, many Republicans who over the years have courted Steve King and his endorsement because of his place in Iowa. Mitt Romney did so in 2012. He endorsed Steve King for re-election in the past. So far, not many Republicans have joined that call. McCarthy and other prominent Republicans including Tim Scott have said that decision should rest with Iowa's voters. We should note that the governor there, Kim Reynolds, has said she will not support Steve King for re-election in 2020. And he is already facing a primary challenge if he chooses to run for re-election from state Republican Senator Randy Feenstra.
KELLY: All right, thanks so much, Sue.
DAVIS: You're welcome.
KELLY: That's NPR's Susan Davis keeping us up to date from Capitol Hill tonight.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Two big stories over the weekend have raised more questions about President Trump's relationship with Russia. First, The New York Times reported that the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into whether Trump was working on Russia's behalf when he fired FBI Director James Comey in 2017. And then The Washington Post reported that Trump concealed details of his meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and ordered his interpreter not to discuss the meeting with other government officials. On the White House lawn today when he was asked about these stories, Trump gave a sharp response.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I never worked for Russia. And you know that answer better than anybody. I never worked for Russia. Not only did I never work for Russia. I think it's a disgrace that you even asked that question because it's a whole big, fat hoax.
SHAPIRO: We're joined now by NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Hi, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Hi, Ari.
SHAPIRO: Trump was asked a question like this on Saturday when these reports first surfaced, and he did not give a direct answer at the time. Why was it so important today that he denied working for Russia?
LIASSON: Because he didn't give a direct answer on Saturday. But it was pretty interesting. The clip you played, he said three times, I never worked for Russia; I never worked for Russia. And that was a very specific denial. He didn't answer the general question about whether he had business dealings in Russia or acted in Russia's interest. So every time the president talks about Russia, he managed to - manages to deepen instead of clearing up the mystery about why he is so solicitous to Vladimir Putin and why he manages to repeat Russian talking points on issues ranging from the Russian invasion of Afghanistan to Montenegro or to NATO.
SHAPIRO: Now Democrats are talking about issuing subpoenas for the interpreter at that Putin meeting and any notes the interpreter might have taken. What sort of political risk could that carry for both Trump and the Democrats?
LIASSON: Well, I think it's a risk for Trump. He was very nonchalant about this on Saturday on Fox. He says he wasn't keeping anything under wraps. But today when he talked to reporters, he claimed ignorance of the issue. Here's what he said.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMP: But I have those meetings one-on-one with all leaders, including the president of China, including prime minister of Japan, Abe. We have those meetings all the time - no big deal.
LIASSON: No big deal. But I think what Democrats are going to want to know is did he confiscate the interpreter's notes from any other meetings with other world leaders or only Vladimir Putin? Now, presidents do have executive privilege. They need to be able to have confidential conversations with world leaders. But the big question that I think Democrats will be interested in exploring is, why doesn't he want others in the U.S. government to know about his conversations with Vladimir Putin?
SHAPIRO: The president's been on a tweeting frenzy lately. He's pushing back against these stories and against people he opposes. Just in the last 24 hours, he's created a new nickname for Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post. He's attacked Senator Elizabeth Warren again. What do you think is driving this burst of activity?
LIASSON: I think it's a challenging time for the president. He's used to driving and dominating the media narrative. That's one of his metrics for success. But now there's a Democratic House, so he is sharing power. And he hasn't really absorbed what that means. Meanwhile, there's a grinding legal process not just by the special counsel, but Democrats are going to start issuing subpoenas pretty soon. That keeps Trump on the defensive. And the government is still shut down, and he's not winning that fight, either.
SHAPIRO: Right. It's Day 24 now. We surpassed the record for the longest-ever shutdown in the United States - any movement on that standoff?
LIASSON: No movement at all. Here's what Trump had to say about it today in a speech to the Farm Bureau.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMP: They think if they can stop me from building the wall, that's good. This is the reason why they don't want the wall bill - 'cause they all know it works. They all approved it numerous times.
LIASSON: They of course meaning Democrats. But the president has made it very hard for Democrats to offer him anything because he has made the wall the definition of border security. And he's made it the most important thing right now for his presidency. So we're stuck. There are no negotiations, and neither side is feeling the kind of political pain that would cause them to capitulate.
SHAPIRO: NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson - thanks, Mara.
LIASSON: Thank you.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
All right. Let's stay with Trump and Putin and these questions about what they have said to each other in private talks. As we just heard, the Washington Post is reporting that Trump seized his own interpreter's notes after one meeting, the Trump-Putin sit-down in Hamburg in 2017. Last year at the Helsinki summit, the only other person in the room with Trump on the American side was a career State Department interpreter, Marina Gross. Well, some Democrats in Congress are calling again for her to be subpoenaed to testify.
Our next guest served 18 years as head of interpreters at the State Department. She was in the room interpreting when U.S. officials sat down with Fidel Castro, with Augusto Pinochet and many others Stephanie van Reigersberg, welcome to ALL THING CONSIDERED.
STEPHANIE VAN REIGERSBERG: Thank you.
KELLY: Is there any precedent for interpreters to be subpoenaed to testify about what they've witnessed?
VAN REIGERSBERG: No, it is something that I never imagined could happen.
KELLY: In your view, is it a good idea to start now?
VAN REIGERSBERG: I don't think it's a good idea at all. There is an ethical rule that governs the work of interpreters as it does the work of lawyers and doctors. And if interpreters were forced to violate professional secrecy, I can't see why anyone would ever trust an interpreter again. You have to believe that your interpreter is good and faithfully conveys what you're saying, but you also have to trust that the interpreter is not going to go and talk to anybody that asks for a readout.
And the other reason is the kinds of notes that interpreters take in order to do consecutive interpretation differ radically from the kinds of notes that substantive officers take when they are the official note-takers. Our interpretation notes are based on our short-term memory. They're full of little symbols and squiggles and arrows.
Basically, what interpreters do when they're taking notes is they draw a kind of road map through the material they're hearing. They are immediately thereafter able to reconstruct this piece of material. But if you show them those notes in two or three weeks, their eyes would glaze over and say...
KELLY: (Laughter).
VAN REIGERSBERG: ...I really don't remember (laughter) what this was about.
KELLY: The other thing I'm curious about that has come up here is, afterwards, is it common practice for an interpreter to brief senior aides? You know, regardless of whether there's public testimony before Congress, would an interpreter come out and share with the president or whoever - the secretary of state's - most senior aides, this is what we talked about?
VAN REIGERSBERG: I can't give you a 100 percent answer. If there is a note-taker in the room, which there always should be, in my humble opinion...
KELLY: Aside from the interpreter.
VAN REIGERSBERG: ...Then what frequently happens is that the note-taker will sit down with the interpreter and say, this is what I got. Is this what you recall? But it's not normal for some third party who had nothing to do with the meeting to call you and say, hey, why don't you give me a readout of the bilateral between President - I don't know - Clinton and someone else? That would be crossing a line into what we would all consider to be unethical.
KELLY: Can you imagine any scenario where the national security interests of the country should override what you've described as the importance of the sanctity and confidentiality of these conversations?
VAN REIGERSBERG: Well, if I really try to push this to an extreme position, I suppose I can imagine such a thing. But my question would still go back to my second facet of this whole conversation, which is what would the interpreter's recollection be worth? How can someone who interpreted at a meeting six months ago go before a committee of the House or the Senate, speak under oath and absolutely be sure that he or she is remembering correctly, given the kinds of notes we take?
KELLY: Stephanie van Reigersberg. She's former head of the interpreting division at the State Department. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk.
VAN REIGERSBERG: Thank you for having me.
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ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Here in Washington, D.C., today, a weekend snowstorm prompted federal offices to close. Of course many workers have already been away from their offices for more than three weeks because of the partial government shutdown. Also because of the government closures, tourists haven't been able to visit the city's most popular museums. As NPR's Rebecca Ellis reports, this has meant crowds in some unlikely places.
REBECCA ELLIS, BYLINE: Capitol Lounge is a popular watering hole for political staffers located just two blocks from the U.S. Capitol. So when the government stopped functioning, the owners knew their business was in trouble. They made a quick pivot.
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: Furlough shots, furlough shots, furlough shots.
ELLIS: Since the shutdown, the bar has been slinging shutdown-themed cocktails half-off for federal employees. Co-owner James Silk says it's worked.
JAMES SILK: It's been overwhelming. We're not the type of place that usually has a line out the door upon opening.
ELLIS: He feels especially fortunate, as many nearby businesses say they've lost half their customers.
SILK: People who come in here who are furloughed want a laugh, and they want to be able to enjoy themselves.
ELLIS: Erin Buckley is one of these people. For her, the government shutdown has resulted in looming unpaid bills and too much free time.
ERIN BUCKLEY: I've been doing a lot of mail prepping, hanging out by myself. I cleaned out my closet, like, three times. But mostly I've been very bored.
ELLIS: Buckley works for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, though right now she's weighing getting a second job to help her out with student loans. Until then, she's roaming the district, looking for something cheap to do.
BUCKLEY: I've got to discover the city in new ways. But also, I can't really spend money. So...
ELLIS: It's not just furloughed employees looking for a place to go. Tourists arriving in D.C. have found all the Smithsonian museums closed - no Museum of Natural History or Air and Space. Bartender Dara Dike says her bar full of furloughed workers has become a destination spot for many of these out-of-towners.
DARA DIKE: There'll be a tourist in from Florida, from Canada. We had a group come in from Australia.
ELLIS: Lots of places in and around the district are noting an unusual spike in people. Arlington National Cemetery has seen a big bump in families visiting the grave sites of loved ones. Private museums are booming, as is the National Aquarium in Baltimore and, across the Potomac River, Old Town, Alexandria, Va. Alexandria's little-known apothecary museum, which long ago filled orders for the likes of Martha Washington, is now holding back-to-back tours, a rarity for January. Down the road is a tavern once frequented by Thomas Jefferson. On a tour there is Chris Keefer, an analyst for the federal government.
CHRIS KEEFER: You know, getting a little antsy, so we came out today to take in some of the local history.
ELLIS: He's enjoying the sightseeing during this long federal shutdown. But...
KEEFER: This now is three weeks. So I think that's the longest period of time I've taken off in my entire career (laughter).
ELLIS: And as nice as the city's colonial sites are, he'd really rather be at his desk. Rebecca Ellis, NPR News, Washington.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is headed back to the U.S. after an extensive trip to the Middle East. His travels took him to the heart of several ongoing regional controversies. He is returning from this trip a day early because of a death in the family, skipping a planned visit to Kuwait. The controversies that have dogged him during this trip include the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi last October at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Pompeo talked about that this morning when he met with the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. U.S. intelligence believes Salman was behind the killing. We're joined now by NPR's Michele Kelemen who has been traveling with Pompeo. Hi, Michele.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: Hi there, Ari.
SHAPIRO: What can you tell us about the discussions that Pompeo and the prince had about the Khashoggi killing?
KELEMEN: Well, you know, it was actually the second time that they've met since the Khashoggi killing. I was here in October when we came, and it was kind of an odd picture, all smiles and everything. Today seemed a little bit more subdued though Mohammed bin Salman said he hopes to add some positivity to the discussion. After the meeting, Secretary Pompeo said that he did raise the case of Khashoggi. He again called for accountability for anyone responsible for his death. And he also said that he raised the cases of women activists who have been jailed in Saudi Arabia. Let's take a listen to what he had to say.
MIKE POMPEO: The Saudis are friends. And when friends have conversations, you tell them what your expectations are. And I think the Trump administration has made clear our expectation is that all those involved with the murder of Khashoggi will be held accountable. So we spent time talking about human rights issues.
KELEMEN: What he's expecting is a full accounting of the killing of Khashoggi, some due process for these women that are in jail. But I didn't get the sense from listening to him that he got very far on any of that.
SHAPIRO: Of course, the death of this Washington Post journalist has caused outrage around the world, including in the U.S. Congress where senators, including Republican senators, have said the prince is responsible for the killing. Based on the tape we just heard, it doesn't sound like this visit is likely to address those concerns.
KELEMEN: I don't think so. I mean, it sounds like they're stuck in where they were before. Pompeo himself has never gone on record saying that he endorses this idea that Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince, ordered the killing. In fact, we asked him again today, does he believe the U.S. intelligence assessment? And he just said, I don't comment on the U.S. intelligence assessment.
The other problem that's of concern in Congress, of course, is how the Saudis have waged this war in Yemen. The U.S. has backed the Saudi-led campaign to restore to power a government that was ousted by Iranian-backed rebels. And millions of people in the country are on the brink of famine. And that's another issue that the secretary has been trying to press both sides - the Iranian-backed rebels but also the Saudis, of course - to end this conflict.
SHAPIRO: Just to take a step back, we've been hearing reports from this entire trip, as Pompeo went to Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and more. What has his overarching message been?
KELEMEN: His big message is building up a coalition against Iran. The problem has been, of course, that, you know, he wants to paint this picture of the Middle East as Iran being the destabilizing force, and all the U.S. Gulf partners are the stabilizing force. But when you have things like the war in Yemen or the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, it raises questions about what U.S. partners are doing.
SHAPIRO: And there have also been things that distracted from his message, like the U.S. troop withdrawal in Syria - lots of questions about that.
KELEMEN: Yeah, lots of questions about that. He was trying to reassure everyone that just because the U.S. is pulling out U.S. troops from Syria, that doesn't mean they're backing off in the fight against ISIS or containing Iran. He also had to deal today, for instance, with a tweet from President Trump who said he wanted to devastate Turkey's economy if Turkey goes after the Kurds in Northern Syria. The Kurds have been allies of the U.S. in the fight against ISIS. Turkey sees them as terrorists. Pompeo says he'd like to deal with both sides so that Turkey feels secure from terrorism but also that the Kurds, who backed the U.S. in Northern Syria, also feel secure.
SHAPIRO: NPR's Michele Kelemen traveling with the secretary of state. Thanks, Michele.
KELEMEN: Thank you.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Tomorrow, members of the U.K. Parliament will face one of their most important votes in decades. They're deciding on Prime Minister Theresa May's plan to leave the European Union. Today, May warned that if she is defeated, the United Kingdom might never leave the EU, betraying the many millions who voted for Brexit.
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THERESA MAY: People's faith in the democratic process and their politicians would suffer catastrophic harm. We all have a duty to implement the result of the referendum.
KELLY: But many who voted to leave Brexit have been angered by the Brexit process. Though, as NPR's Frank Langfitt found on a visit to an English fishing community, some still want out of the EU, no matter the cost.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: It's still dark in the town of Lowestoft on England's east coast. June Mummery drives me to a morning fish auction her company runs along the docks.
JUNE MUMMERY: I'm absolutely disgusted at my government at the moment. I cannot believe what a fiasco this has turned into.
LANGFITT: As we arrive, a fish-buyer named Marty Bloomfield pops his head in the window to say hello and shares his thoughts about leaving the European Union.
MARTY BLOOMFIELD: I'm really keen for us to get out, and I don't care if we go the hard way. You know, it just needs to be done.
LANGFITT: Would you be willing to leave without a deal?
BLOOMFIELD: Absolutely, with no hesitation about that at all.
LANGFITT: Mummery's brought me to the auction to illustrate the impact she says the EU has had on her hometown's fishing industry.
MARTIN MITCHELL: Skate, and it's open - 2 pounds.
LANGFITT: Martin Mitchell is auctioning skate from big plastic bins lying on the market's concrete floor. Standing in blue overalls and black waders, he scribbles orders in a notebook. But there's not a lot of skate and even fewer buyers. Mitchell's worked here since the '70s.
MITCHELL: Thousands of people used to be employed on the market years ago here when I first started.
LANGFITT: Why has it changed so much?
MITCHELL: Lack of fishing opportunities, for foreigners are taking the fish away from the English, basically.
LANGFITT: Because the U.K. is a member of the EU, British fishermen have to share the nation's waters with boats from Europe, on which they blame much of the industry's decline.
Paul Lines has fished here since 1974. He says walking away from the EU with no future arrangement - what people here call a no-deal Brexit - would allow fishermen to reclaim their country's fishing grounds and rebuild the industry.
PAUL LINES: Europe's successively beaten our government in her corner, taken a bit more each year. After 40 years, we're beaten. But we have the ability of once in a lifetime now to take back control and shape our destiny.
LANGFITT: The EU's Common Fisheries Policy is complex and involves quotas for fishing certain species. And experts say British fishermen do have some legitimate complaints. But Peter Aldous, a Conservative Member of Parliament who represents the area, says some of the blame lies at home.
PETER ALDOUS: I also think you'd have to say that successive British governments have mismanaged and implemented the Common Fisheries Policy in a way that has not been good for Lowestoft, in particular with regard to the management of the quota system.
LANGFITT: While some of the fishing community just want to walk away from the EU, Aldous is wary about the impact on other businesses.
ALDOUS: A no-deal Brexit - you are playing a game of Russian roulette with those industries. And for that reason, I would feel very uncomfortable with a no-deal Brexit.
LANGFITT: But June Mummery and others in the fishing community here disagree. She sees a quick divorce from the EU as creating a new beginning for the industry. Now, she says, if only the politicians in London would see it her way. Frank Langfitt, NPR News, Lowestoft.
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ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Over the weekend, Houston's airport shut down one of its security checkpoints. Miami's airport briefly did the same. Around the country, TSA agents have been calling in sick after three weeks of working without pay. The government shutdown is now the longest in U.S. history. And to talk about the impact this has on airline safety, Todd Curtis joins us now. He's founder of airsafe.com. Welcome.
TODD CURTIS: Well, thanks for having me.
SHAPIRO: The shutdown affects a lot of people who work in the aviation industry, from air traffic controllers to TSA agents and more. Let's start with TSA, the people who screen luggage. They've been working without pay. As we said, some airports are closing checkpoints. What impact does all of this have on safety?
CURTIS: Well, the impact on safety, or rather the risk to the passengers due to deliberate actions such as terrorism, I believe is minimal, if non-existent, because the shutting down of some of the terminals is indicative of a staffing issue, not a quality-of-staff issue. So far, there's no indication that the likelihood of the TSA preventing acts of terror from happening has dropped any.
SHAPIRO: So even though people are not being paid, they're doing the same job, checking the same bags. The lines might be longer, but we shouldn't expect that dangerous materials might get through.
CURTIS: That's correct. There are clearly some potential stresses that would come from - financial stresses, primarily - people who are going without paychecks. That may add more stress to the workplace, but there's no indication that that has been an issue so far.
SHAPIRO: What about air traffic controllers? They are also working without pay. That's been the case through Christmas and New Year's. At some point, does that start to affect passenger safety?
CURTIS: It's possible that it may affect air traffic controllers for the same reason the TSA may be affected. The fact that they're not getting paid doesn't reduce their quality of work. It may increase the stresses they may have from financial issues. So far, that hasn't been evident.
SHAPIRO: There are also people who work as aviation safety inspectors, and many of them are furloughed. They're not working without pay. They're just not working at all.
CURTIS: Well, these air safety inspectors, who may ride along in cockpits and oversee the operations of maintenance, et cetera, are there as a check and balance to make sure that the procedures that should be followed are being followed and that the regulations aren't being violated.
If they're not there, there may be a tendency of some to cut corners. That tendency is probably not going to be an issue because there's a level of professionalism in the aviation business, whether it's pilots, mechanics, et cetera, that would not tolerate deliberate actions that would be cutting corners or violating regulations.
SHAPIRO: Are there pressure points in the aviation industry - places that are being stressed by the shutdown - that passengers might not be aware of that could have an impact on traveler safety?
CURTIS: Well, getting back to the TSA situation, the most visible part of the TSA are the screeners at checkpoints. The TSA is more than just that. There are also people who are working out of sight, who are checking check bags, who have bomb- and drug-sniffing dogs to check baggage and such. All that is being done out of the sight of passengers.
There's no indication that there's any problem there. But as time goes on, it's unclear to me whether any part of TSA or other protective organizations, such as Customs and Border Protection, may have a stress level at such that the job isn't being done to the standard that passengers are used to.
SHAPIRO: You know, here in Washington, D.C., where I am, we've had snowy weather over the weekend, and a lot of flights were delayed or canceled. That's going to be a stressful time for any airport.
Does it become more of a concern when you have something like this shutdown stretching on for weeks, and people are already under stress before the bad weather arrives and everything gets upended?
CURTIS: The typical snowstorm or other weather activity that happens in the winter probably won't stress the system. What may be a real test of the system is if there's an extraordinary level of serious weather that shuts down numerous airports, that makes it difficult for the staffing levels that are now in place to actually get the job done.
One hopes that that stress test will not happen. But if it does, we'll probably see issues come to the surface quicker than we have in the past three weeks.
SHAPIRO: That's Todd Curtis, founder and CEO of the website airsafe.com. Thanks for joining us.
CURTIS: Well, thank you again for having me.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
California's largest utility company - that would be Pacific Gas and Electric Corporation - announced plans today to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company faces billions in liabilities and costs related to last year's massive wildfires. A bankruptcy filing could have big implications for PG&E shareholders, employees and more than 9 million customers, as NPR's Eric Westervelt reports.
ERIC WESTERVELT, BYLINE: PG&E's problems have mushroomed since November's fire destroyed the Northern California town of Paradise and killed 86 people in the state's most destructive wildfire. The company faces a flood of lawsuits from fire victims alleging that faulty maintenance of its aging electric system is to blame. Its insurance companies are suing the utility. PG&E's stock has been battered, and ratings agencies have slashed it to junk status. By the company's own estimates, potential liabilities from combined 2017 and 2018 wildfires could reach $30 billion. That's far more than its current assets. And that doesn't account for potential future wildfire liabilities in a state that has seen historic fire damage in back-to-back years.
PG&E board chairman Richard Kelly said in a statement that Chapter 11 represents the only viable option to address the company's responsibilities to its stakeholders. The state legislature could take action in coming weeks to protect the company from 2018 fire liabilities, but given the raw anger at the utility, that may be politically impossible.
JERRY HILL: I certainly don't want to see another bailout for the fires of 2018.
WESTERVELT: State Senator Jerry Hill, a Democrat, heads a key utility safety committee. He says he'll work to see that any reorganization protects ratepayers and fire victims first. Hill says if today's announcement is a company tactic to pressure the legislature for a bailout, it won't work.
HILL: PG&E shareholders and bondholders - they invested, and sometimes we make bad investments. And I think that we should not be helping or assisting them nor giving golden parachutes to CEOs as well.
WESTERVELT: This would be the company's second bankruptcy in two decades. The utility's 2001 reorganization led to a negotiated rate increase. Back then, the company painted itself as a victim of deregulation. But since then, the company has been convicted of felonies in a deadly gas line explosion and now faces those potentially crippling wildfire liabilities and safety lawsuits. So Mindy Spatt with the group The Utility Reform Network says this time is very different. The company's problems are from what she calls PG&E's practice of putting profits ahead of safety.
MINDY SPATT: The debt that PG&E is talking about is debt that arises directly from its own negligence and liability. It is a longstanding principle of utility law that customers don't pay for that kind of thing.
WESTERVELT: Sunday night, PG&E announced that its CEO, Geisha Williams, was stepping down after barely two years on the job. The company says safety improvement is a top priority, but many customers and lawmakers are skeptical. Eric Westervelt, NPR News, San Francisco.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The mayor of the Polish city of Gdansk died this morning after doctors fought for hours to save his life. Pawel Adamowicz was stabbed yesterday during a televised charity event. Shortly before he was attacked on stage, the mayor had complimented the audience on the money they'd helped to raise. This is a wonderful time of spreading good, he said. You are all wonderful. Gdansk is the most amazing city.
Well, reporter Anna Noryskiewicz joins us from Berlin. Hi, Anna.
ANNA NORYSKIEWICZ, BYLINE: Hi.
KELLY: Can you give us more details about what exactly happened last night in Gdansk?
NORYSKIEWICZ: So the mayor of Gdansk, Pawel Adamowicz, was attacked on Sunday while he was attending the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity, which is an annual event where volunteers raise money for medical equipment and hospitals. And a 27-year-old attacker stabbed him multiple times. And he later - after a very long surgery, what lasted more than five hours, he later died from his wounds.
KELLY: Do we know anything about the motives of this 27-year-old attacker?
NORYSKIEWICZ: So it is not yet clear if the motives were political. It was definitely a criminal attack. The attacker reportedly shouted that the mayor's former party which he belonged to, the Civil (ph) Platform, was responsible for his incarceration because the attacker was in jail for more than five years for robbing a bank and for other charges. And he reportedly shouted that the Civic Platform wrongfully indicted him or was responsible for him being wrongfully convicted.
KELLY: What should we know about the mayor? I was reading up on him, and I gather he was widely known throughout Poland for supporting gay rights, for supporting the rights of immigrants.
NORYSKIEWICZ: Exactly. So now you can say that Poland is really in a state of shock because he was a very popular figure and known best for his political - or liberal political views, very pro-immigration and an advocate for LBGTQ rights with a very harsh stance on anti-Semitism as well. And of course, he was a critic of the right-wing, nationalist Law and Justice Party, which is the ruling government since 2015. And he himself was an independent politician but used to be a long-term member of the liberal Civic Platform. And he's a father of two girls, married. And he held the position for two decades.
KELLY: For 20 years. Wow.
NORYSKIEWICZ: Exactly. And he first came to power in 1998, and he had been reelected four times, including in the last elections in November.
KELLY: And you were starting to mention what the reaction to this has been in Poland. I gather there were rallies today, anti-violence rallies.
NORYSKIEWICZ: Exactly. So from all major political parties, people were condemning the attack. Again, he was a very famous public figure. And you have to understand that ever since the national right-wing, conservative Law and Justice party came into power, the political atmosphere in Poland is very tense because basically what you can say is that society is really divided into pro-government supporters and into supporters of the Civil (ph) Platform. And recently, there've been attacks and altercations between those two platforms.
KELLY: Have we seen violence like this before - a murder?
NORYSKIEWICZ: Well, we've seen altercations, and we've seen attacks on both peace supporters and Civil (ph) Platform supporters. So these incidents happen, but not yet that they actually resulted in death.
KELLY: But you're describing a political climate that, to use your word, has gotten more tense, has gotten more violent in recent days and months.
NORYSKIEWICZ: Exactly.
KELLY: That's reporter Anna Noryskiewicz reporting on the fatal stabbing of the mayor of Gdansk in Poland.
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ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Senators have a lot of questions for President Trump's nominee to lead the Justice Department - questions about the Mueller investigation, independence from the White House and whether the president is above the law. Tomorrow, William Barr will have a chance to answer those questions in the first day of his confirmation hearing to be attorney general. According to excerpts of his opening statement, he'll say, I believe it is vitally important that the special counsel be allowed to complete his investigation, and I also believe it is very important that the public and Congress be informed of the results of the special counsel's work.
Barr has led the Justice Department before in the early '90s under the first President Bush. And his deputy at the time, George Terwilliger, joins us now. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
GEORGE TERWILLIGER: Thank you, Ari. Nice to be with you.
SHAPIRO: You wrote a Washington Post Op-Ed endorsing Barr for attorney general, in which you said that some people saw you two as joined at the hip when you were both at the Justice Department. So how would you describe his approach to the job?
TERWILLIGER: His approach to the job as attorney general is much like his approach to the job of being a lawyer. He is a very principled, careful lawyer who believes that the rule of law should dictate the outcome of anything that comes before the department.
SHAPIRO: There is a long tradition of the attorney general working to preserve the Justice Department's independence from the White House. And at the same time, President Trump has made it clear that he believes the attorney general should answer to the president and, if necessary, protect the president. Where do you think Barr's understanding the job lies?
TERWILLIGER: Well, clearly Bill believes the attorney general is a subordinate, as the Constitution says the attorney general is, of the president. But he also believes that, for the sake of the integrity of the Justice Department, that its work is better freed of any political interference or undue influence. And, you know, we could probably spend the next hour talking about, you know, what that...
SHAPIRO: What that means in practice.
TERWILLIGER: ...Means in practice. That's right. But I think if you look at Bill's record when he was attorney general, in practice he maintained that level of independence.
SHAPIRO: You say Barr's record speaks to his approach to the job. Can you point us to an example of a time that he has protected the Justice Department from political influence?
TERWILLIGER: I don't recall a time in the administration of George Herbert Walker Bush where we worried about undue political influence. Really ever since Watergate, presidents have had more of a hands-off attitude about the Justice Department. People talk about the traditional independence of the Justice Department, and I'm all for that.
But if you look at as recent as President Kennedy, presidents had no compunction about telling the attorney generals what they ought to be doing and what their priorities ought to be. So there's kind of a fine line between improper interference and presidents letting their views be known.
SHAPIRO: Bill Barr has written one memo in particular that's gotten a lot of scrutiny about the Mueller investigation. And if I can paraphrase, he writes that a president can face obstruction of justice charges for directly altering an investigation, like witness tampering or interfering with evidence, but not, for example, for hiring and firing officials as part of his constitutional duties, like firing FBI Director James Comey. If Barr is confirmed as attorney general, do you think President Trump's future could hinge on that memo?
TERWILLIGER: No, I don't think so. First of all, I think Bill was right, but it's a very narrow analysis. And it's misunderstood in some respects. And I'm sure maybe tomorrow we'll get educated a little further.
SHAPIRO: It seems that everybody who takes a senior position in Trump's orbit, sooner or later, comes in for intense personal attacks from the president. Trump publicly called the last attorney general, Jeff Sessions, disloyal, weak, disgraceful. Given the way that Trump treats people close to him, why do you think Bill Barr wants this job?
TERWILLIGER: I think Bill agreed to take this job because he's a patriot, and he believes that, at this particular time, a steady hand committed to the rule of law was what was needed at the Justice Department. He cares about the department. And Bill is no shrinking violet. So I think he and the president will get along just fine.
SHAPIRO: George Terwilliger, former deputy attorney general who served with Bill Barr in the early '90s. Thanks for joining us today.
TERWILLIGER: Thank you for having me.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
It may be 2019, but the 2020 presidential campaign has already begun. Some potential Democratic candidates have taken big steps towards running, the latest being Julian Castro. The former mayor of San Antonio and former Obama cabinet member announced this weekend he's running for president.
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JULIAN CASTRO: When my grandmother got here almost a hundred years ago, I'm sure that she never could've imagined that just two generations later, one of her grandsons would be serving as a member of the United States Congress and the other would be standing with you here today to say these words. I am a candidate for president of the United States of America.
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KELLY: For more about how the 2020 Democratic field is filling out, we are joined by NPR's lead political editor Domenico Montanaro. Hello, Domenico.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Hey there, Mary Louise.
KELLY: Start with Castro and that announcement we just heard. What struck you about it?
MONTANARO: Well, you know, the fact is Castro is Latino. And you know, he made a lot of comments during this speech that were bilingual, frankly. He also said in Spanish, (speaking Spanish); I am a candidate for president of the United States. And that really struck a lot of Latinos in a really emotional way because to be able to see this - for any immigrant family, frankly - see somebody go - able to cross this threshold is really fundamental, especially in this era of President Trump, to be honest.
KELLY: In this era of talking about the border and immigration - and he's a third-generation Mexican-American. Another well-known name who has jumped in recently - well-known name who's jumped in recently is Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. She has been all over the map for months. She was in New Hampshire this weekend. What are we learning about the case that she's going to make to voters?
MONTANARO: Well, she's a fighter, right? And she's been making a very strong case about corporations and Wall Street going unregulated and kind of working within the system. She talks about CEOs and executives getting rich while the little guy gets the scraps. And she was in New Hampshire this weekend, and she went a little bit broader than just that. So let's take a listen there.
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ELIZABETH WARREN: We need to make change in this country - not little bitty change, not change at the margins, not a nibble around the edges, not even pass one good law here and one good law there. We need to make systemic change in this country.
MONTANARO: And that might sound a lot like Bernie Sanders - kind of radical, take down the system, change things from the way they are.
KELLY: Bernie Sanders, who is also thinking about making a run in 2020.
MONTANARO: Absolutely. And, you know - but the difference here with Bernie Sanders in this time around if he decides to run - people are wondering if his base will stay with him because you have so many more options. It's not just Bernie versus the establishment.
And frankly, I think a lot of people are looking at this election as pugilism versus pragmatism. Are you somebody who's going to be a fighter and fight for those causes, or are you going to be somebody who takes incremental change? And what one strategist said to me was that they want to find somebody they can fall in love with, somebody that they can go to the mat for, especially because President Trump has such a loyal following.
KELLY: Circle you back quickly to Elizabeth Warren, who the president has a habit of tweeting about. He had a pretty stunning...
MONTANARO: Yeah.
KELLY: ...Tweet about her over the weekend. What did it say?
MONTANARO: He did. You know, he again called her Pocahontas. He went further, saying that it would've been a smash if her husband had dressed in full Indian garb and filmed it from Bighorn or Wounded Knee. And there's so much going on there that a lot of people have found racist or offensive. I mean, hundreds of people were killed. Women and children were massacred at Wounded Knee. Congress apologize for this in 1990. But the fact that he's going after her is very telling because he goes after opponents he sees as threats.
KELLY: All right, a lot of jockeying in the months to come as the Democrats try to figure out who might be able to take on and beat President Trump in 2020. Domenico Montanaro, thanks very much.
MONTANARO: Absolutely - be more to talk about.
KELLY: Oh, yes.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
French President Emmanuel Macron is trying to end the yellow vest protests that are now in their third month. In a letter today to the French people, he invited regular citizens to take part in a series of public debates. Despite government concessions to the protesters, there is no sign that the yellow vest campaign will stop soon. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley explains.
(CROSSTALK, LAUGHTER)
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: The gilets jaunes are fired up. This group of yellow vest protesters has been occupying the same traffic circle near the Normandy town of Rouen since mid-November. Threats of arrest don't keep them away. They build bonfires, block traffic and chat with truckers who honk in support. With the movement constantly at the top of the news, protester Fred Bard says they feel powerful.
FRED BARD: (Through interpreter) This is the most important thing I've ever done. We've made the government react. But we yellow-vesters are not going to accept the crumbs Macron has thrown us.
BEARDSLEY: Bard says they won't stop until Macron resigns. Others talk about dissolving the Parliament. Marc Lazar, a historian at Sciences Po university in Paris, says part of the movement is radicalizing.
MARC LAZAR: They refuse a possibility of compromise, of negotiation with the government. They say, no, we just want the rejection of Macron. We hate him. The importance of the hate is something crucial in this yellow vest movement.
BEARDSLEY: The movement rose up from small-town, rural France, places without public transport where people depend on their cars. Anger over higher gas prices sparked the movement last November. Christophe Barbier, a columnist for L'Express magazine, says there are two different nations within France.
CHRISTOPHE BARBIER: In France, there is a nation who understood the new rules of international capitalism, and it is the brain of France. But the body of France did not understand the rules and did not accept the new rules of capitalism.
BEARDSLEY: In some ways, the bonfires and bonhomie at rural roundabouts across the country have replaced the cafes and shops that have disappeared as rural France declines. Forty-two-year-old yellow vest protester Claire Bitaine has lived her whole life in the countryside.
CLAIRE BITAINE: (Through interpreter) Before, any village would have at least a newspaper and tobacco shop, a bakery, a couple cafes, places for people to meet and socialize. That's all disappearing as people are pushed to come to the cities to work. Rural life is discredited now. Only intellectual work is recognized and valued in France today.
BEARDSLEY: These protesters denounce violence and say it's aggressive riot police who create the trouble. The French public doesn't condone the violence, but its support is key to the movement's continued success, says Professor Lazar.
LAZAR: Many French people, even if they don't support the movement, think that the claims of the gilets jaunes are not only for them but for all the French people.
BEARDSLEY: Yellow-vesters can be from the far-left, or even the far-right, but most say they are apolitical. But they don't accept that a CEO makes 40 times what a worker does or that shareholders get ever-larger dividends while employees get laid off. Most don't even believe in capitalism. Christophe Barbier from L'Express magazine says that fits in with the general French view.
BARBIER: If you are a good capitalist, if you are lucky in business, you have to share the profit with everybody. That's the French conception since the French Revolution.
BEARDSLEY: Not since the French Revolution and May 1968 has French society been so shaken to its core. Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Paris.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
In Florida 70 years ago, four black men were accused of raping a white 17 year old. The case became a notorious example of injustice and racism in the Deep South. The men were known as the Groveland Four. All of them have died. And now Florida's Clemency Board has unanimously agreed to pardon the men posthumously. Carol Greenlee is the daughter of one of those men, Charles Greenlee, and she joins us now. Welcome.
CAROL GREENLEE: Thank you.
SHAPIRO: So for the last 70 years, you have been confident of your father's innocence. Tell me about the moment you heard that acknowledged from officials in Florida.
GREENLEE: My faith has kept me on the right path. And when I heard that the county had apologized publicly about the injustices that were done, I was elated.
SHAPIRO: That apology, we should say, was in 2017.
GREENLEE: That's right. The state Florida legislature unanimously, in both houses, issued an apology and asked that the governor expedite the pardon. That was it. So we waited and waited and waited. And we thought, oh, yeah, this is going happen. But it never did. And every encounter with state officials during that time, they would say that the process has to take place. They had thousands of requests in front of them, and it had to go in sequence.
SHAPIRO: The teenager who falsely accused your father and the three others of this crime, Norma Padgett, is still alive and spoke at the clemency board's hearing on Friday. And she insisted that she did not lie all those 70 years ago. So what was it like to hear her say that even after all of this evidence has shown your father's innocence?
GREENLEE: It was not to take away from the moment that I was there to witness. I went there not knowing that she was going to be there, not knowing that the governor was going to take a vote. I went there to, again, hear a discussion about the evidence and to keep on the rules and keep focus on seeing through that my father innocence will one day be done. I had already pretty much accomplished the first goal, and that was letting the world know the truth. And the second was to get him pardoned. I was glad she was there because that was a piece that I had not heard, that she had not spoken or not said anything about it. So that, in itself, to hear her say that, backed up against all of the evidence, was, again, a relief for me.
SHAPIRO: You must have some mixed emotions today about the fact that neither your father nor the other three men who were falsely accused lived to see themselves pardoned.
GREENLEE: Yes. I wish my father had lived to see it. But I know that as long as my father lived, he was not going to push it. He was not going to even allow me to push it because he said so and because of...
SHAPIRO: Why? Why didn't he want you to push it?
GREENLEE: ...Because it was too painful. He wanted to put that behind him. And he would say to me, Carol, stand up and look behind you. As long as you're looking behind you, you can't see your opportunities in front of you. You can't move forward in a positive way. And if you are doing something that's going to help only you, leave it alone. So I ask you, he said, who will it help? And lord knows, in that chamber Friday, it told me that this pardon - this process, the law, criminal justice system in this country works. It's the people that keep it from working.
SHAPIRO: This pardon is still something short of a full exoneration, which would affirmatively state the innocence of these four men including your father. Do you plan to keep fighting for that further step?
GREENLEE: Yes, that is to totally clear my father's name. And if it takes exoneration to do that, I will not quit. I may get tired. And my father say, rest if you may but just don't quit. I will not quit until it is done.
SHAPIRO: You have one son. What do you want him to know about his late grandfather, your father?
GREENLEE: My father was a proud man, was a family man, was one that would protect his children no matter what. He was a person that felt compassion for the underdog. My father loved his family, respected authority and taught us to do the same. And I have passed that on to my son, my nieces and nephews.
SHAPIRO: Carol Greenlee, daughter of Charles Greenlee, one of the Groveland Four posthumously pardoned by Florida's Clemency Board. Thank you so much for joining us today.
GREENLEE: Thank you for having me.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Now a story about an egg - a mighty, humble egg that conquered the Internet with the help of tens of millions of people on Instagram.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Instagram, the platform where Kim Kardashian and Kanye West can get 2 1/2 million likes for posting a wedding photo.
KELLY: Yeah, that was the most popular post in Instagram history way back in 2014.
SHAPIRO: Beyonce won Instagram for a year. Her pregnancy announcement in 2017 got love from more than 11 million people.
KELLY: And then right up until this past weekend, Kylie Jenner held the title. The first photo of her baby, Stormi, got 18 million likes.
SHAPIRO: Enter the egg - nothing special about it.
KELLY: Nothing special, just a normal brown egg on a white background with some nice little brown speckles.
SHAPIRO: It's actually a stock photo posted by an account called world record egg. This is the only image the account has ever posted. It went up 10 days ago with a caption that reads in part, let's set a world record together and get the most liked post on Instagram. And it worked. As of now, the egg has about twice as many likes as that Kylie Jenner runner-up.
KELLY: So what is going on? Well, here's Taylor Lorenz, a writer for The Atlantic.
TAYLOR LORENZ: This has been a trend with teenagers for months, and it's basically just kind of absurdist humor. They're kind of in the same genre of same pic everyday accounts that just post the same picture of some stock image every single day as kind of a joke.
KELLY: The account comes with a mysterious email address. BuzzFeed reached out, and the reporter was told the Instagram account is being run by (laughter) - by a chicken from the English countryside named Henrietta. The egg, BuzzFeed is told, goes by the name Eugene.
SHAPIRO: We have not fact-checked those claims.
KELLY: (Laughter) No.
SHAPIRO: Taylor Lorenz of The Atlantic says this is a way for people to connect online.
LORENZ: People used to do these viral challenges like planking or the cinnamon challenge. Like, it plays into that sort of collective nature of the Internet. And the fun of it is that you're kind of all working together to build this, like, viral thing or to accomplish this one task.
KELLY: Now that they have accomplished this one task of making it the most liked post, it could be time for this trend to die.
LORENZ: This might be the peak of it. Most of the time, once any of these things break into the mainstream, it kind of becomes lame. So I don't know. You might see a bunch of copycats hop on.
SHAPIRO: For now, every one of those tens of millions of people who've liked the egg post on Instagram can say they helped make history.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The Trump administration suffered a big defeat in court today over its plans to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. A federal judge in New York has concluded the question was unlawful and should be removed from census forms. NPR's Hansi Lo Wang has been covering this legal battle from the very beginning. He joins me now. Hey, Hansi.
HANSI LO WANG, BYLINE: Hey, Mary Louise.
KELLY: All right, before we get into the details of today's ruling, remind us just what exactly the wording is - was of the citizenship question.
WANG: The question asks, is this person a citizen of the United States? It's the kind of question that a sample of U.S. households have been asked by the government - but not all - since the 1950 census close to 70 years ago. And the Trump administration says it wants to add a citizenship question onto the 2020 census because it wants more detailed citizenship data to better enforce part of the Voting Rights Act, specifically Section Two of the Voting Rights Act, which has protections against discrimination of racial and language minorities.
KELLY: Which explains perhaps why so many states and cities and all kinds of groups have sued to try to get this question taken off the census.
WANG: Right. They don't buy that reasoning from the Trump administration. The bottom line here is that all of these plaintiffs are worried that this question will result in fewer people being counted for the 2020 census. Remember; the Constitution requires a head count of - every 10 years of every person living in the U.S. But Census Bureau research suggests this question, the citizenship question, will scare away immigrants from participating. And that could have a direct impact on how power and money are distributed in this country.
You know, the plaintiffs are also arguing that the administration was misleading the public by using this Voting Rights Act to justify adding this question and not listening to recommendations from Census Bureau staffers who advocated for using existing government records instead of a citizenship question. And we heard earlier today from one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, Dale Ho of the American Civil Liberties Union. Let's listen to what he said.
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DALE HO: These are not the acts and statements of government officials who are merely trying to cut through red tape. Instead they are the acts and statements of officials with something to hide.
WANG: And I did reach out to the Justice Department, who sent back a statement. They said they are disappointed by this decision, and they are still, quote, "reviewing the ruling."
KELLY: OK, so that's what the various parties invested in this are saying. What's the judge saying? What was his reasoning behind his ruling today?
WANG: Well, U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman wrote a very thorough opinion. It's really, you know, more than 270 pages written by someone who's expecting a higher court to look over his shoulder. You know, I was there every day for the trial in New York over the citizenship question. And Furman has said that he's expecting his decision to be appealed, so he put out a very carefully worded opinion.
And some of the main points here is that - one of them is essentially that he believes that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the census - that he made the wrong call by adding a citizenship question before deciding to use existing government records as much as possible and that he made a, quote, "smorgasbord of violations" of administrative procedure act, including cherry-picking evidence to support his decision to add a citizenship question.
KELLY: Quickly before I let you go, Hansi, you said the judge expects his decision to be appealed. I mean, the timing here is tricky, right? We're a year away from the start of the 2020 census. Is that enough time for this to play out however it's going to ultimately play out in the courts?
WANG: It's going to be very, very tight. And we can't forget that there are lawsuits also in California and Maryland. There are - all underway. And we're going to keep on watching to see where this all - how this all unfolds.
KELLY: NPR's Hansi Lo Wang covering all things census-related - thank you, Hansi.
WANG: You're welcome.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The 23-year-old jazz pianist James Francies has his musical fingerprints all over the place. He has recorded a Grammy-winning single with Chance the Rapper. He's toured with Lauryn Hill and Pat Metheny. And for the past four years, he's filled in on "The Tonight Show" with the house band The Roots. Now Francies has released his own album, and our own Walter Ray Watson has this profile.
WALTER RAY WATSON, BYLINE: Here's what the pace of James Francies' life sounds like right now.
(SOUNDBITE OF JAMES FRANCIES' "CRIB")
WATSON: Francies is moving very fast through music circles, doing an ever-widening variety of gigs. And to keep up with demand, he says he's flying a bunch.
JAMES FRANCIES: It just felt like you're on a plane at 40,000 feet, traveling at, like, 600 miles an hour.
WATSON: He calls his first album "Flight."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CRIB")
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: On behalf of all of us here, we'd like to be the first to welcome you to Houston.
WATSON: This tune is a shout-out to his hometown. It's called "Crib."
FRANCIES: When we say crib, we just know that's Houston. You know, you think about Frenchy's or, like, Shipleys or just barbecue, just food and just anything Houston. We just - like, yeah, that's crib.
WATSON: That's where he started playing at 4. His parents, a couple of non-musicians, took him to hear a concert at their church. It featured the late pianist, composer and family friend Joe Sample, one of the Jazz Crusaders.
FRANCIES: And he was the first jazz pianist I ever saw live. And it was incredible. And Joe Sample wrote me a note saying, always love your music. And I was 5 years old. I will never forget that.
WATSON: A framed poster from the concert still hangs at home.
FRANCIES: He always - he used to call me Little Oscar actually.
WATSON: After jazz great Oscar Peterson, someone who also played lots of notes. Here's what Francies sounded like at 17 at the High School for Performing and Visual Arts in Houston.
(SOUNDBITE OF JAZZ MUSIC)
WATSON: He was ambitious. He made audition tapes like this one with hopes a summer jazz camp would accept him.
JASON MORAN: I remember hearing James when he was still in high school - maybe a junior in high school and thinking, like, oh, wow, this kid has it together.
WATSON: That's pianist Jason Moran. No slouch himself, he's artistic director for jazz at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. And as it turns out, he also went to the same high school in Houston as Francies. Moran's a mentor and a fan.
MORAN: James has the ability to do things with his hands. You know, at one part, it's extremely technically challenging what he is able to accomplish. The other part, he has this right hand that really can make the upper register kind of sing.
(SOUNDBITE OF JAMES FRANCIES' "ANB")
WATSON: In addition to being an accomplished pianist, James Francies says he's been writing his own tunes since he was 8.
FRANCIES: But they didn't really get good until, like, last week.
(LAUGHTER)
WATSON: Most of the compositions on his debut album are instrumentals.
(SOUNDBITE OF JAMES FRANCIES AND YEBBA SONG, "MY DAY WILL COME")
WATSON: But he co-wrote one of the vocals with another 23-year-old, newcomer Abbey Smith. She uses the stage name YEBBA.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MY DAY WILL COME")
YEBBA: (Vocalizing).
WATSON: They wrote the song "My Day Will Come" after her mother's death by suicide.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MY DAY WILL COME")
YEBBA: (Singing) I thought that I had everything to myself.
He's so fierce but, like, so gentle at the same time when he plays. And so that really kind of helped me step back and just focus on the simple things that I wanted to say 'cause the ease was there. So instead of me trying to be, like, all this pain, all this pain, all this pain, he helped me to release hope.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MY DAY WILL COME")
YEBBA: (Singing) And, love, our day will come, and I'll see the sun. And it all just might come crashing right back down to the ground. But I will stand again, my friend.
WATSON: James Francies is composing songs for YEBBA's debut recording in addition to touring for his new record and playing as a sideman with other jazz artists in New York.
FRANCIES: I mean, I'll always be a jazz pianist at heart, you know?
WATSON: There's a but in there.
FRANCIES: I feel I just have so much more to offer in terms of the songwriting, performing, producing. It's just - I just see it all as music, you know?
WATSON: James Francies hopes to carry listeners on their own journey into where music is going if, that is, they can keep up with him. Walter Ray Watson, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF JAMES FRANCIES' "SWAY")
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
In London today, British lawmakers dealt a massive defeat to Prime Minister Theresa May's plan to exit the European Union.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MP: The ayes to the right, 202. The noes to the left, 432.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
May's defeat in Parliament now creates huge uncertainty. Britain is set to leave the EU on March 29, deal or no deal. The concern is that without some kind of an agreement, there could be disruption at the borders with Europe and a lot of economic pain.
For more on today's developments, we're joined by NPR's Frank Langfitt at Parliament in London. Hi, Frank.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: Hey. Hi, Ari.
SHAPIRO: The fact the Parliament defeated this was not a surprise. The scale of it was shocking. Why did MPs vote so overwhelmingly against this Brexit plan?
LANGFITT: Well, there were a lot of things in this plan for a lot of members of Parliament to dislike. The key thing, I think, Ari, was many were concerned that it would keep the United Kingdom in the grip of the European Union perhaps for years to come with no way to actually get out. There was also a lot of people who want to remain in the EU, and they felt that this was worse than the current deal that they had. And that's one of the reasons I think you saw such huge numbers here.
SHAPIRO: Well, what did the prime minister have to say after this massive defeat?
LANGFITT: Well, she - she knew it was coming, I think. She acknowledged it was a huge defeat. And she pointed out, I think, importantly that there isn't a majority in Parliament right now, it seems, for any solution to Brexit. And here's what she said.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
THERESA MAY: The house has spoken and the government will listen. It is clear that the house does not support this deal. But tonight's vote tells us nothing about what it does support.
SHAPIRO: OK, Frank, so there are clearly questions about the future of the U.K.-EU relationship. But there are even more immediate questions about the future of Theresa May. Can she survive this as prime minister?
LANGFITT: Well, the opposition Labour Party intends to test that and find out. Just not long after the prime minister spoke, a Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, of the opposition, he spoke up, too. This is what he had to say.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JEREMY CORBYN: I have now tabled a motion of no confidence in this government.
(BOOING AND CHEERING)
CORBYN: And I'm pleased - I'm pleased that motion will be debated tomorrow so this house can give its verdict on the sheer incompetence of this government.
SHAPIRO: Frank, this defeat comes after more than a year and a half of negotiations with the European Union leading to this deal. You have covered the back-and-forth and back-and-forth. Now that it has been shot down, what happens next?
LANGFITT: Well, it's going to be very interesting to watch. You know, tomorrow, she will face a no-confidence vote. She's actually - and this is extraordinary to say this, Ari - she may well survive. Her party seems willing to back her. She has the Democratic Unionist Party that's propping up her government, giving it a small majority. They think that people will vote with her.
And so then after that, on Monday, she's got to come up with a plan B. But it's hard to know what she's going to come up with because she's really stuck now between a parliament that hates her deal and the European Union that said, you know, we've been through this now for a really long time. We're tired of negotiating.
It's also kind of hard to imagine - even if she went back to Brussels, what would she bring back here that would turn around such a massive defeat? So it's very hard to see where it goes right now.
SHAPIRO: The people who voted against her today include both hardcore Brexiteers and people who don't want to see the U.K. leave the European Union. Is there any chance of another referendum on this?
LANGFITT: You know, I was asking that question from members of Parliament leaving right now, and one that I spoke to said there just is not the votes for that at the moment. And there are members of Parliament who would like to seize control of this process and push it to another referendum.
There were huge crowds outside today, tonight yelling for referendum. But at the moment, we don't see it coming yet. This is kind of a day-to-day process, Ari, and we're just going to have to see how this unfolds in the next few days.
SHAPIRO: That's NPR's Frank Langfitt speaking with us from Parliament in London on this dramatic day. Thank you, Frank.
LANGFITT: Happy to do it, Ari.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Let's bring in another voice now to help us try to make sense of this dramatic day - as Ari just said, this dramatic day unfolding in Britain. George Parker is political editor of the Financial Times. He is on the line from London. Hi, George.
GEORGE PARKER: Hi there.
KELLY: If I asked you for one word to sum up what just happened, what might that word be?
PARKER: Momentous, I think, probably. I mean, this is not just a crushing defeat on an epic scale. It's actually the biggest defeat suffered by any British government ever. I mean, it's absolutely off the scale - 230-vote defeat. And it's left the whole sort of question of Britain's exit, Britain's future relationship with Europe, up in the air. It's a absolutely enormous occasion.
KELLY: You used the word momentous, but let me put to you the question that we just put to Frank Langfitt. What on Earth happens next?
PARKER: Well, that's the - that's the - really, the question we all need to be asking tonight because what we do know is that the House of Commons doesn't like the deal that Theresa May has put together. We also know that Parliament doesn't want Britain to leave the EU without a deal because that'll be extremely disruptive for business. It'll create lots of legal uncertainty, including for the rights of citizens and EU citizens living in the UK and vice versa.
What we don't know is what Parliament actually wants from Brexit. And that's the big question, as Theresa May was pointing out in that clip you played earlier. She said, well, fine. I know what you don't like, but what do you like? And then you've got as many answers almost as you've got MPs. It's a very uncertain picture.
KELLY: I mean, among the ironies here is that, had we interviewed you yesterday, you would have told me it was really uncertain what happens next. What does today's vote actually change?
PARKER: Well, I think what it means is that Theresa May's deal is on life support. And I think, you know, any idea that she can get away with just tweaking this a bit and getting some new assurances from Brussels about the operation of the deal, whether that would be enough, I think that's now been blown out of the water by tonight's vote. So it's going to require a lot more work.
I think the big question is how imaginative or bold is Theresa May prepared to be? Is she prepared to go for a much softer form of Brexit, leaving Britain in a much closer orbit to the EU in the future? Now, that would alienate many of the right-wing Eurosceptics in her party. But it would be more likely to bring on board opposition MPs and form some sort of cross-party consensus.
So that's the question - how bold is she prepared to be?
KELLY: And I wonder what your answer to that would be. I mean, how do you rate Theresa May's chances of being prime minister a month from now?
PARKER: Well, I think one thing we know about Theresa May is boldness is not necessarily one of her characteristics. And I think she will - her instinct will be to try to patch up this deal and try to - try to keep it going.
Can she still be prime minister in another month's time? Well, look, it seems unlikely, you know, given what's just happened. But I would say that - if I was putting money on it, I would say the answer to that is yes, simply because of this - Theresa May may not be an inspirational prime minister, but lots of conservative MP fear what would happen if you removed her because then you'd plunge the country into even greater chaos.
There'd be a prolonged leadership contest in the conservative party if they chose a new prime minister. The new prime minister might be a Brexiteer, for example, someone like Boris Johnson. And then what would happen next? He would go to Brussels, try to negotiate a better deal, wouldn't get one and we'd be back to square one.
So for all of Theresa May's problems, her weakness is almost her strength - that people are frightened to remove a fear - for fear of what might come next.
KELLY: The possibility of going back to Brussels and trying to get a tweak or trying to ask for more, Brussels has said over and over, we gave you our best deal. We're done. (Laughter) So does today's vote change anything?
PARKER: Well, I think Brussels was always prepared to come back with a little bit more. I think they were reluctant to give Theresa May everything she wanted before this vote because they knew that Mrs. May's critics would simply bank the concession and come back for more. I think there has been some discussion in Brussels about giving some sort of legal undertaking that the backstop arrangement for the Irish border, which May Tory MPs don't like because they think it could be...
KELLY: Which has been a huge sticking point.
PARKER: ...Trapped in the customs union. That would be a - really would be a temporary arrangement only. I think that could still be forthcoming. But Theresa May's problem will be if Parliament demands much more sweeping concessions from Brussels, Brussels might just say, well, look, we spent the last year and a half negotiating this. We're not going to rip it all up now. It's your problem, not ours.
KELLY: in the moments we have left, which is just 30 seconds or so, how worried are you? As a longtime watcher of UK politics, how worried are you about the future of your country?
PARKER: Well, I am worried. I'm worried about the future of the economy. I'm worried about the state of public discourse in this country, which is becoming much coarser. I'm worried about the possibility that Britain is deadlocked. And what I'm just very sad about is the loss of British influence and credibility in the world. I think it's a very sad moment for our country.
KELLY: George Parker. He's Financial Times political editor speaking to us from London. Thank you.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Brazil's new president, Jair Bolsonaro, is a retired Army captain from the far-right. He's been in office for about two weeks and just took what may be his biggest step so far. He's made it a lot easier for Brazilians to have guns. NPR's Philip Reeves reports.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Chanting) Mito, mito, mito, mito, mito...
PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: When he was campaigning to be president in front of crowds, Bolsonaro had a signature gesture. He'd hold his hand aloft and make his fingers into the shape of a pistol. That's how he symbolized his campaign promise to give Brazilians far greater access to guns. Brazil leads the world in the total number of homicides. That promise did a lot to help get Bolsonaro elected.
Today, Bolsonaro took a step towards keeping it. Brazilian law already allows people over 25 to possess firearms under certain conditions. One was that they had to prove why they needed a gun. That sounds easy. In practice, the police frequently turned them down.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JAIR BOLSONARO: (Speaking Portuguese).
REEVES: Today in a televised ceremony, Bolsonaro signed a decree that changes that by removing the need to prove necessity. It only applies to guns at home.
AXL SATIER: (Speaking Portuguese).
REEVES: Axl Satier co-owns a gun shop in Niteroi, a high-crime city bordering Rio de Janeiro. Satier would like Bolsonaro to go further. He also wants to be allowed to carry.
SATIER: (Speaking Portuguese).
REEVES: But he thinks it's good this decree tackles the red tape blocking gun ownership. His clients are increasing, as is the number of Brazilians interested in gun clubs, says Alexandre Coelho, who's an instructor in one.
ALEXANDRE COELHO: It's growing and growing and still growing.
REEVES: For many Brazilians, this is about self-defense, says Coelho.
COELHO: It gives me a chance to fight. I think the criminals will think twice to enter your home, to break in your home and harm you and your family.
ROBERT MUGGAH: The evidence is - is that having a gun in the home actually increases by a significant statistical percentage the likelihood of you or your spouse or your child being a victim of gun violence.
REEVES: Robert Muggah is co-founder of the Igarape Institute, a Brazil-based think tank specializing in security issues. Today's decree by Bolsonaro is just the beginning. Muggah says more measures are planned. Brazil's pro-gun lobby and its Congress, which supports Bolsonaro, is working on a bill that will enable many more Brazilians to carry guns.
MUGGAH: Which means that we'll see taxi drivers, civil servants, lawyers, doctors, all manner of citizens walking around with guns, concealed weapons. And this is extraordinarily dangerous in a country that obviously has a serious problem with gun violence.
REEVES: Philip Reeves, NPR News, Rio de Janeiro.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
For more than a century, a Confederate monument known as Silent Sam stood at the entrance to the campus of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Last year, protesters tore it down. But its pedestal and placards remained in place until today. Debate continues over what to do with the toppled statue - and complicating matters, the resignation announcement of the university's chancellor yesterday. Lisa Philip has been covering all of this for member station WUNC in Chapel Hill.
Hi, Lisa.
LISA PHILIP, BYLINE: Hi.
KELLY: So I said the pedestal and all the signs were still there until today. What happened?
PHILIP: Yeah. So it's been a roller coaster these past 24 hours. Yesterday, in the same email that the chancellor announced her resignation, she also authorized the removal of the pedestal on the plaques for the Confederate monument. And that happened at - it had wrapped up by about 3 a.m. this morning. The move apparently took state university officials by surprise. They convened an emergency meeting this afternoon, and they voted to move up the timeline for the chancellor's resignation. In her announcement yesterday, she said she was planning on sticking around past graduation this spring. But they decided that they would move that up to the end of this month.
KELLY: So just to be clear, the chancellor's resignation is connected to the Silent Sam controversy or not?
PHILIP: She would say otherwise. She told reporters on a conference call this morning that the two were not related. They just happened to take place at the same time - that, like, matters brought these two things together but they were not connected.
KELLY: I'm guessing her critics might say otherwise. But let me ask about Silent Sam. The statue, is it any clearer where that's going to end up, where it will be kept?
PHILIP: Not really. So just to give some history on the statue - it was put up in the early 1900s, and supporters say it's to commemorate those students who died fighting for the Confederacy. But the statue was dedicated with a pretty problematic speech that praised white supremacy. So after events in Charlottesville, students and faculty were crying louder and louder for its removal from campus. And last August, protesters took matters into their own hands and tore it down. And then that led to campus officials coming up with a plan to build a $5 million university history center on campus to put the statue inside of that. And of course, no one was happy with that plan. Students and faculty were very upset by it. And...
KELLY: Arguing that money could be spent elsewhere, I imagine. Yeah.
PHILIP: Yeah, exactly. And then there were people who were upset by the fact that the statue wasn't going back where it had once stood.
KELLY: That's Lisa Philip, a reporter with member station WUNC in Chapel Hill, N.C.
Thank you, Lisa.
PHILIP: Thank you so much.
KELLY: And we should note - the University of North Carolina holds the broadcast license for WUNC, but the station's newsroom operates independently.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Is Facebook ripe for disruption in 2019? That's a question we're asking in this week's All Tech Considered.
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SHAPIRO: Generally, Washington has taken a hands-off approach to tech platforms, not wanting to slow down an economic powerhouse. After multiple scandals involving Facebook, though, this attitude seems to be changing. Conservative lawmakers have criticized the social media giant for what they view as censorship of their end of the political spectrum. And now, as NPR's Tim Mak reports, progressives are becoming critics, too, for different reasons.
TIM MAK, BYLINE: Power - this one word sums up the rise in concerns on the left about tech behemoth Facebook.
SARAH MILLER: The fundamental problem with Facebook is its power - its market power, its power over the discourse, its power over the way we think and consume information.
MAK: That's Sarah Miller. She's a co-chair of Freedom from Facebook, a coalition of progressive groups opposed to the social media company.
MILLER: Because of its control over information, it is really one of the world's most dangerous monopolies.
MAK: Over the past year, Facebook endured a scandal over Cambridge Analytica's use of personal data and has seen its stock price plummet over privacy concerns. Facebook has been accused by Congress of being used to spread Russian disinformation. And it has also been accused by U.N. experts of being used to incite violence in Myanmar. Here's Miller again.
MILLER: We don't want to live in a country where Mark Zuckerberg decides who lives or who dies.
MAK: As criticism has mounted, Facebook hired an opposition research firm that attempted to discredit Freedom from Facebook by linking the group to George Soros. By the way, Soros' foundation have supported NPR in the past. This tactic of linking Freedom from Facebook to Soros, who is Jewish, struck some of Facebook's critics as anti-Semitic. So Facebook severed ties with the research firm. The social network did not comment on the story by deadline, but Facebook has said in the past that it is open to privacy regulation. So following these scandals, lawmakers on the left are increasingly turning their attention to regulating Facebook.
RON WYDEN: On issue after issue, Facebook has not told the truth to their customers.
MAK: That Senator Ron Wyden, the Democrat from Oregon who has been a leading progressive voice on issues from consumer protection to killer drones to the big banks. He is championing new data privacy legislation and believes that the left is increasingly passionate about the need for reforms to Facebook and other big tech firms.
WYDEN: This is an issue where our side that wants some accountability and some dramatic reforms to put the consumer in the driver's seat - I think we're picking up grassroots support continually.
MAK: Wyden told NPR that Facebook is in an endless cycle in which it lies to consumers, then apologizes, then undertakes what Wyden called meaningless reforms.
WYDEN: We're going to have to say, if these CEOs lie to their customers and lie to the federal government, there's going to have to be a real deterrent. That means significant fines and the possibility they will serve jail time.
MAK: Wyden's frustration is shared by Senator Mark Warner, who is the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been investigating Facebook's role in Russian interference with the U.S. political system.
MARK WARNER: This is not going to be an area where we can rely upon the goodwill or self-policing of these platforms.
MAK: Sarah Miller, who, as you might remember, leads the progressive anti-Facebook coalition, is proposing one solution.
MILLER: We have kind of all come together around a set of solutions that includes restructuring the company, so breaking up Facebook, allowing competition to kind of flourish again in the social media space.
MAK: This thinking has at least one ideological ally on the right. Conservative Senator Ted Cruz has suggested he supports using anti-trust laws to break up big tech firms. With Republicans concerned about censorship, Democrats concerned about privacy and no end in sight for the scandals, Facebook finds itself in the unenviable position of having to weather a rare bipartisan storm. The question now is what action Congress will take in the year ahead. Tim Mak, NPR News, Washington.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
In Kenya today, attackers armed with guns and explosives blasted their way into a luxury hotel and office complex in Nairobi, the capital city. Police are calling it a terror attack. Exchanges of gunfire could be heard late into the night. Authorities have not released a casualty figure, but news agencies report as many as seven dead and an unknown number wounded. Somali Islamist extremists claimed responsibility for the attack.
NPR's Eyder Peralta is in Nairobi and joins us now. Hi, Eyder.
EYDER PERALTA, BYLINE: Hi, Ari.
SHAPIRO: Tell us the latest. What do we know about what happened today?
PERALTA: So a number of armed men stormed at the Dusit Hotel here in Nairobi. And police and witnesses who I've spoken to say they used explosives to get through two security checkpoints. They blew up two cars, and then one of them blew himself up at the hotel restaurant. And then they went through the hotel where they opened fire. And for hours after that attack, the military and the gunmen have been trading fire.
I'm outside the hotel, and there's family members here who are just waiting to hear some news. I spoke to Humphrey Maguna (ph), whose girlfriend was a waitress at the hotel, and he was talking to her on the phone. And he heard gunfire and commotion, and then her phone went dead. And this is what he told me.
HUMPHREY MAGUNA: I don't know whether she's there or that she's been rescued. I have no idea. So just waiting - you have to see what's next.
PERALTA: So just a little while ago, he told me that he did hear back from her. And the interior minister, Fred Matiang'i, says that the situation is under control. But just a few minutes after that, we heard more gunfire. And so people are worried that things are still going on.
SHAPIRO: Tell us about the place, the hotel-office complex for - where this is all playing out. Who would have been in there at the time of the attack?
PERALTA: It's a nice place. It's a place with a fancy deli, and it has a really nice outdoor patio. It's where people take their lunch or they come for work meetings or they have coffee. And it's usually packed during the lunch hour. And the thing about these attacks, especially here in Kenya, is that they happen in places where any one of us would find themselves. And that's why they're especially terrifying for people.
SHAPIRO: Tell us about the claim of responsibility by the Somali extremist group al-Shabab.
PERALTA: So al-Shabab says that they were conducting an operation here in Nairobi, essentially taking responsibility for this. And al-Shabab has attacked Kenya before. They did so in 2013 when they attacked the mall here, leaving 67 dead, and they attacked a college in Garissa in 2015 where it left almost 150 people dead. So al-Shabab is a constant threat. They control much of Somalia, and they target Kenya because Kenya provides many of the soldiers who fight them in Somalia.
SHAPIRO: And what's the reaction been among people in Nairobi who you're talking to today? What's the atmosphere like there?
PERALTA: There's a lot of sadness. I think people feel - you know, this is a place that constantly worries about these attacks. There's, you know, the kind of security you have to go through to get to this kind of hotel - for example, they check the back of your car. You know, you have to go through a metal detector. So in a lot of ways, this is the country that is always bracing itself for this kind of attack. But today, I just - I've heard a lot of sadness that it has happened again.
But government officials, the interior minister, Fred Matiang'i, says that Kenya will not be cowered by this attack, that Kenya will move forward.
SHAPIRO: All right, NPR's Eyder Peralta in Nairobi, Kenya. Thank you.
PERALTA: Thank you, Ari.
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MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
One of the nation's largest newspaper companies, Gannett, is facing a hostile takeover bid from a company known for acquiring and then gutting newsrooms. Gannett owns USA Today and about a hundred other papers across the country. Digital First Media owns more than 50 papers, including The Denver Post and The Boston Herald. It is offering nearly 1.4 billion to buy Gannett.
Well, the deal is raising concerns. And to find out what those concerns are, let's bring in NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik. Hey, David.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: Hey, Mary Louise.
KELLY: So we have here one big newspaper group trying to take over an even bigger newspaper group. A lot of people are really not so happy about this. Why?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, particularly journalists and perhaps those who are served by the newspapers that Digital First already owns. Digital First, it's worth pointing out, is actually controlled and majority-owned by a hedge fund in New York called Alden Global Capital. And its plan, when it takes over companies that are newspaper companies and newspaper properties, is generally to cut it back. Take The Denver Post, which is where Digital First's notional headquarters is.
KELLY: Right.
FOLKENFLIK: That's a company that is about as third as large as it was in 2012. Their executives came to them and said, look, we can move you out of the historic old headquarters in Denver to - after a round of layoffs to the suburbs and the printing plant. They'll forestall future layoffs. The unions and employees agreed to that because they said, let's keep the staff as best we can. And then a few short months later, another third of their staff was let go.
So this is - has - a company that has a tradition of cutting and cutting and then cutting some more, maintaining significant profit margins to apparently help support investments in other places.
KELLY: Right. I mean, there seems to be some evidence to support the argument that this is a company that acquires and then guts newsrooms.
FOLKENFLIK: Strong evidence.
KELLY: Yeah. A spokesman for Digital First, to give - to give them their say, has put out a statement. They told The Wall Street Journal, we believe these publications need to survive, but they need to have their costs come into line with their revenues. Costs in line with revenues seems hard to argue with.
FOLKENFLIK: It seems certainly unobjectionable. In no place does there seem to be any notion of growth or of solving, you know, their real problems affecting the newspaper industry and that Gannett itself has been suffering along with many others. There's no sense that this is a question of, we have a strategy to persevere and to survive. It's a question of, how do we cut and cut and cut?
And let's be clear. Gannett is a company that's been famous within the newspaper industry for cutting. It's just that Digital First does so to a much greater degree. They've been - they have condemned Gannett's leadership for making certain kinds of digital investments, some of which have not panned out.
And they say, we think we can do this better by just paring back the expectations of readers and of staffs - need to be not so significantly high. And at the same time, we think we can eke out enough in print and digital subscriptions to make this valuable as an investment.
KELLY: All right. I mean, the historical irony will not - will not escape a lot of people listening that Gannett was once known as the big guy that gobbled up smaller local papers and cut staff. How is Gannett to responding to this offer?
FOLKENFLIK: Gannett says it will look at it. Gannett has been, you know - is not in the position...
KELLY: Do they have much choice?
FOLKENFLIK: I think they have to do it. They're being offered a premium of, you know, nearly a quarter over what they were going for on the market just a few short days ago. Although, their stock had been valued at more in the last year than what's been offered.
Gannett's got to look at it. But it's looking at it warily. It was hoping not so long ago to take over the Tribune Publishing newspaper chain. It had sought to maybe consolidate with others to try to survive and ride out this huge storm.
KELLY: Right.
FOLKENFLIK: And yet, we're going to see if it turns out to be one of the minnows rather than one of the whales.
KELLY: All righty (ph). Thank you, David.
FOLKENFLIK: You bet.
KELLY: NPR's David Folkenflik.
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ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
It's day 25 of the partial government shutdown, and the number of Transportation Security Administration employees calling in sick continues to grow. They are among the federal employees being told to work without pay right now. With so many off-the-clock lines at security checkpoints in some airports have gotten longer, plenty of travelers are getting frustrated. For some, that feeling is mixed with gratitude, as NPR's David Schaper reports.
DAVID SCHAPER, BYLINE: Across the country, about 7 1/2 percent of TSA workers have been calling in sick in recent days. That's more than double the usual number. The TSA won't provide a breakdown, but clearly, the problem is worse at some airports than others. Elise Durham is a spokeswoman for Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson Airport.
ELISE DURHAM: Given the federal shutdown, we are beginning to feel a little bit of an impact as it pertains to having some TSA workers who have not reported to work.
SCHAPER: Some travelers had to wait in line almost 90 minutes at one point yesterday, and Durham recommends arriving at the world's busiest airport three hours before your flight. Houston, Washington Dulles, Miami and Dallas/Fort Worth are among the other airports that have had to close security lanes and checkpoints because of a shortage of screeners. TSA employees are among the lowest paid federal workers, earning an average of about $17 to $20 an hour. And many are struggling to make ends meet after missing their first paycheck of the year. So across the country, people are lending a helping hand.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Hi, how are we doing today?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: How are you?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Pretty good.
SCHAPER: At St. Mary's Food Bank in Phoenix, TSA workers wearing their familiar blue shirts and badges are waiting in line to be handed grocery bags full of bread, cereal, peanut butter and other staples.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: And then you can grab one of these, and if you would like some milk and eggs, step right here.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: OK, thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: OK. No problem. How are you doing today? Are you going home or are you going to the shelter?
SCHAPER: Food banks everywhere are helping out unpaid government workers, and GoFundMe pages and other fundraising efforts are also underway. Some airline passengers offer cash tips to TSA officers, but they can't accept gifts, so instead, they're hearing a lot of this.
RAY ORTIZ: I just want to thank everyone that is currently working without a paycheck.
SCHAPER: On a recent trip through Chicago's O'Hare Airport, Ray Ortiz of New York was one of many travelers stopping to thank TSA screeners. Another is Bob Clemens from Naperville, Ill.
BOB CLEMENS: I feel terrible for them. I personally think the shutdown is awful all around. And I don't know that I could be as gracious and have the same grace that they do to show up for work and not get paid.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: A lot of people have been showing more support for what we're going through.
SCHAPER: This TSA officer, who we're not naming because he's not authorized to speak to the media, says he appreciates all the thank you's he's hearing at his checkpoint.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: I mean, it makes it easier to do what we have to do. You know, there's nobody, you know, giving you complaints about you having to go through their bag. It just makes it easier so we can, you know, get you to your plane.
SCHAPER: He says it beats the often angry looks and grumbles they're familiar with when conducting bag searches and pat downs. But when asked if he'd rather have a paycheck than those warm expressions of gratitude, he just smiled, nodded his head and walked back to his post. David Schaper, NPR News.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
For much of the past year, the story of people trying to cross the border into the U.S. has been largely a political one. Often lost in the coverage are the stories of individuals who've risked everything to come to America. Writer Peter Behrens tells us about one man who made the trip in late 2017. For reasons that will be clear, in this next story, we are only identifying him by his first name.
PETER BEHRENS: The story begins in West Texas. His name is Bartolo. He was 22. He seemed younger. He'd already come about 2,000 miles when two quail hunters discovered him sheltering in a hunting cabin in the giant emptiness of the West Texas desert.
He spoke some Spanish, and so did they. But his first language was Ki'che' and theirs was English. He was from Guatemala, heading for Houston. Shivering, he asked the hunters to point him in the right direction.
This is a story about someone who broke the law to enter our country illegally, and maybe you have a problem with that. It is also a story about hard traveling, courage and acts of kindness.
The quail hunters were Texas men with weapons, boots, ammunition and ATVs. Bartolo had the cheapest version of a backpack any kid might carry to school, a bottle of water and a goal to work construction in Houston for two years then return to his wife and child in the highlands of Guatemala and open a tienda, a village store.
The hunters gave him one hundred dollars and pointed him north. The next day, Bartolo stumbled out of the desert onto a ranch road. Ranches out there are miles apart, no trees - the wind and the sky. You can see or be seen for miles. Maybe 25 percent of the sparse traffic on that road is Border Patrol. Bartolo should have been caught. He was young and not wily, determined, but naive. His grasp of geography was limited.
But a few townspeople run or bike out that way. The wind is fierce, but the light is stunning. And that morning, a runner spotted Bartolo, brought him home and sheltered him for two days while calling around to locate a safe ride out of the borderland.
My friends were planning a trip to Dallas with their kids to visit grandparents when they got the call. How did you feel about being asked, I asked them. Proud and happy, my friend replied So two parents, two almost teenagers, Bartolo and nine hours across Texas in the family SUV. Using my friend's phone, Bartolo spoke to his wife. There were other calls in Spanish, English and Ki'che' as rides from Dallas to Houston kept falling through.
It was late when they reached Dallas. Dinner was Thai takeout in a windowless common room at the grandparents' retirement community. Then my friend drove Bartolo to a gas station on the outskirts to meet his Houston ride. Saying goodbye, Bartolo tried to offer my friend that one hundred dollars the quail hunters had given him.
A couple of weeks later, he called to say he'd found a construction job. Two years, he reminded them. Two years, then he'd be going home. How did you feel, I asked my friends. Proud and happy, they said. We want to educate our children. He is coming here for a better life for his family and to make money.
How American, they said.
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KELLY: That commentary by writer Peter Behrens. His most recent novel is "Carry Me."
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ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
In a Senate hearing room today, attorney general nominee William Barr has been walking a fine line. Barr is pledging to protect the Justice Department, but he also says the president has sweeping constitutional authority. NPR national Justice correspondent Carrie Johnson has been following these confirmation hearings and joins us now to talk about them. Hi, Carrie.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Hey, Ari.
SHAPIRO: OK. He has been nominated to lead the Justice Department at a time when the president is attacking it. So how did Barr address that tension today?
JOHNSON: Well, Bill Barr said he has a very high opinion of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. He says he has no reason to doubt that the Russians attempted to interfere in our elections. And he says he doesn't believe that Special Counsel Robert Mueller would be conducting a witch hunt. In fact, Barr says he would quit rather than fire Mueller if there were no good cause to get rid of him. And as one of Mueller's friends for 30 years, Barr says it's unimaginable that Mueller would do anything to prompt a firing.
SHAPIRO: Senate Democrats went into this hearing wanting Barr to firmly commit to protecting the Russia investigation. Did they get that commitment?
JOHNSON: Not a firm one, Ari. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the committee, was pressing Bill Barr a lot about what people will learn in the end about the Russia probe.
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DIANNE FEINSTEIN: Will you commit to making any report Mueller produces at the conclusion of his investigation available to Congress and to the public?
WILLIAM BARR: As I said in my statement, I am going to make as much information available as I can consistent with the rules and regulations.
JOHNSON: Now, Bill Barr talked about wanting transparency, but he also said that he as the attorney general will make the ultimate call about what becomes public. And later on, Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii said, just asking us to trust you is not enough. She said, this president will do anything to protect himself. And Mr. Barr was kind of tough in his response. He said, I'm not going to surrender the responsibility of the attorney general to get this title.
SHAPIRO: We know that Barr has had some contact with lawyers involved in the investigation. Did we learn anything new today about his interactions with the White House?
JOHNSON: We did. Barr told lawmakers he actually met with President Trump a while ago. And the president seemed to want Barr to join his legal defense team. Barr politely declined. He said he didn't want to stick his head in a meat grinder.
SHAPIRO: Wow.
JOHNSON: Barr also said he discussed some legal theories with attorneys for the president, the vice president and with Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner. But Barr said he didn't recall learning anything of substance, anything confidential about the probe.
SHAPIRO: From the beginning of this investigation, the issue of recusals has been a very big deal. What did Barr say about recusals today?
JOHNSON: He said he thinks Jeff Sessions, the former attorney general, probably did the right thing to recuse himself. And Democrats pressed Barr to step aside too, given his contacts with lawyers involved in this investigation and a memo he wrote criticizing the investigation. But here, again, Barr would not commit. He says he will ask career ethics officials at Justice to evaluate the question, but he won't necessarily do what they advise. He also said the president is not above the law. The president can't, for example, offer pardons to people who promise not to incriminate him.
SHAPIRO: Taking a step back, there is one question about Bill Barr that people on both sides of the aisle have, which is why would he come back to lead the Justice Department after 27 years to be attorney general again?
JOHNSON: An excellent question. Barr basically says because he loves the Justice Department as an institution. He says he's 68 years old, and he has nothing to lose.
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BARR: If you take this job, you have to be ready to make decisions and spend all your political capital and have no future because you have to have that freedom of action. And I feel I'm in a position in life where I can do the right thing and not really care about the consequences.
JOHNSON: And, Ari, so far nothing has emerged to block Barr's path to confirmation.
SHAPIRO: NPR national Justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, thank you.
JOHNSON: My pleasure.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Let's bring in one of the senators now who was in that Judiciary Committee hearing room today questioning attorney general nominee Bill Barr. That senator is Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island. Senator Whitehouse, welcome.
SHELDON WHITEHOUSE: Thank you, good to be with you.
KELLY: Good to have you with us. So let me start with the central question, whether Barr will protect the Mueller investigation. Based on what you heard today, are you persuaded that he will?
WHITEHOUSE: There are questions that I still need to nail down, but he certainly made a number of very strong statements about his absolute intention to protect the Mueller investigation, about his high regard for Mueller as a prosecutor and as a person of integrity and disavowed any belief that Mueller would participate in any kind of a witch hunt. So in that sense, there was some good news.
KELLY: Another outstanding question is this - whatever final report Mueller produces, whether it should be made public. What did you make of Barr's comment where he said, look; I'll make as much information available as I can consistent with the rules and regulations? So, again, no guarantee that he will make the full Mueller report public.
WHITEHOUSE: Correct. That's a really problematic part of his testimony because on the one hand there are reasons why elements of a Mueller report - particularly one we haven't even seen yet - might properly be kept private, either because...
KELLY: Executive privilege, for example.
WHITEHOUSE: ...It relates to personal information - you know, people's phone numbers and email addresses and things like that - or there's a general concern within the department that you, as a general proposition, ought not to disclose derogatory investigative information about people that you don't charge. And so that principle has to be negotiated. And then what we really couldn't get into is exactly what you said, the potential for assertions of executive privilege.
KELLY: We'll stay with executive privilege for a second because I want to ask you a broader question that extends beyond the Mueller investigation. Were you persuaded by the testimony you heard today that Bill Barr would defend the independence of the Justice Department even if he were coming under a lot of pressure from the White House?
WHITEHOUSE: I think he very likely would. I think if he were presented with a really stark choice between good and evil and it was apparent that his decision would bind the department to one or the other, I think he would choose the path of good. And he clearly said he would step down if he was asked to do anything improper or refuse to obey the order and require himself to be fired. But very often, the devil is in details and particularly with executive privilege playing so big a role and such a vague enforcement scenario around executive privilege right now, that's a very big gap.
KELLY: Did you learn anything about Bill Barr today that you didn't already know?
WHITEHOUSE: That he's gruff and candid, as well as being...
KELLY: He seemed to be having a good time, from what I could tell.
WHITEHOUSE: I mean, his pitch for himself is, hey, look; I don't need to be here.
KELLY: I don't need this job.
WHITEHOUSE: He was going to be who he was going to be today, and I think that showed through.
KELLY: It sounds, if I'm hearing you right, as though you may be kind of leaning toward voting yes, you'll confirm him.
WHITEHOUSE: You know, I'm really not there yet because there are so many pressures that are being brought to bear on the Department of Justice right now. And you really have to nail the tarp down in all of its corners in order to make sure that you've done your job. And I don't want to go there until we've got our questions for the record answered and we've really pinned this down.
KELLY: Is there a single, outstanding thing on your mind?
WHITEHOUSE: The two things that matter the most to me are a clear understanding of his view of executive privilege, particularly as it might affect the Mueller report, and then a clear, specific, detailed description of how that memo about the Mueller investigation came to be - who had input into it, when they had input into it, were there edits? That is probably the worst vulnerability that he has right now. And he needs to dispel any notion that he was involved in political mischief in writing that report.
KELLY: That is Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse. Senator, good to speak with you.
WHITEHOUSE: Good to speak with you, thanks for having me on.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Carol Channing, Broadway's original Dolly in "Hello, Dolly!", died early this morning at 97. She was a performer of many gifts, as critic Bob Mondello remembers.
BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: She had a wide-eyed innocence...
(SOUNDBITE OF BROADWAY SHOW, "GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES")
CAROL CHANNING: (As Lorelei Lee, singing) I'm just a little girl from Little...
MONDELLO: ...That somehow seemed knowing...
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CHANNING: (As Lorelei Lee, singing) We lived on the wrong side of the tracks.
MONDELLO: ...And a rasp that was unforgettable. The combination made her a star as the gold digger Lorelei Lee in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," but it served her just as well in plays by George Bernard Shaw. One critic after, she'd reduced him to tears of laughter, came away talking about mascara to swim in and a nobly tragic mouth. Carol Channing was both a critic's darling and a remarkable comedienne.
In elementary school, she won a student election by doing dead-on impressions of her teachers instead of giving a speech. And that was a talent that also worked in her nightclub act, where she'd segue from a wicked Marlena Dietrich...
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CHANNING: (Impersonating Marlene Dietrich, singing) Ich bin von kopf bis fuss...
(LAUGHTER)
CHANNING: (Impersonating Marlene Dietrich, singing) ...Auf liebe eingestellt.
MONDELLO: ...To a character she'd invented...
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CHANNING: (As Cecelia Sisson) My name is (whistling) Cecelia Sisson.
MONDELLO: ...Who was a huge star in silent films, but for reasons she just couldn't fathom, never made the transition to sound. Channing herself never really clicked in the movies, though she made a few, including "The First Traveling Saleslady," in which her first on-screen smooch was also the first for a kid named Clint Eastwood. To her great disappointment, both of the roles for which she was famous on stage went to other stars on screen, Lorelei Lee to Marilyn Monroe and Dolly to Barbra Streisand. But Channing, who'd started playing Dolly in her early 40s, kept coming back to the part on stage between other projects, more than 30 years of revivals and some 5,000 performances.
(SOUNDBITE OF BROADWAY SHOW, "HELLO, DOLLY!")
CHANNING: (As Dolly Levi, singing) Hello, Harry. Well, hello, Louie. It's so nice to be back home where I belong.
MONDELLO: Legend has it that Channing missed only one performance in all those years to accept a Tony Award for a lifetime achievement. Being her understudy must have been a thankless assignment. She played Dolly with a fever, with a cast, even in a wheelchair.
(SOUNDBITE OF BROADWAY SHOW, "HELLO, DOLLY!")
CHANNING: (As Dolly Levi, singing) Wow, wow, wow, fellas.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters, singing) Hey, yeah.
CHANNING: (As Dolly Levi, singing) Look at the old girl now, fellas.
MONDELLO: Late in life, she was still wow-wow-wowing audiences in a one-woman show called "The First 80 Years Are The Hardest." Carol Channing, glowing, growing, going strong. I'm Bob Mondello.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
In LA today, school buses made the rounds. School cafeterias served breakfast to students. Los Angeles public schools were open, in other words, but without their teachers. Today is Day 2 of a teachers' strike, and classrooms are being staffed by administrators and volunteers and some 400 newly hired substitute teachers.
We're going to hear a couple of different perspectives on this strike. And we're going to start with Nick Melvoin. He is vice president of the LA school board, and he joins us now. Mr. Melvoin, thanks for being with us.
NICK MELVOIN: Thanks so much for having me on.
KELLY: Paint me a picture of how today has gone. I mean, when I say LA schools are open, are kids showing up? Are they staying home? Are they actually in the classrooms learning?
MELVOIN: It's a mix. You know, we have a legal responsibility - and I would argue a moral obligation - to keep kids safe at school, especially when about 82 percent of our families are living in poverty and we have nearly 17,000 homeless students. So schools are open. We are serving hundreds of...
KELLY: And you said 82 percent living in poverty - wow, yeah.
MELVOIN: Eighty-two percent, and so a lot of our families don't have another option. Now, you know, I began my career as an LA Unified teacher in south Los Angeles. And I can tell you that the day that the students will be having in schools is not a typical one.
KELLY: Well, let me ask you about the effort to get things back on track and get teachers back in schools. I'll play you a little bit of - this is LA Unified Superintendent Austin Beutner, who I assume you know and work with. He called parents on Sunday night with a message, and here it is.
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AUSTIN BEUTNER: We did not want a strike. We tried our best to avoid it. And we'll continue to work around the clock to find a solution to end the strike.
KELLY: Work around the clock, he says. So are negotiations happening today?
MELVOIN: Unfortunately they're not. The union walked away from the table on Friday. And we're doing everything we can to get them back. We have been negotiating with the teachers union...
KELLY: What does that mean, everything you can?
MELVOIN: You know, we've been negotiating for about two years. I've been on the board for a year and a half, and our superintendent has been on the board for about six months. And they've been talking about a strike for a while, and so it didn't come as that much of a surprise. But we are hopeful that we can resolve this quickly. We are at the table. We are...
KELLY: But you're not at the (laughter) table, if I may. You just said there are no negotiations underway.
MELVOIN: We're - you know, we're at the table with an empty chair on the other side. We are talking to the mayor. We're talking to the governor and his staff and asking for all the support that we can get to bring the union back to the table. You know, a lot of the things they're asking for and that we're hearing teachers ask for around the country are incredibly valid. But we're ready to settle this and find ways to support our teachers and then work collectively to grow the pie so that our students, most of whom are living in poverty, have the resources they need to succeed.
KELLY: So I just heard you acknowledge that conditions for teachers working in LA public schools aren't great. I know you've just written an op-ed making that very point in the LA Times, saying that, you know, the classes are too big, and their pensions are underfunded. They have all - got all kinds of issues. I mean, why shouldn't they stand up for a better deal?
MELVOIN: Well, I think they should stand up for better working conditions. I think where I try to distinguish the two is, you know, what is in LA Unified's control and what is in the state's control. The pension issue, $100 billion unfunded pension liability, is at the state level. And when districts have to start, you know, paying more to make up that difference, that's money away from salaries and away from class size reductions. When 90 percent of our funding comes from Sacramento, we can't spend money we don't have.
KELLY: So from where you sit, from the school board's point of view, what's the big sticking point at this moment?
MELVOIN: I - right now, it's been an unwillingness to come to the table. I think that's where I'm hopeful in my conversations with the mayor and the governor's team that I think they're trying to get through to the union. And now that they've had this demonstration, they will in the next few days come back to the table. And then hopefully by next week, we'll have schools back to normal.
And again, not just normal as status quo, but we need to continue to do more for our kids. It's not OK that out of a hundred kids in LA, only 12 will graduate from college. We can do better, and we can't do better without our teachers. So I appreciate what they're doing and hope the nation will not just, you know, tweet its support but vote its support.
KELLY: Nick Melvoin, thanks for taking the time.
MELVOIN: Thanks so much for having me on.
KELLY: Nick Melvoin is vice president of the LA school board. We reached out to the union that represents LA teachers and spoke with its president, Randi Weingarten. She told NPR the school board leaders, quote, "don't seem to really understand or care about the everyday needs of kids in the district." She says teachers will continue to demand better learning conditions.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The teachers' strike affects about half a million students of LA public schools, and one of them is high school senior Carmen Gonzalez. She's a reporter for Boyle Heights Beat, a student-run newspaper in Los Angeles. I first met her on a reporting trip there last month. And she's now covering the strike with a team of young journalists. Hi, Carmen. Welcome back to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
CARMEN GONZALEZ: Hello. Thank you for having me back.
SHAPIRO: So tell me about the scene at your school, Mendez High School, where you've reported that 10 percent of students showed up yesterday.
GONZALEZ: Yeah. I was on the picket line with the teachers when they announced that 106 students out of 1,045 students showed up. They were split up into grades. The seniors were in the library, and then every other grade was in the gym.
SHAPIRO: You're saying that because there were so few teachers, the students who did show up were just clumped together with the few administrators and substitute teachers that were there. What kinds of activities were they doing? Were they actually learning?
GONZALEZ: For the seniors, they were being taught economics, which kind of sucks because a lot of them were actually taking AP Government, so we're not even learning (laughter) about anything about economics. And then everyone else was being taught union history, what unions are and the history it has here in the U.S.
SHAPIRO: What were students told about whether they were expected to be in class, what would happen to them if they marched with teachers, those sorts of things?
GONZALEZ: For the most part, administration was very clear what was happening. If it happens, this is the schedule. Here are papers. Take it to your parents, explain it to them. Of course, they couldn't tell us to come or not. But if we did, they told us that breakfast and lunch would be provided and that we would be learning as much as we could with the resources that we had.
SHAPIRO: This is your first experience with a large-scale strike. You live in Boyle Heights, which is a neighborhood with a long history of political activism, including labor activism. What's this like for you?
GONZALEZ: It didn't hit me until I got home yesterday after the strike. I was like, oh, wow. Like, this is serious. Like, they're literally giving up their jobs to, like, fight for us. That - that's what they're saying. They're striking for the students. And I sat at the table with my teachers because a mother nearby opened her home for some heat and some food. And they were all just talking, and we were all laughing. And I was like, wow. Like, it seems like it's going to be a long, long journey. But I kind of felt proud that I was there reporting on it.
SHAPIRO: Did it make you start to see your teachers differently who have always just been, like, the instructor, the educator at the front of the classroom?
GONZALEZ: Yes, totally. Like, I still call them Miss and Doctor and Mister. But they would joke around. They would tell me, ay (ph), lead a chant if you want. And I would be like, no, I kind of want to record it. I can't really lead the chant.
SHAPIRO: You're here to report.
GONZALEZ: Yes, I'm here to report. I was like, I can't really be out there getting my voice heard. But they were very proud when they saw me get off of the metro, walking towards school. They were like, oh, you're here to support. And I was like, yeah, I'm here to take some pictures, record some audio, see what's up.
SHAPIRO: You're a senior, so this is your last semester before you graduate. What's it like to have the homestretch of your high school education disrupted by this big walkout?
GONZALEZ: It's a little annoying. Like, I understand why it's happening and everything. But it's like, they're supposed to put on sale the prom tickets, grad night tickets. We're supposed to have meetings about, like, graduation. This is where it's going to be at. This is the rules for it. Counselors are supposed to go over with their students about, like, OK, you're missing these credits. So it's a little, like, alarming because we don't know how long it's going to be and how long it's going to take to start picking up when they come back. It just throws everyone off schedule. It's a little annoying.
SHAPIRO: Carmen Gonzalez, thanks so much for talking with us today.
GONZALEZ: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
SHAPIRO: She is a student reporter with Boyle Heights Beat in Los Angeles.
(SOUNDBITE OF COLO'S "GHANA (ORIGINAL MIX)")
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
When Hurricane Florence barreled through the southeast four months ago, it wreaked damage on one of the country's most important military bases, the Marine Corps' Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. Well, military officials finally tallied the cost of that damage.
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GENERAL ROBERT NELLER: The total bill comes to about $3.6 billion.
KELLY: That's the Corps' top officer, General Robert Neller, speaking to lawmakers last month. Jay Price of member station WUNC visited the base and found the cost to the military of extreme weather events such as Florence is likely to grow.
JAY PRICE, BYLINE: In the four months since the hurricane, the extraordinary amount of damage to the main East Coast Marine base has kind of flown under the radar. That's because it just isn't spectacular. When you drive around the massive base, all you see is dozens and dozens of blue tarps draped over roofs.
TONY SHOLAR: Obviously, we've had more water damage from last night. This water was - it was dry in here the last time.
PRICE: Tony Sholar is a civilian with the command that oversees East Coast Marine facilities. He took me inside the now-abandoned headquarters of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit. It had rained the night before.
SHOLAR: Clearly, the roof still has some leaks in it, and last night's rain would've leaked some more.
PRICE: The huge, slow-moving storm first damaged hundreds of roofs on the base and then dumped water inside the buildings for three days. All told, 70 buildings need major renovations and about 130 will have to be replaced - among them, the main headquarters for East Coast-based fighting forces, which was built in 1942 as a hospital.
MAJOR GENERAL VINCENT COGLIANESE: It has 14 separate wings like the old hospitals would have.
PRICE: Major General Vincent Coglianese oversees all Marine Corps facilities.
COGLIANESE: We don't want to repair a 376,000-square-foot building that really wasn't configured correctly. It's got 70,000 feet of hallway.
PRICE: He says it must be demolished and replaced with a sturdier, more efficient building farther from the riverfront it sits on now. Climate experts say Congress should be prepared to pay for a lot more damage like this to crucial bases. Shana Udvardy is a climate resilience analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
SHANA UDVARDY: What we know with climate change and global warming is that we're going to see more extreme weather events. And this means more powerful storms, more rising seas and heavy rainfall events.
PRICE: Udvardy was one of the authors of a 2016 report that underlined threats that climate change poses to U.S. military bases, including Lejeune. Other bases, including Parris Island, Naval Air Station Key West and the world's largest naval base in Norfolk, face even greater risks.
UDVARDY: And what the military already knows is that climate change indeed is a national security threat.
PRICE: At Lejeune, it's not just buildings that were damaged. A swing bridge to the barrier island where the Marines do their signature amphibious assault training needs to be replaced. And the training beach itself was partly washed away. Colonel Brian Wolford is chief of staff for the main East Coast fighting forces command.
COLONEL BRIAN WOLFORD: So operationally, you know, the MEF is back to work. We have a mission to accomplish.
PRICE: The II Marine Expeditionary Force, or II MEF.
WOLFORD: But we're doing it in suboptimal conditions. We're also employing field techniques across the MEF when we have facilities that no longer can perform their mission.
PRICE: Field techniques mean things like trailers - 61 now and another 140 on the way - and two or even three units are packed into headquarters designed for one.
WOLFORD: Things that normally take, you know, one hour take two to three hours to do.
PRICE: And not included in the $3.6 billion - hundreds of on-base homes are still being repaired. Marines transferring in are being told to leave their families behind if they can't find suitable housing. For NPR News, I'm Jay Price in Camp Lejeune, N.C.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
In Tampa, Fla., mayoral candidates are being asked to take a position on an important issue. We're not talking about housing or education or taxes. We're talking about the question, what should people from Tampa be called? The man leading this debate is Mario Nunez. He is a fourth-generation Tampa resident and host of "The Tampa Natives Show" on TV station TBAE. We called him up to talk about it. Hi, Mario.
MARIO NUNEZ: How are you, Ari?
SHAPIRO: I'm good. OK. I know you have a strong opinion about what people from Tampa should be called. But before we get to your preferred name, tell us what some of the candidates are.
NUNEZ: OK. There's Tampan, Tampanian and, of course, my preference, Tampeno.
SHAPIRO: Why Tampeno? Why do you prefer this one, aside from the fact that both your name, Nunez, and Tampeno have a tilde over the N?
NUNEZ: Oh, well played, Ari, well played. I give you bonus points for that. No, the reason I suggest that is because I think, first of all, if you know a little bit about our history, Tampa was known for many, many years as Cigar City. Cigars were coming out of this city hand rolled by my-great grandparents and my grandparents. Sadly, that industry has now gone offshore, and we're trying to figure out who we're going to be going forward. Tampeno, which obviously is Hispanic-Latino, it reflects that wonderful diversity that is the history of our city.
SHAPIRO: And we should say that this is not just your preference. It also won a Tampa Bay Times Twitter poll this week. Tampeno was the first choice. How is it possible that in the more than 150 years since Tampa was incorporated as a city this question still has not been definitively answered?
NUNEZ: Well, I don't think that it's been pushed out there into the public sphere like it is currently. And, of course, now with social media, everything can become a thing. My family, my cousins, we always used Tampeno. Tampanian is really an anglicized version of Tampeno. And I don't want to get too far into the weeds, Ari, but Tampan is just not acceptable. I can't tell you how many times...
SHAPIRO: (Laughter) It sounds too much like something else.
NUNEZ: No - yeah, of course. And, look; we're not all sixth-graders, so we've got to just take that one off of the table right quick.
SHAPIRO: Why do you think this debate matters? Why can't everybody just use whatever word they prefer?
NUNEZ: The reason I suggest it is because the branding of a city - the rebranding in this case - is important going forward. You know, we have two major collegiate football games here every year. We've got a Super Bowl coming up in 2021. As people land here, we need to remind them of the city's cultural history.
SHAPIRO: So this is not just a popular debate. You're actually trying to make this official, right?
NUNEZ: Well, a few years back, the city of Tampa took it upon themselves to proclaim officially that the Cuban sandwich is the official sandwich of the city of Tampa.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter).
NUNEZ: I'm hoping that at some point Tampeno could be proclaimed as the official moniker of the residents of Tampa so that the scribes and the media when they refer to us know how to refer to us properly. It just has a cool, hip, kind of progressive vibe that reflects our city.
SHAPIRO: That's Mario Nunez, the Tampeno behind the campaign to get the city of Tampa to decide what to call people from Tampa. Thank you for joining us today.
NUNEZ: Thank you so much, Ari.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
For analysis of the hearing and of what Bill Barr may do if he's confirmed, let's bring in Jennifer Daskal. She's an associate professor of law at American University. She used to work at the Justice Department. Professor Daskal, welcome.
JENNIFER DASKAL: Thank you.
KELLY: So to this central question today, which is whether Barr will protect the Mueller investigation, based on what you heard from his testimony, are you persuaded that he will?
DASKAL: So he - he answered that pretty clearly. He said that he - he likely - I mean, he - he said he would protect Mueller and that - absent something extraordinary, that Mueller would be allowed to continue.
I think the key question and the one that several senators pushed on is the question of, what is going to ultimately be made public and what's going to be made available to Congress?
We heard Bill Barr say repeatedly that he was committed to transparency, but transparency consistent with the law, transparency consistent with rules and regulations. And Barr has a very broad view of executive privilege and a very broad view of executive power, including power over criminal investigations.
KELLY: So when he says he needs to be consistent with rules and regulations on the question of whether whatever final report Mueller produces should be made public, that's what he would be referring to - executive privilege - that the president might say no.
DASKAL: Exactly. Executive privilege or broad claims of national security or a range of different reasons why transparency would be limited, according to his - his views and the president's articulation of what's necessary to keep private, secret.
KELLY: He also, as we just heard there from Carrie Johnson, did not seem to suggest that he's likely to recuse himself from overseeing the Mueller investigation. Did that surprise you in any way?
DASKAL: It surprises me only because it seems like a clear case where recusal would be appropriate. But he has been consistent all along in suggesting that he would not recuse himself. And so I wasn't surprised that he didn't change his mind today.
But given his engagement, given the memo that was - that he chose to write and to send to the president about concerns about obstruction of justice charges targeting the president and given what he acknowledged today about conversations, it seems like this would be a clear case for recusal. But he has been consistent about that.
KELLY: Well, that prompts my next question, and it's one that he was asked today by senators and - in one way or the other, a number of times, which is would he protect the independence of the Justice Department against executive overreach? You know, do you think, when push comes to shove, Bill Barr would tell the president no? No, sir. You can't do that.
DASKAL: So again, I think it depends what's being asked. And he did suggest today that there were certain red lines that he wouldn't cross. But that being said, he has expressed repeatedly, previously, very broad views of executive power and executive privilege. And there are certainly, in a whole range of areas in which the president could assert executive privilege - and my assumption is - and based on Barr's previous writings and statements, that Barr would agree.
KELLY: Did you learn anything about Bill Barr today that you didn't already know?
DASKAL: Some of the contacts that he's had were interesting to hear about. You know, he is - as expected, he was incredibly articulate and - and respectful. I think that the key is - is reading the testimony in light of what he's said and written in the past.
KELLY: Did you hear anything today that might derail this confirmation, that poses a serious threat to his chances of being confirmed?
DASKAL: Just given - given the politics and given the makeup of the Senate, unlikely at this point.
KELLY: Is there a question you - you would have asked him that the senators did not?
DASKAL: Again, I think that really pushing him on this question of transparency, what happens when the president asserts a claim of national security, what happens when the president says, you know, we just want a very brief, cursory summary of this report sent up to Congress, what do you do then?
KELLY: You would have liked to have heard an ironclad, whatever Mueller wants to be made public, I'll back him back.
DASKAL: Exactly.
KELLY: That's Jennifer Daskal. She teaches constitutional and national security law at American University. Jennifer Daskal, thanks so much for taking the time.
DASKAL: Thank you.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
New research finds that older adults who routinely move either with daily exercise or just simple physical activity like housework may protect their brains against age-related damage. NPR's Patti Neighmond reports on the study published online in the journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
PATTI NEIGHMOND, BYLINE: Researchers wanted to know how movement of any type affected the brain of older adults who were 70 or older when the study began. They were given yearly tests of cognitive ability. Neurologist Aron Buchman with Rush University Medical Center in Chicago headed the study. For 10 days straight, participants wore Fitbit-like activity monitors which measured everything they did during the day.
ARON BUCHMAN: Whether you're chopping onions or whether you're typing or whether you're sweeping or whether you're running, the activity counts are going to be measured.
NEIGHMOND: Now, what makes this study unique - all participants agreed to donate their brains for research after their death. This meant Buchman was able to analyze brain tissue under the microscope and compare individuals who moved the most to those who didn't move much at all.
BUCHMAN: Higher levels of total daily activity was associated with a lower risk of developing dementia and was associated with a slower rate of cognitive decline.
NEIGHMOND: And what's most surprising, says Buchman - more physical activity meant lower cognitive decline even for people who, on autopsy, had numerous degenerative changes in the brain, things like amyloid plaques, tangles and vascular abnormalities. The take-home message, he says, is empowering.
BUCHMAN: If you lead a more active lifestyle with physical activity, you're going to maintain your cognition even though you're accumulating degenerative changes in your brain.
NEIGHMOND: The keyword here is movement. Anything an older person can do to increase activity is a good thing.
BUCHMAN: It doesn't have to be going to the gym. Even somebody who's limited and housebound who gets up and moves in the house or goes up and down stairs in the house has the potential to benefit.
NEIGHMOND: The findings are positive news, says preventive medicine physician Tim Church with the Pennington Biomedical Research Center.
TIM CHURCH: And what was fascinating was the physical activity seemed to protect against these different lesions or areas of the brain that were damaged.
NEIGHMOND: Creating something of a brain reserve or resilience.
CHURCH: Despite the damage, the physical activity is still allowing the brain to function properly.
NEIGHMOND: It's not clear exactly how physical activity might protect against age-related changes in the brain. Neurologist Buchman hopes to do more research with the donated brains and figure out which proteins or other mechanisms might link increased physical activity to better cognition. For now, though, the message might sound familiar. Get up. Get going, and move around as much as you can. Patti Neighmond, NPR News.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
And I'm Mary Louise Kelly, with a confession. I have never read a self-help book. I missed "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus," skipped "The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People" - not that I couldn't use the help. But I was always a little skeptical. If these books really worked, why do we need so many of them? Couldn't we all just read one and have our lives completely sorted?
Well, it turns out our next guest Marianne Power was similarly skeptical. But she also says she found herself at the age of 36 convinced her life was in a rut and not quite sure how to climb out of it. So she embarked on a project - read one self-help book a month for one full year, 12 books total. The result is her own book "Help Me!: One Woman's Quest To Find Out If Self-Help Really Can Change Your Life." Marianne Power joins me now. Welcome.
MARIANNE POWER: Thank you.
KELLY: So you set some rules for yourself here, we should let people know. Rule number one, you can't just read the books. You actually were going to follow their advice to the letter.
POWER: Exactly.
KELLY: How far did you take that?
POWER: I took it very, very far. So the first book I followed was a self-help classic called "Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway."
KELLY: Right.
POWER: That says you should do something scary every day. So I created a list of scary things to do, and I...
KELLY: Yeah, what was your list?
POWER: Well, stand-up comedy was the most terrifying thing I could think of doing. I did that. I jumped out of a plane. I did naked modeling for an art class. And then there was also kind of smaller things - opening bank statements. So, yeah, it was a cross-section. By the end of that month, I'd done most scary things in 30 days than I'd done in the 30 years beforehand.
KELLY: And did it work? Did you feel empowered...
POWER: I did.
KELLY: ...And self-confident at the end of it?
POWER: I was exhausted.
(LAUGHTER)
POWER: I was an adrenalized nutcase. But there's a phrase I read somewhere that our fear isn't that life is short. It's that we don't feel alive when we live it. And I felt very, very alive in that month.
KELLY: What was your favorite book of the twelve that you tackled? Which one was going to stick with you?
POWER: Oh, I loved "The Power Of Now." It's written by Eckhart Tolle. And Eckhart Tolle says that when we see people walking down the street talking to themselves, you know, we think they're a bit mad. But actually we're all doing that to ourselves all the time. We all have this voice in our head that's narrating what's happening. And it's quite often very critical. And it's, you know, beating yourself up for something you've done in the past, or it's worrying about what's going to happen in the future. And as a result, you miss the only thing that is ever real, according to Eckhart Tolle, and that's now. He asks, in any given moment, to ask yourself, do I have a problem right now, right here? And the answer is almost always no. So I found that book very helpful.
KELLY: It sounds as though your mom was a great reality check on this project.
POWER: She was.
(LAUGHTER)
KELLY: There was a scene...
POWER: She was everyone's favorite character, my Irish mother.
KELLY: Was she really?
POWER: Yeah, the queen of one-liners.
KELLY: That's annoying. You write your own...
POWER: Very annoying.
KELLY: ...Book, and your mother is the heroine.
(LAUGHTER)
KELLY: She does have a knack for for puncturing some of this stuff.
POWER: Doesn't she?
KELLY: There was one moment that I love where you're trying to explain to her, I guess, that you were working on replacing your usual negative thought loop with positive thoughts. And she says, oh, so you mean you're deluding yourself?
POWER: Yeah, exactly.
KELLY: And then - and this is what I want to ask you about - she said, you're not going to go all American, are you? I mean, do you think there is something to that - the American can-do attitude as opposed to...
POWER: I love it.
KELLY: I know the cliche - but the stiff upper lip of...
POWER: Exactly. Yeah. And I think that's the difference. And I absolutely love the can-do attitude. It's such energy and spirit and optimism. And I find that atonic.
KELLY: So you start with this very clear idea - 12 books, 12 months. You're gonna get it done. But then as often happens, life intervenes, and you got somewhat sidetracked and zigged and zagged. And you ended up doing this for 16 months, is that right?
POWER: Yeah.
KELLY: And also - tell me if I'm wrong - but it seems like going on a bit of a deeper emotional dive than maybe you originally set out to do.
POWER: Yeah, absolutely. I wasn't expecting that. I didn't - I just thought it was a very clever idea, and it would make me feel better, you know, in the way that you can feel better if you had a week of early nights, or you lose a few pounds. You know, I didn't really understand that actually I was taking myself apart in some ways. Yeah. As I got further and further into it, it was becoming a much deeper undertaking than I understood.
KELLY: You introduce us to a lot of the characters who you met along this journey, one of whom was a London cabbie.
POWER: Yeah.
KELLY: What did he share that stuck with you?
POWER: Oh, he was extraordinary. So I was really having a hard time at this point. I was having nightmares every night. And it seemed like the more I was thinking about myself, the more I hated myself. And I got into this taxi. And he just asked me, how are you? And I found myself saying, I feel like I'm going crazy. And he didn't balk. You know, he just said, why is that then?
And, I mean, this is a 60-something London taxi driver. I thought he would have absolutely no clue what I was talking about. But he did. He just seemed to get it. And he said, so you've been digging deep then? And I said, I have. And he said, it's like layers of an onion. You keep peeling each one off, and you feel like you're coming apart. And I started crying then. And he told me, you're touching the void, and you need to step back now and be normal for a while. Go to the cinema. Walk in the park. You know, stop doing this for a while.
And it was him who actually said, you should go and speak to someone. And it was after that that I did take a break and went to a therapist and managed to limp my way through the end of the project. But it was extraordinary. It was one of those conversations that I feel like I made it up, except for when I got home, my flatmate opened the door, and she was like, were you kissing the taxi driver? You were out there for an hour...
(LAUGHTER)
KELLY: ...Because we'd parked up for an hour in this intense conversation.
POWER: Well, so anyway, I'm very grateful to him. I never found out his name. But he's one of my favorite moments from that year because, yeah, the kindness of strangers can be just as healing as a book.
KELLY: Your final chapter is titled "So Does Self-Help, Well, Help?" What's the verdict?
POWER: It probably didn't help me in the ways that I thought it was gonna help me. But it helped in a much deeper and better way than I was expecting, which is - I honestly did learn by the end that I didn't have to improve myself or change myself. I just needed to accept myself. And human beings are messy. And we have good days, and we have bad days. And actually I know myself so well that I'm like, you know, quite over myself now, which makes me a much, you know, nicer person in the world. I'm more interested in other people. So, yeah, it didn't give me what I thought I wanted, but it did - to quote the Rolling Stones - give me what I needed.
KELLY: Well, Marianne Power, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for talking to us.
POWER: Thank you.
KELLY: Marianne Power, her new book is "Help Me!: One Woman's Quest To Find Out If Self-Help Really Can Change Your Life."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YOU CAN'T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT")
THE ROLLING STONES: (Singing) I saw her today at the reception, a glass of wine in her hand. I knew she was going to meet her connection. At her feet was a footloose man. You can't always get what you want. You can't always get what you want.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
President Trump's determination to pull U.S. troops out of Syria despite that ongoing violence we just heard about is costing him among his most loyal supporters - evangelical Christians. Several evangelical leaders have criticized the planned withdrawal, saying it could leave Christians in Syria vulnerable to attack. NPR's Tom Gjelten reports.
TOM GJELTEN, BYLINE: This latest violence shows that ISIS in Syria is still a force to be feared, and given its past attacks on them, Syrian Christians have reason to worry. Today's news came just as the Open Doors Organization, which tracks persecution of Christians around the world, issued its annual list of countries where Christians are in danger. Open Doors CEO David Curry says a security vacuum in Syria would endanger minorities there, especially Christians.
DAVID CURRY: Left to protect themselves, Christians in Syria will become extinct. There's just so few of them now. So we're going to need the U.S. or others to protect those religious minorities or you're going to have a continued genocide.
GJELTEN: Open Doors is just one of the evangelical organizations expressing concern about the implications of a U.S. pullout from Syria. The Christian Broadcasting Network, founded by the conservative televangelist Pat Robertson, is mostly friendly to Donald Trump, but CBN White House correspondent Jennifer Wishon last week saw a serious problem with Trump's plan for Syria.
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JENNIFER WISHON: For now, it appears U.S. policy is putting 2,000 years of Christian history and tradition at risk. Jennifer Wishon, CBN News.
GJELTEN: And there was even harsher criticism from the conservative Family Research Council. Two top officers wrote last month that a U.S. withdrawal from Syria would deal, quote, "an incalculable blow to our professed concern for Christians. We must not do it," they said. The worry is that when U.S. troops leave, Turkish forces or their proxies will come after the Christian and other minority communities there. Bassam Ishak, president of the Syriac National Council - a Christian group - had just left Syria last month when Trump announced his pullout plan.
BASSAM ISHAK: Once that announcement was made, I was getting calls from Syrian Christians, from Kurds who were worried and wanted to know if I had any information. They were desperate.
GJELTEN: The Syriac Christians are among the oldest Christian populations in the world. They still speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus. And they have suffered from Turkish attacks in the past, most notably in the early 20th century. There is also a small Kurdish Christian population in northern Syria, many of them evangelicals. Aykan Erdemir, a former opposition member in the Turkish Parliament, says these Christian Kurds are already the target of Turkish propaganda.
AYKAN ERDEMIR: We see conspiracy theories about a global push to establish a Christian Kurdish state which is, of course, nonsense.
GJELTEN: Christians and other minorities in Syria, including the Yazidis, have welcomed the presence of U.S. troops in the region. The Trump administration has told Turkey to leave those vulnerable groups alone after the U.S. leaves, but the warnings have mostly been rebuffed. Erdemir, now a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, notes that in March, when Turkish troops entered the Kurdish town of Afrin in Syria, they and forces allied with them looted property and caused Kurds to flee.
ERDEMIR: So far, the Turkish government has not given any assurances to the Syriac Christians, to the Yazidis, to the Kurds that Turkey will act differently this time.
GJELTEN: And that's what worries those for whom the persecution of Christians and other religious minorities is a serious concern. Tom Gjelten, NPR News.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Harris County, Texas, which is where you'll find Houston, is one of the most diverse metro areas in the country. That's not always reflected in its judges, but that's changing. The county recently elected a record number of African-American women to the bench - 19 total. Houston Public Media's Andrew Schneider has a story of that group of women who have dubbed themselves Black Girl Magic.
ANDREW SCHNEIDER, BYLINE: Harris County's criminal courts are still damaged from the floodwaters of Tropical Storm Harvey, so criminal court judges are doubling up in the Harris County Family Law Center, a seven-story office building in downtown Houston.
ERICA HUGHES: I'm Judge Erica Hughes for Harris County Criminal Court at Law No. 3.
SCHNEIDER: Hughes is a former Army lawyer who still serves in the Texas Army National Guard. She's one of the Houston 19, also known as Black Girl Magic.
HUGHES: A few of us are on the same floor, so, of course, we would see each other every day. So it's great to have them available and accessible and so close.
SCHNEIDER: Some are closer than others.
SHANNON BALDWIN: Hello, my name is Shannon Baldwin. I am the presiding judge of Harris County Criminal Court at Law No. 4.
SCHNEIDER: Baldwin shares Hughes' third-floor courtroom, but the Family Law Center is nothing like as crowded as when the 19 met in July of 2017. The Harris County Democratic Party held a get-to-know-you meeting that included every candidate for every office on its slate.
BALDWIN: If you could imagine a room that was far too small, we were all sort of packed in. And it was just like, state your name and what you're going to be running for. And it just went around the room like that.
SCHNEIDER: Baldwin says the potential judges had never discussed plans to run as a group. Nearly half had to win primaries first.
BALDWIN: Once we moved past the primary election, we realized that there was this great phenomenon, if you will - a large number of African-American women running for judge. It just simply occurred to us that that was something that needed to be highlighted, and we thought it would be a motivating factor to our voting base.
SCHNEIDER: The phrase Black Girls are Magic had been circulating on social media for at least five years. Judge Tonya Jones explains why the candidates latched onto it.
TONYA JONES: Just the idea of Black Girl Magic in and of itself is just a celebration of the accomplishments of African-American women in various sectors within society, and typically those where we are underrepresented, such as the judiciary here in Harris County.
SCHNEIDER: A promotional photo captured the message. It showed all 19 candidates dressed in black, suggesting judges' robes, in a courtroom at Texas Southern University's Thurgood Marshall School of Law. Judge Cassandra Holleman says throughout the campaign, voters constantly told her how inspirational they found the image.
CASSANDRA HOLLEMAN: I've even had parents that tell me that their daughters took the picture that we had, and they framed it. And it's actually on their wall in their bedroom.
SCHNEIDER: There were other factors in the victory of the 19 than just diversity. Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke lost the state to Republican Ted Cruz, but he carried Harris County by 17 points. Again, Judge Shannon Baldwin.
BALDWIN: Obviously, we benefited from straight-ticket voting. Even more so, we benefited from Beto O'Rourke and what he was able to accomplish in Harris County. But let it not go unnoticed that the 19 worked exceptionally hard.
SCHNEIDER: The fact is a big reason Houston and its suburbs have been trending blue is because they're so diverse. This cycle, Harris County also saw record numbers of Hispanic-American, Asian-American and LGBT candidates. And the more such candidates win, the more it encourages younger people of diverse backgrounds to believe they can do the same.
For NPR News, I'm Andrew Schneider in Houston.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
In New York this morning, protesters gathered outside the headquarters of Sony Music Entertainment in Manhattan. The group is demanding that Sony drop R&B singer R. Kelly. This protest was the latest development in a long saga of accusations against Kelly that he has sexually and physically abused young women for more than a quarter of a century. Outrage over the allegations erupted earlier this month following the six-part Lifetime TV docuseries "Surviving R. Kelly" in which seven women accused Kelly of sexual and physical abuse.
NPR's Anastasia Tsioulcas reports that in the aftermath of the series' airing, there has been a protest at Kelly's studio in Chicago and increased online pressure against the singer. And several prominent musicians have spoken out against their former collaborator.
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UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) RCA, you're to blame.
ANASTASIA TSIOULCAS, BYLINE: R. Kelly has been one of the biggest hit makers for RCA Records, which is owned by Sony. One of the organizers of this morning's protest, Natalie Green, told NPR's Colin Dwyer that the label bears responsibility for Kelly's alleged abuses.
NATALIE GREEN: He preyed on young black girls, and RCA Records is complicit in this. They promoted an abuser. They allowed him to line his pockets, to make royalties, to go on tour and thus expand his fan base. And with that fan base, he was able to abuse more girls.
TSIOULCAS: Last Thursday, Lady Gaga apologized for a 2013 duet with Kelly and had it removed from streaming services. Other artists are also reportedly asking for their recorded collaborations with Kelly to be pulled down, including the Pussycat Dolls and Celine Dion, who also records for a label owned by Sony.
Chance the Rapper, who is an independent artist, has pulled his recorded collaboration with Kelly. In the last episode of the Lifetime docuseries, Chance apologized for having worked with R. Kelly on multiple occasions. On January 6, Chance posted part of his video interview with one of the series' producers on Twitter. He said he ignored the allegations because of an institutionalized culture of violence against black men in this country at the expense of black women's stories.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "SURVIVING R. KELLY")
CHANCE THE RAPPER: Maybe I didn't care because I didn't value the accusers' stories because they were black women.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Mute R. Kelly.
TSIOULCAS: Several dozen protesters gathered in Manhattan this morning to deliver what they said was more than 200,000 petition signatures. They're asking for RCA and Sony to drop R. Kelly from their artist roster. The label did not respond to NPR's request for comment. Jade Magnus Ogunnaike was one of the organizers. She says that RCA Records enhanced a very specific image of Kelly.
JADE MAGNUS OGUNNAIKE: They've intentionally publicized this image of him where he brands himself as the Pied Piper - right? - where he sings songs like "Keep It On The Down Low" (ph), right? Songs that if you listen to them after watching "Surviving R. Kelly," you're just very disgusted like, oh, my God, he was talking about underage girls the whole time.
TSIOULCAS: The protesters say that they will continue their campaign, including at the Grammy Awards, which will be held in Los Angeles next month. Anastasia Tsioulcas, NPR News, New York.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
We begin this hour as we have started our program for the last three and a half weeks - with large parts of the federal government shut down. There is no end in sight for the stalemate that has now stretched to 26 days. Leaders on both sides are not talking, but members of the House Problem Solvers, many of whom are Democrats, had lunch with the president today.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said on Twitter this afternoon that the meeting was constructive and that the group now has a good understanding of what each side wants. Democratic Congressman Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey was one of the members of that bipartisan meeting, and he joins us now. Welcome.
JOSH GOTTHEIMER: Thanks for having me.
SHAPIRO: Do you agree with Sarah Sanders that it was a constructive meeting? Do you feel like you have a better understanding of what the president wants?
GOTTHEIMER: Well, I certainly thought it was productive. You know, we met as a bipartisan group in the Situation Room this morning. I think both sides listened to each other. I think we both walked away believing there was a way forward, there is a way forward. You know, what we've made very clear and - is we've got to open up the government, and we've got to do so now. There's a group that - and I think a significant group in Congress of both parties and in both houses of Congress that are willing to sit down and talk to one another and deal with some of the toughest issues in our country.
But you've got to reopen the government. You know, our security, our safety, our economy, our - have been compromised. You know, we've got millions of families suffering, so we've got to get the government reopened. But there's also a real desire for both sides to sit down and find a way forward.
SHAPIRO: So up until now, Republican leaders have said they will not reopen the government without an agreement to fund the wall. Are you saying that seems negotiable now?
GOTTHEIMER: Well, I would say that, you know - and I don't want to get into - if it's OK - all the specifics of our conversation in the room this morning, but I'll say that I think both sides did listen to one other, as Sarah Sanders said. You know, both sides heard where we're each coming from, and I think that's very important, which is why I think you've got to keep talking to one another. We've got to sit at the table because there's too much at risk. You've got to get the government open. I know I think on some of the issues that many of us are talking about, we think there is a bipartisan agreement to be had, but it's very difficult to do, you know, under these circumstances.
SHAPIRO: So...
GOTTHEIMER: And you can't really have a proper discussion under these circumstances.
SHAPIRO: Just to dramatically oversimplify the possible end-game scenarios, on one hand, either side could get everything they want, but the two more likely scenarios seem to be, first, Congress agrees to fund less than the president is asking for. I don't know. Maybe it's $2.5 billion rather than $5 billion. And the second scenario is that the government reopens. The negotiation happens. An agreement is reached on border security afterwards. Does one of those seem more likely to you than the other at this point?
GOTTHEIMER: Well, I think what's most likely without getting, you know, that would - without revealing all of the conversation - you know, I think what is most likely, I believe, a way out of this is that both sides are going to have to be willing to not get everything they want. Both sides are going to have to be willing to put a little faith in actually - in reopening the government but also being willing to sit at the table and have these conversations and looking for that pathway. And until we actually - until we do that, it's very difficult to solve this problem.
And I think what we heard in this meeting and, you know, from both sides is there's a real desire to get out of this, but it's going to take us, to your point on - that you just said - it's going to really take us to be willing to not get everything - both sides not get everything they want but to get most of what they want.
SHAPIRO: You're saying that there is some - that this was a constructive meeting is actually the most optimistic thing I've heard out of anybody in the last nearly a month. So just in our final minute...
GOTTHEIMER: (Laughter) Yes, so...
SHAPIRO: What is the next step? Is it the leaders to get together with the president? Is it more...
GOTTHEIMER: Yeah.
SHAPIRO: ...Of these lower-level negotiations?
GOTTHEIMER: Yes, you know, I think - the negotiations that are going to happen over whether we're talking about immigration - fix immigration and border security - those conversations have to happen at a high - you know, at a leadership level. And I think we talked about that today. That's - but the - why I am - I thought the conversation, to your point, was constructive. I am optimistic because we're actually talking, and I think...
SHAPIRO: OK.
GOTTHEIMER: ...We need to do more of that, and that's the point.
SHAPIRO: All right. Democratic Congressman Josh...
GOTTHEIMER: Thank you.
SHAPIRO: ...Gottheimer of New Jersey, thanks so much.
GOTTHEIMER: Thanks for having me.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Previous government shutdowns usually ended after a few days. This one has now gone on longer - a lot longer. It's now at record length. So trying to calculate its effect on the economy is more complicated, though even the Trump administration is now acknowledging the shutdown will eat into economic growth. NPR's Jim Zarroli reports.
JIM ZARROLI, BYLINE: White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett has sometimes downplayed the impact of the shutdown on the economy. But yesterday he seemed to have a different take. He said the impact would be twice as much as previous estimates. Here he was in an interview on Fox Business Network.
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KEVIN HASSETT: The government workers that aren't getting pay are feeling the pain, and it's going to really affect the economy as well.
ZARROLI: The White House says every week that the shutdown drags on, it will shave another 0.13 percent off of economic growth. That's pretty small, but it adds up over time. Some 800,000 federal workers are not being paid now, and that doesn't include the 4 million contract workers, many of whom are also going without pay. That's already beginning to affect the spending behavior of federal employees. There are people like Sophia Bogat, who works at NASA on a Mars exploration project.
SOPHIA BOGAT: I mean, it's a dream job. I would just love to be able to do it right now.
ZARROLI: Bogat works on contract, which means she's mostly not getting paid. And unlike civil servants, she won't be made whole later. So she's given up dinners out and exercise classes and even sold her car to raise cash.
BOGAT: It's changed the way that I grocery shop. I've been subsisting essentially on rice, beans and vegetables. You know, I stopped buying pretty much any meat just because it's expensive.
ZARROLI: And that kind of pullback on spending can lead to slower growth as a whole, especially in places with a lot of federal employees. Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM, says there are cities, such as Ogden, Utah, site of a large IRS facility.
JOSEPH BRUSUELAS: These are highly-paid professionals with educations who aren't receiving income who are going to see at least - at this point, at least two paychecks missed by these individuals. That's an entire month of pay.
ZARROLI: And that's only the initial impact of the shutdown. Macroeconomic Advisers founder Joel Prakken says sooner or later, the suspension of so many government services begins to affect the broader economy. Federal workers process housing loans, pay tax refunds and approve food labels. The fact that they're not doing that now keeps businesses from operating.
JOEL PRAKKEN: And then what about disruptions because public transportation is delayed, courts are closed, inspections are not being done, all of that?
ZARROLI: This shutdown comes at a time when the U.S. economy has been doing pretty well. Unemployment has been low. But Joseph Brusuelas says the longer the shutdown lasts, the more likely it is that the job market will suffer. In fact, more jobs could be lost than created for the first time since 2010. And he notes this comes at a time of ongoing trade tensions between the U.S. and China as well as an economic slowdown in Europe and Asia.
BRUSUELAS: You got what I would refer to as a growing uncertainty tax, which will show up in less hiring and less business investment.
ZARROLI: Once the slowdown ends, Congress is expected to pay federal employees back for the time they've lost, but the huge disruption to the economy could leave other problems in its wake. Previous shutdowns have hurt business confidence and left people a lot less certain that the government can address the problems it faces. And that could leave a residue of uncertainty that's a lot harder to eliminate. Jim Zarroli, NPR News, New York.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
In Los Angeles, the rain keeps falling and teachers keep marching.
(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Chanting) U-T.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) L-A.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Chanting) U-T.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) L-A.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Chanting) U-T.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) L-A.
SHAPIRO: It's day three of a teachers strike in the second largest school district in the U.S. Yesterday, we heard from Nick Melvoin, vice president of the LA school board.
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NICK MELVOIN: You know, we're at the table with an empty chair on the other side. We are talking to the mayor. We're talking to the governor and his staff and asking for all the support that we can get to bring the union back to the table.
SHAPIRO: Today, I put that to Alex Caputo-Pearl. He's president of United Teachers Los Angeles. He told me the union has lost faith in school superintendent Austin Beutner.
ALEX CAPUTO-PEARL: The fact is that we're very willing to bargain, and we actually initiated conversations with the mayor to help us make sure that Beutner does actually show up to bargaining or send members of his team who can make decisions. And we think that we'll be in bargaining soon.
SHAPIRO: Everybody's saying they wish this strike didn't have to happen. But in the past, you've called on the union to get ready for a strike, to create a crisis, to be a shock to the system. Can you really say that you have tried everything in negotiation and that this is a last resort?
CAPUTO-PEARL: We absolutely have. We have been bargaining for 21 months. We would like to have a partner in the bargaining and actually reach an agreement. And we've wanted that over the course of those almost two years. What I was referring to is that big, urban, public education systems like Los Angeles are in a constant crisis. It's just a quiet crisis of 46 students in a classroom, 39 students in a classroom at elementary school, 80 percent of schools without a full-time nurse, not enough counselors. It's a quiet crisis that affects kids. And my point in those statements was that we have to organize and actually make that crisis public. And if that means that we need to try everything we can but then legally strike to make sure that we get what kids need, then we'll have to do that.
SHAPIRO: As you well know, this is a very poor school district. More than 80 percent of kids qualify for free and reduced-price meals. Everyone seems to be saying they're acting in the interests of the kids here. But with each day that the strike goes on, these students are not getting regular education. Ultimately, isn't this harming children day by day?
CAPUTO-PEARL: What's harming children is decades of neglect. And frankly, the strategy of the privatizers to - I mean, look at what's happened in LA over the last 10 years. You've got federal IDEA funding and federal Title I funding for special education and low-income kids underfunded. And then at the local level, you have billionaires who are promoting that we not fund our schools and instead privatize them to create a parallel system that does not serve special education students, that does not serve students who have chronic problems.
SHAPIRO: So ultimately, are you making a calculation that causing students short-term pain through this teacher strike is worth it for the long-term benefits that you hope to get out of it?
CAPUTO-PEARL: I'm not just making that calculation. We have been overwhelmed with the amount of support from students, from parents, on picket lines in our actions. And we've had over 50,000 people marching in downtown Los Angeles over the last two days. This is not just us making that calculation. This is the city of LA making that calculation that enough is enough. And if we have to disrupt things for a little bit of time to take care of a decade of neglect, then that's what we're going to do.
SHAPIRO: Well - and then the question is how much time? You've talked about making a hidden crisis visible, creating a shock to the system. Certainly, both of those things are happening this week. How long does it need to go on?
CAPUTO-PEARL: Well, we're working with the mayor to reinitiate bargaining. And we are serious about that and are going to try to reach an agreement as quickly as we can. But what we're not going to do is short shrift some of these key things that have been causing this crisis to public schools over the last years.
SHAPIRO: Alex Caputo-Pearl, thank you for joining us today.
CAPUTO-PEARL: Thanks a lot for having me.
SHAPIRO: He's head of the LA teachers union, United Teachers Los Angeles.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Should Congressman Steve King's comments to The New York Times be called racist? As a reminder, last week, King, who is a Republican from Iowa, was quoted by a Times reporter as asking rhetorically "white nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization, how did that language become offensive" - end quote. Well, as NPR and other newsrooms have tried to characterize his comments - and I should note on air this week I called them racist - NBC did not. NBC got some blowback this week when it advised its reporters not to use the word racist. They have since reversed course, but we still have some questions, so we have brought in NPR's Gene Demby, who has got some strong views on this, to talk it through. Hi, Gene.
GENE DEMBY, BYLINE: Hey, Mary Louise, good to see you.
KELLY: Good to have you with us. OK. What exactly did NBC's guidance to its journalists say?
DEMBY: So NBC's standards editor sent out an email. We know this because the Huffington Post got their hands on it. The email said to, quote, "be careful to avoid characterizing King's remarks as racist. It is OK to attribute to others as in what many are calling racist or something like that." So after this big public outcry on social media over that email, NBC changed tack and said, quote, "it is fair to characterize King's comments as racist and point out that he has a history of racist comments." And, of course, this type of attribution, so-and-so says something that's racist, that's, you know, a pretty common news convention. It's meant to suggest a level of neutrality or distance from the reporter, especially when covering something controversial.
KELLY: Yeah. I think part of this is a desire not to label something. We report what somebody said, and everybody can make up their minds what they think of it...
DEMBY: Absolutely.
KELLY: ...Which is why you find a lot of journalists using terms like racially inflammatory or some other euphemism.
DEMBY: Yes. And that's not a new phenomenon. And so the Cornell historian Lawrence Glickman recently outlined this long history of euphemisms like this, like racially charged and racially inflammatory and racial undercurrents...
KELLY: Racially insensitive.
DEMBY: ...Racially insensitive, right - that are used by news organizations reporting on some sort of racial controversy. Glickman wrote that this really started to pick up steam in the 1950s. He noted one particularly tortured example from the Associated Press that called bombings on the then recently desegregated campus of the University of Alabama as, quote, "racially tinged explosions."
KELLY: And to situate this, you said the 1950s this started to change. Of course, that's when the civil rights movement was gaining steam.
DEMBY: Exactly, exactly. Phillip Atiba Goff, who is a psychologist we have on Code Switch a lot who studies racism, he said that one of the most important consequences of the civil rights movement was to create these new taboos around racial animus. So being a racist or at the time being prejudiced became a bad thing. And so reporters who were trying to stay, quote, "objective" were playing it safe by not characterizing the people that they were talking about as racist or prejudiced. And so to get deeper into this idea, if you primarily understand racism as a kind of, like, illness of the soul - right? - a moral failing, you can't use that term unless you can sort of characterize what's happening in people's hearts. We as journalists can't really do that. But that's not the only way to understand something as racist, right?
KELLY: Sure. Well, I mean, what would be another?
DEMBY: Well, a lot of people understand racism as just a structural reality, particularly people of color. If the United States was built on this history of ethnic cleansing of Native American people and the enslavement of black people and then all these subsequent arrangements flow out of those things, then racism and white supremacy is just, like, part of the source code of American life. It doesn't need to be sort of discerned from people's souls. And these two understandings of racism, those things are butting up against each other when we're using this language in our news coverage.
KELLY: So circle back to where we started and the controversy this week over Steve King and whether to call his comments racist. What do you think?
DEMBY: Well, one thing we should say here is that it matters a lot that mainstream newsrooms are still predominately white, right? And so that understanding shapes a lot of the guidance that newsrooms get, you know. And I think newsrooms should be much more comfortable just saying racist, and I would argue that Steve King's quote in The Times, which is a very literal defense of white supremacy, does not warrant this level of controversy. It's very straightforwardly racist.
KELLY: We've been talking with NPR's Gene Demby from our Code Switch podcast. Thanks so much.
DEMBY: Thank you, Mary Louise.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
British Prime Minister Theresa May survived a no-confidence vote in Parliament today - barely.
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UNIDENTIFIED MP: The ayes to the right, 306 - the noes to the left, 325.
(CHEERING)
KELLY: That means Brexit remains Theresa May's problem to solve. And it is quite a problem. Yesterday, lawmakers voted down her plan for exiting the European Union by an astounding margin. She has until Monday to come up with a plan B. Of course, lots of people are weighing in on what should happen now, and our next guest is one of them. Paul Mason is a writer and a journalist, formerly with the BBC and Britain's Channel 4. He left so he could speak out in support of the opposition Labour Party.
Paul Mason, welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
PAUL MASON: Great to be on the show.
KELLY: So start with that basic question. What path do you see out of this mess?
MASON: Well, ultimately, there has to be a deal. And either we postpone the deadline, which is 29 of March - which I think we will - there has to be a deal. Otherwise, Britain crashes out of this major trading and political relationship. And you know, the aircraft stop taking off from the from the airports. It's as simple as that. And the trucks line up at the major ports. There'll be chaos.
So there has to be some solution to it. The impasse we're in is that the government can't get its solution through, and that is the solution that has been negotiated with Europe. So any starting again doesn't just involve British politics. It involves European politics, and the clock is ticking.
KELLY: Right. Now let me pick up on something you mentioned there, which is the possibility of delaying. As you said, March 29 is when Britain is supposed to be leaving the EU. But I noticed The Times of London was reporting today that officials in Brussels and elsewhere in Europe are looking at how might this work, just to put off Brexit by, say, a year and let you guys figure it out.
MASON: Yeah. I mean, I think Theresa May, the prime minister, is even now, in some way I think, banking on that - banking on this pressure on her own MPs. You see, what happened yesterday is they massively deserted her. They hate the deal. They think it makes Britain into what they call a vassal state. It's like Trump leaving NAFTA but agreeing to obey the rules of NAFTA so that Mexico and China set America's trade rules. That's almost exactly what it is.
And of course, the right - so the Conservatives hate it. But she did the deal. So you know, we're in an impasse. Many of us on the left of British politics want the impasse to be broken by scrapping the whole idea of Brexit. And that is possible. A supreme court case in Europe says it's entirely possible for Britain to say we don't want to do it. We'll stay in with all our old privileges and all our old arrangements. But to do that, we're going to need another referendum.
KELLY: You brought Trump into this, so let me stay...
MASON: (Laughter).
KELLY: ...On that path for a moment. I noticed you wrote a piece for The New Statesman in which you argue that what's playing out in the U.K. is kind of the same culture war as what's playing out in the U.S. How so? And what parallels do you see?
MASON: Well, Brexit was a proposal to leave a major trading bloc. And the primary driver of the vote among poor, working-class communities was their opposition to migration - in this case white, Christian migration from Eastern Europe. Now, many of the same themes were played into that. And of course, we know some of the same money - you know, some of the Russian opaque money was in the U.K.'s political system, the same Facebook manipulation...
KELLY: You're talking about questions about Russian influence.
MASON: Yeah, et cetera - and directly. The American right was, we know, fine. You know, Cambridge Analytica - you know, the sub-company partially owned by Robert Mercer, was involved. So look; the same team that did Trump did Brexit. Note - however, Brexit...
KELLY: You're saying that literally - like...
MASON: Well...
KELLY: ...Steve Bannon, Nigel Farage, those types?
MASON: Well, Nigel Farage, of course, was the leader of the Brexit campaign. And the first thing - you know, when Trump comes to power, Farage is straight over there.
KELLY: Right.
MASON: There are interlinkages, of course, between the Trump campaign, the Russian oligarchs and Brexit. But some of it, of course, is still the subject of the Mueller inquiry. Some of it here is the subject of - we don't have a Mueller-style legal system, unfortunately. But...
KELLY: No. Paul Mason, I'm so sorry because you're leading me down a fascinating path. But we need to leave it there. That is journalist...
MASON: OK.
KELLY: ...And writer Paul Mason.
MASON: Of course.
KELLY: He writes a weekly column for The New Statesman.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
When President Trump announced last month that he is ordering the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria, he said ISIS was defeated. Vice President Mike Pence repeated that claim today even as ISIS claimed responsibility for an attack in the northern Syrian town of Manbij. That explosion killed four Americans and at least a dozen others. NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman is in the studio now to tell us more. Hi, Tom.
TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: Hey, Ari.
SHAPIRO: What do we know about this attack?
BOWMAN: Well, the U.S. military released a statement saying two American soldiers were killed in a bombing along with an American contractor. He was an interpreter, I'm told. Also, a Defense Department employee was killed. Three soldiers were injured, and one official tells me that three soldiers are in stable condition. And again, at least a dozen or so civilians were killed according to local reports.
SHAPIRO: We have not seen a U.S. death toll in Syria comparable to Afghanistan or Iraq. This is unusual. You've been to Manbij. Describe the place where this happened, and explain why U.S. troops are patrolling there.
BOWMAN: Well, Manbij is just 19 miles from the Turkish border. It was retaken from ISIS way back in August of 2016. And I was there last February with the U.S. military. And what's remarkable is we walked around without body armor. It was remarkably calm. It's a vibrant, bustling city, has a huge market selling all sorts of goods and produce. We went to a girls' school. Everybody was happy to be back in school - went to government offices, talked to all sorts of people. You would never get a sense that there was a shot fired in anger there.
Now, U.S. troops have been working in the city with local military council, so there is that presence in the city. And they're also patrolling with Turkish troops outside the city. But I remember even back then, residents and the U.S. military were saying that some ISIS fighters were kind of slipping back into the city. So that was a concern even but a year ago.
SHAPIRO: So tell us about these statements from the administration that ISIS is defeated and how that can possibly be reconciled with the fatal attack that we saw today.
BOWMAN: It can't. And first of all, ISIS has not been defeated, and no one seems to know why the president said that. And just today, as you mentioned, Vice President Mike Pence made a similar statement. Let's listen.
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VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: The caliphate has crumbled, and ISIS has been defeated.
(APPLAUSE)
BOWMAN: Again, that's not accurate. Most of the caliphate has been retaken, but there's still some left. There's a very tough fight in northeastern Syria along the Iraqi border. There are at least a couple of thousand ISIS fighters holed up, desperate and fighting hard. The U.S. is still bombing ISIS targets in Syria. They put out the numbers of airstrikes every week or so. So it just makes no sense why these statements are coming.
And I'm told initially the president wanted all U.S. troops out in a month. Officials said they need more time and got it. But a withdrawal has begun. Some U.S. equipment has been moved out. But at this point, not any of the 2,000 U.S. troops have left.
SHAPIRO: When you talk to the military leaders who are actually waging the fight against ISIS, what do they tell you it'll take to defeat them for real on the ground?
BOWMAN: Well, they say it'll take at least two, three more months. Again, they're dug in in this area called Hajin close to the Iraqi border. They've built berms and tunnels and have bombs ready to go off in cars. So it's a tough fight. And they have suicide bombers as well. It's going to take some time. And also, after the caliphate comes to an end, then the question is, then what? The U.S. says it's necessary to train 30,000 or 40,000 local security forces. That's only just begun.
SHAPIRO: That's NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman. Thank you.
BOWMAN: You're welcome.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
In the U.K. today, Prime Minister Theresa May is still prime minister. She has narrowly survived a no-confidence vote in her government in the British Parliament. This comes just a day after Parliament dealt her government the biggest defeat in modern British history, voting down May's Brexit deal by a whopping, thumping, resounding 230 votes. Well, for more on the tumult in the United Kingdom and the future of Brexit, we turn again to our London correspondent, Frank Langfitt. Hey, Frank.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: Hi, Mary Louise.
KELLY: So yesterday, Parliament - pick your verb - humiliated the prime minister. Let's start there. So how did she survive today's no-confidence vote?
LANGFITT: Well, the reason - I know it sounds very contradictory, but the votes were on completely different questions. You know, yesterday, Parliament killed May's Brexit deal that many in her conservative opposition Labour Party really don't like. Today's vote was about something completely different. It was a bid for political power. Now, Jeremy Corbyn, he's the leader of the Labour Party. He's trying to topple May's Conservative government. And what he wants to do is trigger a general election so he can replace her in No. 10 Downing Street. And here's what Corbyn said earlier today during the no-confidence debate.
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JEREMY CORBYN: Mr. Speaker, this government cannot govern and cannot command the support of Parliament on the most important issue facing our country. Every single previous prime minister in this situation would have resigned.
KELLY: Well, Frank, she clearly did not resign.
LANGFITT: (Laughter) No.
KELLY: And Jeremy Corbyn did not get his way today. What's Theresa May saying?
LANGFITT: Well, it was really interesting that, you know, over a hundred members of her party actually voted against her deal. That was, you know, yesterday. Her Brexit deal today - the entire party backed her, rallied to her cause. And she pointed out during the debate the deadline to leave the EU is at the end of March, and she warned that the last thing the U.K. needs is another election.
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PRIME MINISTER THERESA MAY: It would deepen division when we need unity. It would bring chaos when we need certainty. And it would bring delay when we need to move forward.
KELLY: Frank, does she emerge stronger from this or more enfeebled than ever?
LANGFITT: I wouldn't say stronger. She just - I think she survives. And the question is, where does she go from here? You know, right after the vote this evening, she said I'm going to reach out to party leaders, and she offered to meet with them. Well, this is the first time she's really done this. So I think it shows that she realizes that she has a very, very weak hand. Now, she says she's going to do this tonight and that by Monday she has to explain to the House of Commons what her new plan for Brexit is. Now, of course...
KELLY: Right, that's a deadline.
LANGFITT: It is - oh, yeah. I mean...
KELLY: She has to come back with a new plan. Yeah, OK.
LANGFITT: Well, the Parliament demanded that. And officials over in Brussels, they publicly reminded her that time is running out. And Donald Tusk, he's the president of the European Council, he suggested in a tweet - as he has in the past - that, you know, if the U.K. just can't agree on anything, maybe the United Kingdom should stay in the EU.
KELLY: What about the possibility hovering over all of this of a do-over, of a second Brexit referendum, which was unthinkable not so very long ago...
LANGFITT: No, that's true.
KELLY: ...But here we are. Is it more thinkable now?
LANGFITT: It is more thinkable. And there was a little bit of movement today. Dominic Grieve - he's a member of Parliament in the Conservative Party - he put in a couple of bills to call for a second referendum. Seventy-one members of Parliament in the Labour Party signed letters calling for a second vote as well. The fact of the matter is that's a small fraction of the House of Commons. It would be a steep political hill to climb. But I was talking to Hilary Benn last night. He's a member of the Labour Party. He supported staying in the EU. And he said that if they can't come up with anything else, a second vote could actually become a last resort.
HILARY BENN: If we end up deadlocked, then I can't think of any other way of resolving this other than going back to the British people and say, I'm sorry. I know we've failed to reach agreement, but you're going to have to take the final decision.
LANGFITT: Which, of course, Mary Louise, would be extraordinary.
KELLY: Yet another extraordinary twist in this extraordinary story. That's NPR's Frank Langfitt in London. Thank you.
LANGFITT: Happy to do it, Mary Louise.
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ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
On Capitol Hill this week, senators spent about nine hours pushing President Trump's nominee to lead the Justice Department for his views on the Russia investigation. But the next attorney general will inherit a portfolio that includes a broad range of issues, from violent crime to civil rights. Today, senators heard outside witnesses express sharply different views on how the nominee, William Barr, might handle those matters. NPR national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson reports.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: The last time William Barr held the reins at the Justice Department, he was confronted with a public safety crisis right away. In August 1991, more than 100 Cuban inmates at a federal prison in Talladega, Ala., ignited a riot. Corrections officers and other workers were caught in the middle - 10 hostages in all.
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CHUCK CANTERBURY: Over the course of the nine-day siege, it was clear then that negotiations were failing. General Barr ordered the FBI to breach the prison and rescue the hostages.
C JOHNSON: That's Chuck Canterbury, head of the Fraternal Order of Police, remembering the incident at Barr's Senate confirmation hearing today. Those hostages were freed with no casualties. Another former attorney general, Michael Mukasey, told senators that episode reveals a lot about Barr's leadership style.
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MICHAEL MUKASEY: And then follow that up by not taking any public credit for it. That's the kind of person he is and that's the kind of judgment he has.
C JOHNSON: Current and former law enforcement officials urged the Senate to vote for Barr to become President Trump's next attorney general. They cited his deep experience and his intellect. Mary Kate Cary worked for Barr during his earlier stint at Justice under President George H.W. Bush.
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MARY KATE CARY: I found that Bill Barr has a brilliant legal mind. He knows Mandarin Chinese, and he plays the bagpipes.
C JOHNSON: But 27 years ago, the violent crime rate was through the roof. Things are different now, but some civil rights advocates argue Barr's thinking has not kept up with the times.
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DERRICK JOHNSON: We need an attorney general who understands both the history and persistence of racism in our criminal justice system.
C JOHNSON: Derrick Johnson is president of the NAACP.
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D JOHNSON: In 1992, he said, I think our system is fair. It does not treat people differently. And just yesterday, he told Senator Booker overall - and I quote - "the system treats black and whites fairly." This statement is singly disqualifying.
C JOHNSON: Last month, Congress passed and the president signed an important criminal justice measure, the FIRST STEP Act. That law will give judges more power to tailor prison sentences to individual defendants, and it will give prisoners the chance to apply for early release for some drug crimes. Barr has pledged to carry out the law, but Marc Morial of the National Urban League is not so sure. He points out Barr refused to back away from a policy that directs prosecutors to pursue the most serious charges they could prove in every case. Meanwhile, the Trump Justice Department has reversed positions in several prominent voting rights cases, and Morial worries that Barr will continue that trend.
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MARC MORIAL: This nation needs an attorney general who will dramatically change course and enforce civil rights laws with vigor and independence. Based on his alarming record, we are convinced that William Barr will not do so.
C JOHNSON: The most emotional moment of the hearing came from Sharon Washington Risher. She talked about a phone call she got in 2015 after her mother and cousins were shot at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C.
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SHARON WASHINGTON RISHER: A house of worship - it's supposed to be a refuge from the storms of everyday life. But that young man robbed my family and the eight other families of their loved ones.
C JOHNSON: The man who killed those African-American worshippers has been sentenced to death. Risher says the next attorney general needs to do more to expand background checks and make sure that violent people do not get their hands on guns. On Tuesday, Bill Barr said keeping weapons out of the hands of mentally ill people was, quote, "the problem of our time." Carrie Johnson, NPR News, Washington.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Nine Republican senators think they have a solution to avoid a future government shutdown - take the threat of one completely off the table. Their bill essentially requires government funding to continue in the short term, even if Congress doesn't approve a new spending package. This is called the End Government Shutdowns Act.
And here to help explain it is William Gale. He's a chair in federal economic policy at the Brookings Institution. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
WILLIAM GALE: Thank you very much.
KELLY: All right, so start with the non-wonkiest version you can manage of how this Senate bill would work.
GALE: Sure. The government cannot spend money unless Congress explicitly authorizes it to spend money. So when Congress does not get around to authorizing such spending, the government shuts down, such as what we're in now.
KELLY: Right.
GALE: What the Republican bill would do would be to say, the government will stay open - it will not shut down, even if there's a spending bill that hasn't passed. But the government spending levels would be cut by successive amounts over time until Congress actually took action.
KELLY: The logic being that it doesn't make any sense to shut down much of the government over one tiny slice of government spending - over an argument over one tiny slice, such as is unfolding now over a wall at the border.
GALE: I think the important point is no business would operate this way. Imagine a business had some disagreement about how much they should spend on research and development, say, and because the management couldn't resolve that issue, they shut down the whole business, right? That would make no sense whatsoever.
KELLY: So could this work? I mean, essentially, what you're describing is this would be a temporary funding measure that would kick in if Congress didn't pass a budget and would just keep the government open while they continue to argue about it. I mean, why is that not a good idea?
GALE: I think an automatic continuing resolution, which is what is being proposed here, is a good idea. I've proposed it myself.
What I don't like about the Republican bill is that it does the automatic continuing resolution, but it also builds in spending cuts. So I think it's a backdoor way to shrink the size of government without having Congress vote on that.
What I think they should do is maintain the status quo until they choose to spend at some other level.
KELLY: Why have past efforts to prevent government shutdowns - I mean, to legislatively make it impossible to shut the government down - why have they gone nowhere? It suggests to me that shutdowns can be a useful political tool.
GALE: Yeah. I think the issue is that Congress does not like to give up anything that reduces or weakens its political power. On the other hand, the budget process - and I use that word with air quotes around it - is a mess. It almost never works the way it's supposed to. Oftentimes, we don't even have an overall budget resolution. Many times in the last few years, we've come down to the wire or, you know, we had three shutdowns last year because they couldn't agree.
And so the notion of an automatic continuing resolution is basically an effort to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
KELLY: Can you imagine support for this Republican-led measure increasing if this shutdown continues to drag on and on?
GALE: I can imagine support for an automatic continuing resolution to build up significantly, but I don't think the notion of building in spending cuts is going to get bipartisan support.
KELLY: That's William Gale of the Brookings Institution. Thanks for taking the time.
GALE: Thank you.
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MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
It is day 26 of the partial government shutdown. Tens of thousands of IRS employees have been called back to work without pay. White House economists are increasing their estimate of the negative impact on the economy. And the two sides do not appear any closer to a deal.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Now the State of the Union could be affected. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is suggesting that the president postpone this address to Congress. In a letter, she pointed to the amount of security it requires and proposed, quote, "that we work together to determine another suitable date after government has reopened." She also said Trump could consider delivering it in writing.
Congressman Don Bacon is a Republican from Nebraska who's been advocating for a compromise. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
DON BACON: Thank you. It's good to be with you, Ari.
SHAPIRO: Almost one month in, we're not seeing negotiations or numbers going back and forth. The pain on Americans is increasing. You had a long career in the military. You've been in Congress during another shutdown last year. Why do you think this is not following any of the predictable rules of how these things have gone in the past?
BACON: We've become too partisan. We have really two sides that need to come together. We need to make it a win-win situation where the president comes in. He's requesting 5.7 billion. Pelosi and Schumer have come in. I think it was 1.3, but they didn't want any of it to go towards a wall. Well, we got to meet somewhere in the middle.
SHAPIRO: You say the president has offered to meet halfway. Early in the shutdown, Vice President Pence went to Capitol Hill and suggested a $2.5 billion border security package. The White House undercut that, saying the president would not support the $2.5 billion proposal. Doesn't that make it difficult to negotiate when the White House is being inconsistent about what it's willing to offer?
BACON: I personally think he would take that because he said, Pelosi and Schumer, make your offer. And they keep saying, zero. But the president's made clear that he wants to hear a compromise offer.
SHAPIRO: When they were last at the White House, he walked out of the room. Is that the way to get to a compromise?
BACON: I don't think it is. I really think that either side here are talking at each other but not with each other. And right now, there's a lot of huffing and puffing. And I think this stuff should be hammered out, and it should become a win-win situation. We do need border security. We need targeted areas with a steel barrier. But we also need better screening devices for vehicles and some of the things that the Democrats have called for. This begs for a compromise. And right now, we're just seeing people with their heels dug in.
SHAPIRO: At what point do you think the pain of people not getting paid outweighs the benefits of border security?
BACON: Well, I think we're already seeing that pain right now. I'm not sure one when that point is. But why should it be that the president be the sole one to take that? This should be a shared decision between the speaker, the minority leader and president. It shouldn't be - this should be where we - both sides find solution. It should - why should it be the one side...
SHAPIRO: Sure. But in the search for that solution, is there a point where the pain of people not getting paid outweighs the benefits that you would get from having the border security that Republicans and the president are asking for?
BACON: I'm sure there is a point. I don't know how to quantify it, frankly. But we can't afford to have a breakdown on airport security, as one example, our Coast Guard. At some point, we have to still have a country that functions.
SHAPIRO: You serve on the Agriculture Committee. And the Department of Agriculture is shut down and can't process payments to farmers impacted by tariffs. Is that hurting farmers in Nebraska?
BACON: It is having impact. And it should be as short-lived as possible. I personally think if the - Nancy Pelosi came in and said 2.5 billion or something, and let's talk about TPS, the temporary protected status, or - we would have a deal. It would be done in a day.
SHAPIRO: If you were negotiating on behalf of this White House, what concessions would you make?
BACON: Well, I would take a number somewhere in the middle. Or you also - there's other things that we want to resolve. I think, for example, that we need to find a solution to the temporary protected-status individuals who are here in this country legally. So I think that we put some other things that solves two or three different issues that our country needs, to include maybe DACA.
I'd be willing to have that discussion. I support, you know, a permanent residence for DACA. On the border security itself, I realize the wall should only be a portion of it. We do need screening devices. We need more judges. And so there's an opportunity to do a more holistic approach that I think folks from both parties would support.
SHAPIRO: Congressman John Bacon, Republican of Nebraska, thanks for joining us today.
BACON: Thank you.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Another story now. Explosive testimony yesterday in the trial of Joaquin Guzman, the notorious Mexican drug kingpin also known as El Chapo. A witness alleged that former Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto took a 100 million - $100 million bribe from El Chapo. The president denies this. Vice News editor Keegan Hamilton has been in the federal courtroom in Brooklyn throughout the trial. He joins us now. Hi, Keegan.
KEEGAN HAMILTON: Hello. How are you doing?
KELLY: Hey. I'm OK. Thank you. So I gather that bribery testimony yesterday just drew gasps in the courtroom. You were there?
HAMILTON: I was there. I'm at the courthouse now. And I think we're all still trying to process exactly what happened. There were certainly audible gasps and a lot of journalists sprinting from the courtroom to the pressroom trying to get that news out when it broke.
KELLY: Right. What was the bribe allegedly for?
HAMILTON: Just protection in general, permission for the Sinaloa cartel to operate and for El Chapo to not have to worry about being captured. Obviously, that didn't work out for him in the end because he was captured and is currently on trial in New York.
KELLY: Here's my question. This apparently came out because of questioning by his attorney, by El Chapo's attorney. I mean, if my client were accused of bribing a president with a hundred million bucks, I'm not sure I would want that to come out in court.
HAMILTON: It is somewhat puzzling. And there's some nuance here that I think was lost on the jury and has been lost on most observers of this. What El Chapo's lawyer was getting at was that the statements that were given by this witness, Alex Sifuentes, to U.S. law enforcement after he was extradited were inconsistent. And the first time he talked about it, he said that Pena Nieto asked for $250 million and that Chapo made essentially a counter offer of a hundred million. He stuck with that number for a couple interviews. And then recently, he - in another interview with U.S. law enforcement, he changed the story and said he couldn't remember exactly what it was anymore. So he was essentially trying to say that this witness can't be trusted because he couldn't remember exactly how big the bribe was that Chapo paid.
KELLY: OK. So this is an effort, maybe, to undermine a witness's testimony. Fascinating. Are we expecting El Chapo himself to testify at some point?
HAMILTON: The defense yesterday told the judge that they put Chapo's name on a list of potential witnesses. That doesn't necessarily mean that he is going to testify. But they just didn't want to foreclose on the possibility that he could be called to testify in his own defense. It seems like it's a real possibility. Normally, defense attorneys tell their client, do not get on the stand under any circumstances because you could perjure yourself. You could open yourself to incriminating questions from the government. But in this case, given the amount of evidence we've heard, it's - Chapo has nothing to lose. And he probably wants the opportunity to tell his side of the story. So it's a very real possibility.
KELLY: And was there any more wild testimony today?
HAMILTON: Today's testimony was pretty incredible as well. We heard some stories about Chapo plotting a murder in Canada with the Hells Angels. We heard some more details that he was making - trying to make a movie about his life and gave an interview to a film producer where he told a story about being dangled from a helicopter by the Mexican military. Who knows if any of this stuff is true. This is all coming from the same witness who made the hundred-million-dollar-bribe claim. But that's what the jury heard. That's what everybody in the courtroom heard today.
KELLY: Wow. Sounds like you've got plenty of opportunities to dash out of the courtroom and run to file in your future. That's Keegan Hamilton. He's U.S. editor at VICE News, and he hosts the podcast Chapo: Kingpin on trial. Thanks very much for taking the time.
HAMILTON: Thanks for having me.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
On this day 100 years ago, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, barring the sale of any liquor, wine or beer anywhere in the United States. Fourteen years later, the 21st Amendment repealed Prohibition, but fights over liquor sales continue.
The legal fight at the U.S. Supreme Court today will likely affect the pocketbooks of lots of people. NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg reports.
NINA TOTENBERG, BYLINE: While the repeal of Prohibition legalized liquor sales, it left to the states the right to regulate those sales within state borders. Mississippi was the last dry state in the country, finally allowing liquor sales in 1966.
Most of the fights since then have involved state laws that protect in-state interests. In 2005, the Supreme Court struck down laws that allowed in-state wineries to ship wine directly to consumers out-of-state but barred out-of-state wineries from shipping to consumers in-state.
At issue in the Supreme Court today was a case testing a 12-year residency requirement for anyone seeking or renewing a license to operate a liquor store in Tennessee. Now, the posture of this case is, to say the least, peculiar. The state attorney general twice issued legal opinions saying that the law was likely unconstitutional.
But even as the state began approving liquor licenses, the state trade association of liquor store owners - some 500 of them - pitched a fit and threatened to sue. So the newcomers went to court instead. Among them were Doug and Mary Ketchum, represented by the Institute for Justice.
When doctors told the Ketchums their daughter's lung problems would lead to an early death if they didn't move to a place where the air quality was better, they surveyed their choices, quit their jobs in Salt Lake City and bought a house and a liquor store in Memphis, Tenn.
DOUG KETCHUM: We actually moved 2 1/2 years ago. The state had told us they were going to approve our license.
TOTENBERG: But with final approval in limbo, the Ketchums went to court, joined by a national chain of high-end liquor stores known as Total Wine. After a judge agreed that the 12-year residency requirement was unconstitutional, the Ketchums opened their liquor store in Memphis, while Total Wine opened a superstore in Knoxville, offering 8,000 wines, 3,000 spirits and 2,500 beers. It was unlike any other liquor store in the state. And the state liquor store retail association appealed the lower court decision all the way to the Supreme Court.
In the high court today, the state retailers association lawyer Shay Dvoretzky told the justices that liquor sales are different from any other commodity because the 21st Amendment repealing Prohibition granted states, quote, "virtually complete authority to regulate liquor sales."
Illinois Solicitor General David Franklin, representing some 34 states that have laws similar to Tennessee's, echoed that principle. A law like this, he conceded, wouldn't fly if it involved any other product. But liquor is different, and unlike any other product, he maintained, the Constitution's ban on erecting barriers to interstate commerce does not apply.
Lawyer Carter Phillips, representing the new vendors trying to break into the Tennessee market, contended that there is no total carveout from the Constitution for liquor sales. The core principle here, he said, is nondiscrimination. In-staters have to show some health and safety justification for any discriminatory measures against out-of-staters.
Justice Gorsuch - if we agree with you, why wouldn't the next case be the Amazon of liquor sales? Answer - my clients are brick-and-mortar owners. Justice Kagan - but how do we draw the line?
Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.
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MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The oceans are filling up with plastic trash; much of it is packaging material. So environmentalists are demanding that corporations that sell consumer goods find new packaging that doesn't last for decades or even centuries. As NPR's Christopher Joyce reports, the movement is germinating in the Philippines, and it's led by a man who calls himself a simple island boy.
CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Late last year, Froilan Grate got a surprising invitation. Grate's an environmental activist in the Philippines. He was asked to come to Washington, D.C., to talk with some of the very people he'd been fighting, some of the biggest corporations in the world - the companies that make and use plastic.
FROILAN GRATE: Hey, how are you?
JOYCE: Welcome to Washington.
I meet him on a cold sidewalk last December.
GRATE: Perfect weather here.
JOYCE: You've had two days of meetings.
GRATE: Yes, two days of meetings.
JOYCE: How are they going?
GRATE: Quite insightful and quite exciting.
JOYCE: Grate's barely known outside the Philippines, but two years ago, he caused a stir, and that's why he got the invitation. He says he almost turned it down until he learned only one other Asian was invited.
GRATE: Because we are in D.C., the room is full of white people talking about the problem and solutions. And for me, it was very important that what's happening in countries where people who see the impact of this issue every day, they're being considered.
JOYCE: Grate hardly looks like a fire-breathing revolutionary. He's a boyish 35, maybe 5 feet tall with a wispy goatee. Grate grew up in a village in the mellifluously named province of Iloilo. He loves the feel of hot sand on his feet and swimming in the ocean, but he has a serious soul. He wanted to be a priest and help the poor.
GRATE: I like the simplicity of it. I like the idea of just dedicating yourself to service.
JOYCE: At 18, though, he decides instead to go to university in the capital, Manila. On the 19-hour boat trip, he wonders if he's done the right thing, but he's also excited about a new future. As his ship pulls into Manila Bay, Grate grabs his bags and heads out on deck.
GRATE: It was just excitement, you know, and then slowly I see garbage.
JOYCE: Plastic garbage as far as the eye can see. Grate feels sick.
GRATE: I realize that moment that this is what could happen to the place where I grew up.
JOYCE: And it scares him.
GRATE: I'm scared because I was feeling powerless because the problem is just - it feels like it's beyond me.
JOYCE: At university, Grate does what he can.
GRATE: You know, refusing plastic bags.
JOYCE: But he realizes that's not going to change the world. After university, Grate joins an environmental group, Mother Earth Foundation. The foundation teaches people to separate plastic from the rest of their trash, and neighborhoods start to look better.
GRATE: It feels good because you see communities change.
JOYCE: But many, try as they may, can't keep up with the onslaught of plastic. Grate realizes he's just bailing water instead of turning off the spigot.
GRATE: It would take several lifetime if I only work in a community, you know? At some point, we have to change the entire system.
JOYCE: He decides to shift the battle from city streets to the source, the giant brands - Unilever, Procter & Gamble, McDonald's. In 2006, Grate and other environmental groups write a letter to McDonald's executives about their restaurants Styrofoam packaging. Grate takes it to the corporate offices in Manila, and no one will talk to him.
GRATE: And that very moment really crystallized for me the imbalance in the power dynamics, you know, that this corporation feels that they can actually just shut off a door from us. You know, we were not violent.
JOYCE: So what next? In 2016, Grate and his colleagues come up with another strategy, a much bolder one. Could they embarrass those companies? What if they could turn the very logos that companies used to advertise themselves against them, to weaponize them? At their next beach cleanup, they don't just collect trash. They write down the logo stamped on the plastic and publish what they find so the world can see who's making this stuff. They call it a brand audit, naming and shaming.
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JOYCE: I go to see how it's done in a neighborhood called Navotas, a compound of rundown, water-stained buildings near Manila Bay.
GRATE: (Foreign language spoken).
JOYCE: Grate and about a dozen volunteers are sifting through piles of garbage heaped on the cement floor of a basketball court.
GRATE: Colgate toothpaste sachet - Colgate, Palmolive, Philippines.
JOYCE: Grate reads labels off of pieces of plastic trash taken from households here while a colleague keeps a list. They're sachets, as they're called in Asia, little pouches that once contained things like shampoo or toothpaste.
GRATE: Sunsilk shampoo sachet - Unilever.
JOYCE: And they're a problem. They can't be recycled. Empty sachets float out into the ocean, and Asian countries get blamed for the pollution. But Grate says no, plastic in the ocean is not just Filipinos' fault. It's also the fault of the companies that make and profit from that packaging.
GRATE: These people know the problem. They know the [expletive] they've been giving to these communities, to the country, to the oceans. But for the longest time, they've been trying to get away with it.
JOYCE: But the big brands are trying to change their packaging. Unilever couldn't provide someone for NPR to interview but said in a statement that they are experimenting with ways to make recyclable sachets. They and other brands, such as Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble and Nestle, have pledged to make all their packaging recyclable by 2025. They're investing millions of dollars in research to find alternatives. Crispian Lao is a former plastics executive who represents major brands in the Philippines. He says they're planning to convert waste plastic there into valuable products.
CRISPIAN LAO: We will take the materials, packaging materials, that nobody wants, like the sachets, we will convert it in to a value-added product.
JOYCE: Paving tiles or chairs, for example. But Grate says he's still going to keep the pressure on. With help from the environmental groups GAIA and Break Free From Plastic, he's done more than 20 brand audits now in the Philippines.
GRATE: Because they feel there's value in their brand, so we want to use it against them, OK?
JOYCE: And that's why Grate came to Washington where he sat across from executives with major oil companies that make plastic and big consumer goods producers and people from the chemicals industry. They asked him to keep their company names confidential.
One other thing - do you think the brand audit made this happen?
GRATE: (Laughter) They weren't happy about it, and they have questions, but I would say the brand audits contributed to the pace of the discussion that's happening right now.
JOYCE: How do you feel about that?
GRATE: It's great, and I was made to feel that I have a voice, and people would want to listen to what I say.
JOYCE: It's taken 18 years to make the journey from a sandy island beach in Iloilo to a conference room in Washington, D.C. Clearly, things are changing. Christopher Joyce, NPR News.
KELLY: Our stories on plastic in the Philippines were produced by NPR's Rebecca Davis.
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MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
A champion of people trying to save for retirement has died. Jack Bogle was 89 years old. He created the first index fund which became what economists regard as the bedrock most powerful tool for how everyday Americans should save and invest for the future. Bogle founded the low-cost investment firm Vanguard.
NPR's Chris Arnold has done stories about Bogle over the years, and he joins me now. Hey, Chris.
CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: Hey, Mary Louise.
KELLY: So I know in your reporting you have referred to Jack Bogle as a George Washington figure. Except instead of the American Revolution - revolution on Wall Street. Explain. How did he transform investing?
ARNOLD: You know, if you have a retirement account - anybody in America basically who is investing in the stock market has more money, chances are, because of Jack Bogle. And the reason is that in 1975, he created the first index fund, and that came to be, like, a shot heard round the world.
What he was doing there is he was saying cost is everything. And he was challenging the high fees that financial firms like to charge people and say, look; you don't have to pay these high fees; there's a better way. And the competition that that created brought down the fees that are charged for everybody in their retirement accounts, whether you're in index funds or Vanguard funds or anything else. And it's put billions of dollars into the pockets of middle-class and everyday investors all around the world.
KELLY: OK, well, help me understand exactly what this better way was. I mean, what was the big idea behind what he did with index funds?
ARNOLD: Well, I got to spend a day with Jack Bogle at his house on a lake in upstate New York a few years ago. And that - he's a - also a very wonderful guy. Anybody who's ever met him just - you like him instantly. And here's the way he put this notion of Wall Street and the fees that they charge.
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JACK BOGLE: We live in this mythical world where we kind of believe the American way is if you try harder, you will do better, and if you pay a professional, it will pay off. And these things are true except in investing.
ARNOLD: And his idea was with an index fund - if people aren't clear on exactly what that is, you buy a fund that owns, some of them, the entire stock market - like, all of corporate America. You, Mary Louise, can own all of corporate America or a very small slice of it for a very, very low cost. And research has shown that this is just a very effective, powerful way to invest. You make a lot more money over time, chances are, if you invest this way instead of paying a lot of fees for guys to pick stocks for you. And it's really worked for a lot of people. And Vanguard, the company he's founded, now has $5 trillion under management.
KELLY: Wow.
ARNOLD: And he's changed the industry.
KELLY: Wow. And interestingly, Jack Bogle himself - while he was making all of our retirement funds fatter, he actually took home a lot less money than you might think.
ARNOLD: Absolutely. I mean, he's made nothing on the scale of the big hedge fund guys - very modest by comparison. And he really was more motivated about changing the world than he was about making money for himself. We should say, too, though, that while Bogle was a critic of Wall Street and its greed and its excess and all the things that are wrong, he was a complete fan of capitalism and wanted, like, you know, the young people and the future leaders to fix the problems and make it better, and it really is the best system in the world.
He also had a ton of fans. I mean, the most famous investor in the world, Warren Buffett, was also a - really liked Jack Bogle. He said in an annual letter in 2017, quote, "if there's a statue ever erected to honor the person who has done the most for American investors, the hands-down choice should be Jack Bogle."
KELLY: Wow. Thank you, Chris.
ARNOLD: You're welcome.
KELLY: That's NPR's Chris Arnold talking about Jack Bogle, creator of the first index fund. He has died at the age of 89.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The beloved poet Mary Oliver has died. During her lifetime, Oliver accomplished something few poets ever do. She not only made a living writing poetry. She was also a bestseller. Her poems often explore the link between nature and the spiritual world, and she won many awards for them. She died today of lymphoma at her home in Florida at 83 years old. NPR's Lynn Neary has this remembrance.
LYNN NEARY, BYLINE: Mary Oliver got a lot of her ideas for poems during long walks. That was a habit she developed as a kid growing up in rural Ohio. It was not a happy childhood. She said she was sexually abused and suffered from parental neglect. But as she told NPR in 2012, she found refuge in two great passions which lasted her entire life.
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MARY OLIVER: The two things I loved from a very early age were the natural world and dead poets, which were...
RACHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: (Laughter).
OLIVER: ...My pals when I was a kid.
NEARY: Oliver published her first collection "No Voyage And Other Poems" at the age of 28. She went on to win the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. But writer Ruth Franklin says such recognition probably wasn't that important to Oliver.
RUTH FRANKLIN: I always had a sense of her as somebody who was just interested in following her own path, both spiritually and poetically.
NEARY: In writing about Oliver's book "Devotions" for The New Yorker, Franklin said Oliver was not always appreciated by critics. But she was one of the country's most popular poets, and Franklin says there was a reason for that.
FRANKLIN: Mary Oliver isn't a difficult poet. Her work is incredibly accessible, and I think that's what makes her so beloved by so many people. It doesn't feel like you have to take a seminar in order to understand Mary Oliver's poetry. She's speaking directly to you as a human being.
NEARY: Oliver told NPR that simplicity was important to her.
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OLIVER: Poetry, to be understood, must be clear. It mustn't be fancy. I have the feeling that a lot of poets writing now - that they sort of tap dance through it. I always feel that whatever isn't necessary should not be in the poem.
NEARY: Oliver lived for many years in Provincetown, Mass., with the love of her life, the photographer Molly Malone Cook. She continued her habit of taking long walks which often inspired her poems. She wrote of such a walk in "The Summer Day."
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OLIVER: (Reading) I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
NEARY: Many of Oliver's poems are a joyful celebration of nature, but she also wrote about the abuse she suffered as a child and her first brush with death from lung cancer. All of Oliver's work, says Ruth Franklin, was infused with a deep spirituality.
FRANKLIN: The way she writes these poems that feel like prayers - she channels the voice of somebody who it seems might possibly have access to God. I think her work does give a sense of someone who is in tune with the deepest mysteries of the universe.
NEARY: In her poem "When Death Comes," Oliver wrote this about the inevitable. (Reading) When it's over, I want to say, all of my life, I was a bride married to amazement. Lynn Neary, NPR News.
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MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
To Los Angeles now, where today the school district and the teachers union met for the first time since a strike began on Monday. One of the union's demands is smaller class sizes. And that request is hugely popular with the rank and file, but it has been a sticking point at the bargaining table. As KPCC's Kyle Stokes found, measuring the benefits of reducing class size can be complicated.
KYLE STOKES, BYLINE: It's pouring rain on the picket lines, which makes a regular picket sign impractical.
MICHELE LEVIN: So I have a picket umbrella.
STOKES: Science teacher Michele Levin has etched a union demand on every panel of her white umbrella in bright-pink, waterproof marker.
LEVIN: It will last through rain, sleet and snow.
STOKES: Levin says she teaches 33 students per class at Daniel Webster Middle School, well above national averages. But by LA standards, Levin says a class size of 33 is low.
LEVIN: We're at the whim of the district for class size, and that - I mean, for me, that's the No. 1 reason I'm out here. It's because it's not fair to have so many kids in a class.
STOKES: Her daughter Pilar Cota-Levin goes to one of LA's best high schools, Hamilton High. And she says her largest class has 40 students.
PILAR COTA-LEVIN: Well, it's my math class, and I struggle in math, personally. So I don't get a lot of help. My teacher has to make it so 40 kids can understand.
STOKES: To her mom, the teacher, smaller class sizes mean fewer papers to grade at home. It means Levin can return parents' phone calls. It means she can give more than fleeting attention to each kid in her class. So union leaders say it's not just teachers but students who benefit from smaller class sizes. But from a research perspective, measuring that benefit is complicated.
MATTHEW CHINGOS: Reducing class size is one of the most expensive things you can do in education. So you always have to think about the intervention in the context of what it costs.
STOKES: Matthew Chingos studies education at the Urban Institute. He says the best study on this topic found that students placed in a small classroom of 15 scored better on tests and were more likely to go to college. Compare that with LA today. The district's proposing to spend millions to reduce class sizes. But even after that, most class sizes would still be in the 30s. Core high school classes would be capped at 39. Chingos wonders if that change is worth the cost. He says if the school district has money to spend...
CHINGOS: It's not clear that you would definitely want to spend it on smaller classes versus paying your teachers more or providing more money for new textbooks or for a music program or for after-school activities.
STOKES: School district Superintendent Austin Beutner says it's time for union leaders to consider this tradeoff. He says he, too, wants to reduce class sizes, but the district's also offered teachers up to a 6 percent wage increase, and it doesn't have more money to spend.
AUSTIN BEUTNER: Could we take a portion that's been set aside already for a salary increase and further reduce class size? We'd entertain that notion.
STOKES: The union thinks the district could find the money, but there might be another problem with framing the tradeoff this way. Rutgers University education professor Bruce Baker says in LA, both class size and wages are relatively bad. He says spending on either probably does the district good.
BRUCE BAKER: We're only going to be chipping at the edges on either. And it seems to me - my gut tells me that with class sizes that large, you're probably better off chipping at those edges.
STOKES: And research aside, the ground truth is parents want small class sizes. And the district is competing more and more with private and charter schools that offer them. Declining enrollment has jeopardized the district's finances in recent years, making it harder to pay for a lot of things, including class size reduction. For NPR News, I'm Kyle Stokes in Los Angeles.
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ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Not guilty - that's the verdict today for three Chicago police officers accused of lying about the 2014 police killing of a Laquan McDonald. Prosecutors said the officers lied in an attempt to justify fellow officer Jason Van Dyke's decision to shoot McDonald 16 times. Prosecutors also claim that dashcam video proved the officers were lying. The judge's decision is a major blow to police reformers. They had hoped that this case would send a message about the so-called police code of silence.
Patrick Smith of member station WBEZ joins us from the courthouse in Chicago. Hi, Patrick.
PATRICK SMITH, BYLINE: Hey.
SHAPIRO: Remind us who these officers are and what they were charged with doing.
SMITH: Yeah. So you have current Officer Thomas Gaffney, former Officer Joseph Walsh and former Detective David March. Prosecutors said that these three officers collaborated with Officer Jason Van Dyke and others in the police department to shape a false narrative about the shooting of Laquan McDonald, that they - they said that McDonald attacked the officers, that they said McDonald injured officers and forced Van Dyke to shoot, things that are contradicted by the infamous dashcam video of McDonald's death.
SHAPIRO: Now, this was a bench trial, which means a judge decided, not a jury. How did she explain her verdict?
SMITH: Well, she really undercut the prosecution's whole case and undercut what I just told you. You know, seeing the dash cam video of the shooting seems to completely contradict what the officers put in their reports. What she said was that that video cannot be considered all of the evidence. And, in fact, the fact that it's not from the perspective of the officers themselves is a reason to almost disregard it. It cannot tell us what really happened. I mean, she was saying - the prosecutor said the video proves this whole case, and she said, no, video doesn't prove the case at all.
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DOMENICA STEPHENSON: Only the officers involved in the incident know what their belief was at the time of the incident. We cannot now view the actions of the officers with the benefit of hindsight as to what they should have believed.
SHAPIRO: How have people in Chicago been reacting to this decision?
SMITH: Well, you know, in the courtroom itself, I heard several police reform activists exclaim. You know, they said, wow, in this sort of disappointed disbelief. There are also a lot of police officers, police union members and supporters who were in the courtroom and cheered and congratulated each other on it.
After, you know, the officers and the attorneys talked about their relief, activists talked about their concern that, you know, they were hoping this trial was going to send a message to officers that the code of silence - it's not OK to lie to protect other officers. And they were worried that this sent the exact opposite message.
One people - one person who spoke after was Laquan McDonald's great uncle, Marvin Hunter. He was one of many people I heard who said that this verdict today is proof that the code of silence protects police officers, and it extends all the way up to the bench.
MARVIN HUNTER: I want the Feds to come in I because I have no confidence in what has happened. I think the Department of Justice, I think the Feds need to come in. And I think they need to begin to investigate this for real, Cook - the whole Cook County justice system.
SHAPIRO: Now, tomorrow, the officer who killed Laquan McDonald, Jason Van Dyke, is scheduled to be sentenced. What do you expect to happen then?
SMITH: Well, yeah. There's a whole range of options. You know, the defense attorneys - Van Dyke's attorneys are asking that he be sentenced to probation only, no prison time at all. Well, prosecutors are saying he should be sentenced to 96 years in prison. Van Dyke was convicted of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery.
Prosecutors say he should serve the minimum for each individual count. Well, defense attorneys say, no, he shouldn't go to prison at all. He should be sentenced on second-degree murder, which there is a possibility in Illinois of probation for second-degree murder.
SHAPIRO: Patrick Smith of member station WBEZ in Chicago. Thank you.
SMITH: Thanks very much.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
President Trump was at the Pentagon today to unveil his administration's new strategy for missile defense.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Our goal is simple - to ensure that we can detect and destroy any missile launched against the United States anywhere, anytime, anyplace.
SHAPIRO: Joining us to discuss how the president plans to meet this goal is NPR's Geoff Brumfiel. Hi, Geoff.
GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: Hi there.
SHAPIRO: So I guess the first question is, who is the U.S. defending itself against? What is the specific threat here?
BRUMFIEL: Well, the names are pretty familiar. There's Iran and North Korea. North Korea is still considered an extraordinary threat according to this report despite the recent overtures towards peace by the Trump administration. But then also, notably, this report explicitly calls out Russia and China. And this is really a bit of a change. Russia and China have sort of - U.S. officials have shied away from naming them as threats in previous reports.
SHAPIRO: Russia and China have lots of missiles obviously, so why weren't they already part of the strategy before now?
BRUMFIEL: Well, the problem with defending against their missiles with missile defense is they have so many. They could overwhelm the system. And so basically previous administrations haven't wanted to aggravate Russia and China. They haven't wanted to sort of provoke them. So they've always said this missile defense is about places like Iran and North Korea. Russia and China - we counter with all our missiles. If they fire at us, we'll fire at them. So, you know, that's sort of been the traditional way we talk about this.
And this report still does some of that, but here's the thing. Russia and China have also been developing missiles to specifically counter U.S. missile defenses. So these are things like hypersonic weapons that can travel over five times the speed of sound. And Russia has a design for a nuclear-powered cruise missile with infinite range, which is kind of a crazy thing. But they are working on it. And so now Trump said today that the U.S. would invest directly in countering these new systems. Critics worry this looks a lot like an arms race.
SHAPIRO: Yeah. Those weapons sound potentially terrifying. What exactly is the U.S. calling for to counter that?
BRUMFIEL: Well, initially it's all pretty modest and kind of keeping with the normal line. They call for 20 new interceptor missiles at a base in Fort Greely, Alaska. It also calls for a new system to track missiles in space or from space using satellites. Further down the line, there's more advanced stuff, things like lasers to shoot down missiles. And it sort of sounds a bit more like Ronald Reagan's Star Wars program from back in the 1980s.
SHAPIRO: Missile defense has had a spotty track record in the U.S. To make all of this stuff and make all of it work, what - how many billions of dollars are we talking about here?
BRUMFIEL: There's not really a good estimate for what we're talking about today. The lasers and stuff is all R&D, so it's hard to know.
SHAPIRO: Well, what does Trump say about how this will be paid for?
BRUMFIEL: Trump has a great sort of Trumpian response to this. He suggests our allies might pay for it. Here he was earlier today.
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TRUMP: We protect all of these wealthy countries, which I'm very honored to do. But many of them are so wealthy. They can easily pay us the cost of this protection.
BRUMFIEL: But the truth is that really it's going to be the Congress who has to pony up for this, and that may be difficult with Democrats in the House. They're longtime skeptics of missile defense.
SHAPIRO: NPR's Geoff Brumfiel, thanks a lot.
BRUMFIEL: Thank you so much.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Today we got a startling report from a government watchdog agency about the administration's policy of separating migrant families at the southern border. The report says many more children were taken from their parents than was previously known. We're going to find out more about this from NPR's John Burnett, who's with us from Austin. Hi, John.
JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: Hey, Ari.
SHAPIRO: You've been covering the separation of immigrant children from their parents from the beginning. What is new in this report? Is it just the numbers?
BURNETT: Well, it's sort of a bombshell, but the numbers are really important. This report - it's the first time federal officials have acknowledged the government was using family separation to deter illegal immigration nearly a year before they made the policy official. Immigration agents separated thousands more children than we were aware of. The report is from the Office of Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for caring for these kids.
Everybody's been focused on this group of about 2,700 kids who were separated from their parents beginning in May of last year. That was the subject of a lawsuit that eventually forced the administration to reunite the families. And I and a lot of journalists had been reporting that immigration agents had been separating families before last May. Today they confirmed it, and the numbers are far greater than anybody imagined.
SHAPIRO: The administration described this as a zero tolerance policy at the border. Give us some background, or remind us what went into that policy.
BURNETT: Right. Well, in May of last year, remember; Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the government would observe this zero tolerance policy for all immigrant families who cross the border without papers. And the way it worked was the parent was prosecuted for illegal entry, and then their child, even if they were a baby, was separated and put into U.S. custody.
Then we started hearing reports of these wrenching scenes inside Border Patrol holding cells - agents physically removing the child, sometimes the parent and the infant weeping hysterically. So for the three months that zero tolerance was in effect from May to June, we know the government detained 2,700 kids. But as the inspector general told us this morning, this number doesn't represent the full scope of family separations. Here's Ann Maxwell on a teleconference with reporters. She's assistant inspector general at Health and Human Services.
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ANN MAXWELL: The OIG found that more children over a longer period of time were separated by immigration authorities and referred to HHS for care than is commonly discussed in the public debate. How many more children were separated is unknown.
BURNETT: What boggles belief, Ari, is that HHS didn't - can't say exactly how many kids were put in their care before zero tolerance. They said they estimated thousands.
SHAPIRO: Well, and then the question is, what happened to these thousands of migrant kids who were separated from their parents?
BURNETT: Right. Almost all the minors before and after zero tolerance have been reunited with their parents or released to relatives already living in the U.S - certainly not all but most. And they can stay with these sponsors while they wait to see an immigration judge.
SHAPIRO: Tell us about the reaction that we've seen to this today.
BURNETT: Well, Homeland Security, whose agents were separating the families, has been on the defensive. A spokesperson repeated what they've been saying all along. They had to remove the children because their parents were facing criminal charges, and you couldn't jail them together. And they say that's always been the case even before zero tolerance. But immigrant defenders are saying the government lied to them about how early the family separation policy was launched - way before zero tolerance. This is Nan Schivone. She's legal director for a group that helps immigrants called Justice in Motion.
NAN SCHIVONE: I'm not surprised at all. Members of our human rights defender network in Guatemala started learning about separations at the southern border in early 2018. Families were receiving frantic phone calls from children who were detained and said they didn't know where their fathers were.
BURNETT: And I should add that now the Democrats are in control of the U.S. House, with this OIG report, we may be seeing hearings on Trump's family separation policy.
SHAPIRO: NPR's John Burnett speaking with us from Austin, Texas - thank you, John.
BURNETT: You bet, Ari.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Divers in California have stumbled on an unexpected source of plastic waste in the ocean - golf balls that come from coastal golf courses. Golf balls contain plastic and can emit toxic chemicals. And as NPR's Christopher Joyce reports, there are lots of them underwater, something discovered by a 16-year-old diver named Alex Weber.
ALEX WEBER: My dad - he raised me underwater.
CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Alex Weber is a free diver. She just holds her breath. In 2016 near Carmel, Calif., she and her father were diving in the Pacific just offshore from a golf course. She looks down and saw something weird.
WEBER: You couldn't see the sand. It was completely white.
JOYCE: Golf balls.
WEBER: You look down, and you're like, what are you doing here?
JOYCE: Thousands of golf balls.
WEBER: It felt like a shot to the heart.
JOYCE: She was offended. She decided she'd haul them up. She put them in her family's garage.
WEBER: I had all of these golf balls in my garage, and they stunk. And I had no idea why.
JOYCE: Then she heard about a scientist who studied plastic waste in the ocean. His name was Matt Savoca from Stanford University. She emailed him. He came to look at her collection.
WEBER: Fifty thousand golf balls just sitting in the garage. He said I should write a paper about this. And I was like, Matt, I'm 16 years old. I don't know how to write a scientific paper.
JOYCE: He said he'd help. That meant diving with her - not easy.
MATT SAVOCA: The oceans off California are actually quite cold, and so you suit up in a pretty thick wet suit. It's incredibly physically demanding.
JOYCE: They took kayaks out to ferry the golf balls back.
WEBER: We'll have the kayaks so filled with plastic that we'll end up just having to tow the kayaks back, and we'll have to swim it to shore.
SAVOCA: While we were out there, we would hear plink, plink, and then we'd look up on the hill, and there would be golf balls flying in off the course right into the ocean where we were doing some collections actually.
WEBER: Whenever we have good conditions, we're able to pull out between about, like, 500 to 5,000 golf balls.
JOYCE: Over two years, they found more than 50,000 golf balls. The source - five golf courses. Three were up the Carmel River. The golf balls just rolled under water down to the ocean. In the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin, the team says chemicals from 50,000 or so golf balls will probably only have a small effect on the ocean, but they do degrade into microplastic pieces that marine animals could eat. Alex Weber says if those golf balls floated, people would be shocked.
WEBER: If a person could see what we see underwater, it would not be acceptable.
JOYCE: Christopher Joyce, NPR News.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Fly commercial. That, in essence, was President Trump's recommendation to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi as she was preparing to depart on a congressional trip to a war zone. Pelosi and other lawmakers and aides were about to leave for a trip to Afghanistan, also to Brussels. The president's recommendation came in a letter to the House speaker one day after she wrote to him asking that he delay his January 29 State of the Union address because of security concerns around the government shutdown. NPR congressional correspondent Susan Davis joins us now from Capitol Hill.
Hey there, Sue.
SUSAN DAVIS, BYLINE: Hey, there.
KELLY: Start with the scene there on Capitol Hill. I mean, walk me through quite how this unfolded today.
DAVIS: So Congress had already wrapped up its business for the week, and the lawmakers and aides that were scheduled to go on this CODEL were literally getting on...
KELLY: CODEL, meaning...
DAVIS: CODEL - code for congressional delegation - it's the shorthand that is used up here for when lawmakers take trips abroad. Staff can also take them sometimes, too.
KELLY: Right.
DAVIS: They're very common, and they're often bipartisan. And so lawmakers and aides were literally getting on the bus. The military and the State Department are the support staff for these trips. Lawmakers were boarding a U.S. Air Force bus. They were on their way to the airport when the White House released a letter essentially pulling the plug on the trip and saying - characterized it as a public relations visit and said...
KELLY: Wow. They were literally, bags packed, ready to go.
DAVIS: Yes. And they essentially canceled the trip. The bus turned around. Many of us chased after that bus. It pulled back up to the Capitol, and they got off the bus.
KELLY: Wow. That's quite a scene. What was the purpose of this trip? To Afghanistan - so they were going to go to the war zone.
DAVIS: These are very common trips.
KELLY: Yeah.
DAVIS: They happen all the time. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was leading the CODEL. They were scheduled to take a weekend trip to meet with NATO commanders in Brussels and then to meet with troops in Afghanistan. They were scheduled to be back in time for the congressional session next week.
I would say that these trips are probably one of the last things that are known as being nonpartisan or bipartisan and also a way in which the executive branch and the legislative branch work together. These trips can't happen without military support, without State Department support. There were already support staff on the ground in Belgium awaiting lawmakers to get there on this trip. And I talked to a lot of staffers and members that are kind of stunned because this has just simply never happened before. The president has never pulled the plug on a CODEL for political reasons.
KELLY: As the president knows because of his own recent visit to a war zone, it is unusual for these trips to ever be announced in advance. And we didn't know this was going to happen - right? - until he announced - you know what? - maybe you should postpone.
DAVIS: He did. And he announced it as they were on their way there. That certainly breaks with norms and precedents. These kind of trips into war zones are almost never announced before they're on the ground and often not announced until they've left the war zone.
So for the president to sort of announce that, I think, has also ruffled some feathers up here. Steny Hoyer is the majority leader. He called it small and vindictive and said unbecoming of the president of the United States. Even Senator Lindsey Graham - he's a Republican from South Carolina and an ally of the president - was also critical of the move, saying that one sophomoric response does not deserve another.
KELLY: Can the president do this? I guess the bus turning around indicates the answer is yes. But why does he have control over congressional leaders' travel?
DAVIS: You know, he has the legal authority to do it. I've already asked this question. I'm told he's the commander in chief of the military, and he controls military aircraft. I think there has also been a lot of deference given to the speaker of the House. Remember; the speaker of the House is a constitutional officer. They're in the line of succession. So for them to do this and under these circumstances, it really just is all about politics. There isn't a really good policy reason for this. It's just a bit of a tit for tat.
KELLY: Susan, just briefly - this comes on Day 27 of the shutdown and, I guess, gives us some window into that these negotiations are not exactly becoming a warm and friendly conversation anytime soon.
DAVIS: They're not. And if it's told us anything, I think the two parties are moving further apart and that we have some time to go in the government shutdown.
KELLY: Thank you very much, Susan.
DAVIS: You're welcome.
KELLY: That's NPR's congressional correspondent Susan Davis.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Well, despite the shutdown, one piece of government business that did take place this week was the confirmation hearing of President Trump's attorney general nominee, William Barr. Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin was one of the senators questioning Barr. And as one of the Senate's Democratic leaders, he's also working on trying to find a bipartisan solution to the shutdown. Senator Durbin and I spoke earlier today about the shutdown and Barr's nomination. Senator Durbin, welcome back to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
DICK DURBIN: Good to be here.
SHAPIRO: To start with the attorney general nominee, have you decided whether you'll vote to confirm Barr?
DURBIN: No, I'm taking a look at - it closer look at his answers to questions. I would tell you that the Mueller inquiry was front and center for obvious reasons. We may be facing a constitutional crisis soon, and the attorney general will play a pivotal role. Two questions were asked of him. One, he was very clear and decisive. Would he interfere with Mueller's investigation? He said no and said it repeatedly. I think where there's some weakness in his reply was what he would do with the results of the inquiry. After what we've been through for the last two years and who knows how much longer, I think at the end of the day, we would have all liked to have heard him say that he's going to make a transparent, full disclosure of the results of that inquiry.
SHAPIRO: Well, he did say he would like to make it public, consistent with the law. What concerns you about that answer?
DURBIN: Well, of course, he's a good lawyer. And he erected a little shelter for himself there by talking about the requirements of the law. He has, I think, wide discretion and authority to disclose to the American public. And I'd like to hear him indicate in a more fulsome way that he is dedicated to as much disclosure as legally possible.
SHAPIRO: Beyond the Mueller investigation, you also asked him some questions about immigration. The last attorney general, Jeff Sessions, made being tough on immigrants one of his signature issues. Do you think William Barr would take the same hard line approach on policies like separating children from their parents and trying to keep asylum-seekers out of the country?
DURBIN: Ari, the honest answer is I don't know. And I'll have to tell you, when General Kelly did his exit interview with the press, they talked about Jeff Sessions. And he said one of the reasons he was asked to leave was the zero-tolerance policy. But I never really put it, you know neatly, on Jeff Sessions' doorstep. I really thought this reflected what the president thought, what Steve Miller, his adviser on immigration, thought.
And so if the attorney general is going to play that kind of seminal role in immigration policy, I was looking for some indication that he's even close to the center stripe. He was very careful to endorse the wall over and over again even when it didn't apply. He didn't really break from the Trump approach on immigration. That troubles me.
SHAPIRO: To turn from the attorney general confirmation hearings to the shutdown, the president met with some centrist lawmakers of both parties yesterday, not with congressional leadership. Is it your impression that any movement came out of that meeting?
DURBIN: No. And I think the problem, of course, is the president has said the shutdown continues until he gets some sort of an agreement from Democrats as to how to we move forward. That's absolutely unacceptable. This is the first time ever a president of the United States has initiated a shutdown. We elect a president to lead and manage, not to shut down the government and create a real problem and suffering for hundreds of thousands of federal employees.
SHAPIRO: You've said that the president is being intransigent. And I also want to ask about the position that Democrats have taken. Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, has framed this as a moral issue. She has said she would give no more than one dollar to funding a border wall. If the expectation is that the two sides will negotiate, have Democrats painted themselves into a corner here?
DURBIN: Let's remember where we started. We offered $1.3 billion for border security. Now, where did the Democrats come up with that number? Well, we came up with it from President Trump. We gave him his request. It was only afterwards, after some negative reaction from some of the right wing about his signing a temporary spending bill, that he decided to dig in, shut down the government. If we're going to get back to the table - and we should - open the government, the negotiations will start immediately.
SHAPIRO: So is it your position that the shutdown has to end before there is an agreement on border security? As you know, the administration says there needs to be an agreement on border security before the shutdown ends.
DURBIN: Yes, for two reasons. First, it's totally unreasonable. The president has said he takes pride in the shutdown. And certainly I don't understand why when we have federal employees going to food pantries now to try to make it through this month. And second, this president and his chief of staff who's voted for previous shutdowns have to understand this is not the ordinary course of business. We shouldn't wonder what's going to be in the February shutdown if we solve the January shutdown.
SHAPIRO: The last government shutdown lasted 13 days, less than half as long as this one. And by one estimate, it caused $24 billion in lost economic output. The president is asking for $5.7 billion for his border wall. At some point, is it worth just paying that price because the shutdown costs the economy so much more?
DURBIN: And then what happens in February? Do we face it again on the next issue, whatever it happens to be, the president's favorite? We have to reach the point where we grow up in Washington and discount the notion of shutting down the government and harming innocent people just because the president wants his way.
SHAPIRO: With respect, that doesn't sound like the Washington we've been living in for some time now.
DURBIN: It doesn't. But most Americans said in the November 6 election they want change. And what you're seeing now is a Democratic Party in the House and many in the Senate. And I might add some Republican senators who are trying to say to this president, for goodness sakes, this is not an appropriate way to deal with an important issue.
SHAPIRO: So I know how you would like this shutdown to end. What is your realistic expectation of how this shutdown actually will end?
DURBIN: Well, conversations continue. I don't think they're particularly productive at this moment. I hope they continue at every level. And most importantly, I hope that the same Republican senators who come up to me on the floor and say they're fed up with the shutdown will tell Mitch McConnell that. If he calls the spending bill which Nancy Pelosi passed, and it passes the Senate, I think the president will understand it's time for the shutdown to end.
SHAPIRO: Democrats have been attacking the president far more than they have Republican leaders in Congress. But because you mentioned Mitch McConnell, I have to ask, much responsibility do you think he bears for this? Could he end it if he wanted to?
DURBIN: Yes, he could. And I think if he looks at the Constitution, which we all swear to uphold and defend, it spells it out. We have the authority to pass legislation. If the president chooses to veto it, under the Constitution, we can override the veto. If it's necessary to follow that course, we should.
SHAPIRO: So why do you think McConnell hasn't done that?
DURBIN: I think he doesn't want to brook the embarrassment of this president, having his Senate Republicans turn on him. That's why the president showed up for the Senate Republican lunch last week - to keep the troops in line. But they're getting restive. They want to see an end to this, and they want it soon, and I hope they do.
SHAPIRO: Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois. Thank you for joining us again.
DURBIN: Good to be with you.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
This week, British lawmakers handed a stunning rejection to British Prime Minister Theresa May's plan for taking the U.K. out of the European Union. Brussels is the seat of the European Union. And so to find out how politicians there are reacting, we've reached Jeremy Cliffe, Brussels bureau chief for The Economist. Welcome.
JEREMY CLIFFE: Good to be with you.
SHAPIRO: When British parliament overwhelmingly voted down this deal that Theresa May had worked out with the EU, how did EU leaders react?
CLIFFE: They weren't happy about it. This has been dragging on for almost two years now. The two-year period in which Britain is supposed to be negotiating its exit from the EU is almost up. And I think there's a real concern, first of all, that Britain will leave the EU without a deal, which will have knock-on effects spreading widely across the continent, but also that this issue will continue to drag on in Brussels and take up more time that EU leaders would rather spend on other priorities.
SHAPIRO: Another - a number of British lawmakers said, we can get a better deal from the EU. Go back and re-negotiate. Is that realistic? Is that the view in Brussels?
CLIFFE: It's not realistic within the U.K.'s existing red lines. Theresa May said, for example, that she won't tolerate free movement of people between Britain and the rest of the EU after it's left. And that makes it impossible, for example, to the EU to accept British full membership of the European single market. There's a real gap between, I think, what many people in London think they can get and what the Europeans are willing to give.
In reality, though she's made some tactical errors, Theresa May got the best deal out of the EU that she was going to get in the circumstances. It's not going to get any better than this unless she changes her red lines.
SHAPIRO: Well, after that deal was overwhelmingly voted down, Parliament took a no confidence vote. And she narrowly survived. Do you think most people in Brussels were disappointed or relieved that she remains prime minister?
CLIFFE: They may not have any great affection for Theresa May, but in Brussels, I think there was relief at that result. They do not need more uncertainty and instability in London. And there was certainly a concern that she might, if she lost, be replaced by a even more hardline Brexiteer who would be even harder to negotiate. So there was - there were very few people here hoping for a no confidence vote.
But there is an impatience, as I say, a sense that the ball is back in Britain's court and that Britain needs to decide what to do next and, in many cases, I think something like despair at the Brits ever making their mind up about this.
SHAPIRO: Yeah. Well, as you said, there is fear that this could drag on. What are the chances that it could drag on past this March 29 deadline when the U.K. is scheduled to leave the EU? How likely is it that this could be extended?
CLIFFE: That's right. March 29 is when the two-year official period for negotiating an exit is over. And if nothing changes between now and then, Britain will leave regardless of whether it wants to or not. That's automatic - unless, that is, the remaining 27 governments of the EU agree unanimously to let it extend that period. And I think they'd say yes to that. If Britain couldn't make its mind up by then, they would give it another couple of months.
The real hard deadline is the European parliament election in late May. And many people here don't want Britain to stay in beyond the start of the new parliament session, which is in July, simply because then you'd have the question of what do you do with - do you give British politicians seats in that new parliament, or does Britain somehow sit in the EU without having representation in its legislature? That would be messy, and I think people would try and avoid that if possible.
SHAPIRO: So you're saying even if there is an extension, it's an extension of maybe a couple months, not much more than that.
CLIFFE: Most probably. It's not completely inconceivable that Britain could extend its membership and extend the negotiating period beyond the start of the new parliament, which might mean having British members of that European parliament sitting for the remaining period of the negotiation. It might mean Britain accepting that it doesn't have representation in that parliament. It's not really clear how you'd find a fix to that. But I think it's more likely that the extension would be limited to that, the remaining period of the current parliament, so up till July.
SHAPIRO: Jeremy Cliffe, thanks so much for joining us.
CLIFFE: Thank you.
SHAPIRO: He is Brussels bureau chief for The Economist.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
It's Day 27 of the partial government shutdown. An Ipsos poll done for NPR finds that three quarters of those surveyed are frustrated or angry with the government. NPR's David Welna finds that many in government are pretty angry, too.
(CROSSTALK)
DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: It's noon at Pork Barrel BBQ in the Washington suburb of Alexandria.
BILL BLACKBURN: Hey. Bill Blackburn - appreciate you coming in.
WELNA: I'm met at the door by the restaurant's owner. Blackburn says he's offering free food to furloughed federal workers just as he's done during every shutdown for the past five years.
BLACKBURN: If we're open and we have pulled pork, they can get a free pulled pork sandwich. The plan is to do it until the shutdown is over. So if they're out of work, we'll give them a sandwich.
WELNA: The place is thronged with idled feds, including a woman who says she's not only a scientist...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: I'm a fed-up fed, yep. I'll say that. Yep (laughter), yeah, I am. It's just ridiculous at this point.
WELNA: She prefers to remain unnamed for fear of reprisals. That doesn't stop her from fuming about the border wall President Trump wants.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: It's a hundred percent political. I mean, a wall is a very simple solution - a nonsolution for a very complex problem. To think that something that that's complex could be solved with simply a barrier is ridiculous.
STEVE CODA: How are you?
UNIDENTIFIED CASHIER: How you doing?
CODA: Doing well. Thanks. Can I do the pulled pork sandwich?
UNIDENTIFIED CASHIER: Pulled pork sandwich.
WELNA: A large man with a beard claims his freebie.
CODA: Thanks so much.
UNIDENTIFIED CASHIER: I hope y'all back at work soon.
CODA: I hope so. Thank you so much.
WELNA: On a more normal workday, 30-year-old Steve Coda would be managing a program at the Transportation Security Administration, making more than a hundred thousand dollars a year. But he's been idled without pay for weeks.
CODA: My co-workers - you know, we've discussed about other jobs that we may get just during this period. I haven't done that yet. But if this goes into next week, that may be something I start looking into, whether it's substitute teaching or whatever it is.
WELNA: Others are already at it.
In the Uber I catch outside the restaurant, the guy at the wheel tells me apologetically it's his first day on the job.
JOE SANTANELLO: I'm just trying it out to see how comfortable I am with the app and make sure my phone works. And (laughter)...
WELNA: Joe Santanello is an Earth scientist at NASA. Normally he does computer modeling of satellite data to improve weather forecasting. But he is now furloughed and moonlighting.
SANTANELLO: The shutdown has been going on longer than I anticipated. I'm running out of disposable income and income for bills.
WELNA: Other federal workers not getting a paycheck still have to show up for their regular jobs.
MEGAN FITZSIMMONS: I get up every day, and I walk into work in a prison.
WELNA: Thirty-four-year-old Megan Fitzsimmons teaches GED courses at a federal prison in Lisbon, Ohio. She and her husband, who also teaches there, do guard duty as well. Both are working without pay. Fitzsimmons, who's an Air Force veteran, says promises of back pay once the shutdown is over don't help much now.
FITZSIMMONS: I mean, I don't trust anybody who's making me work without pay. And I'm not sure how they can make me whole because paying someone back later on doesn't make them whole. No one loans you money for free, for a start. I can't go to a bank and ask them for a loan and have them go, oh, sure, just bring me the money whenever you can.
WELNA: In Vero Beach, Fla., Kenneth McDonald is a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He says he spent four months last year fighting ISIS in Syria as an Army National Guard Reservist.
KENNETH MCDONALD: When I got back from Syria, I was on the job for two weeks and then furloughed.
WELNA: He's not the only one.
MCDONALD: This particular shutdown, it actually impacts veterans greatly, like myself. Thirty-one percent of us are veterans, many still serving in the Guard and Reserve.
WELNA: With six children ages 19 to 2, McDonald plans to collect unemployment and find a job where he won't be furloughed. He, too, is fed up.
MCDONALD: Very fed up (laughter), very fed up. The government is supposed to work. That's what the people expect. It's why they pay their taxes. They expect us to be at work and doing our jobs so they can do theirs. So yeah, I'm very fed up.
WELNA: One more fed-up fed with no end in sight. David Welna, NPR News.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Now to Iraq, where U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited last week. While he was there, Pompeo pressed Iraqi leaders to comply with U.S. trade sanctions against Iran. But Iran is, of course, Iraq's neighbor and one of its biggest trading partners, which makes the sanctions a very tough sell, as NPR's Jane Arraf reports from Baghdad.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing in foreign language).
JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: Iran's national anthem plays in a Baghdad hotel ballroom just after the Iraqi anthem. Hundreds of Iranian and Iraqi business people crowd around round tables covered in white tablecloths. There are flags from the two countries next to bowls of flowers. They've come to hear Iran's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif.
(APPLAUSE)
ARRAF: Just a few days after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived in Baghdad to press the Iraqi government on implementing U.S. trade sanctions against Iran, Zarif showed up with a trade delegation of dozens of Iranian companies.
MOHAMMAD JAVAD ZARIF: (Through interpreter) Between Iran and Iraq, there are historic ties. And today, those ties are even stronger. No one can break them.
ARRAF: He offered to allow Iraqi business people to enter neighboring Iran without visas to increase duty-free zones and to invest more in Iraq's oil and gas industry. The U.S. sanctions reimposed last November are targeted at Iranian oil, banking and shipping. The White House says they're aimed mostly renegotiating a deal that limits Iran's nuclear program.
Iraq and Iran do $12 billion a year in trade. Iraq has told the U.S. it needs Iranian electricity and natural gas and can't find other sources as quickly as the U.S. wants. It has asked for and received waivers for those imports. Iranian business people here say they're getting around the trade ban.
REZA NATEGHI: Let me tell you one thing. No problem. We will find it, same as that we have done last sanction.
ARRAF: That's Iranian Reza Nateghi, the manager of Solico, a major Iranian food conglomerate. Food isn't supposed to be targeted by the trade ban, but because it forbids money transfers to Iran, it affects all companies.
NATEGHI: How you want to transfer your money? How you want to receive? How you want to send your money, even for shipping? No any bank will accept to transfer your money.
ARRAF: You can find his company's products in almost every Baghdad supermarket. A company official says they employ 1,500 Iraqis at the food processing plant and distribution centers. Nateghi says the sanctions will slow their expansion but won't stop it.
(APPLAUSE)
ARRAF: Near the back of the room, a businessman in a suit with no tie - Iranian style - enthusiastically applauds one of the speeches. He's Iraqi, but he works for an Iranian construction company. He asks that his name not be used, like others, in case Iranian officials don't want them discussing business. His company has infrastructure projects in the south of Iraq.
UNIDENTIFIED BUSINESSMAN: (Foreign language spoken).
ARRAF: He says they'll find workarounds to the trade ban majority. Some of those grew out of more than a decade of sanctions against Iraq before the 2003 invasion. In a trading office in Erbil, investment banker Shwan Ibrahim Taha says his firm, Rabee Securities, deals only with the legal banking system. But he says, in Iraq, that system is overshadowed by the thriving business in informal money transfers.
SHWAN IBRAHIM TAHA: The illegitimate banking system in Iraq is much bigger than the legitimate banking system and is more capable, more agile.
ARRAF: Back in Baghdad, businesspeople mill around picking up photos of themselves taken by the conference photographer as the Iranian foreign minister finishes up his speech. Then he's off on a trip that will take him to the north and south of Iraq. He has business to take care of. Jane Arraf, NPR News, Baghdad.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
This is the week members of Congress voted almost unanimously to condemn their colleague, Steve King. The move was in response to the Iowa Republican's defense of the terms white nationalist and white supremacist in a New York Times interview. Now, as Iowa Public Radio's Katie Peikes reports, King's constituents in western Iowa are pondering his political future.
KATIE PEIKES, BYLINE: It's breakfast time at the J&J Cafe in the northwest Iowa city of Le Mars. At a table, there's a group of friends who meet daily to settle the world's problems. Today, they're talking about Steve King. Dennis Asche and Dennis Toel have both voted for him in the past and say he's been treated unfairly.
DENNIS TOEL: You know, there's no freedom of speech anymore. DENNIS ASCHE: That's why there's - that's why they started this country, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and all that stuff. And now you can't talk anymore.
PEIKES: Two big Iowa newspapers have called on King to step down, but Asche says King should keep his seat.
DENNIS ASCHE: Why? Because the voters, they put him in there, that's why. We voted him in there.
PEIKES: But their friend, Walt Kleinhesselink, is not so sure.
WALT KLEINHESSELINK: I think he's been in there plenty long.
PEIKES: King has represented this corner of Iowa since 2003, easily winning re-election every time until last November. That's when his history of making racist remarks caught up with him, and he eked out a narrow win. About 20 miles away is Sioux County, where King got some of his strongest support last fall.
At the Town Square Coffee House and Kitchen in Orange City, co-owner Steve Mahr says he voted for King in 2004, but now he wants King to go away.
STEVE MAHR: He's made comments about my immigrant neighbors. He's made comments about the freedom of black people. He's made comments about the superiority of Western civilization over other cultures and civilizations.
PEIKES: A couple of tables away, Bre Ellis says she agrees with King's strong anti-abortion positions and support for gun rights, but she doesn't like the terms King defended like white supremacist, white nationalist and Western civilization.
BRE ELLIS: I think that, at one time, Western civilization was an OK term to use. But I think that now, times have changed. And when times change, you also need to change the way that you say things and do things and support things.
PEIKES: After the New York Times interview ran, King said he condemned white nationalism and supremacy, although he insists he's still a defender of Western civilization. But in a sign that his support here may be ebbing, a prominent local Republican has announced plans to challenge King in the GOP primary next year. For NPR News, I'm Katie Peikes in Sioux City, Iowa.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Fyre Festival - that is F-Y-R-E - was supposed to be the music festival of 2017.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: The actual experience exceeds all expectations into something that's hard to put in words.
SHAPIRO: This promotional video set in the Bahamas promised luxury yachts, beautiful women and a lineup with big names.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SHAPIRO: People shelled out thousands of dollars for tickets and flights. But when they got to the island, it was chaos. Forget yachts. There wasn't even housing or food. Some people were stuck on the island for days fighting for basic needs. And the promotional tool that hyped up the festival in the first place became the engine of its notoriety as people flooded social media with a real-time account of the debacle. The festival's CEO, Billy McFarland, has been sent to prison for fraud.
And now, this week, two documentaries have come out to shed light on what actually happened. NPR's Linda Holmes covers pop culture and entertainment for us, and she had the pleasure of watching both of them. Hi, Linda.
LINDA HOLMES, BYLINE: Hi, Ari.
SHAPIRO: OK. Before we get to whether it was actually a pleasure watching these documentaries or not, remind us how Fyre Festival first came to be.
HOLMES: So Fyre Festival was created by Billy McFarland, who had already had a credit card thing that he did with millennials. And they wanted to make this big, giant music festival. They promoted it on Instagram. They had a bunch of Instagram influencers and beautiful models who one day put just an orange square on their Instagram. So that created this visual effect that made everybody say, oh, what's with the orange square? It turned out it was a Fyre Festival promotion. Then they had a very luxurious video with models frolicking on the beach and so forth. So by the time people were about to leave for it, they were pretty psyched.
SHAPIRO: No small part of the enthusiasm for the Fyre Festival story comes from schadenfreude in watching these kinds of people suffer in what they thought would be an exclusive luxury getaway. But explain how it came to be that in the same week we got two documentaries about it. We knew about the Netflix one, and then Hulu surprised us by releasing one before Netflix.
HOLMES: Right. The Netflix documentary we knew about. It was scheduled for Friday. You know, they said, our documentary's coming Friday. Hulu, in the manner of a suddenly released Beyonce album...
SHAPIRO: (Laughter).
HOLMES: ...Just dropped their documentary on Monday. And Monday coincidentally was also the day that the review embargo lifted on the Netflix doc. So just as critics are releasing mostly positive reviews of this Netflix documentary that's coming in a few days, Hulu says, or you could watch the one that's available right now. So they kind of undercut Netflix.
They also made the point at the end of their documentary that the Netflix documentary had as producers two of the companies who participated in putting on the Fyre Festival. So they were kind of saying, you know, there's another documentary, but it has, you know, some ethical issues. And it was really quite clever.
SHAPIRO: That is some cutthroat marketing.
HOLMES: It was cutthroat. It was cutthroat.
SHAPIRO: So you've watched both the documentaries. What do you think? Are they different? Are they both worth watching?
HOLMES: They're both worth watching. I think they are more similar than different. I think that the the Netflix one takes a little bit more of a tick-tock of the collapse of this whole thing. I think the Hulu one is a little more trying to get at big-picture questions. I think it's trying to get a little more distance. Also, the Hulu one for all of - that they were tut-tutting Netflix...
SHAPIRO: Yeah. I was going to say you mentioned the ethical questions surrounding the Netflix doc. The Hulu doc has its own ethical questions.
HOLMES: Right, because the Hulu documentary, unlike the Netflix documentary, has an interview with Billy McFarland.
SHAPIRO: That they paid for.
HOLMES: That they paid for. And this all kind of came out in a piece in The Ringer that was written by Scott Tobias, and he got to talk to both of the directors of the films. And, you know, they acknowledged, at the Hulu one, that they had indeed paid him something for this interview. So that in journalism is not done, just as having your piece sponsored by the subject of it is not done. So...
SHAPIRO: I feel like this whole saga, from the inception of Fyre Festival to the competing documentaries, is some sort of allegory for something, but I'm not sure what. What - (laughter) what's your big takeaway from all of this?
HOLMES: You know, it's really easy to turn this into tut-tutting wealthy millennials who were ready to drop all their money, you know, just because a bunch of Instagram models told them to come play on the beach. But honestly, every generation, I think, has its how-did-you-possibly-fall-for-this story, whether it's pyramid schemes or, you know, the pet rock or whatever. I think everybody has their thing. And I do think the shape of what it was that they fell for was influenced by Instagram.
HOLMES: But it's not that they're any more gullible. It's just that it's a different thing. This is what happens to be the way to get into people's pockets right now.
SHAPIRO: Linda Holmes hosts NPR's POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR podcast. Thanks, Linda.
HOLMES: Thanks, Ari.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CLAP BACK")
JA RULE: (Singing) Holla back. What do you do when - spit at you? Clap back, we goin' (ph) clap back, we goin' clap back.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Well, as we just heard, this new missile defense strategy singles out North Korea as a continuing extraordinary threat, which is extraordinarily awkward because the report drops even as the Trump administration is angling for a second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Kim's lead negotiator is expected to be at the White House tomorrow bearing a letter from Pyongyang.
Well, one person watching to see how this unfolds is Michael Green. He was the top National Security Council official for Asia under President George W. Bush. So I asked him what exactly he'll be watching for.
MICHAEL GREEN: Well, one is, will we see any concrete steps towards denuclearization? Will the North Koreans offer, for example, to provide a declaration of what nuclear fissile material weapons labs and things they have? But don't expect...
KELLY: And just to pause you there for a moment...
GREEN: Yeah.
KELLY: That is worth just noting - that North Korea in the seven months since the Singapore summit has not even produced a declaration of - here's what we've got; here's the size of our arsenal.
GREEN: That's right. The U.S. position is that we need to see complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization. You can't do that without the first step of the North Koreans declaring what it is they're going to denuclearize. So even the first step hasn't happened. So I'd look to see if there's anything more concrete than the very vague promises that have been floating around since President Trump met Kim Jong Un in Singapore. I don't expect much, but you might see some indication the North Koreans are willing to at least talk about it or something.
But there's another dimension to this that many in the region are watching with great anxiety, which is, what will President Trump say about the visit of the North Korean diplomat and his summit with Kim Jong Un - because when he met with the North Korean leader in Singapore in June, he declared that he would like to someday pull U.S. troops out of South Korea. It would be a move comparable to pulling out of Syria but on a much larger scale with even bigger geopolitical implications.
KELLY: That's a checklist for what to watch for on the U.S. side and what the U.S. side might want out of this. What about the North Koreans - I mean, any guesses as to what is in this letter that's being hand-carried from Pyongyang?
GREEN: So Kim Jong Un scored what every North Korean leader has wanted, which is a closed-door meeting with the U.S. president to try to strike a grand bargain. Consistently, the North Koreans' goal has been to strike a bargain where they keep their nuclear weapons, which is their ultimate guarantee of survival. And Kim thinks he will get the best deal he's going to get from any person on the U.S. side directly with President Trump. So I think the letter will try to entice President Trump to come to a second summit.
KELLY: Why is a second summit a good idea from the U.S. point of view? I mean, I've heard national security adviser John Bolton say North Korea didn't keep the promises it made at the first summit, so we should have a second. You could make the opposite argument. North Korea - if they didn't keep their promises, why is rewarding them with another summit the right way to go?
GREEN: The only policy case you can make for a second summit between President Trump and Kim Jong Un is that it keeps things calm, that it stops the North Koreans from going back to a cycle of testing missiles, testing nuclear weapons, rattling Asia. And it stops President Trump from going back to threats of fire and fury and military options. So it keeps things calm.
KELLY: If you were sitting on the NSC today...
GREEN: Yeah.
KELLY: ...What would your advice be - second summit or not?
GREEN: I would never have recommended a first summit. And I'll tell you honestly. I think the attitude of most of the national security team under President Trump is that it would be better not to have a second summit given how little we've gotten from the North Koreans. But the president's driving this. He's in charge, and he clearly wants another summit. And he clearly thinks that he can get something out of Kim Jong Un that no other administration has.
KELLY: Michael Green, thank you.
GREEN: Thank you.
KELLY: That's former National Security Council official Michael Green. He's now senior vice president for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a professor at Georgetown.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Democrats won control of the House of Representatives in November, in part, by promising to work across the aisle and get things done. Well, the ongoing government shutdown is testing that promise. The sharply partisan battle over President Trump's demand for a border wall with Mexico is dominating their first days in office. Now the class of 67 freshmen Democrats have to decide. Will they use their newfound power to stand with Speaker Nancy Pelosi or to cut deals with Republicans? NPR's Kelsey Snell has more.
KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: The first month of any new Congress is supposed to be about setting an agenda for the next two years, but Democrats can't do that. Instead, they're launching their brand-new majority by trying to do the basic task of opening federal offices.
ELISSA SLOTKIN: A lot of us are very much can-do people. We're very concrete people. We're very practical people. So all I want to do is solve it.
SNELL: That's Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin. She's a former CIA analyst who beat a sitting Republican to represent the area east of Lansing, Mich. She ran on setting aside vitriol to get things done.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SLOTKIN: Where I've worked, in tough situations, you don't ask if someone's a Democrat or a Republican. You work with them to get problems solved.
SNELL: That kind of message dominated political ads in November, but actually following through hasn't been so easy in these first few weeks.
SLOTKIN: So it's frustrating. I think that I would describe it as frustrating.
SNELL: For Slotkin and other freshmen, their very first weekend home as members of Congress was the exact same weekend that federal workers started missing paychecks. And they say that's all they heard when they went out to talk to constituents. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who won a Republican-held seat in Miami, says it was a really eye-opening experience. And she's well aware that this group of freshmen needs to figure out how to use the power they've just been given.
DEBBIE MUCARSEL-POWELL: Don't doubt for a second that we don't understand that we also have a lot of leverage because we're a new class. We're ready to take action. We are - we need to make this government work for all of us.
SNELL: They're trying a whole smorgasbord of ways to get that leverage moving. The freshmen have their own strategy sessions, and they want to take advantage of being political celebrities who attract a lot of media attention. That much was on display when a group led, in part, by California Democrat Katie Hill called their own press conference to march to the Senate to demand a meeting with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KATIE HILL: We're ready to negotiate. We're ready to make a deal, but we have to get people paid.
SNELL: McConnell wasn't there, and there's still no resolution in sight. Hill, one of the co-chairs of the freshman class, says they've remained unified behind Pelosi so far because her demand has been consistent. She says she'll negotiate on the details once the government is reopened.
HILL: We are very much aligned with the strategy of, we have to hold strong. We have to say that you cannot use the American people as a bargaining chip.
SNELL: But that means some members have to find different ways to transcend partisanship in the middle of a massive partisan battle. Freshman Minnesota Democrat Dean Phillips was one of several House members from both parties who went to the White House this week to ask Trump to do exactly what Pelosi's asking - reopen the government now. He says he wants to have bipartisan talks and get things moving, but he agrees that the government can't stay closed while they talk.
DEAN PHILLIPS: It is a unified perspective, you know? The fact is that we have our border security officers and TSA agents, air traffic controllers - the people who actually are charged with protecting us aren't getting paid right now.
SNELL: But many freshmen admit that unity might not last forever. Things might change when they start talking about controversial details of what defines border security. Moderate members from areas once held by Republicans, like Max Rose in New York, don't support the same policies as the outspoken progressives who were also just elected in solidly blue districts. Rose says the unity over the first step of opening the government is simple.
MAX ROSE: That shouldn't be news, right (laughter)? I just want to see people get paid.
SNELL: Navigating bigger policies will come later. Kelsey Snell, NPR News, the Capitol.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Michigan State University has a new president again. It's the school's third leader in less than a year. Interim President John Engler stepped down last night after making insulting comments about some of the abuse survivors of former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. Michigan Radio's Kate Wells reports.
KATE WELLS, BYLINE: Kaylee Lorincz just wants to be done - done with coming to these Michigan State Board meetings, done with trying to get the university's leaders to own the fact that for decades, one of its sports doctors, Larry Nassar, sexually abused hundreds of women and girls like Lorincz even though some of them had been reporting it to MSU for the last 20 years. Lorincz says John Engler, the school's interim president, never seemed to get that.
KAYLEE LORINCZ: You know, they announced his resignation immediately. And I had tears coming to my eyes. I think, like, oh, my God (laughter) - I think that after everything we've been through, I think it's, like, finally time that I can be positive and optimistic. And I'm so excited about it.
WELLS: Engler is a former governor of Michigan, and he was brought in to lead Michigan State last January after MSU's longtime president, Lou Anna Simon, resigned over the Nassar scandal. That came after she and others appeared tone-deaf and unapologetic, denying that the school could have stopped Nassar earlier. But survivors say John Engler did not improve the school's image. Take, for instance, Kaylee Lorincz, the survivor you heard earlier. At a board meeting Engler was running last year, she got up to make a public comment, telling the board that Engler privately offered her $250,000 to drop her lawsuit against the school. And then Engler tried to cut her off.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LORINCZ: President Engler then tried to back up his statements, saying...
JOHN ENGLER: Kaylee, your time is up.
(CROSSTALK)
ENGLER: Her time is up.
(CROSSTALK)
ENGLER: Kaylee, thank you very much.
(CROSSTALK)
ENGLER: Thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Let her speak. Let her speak. Let her speak. Let her speak.
WELLS: Then, in leaked emails, Engler said another survivor was probably getting kickbacks for manipulating other survivors into joining the lawsuit. Then the school shut down a $10 million healing fund it had set up for survivors' therapy bills. Finally, last week, Engler told The Detroit News that some survivors were enjoying their time in the spotlight, as well as the awards and recognition. At first, it looked like just another self-inflicted wound for MSU. But this time was different because three new members had joined the board, giving it enough votes to fire Engler. Here's Chairwoman Dianne Byrum at a hastily scheduled board meeting this morning.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DIANNE BYRUM: As chairperson of the board of trustees, I move that the board of trustees of Michigan State University hereby accepts John M. Engler's resignation as interim president of the university with an accelerated date of January 17, 2019, effective immediately.
(APPLAUSE)
WELLS: In his 11-page resignation letter, Engler laid out what he says are his many accomplishments at MSU - reorganizing the school's health system, upgrading mental health services and reaching a settlement with Nassar survivors for $500 million. But he did not offer any kind of apology. One of the new board members, however, Kelly Tebay, did apologize today.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KELLY TEBAY: We hear you, and we're listening. And we are sorry it took so long. I really hope this is the first step in a long road to really changing the culture of this institution that we all love so much.
WELLS: The board named a former dean, Satish Udpa, as its new interim president. Michigan State University will hire a new permanent president this summer. For NPR News, I'm Kate Wells in East Lansing.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Today, Day 27 of the partial government shutdown, the State Department announced it is bringing furloughed employees back to work. The department says it has been able to find enough money to pay for them for one pay period, two weeks. But after that, pay is up in the air. Now, this is not the only example of the Trump administration bringing back workers as the shutdown has dragged on. But how long might this last, and is this even legal?
Well, NPR's Ayesha Rascoe has been looking into that. She joins me now from the White House. Hey there.
AYESHA RASCOE, BYLINE: Hello.
KELLY: So I said other examples besides the State Department. What other parts of the administration are bringing back furloughed workers?
RASCOE: So it runs the gamut, and it really stretches across different agencies. But they're bringing back workers for a whole lot of different reasons. For instance, the government has called back 46,000 IRS workers to begin processing tax refunds in time for tax filing season. In that case, though, they're working without pay. The administration has continued to provide food stamps, and that's based on this loophole in a prior spending bill that allowed them to expend additional money for about 30 days after it expired. That runs out around January 20. And you also have of the administration bringing back people at the Interior Department to handle planning for an oil and gas lease sale for the Gulf of Mexico.
KELLY: Now, how are they able to do this? Is this digging around in one pot of money to shift it to another?
RASCOE: Some of that. So each program has a different rationale behind the decision. Some of them, like with the State Department and with Interior - they're finding leftover money they can use until it runs out. I talked to Gordon Gray, director of fiscal policy at the American Action Forum. It's kind of an economic think tank. And he said agencies do have some leeway with spending, and they can look for pockets of extra money.
GORDON GRAY: They are sort of looking under the seat cushions. When appropriations acts are passed, they do tend to have some built-in flexibility, but it's limited.
RASCOE: So there's only so much money to be found. In other cases, they're finding a legal basis to bring employees back. Basically under the law, you can continue government operations when it comes to protecting life and property, but operations can also continue if the government has an obligation it's supposed to meet that doesn't require annual funding - for example, paying out Social Security benefits during a shutdown. With the tax refunds, the Trump administration is arguing that they have to give out the refunds because people are owed them, and that's why they're able to bring people back.
KELLY: OK, Ayesha, you just used that the phrases there under the law and legal basis, but is this - are we sure this is completely legit and legal?
RASCOE: Well, not everyone agrees with the interpretations that the administration is making.
KELLY: OK.
RASCOE: Some critics say the administration is stretching their interpretation of the law. With the IRS, there's no deadline for refunds to go out, so these critics say there's no justification for processing them during a shutdown. The Trump administration disputes this. They argue that Congress expects them to distribute tax refunds promptly, so that's why they're taking action. There are also critics who question whether money can be moved around in some of these ways, like fees at the National Park that are supposed to be used for services for visitors - are being used kind of for maintenance of the parks. And so there are questions about that.
KELLY: And I suppose even if you set the legal questions completely to the side, they're all kind of practical issues here.
RASCOE: Yeah, so they're - the overarching issue is that even if you find extra money, it will run out eventually. The State Department only has enough money for one more pay period. And with food stamps, there's only really enough money through February, maybe a little bit beyond that but not much. So the money doesn't go very far, and then you're requiring people to work without pay for a lot of this. Like, that's what this depends on. And at some point, they may just stop working or not do as good a job because they want to be compensated.
KELLY: NPR's Ayesha Rascoe at the White House, thank you.
RASCOE: Thank you.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Survivors of California's recent wildfires are bracing for the possibility that the utility Pacific Gas and Electric may go into bankruptcy protection by the end of this month. Investigators are looking into whether the company's equipment started the Camp Fire. For victims suing PG&E, a company bankruptcy could impact their compensation. From member station KQED in San Francisco, Lily Jamali has more.
LILY JAMALI, BYLINE: For the last several weeks, California's Butte County has been inundated with TV ads like these.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV AD MONTAGE)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: This is for victims of the Paradise, Calif., Camp Fire. You may have a claim for damages against PG&E.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: You need an advocate who's been down this path before, someone who can make sure you're represented fairly and get you the best return for your loss.
JAMALI: Many local lawyers have partnered with the deep-pocketed attorneys from elsewhere, some from thousands of miles away, in a race to recruit fire survivors. The more victims, the more leverage against PG&E whose equipment may have sparked November's Camp Fire. That fire killed at least 86 people and destroyed almost 14,000 homes.
SHIRLEEN DEREZENDES: It's a very intimate and personal process when they work with...
JAMALI: At this community meeting in Chico, Shirleen DeRezendes pitches survivors on how her firm can help them.
DEREZENDES: I don't know another group that has a bigger heart than we do. And I'm...
JAMALI: She tells them the 2017 fires north of San Francisco destroyed the homes of countless friends and family. That prompted her to start working for the group, which includes a firm based in Washington, D.C., and another in Texas. They just opened an office here in Chico.
DEREZENDES: I consider the people that I work directly with from start to finish - they're like family
(CROSSTALK)
JAMALI: Amy Meyer, who lost her home in Paradise, is in the audience with her 9-year-old daughter and 15-month-old son. Afterwards, she tells me she's still considering her options, but suing PG&E makes sense.
AMY MEYER: Because so many of the plans that were in place were destroyed by the fire - you know, rebuilding and having to relocate for jobs and, you know, not having as many work hours as I continue on in this process. So yes.
JAMALI: Lawyers expect to receive a standard retainer of about a third of whatever they win in suits against PG&E. But if the utility ends up in bankruptcy protection, that would throw a wrench into those plans. Bruce Markell teaches bankruptcy law at Northwestern University.
BRUCE MARKELL: Under bankruptcy law, all actions against a company are halted by something called the automatic stay, and no new actions can be brought.
JAMALI: Thousands of victims from the Camp Fire and thousands more from the 2017 fires elsewhere in Northern California would see their suits against PG&E placed on hold.
AMANDA RIDDLE: It's not game over, but it definitely changes the game.
JAMALI: Attorney Amanda Riddle represents more than 800 Camp Fire survivors and counting. She says the bankruptcy threat has added to the rush to sign on more victims.
RIDDLE: The fact of the matter is there are a lot of people out there who need our help. And we are not at the place where we are going to change our strategy because of this bankruptcy talk. We're going to continue helping them unless and until a bankruptcy court tells us it's time to stop.
JAMALI: But not all lawyers are expected to stick around. If PG&E does file for bankruptcy for the second time in as many decades, it would be one of the largest ever for a utility. It could take years before victims and their attorneys learn whether they'll get the payouts they seek or end up with pennies on the dollar. For NPR News, I'm Lily Jamali in San Francisco.
(SOUNDBITE OF FREDDIE JOACHIM'S "SHOULDER KISS")
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The Brazilian composer and pianist Andre Mehmari has always played with the concept of theme and variation. He did a whole album of variations on Beatles tunes.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANDRE MEHMARI'S "HERE COMES THE SUN")
ANDRE MEHMARI: Since a very early age, I was drawn to improvisation. Even sometimes the classical teachers didn't like it when I got off the score, you know, but was something natural for me. I see improvisation as the door of entrance for the composing process.
SHAPIRO: This week, Andre Mehmari was in Washington, D.C., to play at the Kennedy Center. And we invited him in to NPR to sit down at the piano and talk with us about a theme and variation project he recently posted on YouTube. It's a tune you might recognize.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SHAPIRO: How did you discover the ALL THINGS CONSIDERED theme song?
MEHMARI: I must confess that radio is my favorite medium. So I always composed the main theme for a Sao Paolo radio station, classical music station.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MEHMARI: And then I did like a series of them.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MEHMARI: Like in romantic baroque jazz, all sorts of variations. But that's a very simple tune.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SHAPIRO: Does there have to be something specific about a song that speaks to you for you to feel that door into the improvisation?
MEHMARI: Well, sometimes yeah, sometimes not. Sometimes it can be very simple like this one. And, of course, if it's that simple, you can do anything with it.
SHAPIRO: So tell us what you hear when you listen to the ALL THINGS CONSIDERED theme music.
MEHMARI: I hear something that can lead me to a variety of musical places, so to speak. It's like a travel - musical travel. So I took the theme through different parts of my musical world.
SHAPIRO: Can you tell us, sort of deconstruct what you're doing in a part of this improvisation? Tell us how you took the original and what it translated to as you improvised on it.
MEHMARI: Yes, I can try. You have this (playing piano). So this is the famous connecting part of the theme. Then you have the response (playing piano). This is actually really (playing piano) kind of jazzy, you see. (Playing piano). It's like a cell that you can expand into a whole new body. It's like that idea of a germ in a cell that can expand to another more complex organism (playing piano). Something like that.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter).
MEHMARI: Of course you can do - you can go to many places.
SHAPIRO: It almost seems like a parlor game. You could say, how would Mozart do this, or how would Philip Glass do this? Something like that.
MEHMARI: (Playing piano). Maybe a ragtime, like something more jazzy.
SHAPIRO: Yeah. Does it have to be a good melody to create a good theme and variations or can variations make a bad tune good, improve upon it?
MEHMARI: You know, that's a very notorious case that Beethoven took a very mediocre theme from Giovanni - variations (playing piano). And then he wrote the most fantastic sets of variations upon that very simple and kind of stupid theme. That's not the case of the NPR - sorry.
SHAPIRO: I was going to say, would it be rude of me to ask which category the NPR theme falls in?
MEHMARI: I think it's - well, it reminds us of that early '70s aesthetics.
SHAPIRO: Which is when it was first written. If I could ask you to put on your composer hat, if you were to sit down and write a theme for ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, do you think the one we have could be improved upon?
MEHMARI: I think it's doing a great job. It's been around for quite a while, right? I wouldn't touch it. But, of course, you can also always rearrange it. And I have 30 minutes of variations you can - if you like, you can use it (laughter, playing piano).
SHAPIRO: Well, Andre Mehmari, thank you for spending so much time with our theme and with us. It's been a pleasure having you on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
MEHMARI: It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me. It's an honor.
SHAPIRO: If you want to see the YouTube video of Mehmari's full 30-minute improvisation, we'll tweet a link from the show's account - @npratc.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Sharon Van Etten became famous for strumming plaintive, soulful songs on a guitar.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "EVERY TIME THE SUN COMES UP")
SHARON VAN ETTEN: (Singing) Every time the sun comes up, I'm in trouble.
SHAPIRO: From the first single on her new album, it's clear that this Sharon Van Etten has a different sound.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "COMEBACK KID")
VAN ETTEN: (Singing) Hey, you're the comeback kid. See me look away.
SHAPIRO: She ditched the guitar, picked up synth and piano. And the soulful folk singer-songwriter has gone full-on rock star.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "COMEBACK KID")
VAN ETTEN: (Singing) I'm the stay-out-late. I'm recovering.
SHAPIRO: Sharon Van Etten told me picking up the keyboard was like an act of translation.
VAN ETTEN: It helped me look at things in a brand new way, and I also started singing in different keys.
SHAPIRO: Wow. I imagine it's almost like trying to write a story with your left hand instead of your right hand. Like, the story's going to come out different just 'cause you're not as used to doing it.
VAN ETTEN: (Laughter) Well, hopefully it's not as messy.
(LAUGHTER)
SHAPIRO: The new album is called "Remind Me Tomorrow," a nod to how busy Van Etten has been. In the past few years, she had her first child, took her first acting role in a TV show, went back to school for psychology, composed her first film score. And even if her music today sounds different, Sharon Van Etten says these songs still feel like her.
VAN ETTEN: My melodies are still very much what my friends would call SVE melodies because...
SHAPIRO: (Laughter) Sharon Van Etten - SVE, yeah.
VAN ETTEN: (Laughter) But you know, I've had friends that were nervous about the change in sonics and everything. But I think even behind the production and the noises or what one of my friends references as a velociraptor somewhere in there...
SHAPIRO: Which song were they referring to there?
VAN ETTEN: (Laughter) Maybe "Hands."
SHAPIRO: OK.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HANDS")
VAN ETTEN: (Singing) Putting my hands up...
There are definitely some noises and sounds and registers that you wouldn't normally hear. But they're still love songs. And I just feel like I sing with a different kind of force, you know? Whereas my songs were brokenhearted before, these songs are more immediate, very present and much more positive.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HANDS")
VAN ETTEN: (Singing) Put your hands on your lover. I've got my hands up.
SHAPIRO: I also hear some nostalgia for the self you've left behind.
VAN ETTEN: I remember when I first moved to New York and a friend of mine took me under his wing and showed me around to certain neighborhoods he thought I would find a kinship with. And he introduced me to a community of artists and musicians. And as we were walking down a street, I remember him being upset that one of his favorite places had just closed. And then he stopped himself, and he closed his eyes. And it was like he was repeating a mantra. Throughout time, civilizations rise and fall. And then he looked at me, and he just said, it's going to change a lot here over the years, so just be ready.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SEVENTEEN")
VAN ETTEN: (Singing) I know what you want to say.
And then I was writing "Seventeen" at the time when I noticed myself doing that about a place that had recently closed, reflecting on all I had. I used to hang out there, and now these kids are moving into a neighborhood I can't afford anymore. And I stopped myself, and I said the same thing to myself.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SEVENTEEN")
VAN ETTEN: (Singing) Downtown harks back halfway up this street. I used to be free. I used to be 17.
SHAPIRO: So if in that song, you say, I used to be free, then what are you now?
VAN ETTEN: When I first moved to New York, I didn't even know what it was I wanted to do. But now that I've lived in New York long enough and I'm doing all the things that I didn't realize I wanted to be doing at the time, I have different goals. And so I'm free to make those decisions, but there's a lot more of life pulling me in different directions now.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SEVENTEEN")
VAN ETTEN: (Singing) I see you so uncomfortably alone. I wish I could show you how much you've grown.
SHAPIRO: I also hear a lot of songs on this album that sound like you're trying to maybe give advice to an earlier version of yourself.
VAN ETTEN: Wouldn't you like to go back in time and hug yourself when you were a teenager and just tell them like, everything's going to be fine?
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
VAN ETTEN: And, you know, now that I have a kid and I think about all the phases in his life - I mean, when I was pregnant, when I had him, you know, it's all this buildup around having the baby. But then you have the baby, and then you realize all the other stages in life that he's - he's going to get made fun of. He's going to not make the team. He's going to get a bad grade. He's going to think a teacher doesn't like him. He's going to get broken up with. I mean, I'm aching for him already, and he's not even two.
SHAPIRO: Is the last track on this album "Stay" about your son?
VAN ETTEN: That song actually started as a love song to my partner before I was pregnant. And the process of writing some of these songs has been interesting because I wrote a lot of them before I was pregnant, and then I finished writing a lot of these songs after my son was born, with headphones on while he was napping, staring at him...
SHAPIRO: Wow.
VAN ETTEN: ...Hovering. And these songs that started off as love songs to my partner ended up being love songs to something that was much more intense.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "STAY")
VAN ETTEN: (Singing) You won't let me go astray. You will let me find my way.
SHAPIRO: When I look at the things you've done in the last couple years - besides creating this album and creating a human being, composing your first film score, taking on your first acting role in the Netflix program "The OA" - I don't know how you do two of these things, let alone all of them.
VAN ETTEN: Well, you know, not to sound sexist, but I think women are better at multitasking.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter).
VAN ETTEN: But at the same time, I feel like there are days where I am just doing everything at a B, you know. I have an amazing partner that helps me figure out how to do it, and Google Calendar is our best friend.
(LAUGHTER)
VAN ETTEN: It's probably the - hopefully the nerdy thing I'll say on air, but it's very true.
SHAPIRO: Well, Sharon Van Etten, congratulations on the new album. Thanks for talking with us about it.
VAN ETTEN: Thank you so much, Ari. I really appreciate it.
SHAPIRO: It's called "Remind Me Tomorrow."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "COMEBACK KID")
VAN ETTEN: (Singing) Hey, you're the comeback kid. See me look away.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Last year, we introduced you to a man named Bob Carr, the creator of Bob's Crystal Cave.
BOB CARR: Open the door. I ain't going to hurt you (laughter).
SHAPIRO: This was the first stop on our weeklong summer road trip with Atlas Obscura. At first glance, the Crystal Cave is just an oddball attraction - a tiny manmade cavern in the middle of a flea market in Yucca Valley, Calif. But Dylan Thuras, who co-founded Atlas Obscura, said we had to meet the eccentric, joyous man who brought it to life. Bob Carr died earlier this month at the age of 80. Here's Dylan Thuras' remembrance of Carr, who he first met on a family vacation.
DYLAN THURAS: When I took my then-3-year-old son Finn to see Bob's Crystal Cave, at first it just sounded like a cool diversion. Built from chicken wire and 1,100 cans of spray foam, the cave is just big enough so that my son and I could squeeze in, sit on the small bench and stare at this universe of miniature trees, tiny waterfalls and geological formations created out of crystals.
(SOUNDBITE OF WATERFALL)
THURAS: The cave is warm and humid, and my son Finn was mesmerized. For Bob Carr, that was the point - to give every visitor that childlike experience of wonder.
CARR: I've been working for over 50 years to recover my childhood naivete and innocence. And I hope when the creator calls me, I go goo-goo-ga-ga (ph) - (laughter) goo-goo-ga-ga.
THURAS: With his flowing white beard and craggy face, Bob looked the part of a desert mystic. And he spoke like one too...
CARR: You have it all by giving it all away.
THURAS: ...In riddles mixed with laughter.
CARR: There's nothing out there. It's all you. The whole universe, the ethereal, it's already in you. (Laughter) You're looking out there.
THURAS: Bob could be cryptic, especially when talking about the Crystal Cave. When I asked him why he built it, all Bob would ever say was...
CARR: Just plain old unexasperated (ph) joy.
THURAS: And what does an exasperated joy look like?
CARR: What do you mean, what does it look like? You're looking at it (laughter).
THURAS: Despite his radiating happiness, Bob had lived a hard life. He told me he grew up one of seven kids to poor parents who fled the Dust Bowl.
CARR: There was never a book in a house. There was no kind of library. We didn't have a shower or a bathtub. Poverty sucks.
THURAS: So he dedicated his life to finding happiness and sharing it with others.
CARR: I needed to express the uncontainable joy I'd built up over so many years. That's surrender. When I look at you, I can see you. Therefore, I'm stunned by the beauty and joy of every single human I meet.
THURAS: It may seem strange to suggest that the key to happiness can be found in a spray-foam cave in the middle of the California desert. But Bob taught me that every one of us is capable of making beautiful experiences for each other, even out of chicken wire and spray foam.
SHAPIRO: That was Dylan Thuras of Atlas Obscura, remembering the artist Bob Carr who died earlier this month. Bob is survived by his daughter Zena and his wife Elizabeth. In a text message, Elizabeth said Bob died as he lived - on his own terms and with dignity and grace.
(SOUNDBITE OF FREELANCE WHALES SONG "GENERATOR 1ST FLOOR")
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
R. Kelly has disappeared from the RCA Records website. Several media outlets are reporting the label has dropped the R&B singer. Now, this follows the Lifetime TV docuseries "Surviving R. Kelly," which catalogued more than 25 years of sexual and physical abuse allegations against Kelly by a number of women. Seven of them were interviewed on camera. NPR's Anastasia Tsioulcas joins us to talk about the latest developments. Hey, Anastasia.
ANASTASIA TSIOULCAS, BYLINE: Hi, Mary Louise.
KELLY: So start here - R. Kelly says he is innocent. He has always said he's innocent. And up to now his record label stood by him. So what changed today?
TSIOULCAS: Well, I should say first off, Mary Louise, RCA has not confirmed to NPR that Kelly's been dropped, though now it's been reported by Billboard and by The New York Times, as well.
KELLY: OK.
TSIOULCAS: However, it's true that Kelly has, as of this afternoon, been scrubbed from the label's website. And this all comes within two weeks of the Lifetime series airing. And on this - earlier this week, protesters dropped off a petition that included more than 200,000 signatures asking RCA and its parent company, Sony Music Entertainment, to drop R. Kelly. And this all was part of a longer-standing campaign called #MuteRKelly which asked RCA and other companies to sever their ties.
KELLY: Huh. Is there precedent for this, for a label dropping an artist who is, A, as popular as R. Kelly has been and still is in some circles and, B, who hasn't actually been convicted of any crime?
TSIOULCAS: That's right. And Kelly's labels have stood by him, even in 2008, when he was standing on trial for charges of child pornography in which he was accused of having sex with a girl on video aged 13 or 14 at the time. And Kelly was indeed acquitted on those charges. But as far as memory serves, this is the first time I can think of that a musician has been dropped by a major record label because of allegations of immorality or of criminal behavior. And this really could be a watershed moment in the music industry, which historically has turned a blind eye to sexual misconduct allegations. You know, you can look back to Jerry Lee Lewis or Elvis Presley. So this could be a real turning point.
KELLY: Another possibly related development to ask you about, which is R. Kelly's former manager Henry James Mason. He turned himself in to police this morning in Georgia. What is going on with that?
TSIOULCAS: That's right. There was a warrant issued for Mason's arrest. And Mason - it's unclear if he's a former manager or still current manager. A warrant went out six months ago in Henry County, Ga. According to police, Mason made, quote, "terroristic threats," unquote, against Timothy Savage. And Timothy Savage is the father of Joycelyn Savage, who's a young woman who is believed to still be living with Kelly. And both Mr. Savage and his wife have publicly accused the singer of abusing their daughter. And they repeated those allegations on the "Surviving R. Kelly" series. And I should say in May 2017, Joycelyn herself gave an interview to the website TMC saying that she was happy and not being brainwashed.
KELLY: Back to the Lifetime series, which put so much of this in motion, it seems. Have other accusers come forward since that aired?
TSIOULCAS: Well the prosecutor in Cook County, Ill., home to Chicago, where Kelly records and has a residence, made a public appeal for alleged victims to come forward. And people apparently have been calling. And other victims, including the women in "Surviving R. Kelly" have stepped forward to the press and had already done that. They're continuing to do interviews. I should say also that "Dateline" has a show tonight, including - one. And a lawyer for Kelly spoke up and said that Kelly continues to deny the allegations.
KELLY: All right. Thanks so much. That's NPR's Anastasia Tsioulcas following the R. Kelly story for us.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
And we begin this hour with the latest on a report by BuzzFeed that claims President Trump directed his then lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress, specifically to lie about the timing of efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. The story raises questions about possible obstruction of justice. Neither NPR nor other news outlets have been able to confirm BuzzFeed's reporting, and now there are questions about some aspects of the story. Joining us for the latest is NPR's Ryan Lucas. Hello again, Ryan.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Hi there.
KELLY: Start with just a little more detail on what exactly the original BuzzFeed story alleges.
LUCAS: Well, what the story alleges is that Michael Cohen told special counsel Robert Mueller that Trump personally instructed Cohen to lie about the project - this real estate project in Moscow - and say that it ended months earlier than it actually did. Remember; Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about this deal - about this project in Moscow. He told lawmakers that it ended in January when in fact these talks ran until December of 2016 - so late into the presidential campaign.
Now, the point of the lie, BuzzFeed says in its story, was to hide Trump's involvement in this project. And there's another interesting part of the BuzzFeed report. It says that investigators have corroborating evidence to back this up. That includes, BuzzFeed says, Trump Organization internal emails, text messages, other documents as well as witnesses. So if the report is true, it would be a big deal because it could amount to President Trump trying to get a witness to provide false testimony, and that would be a crime.
KELLY: So just to be clear, as you said, Michael Cohen had already pleaded guilty to lying. What this BuzzFeed story did that maybe moved the story along is lay out that the reason he lied was he was directed to do so by the president.
LUCAS: Correct.
KELLY: That's what they're alleging, but now the special counsel's office is disputing at least part of this report. What is Bob Mueller's office saying?
LUCAS: Well, the spokesman for Mueller's office, Peter Carr, said in a statement that, quote, "BuzzFeed's description of specific statements to the special counsel's office and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office regarding Michael Cohen's congressional testimony are not accurate."
KELLY: Do we know what - which documents, which characterizations they say are not accurate?
LUCAS: We do not.
KELLY: That's all we...
LUCAS: That is the extent of the statement. And the fact that we got a statement at all from the special counsel's office is rare. This is generally a fairly tight-lipped operation.
KELLY: I was going to say that's remarkable. I can't think the last time I saw a statement from Mueller's office. Meanwhile, the White House is also denying this story.
LUCAS: That's right. The president pushed back on this early this morning. He tweeted out a quote from a Fox News commentator raising questions about Cohen's credibility as a witness. Trump added a dig of his own in there, accusing Cohen of lying to reduce his prison time. The president's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, also denied it, said that it was categorically false and also took another dig at Cohen, basically saying the same thing that the president did - that Cohen is making these things up in order to save his own skin.
KELLY: So is BuzzFeed retracting?
LUCAS: There has been no indication at this point that BuzzFeed is retracting. Now, this is all coming out in the past half hour or so - that we have seen this pushback from the special counsel's office. So we'll see what BuzzFeed does with this.
KELLY: Early, early hours yet, OK - so where does this leave us? Michael Cohen is set to testify next month before the House Oversight Committee. That testimony just got really, really interesting.
LUCAS: It certainly did. And you know, this report from BuzzFeed generated a lot of attention on the Hill. Republicans were pretty silent. But we did see Democrats jump at it. The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, said earlier today that if the report is true, it would constitute obstruction of justice. The top Democrat on the House Judiciary, Jerry Nadler, said a similar thing. They both vowed to get to the bottom of this. They want to hear more from Michael Cohen.
As you mentioned, Cohen is going to be on the Hill next month, February 7. That will be in front of the House Oversight Committee. There are going to be a lot of questions for Cohen. This may just be added to the long list of stuff that lawmakers are going to want to ask him about.
KELLY: That's NPR's Ryan Lucas reporting. Thank you very much, Ryan.
LUCAS: Thank you.
KELLY: Happy Friday.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
All right. We have a lot of ground to cover today in our Friday Week In Politics chat. Truly, it is never a dull moment. So let's hop right in with Eliana Johnson of Politico and Karen Tumulty of The Washington Post. Welcome back, you two.
KAREN TUMULTY: Great to be here.
ELIANA JOHNSON: Thank you.
KELLY: All right. Let's start with where Ryan Lucas just left off and this bombshell report, if true, from BuzzFeed. Karen, you first. Of the gazillion bombshells that have dropped having to do with Trump and his personal - his former personal attorney and Russia and all the rest of it, how big a deal is this one?
TUMULTY: If it turns out to be true, it's a very, very big deal. We're now in a situation now where I think every news organization is pursuing this, but nobody has been able to confirm it. I mean, there's an old joke in journalism - the worst thing you could possibly have is a scoop that stays a scoop.
KELLY: That nobody's proven or disproven, right.
TUMULTY: Right. Obstruction of justice is a difficult crime often. And again, there's a question of whether the president can be accused of a crime while he's in office. But it is often difficult to prove because it is sort of a state-of-mind crime. You have to prove intent. So the question would be, is there in fact this corroborating evidence out there, these text messages or whatever we're talking about? That could just change the whole ball game.
KELLY: And just to be clear, we're told - BuzzFeed hangs their article on these two anonymous sources, law enforcement officials. Again, anonymous. They're not named. But they say those officials had access to documents and text messages and all kinds of other things that corroborate it. It's not just a - what they're saying. Eliana, what do you think? I mean, NPR - again, we should state - has not confirmed the BuzzFeed reporting. But BuzzFeed argues that this is a big deal because it would mark the first known example, if proven true, of the president explicitly telling a subordinate to lie directly about his dealings with Russia.
JOHNSON: I agree with Karen that if this is true, I think it is the worst thing for the president's prospects of staying in office that has come out yet. We know that special counsel Robert Mueller was investigating obstruction of justice already, but that was for the president's firing of former FBI Director Jim Comey. And that would be a far harder thing to argue is obstruction of justice than would be the president's instructing a subordinate to lie to Congress, which is subornation of perjury and obstruction of justice. Recall - that's what Bill Clinton was impeached for in the late '90s, and that was something that Republicans by and large supported.
KELLY: And this is prompting fresh talks. Speaking of impeachment, it's prompting fresh talk on Capitol Hill.
JOHNSON: Exactly. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi already under pressure from her caucus to impeach the president. If this is true, it will be a far easier case for her - not only for her to make to her caucus but for Republicans in the Senate to go along with and convict the president of the House's charges and I think push him out of office because Republicans are previously on the record as supporting the impeachment of a Democratic president for doing the same thing.
KELLY: Let me turn you both to something we do know is true, which is that this is Day 27 of the partial government shutdown, a shutdown - the chances of which - the chances of it ever ending do not seem to be improved by this feud that we are witnessing escalating this week between the president and Nancy Pelosi. To briefly recap, Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House, wrote to the president suggesting he not deliver his State of the Union address this year. He wrote her back yesterday denying her a plane to travel to Afghanistan. And it seems as though things went downhill from there, Eliana.
JOHNSON: That's right. At this point, at - well, the base of both parties supports each leaders. Democrats support Pelosi, Republicans support Trump. There is frustration - there's beginning to be frustration within each party at the positions of each leaders. Many Democrats feel Nancy Pelosi shouldn't have said that building a wall is immoral, that she's boxed herself in now because any sort of compromise with the president makes her look like she's supporting something she has said is a moral abomination.
Republicans - frustrated with Trump who have said he won't compromise on anything relating to border security short of a physical barrier on the U.S.-Mexico border. So I think we do see signs that support for each leader is bubbling up, but certainly no movement yet to end this standoff.
KELLY: Karen, worth noting there is plenty of precedent for a president not to deliver a State of the Union address in Congress. You wrote a column this week, the headline of which was, "What Would Thomas Jefferson Do?"
TUMULTY: Exactly. For over a century of our history, presidents did not - not only did they not deliver the State of the Union in person, they did not even deliver speeches in person. Thomas Jefferson mailed his in. Interestingly enough, one of the big things he discussed in that 1801 State of the Union letter was the question of immigration, of citizenship. So it's - the president is constitutionally required to periodically deliver the Congress a report on the State of the Union, but the sort of television spectacle that we are all used to is not stipulated.
KELLY: Meanwhile - all right. So we have government shutdown on Day 27 and no sign that it's going to reopen. We have this feud unfolding between Trump and Pelosi. We have new bombshell reporting dropping about what the president may or may not have ordered his former personal lawyer to do. And the White House today announced that on the foreign policy front, we are maybe looking at a second summit with Kim Jong Un. So let me ask you each what your expectations for this summit might be. Karen?
TUMULTY: I think that - you know, after the first one, essentially, the talks got stalled. So I think what the president is going to be looking to do is both, in this meeting, to give some credibility to his negotiating team and also to get some more clarity from Kim Jong Un on just what exactly, for instance, he means by denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
KELLY: Right, the stated goal of what the U.S. wanted to get out of the first summit in Singapore. And we have not really seen any concrete progress of that happening from North Korea's point of view. Eliana, what do you think?
JOHNSON: I think it would be wise for the president to do all of those things. I was at the first summit. And I actually expect something of a repeat. I think the president's far more interested in the media and international spectacle of it all than he is in getting results. We really haven't seen any movement toward denuclearization from North Korea, so you wouldn't really expect the president to schedule a follow-up. But I think he wants - he likes these events for their own sake. And I think we'll see something that resembles very closely what we saw the first time around, though little movement towards denuclearization or progress diplomatically, though I'm prepared to be surprised, as with everything in the Trump presidency.
KELLY: Always ready for a surprise. That's Eliana Johnson, national political reporter for Politico, and Karen Tumulty, political columnist for The Washington Post. Thanks to you both. Happy Friday.
JOHNSON: Thanks.
TUMULTY: Thank you.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The Los Angeles teachers' strike has now been going on for five days. The more than 30,000 public schoolteachers on the picket lines are demanding better pay, smaller classes and more counselors and nurses for students, among other things. Teachers have been pointing out that California spends less per student on public schools than many other states. We wanted to know how spending on education affects outcomes. So we've called on Kirabo Jackson of Northwestern University. He's a labor economist who studies education and social policy. Welcome.
KIRABO JACKSON: Hi. Thank you for having me.
SHAPIRO: You've looked at how increases in school spending influence how students do once they reach adulthood. So what have you found?
JACKSON: So the basic finding is that when children are exposed to increases in school spending while they're in school - so between the ages of 5 and 17 - they experience improved adult outcomes. So specifically, what we found was that increasing school spending by about 10 percent over a child's school-age years - if that child is low income, they experienced about a 13-percentage-point increase in the likelihood of graduating from high school. Their earnings were about 10 percent higher. They were about 8 percent less likely to be poor as adults even though they were poor as children.
And in some recent work, I've found that they're also less likely to be incarcerated as adults. I should be clear that there were also improvements for children who are not from low-income households, except their outcomes were not improved by as much.
SHAPIRO: Can you tell what the schools are spending that extra money on - like, what makes the most difference?
JACKSON: So most of the increases that school districts received tended to be spent on things like class-size reduction, increases in teachers' base salary, which is a way to attract and retain teachers. Some of it also went to increase in the number of support staff for students like counselors, people like that.
SHAPIRO: And to peel it back yet another layer, can you tell what happens when a school has better-paid teachers, smaller class sizes, et cetera, that makes a difference for these kids as they become adults?
JACKSON: So it's really hard to know specifically what individual component is doing the work. But we do know that when you have this sort of bundle of interventions, student outcomes improve. In terms of identifying those individual components, it's pretty hard. Having said, that there is research out there that I haven't been involved with myself documenting that students do have improved outcomes both in the short run and in the long run when they're exposed to smaller classes. And there's also good research out there showing that when you increase salaries, school districts are able to attract and retain higher-quality teachers, which, in turn, tends to be associated with improved outcomes.
SHAPIRO: Now, you said your research shows that there are measurable benefits from a 10 percent increase in spending. What about a 5 percent or a 2 percent increase in spending? Does it stand to reason that any increase will have some benefit?
JACKSON: So the basic 10 percent number comes from the fact that much of the increases that we studied happened due to school finance reforms or legislative reforms that suddenly and in unanticipated way increased the revenue sources for low-income school districts or districts that were not spending very much. And a typical size of that increase was about 10 percent. My sense is that these things tend to be nonlinear. And so it's probably unlikely that a 20 percent increase would be twice as large as a 10 percent increase.
SHAPIRO: To bring this back to the strike in Los Angeles, the school district has suggested taking money away from a teacher pay raise and using it to do other things like provide for counselors and reduce class sizes. Does your research show whether that would have a positive impact?
JACKSON: That is a good question. And it's actually a very difficult question to answer. So the short answer is, I don't know. My general feeling is that when school districts are strapped for cash, there's always something that they're not spending enough on. It might be things like making sure the area is sufficiently air-conditioned. It might be making sure teachers get sufficient pay. It might be making sure that they have enough textbooks for the children. Each one of those things is potentially important.
And when you're in a scenario where you're sort of underutilizing a particular input, putting money into that input could have really, really, really large positive impact. So in a scenario where districts are strapped for cash, I sort of leave it up to the wisdom of those individuals on the ground to figure out how to allocate those funds the most effectively. It is hard for a researcher to make that determination.
SHAPIRO: Kirabo Jackson is a professor of human development and social policy at Northwestern University. Thank you.
JACKSON: Thank you so much.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will meet again. That's the word from the White House after a rare visit from North Korea's top negotiator. The administration says the summit will take place at the end of February. Officials are expecting to announce an exact date and place soon. Vietnam is reportedly one of the options. NPR's Michele Kelemen has this story.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: North Korea's Vice Chairman Kim Yong Chol had a lengthy sit-down with President Trump in the Oval Office lasting for about an hour and a half. And press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders sounded upbeat about the prospects for another summit between President Trump and North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS: We've continued to make progress. We're continuing to have conversations. The United States is going to continue to keep pressure and sanctions on North Korea until we see fully and verified denuclearization.
KELEMEN: One North Korea watcher, Suzanne DiMaggio of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says President Trump seems to be looking for another win.
SUZANNE DIMAGGIO: Trump, I think, views his summit with Kim Jong Un as a high point of his presidency so far. But it's really a qualified win. Yes, tensions have been dramatically reduced, and the North Koreans haven't tested nuclear weapons or missiles for over a year. But there hasn't been any concrete progress on denuclearization.
KELEMEN: DiMaggio, who's been involved in what's known as Track II diplomacy with the North Koreans, says one of the problems is that they've refused to start working-level talks with Special Envoy Steve Biegun.
DIMAGGIO: Following the Singapore summit, Trump fostered what I would call a very unproductive dynamic that reinforced the North Korean's view that they should only deal with Trump. And as a result of that, American negotiators have not been able to engage their counterparts at the working level at all. And I think that's why we've seen so little progress.
KELEMEN: A second summit, she says, is a chance to reset this diplomacy. The State Department says Biegun is heading to Sweden. His North Korean counterpart is already there. There are big gaps to bridge. The U.S. wants North Korea to give a full inventory of its nuclear and missile programs and wants it to denuclearize before getting sanctions relief. Russia and China, both permanent U.N. Security Council members, argue there should be incentives for Pyongyang to stay engaged. The U.N. secretary general, Antonio Guterres, told reporters today he wants to see more progress and predictability first.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ANTONIO GUTERRES: We believe it's high time to make sure that the negotiations between the United States and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea start again seriously and that the roadmap is clearly defined for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
KELEMEN: And he doesn't see a role for himself or the U.N. at the moment. All eyes are on Washington. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has bristled at the idea that the administration is easing up on its maximum pressure campaign against North Korea. But the Carnegie Endowment's DiMaggio believes the Trump administration needs to rethink its approach.
DIMAGGIO: If the U.S. goes into the second summit with a more realistic, phased approach, perhaps including some early sanctions exemptions and a peace declaration, which are the two priorities for the North Koreans, then we may see some progress.
KELEMEN: There's certainly a lot of reasons to be skeptical about whether Kim Jong Un is serious about denuclearization, she says. But she doesn't rule out the possibility of progress once diplomats at the working level can really get started. Michele Kelemen, NPR News, the State Department.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
We want to take a closer look now at the man who met with President Trump today - Kim Yong Chol. For that, we are joined by Jean Lee, who opened the Pyongyang bureau of The Associated Press and who is now at the Wilson Center. Welcome, Jean Lee, to our studio.
JEAN LEE: Great. Glad to be here.
KELLY: So I have seen Kim Yong Chol referred to - we just called him the top negotiator. I've seen him referred to as the former spy chief, as a diplomat. I noticed the BBC just had a profile of him calling him Kim Jong Un's right-hand man. Who is he?
LEE: All of those titles apply.
KELLY: That's a whole lot of titles.
LEE: Exactly. We should remember, though, that even though he's here as Kim Jong Un's chief envoy, he is a man with an intelligence background, a military background and wears many, many different hats inside North Korea. But one thing that I pay attention to is the bulk of his career has been in intelligence and in the military and overseeing some of the strategy related to reunifying the Korean Peninsula. And when I see Kim Yong Chol, it brings to mind that he has a certain mission, and that is probably to really press the point that North Korea wants to have some sort of discussion about this peace declaration.
KELLY: This is something North Korea really wants - to formally end the Korean War.
LEE: Exactly. And there are several different reasons for that. I do think that Kim Jong Un does need to tell his people that they are ready to move past this Korean War that has been unresolved since 1953. Remember that they signed a cease-fire with the United States and the United Nations.
And that ideology of the Korean War being a central fight and focus for the North Korean people has been such a preoccupation. And I do think that he wants to move past that. And it's a way to perhaps decouple the U.S.-South Korean alliance. And so there are pros and cons to whether this is a good idea. But I do think he has multiple reasons for why he wants to move past this and turn his attention to North Korea's economy.
KELLY: To pick up on something else you just said, his intelligence background. This is a guy with military intelligence in his background. He was director until fairly recently of the General Reconnaissance Bureau, North Korea's spy agency. Which struck me, how remarkable is that to have a North Korean spy sitting down with the president in the Oval Office of the White House?
LEE: Absolutely. And he oversaw some extremely destabilizing incidents, including the 2010 sinking of a South Korean warship, the Cheonan, that killed 46 South Korean sailors and really compelled South Korea to institute what are the toughest bilateral South Korean sanctions on North Korea, the May 10 sanctions. And, of course, some of the cyber warfare that I think is a very dangerous arm of North Korea's asymmetrical military tactics.
KELLY: There were reports that he was involved with the hacking of Sony Pictures.
LEE: He certainly would have been aware and overseen elements of that operation. But we could also point out that we too have a former spymaster, Mike Pompeo...
KELLY: Who was at the table today. Fair point, indeed. You do know whether he is actually empowered to speak for Kim Jong Un? How close are these two, do we know?
LEE: Oh, he certainly does go way back with Kim Jong Un. He has close ties to the Kim family. I think, you know, I also think of him as somebody who's tough. And in my dealings with the North Koreans, there was always somebody I called the bulldog. There was somebody who was charming, and there was always a bulldog. He's the bulldog in this equation. He's the tough guy.
And it's interesting because obviously he is - the one thing we didn't mention is that - his diplomacy background. He is not a diplomat. And certainly we have other people that we've been dealing with who are very seasoned, very worldly - he is not.
KELLY: Well, he certainly extracted something that North Korea wants today, which is a second sit-down between President Trump and Kim Jong Un that appears to be on. Just briefly in the moments we have left, how much of a victory is that for North Korea?
LEE: Is it a victory. Of course, another summit would help propel this process and give Kim Jong Un another opportunity for that kind of propaganda and the legitimacy that he craves and the chance to really move this process forward. But the challenge - what I'm focused on is more that the challenge lies for the working-level group, for the working - the negotiators to nail down that road map that we heard earlier. That's the challenge.
KELLY: We will see what happens there. Jean Lee, North Korea expert with the Wilson Center. Thanks so much.
LEE: Thank you.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
This current federal government shutdown is the longest one we've had. Sarah Gonzalez of our Planet Money podcast tells us that the first time this sort of thing happened was over protections for black voters.
SARAH GONZALEZ, BYLINE: In 1879, Rutherford B. Hayes was president, a Republican. He won after some controversial postelection negotiations.
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: A lot of people already are calling him Rutherfraud B. Hayes because he's been elected by fraud.
GONZALEZ: Heather Cox Richardson is a professor of American history at Boston College. Rutherford B. Hayes - is he the one with the long, bushy sideburns or the long, pointy beard?
RICHARDSON: Oh, Lord, can you really tell the difference between all those guys?
GONZALEZ: (Laughter).
RICHARDSON: The only one who kind of stands out is James Garfield because he has piercing blue eyes.
GONZALEZ: James A. Garfield and Rutherford B. Hayes were the key players in the first shutdown.
Did they call it a shutdown?
RICHARDSON: No, they called it the rider fight or the appropriations fight.
GONZALEZ: A rider is a provision that gets tacked on to an appropriations bill. Now, to understand the very first shutdown, we have to go back to the Civil War. In 1861, almost all of the Southerners who were in Congress surrender their seats to go fight in the war as Confederates. But they slowly start gaining their seats back after they lose the war.
RICHARDSON: These guys have literally been shooting at the same people that they're going to be sitting with in Congress.
GONZALEZ: At the time, African-American men were allowed to vote, but they tended to vote Republican. So Democrats didn't want them voting. Sometimes, it resulted in violence at the polls. And the government would send troops. Nineteenth-century Democrats hated this. So when they gained control of Congress 14 years after the Civil War, they come up with this idea.
RICHARDSON: Simply starve the government until they did what we wanted by holding a gun to the head of the Treasury.
GONZALEZ: Fund the courts and the Army but only if the government stops protecting black voters.
RICHARDSON: There are a number of cartoons in the newspapers about how the Confederates have taken back over Washington and how they are deliberately starving the United States Treasury the same way that they starved Union prisoners.
GONZALEZ: And one guy in particular was telling the president, you cannot cave to the Democrats - James A. Garfield with the icy-blue eyes. He was the House minority leader.
RICHARDSON: Hayes and Garfield look at what they're doing, and they say, this is a complete perversion of the way the American government is supposed to work. A faction cannot starve the United States government to death to get its way. Once you have admitted that is as legitimate tactic of governance, you've destroyed our American Constitution.
GONZALEZ: For months, Hayes vetoes bills that forbid protecting voters. And Democrats eventually give in on all but one very small part of the courts. It was mostly symbolic. But starving the government, shutting it down was considered so unsuccessful that no one tries it again for almost a hundred years.
RICHARDSON: People recognized that you could not govern by extremism. There was a premium on abiding by our constitutional norms and by working things out between the different parties that wanted different things.
GONZALEZ: There are a few small shutdowns in the 1970s and '80s. But the return of shutdowns as a tactic really takes hold in the 1990s. Eventually, it did become so difficult for African-Americans to even register to vote. But it didn't happen because of a shutdown. Sarah Gonzalez, NPR News.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
To talk about the new M. Night Shyamalan thriller "Glass," we need to go back to the year 2000.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "UNBREAKABLE")
SAMUEL L JACKSON: (As Elijah Price) It has begun.
KELLY: At Samuel L. Jackson in Shyamalan's thriller "Unbreakable." And exactly what had begun was not entirely clear back then. In 2017, it became a little clearer in his movie "Split." Well, our critic Bob Mondello says now the question is, can the movie "Glass" make it as clear as, well, glass?
BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: Actually, I'll get to "Glass" in a moment. First let's talk a little about trilogies, three connected works that collectively form a new work. The Greeks did it with tragedy. In literature, there's "Lord Of The Rings" written as a single book and broken into three because the publisher didn't expect it to sell very well. And in film, trilogies are everywhere, as a character in "Scream 3" points out when other characters think they're just in the sequel.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SCREAM 3")
JAMIE KENNEDY: (As Randy Meeks) If you find yourself dealing with an unexpected backstory and a preponderance of exposition, you are not dealing with a sequel. You are dealing with the concluding chapter of a trilogy.
DAVID ARQUETTE: (As Dewey Riley) Trilogy.
KENNEDY: (As Randy Meeks) That's right. True trilogies are all about going back to the beginning and discovering something that wasn't true from the get-go. "Godfather," "Jedi" all revealed something that we thought was true that wasn't true. So if it is a trilogy you are dealing with, here are some super trilogy rules.
MONDELLO: Yeah, well, we'll dispense with that. But he's right about how trilogies differ from, say, the James Bond or Marvel sequels. Trilogies work together as self-contained units, which means that from fairly early on, they're planned that way, as in the "Back To The Future" movies or the trilogy of trilogies that "Star Wars" turned into. "Glass," on the other hand, is the conclusion of a stealth trilogy, one that nobody knew was a trilogy for 17 years. The big reveal was a coda at the end of the second film, "Split," when Bruce Willis, the good guy who was unbreakable in "Unbreakable," showed up as the public was just learning about James McAvoy, the bad guy who was split in "Split."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SPLIT")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Because of his many personalities, he is being called The Horde.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) This is like that crazy guy in the wheelchair that they put away 15 years ago. And they gave him a funny name, too. What was it?
BRUCE WILLIS: (As David Dunn) Mr. Glass.
MONDELLO: As in the Samuel L. Jackson character in "Unbreakable" who, instead of a super power, had a super weakness - bones that chatter easily. And at that point, we all knew that M. Night Shyamalan had been playing a long game, even longer than the one he played in "The Sixth Sense" where he saved his big reveal for the final minute. Seventeen years is a seriously long game. And in "Glass," his task is to bring us along.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "GLASS")
SARAH PAULSON: (As Dr. Ellie Staple) Maybe this will all make sense if I explain who I am.
MONDELLO: OK, go for it.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "GLASS")
PAULSON: (As Dr. Ellie Staple) My name is Dr. Ellie Staple, and I'm a psychiatrist. My work concerns a particular type of delusions of grandeur. I specialize in those individuals who believe they are superheroes.
MONDELLO: Clear enough, and she's collected three such individuals in her asylum. So how to get the game started - perhaps by bringing in the unbreakable guy's son and Mr. Glass' mom and the split guy's victim for a superhero roundtable.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "GLASS")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character) Did you know the first Superman couldn't even fly. And Metropolis is actually New York City. And what about all the coincidences in what I was reading?
PAULSON: (As Dr. Ellie Staple) Comic books are an obsession. Have you ever been to a comic book convention?
MONDELLO: Sorry - sliding off track here, doctor. Bring us back.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "GLASS")
PAULSON: (As Dr. Ellie Staple) Your dad is trying to fight her abductor. Your son is trying to best his dad. He's the anarchist. He's the brains. He's the reluctant hero. This all sounds very familiar, doesn't it?
MONDELLO: Well, yes, but that's not really a selling point if we've been kept waiting for almost two decades. You go to a Shyamalan movie looking for the twist which fits nicely with a trilogy's need to give you something at the end that wasn't evident at the beginning. But "Glass'" twist requires so much explaining it doesn't end up feeling all that twisty. Shyamalan does get sharp performances, especially from McAvoy, who'd better be getting paid more than his co-stars 'cause he's certainly working harder with all those personalities.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "GLASS")
JAMES MCAVOY: (As The Horde) I'm Mary Reynolds. Por favor, Senor. We almost got you, bro.
MONDELLO: But the fact is that where "Unbreakable" was ahead of the superhero curve in 2000 - Shyamalan was actually urged to downplay its comic book aspects - "Glass" is now behind the curve. And no amount of directorial pointing and saying, look; I made a comic book movie...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "GLASS")
JACKSON: (As Elijah Price) This is where they would paint you with big eyes and bubbles of confusion above your head.
MONDELLO: ...Is ever going to be enough to fix that. I'm Bob Mondello.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
For all of President Trump's enemies perceived and real, it is emerging that one man could pose the greatest threat to his presidency.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MICHAEL COHEN: I'm obviously very loyal and very dedicated to Mr. Trump.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
That was Michael Cohen in 2017. Now he tweets, I truly regret my blind loyalty to a man who doesn't deserve it. What changed?
(SOUNDBITE OF NEWS MONTAGE)
WOLF BLITZER: Federal agents raid the office of President Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.
UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST: Michael Cohen guilty to violating campaign finance laws and...
LESTER HOLT: Former lawyer and fixer admits to lying in the Russia investigation about dealings during the campaign for a Trump Tower in Moscow.
KELLY: The latest is, today, BuzzFeed is reporting that President Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about those negotiations with officials in Moscow. NPR has not independently confirmed their reporting. Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, categorically denies it. But if the BuzzFeed report is accurate, it seems to fit this description of obstruction of justice.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
AMY KLOBUCHAR: You wrote on Page 1 that a president persuading a person to commit perjury would be obstruction. Is that right?
WILLIAM BARR: Yes.
KLOBUCHAR: OK.
BARR: Or any - well, you know, any person who persuades another to - yeah.
KLOBUCHAR: OK. You also said that a president or any person convincing a witness to change testimony would be obstruction. Is that right?
BARR: Yes.
KLOBUCHAR: OK.
SHAPIRO: That was our next guest, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, questioning attorney general nominee William Barr at his confirmation hearing on Tuesday. In light of BuzzFeed's new report, her questions seem prescient. This is her first interview since that story broke. Senator Klobuchar, welcome.
KLOBUCHAR: Well, thanks, Ari. It's great to be on.
SHAPIRO: Let me begin by asking whether you asked those questions because you knew then about the allegations that BuzzFeed is now reporting.
KLOBUCHAR: No, I did not. I asked those questions really for two reasons. One was to set up the fact that there were things he hadn't said in the report that could in fact be obstruction, including things like offering pardons, which I asked him about, or drafting a misleading statement to conceal the purpose of a meeting.
But the second reason I asked him was that I thought they were an interesting part of that 19-page memo which basically was meant to undermine part of the Mueller investigation. But in fact there were nuggets in that memo like him saying that if a president persuaded someone to commit perjury, that in fact would be obstruction of justice.
So I decided to lead with the things he had actually said in the memo that I thought were helpful in case that ever came up, which this report seems to indicate it might - that you would have the nominee for attorney general actually firmly stating that this was obstruction of justice.
SHAPIRO: To remind listeners, this memo was about when a president can be said to have committed a crime. NPR has not been able to confirm the BuzzFeed report, but given what it lays out, is it your understanding that if true, then the president has committed a crime?
KLOBUCHAR: Well, I am a former prosecutor, Ari, and I never opine on whether something is a crime or not until I actually see the evidence. And as you have made clear, this is simply a report at this point. We have heard reports that there is some other corroborating evidence. There may be things from within the Trump Organization. There may be texts or other documents. But again, all of this combined, if it were true, it would be the most serious allegation seen yet to involve the White House and the president.
SHAPIRO: And given the debate over whether a sitting president can be charged with a crime and given the questions that you asked William Barr, nominee to be attorney general, what's your understanding of his belief in this area?
KLOBUCHAR: Well, Barr was very clear in his memo that was sent out earlier in June but also in his answers to me and a couple others. You know, if they persuade someone to perjure themselves, then that in fact would be obstruction of justice. Or similarly, if someone, including a president, tried to convince someone to change their testimony, that that also would be obstruction of justice. And both of those things could come into play.
SHAPIRO: I'd like to read you a tweet from President Obama's former attorney general, Eric Holder, who said, "if true - and proof must be examined - Congress must begin impeachment proceedings, and Barr must refer at a minimum the relevant portions of material discovered by Mueller. This is a potential inflection point," end quote. That's the former attorney general speaking. Do you agree with him, first, that if this is true Congress must begin impeachment proceedings?
KLOBUCHAR: If the House were to start impeachment hearings, we would get the evidence. We would get the case. And so I am careful about what I say because of that. But I believe two things have to keep happening. One, the House now will be able to start having hearings themselves. And that's why they're having Michael Cohen come and testify on, I believe, February 7. That's very important. I would hope that anything they do wouldn't interfere with Director Mueller's investigation.
The second is we have to allow Mueller to complete his investigation and get that report. And that's why asking Barr about, hey, are you going to take the advice of career ethics people and be recused if they suggest that you do because you wrote this memo is important. But equally important is that you allow this investigation to be completed, and you allow that report to be made public. I can't emphasize, Ari, how important that is. And he equivocated on that answer.
SHAPIRO: Well, you say he equivocated. He said he does want to make it public consistent with the law.
KLOBUCHAR: He did, and that was very good, except he at times would say, well, I have to look at the rules. Well, you would have to see what happens. And people said, well, is it possible you would just let the conclusion come out and not the evidence? Or would you allow the conclusion to come out?
The rules make it very clear that that report is in the attorney general's hands. And then the attorney general decides whether it's released to the public. And I am glad he said he wanted to see it. But again, he's put a lot of wiggle room in place that would allow him to redact major portions or not make it public.
SHAPIRO: Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar speaking with us from her home state of Minnesota. Thank you very much.
KLOBUCHAR: Thank you, Ari. It was great to be on.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
To Chicago now and the sentencing of police officer Jason Van Dyke. He was convicted in the 2014 killing of Laquan McDonald. His sentence could come down today. We wanted to step back and consider what the case might tell us about the culture of Chicago's police department. Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve had a front seat on that culture. She used to work in the prosecutor's office for Cook County, which encompasses Chicago. Based off that, she wrote a book titled "Crook County: Racism And Injustice In America's Largest Criminal Court." Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
NICOLE GONZALEZ VAN CLEVE: Thank you for having me.
KELLY: So Van Dyke was, as you know, the first Chicago police officer in half a century to be found guilty of murder in an on-duty incident. Again, of course, another case of a white officer fatally shooting a black man. Many of those cases end in acquittals or hung juries or never even make it to trial. So let me begin by asking, what does it say to you that this one did and ended with a guilty verdict?
VAN CLEVE: Really, it was the video that was the game changer in this case. When I was doing my research for the book "Crook County," it was over a decade that I was observing, interviewing judges and prosecutors. And basically, the code of silence in policing stretched all the way into the courtroom. And so when there were cases where a suspect was shot and prosecutors - the story didn't really make sense, prosecutors were shamed or intimidated into whistleblowing. They would go up the chain of command and, at every point, be intimidated. In one case, a prosecutor described having an ash tray thrown at his head. And they blamed him and said, you're not a defense attorney. You're a prosecutor - as though the protocol in that culture was to believe police wholeheartedly.
And police, in some ways, governed by fear. They could not show up for cases. That would impact prosecutors' ability to win trials. All these little things were the tacit ways that police could exert their influence not just on the streets in these kind of misconduct cases or use-of-force cases. But they can, in some ways, control the prosecutors and the judges through intimidation.
KELLY: When you describe code of silence, the phrase you just used, explain what you mean and explain whether you think that is something unique to Chicago.
VAN CLEVE: You know, I don't think it's unique need to Chicago the code of silence basically says, you know, that you always believe the police officer. And you don't question their judgment, even if there's a dead suspect. Now, there's always grumblings in the court. In my study, 20 out of the 27 judges that I interviewed admitted that police perjury occurred. And six wouldn't even answer the questions - whether they were intimidated or whether that was part of the silence. So in some ways, when a police officer did harm, planted drugs on young men and women in certain neighborhoods, they would, in some ways, laugh about it as though it was just kind of the inside joke. And the fact that I was such a young law clerk doing this research study, and I could still know these rules - that to me showed how flagrant the culture was.
KELLY: Laquan McDonald's death led to a Justice Department investigation. And the final report from that investigation detailed excessive use of force by Chicago police and recommended all kinds of reforms. Have those changes been made? And were than enough.
VAN CLEVE: You know, they're - only 25 of the 99 reforms have been in some ways implemented since the Department of Justice 2017 report. But if you look and see which ones have not they - you know, I, in some ways, did an analysis. The use-of-force reforms...
KELLY: Right.
VAN CLEVE: ...Eight of them have not been implemented. Accountability reforms - nine of them have not been implemented. Community policing, ones that would help, in some ways, you know, show racial complaints that are coming in or cases of racial abuse - those are not being implemented. So, again, the police department is resisting the reforms that would disrupt this culture that we see is really a stronghold in Chicago policing and extends all the way into the court system.
KELLY: Nicole, thanks so much.
VAN CLEVE: Thank you.
KELLY: Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve - she's now professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Abortion rights opponents came to Washington, D.C., today for the rally known as the March for Life. The annual event culminated with a march to the U.S. Supreme Court, a key symbol of the fight over reproductive rights in this country. With the recent confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, many anti-abortion activists are hoping to see victories there in the months ahead, as NPR's Sarah McCammon reports.
SARAH MCCAMMON, BYLINE: The Supreme Court has been a major focus of the anti-abortion rights movement for decades since the court's Roe v. Wade decision legalized the procedure nationwide in 1973. The March for Life got started the very next year.
JEANNE MANCINI: Forty-six years ago - right? - on January 22, 1973, our country was forever changed.
MCCAMMON: March for Life President Jeanne Mancini rallied this year's crowd gathered on the mall. She told them the goal is ending abortion.
MANCINI: Will you march until abortion becomes unthinkable?
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: Yes.
MANCINI: Will you march so that one day soon we no longer need to march?
UNIDENTFIED PROTESTERS: Yes.
MCCAMMON: That long-held goal - overturning or dramatically weakening Roe and other decisions protecting abortion rights - looks more reachable than it has in decades. President Trump has now named two Supreme Court justices, most recently Brett Kavanaugh, tilting the balance of the court to the right. Vice President Mike Pence made an appearance at the rally, praising the president's judicial nominees and calling on opponents of abortion rights to keep pushing their agenda forward.
VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: And know that we will stand with you until that great day comes where we restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law.
MCCAMMON: Activists on both sides of the issue say the coming months and years could be a pivotal time for abortion rights in the U.S. Planned Parenthood President Leana Wen, an abortion rights supporter, recently told NPR that, quote, "everything is on the line with Kavanaugh on the court." He replaced retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, who'd been seen as the swing vote on issues including reproductive rights. At the march, many abortion opponents said they're pleased to see Trump moving the judiciary to the right. Christine Gunderson, of Alexandria, Va., came with a group of children from her son's Catholic school.
CHRISTINE GUNDERSON: Regardless of how people feel about President Trump, I think conservatives are encouraged by his Supreme Court picks.
MCCAMMON: Leanne Jamieson runs a crisis pregnancy center in Texas that counsels women against abortion. She said she hopes this Supreme Court will weigh in on the abortion issue.
LEANNE JAMIESON: I love that we came from Dallas where Roe v. Wade started and that we're going to march to where it could possibly be overturned.
MCCAMMON: Jamieson says if the courts paved the way for new state laws restricting abortion, then anti-abortion activists will need to do more for women facing unplanned pregnancies.
JAMIESON: I believe that if - when we overturn that, then it's going to be on organizations like ours to walk alongside women. You know, you just can't abandon a woman in a crisis, absolutely. But, yeah, that is our heart - to see Roe v. Wade overturned.
MCCAMMON: Near the end of the rally, Carl Anderson, leader of the Catholic fraternal organization Knights of Columbus, told the crowd that he is hopeful for a future with far fewer abortions.
CARL ANDERSON: But I promise you this - the day is not far off when you will return not for a demonstration but for a victory parade down Pennsylvania Avenue.
(APPLAUSE)
MCCAMMON: Reproductive rights advocates are also bracing for a world without the protections of Roe v. Wade. Activists are working to strengthen state-level protections for abortion rights and expand access in states with more permissive laws. Abortion rights supporters will be among those coming to Washington, D.C., tomorrow for another demonstration - the Women's March. Sarah McCammon, NPR News, Washington.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
On Sunday, Tom Brady will step onto a football field for yet another shot at taking his team, the New England Patriots, to the Super Bowl. Pretty remarkable that a 41-year-old quarterback is still playing at Super Bowl-quality level, especially in a sport as physically demanding and damaging as pro football. Yet on the other side of the bracket is another quarterback, Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints, who turned 40 just this week. Happy birthday, Drew.
Well, adding to the intrigue, these two veterans are facing off against two quarterbacks young enough to, well, to be their sons. Will experience win out or will this weekend mark a passing of the torch?
Robert Mays of The Ringer joins us via Skype to help us break this down. Hey, Robert.
ROBERT MAYS: How are you?
KELLY: I am well, thank you. So what does it say about Tom Brady and Drew Brees that they are still making it into the championship round in their 40s?
MAYS: I think it says a lot just about how historic their talent is. I mean, they are two of the better quarterbacks to ever come along just from a skill perspective. But it also says a lot about the infrastructure of the two organizations they play for. Drew Brees has spent 13 seasons with his head coach, Sean Payton. Tom Brady's spent his entire career with Bill Belichick. And I think that their ability to adapt to new versions of the game, both on a coaching level and a quarterback level, has allowed them to withstand.
KELLY: All right. So just to lay out the landscape for people who are not fully immersed in this. We've got Tom Brady and the Patriots who will be playing the Kansas City Chiefs. Their quarterback is Patrick Mahomes. Meanwhile, the Saints are playing the LA Rams with quarterback Jared Goff. Both Goff and Mahomes are in their early 20s, we should say. And they have both been exceptional all season long. Do you think we're looking at heirs to the throne?
MAYS: I think with Mahomes, we absolutely are. In my opinion, he is the most talented quarterback outside of maybe Aaron Rodgers and Brett Favre, both of whom played for the Packers, that I have seen in my lifetime. His arm strength, his accuracy, his ability to create plays when they don't seem to be there. On Jared Goff's side, he was the No. 1 pick in the draft for a reason. His ability to throw the ball accurately down the field is very impressive.
KELLY: May I point out that a lot of people, frankly, are tired of watching the Patriots make it to the Super Bowl, win the Super Bowl. Tom Brady's going for his sixth Super Bowl ring here. What are the chances he'll get there?
MAYS: I think they're very good. And the Chiefs are a phenomenal team, and they have just been a blast to watch all season. I feel like they've injected life into the sport. In a weird way, the Patriots kind of suck life out of it because people do have that fatigue. But they are so good at understanding different situations, their ability to hone in on high-leverage spots in the game, whether it's close to the goal line or late in the half, they're just so good at execution.
KELLY: These are both games that are rematches of games we saw play out in a regular season, really good, really interesting games from the regular season. Is that right? Does that inform how you think they might go this weekend?
MAYS: Patriots knocked off the Chiefs in what might have been the most exciting game in the NFL outside of the Chiefs-Rams game a couple weeks later. And that game was in New England, where the Patriots have been historically effective. Now they travel to a hostile environment. The Chiefs defense plays much, much better at home. They seem energized by that crowd. So I think they're going to have a much easier time stopping the Patriots than they did earlier this season.
With the Saints and the Rams, it's in the same setting. We're back in New Orleans. We're back in that dome where the Saints play so well. So I feel like the Saints are going to have that same advantage they had earlier in the season. I think the result there is going to be pretty similar.
KELLY: So I got to ask, who's your money on - to win the Super Bowl?
MAYS: I think it's the Saints and the Chiefs are going to get there. And I just feel like, right now, the Saints are complete. They have a much better defense than the Chiefs do. In the end, I think that Drew Brees gets his second one. He was remarkable all season. And I feel like after this game ends, we'll talk about him in the same breath that we talk about Peyton Manning, Tom Brady as the best two or three, four quarterbacks to ever play the game.
KELLY: Thank you, Robert.
MAYS: Thank you.
KELLY: That's Robert Mays with some predictions for the Super Bowl, which will be played on February 3. Mays writes about football for the website The Ringer.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
President Trump and Speaker Pelosi are in an increasingly bitter showdown over what is now the longest partial government shutdown in history.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
On Wednesday, the speaker delayed the president's ability to give State of the Union address from the House chamber, telling him he could submit it in writing instead.
KELLY: On Thursday, the president retaliated by denying the speaker use of military aircraft for a congressional trip to visit NATO commanders in Belgium and troops in the field in Afghanistan. The president suggested they might want to fly commercial instead.
SHAPIRO: Today, Pelosi canceled the group's plans to do just that. She then accused the Trump administration of leaking her classified commercial travel plans.
KELLY: To end the shutdown, one of these two is going to have to crack. NPR congressional correspondent Susan Davis has this report on Washington's most contentious power struggle.
SUSAN DAVIS, BYLINE: Back at the start of the shutdown last month, the White House thought Nancy Pelosi would be more willing to cut a deal on the border wall after she secured the votes to become speaker again. North Carolina Republican Congressman Mark Meadows tried to tell them they were wrong.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MARK MEADOWS: (Laughter) I told them then. I am - I would reiterate it now. Her being willing to negotiate had nothing to do with the speaker's gavel.
DAVIS: The White House may have underestimated Pelosi, but conservatives like Meadows never did.
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MEADOWS: I've never questioned her resolve or her being a worthy adversary.
DAVIS: Pelosi has largely put to rest lingering doubts that she'd be willing to go toe to toe and tit for tat with President Trump. While the president has been unusually restrained when it comes to the speaker, Pelosi has been jabbing at the president's negotiating skills for weeks.
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NANCY PELOSI: What negotiating table are we not at? The last one we went to, I think, was a setup where the president pounded as he gave himself leverage to leave the room.
DAVIS: Today, Trump jabbed back in a tweet suggesting the speaker spends too much time in wine country. These escalating tensions have only pushed the two negotiators further apart on what it will take to end the partial government shutdown, and their political allies are digging in behind them to hold the line. Here's Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Karen Bass.
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KAREN BASS: We see a strong woman and a man who has never had to experience a strong woman with as much power as she has now.
DAVIS: Trump loyalists like New York Republican Congressman Chris Collins say there is no good faith between the president and the speaker when it comes to the wall.
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CHRIS COLLINS: She is attempting, going into the 2020 elections already, trying to deny him his signature promise to America.
DAVIS: Many Republicans believe the only way out is for the president to end-run around Congress, declare a national emergency and use military funds to build a border wall. Here's Collins again.
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COLLINS: Absent that, if she doesn't budge, this government could stay shut down for certainly weeks, if not months.
DAVIS: The only thing members seem to agree on is there is no end in sight for this shutdown. Congressman Meadows says this impasse is setting the tone for what is likely to be a very contentious new Congress.
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MEADOWS: How it's resolved, the fact that we're in it, I don't see that it could have anything of a meaning other than a very difficult two years to come.
DAVIS: And the president and the speaker are just getting started. Susan Davis, NPR News, the Capitol.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
This Sunday marks two years since President Trump took the oath of office. As that anniversary approaches, the president is stuck in a government shutdown he said he'd be proud to own. Cable news is stuck in an endless loop about the Mueller investigation. And Democrats in the House are preparing to launch investigations of their own. All this seems a long way from Trump's confident declaration in his convention speech accepting the Republican nomination in 2016.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I alone can fix it.
(APPLAUSE)
KELLY: NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith looks at the reality of that phrase two years in.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: President Trump pitched himself as the candidate who would come to Washington and bust things up, who wouldn't take no for an answer as other politicians had. Earlier this week, he took something of a victory lap in his speech to the Farm Bureau.
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TRUMP: I have actually done more than I promised. We've done a lot.
KEITH: He has done a lot - like it or not - upending many long-established norms along the way. And a lot of what he's done has been on his own often, against the advice of those around him - imposing steel and aluminum tariffs, pulling out of the climate Paris accord, pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
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TRUMP: Every other president promised it, and they never had the courage or whatever it is to get it done. And I know why - because everybody started calling, just like they did me. They'd call and call.
KEITH: And urge him not to do it - foreign leaders, people in his own administration.
BARBARA PERRY: President Trump is carrying out his view of fixing foreign policy.
KEITH: Barbara Perry directs presidential studies at the University of Virginia's Miller Center. She says foreign policy is an area where the Constitution and the Supreme Court are clear - the president has a lot of authority all on his own.
PERRY: He's doing many things solely and unilaterally, where he doesn't even have to make deals. In today's parlance, we would call this the low-hanging fruit.
KEITH: Trump often boasts about legislative achievements too though on more than one occasion Trump has described himself as waiting around in the White House for Congress to act.
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TRUMP: Good luck, Chuck and Mike and Grant and everybody - Lindsey, everybody back here. Go out and see if you can get that done. And if you can, I'm waiting. I'll be waiting with a pen.
KEITH: Former Republican Congressman Charlie Dent is now a CNN contributor. And he says, from where he sat, Congress was in the driver's seat on the big items, including the failed effort to repeal Obamacare...
CHARLIE DENT: He was never really concerned about the substance of the matter - simply about winning.
KEITH: ...The big GOP tax bill...
DENT: The tax reform bill was more a product of Congress than the White House in many ways.
KEITH: ...And criminal justice reform.
DENT: That was a congressional initiative - no question about it.
KEITH: But the dynamic shifted earlier this month when Democrats took over the House. Trump could no longer just wait for Republicans to send him bills to sign. With no end in sight to the government shutdown, Trump has taken to describing himself once again as alone, waiting for Democrats to compromise and give him money to build the wall.
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TRUMP: I was all by myself in the White House. It's a big, big house - except for all the guys out on the lawn with machine guns - nicest machine guns I've ever seen.
(LAUGHTER)
KEITH: In a recent tweet, he said, quote, "there's almost nobody in the White House but me, and I do have a plan on the shutdown." That was a week ago, and the government is still shut down. Tamara Keith, NPR News, the White House.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Does watching news of government dysfunction ever make you want to scream at everyone, get it together?
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JOHN BERCOW: Order.
KELLY: I give you John Bercow. He is speaker of the House of Commons in Britain, and he is the one charged with keeping...
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BERCOW: Order. Order.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
He's been speaker for years, but this week, his expressive bellows during the chaotic Brexit debate in Parliament became a meme. You have to just picture garish rainbow ties, a shock of silver hair and a face as exasperated as the voice.
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BERCOW: Order.
KELLY: There are lots of montages out there. This one by the CBC really shows his full range.
(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)
BERCOW: Order.
Order.
Order.
Order.
Order.
KELLY: Perhaps not surprisingly, Bercow is not so popular with some of the members of Parliament we have just heard him berating, thus the news this week that the government might not elevate him to the House of Lords when he retires, which would be a major snub.
SHAPIRO: But hey, maybe he can use his skills elsewhere, like managing kids' birthday parties.
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BERCOW: Order. Order.
KELLY: How about dining decisions, like should we go out for pizza or should we just...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BERCOW: Order.
KELLY: So much meme potential and still so much Brexit debate to go.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
From tae kawan do and baseball to skating and golf, South Korea has established itself in recent years as a sports powerhouse. Its medal counts have been in the Top 10 in recent Summer and Winter Olympics. But that glory and prestige has been eclipsed by the shadow of violence and sexual abuse against female athletes. NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports from Seoul.
ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: With just weeks to go before last year's Pyongyang Winter Olympics, short-track speed skater Shim Suk-hee went missing from the national team's training camp. A sports ministry investigation found that Shim, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, was beaten by her coach, Cho Jae-bom, the day she went missing. Cho was sacked and convicted of abusing four athletes, including Shim. He was sentenced to 10 months in jail last September. Cho has denied the charges through his lawyer. Shim testified at Cho's appeal hearing last month and spoke to reporters outside the courthouse.
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SHIM SUK-HEE: (Through interpreter) I mustered my courage to come here today because I hope there will be no more victims like myself in the sports world and because I want to do what I can, not just for myself, but for the future.
KUHN: This month, Shim went further, accusing Cho of repeatedly raping her since she was 17. She's now 21. As the scandal grabbed headlines, a petition on the presidential office's website calling for harsher sentencing of Cho got over a quarter of a million signatures. Government ministries and lawmakers promised to get tough on sexual abuse in sports. In a meeting with his aides this week, President Moon Jae-in called for thorough investigations and stiff punishment.
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PRESIDENT MOON JAE-IN: (Speaking Korean).
KUHN: Recent allegations of physical and sexual violence in sports, he said, reveal a shameful side hidden beneath the shiny facade of South Korea as a sports powerhouse. Also this week, a former judo athlete and a tae kwan do trainee stepped up to accuse their coaches of physical and sexual violence, but some observers say it's just a drop in the bucket.
CHUNG YONGCHUL: Still, the numbers are low, and we all know why - because of all the threat they have. They're afraid to talk about it.
KUHN: Chung Yongchul is a professor of sport psychology at Seoul's so gone University and an activist against abuse in sports. He says the government's been promising to crack down on cases of abuse for the past decade, but thanks to a stubborn culture of impunity, very little has changed. Some of that, he notes, has roots in South Korea's Confucian traditions in which a teacher's authority is just like a father's. It must be obeyed and not challenged.
CHUNG: That's part of the reason why this is so hard for the athlete to speak up because you're actually accusing, like, a father-like figure - accusing him as an aggressor.
KUHN: That's also why sports authorities who have the power to punish abusers often shield them, Chung says. And help centers and hotlines set up for the athletes often side against them. But Chung adds that the strength of public outrage in South Korea at the abuse of skater Shim Suk-hee could mean this time is different.
CHUNG: So I think this could be the last chance for the Korean sport to actually eradicate all the problems.
KUHN: And if South Korea comes home from next year's Tokyo Olympics with a reduced haul of medals but an increase in athletes' human rights, Chung says that's definitely something Koreans can live with. Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Seoul.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
To Chicago now and news of the sentencing of former police officer Jason Van Dyke. Van Dyke got nearly seven years in prison for killing black teenager Laquan McDonald. Here's Cook County Judge Vincent Gaughan.
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VINCENT GAUGHAN: This is a tragedy for both sides. So this is not easy, and I don't expect it to be easy. I - my findings are an appropriate sentence would be 81 months in the Illinois Department of Corrections, two years mandatory supervised release.
KELLY: NPR's Cheryl Corley joins me now from outside that courtroom in Chicago. Hey, Cheryl.
CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: Hi. How are you?
KELLY: Hi. I'm all right, thanks. So to remind, a jury convicted Van Dyke last fall, and what he was convicted of was second-degree murder, 16 counts of aggravated battery. That judge could have sentenced him to anything from probation to life in prison. What was the reaction there in the courtroom to this sentence of six years, nine months?
CORLEY: Well, you know, it depends really on who you are. I mean, the Van Dyke family I think was relieved because Jason Van Dyke could...
KELLY: It could have been worse.
CORLEY: Yeah, it could have been a lot worse. It could have been almost life in prison, a sentence that ranged from probation to almost 96 years. And he ended up with, you know, nearly seven.
KELLY: Yeah.
CORLEY: But I think a lot of other people were disappointed, that they thought that it did a disservice to what happened to Laquan McDonald. So that's how it played out. So you had disappointment on one side and kind of relief on the other side of the courtroom.
KELLY: Cheryl, I want to hear more about what happened in that courtroom today, but remind us just briefly of the facts of this case.
CORLEY: Well, Jason Van Dyke was one of the last officers to come on a scene where people were trying to get Laquan McDonald, a 17-year-old black kid, to put down a knife as he was walking down a street in Chicago's Southwest Side. People had called for help. He had slashed some tires of a truck, and he was being followed by a number of officers who were waiting for a Taser. Van Dyke and his partner - they came on the scene, and Van Dyke got out of his car, and within seconds, he shot McDonald, and he shot him 16 times. And originally the officer said that McDonald had tried to attack officers with a knife. That didn't prove to be true. That was shown on a dash cam video that was released about a year later that contradicted the story that police gave at the time.
This case really caused massive protests in the city then. It caused the ouster of the Chicago Police superintendent, the Cook County state's attorney. So people have really been keeping a close eye on what has happened with this case that's been going on for more than four years now.
KELLY: And this sentencing decision came out a little bit later than we were expecting today. I gather that was in part because so many people were in the courtroom making statements, hoping to influence the judge one way or the other. What were you hearing?
CORLEY: Well, absolutely. You had - for Van Dyke, there were a number of retired police officers who came and spoke on his behalf. His family spoke on his behalf. And Van Dyke also spoke. The former head of the police union, Dean Angelo, said that Van Dyke was not the monster that people had made him out to be in the media and in political circles. He called him a big gentle kid, a hard worker and a good dad. He called this whole event that happened in 2014 a perfect storm, and he said he knew that the murder wasn't something that Van Dyke had set out to do.
It was interesting, too, because Van Dyke's brother in law, who is a black man, spoke on his behalf and also said Van Dyke was not racist. And of course there were statements by people who spoke against Van Dyke. Marvin Hunter, Laquan McDonald's great-uncle, who read a letter that he said was in the voice of his nephew - he said he wanted the judge to know he hopes that no other black man or woman would have to face the evil of Jason Van Dyke.
KELLY: You mentioned that this is a case that people in Chicago have followed very closely. There have been protests. I know the sentencing has just come down, so it's early hours yet. But what kind of reaction are you looking for in Chicago?
CORLEY: Well, you know, it's interesting because I don't think that - when the verdict was going to be announced, there was all this preparation here because they thought that there was going to be, you know, a lot of emotional outbursts.
KELLY: Yeah.
CORLEY: But that hasn't happened here. People have called for calm, and so far, that's what we're seeing.
KELLY: That's NPR's Cheryl Corley reporting from the courthouse in Chicago where Jason Van Dyke has just been sentenced. Thank you, Cheryl.
CORLEY: You're welcome.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
We have a lot to - ground to cover tonight in our regular Friday week in politics chat. There's never a dull moment, and tonight is no exception. So let's hop right in with Eliana Johnson of Politico. Welcome back, Eliana.
ELIANA JOHNSON: Thank you.
KELLY: Hi - and also Jonathan Capehart from The Washington Post. Hey, Jonathan.
JONATHAN CAPEHART: Hi, Mary Louise. Thank you.
KELLY: So I want to start with this bombshell or maybe not so much of a bombshell. We wait and see exactly if BuzzFeed will walk much of this back. But start with the significance of kind of where this has moved the debate and the questions about the Russia investigation and the personal involvement maybe of the president in terms of what he may or may not have told his former attorney to say to Congress. Jonathan Capehart, you first.
CAPEHART: Well, the thing I find - well, first let's start with the BuzzFeed story.
KELLY: Yeah.
CAPEHART: And what it does is it sort of reiterates things that were mentioned in the December 2018 sentencing memo - Cohen sentencing memo about the fact that Michael Cohen sort of lied about when the Trump Tower project officially ended. The sentencing memo also points out that the special counsel's office was - what Michael Cohen told them, the prosecutors there, was consistent with statements and other things that they had gotten from other witnesses. And I'm not saying they used the word witnesses. I'm using that word now 'cause that's what comes to mind. But they had other information. And Michael Cohen corroborated it - corroborated that. What's at issue here now with the special counsel's office statement is, one, they never make statements...
KELLY: Right.
CAPEHART: ...About anything. And the second thing, though, is this story has been out all day long. And yet at 7 p.m., they put out a statement that has a word and then a phrase that jumped out at me. One, they're talking about the description in the story of what's - what has come from the special counsel's office is not - and the phrase is not accurate. They're not saying that it's false. They're saying that descriptions of certain things in the story are not accurate.
KELLY: Right. The specific line, just to go over it again, that came out of the special counsel's office reads - and I'll quote - "BuzzFeed's description of specific statements to the special counsel's office and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office regarding Michael Cohen's congressional testimony are not accurate." And that's the full statement. That's all we got. Eliana, what do you make of this and the timing of this coming out, as Jonathan points out, late in the evening here in Washington?
JOHNSON: You know, I largely agree with Jonathan. It is remarkable for the special counsel to engage with a specific news report about its investigation in the way that it has done tonight. But it does seem, if we're trying to parse this statement, that the special counsel's office is quarrelling with the evidence rather than the conclusion of the BuzzFeed report, and so it could be that the upshot of the report that the president suborn - the perjury of Michael Cohen, inducing him to lie to Congress is true. Though the - as he said, the specific statements and the characterization of documents that BuzzFeed described in its story is incorrect.
Now, that would be an interesting thing I think for the special counsel to do. But the special counsel I think has wanted to operate behind the curtain. And what I think at the upshot here is - that we get from this is that it's really dangerous to try to read into what Robert Mueller's doing. And for all of us in the news media whose job it is to do this, we really do need to wait until Mueller issues his final report to have a full understanding of what he's been up to for the past year.
KELLY: All right, so a lot we still don't know there - in the couple of minutes that we have left, let me ask each of you about something we do know for a fact, which is, we are on Day 27 of this shutdown. Chances of it ever ending do not seem to be enhanced by this Trump-Pelosi feud which we are now witnessing unfolding. Just to briefly recap, Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House, wrote to Trump, suggested he should not deliver the usual State of the Union address at the Capitol. He wrote her back yesterday and denied her the plane she needed to take a planned trip to Afghanistan. Jonathan Capehart, it kind of seems like things have kept going downhill from there.
CAPEHART: Yeah, they really have. I'm not sure. And then today, the other issue that came up is Pelosi's office issuing a statement about how leaks from the administration made it impossible for the delegation to fly commercially, as the president had suggested in his letter. These sort of...
KELLY: Pelosi's office, we should say, says they leaked details - security details about the commercial flight that they tried to rebook, yeah.
CAPEHART: Right, right, correct. But what this all means is we are in Day 28 of this shutdown. There is no end in sight. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is largely absent, and part of the reason for that is because - and he has said this - there's nothing for him to do until the president comes out with a plan that could actually pass his chamber.
And so the onus - as much as the president wants to make this a fight between himself and Nancy Pelosi, he - the Senate majority leader is waiting for the president to step forward. And maybe tomorrow we will find out what the next step is because the president has announced at 3 o'clock tomorrow, he is going to make an announcement from the White House.
KELLY: A major announcement, he says, to do with the border. Eliana Johnson, where do you see this going in the next day or so or maybe week?
JOHNSON: You know, I think this shutdown has been particularly tricky because the Democratic base is largely supportive of Nancy's Pelosi - Nancy Pelosi's position and her unwillingness to budge. And at the same time, the Republican base is largely supportive of President Trump and his unwillingness to give an inch. And so there has really been no incentive for either side to move.
But President Trump announced late this afternoon that he's going to make a major announcement tomorrow, on a Saturday, also an unusual time to give an announcement. And I think that could represent a turning point. We have no indication yet he's going to declare a national emergency, which I think would heightened tensions. So we could see a turning point over the weekend, I think, in the shutdown, which is now in its - just ended its fourth week.
KELLY: Yeah, indeed - lots of unusual happenings here in Washington to close out this work week. That's Eliana Johnson of Politico and Jonathan Capehart of The Washington Post. Happy Friday, and thanks so much to you both.
JOHNSON: Thank you.
CAPEHART: Thank you.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
If you have spent any time at all following special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, you may know this. He doesn't talk. His shop almost never says anything on the record. They do not weigh in on the avalanche of news reports dropping nearly every day about President Trump and Russia. Well, Mueller's team broke that rule tonight with a one-sentence statement shooting down a report by BuzzFeed News, a report headlined "President Trump Directed His Attorney Michael Cohen To Lie To Congress About The Moscow Tower Project."
All right, we're going to walk through this step by step with our White House correspondent Tamara Keith. Hey, Tam.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Hello.
KELLY: So this BuzzFeed report blew up Washington today because if it is true, it would mark the first known example of President Trump explicitly telling someone he works for him to lie about his own dealings with Russia, right?
KEITH: And not just lie but lie to Congress. And Michael Cohen has already pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the Moscow Tower project. But this BuzzFeed report connected the dots and said that they had evidence and sources and that it - that Mueller's office had a whole bunch of documents and evidence that backed up this claim and not just the testimony of Michael Cohen, who is pretty unreliable as a narrator, having pled guilty to lying.
KELLY: And having changed his story a few times - OK, so which part of this exactly is the Mueller camp knocking down?
KEITH: Well, let me just read you the statement from Peter Carr. He's the spokesperson for the special counsel's office - the nearly silent spokesman up until now. The quote is, "BuzzFeed's description of specific statements to the special counsel's office and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office regarding Michael Cohen's congressional testimony are not accurate."
KELLY: And that's all we know. They're not saying what bits are not accurate and whether the overall story is holding up or not.
KEITH: Yeah, they aren't.
KELLY: OK.
KEITH: And my guess is that the silence of the Mueller team will resume and that we will be left to wonder why they are just disputing aspects of the story or whether they are saying the entire premise of the story is incorrect.
KELLY: I will insert in here BuzzFeed says it is standing by its story. Their editor-in-chief, Ben Smith, has tweeted that in response to this statement from the special counsel's spokesman - he says, we stand by our reporting and the sources who informed it. And they would like the Mueller team to make clear what exactly their disputing. Tam, what is the White House saying about all of this?
KEITH: Well, so the president has tweeted a lot. He hasn't actually tweeted his own words, but he has - since this statement from Mueller's office came out, the president has retweeted eight different times various statements from people, including from the RNC chairwoman, saying - she said that the entire premise of this story which received wall-to-wall coverage was based on evidence the reporters admitted they never even saw. I'm not clear that that is accurate either. But also Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, earlier today before that report came out very much disputed the BuzzFeed report.
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SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS: Well, look; that's absolutely ridiculous. I think that the president's outside counsel addressed this best and said in a statement earlier today that it's categorically false.
KELLY: So where does this leave us...
(LAUGHTER)
KELLY: ...Tam?
KEITH: Well, I think it leaves us where...
KELLY: Is this story wrong? Is it right? Do we know?
KEITH: I think that we should put a lot of weight in the fact that the special counsel's office does not issue statements. And they have chosen - they felt that they needed to issue a statement in this case, you know, in part because so many members of Congress - Democratic members of Congress were saying if this is true, then the president has committed a crime, and there needs to be a response. So now we have this, and we're back where we started, in some ways, waiting for Robert Mueller to reveal more of what he knows that none of us do know.
KELLY: NPR's Tamara Keith - thank you very much, Tam.
KEITH: You're welcome.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
In an exceedingly rare move, special counsel Robert Mueller's office has put out a statement tonight pushing back on a big story from BuzzFeed. That story alleges that president Trump personally ordered his longtime lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about a prospective business deal in Moscow, which, if true, raises all kinds of questions about obstruction of justice. But Mueller's office says - and their statement is just one sentence, so I'm going to read it in full - quote, "BuzzFeed's description of specific statements to the special counsel's office and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office regarding Michael Cohen's congressional testimony are not accurate."
BuzzFeed is standing by its story, and I am joined now by their editor-in-chief, Ben Smith. Hey, Ben.
BEN SMITH: Thanks for having me on.
KELLY: Glad to have you with us. What's your response to this statement tonight from Mueller's office?
SMITH: You know, it's really hard to respond to that statement because it's not - it just doesn't at all make clear what they're objecting to in the story. It's certainly not a full-throated denial, but they also obviously have some characterization that they're objecting to, but it's - and we would really urge them to reveal which characterization 'cause it's very hard to respond to. And in the meantime, we are, you know, as we have been for more than a year, continuing to report on in particular this story, which is really the arc of the Trump Moscow project.
KELLY: Your story hangs on two sources who you identify as federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter. Can you give us any more detail about these sources and what gives you confidence that they are, A, telling the truth and, B, in a position to know what they are talking about?
SMITH: I mean, you know, I guess all I can say is that we're not playing games with that characterization as I guess people may sometimes do. I mean, these are exactly as described - federal law enforcement officials involved in the investigation and well-placed to know what is going on inside it. I think the other thing...
KELLY: Do you have a track record with these sources? Have they - have their...
SMITH: You know, I don't think...
KELLY: ...Stories checked out before?
SMITH: I don't think I can talk more specifically about these sources, but what I can say is that these reporters and - we have a remarkable track record with these specific reporters and these stories. We were the first to reveal the details of the plan to build a - you know, a huge Trump Tower outside Moscow. Our reporting then wound up essentially being the - prefiguring the Cohen indictment many months later. We then broke the story that Trump had also offered or planned to offer Putin the penthouse of this building. So this is - it's a long line of reporting by these reporters on this specific story that we feel very good about, very confident about.
KELLY: Your story suggests that these sources are not just relying on something they overheard but that there are underlying documents, emails, text messages, other things. Can you give us any detail about that?
SMITH: You know, as we reported in the story and based on these sources, the special counsel has access to documents that - you know, that support this narrative that Donald Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about, in particular, the timing of the Russia - of this Moscow project. And there's no dispute that Cohen did lie.
KELLY: Do you have access to these documents? Have you or your reporters seen them?
SMITH: I don't think I want to go beyond what it said in the story.
KELLY: Well, let me - in the time we have left, if you had a do-over, would you change a single word of this story?
SMITH: You know, we are very eager to hear from the special counsel what they are objecting to and are of course always open to new information, to corrections, to things like that. But the (inaudible) - the onus here is really on them to explain what they're talking about.
KELLY: So the story as written stands.
SMITH: Yes, absolutely.
KELLY: Ben Smith - he is editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed. Thanks very much for taking the time.
SMITH: Thank you for having me on.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Last year, the Trump administration cut millions of dollars in aid to the Palestinians. Now, in about two weeks, the U.S. plans to shut down its Palestinian humanitarian aid programs, abandoning infrastructure projects already underway. NPR's Daniel Estrin reports from the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: In the city of Jericho, most sewage goes untreated, so the U.S. Agency for International Development started building a sewer system. A Palestinian engineer, Ehab Njoum, showed me the dug-up roads where USAID installed pipes.
EHAB NJOUM: The project cannot be completed, and the sewer - it cannot be connected.
ESTRIN: It's because of a new U.S. law signed by President Trump in October. If Palestinians receive U.S. money, they could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation to families of American victims of past attacks. The Palestinian Authority says it fights attacks and won't accept the money under those terms. So all USAID programs for Palestinians are slated to end February 1. U.S. officials say the sewer system, which costs around $10 million, is mostly done, but it'll be left unfinished.
NJOUM: (Speaking in Arabic).
ESTRIN: In June, the engineer broke the news to Ola Saeed (ph), whose accessories shop is on the torn-up road. She'd been waiting for the sewer to be finished.
OLA SAEED: (Through interpreter) I wish they never dug. I wish they never said they would do something. At least we would have had clean roads.
ESTRIN: Jericho's mayor, Salem Ghrouf, says his city really needed that sewer.
SALEM GHROUF: (Speaking in Arabic).
ESTRIN: Most Palestinians in the city have private sewage pits next to their homes. And he says there's a risk that untreated sewage can contaminate groundwater. According to documents reviewed by NPR, U.S. officials tried to work around the new law to get money to finish the sewers and six other major school and water projects in the West Bank and Gaza. But according to the documents, the White House said no. A White House spokesman did not comment, but critics did.
DAVE HARDEN: I think to leave it just unfinished is a stain on American credibility. It seems irresponsible. It seems petty.
ESTRIN: Dave Harden oversaw U.S. aid to the Palestinians under the Obama administration. He said aid projects aimed to help create economic opportunity, alleviate suffering and help prepare the Palestinians for a future state. Now he says..
HARDEN: USA is frankly irrelevant in the West Bank and Gaza. And that's a shame because the United States can be and should be a shining beacon.
ESTRIN: Current and former U.S. officials say these projects were the last of the U.S. humanitarian aid for the Palestinians. The administration already cut more than half a billion dollars in annual aid last year, in part to pressure Palestinian leaders to cooperate with the U.S. on a peace plan it says will come in the coming months. In Jericho, U.S. officials are preparing to pave the roads over the new sewage pipes, leaving them disconnected.
Daniel Estrin, NPR News, Jericho.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
In a quiet college town, the fictional town of Santa Lora in Southern California, one by one, students fall victim to a bizarre contagious disease. They fall into a deep sleep and don't wake up. In fact, some will never wake up. And the disease spreads throughout the town quickly and indiscriminately. That's the dystopian premise of the new novel called "The Dreamers" by Karen Thompson Walker, who joins me from KPBS in San Diego. Karen, welcome to the program.
KAREN THOMPSON WALKER: Thank you so much for having me.
BLOCK: What got you thinking about this in the first place, this idea of a sleeping sickness?
WALKER: You know, I mean, I've always been interested in sleep. I think I'm interested in the parts of human experience where the ordinary overlaps with the extraordinary. And so I feel like sleep is one of those things that is just so profoundly familiar, obviously, to all of us. You know, we spend six or eight hours unconscious every day.
BLOCK: If we're lucky, yeah (laughter).
WALKER: Yeah, right. But we don't really know what goes on in our brains while we're asleep and in our minds. And so it was sort of exciting fictional territory to imagine this strange sickness that causes - where the only symptom is this kind of seemingly endless sleep and these strange dreams.
BLOCK: Let's talk a bit about the dream life because part of what distinguishes this sickness is that the brains of these victims of the disease are shown to be really, really busy - more activity than had ever been recorded in humans. And in some cases, as we learn later on, they're actually dreaming the future - dreaming about things that will happen. You allude to this notion that that state of being able to exist in parallel dimensions - present, past, future - is something that's been talked about in physics and in philosophy, in classics.
WALKER: Yeah. It was fascinating to explore, you know, for this book the kind of strangeness of sleep and dreaming and the mystery of human consciousness but then also to bring in this time element and this possibility of, what if the strangeness of these dreams are that it's granting some access to a kind of different way of experiencing time? And yeah, there is an idea in physics that past, present and future - that those are human constructs. And I'm interested in that idea of how humans perceive reality is not necessarily accurate to the way the universe actually functions.
BLOCK: I'm thinking, Karen, that as you've been immersed in this world, this fictional world of sleeping and dreaming, that you're probably a whole lot more aware of your own dream life and what those dreams mean.
WALKER: Yeah. I think that's true. You know, I didn't actually come into this with a plan to be writing about dreams, but it did make me more interested in my dreams. And, you know, I have two young daughters. And I'm fascinated by my 4-year-old's dreams as she reports them. And I remember her when she was maybe about 2, she didn't even know what to call them. But she called me in and she was, you know, terrified and said, like, Mama, when I close my eyes, I see something scary. And I feel like there was just something so primal about that description of a dream, even though she didn't even know really what that meant.
BLOCK: Yeah. What did you tell her?
WALKER: I mean, I tried to explain the concept of dreams.
BLOCK: It's hard to do, yeah.
WALKER: Yes. Because, you know, in a way, I'm telling her it's not real, but it is a part of real human experience. So even though the facts of the dream, you know, if you have a dream that you lose a loved one, that's not real. But in a way, in a strange way, your mind and sort of your body has experienced the emotions of what that would be like.
BLOCK: One of the components of the novel is that as the disease is spreading, there's also a different kind of contagion going on at the same time, and that is the spread of conspiracy theories about just what's happening in Santa Lora, that maybe this is a plot by Big Pharma to set a germ loose in this community. Or maybe these are crisis actors faking the whole thing. How conscious were you of trying to tie this fictional world into some of the things that we'd see in real life around real-life disasters?
WALKER: Yeah. I mean, it just seemed like an element of realism that if a new sickness like this appeared in an American city, inevitably, just as we've seen with all kinds of other disasters, there would be some faction of people who wouldn't believe it. And they would be looking for the conspiracy theory angle.
BLOCK: Yeah. There must be some explanation that's even more sinister than the disease itself.
WALKER: Right. In a way, a conspiracy theory is comforting because it's more comforting to think that it's all an evil plot by one person or a group of people because then, in theory, there's something less chaotic about it. Even though it's scary, it's - the real kind of unsettling thing is just the chaos of human life.
BLOCK: Karen, I'm thinking back to the last time that you and I talked. It was about your your first novel, "The Age Of Miracles," also set in California and also about a calamity but a different kind. In that novel, the rotation of the Earth has slowed, so days are lasting as long as weeks. And horrible things happen - the oceans shift, and communities wash away. There is something about you and the apocalypse in California, I think, that is a running theme through your fiction. What's going on there?
WALKER: You know, in some ways, I can't articulate exactly why my imagination is so fired by these disaster situations. I mean, I think growing up in California, I think it does - and both books are set in California too - you know, there is something about the kind of familiarity with the feeling of a looming disaster is a part of a California childhood, which it was of mine. So I think that's part of it. And then I think also just writing about a disaster like this, it's also just a way of looking at my sort of main interest in real subject is ordinary people. So in a way, this sleeping sickness is a way of highlighting and exploring all the just facets of human nature and what would happen to them in such an extraordinary and uncertain situation.
BLOCK: That's Karen Thompson Walker. Her novel is "The Dreamers." Karen, thanks so much for talking with us.
WALKER: Oh, thank you so much for having me.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
President Trump calls it a common sense compromise. Congressional Democrats call it a non-starter. And that's where we are after today's offer, made late this afternoon by the president to get government agencies back up and fully running. The partial shutdown is now in its fifth week. The president offered a three-year reprieve from deportation for the so-called DREAMers who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, and for other foreign-born residents given temporary protected status. But the president repeated his key demand - the demand that gave rise to the stalemate over funding the government.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: To physically secure our border, the plan includes $5.7 billion for a strategic deployment of physical barriers or a wall. This is not a 2,000-mile concrete structure from sea to sea.
BLOCK: And this has been a non-starter for Democrats. But the president said both sides must now in, his words, put down their armor, build trust and come together.
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TRUMP: It is time to reclaim our future from the extreme voices who fear compromise and demand open borders, which means drugs pouring in, human trafficking and a lot of crime.
BLOCK: So what now? Well, I'm joined by NPR's White House correspondent Ayesha Rascoe and our congressional correspondent Susan Davis.
Welcome to you both.
SUSAN DAVIS, BYLINE: Hi, Melissa.
AYESHA RASCOE, BYLINE: Hello.
BLOCK: And, Ayesha, let's start with you. Why don't you give us a bit more detail on what the president's proposing?
RASCOE: So yes. So he's offering most of what they were already asking for - so the $5.7 billion for a steel barrier on the southern border and some other - some more money for inspections at the ports and also for more judges, more border agents - and all of that in exchange for extensions on the DACA recipients and for those who have temporary protected status - this three-year extension for both. And the idea that he was putting forward is that those three years would then be used to come up with a larger immigration proposal to deal with the issues that Washington has been trying to deal with for years now. But that was - so that is the offer from President Trump.
BLOCK: And the DACA recipients, or the DREAMers, as they're known - they've been held as a bargaining chip before. So what's new, if anything, in what the president's offering today?
RASCOE: It's not necessarily that anything is new here. Some of these - all of these have been floating around for a while. And there was a much bigger deal on the table before - long before these - before the shutdown of the government that would have had $25 billion in exchange for some DACA - for compromise on DACA. But this is basically just he's saying, this is what I will give you now to get the government back open. We will have a temporary extension of DACA. And hopefully, that will help ease it for - because there are hardliners on his side who do not want to see DACA recipients stay in the U.S., even for a temporary extension.
BLOCK: Right. So - which raises the question of how this would play with the president's base.
RASCOE: This is a risk for him. Right now, we already are seeing tweets from Ann Coulter saying that this is amnesty. People from the Heritage Foundation, which is conservative, are also saying this is amnesty and that this will encourage more people to come into the country illegally. So we can say that there will be some pushback from people on President Trump's side to this deal.
BLOCK: Sue Davis, let me turn to you for the view from Congress. Talk about pushback - if this - if they were going to throw cold water on this, the Democrats, I'm not sure it could get much more cold.
DAVIS: (Laughter) Well, Democrats pretty quickly and even before the president spoke, as details started to leak out, pretty quickly and clearly rejected this proposal for a number of reasons. First and foremost, Democrats say that they will not negotiate on anything until the government's up and running, that you can't use shutdowns as a negotiating tactic. Get it up and running, then we talk. I think the offer of temporary status for a short term is not good enough. Long-term status, permanent status might have been a starting point. This is not something that Democrats are willing to negotiate on, very much with the support of the DREAMer community, saying, don't compromise on this. So they have the support there.
It's worth noting that Democrats are willing to spend more money on border security. They're going to vote on bills again this coming week to open up the government. They're going to add in more money on border security, for ports of entry, for other - any number of things there is agreement on. They're just not willing to compromise on the wall itself.
BLOCK: And some of that funding the president was mentioning today as well - more money for drug detection at ports of entry, more immigration judge teams - things like that.
DAVIS: That is not why this stalemate continues.
BLOCK: Right.
DAVIS: The stalemate continues over the wall. And I think Democrats - you know, they don't really feel the same kind of pressure on this. I think the party has been largely unified on it, largely unified on the strategy behind the speaker. And I think, in the contrast to the - where the base might be questioning the president on the right, on the left, immigration activists are really saying to Democrats, do not back down here. Do not back down on the wall.
BLOCK: What about immigration rights activists? How will their views affect Democrats' willingness to make a deal with the president?
DAVIS: I think the immigration rights community sees this administration and this president as incredibly hostile to them and to their long-term goals. And I think they're very suspect when he seems to extend an olive branch when you consider the macro perspective of the immigration policies that this administration has put forward. And what they have clearly said today again - early, even before the president outlined his speech - saying do not compromise on the wall. And they see it as a physical manifestation of policies out of this White House that, quite frankly, they view as racist.
BLOCK: And, briefly, Ayesha, one last topic for you. We saw on Thursday BuzzFeed reporting that President Trump had directed his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, to lie before Congress. Then we saw the office of special counsel Robert Mueller issuing a really unusual statement calling that report not accurate. Has there been more reaction to all that from the White House today?
RASCOE: Yes. President Trump has been tweeting about this. And basically, he says that he thinks that having Mueller push back on the BuzzFeed story that it's going to hurt the credibility of the press. He's calling it this - he called the story disgraceful. And even talking to reporters, he said that he was thankful to the special counsel's office for putting out this statement - which is not something you usually hear from the president thanking Mueller.
BLOCK: Exactly.
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe and also Susan Davis - thanks to you both.
DAVIS: You're welcome.
RASCOE: Thank you.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And let's hear some reaction now from a Democratic congressman to what the president proposed today. Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland joins me here in the studio.
Welcome.
JAMIE RASKIN: Thanks for having me, Melissa.
BLOCK: Did you hear anything from the president today that moves this anywhere closer to an agreement that would end the shutdown?
RASKIN: Well, I like the fact that he's sort of given up the language of a 2,000-mile steel barrier wall...
BLOCK: Concrete wall, yeah.
RASKIN: Concrete wall...
BLOCK: Sea to sea.
RASKIN: ...From sea to shining sea. I think that that is progress, and it shows that he understands that the public simply hasn't bought his argument that we need to shut the government down in order for him to get that one campaign fetish promise that he made.
BLOCK: But he's still asking for almost $6 billion for the wall.
RASKIN: Well, look. We can sit down, and we can deal on money questions. We want to make investments, especially at the ports of entry, which is where people are coming in with contraband. But we know that there's been a substantial decline in illegal immigration, illegal entries over the last couple decades, so there's clearly no crisis. There's clearly no emergency.
But we want to invest in the ports of entry. We want advanced technology to scan for drugs and weapons and contraband. And we especially are willing to invest in more Customs personnel. Right now, there are 3,000 customs and border positions which the Trump administration hasn't filled. So it's ironic, to say the least, that they are going around the country yelling about a crisis and emergency when they haven't filled thousands of jobs that are there. And they're not paying the people who are in Customs and Border Patrol right now.
So our major reaction to this is, if you want to get things moving again, open up the government of the United States. We will not tolerate this discussion and this policy debate in the context of a hostage crisis. You can't hold the government and the federal workforce and the people hostage.
BLOCK: But that sounds to me like nothing has shifted because we've been hearing that argument from the Democrat side throughout this whole shutdown.
RASKIN: Well, and we believe it very strongly. And the people are with us, and we have a dozen Republican members who've been voting with us to reopen the government. And clearly, the president is feeling the pressure. But the first words out of his mouth really have to be, we're going to reopen the government of the United States, we're going to put people back to work and we're going to stop making hundreds of thousands of Americans work for free. That's un-American. It violates the federal Labor Standards Act. It's just an unconscionable situation. And then we can debate all of these things through the normal governmental process.
And he's got to accept the separation of powers. This is not a banana republic where the president just decrees what he wants, and everybody accepts it. And you've got to go through the House. You've got to go through the Senate. You might not like democracy, but that's what we live in.
BLOCK: Even if that were to happen, if there were to be a short-term agreement to reopen the government and continue negotiating on these broader questions of the border and immigration, is there room for compromise?
RASKIN: I think that there is. I mean, we've invested $9 billion, when I last looked, in border security. The Democrats have always been for border security. Republicans have voted for border security. We know the president had a campaign chant which was, build the wall. Mexico will pay for it. Well, that promise is out the window because Mexico hasn't paid for it. So the president's got to start over again. And if he brings one of those giant-sized checks that he loves so much from the Mexican government, and he says, you know, here, we're going to put $35 billion down on the table, maybe that changes the conversation.
But look - it's not something that they pressed when they controlled the House and the Senate for the last two years. Suddenly, Democrats win 40 new seats. We get 10 million more votes than them. And he decides that he is going to play this game of ridiculous brinksmanship and shut down the government of the United States simply because he lost an election. It's not an acceptable way to do business here.
BLOCK: Briefly, in the time we have left, what is the Democratic leadership's next move?
RASKIN: Well I think that the Democratic leadership will be sending messages to Republicans that we're ready to have a serious, mature conversation on this. And we've been all along. You know, Pelosi and Schumer went over to the White House, remember, when the president knocked all the silverware off the table and got up after 30 seconds. That's not acceptable. We're willing have a serious conversation.
BLOCK: He would say he did not knock the silverware off the table. But I'll let you have the last word on that. Congressman Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland - he sits on the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees.
Thanks for being with us.
RASKIN: Thanks for having me, Melissa.
(SOUNDBITE OF BLUE IN GREEN'S "RAINY STREETS")
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And as we've been reporting, President Trump made an offer this afternoon to end the partial government shutdown. His plan would include, among other things, temporary protections for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or the DREAMers, who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children. In exchange, he wants $5.7 billion in funding for a border wall.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: If we are successful in this effort, we will then have the best chance in a very long time at real bipartisan immigration reform.
BLOCK: It's his latest proposal to get Democrats in Congress to agree to a Homeland Security funding bill that would pay for that border wall. To sort through the details of this proposal, we have NPR's immigration correspondent John Burnett joining us from Austin.
John, welcome.
JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: Hi, Melissa.
BLOCK: John, does the president's proposal that he talked about this afternoon move the ball forward in any way? Do you hear anything new?
BURNETT: Well, what he's done is resurrect an earlier bipartisan legislation known as the BRIDGE Act, which didn't go anywhere. And it would allow an estimated 700,000 of the so-called DREAMers to remain in the country legally. As we've said, these are the young immigrants who were brought by their parents to the U.S. without authorization when they were children under 16 before 2017. And the way it works is if they pass a background check, and if they can prove they're working or in school or serving in the military, they can get work permits, Social Security numbers and relief from deportation. That's the big one. It's the Obama program called DACA - as you said, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
The deal Trump announced today - he would allow those recipients to continue to live in the country with these protections for three years. And, as it is, they have to renew their status every two years, which leaves them vulnerable to being deported.
BLOCK: So that's the deal that the president would like to see. Right now, it's a proposal. We've been talking about some other parts of what he had to say today. We just heard from Ayesha and Sue about some other things that maybe the Democrats might be looking on more favorably than the wall itself.
BURNETT: Yeah. And there's one more thing in there that was popular with the Democrats. Trump had reversed course on some actions he took earlier. He said today he would give three-year extensions to refugees who were in this country with temporary protected status. Earlier in his term, he'd revoked TPS for about 300,000 refugees who were allowed to come to the U.S. in recent decades fleeing wars and natural disasters. They're from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Nepal, Haiti and Sudan.
BLOCK: And then there's the border well.
BURNETT: Ah, yes.
BLOCK: Yes.
BURNETT: Well, it hasn't changed, Melissa. And it's still in the latest proposal we heard this afternoon - 230 miles of border barrier at a cost of a whopping $5.7 billion. And remember, this would be in addition to the 650 miles of border barrier that's already there in segments from San Diego to Brownsville. Trump repeated he wants a see-through steel barrier in high-priority areas to protect us from undocumented immigrants and drug smugglers.
But a little bit of fact-checking here - the reality is that some illegal traffic won't be altered at all by more miles of tall, iron fence. For instance, we know the vast majority of illegal drugs smuggled into the U.S. comes through ports of entry, hidden in vehicles. And lots of asylum seekers surrender to border agents at ports of entry. And down here in Texas where I am, they can enter U.S. territory and give themselves up south of the existing border wall.
So there is this deep, deep disagreement over what kind of border security is the answer. We heard the congressman you just interviewed said the Democrats are more interested in a border security package with these high-tech measures like ground sensors and pole-mounted remote cameras and better X-ray gear for vehicles crossing through ports of entry.
BLOCK: And last question, John - what happens to the DREAMers, to the DACA recipients, if the Democrats say no deal on what the president's proposing?
BURNETT: Well, it looks like the Supreme Court doesn't have any plans to take up the action on DACA in its current term. And because of some federal court rulings that favor DACA, the government would have to keep it going for at least 10 more months. But, beyond that, DACA folks would still be living in limbo.
BLOCK: That's NPR's John Burnett. He covers immigration for us.
John, thanks so much.
BURNETT: My pleasure.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Earlier today, thousands of progressive women and their allies rallied in Washington, D.C., in New York and elsewhere for the third annual Women's March. The group, which organized the first march in 2017 in response to President Trump's election, has been plagued by internal divisions and accusations of anti-Semitism against some of its leaders. But the march went on today despite the controversy and the damp, cold weather. NPR's Sarah McCammon was at the march in that damp, cold weather here in Washington. She joins me here in the studio.
Sarah, welcome.
SARAH MCCAMMON, BYLINE: Hi, Melissa.
BLOCK: Go through a bit about what these allegations were all about and how the leaders of the Women's March have been addressing them.
MCCAMMON: Well, several of the leaders have faced accusations of anti-Semitism in part because of ties to the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who's made multiple anti-Semitic remarks in the past. And those ties prompted several groups, including the Democratic National Committee this year, to pull out from being listed as a partner for the Women's March. One of those leaders, Tamika Mallory, addressed this during the rally today.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
TAMIKA MALLORY: And to my Jewish sisters, do not let anyone tell you who I am. I see all of you.
MCCAMMON: This, Melissa, isn't the first time that these issues of race and identity have come up at the Women's March. The first year it was organized, right after the 2016 election, there were a lot of concerns, really from the right and the left, about whether the march was inclusive enough both of conservative women and of women of color.
BLOCK: And when you talked to the marchers about all this, what did they say?
MCCAMMON: Well, obviously those who came today were not disturbed enough by these allegations of anti-Semitism to stay home. Several told me they'd heard about the controversy, but it wasn't their focus. For example, Christine Betters (ph) came to the march with her daughter from Takoma Park, Md.
CHRISTINE BETTERS: And I know there's some controversy around this march, but for us, it's not about the leaders. We don't know their leaders' names. We don't know anything about them. And we, frankly, don't care. We're here to be - as we say in our house, we're here to be one with the sisterhood. So here we are. And we're excited.
MCCAMMON: And I did speak with one woman who described herself as a Jewish feminist. She said she had second thoughts about coming to the women's march in light of the controversy but felt it was important to stand in solidarity with other women for racial and economic equality.
BLOCK: Sarah, if we think back to the first Women's March right after President Trump's election, are the issues that we're hearing about in this march the same as they were back then?
MCCAMMON: You know, this has been a challenge for the women's march to sort of define itself and shape its identity. And there have been disagreements about what that should be. They've always tried to address a lot of issues - immigration, poverty, racial inequality among others - along with more traditional feminist concerns like reproductive rights. And that last one was on a lot of people's minds this year with the newly configured Supreme Court, which now includes two Trump nominees, including most recently, of course, Justice Brett Kavanaugh. I talked to Ellie Hackney (ph) of Pasadena, Md. She says she's very concerned about the future of women's rights.
ELLIE HACKNEY: It's actually a very scary time for women and for reproductive rights. We just support candidates who are pro-choice. We also really support Planned Parenthood. But, again, it's a very, very scary time.
HACKNEY: And, Sarah, this march is coming on the same day of - that President Trump addressed the nation about the government shutdown and plans for border security. Were you hearing from people at the march that that was on their minds?
MCCAMMON: Right. This was just before he was expected to speak. And, of course, the Women's March is a very anti-Trump crowd so, not surprisingly, a lot of people I talked to today in D.C. were angry. They blamed the president for keeping the government from reopening. A few told me they hoped to see some compromise and some progress but, at least as of a few hours ago, weren't feeling too hopeful about that. And a couple of people, Melissa, here in D.C. said they were federal workers, and they were very frustrated to be without pay. But they didn't want to go on the record because they're worried about their jobs.
BLOCK: OK. NPR's Sarah McCammon - thanks so much.
MCCAMMON: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MIEL DE MONTAGNE'S "SLOW POUR MON CHIEN")
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
During the partial government shutdown, we've been hearing the stories of federal workers who aren't getting paid and are struggling to make ends meet.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
AMY FELLOWS: I do live paycheck to paycheck, though. You know, I was able to pay for my rent and my utilities for the first of the month, but now I have nothing in my bank.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KAMI CLARK: We've used whatever we had in our bank account to pay our last mortgage payment and our last car payment and our last utilities payment.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LORETTE LEGENDRE: People can't survive like this - you know, to stand out here in 30-degree weather to get food. This is America? Something's wrong here.
BLOCK: We heard there from Amy Fellows, a correctional officer with the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Also, Kami Clark, whose husband works for the Justice Department, and Lorette Legendre, a contractor with the General Services Administration. We'll continue to bring you individual stories like theirs.
But now we want to zoom out to talk more broadly about what's been happening to the U.S. labor force. How many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck? Well, to answer that question, we turn to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. He's been studying wage stagnation and income inequality for years.
Professor Stiglitz, welcome to the program.
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Nice to be here.
BLOCK: Is there any way to put a number on that question - how many Americans live paycheck to paycheck?
STIGLITZ: Well, the way you can think about it is, what are the size of the cash reserves that Americans have? And a number that came out that was really quite startling last year was that 40 percent of Americans have less than $400. Another number that's bandied around is something like two thirds of Americans have less than a thousand dollars. So what that means is that if they miss a paycheck or two, they're in deep trouble.
BLOCK: And that would apply equally to federal employees compared to anybody in the private sector because the median salary for a federal worker is higher than the average - so the median household income overall in the U.S.
STIGLITZ: It would probably be smaller percentage for the federal employees. But remember, there are a large number of federal employees that are very poorly paid. Some of the TSA workers, you know, the airport security - they're not paid that well. We forget how poor the pay is, for instance, for people who are even in the services, in the Coast Guard. So I think that we forget that we're getting a large fraction of the labor force on the cheap.
BLOCK: And when you think about why folks have not been able to save, and you look back over time, how has that changed? I mean, have people been able to save more in the past than they've been able to save now?
STIGLITZ: One of the big - you might say shocks to the economy was the crisis in 2008. Before the crisis, many Americans thought they were setting aside money in the form of their house. House prices were going up. That was their reserve for their retirement. But, of course, we didn't manage our monetary policy well. We didn't curtail the housing bubble. And when that bubble broke, an awful lot of Americans saw their entire life savings going with that. And so that has had a significant effect on the increase in the number of Americans without reserves and with very low net worth.
BLOCK: This is now the longest shutdown on record, so this won't be a perfect comparison. But if you look back at past shutdowns in the '90s, there was the shutdown in 2013, were federal employees better able to get by then?
STIGLITZ: Well, you know, I was in the 1995 shutdown. I was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers at the time. That was much shorter. The period of wage stagnation really began with the Bush administration in 2000. Wages actually were doing pretty well in that period of the '90s. So the stark position that so many American workers find themselves is something that is new, something that's developed in the last 18 years.
BLOCK: If you were to wave some sort of economic magic wand and say, OK. If we want to keep people from having to live paycheck to paycheck in the middle class, how would you do that?
STIGLITZ: Well, if I had a magic wand...
BLOCK: Yeah...
(LAUGHTER)
STIGLITZ: ...Which I don't.
BLOCK: It's a hypothetical.
STIGLITZ: I would have done a lot more to increase equality of wages. And if I can't do that, I would have introduced what we would call more progressivity in the tax rates - in other words, lower taxes on our middle class and increase taxes on the top. That's another way of getting more equality in after-tax income. The remarkable thing about the tax bill of December 2017 was that it did just the opposite. Rather than government countering what is going on in the marketplace with this middle class facing a real challenge, what that tax bill in December 2017 did was to exacerbate the problems they already were facing.
BLOCK: I've been talking with Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist. He's also a professor at Columbia University.
Professor Stiglitz, thanks so much.
STIGLITZ: Well, thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF LUMIPA BEATS' "IMPETUOSO (INSTRUMENTAL BEAT)")
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
At least 66 people have died in Mexico after a gasoline pipeline exploded yesterday, hurling flames into the air and burning more than 100 people. The incident took place in the central state of Hidalgo. Authorities say the pipeline had been tapped illegally by thieves. NPR's Carrie Kahn has more from Mexico City, and we should say some of the details are graphic.
CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: Forensic experts dressed in white body suits took on the gruesome task today of removing the dozens of charred remains from the scorched field where the gasoline pipeline exploded. Many of the blackened bodies were found stretched out on the green grass. Others were found in embraces as if huddled together as they burned. Scorched shoes, plastic jugs and jerry cans used to collect the gushing gas littered the area.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Spanish).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: Onlookers and relatives of the victims, held back from the scene by police, were frantic to identify their loved ones. In video circulating on social media, many complained of bad treatment by officials. In an early morning press conference, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador expressed his condolences to the families.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT ANDRES MANUEL LOPEZ OBRADOR: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: We are shocked by what happened by the tragedy that occurred in Hidalgo, said Lopez Obrador, flanked by the secretary of defense, Hidalgo state's governor and other top officials. Lopez Obrador has been in the midst of a three-week-long crackdown on rampant fuel theft. Last year, thieves siphoned off more than $3 billion from state-owned gas pipelines. Last month, the president shut six key pipelines, opting instead to truck gasoline around the country rather than through the vulnerable conduits. That has led to gasoline shortages in multiple states, hours long lines and price hikes.
Despite the crackdown, illegal tapping of the pipelines continue. According to authorities, around 5 p.m. Friday evening, someone illegally perforated the pipeline in Hidalgo. The military and Pemex, the state oil company, sent armed personnel to the scene. By then, hundreds of residents had gathered already filling buckets and plastic jugs as gas gushed high into the air. For nearly two hours, police and soldiers remained on the scene but did not disperse the crowd. Lopez Obrador defended the soldiers' actions and vowed not to back down in his fight against fuel theft.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LOPEZ OBRADOR: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: "We will continue our same policies," he said, adding - "this explosion is a painful, lamentable lesson to the people that it's time to stop the practice of stealing fuel." Carrie Kahn, NPR News, Mexico City.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
On an October day in 1925, a frontierswoman named Kate McHale Slaughterback etched her name into Colorado folklore. She was out on horseback with her 3-year-old son when they were suddenly surrounded by rattlesnakes - dozens of them. Kate fought the snakes off with her rifle and then a club. She said she was whirling constantly for over two hours before she could kill her way out of them. In the end, 140 snakes lay dead. Word spread around the country. Photos were taken. And she earned a nickname - Rattlesnake Kate. Now that story is the inspiration for a concept album called "Rattlesnake."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TRAIN")
NEYLA PEKAREK: (Vocalizing).
BLOCK: It's from Neyla Pekarek, formerly with the band The Lumineers. Neyla, welcome.
PEKAREK: Oh, thank you so much for having me.
BLOCK: And how did you first hear about Rattlesnake Kate?
PEKAREK: Well, I went to school in a small town called Greeley, Colo. And And in that museum has been preserved this rattlesnake dress that was fashioned from the dead snakes from the snake encounter by Kate herself. And I came across the story as a college student just passing through the historical museum on a day off from my studies.
BLOCK: I'm looking at a photograph of Kate - Rattlesnake Kate - wearing that dress. Why don't you describe it? You've seen it in the museum.
PEKAREK: Yes. I think it's fair to call it a flapper-style dress. It's sort of empire-waisted with these vertically sewn snake skins. And just the nature of having the snake pattern, it gives almost a glimmer and shine. And they actually keep this dress in the dark in a box, and you can press a button to turn a light on. But it's so fragile, and so they keep it as safe as possible. And you can see her individual stitches she did to craft this dress.
BLOCK: You know, I keep coming back to the idea of this dress made out of these snake skins. You actually dedicate a song to it on your album. Let's take a listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE PERFECT GOWN")
PEKAREK: (Singing) The perfect gown will have made them take you seriously. The perfect gown, will it be your mark on history?
BLOCK: And, Neyla, when I'm listening to this song and a lot of the other ones on this album, they sound like show tunes. And I gather you are working on making the album into a musical. You must love that sound, that theatrical sound.
PEKAREK: Yes. That was sort of my pipe dream going into this project was I wanted to create a musical about this woman's life. It felt like the storytelling lent itself to that medium. And I'm just flat-out a musical theater nerd. However, I didn't think I had a lot of the tools or skills to do that. It's a very overwhelming undertaking. But I did - having had the last better part of a decade of being in a band have the tools and skills to write and record and tour a record. So I started there. And then in the meantime, I spoke with a regional theater company here, and they've commissioned me to turn this into a musical.
BLOCK: So when you imagine that musical, what is it that you see and hear in your imagination?
PEKAREK: Well, I think partly it's important to share this story as a Colorado native myself. I also just thought it was such a strange and unique story that hadn't been told yet. And in general, a lot of Western women's stories have gone untold. And I was out to write a female empowerment record and story about this woman that I think represents a lot of that. She lived very much outside of the box of what it meant to be feminine and what it meant to be a woman at that time, and I was really inspired by that.
BLOCK: How else was she living outside the box?
PEKAREK: She certainly spoke her mind. She was very stubborn and said exactly what she felt, which led to a lot of turmoil, especially within relationships. She was - rumor has it, she was married and divorced six times.
BLOCK: She also apparently had a correspondence that lasted for decades with a man named Colonel Charles Randolph, known as Buckskin Bill. But I gather they never actually met. Is that right?
PEKAREK: That's correct. I joke that it's the earliest recollection of a catfish situation perhaps. But there was - yeah - a 40-year love letter correspondence. And I got to read through those letters. And that's really what made me believe this was more than just a song. This was a whole record or perhaps a whole musical partly because of all the details she divulged about her life and so many interesting stories. But they never met. And it just crossed my mind, you know, why would you keep in touch with someone that was essentially a stranger and divulge these details to? And what kind of kept her going? Perhaps the validation of feeling heard and understood by someone when maybe she didn't feel that way that often.
BLOCK: Well, there's a song that you've written called "Letters To The Colonel." This is a duet with the theater actor Brian Cronan.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LETTERS TO THE COLONEL")
BRIAN CRONAN: (Singing) Forgive me if I'm forward, but you're perfect, it's true. Give your secrets to the mailman, send them all through.
PEKAREK: (Singing) Dearest Buckskin Bill, you flatter me just so. I'm afraid you won't want me, weatherbeaten and old. How much, my dear, would you love me if I let you...
BLOCK: Neyla, are those actual words from the letters? Are you doing some invention there?
PEKAREK: It's a little paraphrasing but very similar. She ends a letter, why don't you write me back and tell me how much you'd love me if I let you? And that really stuck with me.
BLOCK: It's a really romantic song, and I don't think of her in that way. I think of her as a tough frontier woman who's really independent.
PEKAREK: Indeed. But I do think she was looking for love and looking to be loved. She sure tried a lot of times to try to make it work.
BLOCK: What was the end of her life like?
PEKAREK: Well, she lived pretty on her own. In fact, she was building her own farmhouse towards the end of her life in her 60s, which is just amazing. About two weeks before she died, she donated her dress to the Greeley Historical Museum. She came down with an illness sort of unexpectedly shortly after that. And so it's interesting how she would have known to donate her dress at that time.
BLOCK: And there it is - still.
PEKAREK: Yes. To this day, you can go visit it.
BLOCK: Well, Neyla Pekarek, thanks for talking to us about Rattlesnake Kate.
PEKAREK: It's been a pleasure. I love your show.
BLOCK: Her debut album is titled "Rattlesnake."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WESTERN WOMAN")
PEKAREK: (Singing) Rocky Mountains send a chill down my spine.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
People who get grocery money through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are getting their benefits for next month now. The federal program that used to be called food stamps, now called SNAP, has issued its last payment to states until at least March while the government is shut down. People who use that money are spending it without knowing when the next payment will come. Montana Public Radio's Nick Mott reports.
NICK MOTT: Sabrina Rubich is shopping for milk, bananas and other basics with her 9-month-old son, Kenny.
KENNY: (Crying).
SABRINA RUBICH: I get it. You're, like, full of stranger danger. I get it. It's all good.
MOTT: She's one of about 39 million people who depend on SNAP each month. Rubich works full-time at an AT&T call center, and her wife stays at home with their two kids. SNAP benefits vary based on income. The four of them get $158 a month. She says it's helping them afford groceries while they climb out of debt. But when she first heard SNAP benefits were coming two weeks early and would have to last until at least the end of next month, she thought...
RUBICH: No. They can't be doing that. And then I got a text today and, sure enough, checked my balance on the app. And I was, like, oh, my God. This is real.
MOTT: She says her family's making extra food bank trips to save the money that just dropped until the beginning of February, especially because she doesn't know if the money for March will come in time.
RUBICH: I am losing sleep over this, man.
MOTT: The Department of Agriculture funding for SNAP expires this weekend. Lorianne Burhop, chief policy officer at Montana Food Bank Network, says her biggest concern right now is making sure recipients understand their benefits are early and not extra. Many families depend entirely on SNAP for their food and, even in a normal month, the money doesn't always last long.
LORIANNE BURHOP: A lot of people end up skipping meals, going without in those last couple weeks of the month.
MOTT: She says Montana food banks are doing more to fill some gaps. And the state's calling recipients and sending out fliers to make sure they know the payment they just got has to last. With the government shut down, what's next?
JAMIE PALAGI: I think that's the question on everybody's mind, and I don't have an answer for it.
MOTT: That's Jamie Palagi of the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services.
PALAGI: If the shutdown continues, we all have questions about what will happen in March and potential months beyond that.
MOTT: Palagi says the USDA advised the state to keep taking applications for SNAP. If the government reopens soon enough, the next payment would be issued for the first week of March.
For NPR News, I'm Nick Mott in Missoula.
TOMMY TOMLINSON: (Reading) I weigh 460 pounds. Those are the hardest words I've ever had to write. Nobody knows that number, not my wife, not my doctor, not my closest friends. It feels like confessing a crime. The average American male weighs 195 pounds. I'm two of those guys with a 10-year-old left over. I'm the biggest human being most people who know me have ever met or ever will.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
That's Tommy Tomlinson reading from his book "The Elephant In The Room: One Fat Man's Quest To Get Smaller In A Growing America." His body mass index was 60.7, twice the government's threshold for obesity; his waist, 60 inches around; his body, he says, crumbling under its own gravity. At least that was Tommy Tomlinson four years ago. He's with us to talk about his life then and since. Tommy, welcome to the program.
TOMLINSON: Oh, thank you so much for having me.
BLOCK: I'm picturing you sitting down to type out that first line, I weigh 460 pounds, and how hard that must have been for you to do.
TOMLINSON: It took even longer than you might think because I was afraid. I was afraid to reveal myself in such a intimate way. And I was afraid to just say that number out loud because that had been one of the closely held secrets of my life, you know? Anybody who saw me could see I was a massive guy. But to see that number in concrete I think might shock some of my friends and people who care about me. And, to be honest, it was shocking to me, too.
BLOCK: We should explain, Tommy, that your voice, which is raspy and thin - and you describe in the book how it will wear out pretty quickly. You had throat cancer in 1993, and there was part of you that thought it was punishment for being fat.
TOMLINSON: Yeah. It's totally unrelated to my weight. But, yeah, I thought that maybe this was some sort of karma, you know, some sort of divine punishment for the way I had treated my body all those years.
BLOCK: Let's go back a bit and talk about your family because you write about your parents growing up poor during the Depression. They were families of sharecroppers. And food, for them, was vital. It was sustenance. There was never enough of it - really changed for you, as a kid growing up in Georgia, when food became equated with love, that this was something that they could provide for you, that they could give you enough to eat. And you did.
TOMLINSON: Yeah. I grew up in a Deep South family. My mom and dad always worked with their hands and their backs. They burned off thousands and thousands of calories just at work. And my generation - by the time I came around, I led sort of a soft life thanks to all the work they did to get us there. And so I basically have had desk jobs my whole life. I've always - almost always been a journalist.
But the Southern meals - those big fried chicken and collard greens and biscuits and cornbread and pecan pie, all those sort of things - those never went away because those became not just fuel for the generations that came before me. By the time I came around, it was a tremendous symbol of love and wealth, you know? In a poor Southern family - this, of course, is true in many cultures - food is the richest thing they have. It is - in my family was - the one thing where we felt wealthy is when we sat down at the table.
And that was also an expression and still is in my family of love. Look at this thing we made for you to show you how much we loved you. And so when those things are all sort of tied in, it's not just a meal. It's - carries all this symbolic weight to it. It made it even harder to turn down and curtail.
BLOCK: One of the things you write about is how many times you have tried dieting in the past. You have a line. (Reading) I've gone through diets like Gene Simmons through groupies - Gene Simmons...
TOMLINSON: Yeah.
BLOCK: ...The lead singer from Kiss.
TOMLINSON: Sure.
BLOCK: And, ultimately, you settle on something that you think will actually work. What tipped you to try to try what you call the three-step diet?
TOMLINSON: Well, because I'd failed at all the others, you know? I - as I said, I've tried pretty much every plan there is out there. I have a very simple plan. I'm not going to make any money off this diet plan. But it's, you know, just very simple. I have a Fitbit that tells me every day how many calories I've burned by walking or other exercise. I calculate very precisely, as precisely as I can, what my intake is in calories. And if I burn more than I bring in, eventually, I'm bound to lose weight. And it's not a plan that's going to transform me overnight. It's very slow and steady. And, you know, I'm still a big guy, you know, several years into this plan. But I do think it will be one - it's something that I can live with.
BLOCK: One of the things you write is that you have never not been fat. What are some of the things that you've missed out on because of your weight, the things that you haven't been able to do and maybe the ways that your marriage has been diminished?
TOMLINSON: When I was a kid, I never wanted to ride a bike because my legs were basically too big. They bumped on the handlebars, and I couldn't keep my feet on the pedals. I never learned to swim. I can keep myself afloat pretty well. I can dog paddle, but I can't really swim. When I was in my 20s, you know, I never had the experience of you know going to a bar, let's say, or a dance or meeting somebody and going home with them, those kinds of things that are sort of rites of passage for so many people.
And as I got older and, as you said, I got married to my wife, Alix Felsing - we've been married 20 years - I've put limits on her life because of the limits on mine, you know? When we first got married, she was a big runner and hiker, did all these active things. And I think I have had an effect on her, where she doesn't do those things as often as she used to because a lot of them, I can't do. And so it is limited, our relationship, in many ways that I'm profoundly ashamed of. And I credit her in a lot of with - just sticking with me for this long because I feel sure a lot of other people wouldn't have.
BLOCK: So you've been on the - wait, you call the three-step diet now for I guess - what? - about four years?
TOMLINSON: Yeah, yeah.
BLOCK: How's it going?
TOMLINSON: It's going well. I don't mean to be coy about the numbers, but I'll just say that I've lost a substantial amount of weight and been able to keep it off for the first time in my life. And that's a joy to me. And I'm sure there used to be that sort of cloud following me around all the time that I didn't even really know or think about all that much, but other people could see it. And now, I walk a little taller in the world because I feel much more confident in my ability to become, not just a more healthy person but I feel like a better person.
BLOCK: That's Tommy Tomlinson. His book is "The Elephant In The Room: One Fat Man's Quest To Get Smaller In A Growing America." Tommy, thanks so much for talking with us.
TOMLINSON: Thank you, Melissa. I really appreciate it.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Today is the two-year anniversary of Donald Trump's inauguration. It also marks 30 days since much of the federal government shut down over the president's insistence that Congress fund a border wall. Trump spent this morning on Twitter defending his proposal to end the shutdown and attacking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Yesterday, the president offered a reprieve from deportation for the so-called DREAMers and immigrants who enjoyed temporary protected status, or TPS, in exchange for nearly $6 billion of wall funding. Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana had this assessment today on CBS's "Face The Nation."
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FACE THE NATION")
JOHN KENNEDY: It represents progress - not perfection but progress. If you bring a plan to him that doesn't include a wall, it's dead as 4:00.
BLOCK: And on the Democratic side, here's Senator Mark Warner of Virginia speaking on NBC's "Meet The Press."
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MEET THE PRESS")
MARK WARNER: What the president proposed yesterday - increasing border security, looking at TPS, looking at the DREAMers - I'll use that as a starting point, but you've got to start by opening the government.
BLOCK: So are we any closer to an end to the government shutdown? Well, Robert Costa joins me here in our studio to talk about that. He's a national political reporter with The Washington Post.
Robert, welcome.
ROBERT COSTA: Good to be with you.
BLOCK: The Republican leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, has said he will move the president's proposal to the floor of the Senate this week as early as Tuesday. Do you figure that that bill will mirror what the president has proposed exactly?
COSTA: It will have Republican support. There has been a cracking inside of the Senate Republican Conference going on for days. I always think about Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, a retiring Republican, as really an example, an indicator of where this conference is. He started telling me a few days ago it's time to reopen the government, time to get some kind of deal cobbled. A lot of Republicans were pushing for a deal, and then the White House came up with its own.
BLOCK: But again, would it be exactly what the president has laid out? Or do you figure that they're going to be changing things, getting something that may be more palatable to Democrats?
COSTA: So much of this moment - it's about blame. Who's going to get blame in the polls? President Trump has been feeling the burden. He's been sagging in the polls during the shutdown. This new deal, this proposal is a way to try to put the pressure on House Democrats - to have the Senate Republicans pass the president's idea and then see what Speaker Nancy Pelosi does.
BLOCK: It's not a deal until it's done, right? So what are the chances that this bill could pass the Senate and get to the House?
COSTA: It'll - it's a very good chance it'll pass the Senate, though you could see some filibuster activity, some efforts to try to block it in the Senate. But some Senate Democrats, like Joe Manchin of Virginia, may be tempted to support this kind of proposal because they want to reopen the government. There's a lot of pressure from federal workers, hundreds of thousands of workers going without a paycheck. But Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, has framed this in moral terms. She does not want to support a border wall. So even if it passes the Senate, it could be dead on arrival in the House.
BLOCK: Right. Now, the speaker - Speaker Pelosi's been demanding that these two things be decoupled, right? First, Congress has to fund the government, then take up border security. So how does that get squared in any way?
COSTA: What we're going to have to watch in the coming days - Vice President Pence, Jared Kushner, senior adviser to the president, his son-in-law, going to the Capitol. Does a real agreement start to be brokered beyond just what the president said on Saturday at the White House? If a deal really starts to get in the works and different tweaks to this proposal start to float up, you could see the president agree to open the government but keep some kind of talks going. The White House privately is trying to see where this all goes. But no one wants to lose their position. But the president - he's paying a political price already with some conservatives who don't like him offering protections for the DREAMers.
BLOCK: Right. So he's getting it from both sides, right? He's getting blowback from the conservative wing, who's saying this amounts to amnesty, and then Democrats, who don't like this at all.
COSTA: Democrats certainly don't like it. But inside the White House, my top sources there say there is real debate inside the West Wing. Was this a smart move by President Trump? He - the Democrats don't like what he's proposing. And now some of his core voters, the Republicans who elevated him to the White House, are wondering, is this amnesty? Is this president whose core issue is immigration - is he somehow walking away from his signature issue?
BLOCK: And how does he try to allay those concerns among his base?
COSTA: He just keeps signaling to them he's fighting and fighting. This is the longest shutdown in U.S. history. Both sides here at the dawn of divided government are trying to see if the other will blink. This is a power play and a power debate as much as it is about immigration and policy.
BLOCK: Robert, this shutdown is already a month long. We have 800,000 federal workers not being paid. They're - they've already missed one paycheck. They're supposed to have another coming this week. Do you see an outcome anywhere in sight that will put an end to the shutdown?
COSTA: All of these issues are piling up. But I spent the week at the Capitol asking senators, Democrats and Republicans, what's the breaking point here? And some of them will pull me aside privately and say, it's only when the public employees really start a rebellion, the TSA employees at the airport stay home, is there chaos at an airport and people can't make their flights. There's paralysis inside of this Congress. They can't really come to an agreement. The president, Speaker Pelosi are dug in - especially the president here - not accepting any kind of deal. They're all trying to see if there'll be an outside factor that breaks it all open.
BLOCK: That's a big if.
COSTA: That's a big if. And we'll have to see if this bill, this proposal from the Senate Republicans floats away and dies this week, and we'll still have a government shutdown.
BLOCK: OK. Washington Post national political reporter Robert Costa. He's also moderator of the PBS program "Washington Week."
Thanks so much for coming in.
COSTA: Thank you.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
As the longest government shutdown in history drags on, it's affecting Americans in all sorts of ways. And one question is, how will it affect this tax season? Under a new contingency plan, the IRS has decided to call back about 57 percent of its workers, who have been furloughed. They'll help process tax returns when filing season starts at the end of this month, but they'll be working without pay. Well, my next guest, Danny Werfel, was the acting IRS commissioner during a government shutdown in October of 2013.
Welcome to the program.
DANNY WERFEL: Good to be with you, Melissa.
BLOCK: If the IRS is calling back about 60 percent of its workers, won't things slow down? Will people have to wait longer if they're getting a tax refund?
WERFEL: I think that's certainly a risk or a possibility because the IRS workforce has not been in seat doing all the things necessary to get ready for such a large event. And with a lot of complex logistics as tax filing season, yeah, I think there's certainly risk. At the same time, having worked with them before, the IRS workforce is an impressive group. And I would not be surprised if they're able to effectively mitigate some of those issues and minimize some of those disruptions. But I would be surprised if there aren't disruptions.
BLOCK: We also have a new tax law in effect. There are going to be a bunch of changes in the tax code. A lot of people are going to have questions, and it doesn't look like they'll be able to get much assistance by phone. The walk-in centers are going to be closed, too.
WERFEL: Yeah. I mean, that's something that the IRS leadership will look at as the situation evolves in terms of what are the things that are going to absolutely stay closed as they're running through tax filing season and what they're going to potentially trigger and reopen. But, as a general principle, the IRS workers will be working to process refunds, be it taxpayer services, walk-in centers, the call centers. There'll likely be a much lower level of service than during a normal filing season.
BLOCK: And what about for the workers, the IRS workers, who'll be working without pay? What does that do to morale? You had to deal with this when you were the acting commissioner.
WERFEL: Well, I used to have this saying - you know, when you're at the IRS, we're unpopular because we're the tax collector. And so - and we're going to take a lot of criticism. But that's in the brochure. You kind of sign up for that, and you wear that with a badge of honor. But working without pay is not in the brochure. And that's something that's really difficult to get people motivated on.
But I think what you do is you remind people of how important the tax system is to the functioning of government and that if they're not there to do it, then the country will ultimately suffer for it. It's a really important organization with a really important mission. But I don't know that there's a way to fully deal with the morale issues of people that are losing a paycheck unjustifiably.
BLOCK: That's Danny Werfel. He was the acting IRS commissioner during the last government shutdown in 2013. He's now a partner with Boston Consulting Group.
Mr. Werfel, thanks so much.
WERFEL: Thank you, Melissa.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
This is a time of profound government dysfunction on both sides of the Atlantic. Here in the U.S., we've been mired for weeks now in the shutdown with Democrats and Republicans unable to agree on how to fund the government. In Britain, they're still tangled up in Brexit, unable to agree on how to extract themselves from the European Union. Sebastian Mallaby joins me from London to talk about the implications of both these stalemates in the U.S. and the U.K. He's a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations.
Sebastian Mallaby, welcome to the program.
SEBASTIAN MALLABY: Great to be with you, Melissa.
BLOCK: When you think about the broader forces that are at play here, immigration is a big factor on both sides. Right here in the U.S., we've seen divisions over immigration and border security becoming the sticking point in funding the government. Where you are, in Britain, a lot of people who voted for Brexit, to leave the EU, said that the main reason that they voted that way was to gain control over their borders.
MALLABY: That's right. It was a combination of resentment of immigration and a vague sense that sovereignty had been diminished. And I guess both of those things apply to the U.S. And along with there is a sort of nostalgic nationalism. So take back control, the U.K. Brexit slogan, reminds me a little bit of make America great again - because again is that nostalgic we used to be great. We're not anymore. We want to get back to where we were.
BLOCK: As I mentioned, you're talking with us from London. How much anxiety is there about what is going to happen? Because there doesn't seem to be a clear way out.
MALLABY: Yeah. There's a lot of anxiety. I think it relates both to the sort of substantive stakes - I mean, there's this sense that if Britain does crash out of the European Union without a deal at the end of March, that means that all kinds of things that one takes for granted - like the ability of aircraft to take off, the ability of medicines to come across the border without being stopped for customs checks - all those things are in question. People are starting to stockpile medication if they have a medical condition that, you know, they're worried they won't be able to get their drugs. And so there's that sort of anxiety.
And then I think it's compounded by the fact that this isn't just a political mess that, you know, you get through it. This is a once-in-a-generation decision to unhook yourself from a deep version of globalization - in other words, connections with the European neighbors.
BLOCK: So much more fundamental about identity. I mean, here in the U.S. ultimately, presumably there will be an end to the shutdown. People will get backpay - at least, some of them will. But there, where you are in Britain, we're talking about a total transformation if this does go through.
MALLABY: Absolutely. I mean, you cross the Rubicon, you leave the European Union, you won't be allowed back in. One of the cartoons in the newspapers today which I think captured the sentiment shows this sort of annoyed cat owner saying to his cat, listen, if I let you out, don't tell me you want to get back in here in five minutes.
BLOCK: (Laughter).
MALLABY: And I think that's very much the sentiment in Brussels - that they're sick and tired of dealing with the Brits who can't decide whether they want to leave, what terms they might want to leave on. And so once leave does happen - barring the outside possibility that it somehow gets derailed - it's going to be very difficult to imagine going back in.
BLOCK: That's Sebastian Mallaby, senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations talking with us from London.
Sebastian, thank you so much.
MALLABY: Thank you, Melissa.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Tonight, everyone in America, where the skies are clear, will be able to experience a rare and beautiful thing - a super wolf blood moon in total lunar eclipse. Joining us to explain what that is and when you can see it is Pamela Gay. She's an astronomer with the Planetary Science Institute and co-host of the aptly named podcast Astronomy Cast. Pamela Gay, welcome to the program.
PAMELA GAY: Well, thank you so much for having me.
BLOCK: So a super wolf blood moon. Let's break that down into its individual parts - first, the supermoon part.
GAY: The supermoon just means the moon is closer than it is on other days during the month. As it goes around the Earth, sometimes, the moon's a little bit closer. Sometimes, it's a little bit further. And when it's a supermoon, it's at its closest point. It appears 14 percent larger than when it's furthest away. And this closeness makes it 30 percent brighter when it's full like it is this month.
BLOCK: OK. So this will be a supermoon, also, a wolf moon.
GAY: That is less interesting. We get a wolf moon every single January. It's just what we call the full moon of January.
BLOCK: OK. So supermoon, wolf moon and, also, tonight a blood moon.
GAY: Yes. With an eclipse, our moon passes into the Earth's shadow, which is something it doesn't do every single orbit. Usually, it's above the shadow, below the shadow, and we see a full moon. When that full moon, instead, passes through the Earth's shadow, it doesn't go completely dark. Instead, light from the sun gets bent around the Earth. It gets refracted around by our own atmosphere. And that atmosphere tends to scatter out a lot of the blue light leaving the red light to give us this blood red moon for the same reasons that our sunset is red.
BLOCK: Wow. It sounds incredible, and it will be visible if - assuming the skies are clear, visible all across the United States.
GAY: All across North and South America. It is really one of those great shared experiences for everyone on our hemisphere.
BLOCK: When are people going to be able to see the super wolf blood moon tonight?
GAY: So the very first moments of the eclipse are going to be at 10:10 p.m. Eastern Time. Totality will start at 11:41 p.m. Eastern with the middle of totality being at 12:12 a.m. as we go into Monday.
BLOCK: That's astronomer Pamela Gay of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson. She hosts the Astronomy Cast podcast. Thanks so much for talking to us.
GAY: My pleasure.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
With both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Trump seemingly locked into their positions on the government shutdown, state leaders are increasingly grappling with the shutdown's impact. NPR's Wade Goodwyn reports now on the shutdown's trickle-down effect on Texas.
WADE GOODWYN, BYLINE: It's probably not the first thing that pops into one's mind when asked to name a couple of the biggest impacts the shutdown has on the economy. You might think airline travel or the national park system. But one of the biggest economic effects has to do with information, research that the federal government produces monthly or quarterly.
PATRICK JANKOWSKI: My biggest concern right now is that with the - so many federal agencies shut down, we're not getting the data we need to understand what's going on with the economy.
GOODWYN: Patrick Jankowski is the senior vice president of research at the Greater Houston Partnership and the chief economist for the fourth largest city in the country.
JANKOWSKI: If you're trying to make hiring decisions and you want to find out whether the economy is expanding, contracting or what rate it is expanding, you need the regular reports to understand that.
GOODWYN: The impact of the shutdown on the economy radiates out from the absence of federal employees. For example, more than $200 billion a year in trade moves through Texas seaports. But without the review of important paperwork by the Coast Guard - for example, the required certificates of financial responsibility - that ship's not coming into U.S. waters.
Switch gears. Texas has a hundred billion-dollar-a-year agriculture sector. Right now is the time when farmers decide what crops and how much of each crop to plant. Luis Ribera is a professor and agricultural economist at Texas A&M University.
LUIS RIBERA: The different agencies in USDA - they collect a lot if information, which - we use it to analyze and forecast. They're very reliable. They're unbiased.
GOODWYN: Ribera says it says if farmers are now playing poker blindfolded. They're going to have to make their bets, but they have to guess what cards they're holding. Take soybeans, for example. Texas is the largest producer, and soybean farmers want and need to know how much China's been buying or not buying.
RIBERA: Usually, the Foreign Agricultural Service data comes about two months behind, so we should've gotten information by the first week in January. Well, we didn't. So we really don't know. By October, we were down by quite a bit. But now, we have a truce, and we wanted to see how much more soybeans we're sending. And, of course, that's going to impact the price of the products, not only soybeans, all different products.
GOODWYN: The oil and gas industry in Texas remains sound. Projects under review have been slowed. But, with the cost of a barrel of oil in the low 50s, producers are making money. With both American and Southwest Airlines based in Dallas-Fort Worth, the state is host to two powerhouse carriers. And analysts agree the industry's weak point in relation to the shutdown is TSA airport security. It's one of the lowest-paying federal agencies, and a second missed paycheck is certain. Joseph DeNardi is the airline's analyst for Stifel Financial.
JOSEPH DENARDI: Yeah. I'm sure, at some point, you can't expect people to show up for work if they're not being paid. That would be the biggest risk, that, at some point, you have staffing challenges at some of the agencies that directly affect customers' ability to fly. I don't think we're seeing any of that yet.
GOODWYN: Delta announced it would lose $25 million in revenue in January. The industry is expected to have another excellent year. Maybe it will. Maybe it won't. The length of the shutdown could decide.
Wade Goodwyn, NPR News, Dallas.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
It started as a whim, an afterthought, really - just a bit of spit into a plastic vial. But for writer Dani Shapiro, what she came to learn from that DNA test would up-end everything she thought she knew about her identity and her family's history. As she would learn, her beloved late father, Paul Shapiro, was not her biological father, and the Orthodox Jewish heritage that she so prized was not her own. Dani Shapiro unravels her family's story and the secrets it held in her new memoir, titled "Inheritance."
Dani, welcome to the program.
DANI SHAPIRO: Thanks, Melissa. It's great to be with you.
BLOCK: You find this out several years ago. You took the DNA test, as we say, as a fluke. You compare results with the woman who you thought was your half-sister, and you find out that you, in fact, are not siblings. You do not share a father. What was your reaction? Were you - was this traumatic? How did you feel?
SHAPIRO: I initially didn't believe it. It just seemed an impossibility. I thought that the DNA testing company must have gotten it wrong. I had my husband call them. So it really was kind of a slow seeping in of this is the case. This has always been the case. And it was like a reckoning.
BLOCK: And as you start unpacking this, you think back to something that your mother had told you 30 years before. She had dropped a really big clue. She said, you were conceived in Philadelphia. It's not a pretty story. She talked about having infertility trouble, that they'd gone to what she called a world-famous institute in Philadelphia for artificial insemination. And you had also heard from your - the woman you thought was your half-sister - that they used to mix sperm in those days. This was all something you had heard long before but had not fully digested, it sounds like.
SHAPIRO: Well, I had dismissed it because my mother made it very clear to me that it was my father's sperm used in the procedure. And when I went back to her after my half-sister said you might want to look into this because they mixed sperm, my mother said to me, can you imagine such a thing? My father was an Orthodox Jew. She said, can you imagine that your father ever would have agreed to do something like that? It would have meant that he wouldn't have known whether his child was Jewish. And I completely accepted that because I couldn't imagine that that would've been something that my father would've been on board for.
BLOCK: The main moral question that it seems like you're struggling with throughout this book is the question of whether your parents knew that your father wasn't actually your biological father. Were they aware of that? Did they dismiss it? Or did they not know at all? What did you, in the end, decide about that? Did they know?
SHAPIRO: Yeah. I mean, that really was the heart of the whole journey of this discovery for me. It was much more important to me than knowing or meeting my biological father. It was, who were we to each other, my parents and me? What did they know, and did they keep this a secret from me my whole life? And I began, really, with a feeling of they must have not known. We were all in the dark. The institute must have fooled them. I had this whole kind of - it was much more comfortable for me to feel that we were all in the dark together.
But no one got on-board for the idea of your parents didn't know. Not one single person I talked to - not experts, not people who knew my parents - no one believed that they didn't know. And so there was this process by which I came to understand, first of all, a lot about the history of reproductive medicine. At that time, infertility, male infertility in particular, was so shameful. And when they chose to have a child in this way, with donor insemination, it was a huge secret.
There was a practice at that time of mixing donor sperm with the intended father's sperm. It was meant to allow the couple to just really have a kind of plausible denial that this had happened. I believe that from the time my mother got pregnant with me, she decided that I was my father's child. My father, though, I think is a different story I think that he - and I'll never know, but I do think that he knew that I - that he wasn't my biological father.
BLOCK: We should explain, too, that you look very different from your father and his side of the family. And you would hear very often, you don't look Jewish.
SHAPIRO: Yeah. I was very fair, pale-skinned, blue eyes. It really was the story of my life - that literally every day, someone or another would say, you don't look Jewish, or you can't possibly be Jewish.
BLOCK: At the same time, when you talked to an old friend of your mother's, she says your father is still your father - that nothing in that has changed, really.
SHAPIRO: When she first said that to me, it was within 24 hours of my having made this discovery about my dad, and I could not hear that. I felt betrayed. I felt lied to. And yet, my father loved me into being. My father is who raised me, and so much of who I am is the result of our shared time together. And, you know, at the time, everyone was told by doctors - and doctors were god in the early 1960s - the child will never know, and what we don't know won't hurt us. And the idea of a future in which you could spit into a plastic vial and send it away through the mail would have been completely the stuff of science fiction.
BLOCK: You end up very quickly - within 36 hours and some very careful computer searches - tracing back to the sperm donor who is your biological father. You call him Dr. Benjamin Walden. That's not his real name. And you actually find a video of him giving a speech. What did you see when you were watching that video?
SHAPIRO: I saw myself in a 78-year-old retired physician giving a speech. He was gesturing the way that I gesture. I looked like him, and I had his coloring and his features. But it was much more than that - it was a quality that I recognized as being a quality of my own.
BLOCK: You describe in the book the process of reaching out to your biological father and, in the end, meeting him and his family. What has that been like for you?
SHAPIRO: In a way, it has contributed to a sense of wholeness. I feel very, very fortunate that that was able to happen. It's helped me to, you know, have the experience of sitting with and meeting and to some degree getting to know the man who is my biological father.
BLOCK: You write toward the end of your book about meeting with a rabbi, Rabbi David Wolpe, who quotes to you from a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. You've been talking with him about otherness. And I wonder if you could read the part of that poem that he quotes to you.
SHAPIRO: Yes. (Reading) God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers and thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face, a gauntlet with a gift in it.
BLOCK: And what did you take from that?
SHAPIRO: That really reframed, in a way, my experience - is that for sure it was a gauntlet but that there was this very powerful gift in it - that I was seeing and understanding the truth of myself in a way that I had never been able to before.
BLOCK: That's Dani Shapiro. Her book is "Inheritance: A Memoir Of Genealogy, Paternity, And Love."
Dani, thanks so much.
SHAPIRO: Thank you.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
In 1940, in Nazi-occupied Poland, a group of Jewish historians, journalists and others gathered in secret. Days before, hundreds of thousands of Jews had been sealed by the Nazis inside the Warsaw Ghetto. This group decided to resist with the power of their words. Under the code name Oyneg Shabes, or the joy of Sabbath, they started documenting every bit of their lives. They collected poems, essays, underground newspapers and diaries that captured unflinching real-time accounts of the horrors around them. Now, a new documentary film tells the story of this time. It's a hybrid movie that includes archival footage of Nazi atrocities. And we hear actors reading verbatim from the letters and diaries of the Warsaw Jews.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "WHO WILL WRITE OUR HISTORY")
ZACHARY MOOREN: (As Abraham Lewin, reading) The news about the expulsion of Jews is spreading like lightning through the ghetto.
ADRIEN BRODY: (As Emanuel Ringelblum, reading) A wave of evil rolled over the whole city as if in response to a nod from above.
BLOCK: When the Nazis began mass deportations of the Jews, sending them to the gas chambers, the Jewish leaders in Warsaw buried everything they'd collected - in boxes and milk cans - in a desperate attempt to save it. In the years after the war, much of it was unearthed. The new documentary about that hidden archive is called "Who Will Write Our History." And the director of that film, Roberta Grossman, joins me now. Welcome to the program.
ROBERTA GROSSMAN: Hi. Thank you very much for having me.
BLOCK: Let's talk a bit about the man who started the collective in the Warsaw Ghetto, the driving force behind it, the historian Emanuel Ringelblum. And let's listen to part of a letter that he wrote before he was captured and ultimately deported and killed.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "WHO WILL WRITE OUR HISTORY")
BRODY: (As Emanuel Ringelblum, reading) Remember that our workers were ever faithful to the ideals of our culture until their dying moments. The flag of culture and of struggle with barbarism was clenched in their hands until death.
BLOCK: It's such an incredible image, that flag of culture. What is he talking about there? What's the meaning of that?
GROSSMAN: I think culture to Emanuel Ringelblum and the people of his milieu meant the better angels of our nature. It meant valuing humanity at its best, creativity in art and literature and music, in relationships, human kindness and in stark contrast to what the Nazis were presenting themselves as, the enemies of humanity. He really saw culture as being a force of resistance. Resistance can come in many forms, in the woman who risks her life crossing out of the ghetto to buy food for her starving children. That's a form of resistance. Writing in a diary and recording the crimes of the Nazis. That's a form of resistance. Writing about the experiences of individual lives and not allowing themselves become nameless victims. That's a form of resistance.
BLOCK: Yeah, even just putting the name on the page or showing what the arts and the intellectual scene was among the Jewish people of Warsaw, that was vital.
GROSSMAN: But even more than that - I mean, the emphasis was on the truth, right? These were people who were willing to risk their lives for the truth. And they - Emanuel Ringelblum and the others of the Oyneg Shabes - as they realized that perhaps all of European Jewry was going to be destroyed, they did not want the history of their people to be told by their murderers.
BLOCK: And that question of - point of view, which is embodied in the title of the film, "Who Will Write Our History" - it's also the title of the book by historian Samuel Kassow that was the basis of this and was interviewed in your film. He's asking whose lens are we looking at when we view the Holocaust. Who's telling that story?
GROSSMAN: Exactly. But it was critically important because the Nazis had propaganda units in the ghetto all the time. And there's a lot of diaries and writing in the Oyneg Shabes archive that mentions this. And, obviously, what they're trying to do is to take photographs and footage that will - they can then use to show the Jews as less than human. And so the members of the archive saw what they were doing, what they were collecting, what they were writing as a counterbalance to that.
BLOCK: Let's listen to a bit of writing from a 19-year-old in the Warsaw Ghetto, David Graber, who was writing, essentially, what was his last will, later found in the archive. It's read here by an actor.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "WHO WILL WRITE OUR HISTORY")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As David Graber, reading) What we were unable to cry and shriek out to the world we buried in the ground. I would love to live to see the moment in which the great treasure will be dug up and scream the truth at the world.
BLOCK: Much of the archive was dug up from the rubble of the Warsaw Ghetto after the war, but it is not widely known. Why do you think that is, this great treasure that David Graber was talking about?
GROSSMAN: That was a question I asked myself when I read Sam Kassow's book about 10 years ago. I was completely outraged because I had spent my life reading and learning about the Holocaust, and I didn't know the story. And then, I started asking other people and no one had ever heard of the story. And, to me, this seems like the most important untold story of the Holocaust, or unknown story of the Holocaust. This was the most important, the largest, the most thorough eyewitness cache to survive the Holocaust.
And I think that the reason it hadn't been more well-known is a bit complicated. One reason is that it stayed in Warsaw behind the Iron Curtain.
And Sam Kassow and David Roskies' another scholar in the book - they posit that, perhaps, even a more profound reason why the archive remained unknown or, indeed, continued to be buried is because it's far too honest, right? There's Jewish prostitutes. There's Jews who tell the location of the family - hidden jewelry to members of the Gestapo in order to get some small favor. It's not a simple picture as perhaps was needed or wanted right after the war and for many decades after. So it didn't fit quite into the narrative.
BLOCK: When you go and look at all of this writing and ephemera from the Warsaw Ghetto, what is that like for you? What are you seeing?
GROSSMAN: I'm seeing a rich and vital community. I'm seeing a murdered civilization, a very diverse civilization. Ringelblum went to great lengths to have people of all political stripes - religious, nonreligious, young, old, rich, poor - he really wanted a picture. It's a time capsule of a murdered civilization.
BLOCK: And, at the end of your film, we see this fact. Three million Polish Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Only 1 in 100 survive the war. When you hear that number, does it ever get any less surprising?
GROSSMAN: I continue to be completely confounded by the Holocaust and by the cruelty and absurdity of it. And I - often, I have even, you know, friends of mine. When I told them, when I started working on this film seven years ago, what I was doing, there was sort of this general eye-rolling and like, oh, God, not another film about the Holocaust. And my easy quip is, oh, I didn't realize there had been 6 million films. But, more seriously, I think it's a rift in civilization. It's a rift for humanity. And we're still continuing to grapple with how did it happen and why did it happen and how could we prevent it from happening again.
BLOCK: That's Roberta Grossman, director of the feature documentary "Who Will Write Our History." Thank you so much for talking with us.
GROSSMAN: Thank you very much.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The one-word title "Girl" makes Belgium's Oscar submission for best foreign-language film sound pretty straightforward, but critic Bob Mondello says nothing about this unusual drama is quite what it seems, title included.
BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: Lara is asleep as the film begins, her mane of straight blonde hair falling across her cheek as her 5-year-old brother climbs onto her bed, whispering her name.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "GIRL")
OLIVER BODART: (As Milo) Lara...
MONDELLO: It's clearly a ritual. As she wakes, she stays still, then lifts him in the air.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "GIRL")
VICTOR POLSTER: (As Lara) Boo - tickle, tickle, tickle, tickle.
BODART: (As Milo, laughter).
MONDELLO: Milo is adorable. And Lara is, too, a fresh, pretty 15-year-old delicately featured, slender and, as evidenced by the ballet stretches she begins before even getting out of bed, an aspiring dancer. She's applied to a ballet school and later that day is undressing for a physical exam when we first see that Lara's padded bra is covering a boy's chest.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "GIRL")
KATELIJNE DAMEN: (As Dr. Naert, speaking Flemish).
ARIEH WORTHALTER: (As Mathias, speaking Flemish).
MONDELLO: Her father and her doctor talk quietly about puberty inhibitors and when Laura will be ready to begin the hormone treatments that will make her body line up with her vision of herself. Those treatments plus surgery will take two years, and she's impatient. Another doctor, a psychiatrist, tells her she should relax. "When I look at you..."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "GIRL")
VALENTIJN DHAENENS: (As Dr. Pascal, speaking Flemish).
MONDELLO: "...I see a beautiful woman," he says. She smiles but doesn't believe him. Meanwhile, she's enrolled in classes where she has to play catch-up since she's learning at 15 to do what the other girls have been doing for years - dance en pointe.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "GIRL")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: (As character) From here, your side arm closes and crosses. Set your knees. And faster, faster, faster, faster, faster, faster, faster. Try not to bounce.
MONDELLO: Toes punishing floorboards sounds like thunder, no? And though Lara is stoic in class, first-time writer-director Lukas Dhont lets you see what the work is costing her when she's alone untaping her now-bloodied feet. The film's star is another newcomer, Victor Polster, who was cast as Lara when he was just 14 and still going through puberty himself, though not transitioning. He gives a ferociously physical performance, whether en pointe and taped on the dance floor...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "GIRL")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: (As character) Stay together now. Stay together.
MONDELLO: ...Or emotionally hemmed in and taped in a different way at home. Polster's performance is wise beyond his years, especially as Lara becomes impatient with being in transition. And the performance meshes with the director's insistence on playing Lara's increasingly desperate impatience in context. Lara's father is wholly supportive. So are doctors, shrinks, school officials, fellow dancers.
In fact, where most queer films are about external conflicts and prejudice, Lara's biggest conflict is with what she sees in the mirror, which means she's not seeing what we see. The physical specifics are almost beside the point. There is never a moment when the Lara on screen is anything other than the girl of the title. I'm Bob Mondello.
(SOUNDBITE OF BIBIO'S "LOVERS' CARVINGS")
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
As lawmakers return to the Kansas State Capitol this year, three seats won by Republicans are now in the hands of Democrats. That's after three suburban Republican women switched parties, saying they no longer felt at home in the GOP. Jim McLean of the Kansas News Service brings us the story.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
RON RYCKMAN: The House will come to order. Members will be at their seats. The first...
JIM MCLEAN, BYLINE: Stephanie Clayton started her fourth term in the Kansas House as a Democrat. She won re-election as a moderate Republican but had an abrupt change of heart about a month later.
STEPHANIE CLAYTON: It was Monday, December 10.
MCLEAN: That was the day Republican legislative leaders said they wanted to rewrite a school finance bill that Clayton and other moderate Republicans had fought side by side with Democrats to pass the previous session. It was a breaking point.
CLAYTON: I thought, I really can't do this anymore. I don't know what to do. And by the 19th, I had made my announcement.
MCLEAN: Clayton announced her switch the same day as state Senator Dinah Sykes, another former moderate Republican from the Kansas City suburbs. Sykes, like Clayton, says she felt like an outsider in the Republican caucus.
DINAH SYKES: You know, if you didn't vote lockstep and fall in line, you were penalized.
MCLEAN: That's what happened to state Senator Barbara Bollier, another former moderate Republican from the same Kansas City suburbs. Kansas Senate President Susan Wagle, a Republican, says she had no choice but to strip Bollier of her committee leadership posts for endorsing Democrats.
SUSAN WAGLE: And that was the line. She endorsed against an incumbent Republican congressman in her district. And she also endorsed that day the Democrat for governor.
MCLEAN: As a Democrat, Bollier says she's approaching this year's legislative session with new enthusiasm.
BARBARA BOLLIER: For the first time ever, I don't have that pit in my stomach, that stress of knowing I don't agree with so many of the policies they're trying to bring forward.
MCLEAN: Like the others, Bollier reached a breaking point. Republican positions on issues ranging from LGBTQ rights to Medicaid expansion didn't align with hers. And she gave up trying to steer the party back to what she considered its traditional center.
BOLLIER: And I've spent nine years trying to do that, and I failed. And I'm not alone. Many people have been trying to do that, all my moderate Republican colleagues.
MCLEAN: The transition from red to blue in the Kansas City suburbs mirrors what's happening across the country, says University of Kansas political scientist Patrick Miller.
PATRICK MILLER: It's a trend that's - we've been seeing in suburbia growing for 20 years. And I think it's reached a flash point recently where it's very obvious on maps.
MCLEAN: Miller grew up in Virginia. And he says today's transformation is the reverse of what he saw happening in the South a generation ago when conservative Democrats morphed into Republicans.
MILLER: And I see this as very much the same phenomenon of people who, 20 or 30 years ago, could have been very comfortable in a Republican Party that was a lot more diverse ideologically but who, in a politics of 2018, they're going to be more comfortable and fit better with where the Democratic Party is today.
MCLEAN: The lawmakers have likely improved their re-election chances by switching parties, Miller says. And going from majority party outcasts to celebrated members of the minority could also increase their influence as lawmakers. Bollier, a retired physician, is now the ranking Democrat on the Health Committee, a slot that until recently was filled by former state senator, now-Governor Laura Kelly.
On the surface, Kansas House majority leader Dan Hawkins seems unconcerned by the defections. Here he is reacting to Clayton's.
DAN HAWKINS: Was she ever really voting with us as a Republican? I think if you look at her voting record, she's where she should be.
MCLEAN: But privately, the question nagging Hawkins and other top Republicans is this. Are these three parties switchers the exception, or are they the start of a trend that could make Democrats more competitive in a state that Republicans have reflexively put in the win column? For NPR News, I'm Jim McLean in Topeka.
(SOUNDBITE OF M. WARD'S "DUET FOR GUITARS NO. 2")
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The first African-American woman to have her music performed by a major orchestra was Florence Price. The year was 1933, and the piece was her first symphony.
(SOUNDBITE OF FORT SMITH SYMPHONY PERFORMANCE OF FLORENCE PRICE'S "SYMPHONY NO. 1")
CORNISH: The work, along with her fourth symphony, has been released in a new recording. NPR's Tom Huizenga has this review of the music and the pioneering composer behind it.
TOM HUIZENGA, BYLINE: Fans of Florence Price, especially in the African-American community, will argue that her music has never really been forgotten. But some of it has been lost. Not long ago, a couple bought a fixer-upper south of Chicago and discovered nearly 30 boxes of manuscripts and papers. Among the discoveries in what turned out to be Price's abandoned summer home was her fourth symphony composed in 1945.
(SOUNDBITE OF FORT SMITH SYMPHONY PERFORMANCE OF FLORENCE PRICE'S "SYMPHONY NO. 4")
HUIZENGA: This is the world premiere recording of the fourth symphony with conductor John Jeter leading the Fort Smith Symphony. It's another piece of the puzzle to understanding the life and music of Florence Price and a particular time in America's cultural history.
(SOUNDBITE OF FORT SMITH SYMPHONY PERFORMANCE OF FLORENCE PRICE'S "SYMPHONY NO. 4")
HUIZENGA: Price was born in 1887 in Little Rock, Ark. Her mother gave her music lessons since none of the leading white teachers in town would take her. In 1904, Price enrolled at the New England Conservatory in Boston, one of the few music schools that would accept black students at the time. After earning two diplomas, Price returned to Little Rock where she taught, got married and began raising a family. But racial tensions were on the rise, and a public lynching in 1927 triggered a move to Chicago. There, Price blossomed as a composer. Her first symphony won a prize, which led to its premiere by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The music is a blend of two traditions - African-American and European. The opening movement sounds like Dvorak.
(SOUNDBITE OF FORT SMITH SYMPHONY PERFORMANCE OF FLORENCE PRICE'S "SYMPHONY NO. 1")
HUIZENGA: Price might be searching for her own voice in her first symphony, but she adds distinctive touches. Cathedral chimes glisten in the serene slow movement, and African drums accompany the syncopated Juba dance, a folk tradition that originated in Angola and moved with slaves to American plantations.
(SOUNDBITE OF FORT SMITH SYMPHONY PERFORMANCE OF FLORENCE PRICE'S "SYMPHONY NO. 1")
HUIZENGA: Price and her music were well-received in Chicago and the great contralto Marian Anderson closed her legendary 1939 Lincoln Memorial concert with a piece arranged by Price. Still, she scraped to make ends meet, writing pop tunes and accompanying silent films. In 1943, she sent a letter to Serge Koussevitzky, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, acknowledging what she was up against. I have two handicaps, she wrote. I am a woman, and I have some Negro blood in my veins. But Price pushed on. Two years later, she wrote her final symphony, the newly resurrected fourth. In the opening movement, she quotes one of the most famous spirituals, "Wade In The Water."
(SOUNDBITE OF FORT SMITH SYMPHONY PERFORMANCE OF FLORENCE PRICE'S "SYMPHONY NO. 4")
HUIZENGA: Florence Price died in 1953 at age 66, and the amount of music she composed but was never heard helped dim her reputation over the years until now. Tucked away in those 30 recently discovered boxes are some 200 compositions which scholars are poring over. Clearly Florence Price's story is far from over. Tom Huizenga, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF FORT SMITH SYMPHONY PERFORMANCE OF FLORENCE PRICE'S "SYMPHONY NO. 4")
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Exactly one year from today, the 2020 census is set to begin in a small Alaskan village on the Bering Sea. It's a tradition for Alaska's rural communities to be counted first. NPR's Hansi Lo Wang explains why.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
HANSI LO WANG, BYLINE: Ever since Alaska became the 49th state in 1959...
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: In the White House, President Eisenhower signed the proclamation that makes Alaska's entry into the union official.
WANG: ...The most remote parts of the most northern state have gotten a head start for the national head count. For the rest of the U.S., the census has started on or around census day - April 1. But by that time of the year, snow and ice are melting in rural Alaska.
CAROL GORE: The best time to get to those communities is usually in the winter, when the ground is frozen.
WANG: Carol Gore is the chair of the Census Bureau's National Advisory Committee on racial, ethnic and other populations.
GORE: I describe myself as a forever-Alaskan of Aleut descent. My mom was born and raised in a very small village south of Anchorage called Ninilchik. That means a peaceful place.
WANG: Ninilchik is connected to highways and roads, unlike more than 80 percent of communities in the state. Gore says in what's known as Bush Alaska, it can be hard to complete a census form by mail or online. So census workers have to go door to door by foot in a village before they venture on to the next one.
GORE: Often, it's a combination of dog sled, snow machine travel or bush plane to get into a community.
MARK NEUMAN: One size fits all did not apply in terms of the census to Alaska. That was the message from Senator Ted Stevens.
WANG: Mark Neuman was the Census Bureau's director of congressional affairs before the 1990 census. He remembers how the late Republican Senator Ted Stevens pushed to make sure Alaska's population count was accurate. Those numbers determine how many congressional seats, Electoral College votes and how much federal funding Alaska would get.
Neuman says getting the correct count in rural Alaska required what was once considered a unique approach.
NEUMAN: To make sure that the person knocking on the door for the census looked like and sounded like the person answering the door.
WANG: That often means hiring local residents who can speak Alaskan native languages, like Yup'ik.
ROBERT PITKA: (Speaking Yup'ik), meaning counting people
WANG: Robert Pitka is the tribal administrator for the Nunakauyak Traditional Council, which governs the Nunakauyarmiut Tribe of Toksook Bay, Alaska, the first community that will be counted for the 2020 census. Pitka says he expects to see a bump up from the 2010 population count of 590.
PITKA: We have young families. And because our size is growing, there is more need in the village for housing.
WANG: Still, whatever changes the 2020 census will show, Pitka says he hopes the people of Toksook Bay will continue carrying on the traditions of their ancestors who settled in the treeless, cold deserts of Alaska's tundra.
PITKA: When you look at the world and all the starving and suffering, I would say the Eskimos are the luckiest people in the world because we can survive off the land.
DIANA THERCHIK: Each family fishes for herring. And once gutted, we braid them with grass and hang them to dry, and that'll be one of the staple foods for the whole winter.
WANG: Diana Therchik was born and raised in Toksook Bay.
THERCHIK: I used to go help with fishing. I got seasick - never again.
WANG: She's now the operations manager at the local health clinic. Therchik says unlike in some other rural Alaskan villages, residents of Toksook Bay can go fishing and hunting near their homes, and families don't have to migrate. So when the census workers come around...
THERCHIK: I should be here. Like our people say, (speaking Yup'ik). If nothing happens to either you or me...
WANG: We will see each other again someday. And if that day is next January 21, it'll be during the start of the 2020 census in Toksook Bay, Alaska. Hansi Lo Wang, NPR News.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Today in Washington, President Trump and Vice President Pence laid a wreath at the memorial for Martin Luther King Jr. The president also issued a proclamation urging all Americans to recommit themselves to the late civil rights leader's dream of equality and justice for all. Federal offices are closed today in honor of Dr. King.
And of course many government offices were already closed for weeks because of a political standoff. The president is demanding that Congress approve money for his border wall. Congressional Democrats have been unwilling to do that. NPR's Scott Horsley joins us now with the latest on the shutdown. Welcome, Scott.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Audie.
CORNISH: So this week, the Senate is expected to take up a proposal that the president made over the weekend. It would provide wall funding in exchange for limited protection for certain classes of immigrants. Tell us more about it.
HORSLEY: Yes, this proposal, which the president spelled out in an address on Saturday, what he billed as a major announcement, would offer a temporary reprieve from deportation to DACA recipients - that is the young people who were brought to the country as children - as well as several hundred thousand people from Central America and Haiti who have been living in the U.S. under what's called temporary protected status. Now, under Trump's plan, those folks would be allowed to remain in the country for three years.
And in exchange, the president's asking for the full $5.7 billion he's been seeking for his border wall. That would be enough to fund about 230 miles of border barrier. Now, even before the president spoke on Saturday, Democrats had rejected this proposal. But Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma said on ABC's "This Week" Democrats really ought to give this a second look at least as an opening offer.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THIS WEEK")
JAMES LANKFORD: The vote this week in the Senate is not to pass the bill. It is to open up and say, can we debate this? Can we amend it? Can we make changes? Let's find a way to be able to get the government open because there are elements in this that are clearly elements that have been supported by Democrats strongly in the past.
HORSLEY: Now, Democrats point out that the president's proposal does not include, for example, a path to citizenship for DACA recipients, which is something they've supported in the past. What's more, they say this is just a three-year reprieve, and it only restores protection that was already in place until that the president decided to rescind DACA. So for Democrats, that's not good enough to justify spending on the president's border wall.
CORNISH: So what are Democrats doing?
HORSLEY: Well, this week, Audie, the Democratic House is expected to vote on its own proposals to reopen shuttered parts of the government and provide some additional funding for border security but not for the president's border wall. The Democrats want to demonstrate that their opposition to the wall does not mean they are against border security in general even though that's something the president has tried to paint them as.
The Democrats' basic position throughout this shutdown has been, we are not going to negotiate until the government is reopened. Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia was on "Meet The Press" this weekend. He said, step one should be recalling furloughed federal employees and making sure those who are already on the job don't miss another paycheck.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MEET THE PRESS")
MARK WARNER: I don't think we give our federal employees enough benefit. Five weeks now without pay - they're still showing up to work. They're working overtime. How many of the folks in the studio would come to work this morning if they'd gone five weeks without pay?
HORSLEY: We are well into the fifth week of this shutdown, Audie. And if it's not fixed pretty soon, federal workers are set to miss their second consecutive payday this coming Friday.
CORNISH: Now, this is obviously causing considerable hardship for those workers who are affected - right? - and their families. Is there a sense yet of what it means for the broader economy?
HORSLEY: The longer it goes on, the deeper the impact. The chief White House economist has said it shaving about one-tenth of 1 percentage point off of economic growth for every week the shutdown continues. That means by the end of this week, we will have given up a full half percentage point of GDP. Some of that could be made up when federal workers get backpay, as they are promised.
But some of that economic activity, Audie, is just gone for good. Certainly that's true for all of the non-government businesses that are losing money on the sidelines of this shutdown - you know, restaurants that cater to federal workers or to tourists visiting government museums, that sort of thing. What's more, this record-setting shutdown does not exactly inspire confidence that the federal government will be able to deal with any real challenge that might come from the outside as opposed to problems that the government is creating for itself.
CORNISH: In the meantime, can you talk about that visit the president made to the memorial for Martin Luther King Jr.? I mean, last year this time, the president was mired in a fair bit of controversy around issues of race.
HORSLEY: Well, and those haven't really gone away. This was a low-key event. It was not on the president's public schedule. But he and the vice president made a very quick trip to the King memorial, which is not far from the White House. And the president did issue that proclamation in which he said that while there has been progress, there is still a lot of work to do in this country to achieve racial justice.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Scott Horsley. Scott, thank you.
HORSLEY: You're welcome, Audie.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
About half of the 800,000 furloughed federal employees are having to work without pay. And that includes around 35,000 prison guards and staff at federal correctional institutions. They're already on the lower end of the pay scale, with little financial cushion. NPR's Martin Kaste reports on how they're coping during the shutdown.
MARTIN KASTE, BYLINE: Federal prison guards missed their first full paycheck last week, and a big topic right now is gas money. A lot of these prisons are in small towns and rural settings. Long drives are typical. And that presents the guards with a conundrum.
CHARLES JONES: They're still required to come to work, but they can't afford to come to work. They don't have gas to put in their vehicles.
KASTE: That's Charles Jones, a guard at Marianna Federal Correctional Institution in the Florida Panhandle. He says some guards are taking side jobs. Others are postponing car and house payments. His own wife has been going online to sell some of their stuff. He puts down the phone for a second to ask her what she sold so far.
JONES: Hey, babe, what are some of the things you've sold on Letgo? Oh, like, the external drives - she sold one of those that we had. We had a, you know, a spare cabinet that we, you know, we cleaned up, and she sold that on there. Just, we look around, we're like, OK, what can we try to get rid of, maybe, that somebody wants? And you do stuff like that.
MATTHEW SHAPIRO: That's kind of shocking when government workers, who we're relying on for the safety of our prisons, are having to sell off their belongings in order to make ends meet.
KASTE: Matthew Shapiro's an economics professor at the University of Michigan. He studied the financial resilience of government workers during another shutdown in 2013 to see how they coped. He found that they generally had enough cushion to get through one missed paycheck, but not much more.
SHAPIRO: Based on our work and looking at 2013, and we have no reason to believe things have changed much in terms of how much government workers keep in their checking accounts, almost all will run out of cash after a second payless paycheck.
KASTE: That second payless paycheck is coming later this week. President Trump has signed legislation guaranteeing federal workers back pay once the shutdown ends. But until then, prison guards have to keep showing up for work.
They don't even have the option of protesting with a work stoppage or slowdown, says Jacqueline Simon. She's policy director for the national union the American Federation of Government Employees.
JACQUELINE SIMON: Strikes are absolutely illegal and off the table for federal employees. Any kind of concerted action that even involves, you know, staying home is off the table. We don't condone that. We don't coordinate that. We have instructed our members, if you are directed to go to work, as an accepted employee, then you must go to work.
KASTE: But guards can call in sick. Aaron McGlothin says he's noticed more guards are staying home for medical reasons. He's a correctional officer at a federal prison in Mendota, Calif. He's also the union local president. And last Thursday and Friday, he, himself, called in sick.
AARON MCGLOTHIN: My doctor says, hey, you know what? You need to stay home and not be around that right now. And take care of your health.
KASTE: There's a lot of stress in the prisons right now, he says - stress for the staff as the shutdown drags on and guards worry about looming bills. And then there's the fact that inside those prisons, daily life hasn't really changed yet.
MCGLOTHIN: It's business as usual for the inmates. They still get fed their meals, and they still have their jobs that they go to. And they still get their inmate pay. It's kind of a slap in the face when an inmate can still get his pay, but the staff that come in and do those jobs and put their safety on the line - they don't get paid.
KASTE: After his two sick days, McGlothin was planning a drive up to San Francisco over the weekend because he'd heard that you can make some decent money up there on Saturdays driving for Uber. Martin Kaste, NPR News.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Around the country, thrift stores are being swamped with sweaters, shoes, coats, books.
BRIAN EDWARDS: Thousands and hundreds of thousands of donations. It's huge. We can hardly keep up with it.
CORNISH: That's Brian Edwards. He's from Gulfstream Goodwill in south Florida speaking to his local station, WPTV. In Indianapolis, Braden Pothier of Wheeler Mission Thrift Store told Fox 59 News he's seeing the same thing.
BRADEN POTHIER: We've noticed a drastic increase in donations just over the past three or four weeks now.
RACHEL SYME: It looked like Fiddler on the Roof, you know, just like moving from one village to another. I mean, everybody had a giant Ikea bag full of clothes or five suitcases.
CORNISH: That's New Yorker magazine columnist Rachel Syme describing the scene she witnessed at a used clothing store in Brooklyn.
SYME: And I went down the line of people and just asked them, are you here because of the show? Nine out of 10 of them were. They had seen the show and immediately felt moved to get rid of their belongings.
CORNISH: The show she's referring to is the Netflix series "Tidying Up With Marie Kondo" which debuted on New Year's Day.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "TIDYING UP WITH MARIE KONDO")
MARIE KONDO: Hello? I'm Marie Kondo. (Speaking Japanese).
CORNISH: Kondo is the Japanese organizing expert whose bestselling book "The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up" has sparked a nationwide decluttering frenzy. Her key advice - you should survey all your belongings and ask yourself if each thing sparks joy. If yes, keep it. If no, let it go.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "TIDYING UP WITH MARIE KONDO")
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Spark joy - it's not as easy as I thought it was going to be.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: We're on board. We want to change. I just want it to be strong enough to change me.
CORNISH: In the show, Kondo travels around helping people go through the wrenching but ultimately liberating process of getting rid of stuff. Now, there's no proof that this is the main reason for the surge in donations at thrift stores, but Rachel Syme of The New Yorker points to the show's auspicious timing.
SYME: Releasing it right on New Year's Day was a genius move by Netflix because everybody is already in this kind of self-improvement zone, and they want to start the year with a blank sheet of paper, a new leaf, an empty bookshelf. You know, everybody wants that sort of blank canvas start to the new year, and I think that cleaning out your closet is a huge signifier of that. It's kind of an unburdening.
CORNISH: Syme says she thinks the connection Kondo makes between decluttering and happiness has inspired the viewer to take action.
SYME: I guess a lot of things weren't making people happy, but I will say if getting a new leather jacket makes you happy, now is a really good time to go to a thrift store and find one.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The NFL has, over the last decade, been rocked by lawsuits over traumatic brain injuries, allegations of player domestic violence off the field and rule changes of their own. But according to an ESPN investigation, the sport is facing a problem that could threaten its very survival - lack of insurance. The NFL no longer has general liability insurance covering head trauma. And only one carrier is willing to cover teams for workman's comp. In short, if there's no insurance, there's no football. Steve Fainaru co-wrote the story with Mark Fainaru-Wada for ESPN's Outside the Lines. He joins me now. Welcome to the program.
STEVE FAINARU: Thank you.
CORNISH: So help us understand right now what the NFL is dealing with when it comes to insurance.
FAINARU: It started with the resolution of the class-action suit against the NFL that was over concussions. You had thousands of former players that were accusing the league of covering up the link between football and neurodegenerative disease. The NFL settled that suit for an estimated $1 billion. And since then, the insurance industry has been taking a look at the litigation that's been proliferating since then. And it's hitting the sport at all levels - from Pop Warner all the way up to the league. And the result has been that many of the companies have just been taking a pass. They've been getting out of the industry. So if the league was sued under its general liability policy on this issue in the future, they're on their own. They ultimately have to pay it.
CORNISH: It's interesting. So, basically, no matter what the NFL says or anyone attempting to debate the science of what's going on, insurers have made a call already, which is, like, they're out.
FAINARU: Yeah, I think this is one of the things that is so striking about this issue - is that it's a market issue. And so for all the issues that the NFL has been doing to try to mitigate this problem, to try to - putting money into the research and changing the rules - that the insurance industry is making its own judgments about where this is going. And I think that what they're seeing is that there's just still a tremendous amount of uncertainty. There's been so much litigation that's proliferated since the NFL settled the class-action suit in 2013 that it really gives the insurance industry pause. The NFL's insurance broker, Alex Fairly, spoke with us. And he said bluntly that if you are football or other contact sports, the insurance industry basically doesn't want you right now.
CORNISH: So your reporting shows that we're already starting to see the impact of this - smaller programs shutting down because of insurance costs. Can you describe one or two stories that stuck out to you?
FAINARU: The problem is especially acute at the lower levels, at the nonrevenue-producing sports. So Pop Warner, for example, was told by its longtime insurer that it would no longer cover the organization for any neurological injury. And they found that there was only one company that was able to provide them that coverage. And the executive director of Pop Warner, Jon Butler, told us there's only, really, two solutions for Pop Warner if they can't get insurance. They either have to declare bankruptcy, or they go out of business.
So that would obviously pose incredible problems for the 250,000 youth players that are involved in Pop Warner. We followed a case in Maricopa County, Ariz., where a junior college district decided to eliminate football for four teams. They found that the cost of insuring 358 football players represented one-third of the entire costs of the 200,000 students that were in the system. And they decided that was just too much. And they had to get out of it.
CORNISH: In the long run, as more and more insurers get out and get out at the level you were talking about - Pop Warner - right? - people's early introduction to playing the sport, could that have a long-term effect on football itself?
FAINARU: I think we'll have to see. But I think it's obvious - if you can't get insurance with all the litigation that's out there, it becomes essentially impossible to field a team. And so for youth sports in particular - and then when you get into the high-school level, there is an enormous amount of complexity around it. But it is sort of a basic thing - that if you can't get insurance, it becomes very difficult to stage the sport.
CORNISH: Steve Fainaru reports for ESPN's Outside the Lines. Thank you for sharing your reporting with us.
FAINARU: Thanks, Audie.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Had he not been assassinated in 1968, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. would have celebrated his 90th birthday last week. Today, on the federal holiday dedicated to him and his legacy, we take a moment to do just that.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JAMES EARL JONES: (Reading) We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed.
CORNISH: That's actor James Earl Jones reading from King's "Letter From Birmingham Jail." King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference launched the Birmingham campaign in 1963, a series of nonviolent protests and boycotts in that Alabama city meant to pressure businesses to desegregate and business owners to hire people of all races. On Good Friday, King and other black protesters were arrested and jailed for parading without a permit.
While there, he was given a copy of an open letter about the protest. It was written by eight white Alabama clergymen. They said they recognize the, quote, "natural impatience of people who feel their hopes are slow in being realized." They also called the protest unwise and untimely and suggested local protesters abandon demonstrations and negotiate instead. King took that to be yet another way of saying wait. He was tired of hearing wait.
Here are selections from his response read by James Earl Jones. It contains words many found offensive then and many will find offensive now.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JONES: (Reading) We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say wait. But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen the hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your 20 million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading white and colored; when your first name becomes nigger and your middle name becomes boy, however old you are, and your last name becomes John; and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title Mrs.; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly on tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of nobodiness, then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.
There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of injustice where they experience the blackness of corroding despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.
CORNISH: James Earl Jones reading an excerpt of Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "Letter From Birmingham Jail." It was recorded in New York City in 1988 at the 92nd Street Y.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May is yet again facing an elusive task - forging consensus with members of the British Parliament over Brexit. Now, if she succeeds, she could then return to the European Union and ask for concessions. May's first plan was resoundingly rejected by Parliament last week. Today she tried again. NPR's Frank Langfitt joins us now from London to talk more about it. Hey there, Frank.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: Hi, Audie.
CORNISH: So what did the prime minister say to lawmakers today? What was different?
LANGFITT: Well, she sort of said - she didn't add very much, frankly, Audie. She said she's going to try to find some kind of compromise in Parliament that the EU will back and that she's going to talk - continue to talk across party lines. The biggest sticking point we've been talking about for months here is avoiding customs checks along the border in Ireland while not trapping the United Kingdom inside a customs arrangement with the EU that could last for years. And here's what the prime minister said.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRIME MINISTER THERESA MAY: We will work to identify how we can ensure that our commitment to no hard border in Northern Ireland and Ireland can be delivered in a way that commands the support of this house and the European Union.
CORNISH: So how is this different from what the prime minister said last week?
LANGFITT: It's not very different at all. She's been saying this for some time. And the thing about today - she didn't offer any new details, and that's kind of the problem. You know, before, she hadn't even been consulting with other parties in Parliament when she was negotiating this deal with the European Union. And today, the opposition Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn - he said the whole process feels like the movie "Groundhog Day." And it certainly feels that way to a lot of people who've been covering it. She finally now says she is going to compromise with other parties. And this is what Corbyn had to say.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JEREMY CORBYN: So, Mr. Speaker, no more phony talks. Parliament will debate and decide. And this time - this time, Mr. Speaker, I hope and expect the government to listen.
CORNISH: So we hear a lot about Parliament saying they want to take control of the process. But did we see any evidence of them trying to do that?
LANGFITT: Yeah, you did hear more people referring to that today. Yvette Cooper - she's a parliamentarian with the Labour Party. She said some members of Parliament want to be able to vote on specific elements of a Brexit plan, including things that they're really interested in, like keeping a much closer relationship by staying inside the EU Customs Union. This is what Cooper had to say.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
YVETTE COOPER: But to be honest, we heard all of this before. If she's serious, why not give Parliament a say? Why not put to Parliament some votes on her red lines, including a Customs Union? Otherwise, how can any of us believe a word she says?
(CHEERING)
LANGFITT: And what Cooper's talking about here, Audie, is the opportunity to really reshape the deal that the prime minister wants. When she's talking about red lines, the prime minister said, we're going to leave the giant single market; we're going to leave the Customs Union of the European Union. What Yvette Cooper's saying is, we want to have different choices here; we don't like your plan; we'd like to see something much closer with the EU.
CORNISH: And the clock is running out. March 29 is the deadline for Britain to leave the EU. Where does this leave the prime minister?
LANGFITT: She's got to find some kind of consensus with Parliament, which is very difficult because Parliament is deeply divided. Many members of Parliament want completely different things. It's a tough thing for the prime minister to do. Then if she gets that, she's got to go back to Brussels and get concessions. Brussels has said no more negotiations. Then she comes back on the 29, puts something in front of Parliament, which they can amend. And we'll see where it goes from there.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Frank Langfitt speaking to us from London. Frank, thank you.
LANGFITT: Happy to do it, Audie.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
In India, food prices are low. This keeps poor people from starving. It also means little profit for farmers. That's caused Indian farmers to take to the streets.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting in foreign language).
CORNISH: They're demanding the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi forgive their debt and set higher prices for produce. NPR's Lauren Frayer traveled to rural Maharashtra to meet farmers, a powerful voting bloc in the upcoming election.
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: Sanjay Sathe grows onions on about an acre of land on a roadside.
SANJAY SATHE: Onion, onion.
FRAYER: This little farm prospered under Sathe's grandfather and father. Now the family has a side gig raising goats because the price of onions keeps falling.
(SOUNDBITE OF GOATS BLEATING)
FRAYER: We're looking at about a football field-sized onion field. And how many onions can you grow in this field?
SATHE: (Speaking Marathi).
FRAYER: From a good harvest, he says he can make the equivalent of about $350. That has to last his family half a year. But this harvest was not good. He made a paltry 15 bucks and decided to pull a stunt. Sathe sent a money order for his entire profit, that whopping $15, to the prime minister of India, who's running for re-election. Sathe wanted to show him how little farmers have to live on.
SATHE: (Through interpreter) The government neglects farmers. It gives tax breaks to big business, and it plays up controversies over Hindu temples and such, all of it for votes. But look at us. We're dying here.
FRAYER: He's not being dramatic. There's been a suicide epidemic among Indian farmers as food prices drop and pesticides and fertilizers get more expensive. This Indian government has been cautious about meeting farmers' demands for higher food prices, says economist R. Ramakumar.
R RAMAKUMAR: Farmers want higher prices. Consumers want lower prices. So there is enormous opposition to the idea of increasing the minimum support prices for farmers because it is argued that it will lead to inflation.
FRAYER: In the case of onions, there's no minimum price, so it's particularly volatile. In recent weeks, the price of onions has dropped by more than 80 percent because of surplus and fewer exports.
Workers pack onions at Maharashtra's wholesale market. My producer and I found rows upon rows of flatbed trucks overflowing with onions rotting in the sun.
UNIDENTIFIED FARMER: (Speaking Marathi).
UNIDENTIFIED INTERPRETER: So they wait to see the prices will go up. So they waited, waited, waited. And now these have become really old.
FRAYER: Whose onions are these? Is it someone here?
UNIDENTIFIED INTERPRETER: (Speaking Marathi).
UNIDENTIFIED FARMER: (Speaking Marathi).
FRAYER: Farmer Vijay Ghayal simply refuses to sell at a loss.
VIJAY GHAYAL: (Speaking Hindi).
FRAYER: At this rate, he says he can't even afford the rent on his truck. The farmers all look desperate. Meanwhile, farmer Sathe got his money order returned from the prime minister. And he got some somber news from fellow farmers. Two local onion growers had killed themselves.
IRABAI JADHAV: (Crying).
FRAYER: Sitting cross-legged on her cement floor, Irabai Jadhav describes how she lost her son. He was about $40,000 in debt. He drank pesticide in late November. Irabai's husband died of a heart attack 12 days later. And now she is left with all of their bills.
JADHAV: (Through interpreter) My son was the only one educated in our family. He's the only one who understood the loan documents. I'm worried about how I'll feed his children. I rue the day we ever became farmers. The farmer dies feeding this country, but no one fights for the farmer.
FRAYER: With elections coming, political parties are fighting for farmers' votes, offering to forgive debt owed to state banks. But many loans to farmers are private and predatory. Interest rates average around 40 percent. Half of India works in agriculture, and people here say onion prices can sway elections. The widow Irabai Jadhav's family says whoever's willing to help them will have their votes. Lauren Frayer, NPR News, in rural Maharashtra, India.
(SOUNDBITE OF BLAZO'S "NATURAL GREEN")
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
There's a big fight in upstate New York over the future of the Hudson River. Over the last decade, the federal government forced General Electric to spend hundreds of millions of dollars cleaning up tons of toxic PCBs - oily, toxic chemicals the company dumped in the river. It was seen as a model program. But as North Country Public Radio's Brian Mann reports, a growing number of critics say it didn't work.
BRIAN MANN, BYLINE: It's a bitter-cold day in Hudson Falls, N.Y., and I'm down by the icy river bank. This is a stretch of water the state of New York says is still dangerously polluted. Basil Seggos heads New York's Department of Environmental Conservation.
BASIL SEGGOS: The levels of contamination of both fish and sediment have remained troublingly high.
MANN: His office released a big new study last month concluding that levels of toxic PCBs haven't declined much despite six years of dredging and other restoration work.
SEGGOS: That doesn't mean that the original dredging was not worth it. But then you have to assess whether or not it worked and whether more is needed.
MANN: General Electric hauled out tons of contaminated muck, spending roughly $2 billion on one of the biggest environmental cleanup efforts the U.S. has ever seen. This Superfund site sprawls over more than 200 miles of the Hudson River. The Environmental Protection Agency is doing its own research, trying to decide whether that work was good enough that they can call the project complete.
But Manna Jo Greene, an environmental activist, says the report by scientists working for New York state shows that a clean bill of health for the Hudson would be premature.
MANNA JO GREENE: The results are disappointing in that a more robust cleanup is needed. EPA must not issue a certificate of completion to General Electric because that would let them off the hook.
MANN: But there's growing skepticism in these old industrial towns along the Upper Hudson that more dredging and more cleanup will do any good.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOGS BARKING)
JAY HARRINGTON: They should've left it alone from the get-go.
MANN: Jay Harrington lives right next to the river. The backyard where his dogs play is bordered by the contaminated river bank.
I mean, you live near the water. You say you've boated on it all these years. Do you worry about the health effects on you?
HARRINGTON: It's too late now.
MANN: You hear this over and over here, a kind of resignation. GE spread PCBs all over this valley before people realized the industrial chemical causes deformities in fish and other wildlife and carries a risk of cancer for humans. In a coffee shop nearby, Art and William Wells are eating lunch.
ART WELLS: How are you going to get it all out of the water? I just don't see how.
WILLIAM WELLS: I'm thinking with him - waste of time. I live right behind GE. I'm glowing. Can't you see me?
(LAUGHTER)
MANN: General Electric meanwhile is lobbying the EPA hard, hoping to convince federal officials that enough progress has been made, that more dredging isn't needed. By some estimates, another round of cleanup could cost GE $500 million at a time when the corporation is struggling financially. GE spokesman Mark Behan says the cleanup did more good than critics are willing to admit, and he accuses New York state of moving the goalposts, setting new, stricter standards to measure the cleanup's success.
MARK BEHAN: Based on the new standard it's applying, New York state now says they don't meet the threshold, but they did meet the EPA threshold.
MANN: Basil Seggos, New York's conservation commissioner, says that's just not true.
SEGGOS: Our research in the last two years followed the exact same protocols as the EPA-mandated protocols that GE followed. So to suggest otherwise is frankly absurd.
MANN: EPA officials who weren't available to talk because of the partial government shutdown will play referee here, deciding what additional work, if any, has to be done. Their final answer is expected this year. And whichever way they rule, it'll likely be tested by a lawsuit. This debate and the science emerging from the Hudson cleanup are being watched closely. Around the country, officials are preparing other big dredging projects on rivers contaminated with PCBs. Brian Mann, NPR News, Hudson Falls, N.Y.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
A new novel, "The Field Guide To The North American Teenager," taps into all the raw anxiety of adolescence. Author Ben Philippe is able to take readers right to the heart of the matter.
BEN PHILIPPE: When you're a teenager, that's the age where you feel everything to the absolute highest, right? So you're not just like, oh, yeah, my relationship is kind of hitting a weird spot. It's like the world is crumbling, and screw your casserole, Mom. And nothing makes sense, and I'm just going to sob in a stairwell. And that's...
CORNISH: That was so accurate. I applaud you. Thank you for that.
PHILIPPE: (Laughter).
CORNISH: His protagonist is Norris Kaplan. He is a hockey-loving black French Canadian who's a snarky, skeptical fish out of water plopped into an Austin, Texas, high school. Though he was raised in Canada, the author's life is reflected in many of Norris' experiences.
PHILIPPE: On the one hand, Norris has a very, very thick outer shell. He's very much trying to attack first because he just assumes that moving to Texas, coming into the middle of the year, that people are going to attack him. He's black, he's French and he's Canadian. He has an accent that's probably similar to mine. So he has his guard up. And he's one of those people that lashes first so when you react badly, they can say, ha, ha, I knew it all along.
And, also, it's not a trope, but I remember reading so many white books where the protagonist is just mean and acerbic and sort of, like, off-putting.
CORNISH: Yeah.
PHILIPPE: And for some reason, everyone just flocks to them. And in the real world, that's not really how it goes. In the real world...
CORNISH: Right. In the real world, no one has to make a connection with you.
PHILIPPE: Exactly. If you push people away, most of the time, they just leave. And I wanted to start Norris at his brattiest and sort of have him come to that lesson, hopefully.
CORNISH: Now, the title, "The Field Guide To The North American Teenager," comes from this notebook that Norris keeps. And you start each chapter heading with a little kind of description of the creatures that we're going to encounter in that chapter. So here's one from Chapter 3.
(Reading) Jocks and cheerleaders. Identifying characteristics - muscular, rarely spotted without a water bottle, athleisure wear. Habitat - the jock table, football stadium or other athletic field, keg parties. Preening habits - extensive. Mating habits - frequency of copulation typically over-exaggerated.
It made me think of all of the books and movies I've seen with this archetype and with all of these. And did you have favorites growing up? Like, how did you - what was in the back of your mind when you were making your own jocks and cheerleaders and loners?
PHILIPPE: Oh, absolutely. Those headers come from, you know, years of soaking up America through the prism of teenage movies, through seeing, you know, "10 Things I Hate About You," Bring It On" - all those wide tropes of a high school being this almost "Hunger Games" of different districts.
CORNISH: (Laughter) Yeah.
PHILIPPE: And I was a grown adult when I was writing this. I knew that they weren't true, but I love the idea of the American high school. I'm French. I come from a French-speaking household. I was also an only child. And I had a TV in my room, so I basically kind of learned English watching the WB, which is...
CORNISH: Wow.
PHILIPPE: Yeah. That might explain a lot. This office feels like therapy.
CORNISH: (Laughter) It might. It might. I mean, maybe because especially the way the teenagers talk, you've got some very kind of smart, savvy teenagers in this book - not quite "Dawson's Creek" level, you know, where they just sound like adults, but they are all putting on the performance of being cynical adults, which it does feel pretty accurate.
PHILIPPE: Yeah. And I wanted to make it through an interview without bringing up the "Gilmore Girls," but I can't.
CORNISH: It's OK. It's all right. I'm here for you.
PHILIPPE: Thank you. Thank you for the support. I love that show. And I think that cadence of always having a quippy reference is how I approach Norris, even though his is coded and trying to keep the world at bay. It's a very defensive maneuver for him, even though he's not quite aware of it yet. It is how I engaged with social situations for quite a while.
CORNISH: Norris is also grappling with his parents' divorce. And as he's trying to navigate his move, as he's trying to navigate school, there is this undercurrent of emotion there - right? - this thing that is just kind of - I don't know how you would characterize it. How did you want this to affect his story?
PHILIPPE: Norris Kaplan is deeply depressed when he moves to Austin. It doesn't look like what you might expect from depression. But he's very hurt because his parents got divorced. He wanted to live with his dad to stay in Canada. But the dad basically refused because he had a wife and a new child. And Norris feels like he's been sort of, like, cast off, even though he loves his mom.
I think he's a child of immigrants that's dealing with the ripples of a divorce in an immigrant household, which was my case, too.
CORNISH: You said an immigrant household. Why do you think that's significant?
PHILIPPE: I'll speak for myself, not the full scope of all immigrants everywhere.
CORNISH: Right.
PHILIPPE: My parents moved from Haiti to Canada. And as an only child, a lot of the reason why they moved, a lot of their hopes and expectations were based on me - sort of, like, to give me a better life, give me a better school, a better future. And I felt, I think a little bit, that when they got divorced, that was a failure on my part - that, like, the son or the child having a better life wasn't enough to keep them together.
So it's not an active or conscious thing on Norris' part, but I do think that is a spine that the character and I share.
CORNISH: Ben Philippe, I feel emotional now, listening to that. Have your parents read this book?
PHILIPPE: My mother primarily speaks French, so we do this thing where she's learning English. She really wants to read the book. We read the same English book, and then she'll discuss it with me over the phone sort of just to understand what she just read. So she's getting really good.
And she started my book. You know, she saw the dedication. She was moved. And about halfway through, she was like, are the adults going to come back in? And it's like, no, no, it's mostly the kid.
(LAUGHTER)
PHILIPPE: And then she was like, oh, well, you know, Michelle Obama wrote a book. And I love you, but could we maybe switch to that one for a few chapters?
CORNISH: You know, I'm not mad at her.
(LAUGHTER)
PHILIPPE: No one's mad at her. As soon as they see Michelle Obama, they're like, well, yeah. Yes, I would do that, too. But I'm - she's not Michelle Obama's mother. Like, she could have, like, stuck it for, like, a few more chapters.
CORNISH: (Laughter) Do you think we're still in a moment where, like, we need books that kind of justify the normalness of being a black kid?
PHILIPPE: I've thought about this a lot, and I think we do.
I think when it comes to black male characters, there's often the - I call it the Barack and Trayvon dichotomy, whereas either you're given someone who's perfect, who's almost bigger than life, who's going to end up becoming president, essentially, or you're given the tragedy, right? You're given all the potential that is going to get snuffed out from the world.
And people say that, you know, Norris doesn't really have a thing. He's not this amazing talent or political activist. And that's exactly what I was aiming for.
CORNISH: Ben Philippe - his new book is "The Field Guide To The North American Teenager." Thank you so much for speaking with us.
PHILIPPE: Thank you so much for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I WANT YOU TO WANT ME")
LETTERS TO CLEO: (Singing) I want you to want me. I need you to need me.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
A non-starter, more hostage-taking - that's how Democrats are describing President Trump's offer over the weekend. The president said he would extend temporary protection to recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, in exchange for the $5.7 billion he wants for his border wall. Democrats want the government reopened before any negotiations on border security issues.
Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are trying to put some muscle behind the White House pitch. They plan to add in billions for disaster aid and extend the Violence Against Women Act. And they could try to put it to a vote as soon as this week. Congressman Bennie Thompson is a Democrat from Mississippi. He's also chair of the House Homeland Security Committee. He joins us on the line from outside Jackson. Welcome to the program.
BENNIE THOMPSON: Thank you for having me.
CORNISH: So what would your response be to DACA recipients who heard this offer and might have had some hope?
THOMPSON: Well, I think at best that temporary proposal is just that. It gives no pathway to citizenship. And, again, it's just a crumb that the president is dangling in front of the public with no permanence to it. So I would say to the DACA people, don't be fooled. The president is just doing this in his pursuit of trying to get the money for the wall. It should not be a carrot in the process. The first thing we have to do is get our federal employees back to work.
CORNISH: Let me jump in here because Leader Kevin McCarthy tweeted Sunday that President Trump has, quote, "put forward a serious and reasonable offer." Now, if Democrats say the president's proposal is a non-starter, as you're saying, is it fair for Republicans to say that you're not willing to negotiate?
THOMPSON: Well, you know, at this point, it's people tweeting back and forth. We're not sitting down like adults negotiating. We get to a solution when we meet face-to-face. Every time we've tried to meet with this administration, the president throws a temper tantrum and basically walks out the room. That's not how you get a deal done. So Democrats are absolutely prepared to work with the president to make sure that we get government back open. And by all means, we are for border security. We've always been for border security. But the wall is a non-starter.
CORNISH: Does that mean that there's no wiggle room?
THOMPSON: Well, let me tell you. For two years, he talked about Mexico going to pay for it. Now he wants the taxpayers of America to pay for it. This is not a political stunt that Democrats will fall for. We are willing to look at technology. We'll look at bringing more men and women to the border from a security standpoint. But under no circumstances are we going to do a wall.
CORNISH: If Democrats are able, say, to make a deal, do you want to fund the government for the rest of the year or are you looking for a short-term extension, something that would reopen the government and allow these negotiations to continue?
THOMPSON: Well, we've tried short-term just to get people to work. We have 800,000 employees out here who are absolutely on the brink of bankruptcy in some instances. Our employees are not rich people. They go to work, but we should pay them. And now we put them in an untenable position where they're having to stand in line for food.
CORNISH: So you're not seeing a short-term solution, a short-term extension.
THOMPSON: A short-term extension - we've offered it. Leader McConnell wouldn't even bring it up on the Senate side. We will do that if that brings people back to work. But we have to get out of this Trump shutdown.
CORNISH: That's Congressman Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi. Thank you for speaking with ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
THOMPSON: Thank you for having me.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Today, Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta held a special service to commemorate the life of Martin Luther King Jr. The civil rights leader would have been 90 this year. Ebenezer was his home church. As Emma Hurt of member station WABE in Atlanta reports, 50 years after his death, King's legacy there is alive and relevant.
EMMA HURT, BYLINE: Atlanta native Giana Davis has come to the commemorative service many times at Ebenezer Baptist Church, but she doesn't come just to hear about the past.
GIANA DAVIS: With everything going on in the world, I needed to be here.
HURT: She says every year on this holiday, she reflects on what's important in life.
DAVIS: Thank God that we had at least him, where - I don't think he'll ever die. Even if nobody else comes to replace him, we always can come back to Dr. King.
HURT: While King died in 1968, there's no need to read his biography at this service. Everyone in the room already knows it.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: I feel the spirit of the Lord in this room. Lift your hands all in the sanctuary if you love him today.
HURT: The service instead focuses on the values King upheld, like unity, and applying them to the present day.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BERNICE KING: We can try to build a wall to physically separate ourselves from others, but walls do not negate our interconnectedness.
HURT: That's King's daughter, Bernice, the CEO of the King Center in Atlanta. She hit on another news headline, too.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KING: And when a government shutdown persists to the point that it affects the livelihood of individuals and those in dire need of critical social services, this is a humanitarian crisis, and we are all in a state of emergency.
HURT: Other speakers included different faith leaders, Georgia Congresswoman Lucy McBath, Emma Gonzalez, the activist from Parkland, Fla., and Senator David Perdue. Perdue is known for his close association with the president, but his remarks about King steered clear of politics.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DAVID PERDUE: Though we may talk differently, look different and have different political views, he would remind us we are at first and last one nation under God.
HURT: It was the same point that Bernice King emphasized.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KING: It's time to stop merely praising King with platitudes and pleasantries. Now is the time to start embracing his vision of humanity tied in a single garment of destiny.
HURT: Raphael Warnock, the pastor of Ebenezer, put it a different way with a metaphor about birds.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
RAPHAEL WARNOCK: Geese fly together. Some are on the left, and others are on the right. But they don't decide to stop flying and shut the whole geese government down.
HURT: That shutdown hit this corner of Atlanta, too. King's birth home and the original Ebenezer Baptist Church nearby are operated by the National Park Service. If not for a last-minute donation from Delta Airlines, they would have been closed today. For NPR News, I'm Emma Hurt in Atlanta.
CORNISH: And we should note that Delta Airlines is a financial supporter of NPR.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
California Senator Kamala Harris announced her bid for the White House today and says she welcomes the large field of Democrats expected in the 2020 campaign. Harris visited her alma mater Howard University in Washington to take questions from the press. NPR political correspondent Asma Khalid was there. She joins us now. Hey there, Asma.
ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: Hey, Audie.
CORNISH: It's been clear for a while that the senator has been thinking about running. Can you talk about the timing?
KHALID: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think there is clearly a symbolic element to announcing her candidacy on MLK Day. You know, she spoke about the inspiration that she takes from the civil rights movement, the role that that movement had in her parents' lives.
But she also talks a lot about her record for pushing racial justice and pointed to a program that she led in California that she says kind of shut the revolving door in the criminal justice system. It shut down recidivism rates, so you could get people who've gotten out of jail to essentially stay out of jail.
You know, she's also out there pushing college affordability, "Medicare-for-all" - all these things that, truthfully, don't really sound that unique this cycle because, essentially, every Democrat is pushing for those things. I think what we see that's really unique in her, though, is that she is leaning into her record as a prosecutor.
CORNISH: Right. And that is meaningful because in a Democratic primary, obviously, with the progressive politics around criminal justice reform and things like that, it sounds like maybe she's trying to get ahead of it.
KHALID: That's right. I mean, she does have some concerns that young, progressive voters of color do have some concerns about the criminal justice system and policing. And she was the attorney general of California and a top prosecutor in San Francisco.
And, you know, she's talked about this. She's talked about regretting some of the decisions that she and her office had to make. But she also feels like that experience gives her insights into the problems about how, you know, we all need to fix some of those things.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KAMALA HARRIS: There is a lot about what I did as a prosecutor that I'm proud of, including a recognition that there are fundamental flaws in the criminal justice system and that this criminal justice system needs to be reformed.
KHALID: And so, Audie, from here, she's got a rally planned on Friday with some sorority sisters in South Carolina. She'll then head to her hometown, Oakland, Calif. And then it is on to Iowa for her.
CORNISH: Now, a lot of other Democrats who are also thinking about a presidential run were out at King Day events, right? What are you hearing about them?
KHALID: Well, I was at a breakfast this morning here in Washington, D.C., with the Reverend Al Sharpton. Former Vice President Joe Biden was there. He was being honored.
And I think what's really interesting is that if Biden were to get into this race, I think there are some questions that people, specifically in different communities of color, have around his support for a '90s-era crime bill. He came closer today than I have ever heard him before in acknowledging some regrets around that. He said that it was a big mistake that was made and that it trapped an entire generation.
A lot of Democrats this election cycle are talking more and more, it seems like, about systemic racism or institutional racism. And that's also something I heard from Joe Biden today.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JOE BIDEN: The bottom line is we have a lot to root out. But most of all, the systematic racism that most of us whites don't like to acknowledge even exists. We don't even consciously acknowledge it, but it's been built into every aspect of our system.
KHALID: And, Audie, we also heard today from a couple of women who've said that they're running for president. That's Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. They were among several other Democrats who were out today at rallies and different events.
And what I'm noticing in listening to these candidates this year is how much more direct they seem to be willing to talk about race and racism than I've heard in previous election cycles. There's an emphasis that it seems they're putting on racism as a fairly large problem in our society.
And, you know, of course, this is MLK Day. I think we sort of expect them to talk about these issues today. But I will say it's something I've also heard in announcement videos, and even on the trail in Iowa so far.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Asma Khalid. Thank you so much for your insight.
KHALID: You're welcome.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
And it's time now for All Tech Considered.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CORNISH: This month, we've been examining what's ripe for disruption in the tech world. And today we're going to look at where some of that disruption is coming from. In November, 20,000 Google employees worldwide took to the streets to protest how the company handled sexual harassment claims.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Time is up.
CORNISH: It was the first show of force of this size among tech workers and one that their boss, CEO Sundar Pichai, said he supported. This year, the walkout organizers are hoping to channel their momentum into real change in how Google operates. Google linguist Vicki Tardif led the protest in Cambridge, Mass. She joins us now. Welcome to the program.
VICKI TARDIF: Thank you.
CORNISH: So can you take me back to that moment in November. I'm from Massachusetts, so I'm guessing what the weather was like. But what did it feel like to actually walk out of the job?
TARDIF: I think for - if you weren't within Google's four walls, it seemed like it was sudden. But there was a lot that led up to this. There was - the sort of internal communications had broken down of how people voiced dissent about things. It was this moment of saying, you know, we're sick of asking for changes and not seeing them. You know, I'm tired of seeing women colleagues transfer teams to avoid some creep on their team. I'm wondering why it is I have colleagues who aren't treated as fairly simply because they're contractors and I'm a full-time employee. I'm wondering why it is there all these diversity and inclusion efforts, and yet we don't see increased representation for people of color or for trans people or nonbinary people. And so it was this moment of, like, being very tired of that and wanting to do something.
CORNISH: And at the time, the CEO Sundar Pichai said like, look. We don't always get it right. We're committed to doing better. But since then, do you see evidence of that?
TARDIF: So I think it's important to separate the rhetoric and real meaningful change.
CORNISH: But they did, for instance, drop arbitration for full-time employees when it comes to sexual harassment cases.
TARDIF: So to clarify, they issued a press release saying they would do that, but our contracts haven't been updated. So it's unclear what that means legally. And for our colleagues who are vendors or contractors, it's unclear if they'll ever get that carved out.
CORNISH: So now you have the social media campaign, and it seems to be sending the signal that you feel like you guys aren't being listened to.
TARDIF: I think that is the feeling - is that we aren't being listened to. You know, when we talk about this, we aren't just talking about Googlers (ph). Things like forced arbitration affect people outside of the tech industry even. There are more than 60 million Americans who are bound by forced arbitration agreements. And so some of this is building a coalition of workers - not just tech workers, not just Googlers - to say, how do we address inequity and unfairness in workplaces across the country?
CORNISH: It's interesting because I think to the broader public for so long we were used to hearing a couple of kind of threads out of Silicon Valley - you know, number one, that you guys, like, were creating this vague utopia-like tools how would make our lives better, even if none of us really knew what they were, and that the workers were really happy because they had, like, free bowling and, like, never wanted to go home because there was awesome food. So it did feel sudden. Do you think there is a shift in how workers themselves see the industry?
TARDIF: Yes, particularly for members of underrepresented groups. It was easy at one time to say, oh, these issues exist, but we're going to fix them. But it was four years ago that a Googler named Erica Baker started a spreadsheet to say, hey, let's track how people are paid and see if it's equal across the board across demographics. That was four years ago. And we haven't seen meaningful change since then. For all of the industry patting itself on the back, for all its diversity and inclusion efforts, we aren't seeing numbers shift at all.
CORNISH: We've seen these conversations bubble up in places like Amazon as well. Looking ahead into 2019, where do you see these movements going? Do you see them actually getting stronger?
TARDIF: I hope so. One of the goals for 2019 is definitely to continue to build broad coalitions because our power really is in our numbers. And you see that in things like the LA teachers' strike, right? It's important we all support each other as workers.
CORNISH: I don't know if you've feared retaliation at Google, but there is a sense that workers at other big tech companies are afraid. And do you think that's valid?
TARDIF: I think it's valid. I think a lot of us are knowingly taking a risk. But at some point, you get so tired that it's the best alternative to live with yourself.
CORNISH: Vicki Tardif is a linguist at Google. Thank you for speaking with us.
TARDIF: Thank you.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
An update now on the Chinese scientist who shocked the world last fall when he claimed that he'd created the world's first genetically modified babies. Chinese state media reported today that a government investigation has found that He Jiankui seriously violated state regulations. And today, his university released a statement saying he'd been fired. Scientists around the world have condemned his work, with many saying his experiment was reckless and crossed ethical boundaries.
For more, we're joined by Marilynn Marchione. She is chief medical writer for The Associated Press. She was among the first to report this story and has been following developments. Marilynn, welcome to the program.
MARILYNN MARCHIONE: Hi. Thanks very much.
CORNISH: So first, what do you make of today's announcement from Chinese authorities that this scientist broke the rules?
MARCHIONE: Well, I think it's clear that - from the world's reaction to his work that he violated some societal norms for what he did. But what was significant to us, and a bit of a surprise, was that the report appears to give credence to the fact that these babies actually do exist.
There's been a lot of doubt because the work has not been published. The couple - the supposed parents of these babies was not able to be interviewed. So we have been wondering and looking for proof that this really, indeed, occurred, and the investigation appears to have confirmed that.
CORNISH: So help us understand. Is it clear what state regulations he's accused of violating?
MARCHIONE: Well, it is very unclear whether it's state or federal or just exactly what rules or regulations there are. The ones that we have looked at and that others have flagged to us seem to have been adopted around the time when human cloning was more in the news and that was a big concern and risk. We're not aware of anything that directly addresses embryo gene-editing, which is what this was.
CORNISH: In the meantime, he hasn't been out in public since he presented his work, right? And that was at a conference in Hong Kong two months ago. Does anyone know what's happened to him?
MARCHIONE: Well, I spoke just this morning with a Stanford bioethicist who has been in almost weekly contact with Dr. He ever since the conference. And he says that the guards at the apartment and the university where Dr. He is living are there out of mutual agreement, that there have been nasty emails, and there were some efforts - many efforts to contact Dr. He.
CORNISH: So it's a kind of house-arrest story. What are we talking about here?
MARCHIONE: It sounds like that. It's really hard to describe because his own university has not responded to inquiries. There are others who have investigations under the way - his university in Shenzhen. Also, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Health, I believe, still got an investigation open. This is a local province - the local authorities, who have issued the first statement on this.
CORNISH: When this story was first reported, there was a kind of conversation about whether or not laws in China around this kind of research were somehow more lax than in other parts of the world. What does this response that we're hearing in Chinese media tell us, if anything, about how the Chinese government views all this?
MARCHIONE: Well, I spoke this morning with Alta Charo, who is a very prominent bioethicist from the University of Wisconsin. And she said this morning that the statement from the investigation actually was quite reassuring - that it suggests that there is a system of regulatory controls in China that can be brought to bear on any effort to prematurely use gene-editing technology and that that might be a better way to regulate this field than an outright ban.
CORNISH: What happens to the babies now? And what happens - I believe there was a report that there was a woman who participated who is now pregnant.
MARCHIONE: Well, that's something that was kind of a revelation, again, in the report that we had today from the local authorities. They say that the twins will be followed by Chinese government authorities, health authorities and that the second pregnancy, also, will be monitored and followed.
So this confirms both things that Dr. He has reported. It's unknown how many embryos are left. He did make more than what had been reported to have been used, and it's unclear where they are now or what will happen to them.
CORNISH: Marilynn Marchione is chief medical writer for The Associated Press. Thank you for sharing your reporting with us.
MARCHIONE: Thank you.
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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Wisconsin, the dairy state, may someday be known as the solar state too. One of the biggest solar projects in the Midwest is planned for prime dairy land. While solar is a boost for some struggling dairy farmers, others fear the fallout from turning their farm community into a solar production site. Sarah Whites-Koditschek, of Wisconsin Public Radio, reports.
SARAH WHITES-KODITSCHEK, BYLINE: Bob Bishop is a 61-year-old farmer living deep in dairy country in southwest Wisconsin. Today he is helping his two sons pull a downed tree off a fence line.
(SOUNDBITE OF PULLING DOWN TREE)
WHITES-KODITSCHEK: The Bishops have been in and out of debt since the hog industry tanked in the 1990s. Now, they'll no longer raise milk cows because dairy is in trouble too. And Bishop says automation creates uncertainty for the future of their corn and soybean crops.
BOB BISHOP: You take the farmer off the tractor, that's going to be quite the change. And what markets will be out there, who knows?
WHITES-KODITSCHEK: The Bishops love to farm and are looking to solar to help them stay on the land. They lease about 650 acres, about a third of their land, to what will be one of the Midwest largest solar projects. Twenty-nine-year-old Andrew Bishop wants to raise a family here and have something to pass along.
(SOUNDBITE OF ENGINE STARTING)
ANDREW BISHOP: I'd like my kids to take over running my farm someday. I have to have the financial future in front of them to make it viable.
WHITES-KODITSCHEK: Farmers in the project will earn about three times their typical income for this land, and the county could bring in more than $1 million a year in tax revenue. The Badger Hollow Solar Farm, proposed by renewable energy company Invenergy, will sell at least half of its 300 megawatts of power to Wisconsin's public utilities.
I'm standing at what will be close to the heart of the Badger Hollow Solar Farm, next to a cornfield right now. And I can see windmills in the distance turning. There are cars going by on a main road, where there is a power line.
ALAN JEWELL: To an accountant, it's dirt. To somebody that works with the land and fields, it's a partnership. And so it's not an element to buy or sell. It's an element to respect.
WHITES-KODITSCHEK: Residents like Alan Jewell fear that a utility-scale solar project will destroy the natural beauty and farming legacy here. More than a million 15-foot-tall solar panels and their machinery could dot this rolling farm landscape. Jewell says the state has no citing rules specific to solar. He says the county board didn't fully study the unknowns and rushed to support the project. Jewell says neighbors haven't been promised large enough setbacks or noise controls from the inverters.
JEWELL: Nobody has taken the time to think this through.
WHITES-KODITSCHEK: But Iowa County Board Chairman John Meyers says officials did their homework on this project.
JOHN MEYERS: We've rehashed this for about three months now. We brought it to the county board a month ago, and we sent it back to the committee that initiated it. I think it's been fairly well-vetted in the county.
WHITES-KODITSCHEK: Invenergy project manager Dan Litchfield promises that the panels will be visually unobtrusive.
DAN LITCHFIELD: As far as energy generation technologies go, I think it's as low impact as it gets. There's no water usage other than the bathroom in the maintenance facility. There's no air emissions.
WHITES-KODITSCHEK: And there's another possible upside. If some farmers switched to milking the sun, it could conceivably help bolster dairy prices in Wisconsin for the farmers still milking cows. For NPR News, I'm Sarah Whites-Koditschek.
(SOUNDBITE OF LE FIGLIE DEL VENTO'S "SUGLI SUGLI BANE BANE")
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
In Guatemala, there's been a wave of killings of indigenous leaders over the last year. International human rights organizations have tried to raise the alarm, but in Guatemala itself, there's been little outrage and silence from most political leaders. Maria Martin reports.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: (Speaking Spanish).
MARIA MARTIN, BYLINE: The newscast on Guatemala's TV channel Guatevision led off its regional evening report this past summer with the murder of a 25-year-old indigenous rights activist in the western province of Quiche.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Speaking Spanish).
MARTIN: The victim's father tells us that Juana Raymundo, a nurse by profession, was kidnapped while coming home two nights before her body was found in a river covered by brush showing signs of torture.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Speaking Spanish).
MARTIN: Raymundo was also a rising young Ixil Maya political leader, active in various human rights and political groups. To many in the area, her death was reminiscent of the massive atrocities committed during the country's long civil war, which ended a little over 20 years ago. More over, her death was not an isolated incident. According to The Washington Office on Latin America, 26 indigenous human rights workers were assassinated in the last year.
JO-MARIE BURT: Guatemala is on the verge of a major human rights catastrophe.
MARTIN: Jo-Marie Burt is a professor at George Mason University and a senior fellow at The Washington Office on Latin America. She says Guatemala is close to falling into the violence that gripped the country three decades ago, a violence that the U.N. and Guatemalan courts say led to a genocide of the country's indigenous citizens.
BURT: It's amazing to look at what's happening in Guatemala, and it literally feels like it's on the edge of the precipice. And just over that precipice, you're staring back at the 1970s. You're staring at the massive violation of human rights. It's no surprise that we see hundreds of - tens of thousands of Guatemalans fleeing the country, going into Mexico, trying to get to the United States to flee a country that is in freefall.
MARTIN: Guatemala's human rights ombudsman, Jordan Rodas, says the situation is troubling, especially because of what he calls a lack of concern on the part of Guatemala's authorities.
JORDAN RODAS: (Speaking Spanish).
MARTIN: Rodas says the president and his interior secretary refused an invitation to meet with Mayan leaders to discuss the escalating number of assassinations.
RODAS: (Through interpreter) One feels a certain indignation that there's no public condemnation of these acts. I don't have much faith in this government. Hopefully, the Justice Department will take action on these cases because it's like going back to a past I thought we had put behind us.
MARTIN: The government didn't respond to multiple efforts seeking comment. Guatemalan society is deeply unequal. Indigenous Maya form at least 40 percent of the population but have little political representation and are last in terms of education and health.
(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Speaking Spanish).
MARTIN: More than half of the indigenous activists killed in the last year, including Juana Raymundo, were members of CODECA, an organization of mostly rural Mayan farmers which is trying to become a political force. Analysts say this poses a threat to the power structure in Guatemala. Anthropologist Irma Alicia Velasquez says Guatemala has entered what she calls a new stage of repression.
IRMA ALICIA VELASQUEZ: All the majority that the country produce is control in a few hands, so CODECA tried to talk about this, tried to change the situation. And for the reason, they are confront a lot of repression in the last years.
MARTIN: Velasquez says indigenous people in Guatemala are now up against powerful business interests bent on acquiring resources in Mayan communities. These interests, she says, are allied with the military-backed government fighting reforms and anti-corruption efforts. President Jimmy Morales just recently expelled an international anti-corruption commission which had investigated him and many of his allies. For NPR News, I'm Maria Martin.
(SOUNDBITE OF SUDUAYA'S "PATIENCE")
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
At the Detroit Auto Show this week, the big automakers are promoting trucks and SUVs, once again the bestselling vehicles in the U.S. There's also a new company knocking on the door, Rivian, which wants to be the first to sell an all-electric pickup truck. Ryan Denham of member station WGLT reports.
RYAN DENHAM, BYLINE: I'm riding in a golf cart around the massive auto plant in Normal, Ill., a hundred miles southwest of Chicago. My tour guide is Wade Jensen. He worked here three decades ago when Mitsubishi and Chrysler built cars here, cranking out hundreds of thousands every year. But three years ago, Mitsubishi shut it down and moved production to Japan. Jensen and 1,200 others lost their jobs.
Now he's back as the engineering manager for electric automaker Rivian's first assembly line. The startup plans to hire a thousand workers here in the next four years.
WADE JENSEN: When you've done it for 28 years, it's your passion. I mean, it's - it's what's in you. It's what's in your heart. It's your desire, and to have the opportunity to see this plant producing cars and putting them out the back door again, I was all in.
DENHAM: The man who's recycling this plant is Rivian founder and CEO R.J. Scaringe, a 36-year-old car geek with a Ph.D. from M.I.T. in mechanical engineering. He started work on a gas-powered, eco-sports car 10 years ago, about the time when another ambitious entrepreneur, Elon Musk and Tesla, started bringing electric cars into the mainstream. Here's Scaringe on the sidelines of the recent LA Auto Show.
RJ SCARINGE: They took the untruth that electric cars are boring and slow and flipped that and showed the world electric cars can be exciting and certainly very quick.
DENHAM: Musk is known for his bombast, tweets that move stock prices and promotions like shooting a car into space. Scaringe spent the past few years doing the opposite, staying quiet, hiring auto-industry veterans and raising a half billion dollars from Saudi and Japanese conglomerates.
At the LA Auto Show, Rivian finally revealed its electric pickup and SUV with a charging range of 400 miles. He beat Detroit to the punch.
SCARINGE: That's the opportunity we have is to show the world that this is a space that actually badly needs electrification, and electrification can make those products better than what their gasoline diesel counterparts had been in the past.
DENHAM: Rivian has only 600 employees so far. Design and engineering are done outside Detroit and in the U.K., batteries and tech in California. And about 70 people are getting the plant in Illinois up and running.
Starting a car company from scratch isn't easy. Just ask Tesla. It's hemorrhaged money, missed deadlines and freaked out investors. And it's considered a success.
Other EV startups haven't even made it to market, one reason electric vehicles here still represent a tiny part of the market, 1 percent of sales. While they may be the future, low gas prices are a challenge to electric vehicles, especially for legacy automakers.
If that changes in a few years and Ford finally puts an electric version of its bestselling F-150 on the market, Rivian would be facing stiff competition. Industry watcher Chelsea Sexton was at the LA Auto Show for Rivian's debut.
CHELSEA SEXTON: We root for all the startups, but a lot happens between concept and showroom. And it's most vulnerable for the startups.
DENHAM: Rivian's high price tag - trucks starting around $70,000 didn't - scare off Ariel Fernandez from Florida. He was among the first to plop down a thousand bucks to preorder a Rivian SUV.
ARIEL FERNANDEZ: I'm willing to invest in this company and basically put my trust in them that they're gonna produce the vehicle and make me happy when - when I pick it up.
DENHAM: Fernandez's SUV'll be made here in Illinois. But that may not be it. Rivian also plans a side business, selling its battery technology to other companies. So if electric trucks don't take off, maybe battery-powered tractors and Jet Skis will.
For NPR News, I'm Ryan Denham in Normal, Ill.
(SOUNDBITE OF VARIOUS & DEEP-WATER RECORDINGS' "COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS")
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Tony Mendez was a legend inside the CIA because of the role he played in rescuing American diplomats trapped inside revolutionary Iran in 1980. He became widely known to the rest of us outside the agency in 2012, which is when he was portrayed in the Oscar-winning film "Argo," which is about the rescue. Tony Mendez died over the weekend. He was 78, and NPR's Greg Myre has this remembrance.
GREG MYRE, BYLINE: In the movie version of his life, Tony Mendez is played by Ben Affleck, who insists he knows best how to save the six Americans in Iran's capital, Tehran.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ARGO")
BEN AFFLECK: (As Tony Mendez) The only way out of that city is the airport. You build new cover identities for them. You send in a Moses. He takes them out on a commercial flight.
MYRE: The Americans secretly took refuge in the Canadian Embassy after Iranian revolutionaries stormed the U.S. Embassy in 1979, taking more than 50 hostages who were held for more than a year. The CIA called on Mendez because he had a specialty - exfiltration. He could slip into hostile countries and bring people out safely. As the Ben Affleck character explains to those being rescued, they also need to know their cover story.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ARGO")
AFFLECK: (As Tony Mendez) Look, they're going to try to break you - OK? - by trying to get you agitated. You have to know your resume back to front.
MYRE: In Tehran, Mendez and the six Americans posed as a Canadian film crew. Armed with false passports, they talked their way past suspicious guards and made it out on a Swissair flight. In an interview with the International Spy Museum, Mendez described watching his real-life drama on the big screen.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TONY MENDEZ: I was sitting there in my seat and thinking, gee whiz. I've done that before, and this is exactly how it feels.
MYRE: During a 25-year CIA career, Mendez served as the agency's chief of disguise. He worked closely with Hollywood makeup artists to bring their techniques to spycraft.
JONNA MENDEZ: Now, a lot of people are aware that our disguise program was informed by some of the special effects people in LA.
MYRE: That's Mendez's wife, Jonna. She had a long CIA career as well and also served as chief of disguise. In an interview with NPR last month, Jonna Mendez said her husband, who was of Spanish and British ancestry, was a natural spy.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
J MENDEZ: Tony had one of these demeanors and one of these looks that he fit in almost everywhere. He could be Pakistani. He could be Mexican. He had a great look.
MYRE: Mendez was long retired when the "Argo" movie came out. And in this interview with "The Today Show," he had a droll take on his late-in-life fame.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE TODAY SHOW")
T MENDEZ: Mostly movies about the CIA, they have their CIA guy, a deranged assassin. What we're hoping is we're going to start a new trend and make the CIA guys lovable.
MYRE: Tony and Jonna Mendez wrote several books about their clandestine work. A joint effort completed shortly before Tony Mendez died Saturday of complications from Parkinson's disease recounts their work in the Soviet Union. It's called "Moscow Rules," and it will be published in May.
Greg Myre, NPR News, Washington.
(SOUNDBITE OF APHEX TWIN'S "JYNWYTHEK YLOW")
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
A moment now to remember former Senator Harris Wofford of Pennsylvania. He died yesterday after suffering a fall. He was 92. Wofford was a lifelong advocate for civil rights and progressive causes. NPR's Brian Naylor has more.
BRIAN NAYLOR, BYLINE: Harris Wofford led a long and, in a word, interesting life. His former chief of staff John Gomperts sums it up this way.
JOHN GOMPERTS: His life was one giant adventure.
NAYLOR: Wofford was born to a well-to-do family in New York in 1926. On a world tour with his grandmother at age 11, he watched Mussolini denounce the League of Nations from a Rome balcony and saw Gandhi in India. He volunteered for the Army Air Corps in World War II and in the mid-'50s became one of the very first whites to graduate from Howard University law school. He also had a law degree from Yale. He helped John F. Kennedy get elected president, helped found the Peace Corps and marched with the Reverend Martin Luther King in Selma. Gomperts says the day Wofford died was fitting.
GOMPERTS: The poetic thing that happened is that Harris died yesterday on Martin Luther King holiday, a day that he and John Lewis together turned into a day of service through legislation passed in 1994.
NAYLOR: Wofford became a senator in 1991 after a plane crash killed Republican Senator John Heinz. He won the seat later that year in part by making health care an issue. He was asked in a 1992 NPR interview why it took so long for health care to become recognized as a problem by lawmakers.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
HARRIS WOFFORD: How long? Oh, Lord, how long? I - the - there's a tide in the affairs of men with issues, and the tide is coming in on this issue now.
NAYLOR: Wofford's time in the Senate was short-lived. He lost re-election in 1994. He then returned to public service, becoming CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service, the parent organization of AmeriCorps. He also became a commentator for NPR. In 1995, he had this to say about the debate over affirmative action.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
WOFFORD: Race is the oldest, most dangerous wedge in American politics, a time-tested way to split the nation apart. Once it led to civil war. For years afterwards, especially in the South, it was the way for demagogues to win elections.
NAYLOR: I asked John Gomperts what he thought was Wofford's legacy.
GOMPERTS: The buoyant and endless pursuit of a better nation, a better world.
NAYLOR: After his wife's passing in 1996, Wofford fell in love with a man 50 years his junior, Matthew Charlton. The two were married when Wofford was 90. He wrote in The New York Times that matrimony is not based on anyone's sexual nature, choices or dreams; it is based on love. Brian Naylor, NPR News, Washington.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
There were some surprises in this year's Oscar nominations, but this next conversation is about one that will have surprised absolutely no one who's been paying attention in the best original song category. There was one song you could be pretty sure was going to make the cut.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SHALLOW")
LADY GAGA: (Singing) I'm off the deep end. Watch as I dive in. I'll never meet the ground.
KELLY: That, of course, is Lady Gaga singing her song "Shallow" from "A Star Is Born." It does have competition in this category, and here to talk about that is NPR's Stephen Thompson. Hey there, Stephen.
STEPHEN THOMPSON, BYLINE: Hi. Good to be here.
KELLY: So is "Shallow" the hands-down favorite one to beat this year?
THOMPSON: I think it's the most likely winner of all the Oscar nominations this year. It is a true movie showstopper, and it's a good example of an original song in a movie that is actually integral to the movie in which it appears.
KELLY: Right. It's actually part of the plot...
THOMPSON: Yeah.
KELLY: ...As they're making their way through it. I will confess to being completely biased, and I love this song.
THOMPSON: (Laughter).
KELLY: I've had it on replay in my car ever since the movie came out, but run us through the other nominees real quick.
THOMPSON: Well, you've got "All The Stars" by Kendrick Lamar and SZA from "Black Panther."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ALL THE STARS")
SZA: (Singing) This may be the night that might dreams might let me know. All the stars are closer. All the stars are closer.
THOMPSON: You've got "The Place Where Lost Things Go," which is a very sweet ballad from "Mary Poppins Returns."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE PLACE WHERE LOST THINGS GO")
EMILY BLUNT: (As Mary Poppins, singing) Nothing's really left or lost without a trace.
THOMPSON: "When A Cowboy Trades His Spurs For Wings" from the "Ballad Of Buster Scruggs," that's written by David Rawlings and Gillian Welch.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHEN A COWBOY TRADES HIS SPURS FOR WINGS")
TIM BLAKE NELSON AND WILLIE WATSON: (As Buster Scruggs and The Kid, singing) Yippee-ki-yi-yay. He shalt be saved when...
THOMPSON: Then you've got a song called "I'll Fight," written by Diane Warren and performed by Jennifer Hudson. That's from the "RBG" documentary.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I'LL FIGHT")
JENNIFER HUDSON: (Singing) So I'll fight, fight that war for you. I'll fight, stand and defend you. Take your side...
KELLY: You know, for the last few years, we've talked a lot about the Academy Awards and attempts to diversify what you see on stage, diversify the nominees, diversify the voices. Does this current batch of nominees reflect that?
THOMPSON: It's a relatively diverse field. What I - what I like about it is that it's stylistically diverse. You have a cowboy song - kind of a traditional cowboy song in that "When A Cowboy Trades His Spurs For Wings" from "Buster Scruggs." You have kind of a traditional Oscars ballad in "I'll Fight." "The Place Where Lost Things Go" is a very traditional Disney nominee and, I think, a sweet song. "Shallow," obviously is your showstopper. And then you've got "All The Stars," which is a - which is a true kind of pop hit.
So I like the fact that when you listen to these songs, they don't all sound the same. They're not all kind of traditional movie ballads like you sometimes get.
KELLY: Any song you think should have made the nominee list and didn't?
THOMPSON: For me, the song that would have really filled out this field perfectly is a song from the movie "Sorry To Bother You" by The Coup which is led by the movie's director, Boots Riley. The song title is billed as an acronym, but it stands for, oh, yeah, all right, hell yeah, that's tight. And it has this this great, infectious, wonderful energy that I would have loved to have seen on an Oscars stage.
KELLY: All right. Well, I'm going to let you take us out on that one. Since we won't be hearing that on the Oscars stage, we'll hear it now. That's NPR music's Stephen Thompson. He's also a panelist on Pop Culture Happy Hour. Thank you, Stephen.
THOMPSON: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "OYAHYTT")
THE COUP: (Singing) Oh, yeah. All right. Hell yeah. That's tight.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
It's day 32 of the partial government shutdown, surpassing all prior records and predictions. If it continues, 800,000 federal workers will miss a second paycheck.
Congress, though, has returned to Washington after the long weekend. And lawmakers will be voting on President Trump's new proposal to end the stalemate and get federal employees back to work.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
That's right. Here's what he's offering. He is offering to extend temporary protections to roughly 700,000 DACA recipients - those are the immigrants who were brought to the country as children - also to another 300,000 immigrants who fled countries destabilized by war or catastrophe.
Now, in exchange, Trump wants 5.7 billion for a border wall and also wants changes to rules for asylum seekers. That is a proposal that most Democrats reject.
NPR's congressional reporter Kelsey Snell joins me now in the studio. Hey, Kelsey.
KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Hi there.
KELLY: All right. So help me understand the role that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is playing 'cause he holds some cards here. And he had said he wasn't going to allow votes on any bills until Democrats and the president were onboard. So what's his strategy now?
SNELL: Yeah, all of that changed over the weekend when - I understand McConnell approached the president about a week ago and told him that the dynamic needed to change. And the president now made the announcement of his plan over the weekend. And since then, McConnell has agreed to vote on not just the president's plan, but a second thing proposed by Democrats, which is a short-term spending bill to keep the government open - or reopen the government until February 8. And it would provide disaster aid.
Now...
KELLY: So these are two separate proposals...
(CROSSTALK)
SNELL: Two separate proposals that would kind of have a dueling vote on Thursday. And part of the idea here is they need to prove what is possible. McConnell had said that he wasn't interested in doing show votes. And really that could end up being what this is.
But some of this is about politics, right? So 2020, that - while that may seem far away to some people, it's not that far away in the politics of Washington. And he's - what has happened here is McConnell's trying to force Democrats to vote against opening the government in the president's bill. He kind of wants to shift the pressure. And by adding disaster aid and an expansion - an extension of the Violence Against Women Act, he kind of gets that leverage.
And, you know, it's one of these things where he thinks it'll be harder for Democrats to reject the president's proposal when they're seeing all of this pressure to get those 800,000 workers back to work.
KELLY: And what is the Democratic strategy to counter Senator McConnell's pressure? Because up to now, we've seen Senator Pelosi and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, they've kind of kept Democrats in - in line and united. Is that - are we seeing signs of cracks there?
SNELL: It's hard to say if the cracks are really expanding. There are some moderates who are pressuring Democrats to get to a vote. But, you know, it's really been one of those situations where Democrats are united against the asylum portion of this bill.
They're calling it - they're calling it a poison pill. And they are seeing this as kind of, you know, Trump is pushing for a temporary fix to DACA and to TPS, these - these protections for immigrants. But he's offering that as a solution in exchange for everything that he wanted, and it's easier for Democrats to keep their own party together on that message of pushing back on the president on that.
KELLY: And polls showing, for now, Democrats still - that they're still kind of prevailing in terms of public opinion?
SNELL: So far, and as long as that holds, it makes it easier for Democrats to stay together and keep the pressure on the president.
KELLY: NPR's Kelsey Snell, thank you.
SNELL: Thank you.
[POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: In this report, we incorrectly refer to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as Sen. Pelosi.]
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Today - a tentative deal in Los Angeles where teachers began a strike more than a week ago. Mayor Eric Garcetti called today's deal a historic agreement.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ERIC GARCETTI: For a city that embraced the idea that public education matters, that children matter, that teachers matter, today is a day full of good news.
CORNISH: It was cause for celebration for many teachers. Here is math teacher Donnie Walker.
DONNIE WALKER: I'm feeling awesome. I feel like our students really won, you know? It's been a while since I've seen them, but they know what we're fighting for. They have, you know, shown us a lot of confidence and support.
CORNISH: And Walker could see his students back in school as soon as tomorrow. For more, let's turn to KPCC's Kyle Stokes. And Kyle, are a lot of the people you've been talking to saying the same thing as Donnie Walker?
KYLE STOKES, BYLINE: That this is a good deal, that they're pretty excited to be heading back into classrooms. There's definitely a lot of excitement to have this deal in hand. Obviously the voting is, you know, supposed to commence now. The teachers are supposed to put their stamp on this tentative agreement. We were expecting the school board to also vote today. We've just learned that that vote is going to be delayed until a little bit later so that this can be properly noticed in the public.
But this was, as you sort of heard - this is being celebrated by both parties as an agreement that not only protects one big district priority, which is the finances of LAUSD, but also by the unions who've been aiming for real improvements in classroom conditions and in teaching conditions for the union members they represent.
CORNISH: What's in it?
STOKES: Well, so there's a lot of things. The big issue is class sizes. The two sides have agreed to a deal to reduce class sizes by an aggregate total of four students over the next three years. So it's a three-year deal. And even with that, the class sizes that the school district is going to have are well above national averages. But it takes a big chunk out of the class size differential that we've seen.
It's also a remarkable deal in that the district has relinquished the power that it had previously to raise class sizes to solve budget problems, essentially. They had wide authority in the past to do that - also quickly noting a 6 percent salary increase for teachers as well as an increase in staffing levels for nurses and counselors and social workers as well as some charter school regulations as part of this deal as well. That had been a big focus and a big anxiety among teachers here.
CORNISH: A sticking point had been finding the cash for all of these ideas. What changed over the last few days?
STOKES: Well, so what has changed over the last few days isn't necessarily clear. There's still a lot of money that we're talking about involved in this deal. It's not clear where all of it is going to come from. We do know a few things changed. One is that the county, Los Angeles County, came forward with some funding for more nurses. That's going to help in this deal. The city - you mentioned LA Mayor Eric Garcetti has been involved in this deal. The city is going to bring forward some assistance as part of this.
And the two sides have agreed to - well, all three sides - the union, the mayor and the district - have agreed to advocate for more funding. But a lot of this goes back to the state. There is more money in Governor Gavin Newsom's new state budget for K-12 education. But it's going to take probably even more money, you know, one would guess, given the sort of cost of what we're talking about. Class size reduction is not a cheap item by any means. So it's going to take more money to make this agreement sustainable.
CORNISH: Just a few seconds left. What's the order of business over the next few days?
STOKES: Well, so first is a vote of the teachers and then a forthcoming vote of the school board. The vote of the teachers, the rank and file members of United Teachers Los Angeles, is supposed to happen over the next day or so. And we should have results of that coming pretty shortly. The union says they can turn this vote around pretty quickly.
CORNISH: That's Kyle Stokes of KPCC. Thank you for your reporting.
STOKES: You're welcome.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
NPR and the PBS show "Frontline" have been investigating a resurgence of advanced black lung among coal miners across Appalachia. We found that, despite mounting evidence and a stream of dire warnings, federal regulators and mining companies failed to protect workers.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Now we're going to hear about this devastating disease from the miners themselves. It has drastically changed their lives, their communities and their families. They told their stories to NPR's Howard Berkes and Ohio Valley ReSource reporter Benny Becker. We start in Leatherwood, Ky., which is where Howard met miner Greg Kelly.
HOWARD BERKES, BYLINE: Greg, hey. I'm Howard Berkes from National Public Radio. Great to meet you.
GREG KELLY: Uh-huh.
BERKES: Do you want to go in and talk?
KELLY: I'm Greg Kelly. I'm in Leatherwood, Ky. Well, I dropped out of high school. I worked in a grocery store. And I left the grocery store and went to coal mining. I felt like coal mining was my way of living.
CHARLES SHORTRIDGE: It was something that was in our blood that we loved to do. My name is Charles Shortridge, and I live in Meadowview, Va. And I've worked 28 years in the coal industry. We loved working in a coal mine since that's all we knew, was hard work. And that's how we provided for our families.
PAUL KINDER: I love coal mining. If I was able today, I'd be working in the mines. My name is Paul Kinder, and I live in a little town called Honaker, Va. My full career was underground. And I run a roof bolter some and a continuous miner, and I was a foreman. And, you know, I just loved it.
I remember when I was a little boy, I'd go - my daddy sometimes would take me to the mines where he worked at. And, man, I loved the smell of that. It's just a different smell. I'd like to go smell one today. It was a good job and a good way to get to work.
JOHN GIBSON: My name's John Gibson. I'm from Appalachia, Va., and I'm 56.
HAROLD DOTSON: Harold Dotson, live in Phelps, Ky.
JACKIE YATES: My name is Jackie Yates.
NOAH K COUNTS: My name is Noah K. Counts. I live in Clintwood, Va.
RODNEY SEXTON: My name is Rodney Sexton. Coal mines was good to me, but God's been even better. That's the way I look at it, you know? The one thing I didn't want was black lung, but I got it anyway (laughter).
BERKES: What's it like now with the disease for you?
BILL CANTRELL: Oh, it's terrible. Bill Cantrell, I'm from Pinsonfork, Ky. I mean, it's unexplainable. It's just - I don't know how to explain it (laughter).
SHORTRIDGE: It's a horrible-looking thing. You got nodules that's on your lungs that's caused from coal dust, rock dust.
YATES: You know, it's just, like, turned your lungs to concrete.
COUNTS: You just stop breathing. And you just wake up, and there you are. You're awake.
JACK HORNE: I'm Jack Horne, and I'm from Kimper, Ky. The only thing I could liken it to is, like, if somebody ever holds you underwater till you thought you were going to drown. And when you come up, you're gasping for air. That's about what it's like, you know, when you have a lung attack.
EDWARD FULLER: And I hate it so bad I can't understand it at times. But it's affected my whole being.
BERKES: Tell me your name and where you're from.
FULLER: Edward Fuller from Steel (ph), Ky,
BERKES: Looking back on your mining career, can you think about what it was that happened that might have caused your black lung?
FULLER: Yeah. The coal dust, the dust.
JAMES L MUNCY: Yeah, I was in the dust all the time. James L. Muncy, M-U-N-C-Y. I'd come out of there as white as a sheet, as a ghost. Well, I'd come out of there, and the only thing you'd see of me was my eyes.
YATES: You'd just watch it fall off like ash. It's thick.
ROY MULLINS: My name's Roy Mullins, Roy Edward Mullins, from Clintwood, Va. You can smell it. You can taste it.
SHORTRIDGE: And when you come outside - you get a drink of water, or a Coke or whatever - you know, you hark (ph) it up and spit it up, you're spitting up goops of coal dust. And that is embedded into your system.
JAMES HAYES: That's just the way it is, really, I think. My name's James Hayes, and I'm from Pike County in Pinsonfork, Ky. You know, I mean, it's a dusty job. It's just dusty in the coal mines regardless. And if you stay long enough, you're more likely going to get black lung.
JIMMY WAMPLER: I blame the whole mining industry, you know? The companies, them all. I'm Jimmy Wampler, and I worked for little mines. I worked big mines.
YATES: You got people out there that runs mines that all they want is coal. They don't care about violations. They don't care about nothing else. They just want coal.
MUNCY: Coal - get the coal. Get the coal.
DOTSON: They don't care if you live or die, is the truth of it.
GIBSON: The name of the game was run coal (laughter).
DANNY THORNSBERRY: My name's Danny Thornsberry. And I was a bolter man, scoop man, drill man - done it all. And then I ended up being a foreman. There was just a lot of laws that was - couldn't really do and mine coal profitably.
ROY SPARKS: Roy Sparks. I'm from Rockhouse, Ky. Yeah, the companies has got so - they're so slick. I mean - you know.
WAMPLER: Fudging everything.
COUNTS: It's a hide-and-seek for real. They try to act like they're complying about the laws. Even the inspectors know they're not.
FULLER: And you had to do what they said. If you didn't, your hide.
DOTSON: You kept your mouth shut. If you didn't, they'd fire you. So I just kept my mouth shut and went on. But I paid for it in the long run. Sure have. And I'm sure every other miner has too.
KELLY: Just almost every guy that I know in our church was a coal miner. My pastor, he had black lung. Bill has black lung. Mike had black lung.
SPARKS: My father-in-law...
SEXTON: I got a older brother who's got black lung.
SPARKS: ...My brothers, my uncles...
CANTRELL: My dad's got black lung.
SPARKS: ...Just the whole - you know? Everybody around me, the whole neighborhood.
KELLY: And I think Papa does, and me.
SEXTON: Since 2011, I have lost seven friends.
MULLINS: And knowing that that's coming to you, it's pretty hard to take.
THORNSBERRY: I tried to help my son out of it. I tried to get him to go to school. You know, when he got out of high school, I said, you know, look, you're going to go to school, or you're going to get you a job. And he said, I want to stay here. And he said, I want to go into work in the mines. And so he did.
YATES: I say, you'll be 30 years old with black lung. You don't want this. No, Dad, I want to work in the mines. I want to be like you. And guess where he's at? He's working in the mines.
WAMPLER: The day you pick that dinner bucket up and go in the mines, that's the day you sign your death warrant. That's plain simple.
SHORTRIDGE: I go out, and I just sit down and have a little cry. You know, that's all you do because it's black lung. It's a death sentence. But, you know, what's - you just got to take it one day at a time and hope for the best. Hope and pray that the good Lord has blessed us to have another day.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CORNISH: The voices of 17 coal miners in Appalachia. All of them have advanced black lung. NPR's Cat Schuknecht produced this story as part of an investigation by NPR in the PBS series "Frontline" about the failure of U.S. regulators to stop the worst outbreak of black lung in decades. The full documentary of our investigation, "Coal's Deadly Dust," airs tonight on "Frontline." You can see it on your local PBS station.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
To lessons now from the Iraq War, according to a long-awaited study of that war from the U.S. Army War College. It was commissioned by then-Army Chief of Staff General Ray Odierno six years ago back in 2013. And here's how the Army Times summed up the findings in a headline, "Army's Long-Awaited Iraq War Study Finds Iran Was The Only Winner In A Conflict That Holds Many Lessons For Future Wars."
To talk about some of those lessons, we are joined now by Colonel Frank Sobchak, now retired. He's one of two co-editors of the study, and he joins me now. Colonel, welcome.
RET COLONEL FRANK SOBCHAK: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be with you, Mary Louise.
KELLY: Talk to me about that headline, that Iran was the, quote, "only "winner" in the Iraq War. Do you agree?
SOBCHAK: Yes, I do. I think that one of the reasons why in Operation Desert Storm the decision was made not to go all the way to Baghdad was just the geopolitical balance of having Iraq as a bulwark or counterweight to Iran.
Now with Iraq severely weakened and with elements of its political class as supporters of Iran, Iran is clearly in a much stronger situation just strategically. And I think we see that playing out through its expansionism and kind of adventurism occurring in Syria, Yemen and other locations.
KELLY: Your report also documents a U.S. failure to adequately train Iraqi forces. It documents some of what happened after the U.S. pulled back in 2011. And of course, we then saw sectarian tensions deepen and the rise of ISIS. And it's very critical of some of the Army's most senior officers. What has the reaction been like?
SOBCHAK: You know, at the tactical level, at our training center - is we do after-action reviews after every single battle. And so, to a degree, this is an academic after-action review. It's - it's a assessment of what went right and what went wrong. And so while in some areas it can be perceived as being overly critical, from another perspective, it's the military reviewing itself to try to make sure that, if this ever happens again, that we are better prepared.
KELLY: Let me ask about a potentially delicate matter you had to deal with. I mentioned General Odierno commissioned this report. He wrote the foreword for it. Back when he first arrived in Iraq, he was division commander.
SOBCHAK: Yeah.
KELLY: He was criticized as someone who maybe didn't get the whole hearts-and-minds things, the importance of winning the population over. Was that a challenge to navigate? The man who commissioned it, the man who wrote the forward to it was also somebody you had to investigate as you pored back over those years.
SOBCHAK: I don't think it was a large challenge because we were given so much freedom to study kind of what went right and what went wrong. And, I mean, you know, frankly, more went wrong than went right. And we've even given guidance, effectively, that if you have to kill sacred cows, kill some sacred cows because we need to learn from this. This matters.
KELLY: How directly does your report criticize him and other senior army officers?
SOBCHAK: I think that we were given a lot of latitude to present mistakes that occurred. And we all - I mean, I served in Iraq, as did every one of the other authors of the study. We all made mistakes, and we all have things that we can learn from.
KELLY: That's retired Colonel Frank Sobchak. He is one of the editors of an extensive new report from the U.S. Army War College on the war in Iraq.
Colonel Sobchak, thanks very much.
SOBCHAK: Thank you.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
A tense encounter on the Washington Mall Friday between a Native American elder and a group of high school students from Kentucky has also become a battle over media coverage. Questions about how each acted in the episode have led to online condemnations, apologies and then recriminations against the press. Joining us to sort it all out is NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik. Hey there, David.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: Hey, Audie.
CORNISH: So we have multiple videos out now online of the same scene, but it began with one, and it showed a Native American man and a white high school student inches apart with this crowd of other students chanting and jumping and smiling around him. Do we have a clearer picture now of what led to that point?
FOLKENFLIK: I think we do. I want to be careful about that, but I think we do. I mean, initially, this was a Rashomon moment meeting a Rorschach test, right? And what I think we now find is that these students were part of, in some ways, a three-party encounter. You had - a bunch of largely white, largely male students from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky outside Cincinnati were at the - in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial for the March on Life event Friday. You had a fringe hate group called Black Hebrew Israelites, African-Americans, heaping invective upon whites they saw - just incredibly ugly rhetoric. And into this wanders a couple of Native American activists, including Nathan Phillip, who plays a drum and sings a song that he later says - tells NPR and others that he hoped in some ways would bring peace and de-escalate.
Some of the things the kids did were, you know, derogatory, derisive, denigrating. You saw some tomahawk chops from some students. You saw some chanting and mockery in some ways satirizing the Native American song. And so there was some ugliness as well as some other stuff there - perhaps not as bad as was initially alleged and charged.
CORNISH: Now, how does the media fall into all of this?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, I think you saw some great lurching. You saw it on social media and particularly on online and cable, say, as Friday gave way to Saturday, Sunday - some real invective against the students. And there was condemnation by journalists and pundits, particularly online but also on cable. And then you saw, you know, calls for the students to be doxed - that is, their identities exposed, their homes, claims that they should be punished by their schools. You saw apologies by officials from the archdiocese locally there. And then the media went the other direction as more information came to light as it was clear that they were being subject to some abusive things from the Black Hebrew Israelites. And some questions - they didn't themselves surround the Native American protesters. It turns out that Philip (ph) and the small group of others approached them.
CORNISH: President Trump says the students of Covington Catholic High School have become symbols of fake news. What is the media's role in this becoming politicized?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, I think the fact - the combination of social media and a somewhat polarized media and a quick-twitch media just desperate to get it out in some ways amplified some of the flaws in the reporting and, you know, overlooked some of the nuances and some of - a little bit of the texture in this - that is, there was ugliness there, but it wasn't as clean as presented. And I think that the president, of course, uses this regardless.
But I also think that it's important to note, you know, the students were there. They were wearing, you know, Make America Great Again caps. They seemed derisive. And, you know, the student at the center of it, Nick Sandman, he's hired in response to this criticism a PR firm based in Louisville with close ties the national Republican Party. He is set to show up tomorrow on the "Today" show on NBC to make his case. So, you know, he's willing to utilize the media as well.
CORNISH: What should people take from this?
FOLKENFLIK: I think you take from this some of these verities. You know, a buddy of mine texted me over the weekend. He said I think media people were expressing the need to learn lessons they should have learned in journalism school. I think all journalists have - and in fact, all citizens, all of us, have to constantly relearn lessons we should know. Take your time. Take a breath, maybe not the sharpest judgment. Maybe don't draw the deepest conclusion. There should be the accretion of information, not this sort of pendular lurching from side to side.
CORNISH: That's NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik. David, thank you.
FOLKENFLIK: You bet.
[POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: In this report, we incorrectly refer to the March for Life as the March on Life and we incorrectly refer to Nathan Phillips as Nathan Phillip.]
(SOUNDBITE OF J DILLA'S "JAY DEE 49")
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Parts of the government have been closed for more than a month now while President Trump and Democrats in Congress argue over funding a border wall. Meanwhile, the partial shutdown has wreaked havoc on the lives of some 800,000 federal employees. They are about to miss a second paycheck.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
We checked in today with some federal workers whom we met just after the shutdown had begun.
PAUL EMIL KIEFER JR: My name is Paul Emil (ph) Kiefer Jr. I work for the Internal Revenue Service in Austin, Texas. I am now considered an accepted employee, meaning that I am now critical to the mission. That still means I'm not getting paid.
Fortunately, I have enough money to make the next rent payment. But after that, I have to worry about my phone bill, my credit card payment. I have to worry about my insurance payments, my medicine 'cause I am a diabetic. And if I can't pay for my medicine, that's practically a death sentence.
LORI OTT: My name is Lori Ott. I'm a revenue agent for the IRS. I live in Lyman, Wyo. We're digging into savings a little bit. I have an adult daughter who has - who's disabled. And I cut back on her care to save some money. And then I'm home anyway, so I can take care of her myself more. We did get paid on the 31, so that was a nice surprise - but didn't get paid on the 14. And it's not looking good for the 28 right now. I'll be OK. I - (laughter) it can't last forever, but I can get through the 28.
KELLY: While both Congress and the White House say federal employees will get back pay once the government reopens, whenever that may be, government contractors, though, have gotten no such reassurances. Here's what some of them told us.
RICHARD NEWMAN: I'm Richard Newman. I own Chinook Flight services at Everett, Wash., at Paine Field. And I administer airman knowledge testing for the FAA. With the FAA local offices being shut down, people who require certifications cannot proceed onward to the certification. So they're not coming in for testing.
So I've had to stop doing certain activities to improve business, to make repairs to the facility or upgrades to the facility. And on a personal level, that means I also had to cut back on groceries in order to make my rent.
NAOMI RACHEL: My name is Naomi Rachel, and I'm the co-director of Milo Papers, which is a company that creates interpreted products for the national parks. And we live in Boulder, Colo. So that's all through the federal government. So obviously we're dead.
Nobody's ever going to order until the government opens up because our clients have even gotten - we talked to the buyer at Death Valley. And he said, you know, we don't have a budget, and we don't know what - when we're ever going to have a budget.
CORNISH: Words of uncertainty from some of the people affected by the partial government shutdown.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
And leading the pack with today's Oscar nominations - "Roma" and "The Favourite." And here's a quick sampling of the eight contenders for best picture.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE FAVOURITE")
RACHEL WEISZ: (As Lady Sarah) You have become close to Abigail. She is a viper.
OLIVIA COLMAN: (As Queen Anne) You're jealous.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "GREEN BOOK")
MAHERSHALA ALI: (As Don Shirley) Do you foresee any issues in working for a black man?
VIGGO MORTENSEN: (As Tony Lip) You in the Deep South - there's going to be problems.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ROMA")
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BLACKKKLANSMAN")
JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON: (As Ron Stallworth) We'll need a white officer to play me when they meet so there becomes a combined...
ADAM DRIVER AND JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON: (As Ron Stallworth and Flip Zimmerman) Ron Stallworth.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) You're a legend, Fred.
RAMI MALEK: (As Freddie Mercury) We're all legends.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WE WILL ROCK YOU")
QUEEN: (Singing) We will, we will...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BLACK PANTHER")
DANAI GURIRA: (As Okoye) Wakanda forever.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "VICE")
CHRISTIAN BALE: (As Dick Cheney) The vice presidency is a mostly symbolic job. However...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "A STAR IS BORN")
LADY GAGA: (As Ally, singing) I'm off the deep end, watch as I dive in. I'll never meet the ground...
CORNISH: All right, working backwards, that's "A Star Is Born," "Vice," "Black Panther," "Bohemian Rhapsody," "BlacKkKlansman," "Roma," "Green Book" and "The Favourite." We're joined by Linda Holmes, host of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. Hey there, Linda.
LINDA HOLMES, BYLINE: Hi, Audie.
CORNISH: And NPR movie critic Bob Mondello - welcome to the studio, Bob.
BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: Great to be here.
CORNISH: OK, I want to start with the blockbusters. Among the eight nominees for best picture, there were several blockbusters. That's not normally the case. I remember there was this big hullabaloo about whether or not there should be a special category...
MONDELLO: Best popular film, right?
CORNISH: Yeah, exactly (laughter).
MONDELLO: Crazy, and they ended up not needing one. I mean, this year, they nominated "Black Panther," which made $700 million and is the biggest picture of the year, also "Star Is Born" and "Bohemian Rhapsody," both of which made a freaking fortune. They basically have sold more tickets than anything since the year of "Avatar" a decade ago. So usually at the Oscars, you complain that the - nobody saw the movies and so...
CORNISH: Yeah, that's a running joke usually by the host.
MONDELLO: Right, and so that's why nobody's watching the Oscars. This year, they'll have to blame the fact that there is no host (laughter).
CORNISH: Yeah. I want to follow up on "Black Panther" for a second because - obviously nominated for best picture. And then "Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse" was nominated for best animated feature. And, Linda, is this kind of a moment for this particular genre?
HOLMES: I think it is. And back when they expanded the best picture field from five to up to 10, one of the things they wanted to do is make room for maybe a really great superhero film, but we haven't quite had that happen until this year with "Black Panther."
And then if you look over at "Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse," that's, you know, alongside "Incredibles 2," but "Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse" is so distinctive in its visual approach as well as its narrative approach. And "Black Panther" has a really different POV and a really different aesthetic. And so I think you're seeing that they absolutely are willing to recognize superhero films, but it's great to see them recognizing two that are very different from the kind that we've gotten in the past.
CORNISH: I want to talk about the film "Roma." It has 10 Oscar nominations. It's the first time a Netflix film is up for best picture, though not for lack of trying - right? - on Netflix's part.
HOLMES: Right, right.
CORNISH: How big a deal is this for Netflix, Linda?
HOLMES: Well, it's a big deal for them - definitely a big deal. This is one of the things they've been going for. In some ways, this film is a really obvious Oscar contender. The director is Alfonso Cuaron, who also directed "Gravity." He's a hugely respected director. But on the other hand, Netflix is a - has only been distributing sort of high-profile movies for a few years. And for them, this is enormously significant because it's a step in this direction.
And also I think for movie audiences, you know, Cuaron has made the point that for all that people may not like Netflix as a film distributor, more people are going to have easier access to this film than a lot of past sort of art movies that have been nominated for Oscars.
MONDELLO: Yeah, and you can actually argue that that's also true for documentaries, that it's true for foreign films in general, that the audience in out-of-the-way places or simply anywhere other than New York probably couldn't see most of those movies in years past. And now they are going to have the option of seeing them in streaming.
CORNISH: People can't help but ask about the films that were snubbed (laughter). For you, what are the surprises?
HOLMES: Well, for me, it's "If Beale Street Could Talk," the Barry Jenkins film that I think is one of the most beautiful and technically brilliant films of the year as well as being incredibly emotional. I wanted it to be nominated for best picture, and it wasn't, which I think is very odd. I really wanted him to be nominated for best director, and he wasn't. So those are both really, really disappointing to me.
CORNISH: Bob?
MONDELLO: Well, they left out a documentary that I think everybody thought was going to be nominated, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" And this upsets me not merely because it's a good documentary and it's...
CORNISH: And this is a documentary...
MONDELLO: ...About Mr. Rogers - but also because our own Susan Stamberg was in it, and she doesn't get a chance to wear a beautiful gown and attend the Oscars, and that's very frustrating.
CORNISH: Movie critic Bob Mondello and Linda Holmes, host of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, thanks so much.
MONDELLO: Great to be here.
HOLMES: Thanks, Audie.
(SOUNDBITE OF VINCE GUARALDI'S "CHARLIE BROWN'S WAKE-UP")
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Transgender members of the military and those hoping to enlist find themselves in a new kind of limbo today. The Trump administration's proposed policy to keep trans people out of the military had been on hold while legal challenges worked their way through lower courts. Today, the Supreme Court lifted most of those injunctions.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
That's clearly a win for the Trump administration, but attorney Shannon Minter says not much else about the order is clear. He represents trans service members in two cases challenging the Trump administration's policy, and I spoke to him earlier today.
SHANNON MINTER: The court issued a very limited order. It temporarily stayed three of the four existing injunctions that prevent the Trump administration from barring transgender people from military service. So the Trump administration can now theoretically, if it wishes to, begin enforcing the ban. It's not clear that it's going to do so. It is temporary. It's - will only remain in place until the 9th Circuit rules, at which point the court will take another look at this whole issue.
CORNISH: So it means that the legal challenge to this policy isn't over.
MINTER: Absolutely not. And on the more positive side, the court declined today to take these cases up right now, which it could have done, which means that we are still alive and fighting these challenges in the lower courts.
CORNISH: It's one thing to understand that as an attorney. Can you talk about how your plaintiffs took it? I mean, what did you hear from them? Specifically, how were they feeling?
MINTER: The plaintiffs are understandably really shook up and confused by what's happening because even though this was a temporary limited order, it still does give the military the power to enforce a ban. And you know, you can only imagine what it's like to be deployed overseas or a young person serving in the Naval Academy, like one of our plaintiffs, and get a message like that from our nation's highest court. You know, it's really a body blow to those folks.
CORNISH: Now a Pentagon spokesperson said very clearly DOD's proposed policy is not a ban on service by transgender persons and that the proposed policy is based on professional military judgment. At this point, I mean, basically the Pentagon decides whether or not it's going to move forward, right?
MINTER: Yes, the ball is in the Pentagon's court at this point. They can either start enforcing the ban or not. They could wait to see what ultimately happens. The notion, though, that the policy they want to put into place is not a ban is really absurd. The impact of the policy would be that any transgender person that seeks to enlist in the military will be excluded, and any transgender person who's in the military now but hasn't come out - if that person comes out and says that they are transgender, they will face discharge. So that certainly sounds and looks and operates like a transgender ban.
CORNISH: Do these moves by the Supreme Court make you think that the administration would win if and when one of the challenges does reach the high court?
MINTER: No, it really doesn't. I mean, the ruling today was so limited. I don't think it tells us anything about how the court would consider the constitutional questions that will ultimately probably end up in front of them. So I'm still very optimistic that at the end of the day, even this new, very Conservative Supreme Court, I think, is just going to have to be given serious pause by a policy that categorically excludes a group of people based on a characteristic that doesn't really have anything to do with their fitness for military service.
CORNISH: That's Shannon Minter with the National Center for Lesbian Rights. Thank you for speaking with ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
MINTER: Thanks, Audie.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The partial government shutdown is now in its fifth week. And if nothing changes come Friday, hundreds of thousands of federal workers will miss another paycheck.
Among those federal workers, FBI agents. The FBI Agents Association says without funding, that important counterterrorism, drug and child abuse investigations are stalled.
Thomas O'Connor is president of the association, which advocates for more than 14,000 former and active FBI special agents. And he joins me now. Mr. O'Connor, welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
THOMAS O'CONNOR: Thank you for having me.
KELLY: So point me towards an example. When you say that investigations, operations that should be unfolding, aren't, give me one example.
O'CONNOR: Well, we reached out to our field agents and asked them to give us examples. And I'll read you just one of the many. It's, quote, "not being able to pay confidential human sources risks losing them and the information they provide forever. It is not a switch that we can turn on and off," end quote.
KELLY: What kind of operation would that person be involved with?
O'CONNOR: Well, the person is talking about counterintelligence and counterterrorism. But, you know, confidential informants are a tool which is used by the FBI in all of our investigations. And when you don't have the money to pay those people, that information source can dry up. People will do it for a period of time. But they also have bills to pay also, right?
KELLY: Yeah. Well, this is an important point to just stay on for a minute because I think a lot of us understand FBI agents are considered essential workers. So I know that they're not being paid, but they're on the job. The point you're making is the people they need to get their job done, if they're not getting paid, informants aren't going to show up and cooperate. Translators who you need to get your work done, they're not going to show up necessarily.
O'CONNOR: Well, there are people that are furloughed in not only the FBI, but the U.S. Attorney's Office, which is part of the Department of Justice that assists the attorneys that we work with on a daily basis processing subpoenas, search warrants, this type of stuff. And those people aren't there to do their job.
So when agents go to the U.S. Attorney's Office to try and move their case forward, the U.S. Attorney's Office is not able to assist the way they would if the government was funded and they were fully staffed.
It is not just our agents. It is the people that we work with that are affected by this shutdown, and it slows down the investigations across the board.
KELLY: There are also practical issues that I hadn't thought about. If an FBI agent misses a credit card payment or a mortgage payment, they have to worry about all the things that any other federal worker would, in terms of maybe messing up their credit rating or losing their home. They also have to worry about messing up their security clearance.
O'CONNOR: Right. So FBI agents go through a thorough background investigation when they're hired and on a regular basis throughout their career. As part of that, we have to do what's called a financial disclosure on an annual basis. We have to disclose every dime that comes into our family. And anytime there is some type of a failure to pay or if your credit rating gets hit because you weren't able to make a payment, this can potentially be damaging to a person's clearances, top secret and above.
KELLY: It sounds like when you put out this call to agents in the field - tell me your stories, tell me what's going on - you heard back from a lot of people. And you heard back loud and clear.
O'CONNOR: We heard back from hundreds of members. I mean, there are heartbreaking stories when it comes to the personal side of things. And there are disturbing stories when it comes to the operational side of things. FBI agents are doing their job today just like they did it before the shutdown. And we will continue to do our jobs once the shutdown ends.
KELLY: As we have reported on the shutdown and we've checked in with other government agencies, some of them have described stopgap ways they're finding of keeping things running, you know, pulling from a different pot of money that was set aside for something else. Understanding that that's not an ideal solution or a long-term solution, is some of that not possible within the bureau?
O'CONNOR: Oh, it is possible. And FBI headquarters has done Herculean work in trying to find funding veins for us to use. But as we continue to go forward and no new moneys come into the FBI, it doesn't take a rocket scientist or an accountant to tell you that operations and personnel are going to suffer.
KELLY: Thomas O'Connor He's president of the FBI Agents Association. Thanks very much for taking the time.
O'CONNOR: Thank you very much for having us. And I hope that next time we speak, that this is all done
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Venezuela is preparing for nationwide protests tomorrow, part of a fresh drive to oust President Nicolas Maduro. The U.S. is lending strong support voiced today by Vice President Mike Pence.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: On behalf of the American people, we say to all the good people of Venezuela, estamos con ustedes. We are with you.
CORNISH: NPR's Philip Reeves is in Caracas and sends this report.
PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: This is the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas. We've come to what's called a cabildo, a kind of town hall meeting, to discuss Venezuela's turmoil. There have been many of these around this country in the last few days. Student activist Arturo Requena says they're part of an opposition campaign...
ARTURO REQUENA: (Speaking Spanish).
REEVES: ...To explain to Venezuelans the political crisis that's unfolding ahead of tomorrow's mass protests.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Singing in Spanish).
REEVES: This month, Nicolas Maduro began his second term as president after being re-elected in an election widely condemned as fraudulent. Venezuela's congress, or National Assembly, is refusing to recognize Maduro. So are dozens of nations, including the U.S. They've launched a major new effort to pressure Maduro to leave and to allow the National Assembly's newly elected 35-year-old leader, Juan Guaido, to take over as interim president until new elections are held.
Among the students here, there's a man of 82 called Fernando Gonzalo.
FERNANDO GONZALO: I feel like I should be here because our generation had so many opportunities and such - had such a beautiful country. And our sons and daughters didn't. I mean, they had to migrate.
REEVES: How many of your family have left?
GONZALO: Almost everyone.
REEVES: In the 1980s, Gonzalo was one of Venezuela's top architects. His work fell away when the economy crashed. Gonzalo believes there has to be political change in Venezuela because the crisis is unsustainable.
GONZALO: All you have to do is see how the university, the campus is deteriorating. And the rest of the whole country degraded, degraded to extremes - unbelievable extremes.
REEVES: Yet Venezuelans have tried mass protests before, says Gonzalo.
GONZALO: And at the end of the day, nothing happens because, well, you cannot fight against people like this with your bare hands.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOG BARKING)
REEVES: In a tiny house down some steep stone steps in a Caracas slum lives a woman who remembers some of those mass protests well. Vanessa Furtado says she took part in many of them.
VANESSA FURTADO: (Speaking Spanish).
REEVES: They were in 2017 and went on for about four months. More than 120 people were killed, most by the security forces. Furtado was upset when Venezuela's opposition leaders let those protests fizzle out.
FURTADO: (Speaking Spanish).
REEVES: "I felt pain, indignation and anger," she says. Furtado plans to take to the streets again tomorrow. This time she hopes for a different outcome. That's far from assured. Although under intense pressure, Maduro holds the levers of power, including control of the Supreme Court. Officials say several dozen low-level National Guard troops were arrested in Caracas yesterday after a mutiny. Opposition leaders have been offering amnesty to military officers who abandon Maduro. Yet so far, senior commanders appear to have remained loyal. As for Maduro himself...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT NICOLAS MADURO: (Speaking Spanish).
REEVES: He's dismissing the National Assembly's latest challenge to his presidency as an attempt to destabilise the country led, he says, by little boys. He and his ruling Socialist Party stripped the Assembly of its powers long ago.
As Venezuelans prepare to take to the streets again, many fear the security forces will respond with violence. Vanessa Furtado, the veteran of street protests, says that's why it's important that people don't give them cause.
FURTADO: (Speaking Spanish).
REEVES: "We must be careful and calm," she says. "This is our last opportunity." Philip Reeves NPR News, Caracas.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
A week from tonight, President Trump is supposed to deliver a State of the Union address to Congress and the nation. Now, whether he will or not it is an open question. The White House is moving ahead with plans but no word yet on whether House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will give him the permission he needs. She had suggested last week that Trump postpone his speech until after the shutdown ends or maybe just deliver a written version and skip the speech part.
Well, uncertainty over the mechanics of this year's speech has given us reason to reconsider the century-old tradition of the State of the Union. Joining me now is NPR's Ron Elving. Hi, Ron.
RON ELVING, BYLINE: Hey, Mary Louise.
KELLY: So the century-old tradition, I just called it. And I did not know until quite recently that the president is not actually required to show up on Capitol Hill and deliver a big old State of the Union speech. When did that actually begin?
ELVING: Woodrow Wilson was really reviving the idea of reporting in person to Congress in 1913 when he gave his first report. But it was originated actually by George Washington in 1790 before the Capitol building as we know it was ever built. Wilson was a college professor, and he loved the idea of lecturing Congress and laying out his agenda. And plenty of other presidents have loved that idea, too. They started putting them on the radio in the '20s and on television in 1947.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ED HERLIHY: The Capitol awaits the arrival of President Truman to deliver his message on the state of the Union.
ELVING: And since then, presidents have pretty much wanted to have that opportunity to reach the big, national audience.
KELLY: You mentioned television, which is a reminder, I guess, of the optics of this - that if it were to go ahead, Nancy Pelosi would of course be sitting there right behind the president. And it's also a reminder this is her chamber. She gets to decide who addresses it.
ELVING: And actually, Nancy Pelosi introduced George W. Bush back in 2007 after the Democrats had taken control of the House of Representatives at that time.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NANCY PELOSI: Members of Congress, I have the high privilege and the distinct honor of presenting to you the president of the United States.
ELVING: And that is how, in general, the Congress has shown its respect for the president of the United States.
KELLY: You're describing some of the traditions behind all this. What about just the message? How powerful a platform is this for the president? Do these speeches tend to resonate?
ELVING: They do in historic moments, such as FDR announcing the four freedoms that we would fight for if we were to be pulled into World War II...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
FRANKLIN D ROOSEVELT: We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
ELVING: ...LBJ declaring unconditional war on poverty.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LYNDON B JOHNSON: And this administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.
ELVING: George W. Bush in 2003 set the stage for the invasion of Iraq that was coming in March with a series of accusations about Iraq seeking weapons of mass destruction.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GEORGE W BUSH: The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
ELVING: That of course was later repudiated as an accusation against Iraq. Barack Obama, in 2014, following a government shutdown the previous fall took that opportunity to chastise the members of Congress who had pressed for that shutdown.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BARACK OBAMA: When our differences shut down government or threaten the full faith and credit of the United States, then we are not doing right by the American people.
ELVING: A moment of precedence perhaps for the former president.
KELLY: You know, one of the things that strikes me about the State of the Union is what a security nightmare it is - all of those people in one chamber, so much so that they always leave one member of the cabinet in an undisclosed location. But that combined with the shutdown - is this an opportunity to shake it up, how this speech unfolds every year?
ELVING: Many would like it to be such a moment. This has perhaps outlived its usefulness. We're now used to seeing the president. It does give a certain advantage of course to the incumbent president. And the opposition party is never terribly happy about that - giving him an entire hour to present his case on any number of controversial subjects. And certainly we would anticipate that would be the case again this year.
KELLY: NPR's Ron Elving - he is senior editor and correspondent on the Washington Desk. Thank you, Ron.
ELVING: Thank you, Mary Louise.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
It's early days still, but the Democratic field of 2020 presidential candidates is growing. The latest to throw in her hat - California Senator Kamala Harris. Harris has branded herself a progressive, but she also carries political baggage that opponents may use to question her progressive credentials - controversial decisions she made as a prosecutor and attorney general of California.
Chris Cadelago is a reporter for Politico. He's been following Harris' career for years. Welcome to the program.
CHRIS CADELAGO: Thank you so much.
CORNISH: So you were based in Sacramento during the years when she was a prosecutor, right? Based on what you saw at the time, how was her tenure characterized?
CADELAGO: As an attorney general, people often criticized Kamala Harris for being overly cautious, basically for siding with law enforcement too often. And I think some of those cases where that came up where some statewide ballot initiatives where she did not take a position on one in particular that would have reduced some felonies to misdemeanors.
CORNISH: Now, when you look at a potential candidate - I'll say like a Joe Biden - people are already talking about his role in the mid-'90s in terms of the crime bill - right? - and its connection to mass incarceration. Is there anything like that for Kamala Harris that could kind of come back as a criticism?
CADELAGO: So even though Kamala Harris has long been personally opposed to the death penalty, she made a vow when she ran statewide in California that she would uphold the law of the land. And there was a sort of famous case in Orange County where the issue of the death penalty came before her office, and her office actually took the side of the state and argued that the death penalty should stand. And her critics now point to that and say, you know, that was an opportunity for her to really take a stand and say, you know, this should not be the law of the land in California. And that's not something that she did.
CORNISH: We saw just as recently as the last presidential election issues of criminal justice coming to the forefront in the Democratic primary. Can you talk about how different the politics are now for this next crop of candidates and including Kamala Harris?
CADELAGO: Sure, yeah. We were just starting to hear a lot of the sort of voices creeping up within the Democratic Party at the time in 2016. Now I think people have really come to digest the new environment that we're in with really the Black Lives Matter movement really taking hold across the country. And I think you've seen prosecutors across the country come out and really take much stronger - what some folks would call activist positions. Folks in Kamala Harris' camp who have come up a couple - maybe a generation or two before them really were a lot more in line with this sort of standard law-and-order prosecutor that sort of defended the law of the land even though she did take some other approaches in her career.
CORNISH: So what does that mean looking forward to 2020? How do you think she tries to reframe this resume?
CADELAGO: She's really going to position herself as a progressive prosecutor and a public interest attorney, as she calls it, someone who worked on behalf of the people. She had clients, so to speak, who were sexually assaulted young women and girls, and she was in the courtroom trying to seek justice for them. That is something that she's going to point out - and I think a lot of environmental laws related to California where she was taking on the big polluters. So I think she has to really own this profile as a prosecutor and talk about the ways in which she did things differently.
CORNISH: What are you going to be looking for in the coming weeks?
CADELAGO: I think the question - she has a speech in Oakland on Sunday, which is supposed to really mark the start of her campaign. And I think that speech is going to take place only a few blocks from where she worked for years at the Alameda County Courthouse, and so it - there's a lot of symbolic value to the location. And I think this part of her record is something she's going to have to explain to people, and she's going to lead with this idea that she was not only a prosecutor but a progressive prosecutor.
CORNISH: Chris Cadelago is a reporter for Politico. Thank you for speaking with us.
CADELAGO: Thank you so much.
[POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: In an earlier version of this story, we incorrectly reported that Sen. Kamala Harris is a former federal prosecutor. She is not. She previously was district attorney for the city and county of San Francisco and previously was California's attorney general.]
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Iranians are keeping an eye on the #MeToo movement. Activists fighting sexual harassment say a Farsi version of the hashtag #MeToo can be found on social media, but because of government censorship, it is far from widespread.
From Istanbul, NPR's Peter Kenyon reports that Iranian women are still trying to make their voices heard.
PETER KENYON, BYLINE: Sara, a woman in her early 30s, works at a Tehran marketing firm. She asks, like others, that her family name not be used so she can speak via Skype on a sensitive subject. She says she's active on social media but isn't surprised that she rarely comes across #ManHam, the Farsi equivalent of #MeToo.
SARA: (Through interpreter) I really don't see any campaigns or movements here that can help women speak out about the sexual harassment they've been subjected to. I remember a movie that tackled the subject, but there just aren't many opportunities to talk about it.
KENYON: Sara says when she was a teen, she was nearly kidnapped by four men, one of whom was wearing a chador, the full-length covering worn by some Iranian women. But he had nothing on underneath. But the point she wants to make is that afterward, even her boyfriend advised her to keep it to herself.
SARA: (Through interpreter) I had this devastating experience, and my boyfriend just warned me not to say anything because it would ruin my reputation. The subject is taboo.
KENYON: Feeling suppressed by government pressures and a blame-the-victim culture, women's rights advocates have poured their energy into other campaigns such as the White Wednesday demonstrations against the compulsory hijab headscarf.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Farsi).
KENYON: This video posted to YouTube shows men and women, some with their hair exposed, marching between cars as the drivers honk in support. One woman yells, no to headscarf, no to humiliation.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking Farsi).
KENYON: The government has its own videos, one from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's official website begins with Western women.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Me too.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: Me too
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: Me too. I have been sexually harassed.
KENYON: The video goes on to quote Khamenei asserting that such behavior simply isn't found in observant Islamic societies.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO)
SUPREME LEADER AYATOLLAH ALI KHAMENEI: (Speaking Farsi).
KENYON: He says, quote, "by introducing the hijab, Islam has shut the door on a path that would pull women towards such deviation." "Islam," says Khamenei, "does not allow this." A slogan fills the screen. It reads, (reading) hijab gives women freedom and identity.
But for years, many women in Iran and other conservative Islamic societies have been saying women wearing the hijab are just as likely to be harassed as those who aren't.
I contacted a 42-year-old female artist in Tehran who agreed to speak by Skype if her name isn't used. She worries about retribution if she is identified. She says despite government efforts to pretend that harassment isn't an issue in Iran, she has no doubt it's a pervasive problem for Iranian women.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: (Through interpreter) If you ask 10 women about this, nine of them will say, yes, they have suffered harassment.
KENYON: Her husband, Arash, a construction worker, says while the #MeToo meme is less prominent in Iran than in the West, he's convinced, in time, that will change.
ARASH: (Through interpreter) I believe this will definitely gain momentum. Any social movement is like a little spark. It will grow, and this movement against sexual harassment will also grow. It will take time, but it will happen.
KENYON: Iran's hard-liners are trying to prevent that. In recent months, human rights groups say several women's activists in Iran have been jailed. And the country's leaders continue to claim that Islamic traditions are enough to protect women from abuse. Peter Kenyon, NPR News, Istanbul.
(SOUNDBITE OF SEARCH'S "ACTION TAPE 1 (AIM MADSCOPE MIX)"
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Zimbabwe is currently the most expensive place in the world to fuel up a car. That is according to the website Global Petrol Prices. And it follows the government in Zimbabwe more than doubling the price of gasoline and diesel last week, which has made people in Zimbabwe mad. These past few days have seen protests in the capital, Harare, and the country's second-biggest city, Bulawayo. Government forces have now cracked down violently. Human rights groups say at least 12 people have died. Many more have been arrested. Well, joining us now is Tendai Marima. She is in Bulawayo. She's a local journalist there in Zimbabwe. Hi, Tendai.
TENDAI MARIMA: Hi, Mary Louise.
KELLY: Paint me a picture of just how chaotic things have gotten where you are and in Harare over these past few days.
MARIMA: Over the past few days, we've seen people rebelling and rejecting the president's announcement to raise the prices of fuel. So people have called for action and, you know, gotten in the streets burning tires, barricading the streets with metal objects, you know. And, you know, at some point, the protests also took a very violent turn where people started by first targeting shops that were associated with government businessmen or people who are linked to the government in one way or another. And those shops were looted and burned. And then it just basically spread into all the shops in certain areas.
KELLY: So you're describing protests - tires burning in the streets, shops being looted. In other parts of town, is normal business able to proceed? Are buses running? Are people getting around?
MARIMA: For the past week, there hasn't been any commuter transport going into town because the roads have been blockaded by protesters. Even public transporters cannot get into town. So what we've seen particularly in the past week is people walking six kilometers to get into town and then journey back home again because some people don't have the option to stay at home because of the tensions that are ongoing.
KELLY: And give me a sense of the crackdown. We mentioned 12 people dead but many hundreds arrested and jailed. Is that correct?
MARIMA: Yes, that's correct. Yesterday, I went to two large courthouses, which host about three courts each. And in all of those magistrates' courts, they were full to the brim with people that were accused of looting, people that were accused of destroying property, people that were accused of acts of violence. They've all just been bundled together. And among those people, there are young children who are minors below the age of 18. There are also some very elderly people who have also been, you know, swept up in these door-to-door raids that the police have done.
KELLY: I mean, the backdrop to all of this is Zimbabwe is a country in transition after decades of repressive rule under Robert Mugabe. There was a sense just last year I know when the ALL THINGS CONSIDERED team visited and was reporting from Zimbabwe last year that there was hope, that there was possibility, that there was going to be new openness. Does it still feel like that in Zimbabwe?
MARIMA: At the moment, it doesn't feel that way at all. When President Robert Mugabe was overthrown from power, there was a feeling of enthusiasm. There was, you know, great joy on the streets and people felt like Zimbabwe had turned a new chapter. But what we've seen in the last three months hasn't reflected that. And there's a huge feeling of disappointment and also a feeling of uncertainty as to how low the country could go before things actually turn around.
KELLY: Journalist Tendai Marima reporting there from Zimbabwe. Tendai, thank you.
MARIMA: All right. Thank you very much, Mary Louise.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Cave-dwelling bats have been dying by the millions across the U.S. and Canada. Experts blame white-nose syndrome. It's a fungal disease. Field biologists, though, are testing some promising treatments. Jacqueline Froelich of member station KUAF takes us now to a test site in the mountains of Arkansas.
JACQUELINE FROELICH, BYLINE: Wearing white hazmat suits, helmets and hip waders, Blake Sasse and Shawn Thomas cross a frigid rushing creek to the entrance of a manganese mine abandoned a century ago.
SHAWN THOMAS: And at some point after that, bats decided to move in and hibernate here.
FROELICH: Thomas works for Bat Conservation International, and Sasse is a wildlife biologist with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. They switch on their headlamps and slosh into the mine filled with knee-deep murky water. The ceiling and walls sparkle with condensation. Sasse counts what looks like tiny, furry brown bears clinging to the rock.
BLAKE SASSE: OK. We've got a couple of tri-colored bats on the wall right here, and they're both kind of covered with white frost.
FROELICH: The hibernating bats appear healthy, but in 2015, this colony was infested with a contagious white fungal pathogen.
SASSE: We had nearly 1,400 bats that particular winter, and then the following time we surveyed, it was down to six.
FROELICH: The irritating fungus, called Pd for short, spreads over bats' muzzles and wings, disrupting winter hibernation. With no insects to feed on, bats can starve. Deeper into the Ouachita Mountain mine, Thomas and Sasse unlatch a bat barrier to their treatment site.
THOMAS: And the idea is to clean the environment, and by environment, I mean the hibernaculum here where bats hibernate as a strategy to survive the winters.
FROELICH: Last fall, the team tried two treatments to combat Pd. They applied polyethylene glycol, a fungicide that doesn't harm the environment, and also used bursts of blue disinfecting ultraviolet light on uncertain marked places along the walls and ceiling.
THOMAS: And then we're going to be swabbing to test if Pd is still here and at what level.
FROELICH: The treatments are being replicated in two other remote, contaminated mines in Alabama and Ontario, Canada.
THOMAS: And that's really important because as we hopefully expand these treatments to other sites, we want to make sure it doesn't have other effects on the other critters on the cave walls like bacteria and invertebrates and especially bats and other mammals that use these places.
FROELICH: Jeremy Coleman is white-nose syndrome coordinator with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He says more than 6 million bats have died over the past decade, placing some species at risk.
JEREMY COLEMAN: Such as the little brown bat, the northern long-eared bat and the tri-colored bat. Those declines in many cases in excess of 90 percent for winter populations have continued to be observed through the Midwest and the southeastern U.S.
FROELICH: Coleman says scientists are also testing vaccines and probiotics to help bats build immunity to the fungus. That's important because bats consume insects that harm agricultural crops. The team will return here this spring and early summer to take more swabs. If successful, the entire mine will be treated. And if that works, Thomas says, the methods could be used on other hibernating bat ecosystems across North America.
THOMAS: It would be a one-time treatment in the late fall before hibernation starts.
FROELICH: Cleansing bad habitats of the fungus will work to reduce bat-to-bat transmission and re-establish declining bat populations. For NPR News, I'm Jacqueline Froelich in Fayetteville, Ark.
(SOUNDBITE OF TYPHOON'S "BELLY OF THE CAVERN")
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
California is taking an aggressive approach to combating the opioid epidemic. It's called the Death Certificate Project. The state medical board is combing through the death certificates of patients who died from opioid overdoses. Then the board is investigating the doctors who prescribed the drugs. From member station KQED in San Francisco, April Dembosky reports some doctors are so afraid of being sanctioned they have stopped treating patients with chronic pain.
AKO JACINTHO: Dear Doctor, pursuant to...
APRIL DEMBOSKY, BYLINE: About a year ago, San Francisco doctor Ako Jacintho got home from traveling to find a letter from the state medical board.
JACINTHO: The complaint alleges the following.
DEMBOSKY: It said a patient of his had died in 2012 from taking a toxic cocktail of methadone and Benadryl, and he was the doctor who wrote the last prescription for methadone. He had two weeks to respond.
JACINTHO: Written summary of the care, expert testimony, a certified copy of the patient's medical record.
DEMBOSKY: And if he refused?
JACINTHO: Citation penalties of $1,000 per day.
DEMBOSKY: The letter seemed to presume he did something wrong. But when Jacintho reviewed the patient's medical charts, he was convinced he didn't.
JACINTHO: This person had intractable pain.
DEMBOSKY: At the time, Jacintho says, methadone was common for treating the kind of back pain his patient had. And he takes issue with the board's choice of words here, overprescribing and toxic levels.
JACINTHO: What's a toxic level for someone may not be a toxic level for someone else.
DEMBOSKY: It wasn't until 2016 that the CDC issued guidelines for prescribing opioids, telling doctors to start low and go slow. But back in 2012 and '13, doctors like Jacintho were being admonished to never leave a patient in pain. The California Medical Board's own guidelines said, for certain types of pain, opioids were the cornerstone of treatment and should be pursued vigorously.
JACINTHO: It actually says that no physician will be punished or receive disciplinary action for prescribing opioids to patients with intractable pain.
DEMBOSKY: But now the medical board is using death certificates from 2012 and '13 to discipline doctors. The punishments include public reprimands, probation and even revoking a doctor's medical license. The timing of the investigation really bothers Jacintho because in the six years since his patient died, he's totally revamped his practice. As a family doctor, he saw the opioid crisis coming, so he got more training to become an addiction specialist.
JACINTHO: If they're looking for clinicians who are overprescribing, I'm the wrong doctor.
DEMBOSKY: The head of the medical board, Kim Kirchmeyer, says the board takes things like this into account. And it's only punishing doctors with a clear and repeated pattern of inappropriate prescribing.
KIM KIRCHMEYER: Individuals were prescribing drugs without even performing a history and physical exam. They don't have a treatment plan with...
DEMBOSKY: Investigators sent letters to about 500 doctors who seem to deviate from the standard of care.
KIRCHMEYER: ...Any type of testing....
DEMBOSKY: So far, they've filed formal accusations against 25 of them.
KIRCHMEYER: ...Just not paying attention to drug-seeking behavior.
DEMBOSKY: The majority of doctors who've been investigated up to this point have been cleared of any wrongdoing. Hundreds more, like Jacintho, are still waiting more than a year later to learn their fate. But ultimately, Kirchmeyer says, this is about patient safety, not doctors' comfort.
KIRCHMEYER: If we save one life through this project, that is meeting the mission of the board. And that makes this project so worth it.
DEMBOSKY: But some fear the project could ultimately harm patients. Some doctors have been so frightened by the letters they've lowered their patients' opioid doses or cut them off completely. Public health researcher Phillip Coffin has done preliminary research suggesting some of these patients are twice as likely to turn to street drugs, increasing their risk of overdose.
PHILLIP COFFIN: Scaring providers into not prescribing opioids is not the ethically appropriate way to go forward.
DEMBOSKY: Kirchmeyer says the board doesn't want doctors to simply stop prescribing. She says they're trying to wrap up investigations faster. And they've rewritten the letter so they sound less accusatory. But the board is committed. After it finishes reviewing the 2013 deaths, it's going to start on 2014. For NPR News, I'm April Dembosky in San Francisco.
KELLY: And that story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, KQED and Kaiser Health News.
(SOUNDBITE OF TYCHO'S "A WALK")
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The shutdown is rippling through the government, including the IRS. The agency starts processing tax returns on Monday. Besides the shutdown, the agency is dealing with the biggest changes to tax laws in three decades.
Last week, the IRS ordered nearly half its staff - that's about 30,000 furloughed workers - back to work without pay. NPR's Yuki Noguchi reports on how that is affecting the agency.
YUKI NOGUCHI, BYLINE: Priscilla Clowers returned to the office last week to resume training on the new tax code so she can answer IRS customer service calls. But she's also fretting about how to pay for her wedding planned for March 30.
PRISCILLA CLOWERS: I'm sitting here like, oh, my God, this can't be happening. I still got to get my dress. Oh, my God, I've got to pay the vendors, the wedding planner, the caterer. And I got to buy my cake.
NOGUCHI: Clowers says if she's still not getting paid February 1, the reception is off.
CLOWERS: I haven't even called anybody because it's like somewhere deep down inside of me, I got faith in God that something is going to work out.
NOGUCHI: Clowers, a Navy veteran, says the mounting anxiety makes focusing hard.
CLOWERS: We're doing a refresher of everything that we previously learned before we left. I'm trying to get back into the swing of things, but my mind is just on everything that's going on at home.
NOGUCHI: Even in a normal year, taxes can be complicated and stressful for taxpayers and IRS workers alike. But this year, the agency is trying to implement big changes in tax law while many employees are absent or preoccupied with their personal financial struggles. Tony Reardon is national president of the National Treasury Employees Union, representing 70,000 IRS workers. The union says some workers have been unable to report to work.
TONY REARDON: I mean, how are they going to handle commuting costs, child care costs, I mean, even when you think about, OK, so how are they going to afford lunch?
NOGUCHI: So what does that mean for the 150 million Americans filing individual tax returns and those expecting refunds? Christopher Rizek is a tax attorney and adjunct professor at Georgetown.
CHRISTOPHER RIZEK: I don't know how that's going to turn out. I think everybody is hopeful, but not a lot of people are optimistic.
NOGUCHI: The shutdown, he says, exacerbates an existing problem.
RIZEK: There's been a big brain drain at the IRS, particularly at the more senior, experienced levels, you know, because why would someone continue to work for the IRS when they can go work for an accounting firm, do the same work for more money and less stress?
NOGUCHI: Automated systems might offset some of the burden. Kathy Pickering is executive director of The Tax Institute at H&R Block. She notes the vast majority of taxpayers - 97 percent - use software to prepare taxes, and most of them file electronically as well.
KATHY PICKERING: If you prepare your return using software and you electronically file and you ask for a direct deposit, your return has a really good chance of flowing through without interruption.
NOGUCHI: That's not the case for forms filed the old-fashioned way.
PICKERING: Any paper filing is just necessarily going to take longer.
NOGUCHI: Also, Pickering says, many taxpayers will see changes to their anticipated refunds because of the new tax law. That will likely result in more calls to the already-jammed IRS hotlines. Some people say taxpayers should feel the pain. Penny Hays is a 35-year veteran IRS worker in Seattle. She says she feels financially pinched from the shutdown and argues taxpayers should, too, if nothing else, to demonstrate that IRS workers provide essential services. If they don't, she says...
PENNY HAYS: It makes the American people feel like there's nothing going on. It's no big deal. Everything's working for them.
NOGUCHI: Hays says the effects of the shutdown will linger by making it harder for the IRS to recruit.
HAYS: It's disheartening because you see these people walk out the door who have so much job knowledge. And I have a lot of job knowledge, but I have no one to give it to.
NOGUCHI: But at least one new IRS worker plans to stick it out. Priscilla Clowers, who's getting married in March, says she hopes she'll get paid in time to have a reception.
CLOWERS: But if not, like my fiance says, all he needs is the preacher and me (laughter).
NOGUCHI: Yuki Noguchi, NPR News, Washington.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Now a little treat for anyone out there suffering from '90s pop music nostalgia.
BRIAN LITTRELL: This Brian here.
AJ MCLEAN: And this is AJ.
CORNISH: That's Brian Littrell and AJ McLean, two of the five Backstreet Boys. Twenty-five years after their debut, the group still has its original lineup. The other three include Nick Carter, Kevin Richardson and Howie Dorough. They have a new album called "DNA." They say it's a return to the musical recipe that solidified their fame. Take, for example, the album's first single, "Don't Go Breaking My Heart."
MCLEAN: We have so many songs with the word heart - the "Shape Of My Heart," "Quit Playing Games With My Heart," "Don't Go Breaking My Heart."
CORNISH: How have I not noticed that (laughter)?
MCLEAN: I'm definitely sensing a pattern going on here.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DON'T GO BREAKING MY HEART")
BACKSTREET BOYS: (Singing) Baby, don't go breaking my heart, breaking my heart, baby, don't go breaking my heart, breaking my heart 'cause it's the only one I got, 'cause it's the only one I got.
CORNISH: But the Backstreet Boys are now men. They're married. They've got kids.
LITTRELL: You have to continue to grow. I mean, one of the struggles I think for us early on was this box that society wants to put you in or press wants to put you in. It's like, oh, you're a bunch of pretty faces. You don't really sing, and you're a boy band. You'll be the flavor of the month or maybe the year if you're lucky, and then you'll be gone.
CORNISH: Well, a quarter-century later, they're not gone. In fact, they just received a Grammy nomination for "Don't Go Breaking My Heart," and they still insist they're a vocal harmony group, not a boy band.
MCLEAN: We have always considered ourselves to be a vocal harmony group. And we do actually finally have an a cappella song on this album when we haven't had one since the very first record.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BREATHE (DNA)")
BACKSTREET BOYS: (Singing) Sand keeps slipping right through my hands, days all feel the same, still numb from you, first step off of this plane I knew I suffocate without you, the heart beats for two.
LITTRELL: Not to toot our own horns, but singing a cappella is something that the fans really love. I know every chance we get, we try to do that just to prove to people that we are real.
CORNISH: It's weird to hear you talk about proving things. I mean, I think 25 years seems like a pretty good run, especially to have, like, another Grammy nomination. Do you still feel at times that you're having to prove something?
LITTRELL: Yeah. I mean, why not? I think even if we were a star athlete, you know, when LeBron James goes out on the court every night, he wants to perform. I think if you keep that mentality like there's always something to prove, then it's always going to keep you on your game. I mean, that's just kind of how I look at it.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BREATHE (DNA)")
BACKSTREET BOYS: (Singing) Breathe, ooh.
CORNISH: You all became famous at such an absurdly young age, right? And that means that when members of the group ran into legal trouble, and in this case I'm talking about Nick Carter, who was accused of sexual assault and harassment, you know, what is your response to people who think that allegations against him haven't been adequately addressed?
LITTRELL: Well, he's come out and been very, very public about his statement of his side of the story. And I think it's important that, you know, people focus on the facts. You know, the facts are the facts. And it's unfortunate in this situation, but he's made his statement. We stand behind him as a band member, and we're here to move on.
CORNISH: I think I'm asking because we're in this conversation right now, this #MeToo movement where people are asking, you know, can the work be separated from the artist? People who are going to say, like, you know, in his case, let's say in the allegations from the pop singer Melissa Schuman - you know, that case did not move forward because of statute of limitations - there are people out there who are saying I don't think I can support an artist with this question mark in my mind.
LITTRELL: I guess that comes down to individual opinions, to be honest with you, you know. And tying an artist to, you know, to personal ventures and things like that, I mean, it's part of who we are, and it's part of the media and the world that we live in today. But...
CORNISH: You said - what do you mean personal ventures? Just so I can understand that.
LITTRELL: No, I just mean, like, you know, if AJ or myself, you know, stepped out - we've all had solo ventures. We've all stepped out on our own. And the personal world of the entertainment business has become so intertwined with the actual business itself. You know, we all put our Backstreet Boys hats on even when we step out as individuals, and, you know, being famous is not something that's very easy.
CORNISH: Do you look back on that period and really, you know, find yourself surprised at the ways you did or did not survive it?
MCLEAN: Oh, I mean, I just turned 41. To be 41 and to still be sitting here talking to you is a miracle within itself with drugs and alcohol and all these things that for me personally that I've had to overcome, and it will forever be a daily struggle. And that's why we've always prided ourselves on just being upfront with our fans and just being honest with our fans and, you know, being honest with each other because, you know, that is probably one of the biggest reasons why we've been together for almost 26 years because we're, you know, family. We're brothers. We've seen the highs and lows with each other. We've been through everything together. We're all fathers now. We're all married. You know, we've literally lived lives together in and out of, you know, good, bad or indifferent.
(SOUNDBITE OF BACKSTREET BOYS SONG, "NO PLACE")
MCLEAN: I wanted to ask you a question.
CORNISH: Mm-hmm.
MCLEAN: (Laughter) Have you listened to the entire "DNA" album?
CORNISH: No.
(LAUGHTER)
MCLEAN: If you don't have a copy, we'll send you one for sure.
LITTRELL: We will definitely do that.
CORNISH: (Laughter) OK.
(LAUGHTER)
CORNISH: Now that you have called me out for not listening to the whole album...
MCLEAN: Not intentional, not intentional.
CORNISH: This is the moment where I would love for you to let us go out on a song that you think people should take a listen to that maybe feels different from something you've done before or something you couldn't have done, you know, when you first started, something that's what they call the deep cut.
LITTRELL: Well, I'm going to go with track eight being "No Place." "No Place" to me is really something that we could not have done years ago. The new video that's out now has all of our families in it. It just shows that comfortableness that we have in our own skin as individuals and as a band. We're not trying to be anything that we're not. We're comfortable in our skin, and we're happy to be doing what we're doing still so many years later.
MCLEAN: I forgot about that song, and it's already out right now. I totally forgot about it.
LITTRELL: (Laughter) It's just something we couldn't have done when we started, you know, because...
MCLEAN: No, of course, because we hadn't experienced...
LITTRELL: Yeah.
MCLEAN: ...What we're singing about yet.
LITTRELL: And it's really DNA. Like, when you think about the album "DNA," I mean, it's just the makeup of who we are as five individuals. So there we go.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NO PLACE")
BACKSTREET BOYS: (Singing) Wherever you are, baby, that's where I want to be. I've been all around the world, done all there is to do, but you'll always be the home I want to come home to.
CORNISH: Well, Brian Littrell and AJ McLean, thank you so much for spending this time with us and...
MCLEAN: Of course.
CORNISH: ...Being candid. We appreciate it.
LITTRELL: Thank you very much for having us.
MCLEAN: Thank you very much for taking the time.
(SOUNDBITE OF ODDISEE'S "SOCIAL INSECURITY")
CORNISH: And we reached out to Melissa Schuman, the woman who alleged that Nick Carter sexually assaulted her. She expressed frustration that Carter has never had to answer to allegations made against him, either in the media or in a court of law. Schuman also said that Brian Littrell was not present when she alleges Carter assaulted her and therefore is not entitled to question her integrity.
(SOUNDBITE OF ODDISEE'S "SOCIAL INSECURITY")
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Last night was just your usual, busy Tuesday evening in one of the busiest, biggest cities in the world.
(SOUNDBITE OF YO-YO MA PERFORMANCE OF BACH'S "CELLO SUITE NO. 1")
KELLY: And it was there that a lucky handful of people hanging out in Mumbai, India, on Marine Drive promenade were treated to this.
(SOUNDBITE OF YO-YO MA PERFORMANCE OF BACH'S "CELLO SUITE NO. 1")
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
World-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma giving an impromptu performance. According to the Mumbai Mirror newspaper, a little before sundown, Ma quietly walked onto the promenade, sat on the wall that separates the sea from the city and began to play Bach's "Cello Suite No. 1."
(SOUNDBITE OF YO-YO MA PERFORMANCE OF BACH'S "CELLO SUITE NO. 1")
KELLY: For 20 minutes, the typical sounds of Marine Drive - choking traffic, cacophonous car horns - mingled with Bach. Onlookers had no idea who the performer was.
CORNISH: But that didn't matter. One bystander told The Mirror, I'm not quite sure what he played, but listening to him left me spellbound. And that feeling is probably just what Ma was trying for.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KELLY: That's Ma here at NPR last August. He stopped by to play for us and to talk about his Bach project, a 36-city worldwide tour where he is playing the complete suites. A musical journey, Ma told me, motivated by Bach's ability to speak to our common humanity at a time of division in the world.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
YO-YO MA: Music actually was invented, as all of culture was invented, by us to help all of us figure out who we are, what the culture of us is and to start a conversation.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
This morning, Nick Sandmann, the white teen at the center of last Friday's public encounter with Native American Nathan Phillips, went on NBC's "Today" show to give his side of the story.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "TODAY")
NICK SANDMANN: My position is that I was not disrespectful to Mr. Phillips. I respect him. I'd like to talk to him. I mean, in hindsight, I wish we could have walked away and avoided the whole thing. But I can't say that I'm sorry for listening to him and standing there.
CORNISH: What happened Friday between Phillips, Sandmann and a fringe group called the Black Hebrew Israelites has sparked intense national debate, a debate about culture, race and intent. We wanted to hear perspective from the Native American community, so we turn to Jacqueline Keeler. She's a reporter from Portland, Ore., and a citizen of the Navajo Nation and descendant of the Yankton Sioux tribe. I spoke with her earlier and asked her what she thinks is being lost in this national conversation.
JACQUELINE KEELER: I see it as a very interesting moment, a moment where three streams of American experience all met on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. We're all coming at this from different directions based on our own experiences that we've had under the system that we live under. And for hundreds of years, it's been a system of white supremacy that accompanies colonialism.
And so you have a group of young men who benefit from that and live in an environment where they appear to not be aware of how other groups view their privilege. And then you have a situation where adults - their adults in their lives have not informed them of how to live in a pluralistic society.
CORNISH: We heard Nick Sandmann talking about his intent, you know, what he thought he was doing. And a lot of people are reading a lot into his smile, the look on his face. How do you think we should discuss this idea of intent, especially when people are, you know, talking about racism?
KEELER: Well, I think that - specifically addressing the young man, I think that he should never been put in that position to begin with. I think that the adults there should have removed him from the situation, removed all of the young people from the situation. I can't predict how any young person, even a young Native person, would act in a situation like that having been harassed and then confronted with that.
I think that's the way in which we as adults must shepherd the conversation and experiences of young people in a pluralistic society when they encounter things that they have not encountered before. So I think that was handled very poorly. And if I was his parents, I would be angry at the chaperones for putting him in that position.
CORNISH: You've been to Covington. You've spoken with Native American people in that community. And it sounds like you're bringing a lot of sympathy towards the young men in this story. Can you talk about why and if that's a common sentiment?
KEELER: Well, you know, I don't - I don't know if sympathy is the right term, but I do recognize that minors have a different role. It's really that expectations are on the adults to guide them. But I do note that there is huge difference in expectations between - you know, we have the same folks who are upset about how these boys are being judged. But yet at the same time, when young black men are murdered for wearing a hoodie, they expect them to be able to negotiate that space much more carefully - right? - when they are paying with their choices with their lives. And so I think that, all things being fair - that either that is applied equally, or it's applied not at all.
CORNISH: From where we are now, what do you think are the next steps? As we mentioned, you've been reporting from Covington. You've talked and heard a lot of people who feel like they have a stake in the story.
KEELER: Yeah, I think the next step is really beginning to understand the Native American perspective to a much greater degree. The AIM Kentucky, the American Indian movement, then also the Greater Cincinnati Native American Association (ph) - what they wanted to speak to dioceses about which they did not get to speak to the dioceses was that they wanted the church - the Catholic Church, in particular - to recognize its role in the harm that it has done to Native people - the boarding school systems where the children were abused for speaking their language and their culture.
CORNISH: It sounds like you're saying this has opened the door for a broader conversation that...
KEELER: Exactly.
CORNISH: ...People want to have from Native communities.
KEELER: Yes - and sexual abuse. I mean, it's an intergenerational problem. I mean, a lot of times people will judge Native people, but they are dealing with a lot of trauma that's been done for generations to their family members. And they're not able to operate in the way that they could have if their societies had not been damaged in this way by American policy and by Catholic policy.
CORNISH: Jacqueline Keeler, thank you for speaking with us.
KEELER: Sure. Thank you for having me.
CORNISH: That's Jacqueline Keeler, a reporter from Portland, Ore. She's a member of the Native American Journalists Association and a descendant of the Yankton Sioux tribe.
And a quick note - the correct name of that Cincinnati Native organization she mentioned is the Greater Cincinnati Native American Coalition.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
In federal courts around the nation, the wheels of justice may soon be grinding to a halt. The government shutdown has already caused court delays and disruptions. But as NPR's Tovia Smith reports, things may get a lot worse next week.
TOVIA SMITH, BYLINE: It's carved in stone on the front of the federal court in Boston that the whole government depends on the, quote, "skillful administration of justice." But for many who do that job, it's getting harder.
JULIE OLSON: There is that huge uncertainty. And it will impact our clients' access to justice.
SMITH: Public defenders like Julie Olson say it's getting harder to mount a strong defense when the expert witnesses you want to hire, for example, don't know if they'll get paid.
OLSON: Hopefully they will trust that this will all shake out in the end. But yeah, we're sort of asking consultants and experts to work on faith.
SMITH: On the other side, prosecutors are also feeling the pinch.
LAWRENCE LEISER: It's difficult. It's a little demoralizing. And as time goes on, the worse it's going to get.
SMITH: Lawrence Leiser heads the National Association of Assistant U.S. Attorneys, all of whom are either furloughed or working without pay. That has stalled civil cases brought by the government. And while the official word is that criminal cases are carrying on uninterrupted, Leiser says not quite.
LEISER: As that spicket is being turned off, it's beginning to impact our ability to protect the innocent, prosecute the guilty.
SMITH: Leiser says prosecutors are running out of money for basics like DNA testing, paying informants or traveling to interview victims and witnesses. And that's hobbling, for example, even a major investigation of an alleged child predator.
LEISER: We don't have the funding to conduct the investigation and get the bad guys off the street in a timely fashion.
SMITH: Courts are also feeling the ripples from other federal agencies. For example, in the Southern District of New York, officials say prison staffing constraints are limiting attorney-client visits, so the court is being asked to postpone hearings. That court has also limited bail hearings because U.S. marshals, who transport prisoners, are reducing their hours. So some defendants who might have gotten bail are now spending an extra night in jail.
Such delays are not only costly, but Maine's chief federal District Court judge, Jon Levy, says they may also be unconstitutional.
JON LEVY: The old adage justice delayed is justice denied is true. So I think we have to be concerned about challenges regarding the right to a speedy trial that we typically don't face.
SMITH: Unlike the prosecutors going unpaid by the Justice Department, those paid by the courts - like public defenders, probation officers, interpreters and jurors - are still getting paychecks, thanks to court fees and some creative accounting. But that money runs out next week. And courts say they'll have to implement draconian triage measures if the shutdown continues.
EDWARD FRIEDLAND: It will be a disaster. The judicial process will almost come to a grinding halt.
SMITH: District Executive Edward Friedland from the Southern District of New York Federal Court says he's worried that even maintenance crews who keep the court open may not be for long. And he's planning for the worst.
FRIEDLAND: If in fact the buildings can't stay open, we literally will have judges sitting at their kitchen tables with a laptop computer with a camera on top looking at a defendant who's sitting in a U.S. marshal holding cell somewhere conducting these hearings.
SMITH: Outside Boston federal court, many prosecutors and public defenders like Julie Olson vow to keep working with or without pay.
OLSON: We're going to still have to do whatever it is we have to do. I still can't let my client sit in a prison. It just can't happen.
SMITH: But the prospect of going unpaid weighs on her.
OLSON: It's very nerve-wracking. We have student debt that I'm paying off and, you know, living expenses. And so the threat is frightening.
SMITH: Courts say they're already seeing some people retire or leave for jobs in the private sector. It's all the more frustrating since that'll make it even harder to dig out through the big backlog of cases courts will face when the shutdown finally ends. Tovia Smith, NPR News.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
It is Day 33 of the government shutdown, and it has been just about that long since the Senate has tried to pass a new spending bill. That changes tomorrow. That is when each party, in an effort to end the shutdown, will bring its own bill to the Senate floor.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The Republican bill, in exchange for money for the president's border wall, offers protections for the so-called DREAMers but with a catch. It also makes it harder for children from Central American countries to seek asylum in the U.S. The Democrats' bill is a spending bill that would fund the government through February 8. It doesn't provide any new money for the wall. Neither is expected to pass.
South Dakota Republican Mike Rounds will be there to cast his vote. He joins me in the studio. Thanks for coming in.
MIKE ROUNDS: I appreciate the opportunity to visit with you this afternoon.
CORNISH: I'm going to get to this topic in a moment, but I do want to address something that has moved quickly this afternoon, and that's about the State of the Union. After dueling letters between the president and Speaker Pelosi, the State of the Union is effectively canceled. And now the president says he's going to be giving a speech at an alternate event, essentially. Should he be giving that address now with the government shutdown?
ROUNDS: It's unfortunate that it comes this far. These two leaders need to find a way to work together. The president needs to find a way to break through, but Speaker Pelosi has a responsibility here as well. Simply denying the president the opportunity to have the State of the Union is probably not going to help us find common ground on other more pressing issues.
The president has a number of different options in which he can deliver a State of the Union. But this has been the traditional one, and it's the one that many ways is an example to the rest of the world of how even if we have real disagreements, we still come together; we listen to the president's message, and then lawmakers have the opportunity to express their approval or disapproval but not by throwing things at one another but by simply expressing in that chamber their thoughts about what the president is saying. This is probably a mistake not to have a way to continue it in front of the entire world.
CORNISH: I want to talk about the two bills that will be before you this week. Democrats are looking at the proposal from Senate Leader McConnell and saying it has a poison pill in these restrictions on people applying for asylum.
ROUNDS: I guess we had never looked at it that way before, and it's really the first time that I've heard it approached that way. What we really thought we were trying to do on this was to provide at least an avenue in which those individuals knew that there was a continuation of being able to seek asylum. But more than that, it was a first step on behalf of the president to come off of what had been his position of simply saying, I want you to fund my border wall; I want you to fund this thing right now.
And I give Leader McConnell a lot of credit for actually getting the president to come off and make the first move in this negotiation - doesn't mean it's perfect, but it was a step forward. The expectation was that the speaker would then respond with an appropriate message coming off of her hard position of, you get nothing. So far, that hasn't occurred. It's back to...
CORNISH: Open the government. Debate afterwards.
ROUNDS: Right. And...
CORNISH: To that point, are any Republicans going to cross the aisle to vote for that Democratic proposal to say, look; let's just, like, get the government open and then have a real discussion?
ROUNDS: I don't know. Each of them will look at this and say, what will my constituents think is the best approach on this? Some will say, no, look; we're going to have to stand firm so that everybody understands that it's going to be a united effort. It's going to be one that both the president and Speaker Pelosi both say, I can live with this new, third alternative. And if they - you know, once again, if Democrats surprise us and step forward and agree to what the president is saying in order to move it over to the House, that would be a positive thing. But I don't think that you're going to see that.
I don't believe that Republicans are going to step forward and say, move it to the House because they know that the president would veto it. And then you start all over again, only you're several more days, if not a week, down the line yet. It would be good to break through and to actually have a group established to find some common ground if at all possible. Leader McConnell was right. It takes both the speaker and the president to agree to move forward. And at this point, it doesn't look like we're coming anywhere close to that.
CORNISH: If you don't mind me saying this, you look exhausted and exasperated. And do you feel like your leaders have let you down?
ROUNDS: I'm frustrated just like I think the vast majority of members in the House and the Senate are. We came to Washington to fix things. But right now we have the president, who has taken a first step. We really hope Speaker Pelosi will take even a small step forward to break the original impasse. Once we get to the point where we can get a small committee working, then I think things will start to move quickly.
CORNISH: That's Republican Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota. Thank you for coming in and speaking with ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
ROUNDS: Thank you.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Now to Los Angeles, where it is the first day of school all over again. Tens of thousands of teachers are back in their classrooms after a six-day strike in the nation's second-largest school district. As Saul Gonzalez of member station KCRW reports, he visited one school where parents, teachers and administrators were all eager to get back to normal.
JUMIE SUGAHARA: Hi. Good morning. How are you? All right. Thank you.
SAUL GONZALEZ, BYLINE: At LA's Glassell Park Elementary School this morning, Principal Jumie Sugahara greeted parents as they dropped off their children. Today was the first regular school day in the wake of the teacher strike.
SUGAHARA: OK, kids. (Speaking Spanish). Bye.
GONZALEZ: Sugahara says she was ready for normal classes to resume at her largely Latino, 350-student campus.
SUGAHARA: I'm actually very happy. I'm very happy. It's nice. It's like having your family back together. The family's come back home.
GONZALEZ: Pre-K teacher Georgina Ramirez was thinking about what to tell her students after more than a week of picketing instead of teaching.
GEORGINA RAMIREZ: I keep just going back and forth. What do I tell them? I just want to hug them (laughter) and say, we're back (laughter) - and just hug them. That's the truth.
GONZALEZ: More than 30,000 members of LA's teachers union went on strike last week demanding smaller class sizes and more support staff like nurses. Many Los Angeles schools, including Glassell Elementary, only have a nurse once a week. After marathon bargaining sessions facilitated by LA's mayor, the district and union reached a deal. The teachers got a 6 percent retroactive salary increase and promises to reduce class sizes and hire a lot more librarians, counselors and those nurses.
CARANTINA ALDERETE: Let's hope that everything gets better, and we start seeing the smaller sizes. We start seeing everything that the kids deserve.
GONZALEZ: That's parent Carantina Alderete. She strongly supported the teachers during the strike and is cautiously optimistic about the agreement.
ALDERETE: But we'll go day by day and keep supporting the teachers because they're important.
GONZALEZ: But many questions remain, like how the financially strapped school system is going to pay for the new hires and class-size reductions. The teachers union and the school district say they'll work together to get more education money from the state of California.
SUGAHARA: Hi. Good morning. How are you?
GONZALEZ: Principal Sugahara says she hopes the new agreement means more resources for her school.
SUGAHARA: There are a lot of families that go through trauma, so we need more in terms of social, emotional support. Good morning. How are you? Hi, Alexa (ph). Hi, Nate (ph). Thank you. So I think it varies. I think every school is different. I think that for our school, we would benefit from a five-day-a-week nurse. That would benefit us.
GONZALEZ: And Glassell Elementary should eventually get that. The new agreement provides for a full-time nurse in every school. But the deal isn't fully approved yet. The LA Unified School Board is expected to finalize it next week. For NPR News, I'm Saul Gonzalez in Los Angeles.
(SOUNDBITE OF BUSHY'S "THERE'S A LIGHT")
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
There are now more than 10,000 migrant children who arrived in the country illegally being held in U.S. government custody. The system that cares for these children has come under intense scrutiny. Now a number of federal lawsuits allege the Trump administration is using that system to punish and deport the kids and their families. NPR's John Burnett joins me now from Austin. Hey, John.
JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: Hi, Mary Louise.
KELLY: So a number of federal lawsuits. What the number, and what exactly are they alleging?
BURNETT: By my count, there are at least four federal lawsuits filed since last March, and many of them challenge the way the government confines these children. They allege the Trump administration is ignoring a federal mandate to release the immigrant kids to sponsors as soon as possible. The lawsuits claim the kids are being locked up for months when there are loving family members ready to take them into their homes. And, remember; these are mostly teenagers who trekked to the U.S. border from Central America. They say they're fleeing violent street gangs, and most of them are asking for asylum.
KELLY: I gather one of the issues in play here is that sponsors who maybe step forward and say they can take these kids, that they are in danger of deportation. Do the lawsuits get into that?
BURNETT: Exactly. In one lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, it alleges the administration has sort of weaponized an agency called the Office of Refugee Resettlement, or ORR. It's the entity in charge of caring for these underage migrants. The lawsuit says when family members step forward to take a migrant child into their household, which is what the law intends, deportation agents will arrest those sponsors if they're here illegally. Lawyers say so far 170 willing sponsors have been arrested and put into deportation proceedings. And it's had the effect of scaring other family members from coming forward, which means the kids end up staying longer in these controversial ORR shelters. Some have now been there since last summer.
KELLY: And we'll watch and see how the Trump administration plays this in court. But what is their response to the central allegation, that a system that's supposed to be set up to care for children is being used to punish and deport them?
BURNETT: Well, Homeland Security says it will round up unlawful immigrants even if they happen to be sponsors stepping forward to claim a child migrant. There was actually an internal Homeland Security memo that was revealed last week, and it confirms that. The administration planned back in December 2017 to make an agreement between ORR and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. And it says right there in black and white the arrests of sponsors would result in a deterrent effect on human trafficking. Mary Bauer is deputy legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center.
MARY BAUER: There is no doubt that ORR and ICE are working closely together to use children as bait to catch sponsors and put them into removal proceedings. We know that because they put it in writing and said that they're doing it.
BURNETT: Another really important point the lawsuit is that ORR is allegedly holding children until they can be deported on their 18th birthday. They actually put one of the plaintiffs on a call with reporters - Kayla Vazquez. She was trying to sponsor her 17-year-old Honduran cousin by marriage who was in one of these shelters. She says the social worker who works for ORR keeps changing the rules on her. She's worried the government wants to keep him confined until his 18th birthday when they can come in and arrest him.
KAYLA VAZQUEZ: I feel like they're playing a game. They're just keeping him there to have the family suffer, which is wrong because the ones that are suffering most are the children.
KELLY: What does the ORR, the Office of Refugee Resettlement, say in response to stories like that?
BURNETT: The agency says it's reviewing the court filing and doesn't have any comment at this time. But I should say that in mid-December, a government official told me the children should be home with their parents. The government makes lousy parents. The agency then streamlined the way it screens the sponsors. And today, the number of kids in custody has dropped from just shy of 15,000 to under 11,000. So I think the agency's numbers indicate contrary to what the lawsuit is claiming that it's releasing more kids more quickly to sponsors than it has in the past.
KELLY: NPR's John Burnett reporting from Austin. Thank you, John.
BURNETT: It's a pleasure, Mary Louise.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
It's been a day of high political drama in Venezuela. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to demand that President Nicolas Maduro resign. Opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself interim president. He took an oath of office in front of the crowds in the capital, Caracas.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JUAN GUAIDO: (Speaking Spanish).
(CHEERING)
CORNISH: Shortly after that, the Trump administration recognized Guaido as the transitional president. Maduro responded by cutting off diplomatic ties with Washington and announced he's kicking out U.S. diplomats. NPR's Philip Reeves joins us now from Venezuela's capital. And, Phil, this sounds like an extraordinary day. Can you tell us, what's the latest update?
PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: Well, we have a major political crisis here, and it's not at all clear how it will end. This started out as a day of nationwide mass protests in Venezuela. These protests were called by the opposition who control the Congress - the National Assembly as it's called here. The National Assembly no longer recognizes Maduro as president, saying his election for second term, which has just started, was a fraud. And these protests were to scale up the pressure on Maduro to go.
Then the day took an extraordinary twist when, in front of that huge crowd as you heard of supporters in Caracas, Juan Guaido, the head of the National Assembly, declared himself interim president, saying he'll oversee the nation until new and fair elections can be held. The U.S., Canada and several Latin American nations immediately formally recognized him. And that's what's created this extraordinary and highly volatile situation with Maduro defiantly holding onto power while his chief opponent, Guaido, saying he's the president and many nations, including the most powerful nation on the block, the U.S., agreeing with him.
CORNISH: We mentioned the expulsion of U.S. diplomats. Has there been any other reaction from Maduro?
REEVES: Well, Maduro went on TV in front of his presidential palace where there was a big rally of his supporters today and denounced this as an attempted coup by the opposition and the United States. He said, as you mentioned, he's - that he's severing diplomatic ties with the U.S. such as they are. And he announced that he's kicking out U.S. diplomatic personnel, giving them 72 hours to leave. But meanwhile, there are reports that Guaido is encouraging the diplomatic community here to disobey Maduro's orders. So we really are in uncharted waters.
We don't know whether Maduro will now move against Guaido. The U.S. is making it clear that there could be a very strong response from them if he does so. The White House is saying no options are being ruled out. Maduro is being publicly defiant. But I think his future might depend now on whether he can maintain the support of the military.
CORNISH: To go back to Guaido for a moment, what did he have to say to the crowds in his speech?
REEVES: Well, it was really an extraordinary moment. I mean, he appeared before this huge crowd of people. He said that he would assume the powers of the presidency to secure an end to what he called the usurpation, which is the word they used for Maduro. And when he did that, there was a huge cheer.
CORNISH: What are protesters saying in the streets about all of this?
REEVES: I think they are embracing this moment, those that opposed Maduro. They're happy now to speak out, and when they do, they say they're desperate for change. I mean, listen, for instance, to one of the crowd, Carlos Gonzales, who's a teacher.
CARLOS GONZALES: This government - they destroy our democracy, and I want our democracy back. And our rights to all Venezuelan citizens, I want our rights back. It's what I want.
REEVES: I asked Gonzales about what he thought of the role being played here by the U.S. in pushing for Maduro and recognizing his opponent, the president of the National Assembly. And Gonzales was very happy about that. He said people have been waiting for the world outside to come to their aid, and he was pleased about it.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Philip Reeves. Philip, thank you.
REEVES: You're welcome.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRHYME SONG, "COURTESY")
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Atlanta's Hartsfield Jackson Airport is the busiest in the world based on the number of passengers who move through it every day - a number expected to rise when you throw in a little event like, oh, say, the Super Bowl. Well, Atlanta hosts the Super Bowl on February 3. City officials have, of course, been planning for months, but those plans did not factor in a partial government shutdown. John Selden is general manager of the airport. He joins me now from Atlanta in the Atlanta airport. Hi there, Mr. Selden.
JOHN SELDEN: Hi, Mary Louise. How are you?
KELLY: I'm doing all right. Thank you. Let's start here. How many passengers pass through security on a typical weekday at Hartsfield-Jackson?
SELDEN: Somewhere between 60,000 to 75,000, depending on the day of the week and business travel and holidays. But we run somewhere in that range.
KELLY: OK. So 60,000 - maybe a little bit higher. How many are you bracing for for the Monday after the Super Bowl?
SELDEN: So we're looking at somewhere between 105 to up to 115,000 people going through our checkpoint on that Monday morning.
KELLY: So close to double what you would have on a typical weekday.
SELDEN: Very close to double - our record to date, I believe, is 93,000. So the conversations and the planning before the shutdown was significant. And the TSA was going to bring additional canine to do screening and additional officers to do screening.
KELLY: How confident are you that you will have enough TSA officers who you do need to do the security screening - that they'll actually show up and be on the job that day?
SELDEN: So, Mary Louise, we are concerned. We do not expect - and I shouldn't say this - but we do not expect the full staff. There are many of these federal employees that financially have limitations of child care and paying for gas. So that situation is critical to how many can actually show up for work, pay their bills, stay in their homes and take care of their families. But we are doing all we can with our stakeholders, with our neighbors, friends to support these employees and do what we can to provide them the tools that they need to be able to come to work.
KELLY: Sure. I'm wondering though when you described bringing in additional TSA agents, who are not normally based in Atlanta, there can't be that many spare TSA agents anywhere in the country at the moment, right? Everybody's dealing with shortages.
SELDEN: Well, the TSA is doing all they can to get a requisite number, which they think they need to get here. The TSA agents will be on their government credit card. They'll be put in a hotel. Their food will be paid for. So those agents, they believe, will show up and support the operation here at Hartsfield-Jackson.
KELLY: You described passengers showing up at the airport, coming straight from the game, who were going wait for flights out on the Monday. And the Atlanta newspaper The Journal Constitution is reporting that travelers will be able to pass through security up to 24 hours before their flight in order to spread them out. The plan then being - what? - that they would spend 24 hours in the terminal?
SELDEN: That's correct.
KELLY: I mean, that sounds like a zoo - if I may (laughter).
SELDEN: It may be. And we have 1,800 volunteers that will be badged that can get through the checkpoint and help and support our travelers that will be here in the terminal for an extended period of time.
KELLY: So how closely are you following politics and the shutdown debate in Washington right now?
SELDEN: I follow it very, very, very closely. It's on in my office 24/7.
KELLY: Oh, boy. John Selden, we wish you much luck weathering Super Bowl weekend. Good luck.
SELDEN: Thank you so much, Mary Louise.
KELLY: He is general manager of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta.
(SOUNDBITE OF JAM DE SILVA'S "DIA SANTO")
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Next Tuesday, January 29, was supposed to be the day President Trump continues the tradition launched by his predecessors.
(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)
UNIDENTIFIED SERGEANT AT ARMS: Madame Speaker, the president of the United States.
BILL CLINTON: My fellow Americans.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Our nation will forever be safe and strong and proud.
GEORGE W BUSH: And the state of our union will remain strong.
BARACK OBAMA: The state of our union is strong.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
But today saw dueling letters between President Trump and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. And the State of the Union speech - at least a State of the Union speech delivered in the House chamber - has been effectively canceled.
CORNISH: The president sent a letter to Pelosi saying he looked forward to seeing her in the House chamber next week. This afternoon, Speaker Pelosi responded saying that the House will not authorize the State of the Union until the government is reopened.
KELLY: All of which gives you a little window into the spirit of bipartisanship and cooperation breaking out here in Washington - not. Meanwhile, we have reached Day 33 of the partial government shutdown.
Well, let's bring in Massachusetts Congresswoman Katherine Clark. She is vice chair of the House Democratic Caucus. And we have reached her at her office on Capitol Hill. Congresswoman Clark, welcome.
KATHERINE CLARK: Oh, it's great to be with you.
KELLY: Let me start with the State of the Union. How does denying the president his traditional speech help find common ground when there are, as you know, tasks of real consequence - funding the government - that are not getting done?
CLARK: Well, we are trying to send a message to the president that it is time to stop governing like we're about to cut to commercial, and to realize the pain that he is inflicting and the real threats to our national security by continuing this shutdown.
It is time to reopen government and make sure that we can then come to the table and talk about effective ways to make sure that our borders are secure.
KELLY: But does this back-and-forth over a State of the Union on the House floor feel petty?
CLARK: I think it is petty. I think that what we've seen is that the president has started a very petty argument that is taking a tremendous toll on real people.
I can tell you the stories from my district alone - about an elderly woman in my - one of my communities called Natick, where she cannot get the verification of her income to continue her subsidized housing. Our Coast Guard base that is local - they have had to open a food pantry because so many of those who are serving us live paycheck to paycheck.
This president has decided to hold the American people and these federal workers hostage to a campaign promise that he made. And that is the ultimate petty governing, but it is having a real effect. And we need to make sure that that government is open before we negotiate.
KELLY: Well, let me - to that point, talk to me about reports today that House Democrats are preparing a counteroffer to the president - House Democrats, that would be you. The measure, I understand, would provide funding for border security, but no funding for a wall.
Start here. Does this mean Democrats are willing to negotiate with the president before the government is reopened?
CLARK: No. We have been clear. We have tried everything we can. We took our 10th vote today to reopen government. We are trying in every way we know. First, it was we'll give the Senate Republicans back the bills they already approved, see if they will side with the American people and stop siding with the president. When that didn't work and our House Republican colleagues asked us to put out the bills that they had agreed to, we have done that now.
And it's time where we're going to see whether House Republicans and those in the Senate - whose side are they on? So far, they are siding with the president.
KELLY: But does this represent - this counteroffer - does this represent a new move from Democrats that would give the president pretty much the amount of money he's calling for, just not money for a wall?
CLARK: I think we're trying to send a signal that we are very serious about border security, and we are willing to have that discussion with the president. But first, he has to open government and stop holding things hostage.
KELLY: He's made it so clear, though, if there's one thing he's not going to do, it's - if there's no money for a wall, there's no deal. What makes you think he doesn't mean it?
CLARK: If we yield to his extreme demands now, shutdowns won't be a last resort. They're going to be a weekly special - a tool that he uses routinely. And that's why we're saying to him that you have to open government.
You have to remember, when this started on December 20, the Republicans were fully in charge, as they had been for the last two years. And it was really far-right political commentators that drove the president into this position. Who he is forgetting is the American people.
And by not paying TSA workers, FBI, the Coast Guard, Border Patrol, what he is creating is a new threat to our national security. This shutdown has to end.
KELLY: But again, how does this counteroffer move things forward if it's the one thing he said he won't budge on?
CLARK: You know, what we - what we're saying to him is, open government. Open it for a short time. Keep the pressure on both parties, and then we'll negotiate. Tomorrow, we're going to try and preview some of the specifics of what we would do. But our general position - we are unified, and it is not just the Democratic caucus. It is the American people. They see what this is. This is a temper tantrum, not a way to govern the United States.
KELLY: In the moments we have left, Congresswoman, as you know, the end of this week will mark the second missed paycheck for federal workers. Should members of Congress forfeit that paycheck, too?
CLARK: I think that members of Congress would - if forfeiting a paycheck would put the paycheck back into the hands of our federal employees, we'd be glad to do it.
KELLY: Are you planning to do that?
CLARK: But only one thing is going to do that, and that is opening government. So anything else is a distraction from the real needs of these people. And this president needs to look at all the people, not play to his base or a few commentators, and make sure that he is siding and deciding that he is going to be a president for all Americans.
KELLY: And we'll have to leave it there. That's Massachusetts Democrat Katherine Clark. Thanks so much.
CLARK: Thank you.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Voters across the country are looking for clues for when the shutdown will end. Often, they are choosing sides based on their partisan leanings - their like or dislike of Trump. And there's frustration at the inability to get anything resembling real negotiations underway. NPR's Don Gonyea has been talking to voters in Ohio.
DON GONYEA, BYLINE: I'm in Chillicothe, Ohio, about an hour south of Columbus. This was, in fact, once the state's capital. It's a pretty red part of the state. But in the city itself, you find a precinct that went for Trump next to one that went for Hillary Clinton next to another where Trump won and back and forth. Just on the edge of downtown, I wandered into a barbershop where Kevin Newsome is the owner and the guy with the scissors.
KEVIN NEWSOME: Well, they all have to come to the table. They all have to work out an agreement.
GONYEA: We're talking about the government shutdown, and it's clear that he's backing President Trump in this fight over the border wall.
NEWSOME: They just can't be fighting each other because they're mad because one man's president and their man's not.
GONYEA: Newsome stresses that he's not against immigration but that people have to come in legally. Otherwise, he says, they are not welcome in the U.S. He says building the wall will help that. And he says the president is right to make that the issue in any negotiations about reopening the government.
NEWSOME: Absolutely I'm with Trump. I'm going to be with Trump. Sorry. That's how it is. I like him.
GONYEA: Outside the barbershop on this cold morning is 63-year-old Miljenko Marinkovich. As he shivers in the frigid weather, he explains that he lives in Florida but that he's in town visiting his brother who's at the VA hospital here. In fact, his brother's inside getting his haircut as we speak. Marinkovich immigrated to the U.S. as a small child. On the demand for funding for the wall, he says the president is being, quote, "obstinate."
So you did not vote for him.
MILJENKO MARINKOVICH: Oh, no, I did not vote for him. And yeah - but he is the president, and I respect that. But I wish he would simply change his mind on this.
GONYEA: He adds this...
MARINKOVICH: The deal is not working. The deals he used to make, well, they work in the real estate business, not in government.
GONYEA: Now to a sprawling shopping center just over a mile away and another tough critic of how the president is handling the shutdown.
NANCY WALLS: I just think it's an outrageous way to try to bully your way into something that you want.
GONYEA: That's Nancy Walls. She did not vote for Trump and says it's frustrating watching him put so many federal employees through so much with this extended furlough. She says this can all be resolved with real negotiations with Congress.
WALLS: It's childish, and do your job and resolve it the right way.
GONYEA: So far, these voters you've heard have all voiced strong feelings for or against the president. But Fran Burdette is different. We spoke downtown as a light but cold rain started to fall. She works at a Chillicothe law office. She voted for Trump and says this at the very start of our conversation.
FRAN BURDETTE: I truly believe that we do need a wall...
GONYEA: On that, she's absolutely with the president. But...
BURDETTE: ...But I don't think this is the right way to do it.
GONYEA: Burdette says Democrats share in the blame for the stalemate, and she worries about all those government workers not working. She admits she was a reluctant Trump voter in 2016 and says it's way too early to talk about her 2020 vote but that right now she does still support him. She closes with this...
BURDETTE: Yes. I mean, I am a supporter, and I just hope he does the right thing. But I also think the other side needs to come to the table, too. They've got to quit fighting.
GONYEA: And with that, the cold rain ended our sidewalk interview with no sign of a warming up in Washington any time soon. Don Gonyea, NPR News, Chillicothe, Ohio.
(SOUNDBITE OF LOS CAMPESINOS SONG, "YOU! ME! DANCING!")
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
This week, a sleepy ski village in Switzerland is the stomping ground of the global elite. We are talking Davos. We are talking the annual World Economic Forum where corporate titans rub shoulders with political leaders. This year, though, a number of heads of state are no-shows because of trouble at home. And that includes President Trump. NPR's Gregory Warner, though, has managed to make it to Davos. He's on the line now. Hey, Gregory, how are you holding up?
GREGORY WARNER, BYLINE: Well, it's freezing cold. At least, I have my crampons, like every other delegate here has been issued. It's what they call ice spikes so we don't slip on the icy sidewalks.
KELLY: (Laughter) I want to dive in and start in an unusual way. I rarely begin our coverage of a gathering by describing who's not there, but there's a whole lot of important names who are not there at Davos this year.
WARNER: Definitely. And President Trump is definitely not the only no-show. You have the French president who canceled because of the yellow vest protests Theresa May, British prime minister, is not here. She's dealing with the fallout over the failed Brexit vote. And Justin Trudeau of Canada is not coming because he was criticized for spending too much money at Davos last year. You know, it says something that all these leaders are cancelling because of anti-elite sentiments in their own countries.
KELLY: President Trump says he canceled because of the shutdown. He pulled the whole U.S. delegation out. What has been the reaction to that absence?
WARNER: Well, the U.S.-China relationship is definitely talked about a lot here at Davos. It matters so much to so many smaller countries and to Europe. But there has been a kind of tit for tat playing out between the U.S. and China right here at Davos. And it started yesterday when the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, was beamed in by Videotron from D.C. to Davos, and he said, look; the U.S. trade relationship with China has to be balanced. He used the word rebalanced. He said, look; Chinese companies are free to work in the U.S. undisturbed.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MIKE POMPEO: American companies should be permitted to do that as well without having to have a mechanism by which the technology that they're providing will be forced to be transferred.
WARNER: Now, today, the vice president of China, Wang Qishan, forcefully responded to that. First, he uses the exact same word. He said that there should be a rebalancing, but it should be that China assumes its rightful place in the world. And then he talked about the theft of intellectual property, technological know-how. He said in every market there's going to be some level of theft, and to call for no theft would be idealistic. And it sounded definitely like he was saying, look; if you want to do business in China, you got accept some level of thievery.
KELLY: And I'm sorry, but I'm hung up on this image, Gregory. The vice president of China was there in person, but Secretary Pompeo beamed in and - what? - was on, like, a giant screen in the middle of this?
WARNER: It was a little Big Brother-ish. I mean, yeah, it was a giant, giant Videotron screen in a room of thousands of people.
KELLY: We should note Davos, I mean, the heart of it is - it's a celebration of free trade. What were other world leaders saying there, you know, about that and about the U.S.-China trade spat that we're watching play out?
WARNER: Yeah. It's a celebration of global cooperation, right? But this year, it felt like every world leader who addressed the crowd was kind of talking about that they have their own style of capitalism. So Angela Merkel of Germany said that European capitalism is different than American and Chinese systems because it cares about the privacy of the individual. And then New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, youngest female head of state in the world, she said that what's different about her government system that she wants to put in is that they're going to care not just about economic health of its citizens but their societal well-being. And, you know, it felt like honestly globalization 4.0, which is the theme of this Davos this year, is all about - I don't know - defending your own turf.
KELLY: NPR's Gregory Warner reporting from a different kind of Davos in Switzerland this year. Thanks so much, Gregory.
WARNER: Thanks, Mary Louise.
KELLY: And Gregory Warner is host of NPR's podcast Rough Translation.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Here in Washington, the White House is warning that the partial government shutdown could bring economic growth to a standstill. Even before the shutdown began, though, some economists are worried about a looming downturn, possibly even a recession. As NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben reports, if that happens, it's not clear how much Washington could do to help.
DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, BYLINE: It's not like there's ever a good time for a recession. But if one is indeed on its way, there's something for policymakers at the Federal Reserve and in Congress to start thinking about. The levers that we usually pull to boost the economy just might not work all that well this time. I called Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, to see if my instincts on this were correct.
First things first, does that seem right to you?
MARK ZANDI: Yeah, it does. It does. There's just a lot less room to maneuver than is typical leading up to a recession, for sure.
KURTZLEBEN: Right.
ZANDI: Oh, should I be recording at this point?
KURTZLEBEN: Oh, yes. Absolutely.
ZANDI: Oh, OK.
KURTZLEBEN: Start recording.
ZANDI: OK.
(LAUGHTER)
KURTZLEBEN: So, OK, we started recording, and we talked about this. If a recession hits, what's the first fix? Let's start with the Fed.
ZANDI: The typical way is to let the Federal Reserve manage it. That means let the Federal Reserve lower interest rates to try to help support the economy.
KURTZLEBEN: This is why we often hear President Trump saying he doesn't want the Fed to raise rates. He wants to preside over a fast-growing economy.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: President Obama, we were heading south, and he had zero interest. It's really easy to do things with zero interest.
KURTZLEBEN: Think of these short-term interest rates as a sort of accelerator pedal. When the Fed lowers them, it's supposed to speed things up. The idea is to encourage more borrowing, more activity. But here's the thing. That accelerator pedal is already relatively close to the floor.
ZANDI: The Fed generally cuts interest rates by 4 or 5 percentage points in a typical downturn. Right now, the interest rate that they control is at 2 1/2 percent. So that just indicates how little cushion room they have to maneuver here.
KURTZLEBEN: The Fed can also try less conventional tools, like quantitative easing, often just called printing money. It's supposed to lower long-term interest rates. But, again, those are pretty low right now. So, OK, let's say monetary policy doesn't work. Recession fix number two - fiscal policy, spending money. Washington tried this during the Great Recession with that big stimulus package President Obama signed.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BARACK OBAMA: At this particular moment, only government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe.
KURTZLEBEN: And it did help to soften the blow. But there's a potential problem with trying that now. The U.S. has way more debt right now than before the recession, and it's only projected to go up for a lot of reasons. There are longstanding issues. Entitlement spending continues to grow especially as boomers get older and go on Medicare. On top of that, there were the recent tax cuts.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED POLITICIAN: We are giving the people of this country their money back. This is their money after all.
KURTZLEBEN: Importantly, economists do disagree widely over how bad government debt is for the economy. But either way, the prospect of ramping up the debt does spook some lawmakers, which might make them nervous about taking action. And it's also quite possible Washington just couldn't agree on how to respond considering especially how little they agree on lately.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
CHUCK SCHUMER: We shouldn't shut down the government over a dispute. And you want to shut it down. You keep talking about it.
TRUMP: No, the last time, Chuck, you shut it down.
SCHUMER: No, no, no.
KURTZLEBEN: So it's quite possible Washington couldn't get its act together. Either way, there's one more question. Could businesses and households handle another downturn? One problem area here is corporations, some of which have brought on a lot of debt. And if and when interest rates rise, that gives businesses a tough choice. Here's Mark Zandi again.
ZANDI: Do I either make my debt payment or do I cut investment in jobs? And they're very likely to cut back on jobs and investment. So that just exacerbates the recession.
KURTZLEBEN: And for households, it's a mixed bag. On the one hand, Americans have really cut down their debt from where it was before the Great Recession. Even then, though, 4 in 10 Americans say they wouldn't be able to come up with a few hundred dollars in an emergency, meaning there are a lot of Americans who could suffer in a downturn. And it's not clear now how much the government could help. Danielle Kurtzleben, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BUDOS BAND'S "T.I.B.W.F.")
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Students at Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky were back in class today. The school has become the center of a national uproar over a viral social media video that showed a group of students wearing Make America Great Again hats apparently staring down a Native American elder at the Lincoln Memorial.
The students had traveled to Washington, D.C., to attend the anti-abortion March for Life rally when they encountered Nathan Phillips. The teen featured most prominently in the video, junior Nick Sandmann, appeared on NBC's "Today" show with his take.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "TODAY")
NICK SANDMANN: My position is that I was not disrespectful to Mr. Phillips. I respect him. I'd like to talk to him. I mean, in hindsight, I wish we could've walked away and avoided the whole thing, but I can't say that I'm sorry for listening to him and standing there.
CORNISH: NPR's Sarah McCammon has been talking to residents in Covington, Ky. She joins us from there now. And, Sarah, what's the mood like in that community now?
SARAH MCCAMMON, BYLINE: Well, this incident really is on people's minds. And things are starting to get back to normal to a certain extent with schools reopening, but there was a police presence there when I drove by this morning. People are concerned, they tell me, about the safety of these kids and also about how this reflects on the community.
I stopped at a coffee shop just down the street from the school, and I met Karisa Moore.
KARISA MOORE: I feel for the boys because I don't think that they went with the intent of this transpiring. And it's put them in the public eye, and it's put the school in the public eye. However, I always see that these are opportunities. These are opportunities to talk to people, to connect, to think differently.
MCCAMMON: Moore said she's been praying for everyone involved. And several people I talked to here said they didn't want to voice their opinions publicly, but they had very strong feelings. And they said it's just very sensitive. A couple people said they didn't want to go on mic with me because they were worried about their job security if they speak too freely. It's a very emotional issue here.
And when I asked people how they felt, I heard words like sad and embarrassed.
CORNISH: There are so many interpretations, especially on social media and the commentary about what happened and what it means. How are people there making sense of it?
MCCAMMON: Lots of different ways, and it seems to come down, like it does for much of the rest of the country, to personal experience, personal point of view. Again, I heard a lot of concern about the boys - about well-being, but also about how the adults here were doing their jobs, whether they were to mentor them and teach the kids about diversity.
I spoke to Tracy Siegman, pastor at First Christian Church of Covington, and she says this has come up in her knitting circle.
TRACY SIEGMAN: We all received the talk when we went out on a school trip that we should be mindful that we're representing our school and our community. And their behavior does not reflect well on their school or our community.
MCCAMMON: She says she's been thinking about how to talk to her congregation about this. And she says if this happened at her church, she'd want to see a long-term series of conversations about what happened and what it means.
CORNISH: Has there been any effort to get any kind of big public conversation going locally about this?
MCCAMMON: Well, there was a small rally yesterday hosted by a local Native American group. NPR member station WVXU was there and spoke to Guy Jones of Dayton, Ohio. He says things need to change in this country.
GUY JONES: We as a people have to go and put a stop to it. You've got all these young kids who are saying, let's make America great. Well, yeah, let's do that. And let's stop the hate.
MCCAMMON: On a much larger scale, the White House has said that President Trump might consider meeting with the boys after the shutdown is over. And separately, there's been talk about the boys meeting with Nathan Phillips, the Native American elder. So we'll see where those discussions go in the days to come.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Sarah McCammon. She spoke to us from Covington, Ky. Sarah, thank you.
MCCAMMON: Thank you.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Director Bryan Singer, whose latest film "Bohemian Rhapsody" is nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture, is facing new scrutiny over allegations of sexual misconduct including rape. An expose published today in The Atlantic includes on-the-record accounts from young men who were underage at the time of the incidents they describe, yet another turn in what has become a very long line of very powerful men in Hollywood reckoning with allegations of sexual misconduct. Here to talk more about this is Kim Masters. She is host of member station KCRW's The Business and editor at large of The Hollywood Reporter. Kim Masters, welcome.
KIM MASTERS, BYLINE: Thank you.
KELLY: First, just for people who may not know Bryan Singer, he is a big name in Hollywood - right? - a top-tier director.
MASTERS: Yeah. I think he really broke through for a lot of people with "The Usual Suspects," which was a very well-received movie. And then he went on to do the X-Men movies, which are the kind of thing that put you in this A-list of directors because they are big box office draws. So he had the kind of arthouse type of movie as well as the big franchise movies.
KELLY: Now, he denies having sex with underage boys. His lawyer points out in the article he has never been charged with any crime. Can you give me a sense of just the array of allegations he is facing?
MASTERS: There is a group of men now who describe being assaulted by Bryan Singer when they were underage, one as young as 13, in pretty graphic terms. In some cases, it's presented as that they were, you know, participating, but when you are underage, that's still rape.
KELLY: Without consent, yeah. I should mention your own involvement in trying to break this story. Back in December of 2017, you broke the story that Singer had been fired from directing "Bohemian Rhapsody" even before filming had completely finished. How much did you know about the why?
MASTERS: Well, everyone knew that Bryan Singer at that point was a troubled proposition. He was known to vanish off of movie sets. Warner Brothers had problems with him before on other movies before Fox took him on on "Bohemian Rhapsody." These are things that he's been able to somehow fend off, and it's given cover to people to do business with him. But Fox knew going in that he was troubled. And they were very strictly telling him, you need to show up on time and you. And he was told explicitly don't break the law, which is kind of extraordinary when you think about it. And nonetheless, at one point, he did not want to show up, and they did fire him. And that's extraordinary, especially that close to the end of a shoot.
KELLY: Here's what I'm wrestling with is that we're sitting here in 2019, so a year and a half into the #MeToo movement. And yet here's yet another story that - it sounds like everybody in Hollywood knew, that was yet another open secret in the mold of Harvey Weinstein.
MASTERS: It is disheartening. These open secrets and the tolerance of them is a disturbing thing. And it's not as though this is the last story like this that's going to emerge.
KELLY: Why is it that they're so hard to report?
MASTERS: Because people are terrified to come forward. I mean, you have to bear in mind, this is an industry where there is so much money. And some of these young men in the Atlantic article come from disadvantaged backgrounds, not a lot of access to the kind of glamour and wealth that Bryan Singer could open the door to. So this is an industry that is rife with opportunities for abuse given what Hollywood offers. And it is going to be a huge challenge to clean up the culture...
KELLY: Even now, even this far into the #MeToo movement, that culture persists.
MASTERS: Yes. I'm watching a year-plus in. I'm still reporting these stories myself. And you feel the culture resisting change.
KELLY: Kim Masters, host of member station KCRW's The Business and editor at large of The Hollywood Reporter. Kim Masters, thank you.
MASTERS: Thank you.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
For more than a year, a bipartisan congressional committee has been trying to answer this question - should women be required to register with the Selective Service? That's the agency that registers all men at 18 years old in case of a military draft. It's also looking at whether non-military service should be required of young people to recapture a spirit of national unity. NPR's David Welna reports on the commission's early findings.
DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: Every seat was filled today in the auditorium at the privately owned Newseum, where the National Commission on Military, National and Public Service was rolling out its progress report. Former Republican Congressman Joe Heck chairs that commission. He reminded the crowd how unprecedented the 24 public hearings it's held have been.
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JOE HECK: For the first time in our nation's history, a commission was tasked to holistically and comprehensively review the Selective Service system along with Military, National and Public Service. It is truly an historic opportunity.
WELNA: Many in that crowd were public servants themselves, from the military, from volunteer organizations and from government agencies, something Heck seemed keenly aware of.
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HECK: The irony of releasing a report that speaks in part to encouraging more people to seek a career in public service during the midst of a shutdown is not lost on us.
WELNA: Finding ways to attract more people to public service, military or otherwise, is indeed one of the commission's main goals. Janine Davidson is a former undersecretary of the Navy and the first woman ever to fly the military's Hercules C-130 transport plane.
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JANINE DAVIDSON: De Tocqueville said we were a nation of joiners, and that's what made our civil society so strong - that we jump in and we do stuff. And even in this shutdown in the airport the other day, you know, we always talk about people getting out to help veterans, there's a veterans group there helping the TSA people.
WELNA: And yet, as the interim report notes, military veterans comprise less than 10 percent of the population. And 4 out of 10 young Americans say they never considered military service. Still, all males between ages 18 and 25 are required by law to register for the Selective Service in case a military draft is revived. Women are not, even though they're now allowed in combat units. Commission member Debra Wada says requiring women to register is an issue Congress took up three years ago but never resolved.
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DEBRA WADA: It was the impetus, actually, for the creation of this commission. And it's a large question that was given to us. And we're looking to the American public's input. And we've heard a lot from individuals, and we continue to seek input from others.
WELNA: Again, Chairman Heck.
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HECK: I know you're all waiting eagerly on the edge of your seat. All right. Will women have to register? I can't tell you because the commission hasn't come to a decision.
WELNA: Heck said, after a year of public hearings, it's clear this sharply divides those who've weighed in on it.
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HECK: People have very definitive opinions on this issue. It's not like when you ask the question, they have to take a moment to think about it. It's a visceral response. It's either, yes, they should have to register, it's a matter of equality - or no, they should not have to register because women hold a special role in American society. I mean, that's what it basically comes down to. I don't think there are many people that are on the fence when it comes to deciding whether or not women should have to register.
WELNA: Heck says the commission has a broader concern - the decline of public service.
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HECK: Our goal is that there should be a universal expectation of service, that instead of the person serving being the odd person, it's the person who doesn't serve is the odd person. So that within a generation or two, every American is inspired and eager to serve.
WELNA: Fourteen more public hearings are planned in the coming months, with a final report and recommendations due early next year. David Welna, NPR News, Washington.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
A new sitcom premiering tonight on Comedy Central offers a unique look at how fame happens these days. NPR's Glen Weldon says "The Other Two" mixes over-the-top satire with a surprisingly warm, intimate sense of humor.
GLEN WELDON, BYLINE: In the first episode, 13-year-old Chase, played by Case Walker, becomes an overnight sensation off of a cloyingly sweet homemade video he posts to YouTube.
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CASE WALKER: (As Chase, singing) My friends thinks I'm crazy, but I was thinking maybe I want to marry you at recess.
WELDON: But "The Other Two" isn't about Chase really. It's about his two older siblings, Brooke and Cary, "The Other Two" - get it? - played by Helene Yorke and Drew Tarver. They're a couple of self-obsessed 20-somethings struggling to make it work in New York City and - wait, stop, come back. I know that setup sounds familiar, but "The Other Two" keeps making choices that defy your expectations, especially if one of the things you're expecting is the caustic tone so many sitcoms default to. You just feel for these two characters right away. Cary is waiting tables while trying to make it as an actor.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE OTHER TWO")
DREW TARVER: (As Cary) Hi, I'm Cary Dubick (ph). And I'm reading for the role of man at party who smells fart.
WELDON: His sister Brooke doesn't even know what she wants. And over dinner with her mom, she's maybe a little defensive about that.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE OTHER TWO")
HELENE YORKE: (As Brooke) We might not be the hot, new twink or whatever, but all three of your kids are hot, equally successful millennials.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) What? You guys aren't millennials.
YORKE: (As Brooke) Yeah, we are.
TARVER: (As Cary) We Googled it.
YORKE: (As Brooke) We looked it up.
DREW TARVER AND HELENE YORKE: (As Cary and Brooke) It's 1982 and after.
WELDON: Individually, Brooke and Cary can be a lot. But in their many scenes together, Yorke and Tarver find an easy, unforced chemistry marked by mutual affection and a shared sense of humor. Over the course of the season, Brooke and Cary get caught up in their younger brother's fame and start to lose themselves in it. And while the satire about the nature of viral Internet success and showbiz phoniness can be broad, the actual jokes are sharp.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE OTHER TWO")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Some in the music industry are already calling him the next big white kid.
WELDON: Co-creators Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, former head writers at "Saturday Night Live," have a knowing grip on the thing they're making fun of and an intimate sense of these characters. Kelly and Schneider are a gay man and a straight woman writing about a gay man and a straight woman. And the show's particularly smart about how it treats Cary's gayness, showing the tiny everyday negotiations queer people have to make as they move through the world. Take the way Cary's boss at the restaurant keeps pulling his gay waiters aside to update them on just how woke he is.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE OTHER TWO")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character) I wanted you both to know last night at my home, my wife and I watched "Brokeback Mountain."
WELDON: Brooke and Cary grow and change over the show's 10-episode season, which sets it apart from other sitcoms that keep their characters static. "The Other Two" knows that watching flawed characters trying to become better people inspires a deeper kind of laughter because it comes from a real place of recognition and empathy. Glen Weldon, NPR News.
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MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
More than three months after Hurricane Michael slammed into Florida's panhandle, communities there are still struggling. In Mexico Beach, where more than three quarters of the homes were flattened, just removing the debris could bankrupt the city. NPR's Greg Allen was in Mexico Beach the day after the storm, and he went back to check on the recovery.
GREG ALLEN, BYLINE: On highway 98 in Mexico Beach, the road that runs along the ocean, a small front loader is tearing down one of the many homes still partially standing. There's a lot more demolition and cleanup to do. Officials say debris removal alone is likely to cost more than $25 million, more than 10 times the town's annual budget.
AL CATHEY: We're past the needing water and tarps, but now we're at, you know, where the rubber hits the road.
ALLEN: Mayor Al Cathey says Mexico Beach will need an additional $3 million to replace portions of its sewer and water systems. Although FEMA will reimburse the town for much of those costs eventually, it may not be for a year or more. Making matters worse, the storms destroyed the town's tax base.
CATHEY: Here's what we had. We had roughly 2,700 homes, and there's less than 500 standing.
ALLEN: And many of those standing are uninhabitable, all of which raises questions about how long the town can remain solvent. Mexico Beach was a quiet seaside community, one dependent on tourists and summer rentals. Three quarters of the houses here were second homes. Cathey says that Mexico Beach is now gone. He rode out the storm in his home several blocks from the water. When he went through the town afterwards, he says it was unrecognizable.
CATHEY: There were no landmarks. That's something that was so visual in my mind. I lost track of where I was. After 65 years, I wasn't sure what street I was looking at.
ALLEN: Cathey believes that with help from the state and federal government, Mexico Beach will be able to pay its bills and rebuild. He says local officials will fight to maintain the town's low-key character with zoning and height restrictions. But there's no doubt that a lot of new construction will be going on here over the next several years and that many longtime residents will leave.
DON TILLEY: There's a lot of people walking away.
ALLEN: Don Tilley's house was flooded, but it can be renovated. He's staying, but many of his neighbors aren't.
TILLEY: Some people don't have the money to rebuild, and some people don't have - they just don't want to mess with it.
ALLEN: Right now there's a moratorium on rebuilding. Local officials are studying FEMA flood maps and discussing a new construction code that's likely to increase the cost of rebuilding homes that were destroyed. Even for those whose homes survived Hurricane Michael largely intact, recovery is slow.
PATRICIA HENDRICKS: Hey, how are you?
ALLEN: Good to see you. [LB] I first met Patricia Hendricks in Mexico beach the day after the storm. Her home was mostly OK except for the large pine trees that fell on her house, punching holes in the roof.
HENDRICKS: I just got my shingles today.
ALLEN: Delivered or on top?
HENDRICKS: Delivered.
ALLEN: Yeah.
HENDRICKS: Delivered, oh, yeah. So...
ALLEN: Going to go through this plastic here. [LB] Hendricks pulls back plastic sheeting so we can enter her bedroom where most of the storm damage occurred. The work crews already removed soggy drywall. [LB] Oh, you've got everything - all the - gutted down to the studs here.
HENDRICKS: Yeah.
ALLEN: That's great.
HENDRICKS: It's all stripped down, and now you can see the holes (laughter).
ALLEN: It will be many months or a year, Hendricks says, until she gets her house repaired. The towering pines, cedars and oak trees that she loved and which surrounded her home are gone. But many others in town, she says, have it much worse.
HENDRICKS: You know, there's a lot of people that are struggling here with just living. You know, it's not the food anymore. It's not the water anymore. It's trying to figure out how to put your life back together not like it was, even, but just how to put your life back together.
ALLEN: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been to Mexico Beach twice since taking office in January. He's pledged to aid the city in its recovery, starting with nearly $3 million in state funds to help with the cost of debris removal. Greg Allen, NPR News, Mexico Beach, Fla.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
We're going to take the next couple of minutes to remember a pioneer - Barbara Proctor. She was the first African-American woman to start an advertising agency in the U.S.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Her success in the heavily male and white advertising industry earned her the praise of President Ronald Reagan.
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RONALD REAGAN: The spirit of enterprise is sparked by the sunrise industries of high tech and by small business people with big ideas, people like Barbara Proctor, who rose from a ghetto to build a multimillion-dollar advertising agency in Chicago.
CORNISH: Proctor was born in poverty, but managed to go on to college in Alabama. In 1954, she'd just spent a summer in Michigan and was planning to return to her native North Carolina to teach but made a fateful stop in Chicago.
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BARBARA GARDNER PROCTOR: I lost my money to go back to North Carolina. As a matter of fact, I didn't lose it. I went shopping, and I spent it. And I lost my bus fare to go back to North Carolina. And in a sense, I've been 30 years trying to get my bus fare back home.
KELLY: Chicago became her home. But before that career in advertising, Proctor got work with a small record label called Vee-Jay, and it was that job that gave her a small hand in bringing an unknown British rock band to America.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FROM US TO YOU")
BEATLES: (Singing) Da-da-da-da (ph) dum-dum-dum (ph).
KELLY: Proctor swapped the rights for songs by the group The Four Seasons for those British singers.
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PROCTOR: I took The Four Seasons to London, and they traded with EMI Records to trade The Four Seasons' records for the Beatles.
CORNISH: Proctor's label released the Beatles, and after a couple of other jobs, she landed a job in advertising. When the agency she was working for proposed an ad borrowing images of social justice marches to sell hair care products, Proctor refused to take part, and she was fired.
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PROCTOR: It became quite apparent to me that if I did not begin to control my own destiny, I was going to have it changed about every five years.
KELLY: And control her own destiny she sure did. Proctor went on to found Procter & Gardner, for years a highly successful agency with major accounts including Kraft Foods, Alberto-Culver and Illinois Bell. Proctor died last month at the age of 86. We learned of her death this week.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Today is the 34th day of the longest government shutdown in history. And on Capitol Hill, the Senate took their very first votes on bills to reopen the government.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
That's right. One bill, backed by President Trump, would have reopened the government in exchange for $5.7 billion for a border wall. The other bill, backed by Democrats, would have opened the government for a short time to keep talking about the border. Now, both of these bills failed, but taking the step of voting seemed to shake up negotiations that have been stalled for weeks.
CORNISH: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer went immediately into a meeting to discuss an alternative path forward, one that could reopen the government and give lawmakers a few more weeks to work out the details. NPR's congressional reporter Kelsey Snell joins us now from Capitol Hill. And Kelsey, can you give us a sense of whether this new development is a sign of real progress?
KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Well, it's kind of hard to tell at this point because things came together really quickly after those two votes failed. A group of about 18 senators from both parties, almost evenly split, went to the Senate floor and they started talking about a plan for a three-week spending bill to reopen the government just to let the talks continue. And South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham was one of them. He said he'd already brought the idea to President Trump, and Graham said Congress needs to agree to give Trump clear parameters for talking about border security and spending. Here's what he said.
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LINDSEY GRAHAM: You're not giving President Trump a bunch of money to do anything he wants to with. He's got to spend it on a plan that the professionals have come up with.
SNELL: And he said Democrats would get some things they want, too.
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GRAHAM: You want $800 million for refugee assistance. You'll get it. We all need more judges. Two-hundred-fifty more border patrol agents on the border would be good for us all.
CORNISH: How are leaders responding to this idea?
SNELL: Well, as you said, McConnell and Schumer went and had a meeting about it right after the votes. And they talked about the possibilities, and by the time it was over, Schumer came out and he was smiling. He told all of his reporters that they were continuing to talk. But it's really hard to tell right now how far those talks will go, in part because the president followed up by saying he needs a down payment on the wall before he can agree. And that's something we know Democrats have rejected so far.
CORNISH: The impression has been that the Senate has been completely taking a back seat in these talks. But now it seems, clearly, the majority leader is engaged. Do we know what sparked this uptick in talks?
SNELL: People on the Hill are getting incredibly irritated. They want a deal, and every time they hear from constituents or they turn on the television, there's a new story about the impact of this shutdown on people who are voting for them and people who are hurting. Ohio Republican Rob Portman told many of his reporters that this shouldn't be so hard and that there's actually a deal to be had.
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ROB PORTMAN: Shutdowns are always stupid. This is a particularly stupid one because the underlying problem is one we can resolve. We're not that far - this is not health care.
SNELL: He also said this isn't abortion, this isn't a kind of social issue that divides the two parties. It is a conversation about border security, which in the abstract is something that both parties agree on. And that's kind of been the feeling from both parties.
CORNISH: Are House Democrats sharing that same frustration?
SNELL: Yeah. They have passed several bills that all send the same message that they want to reopen the government first and then talk about border security later. And they passed another one this week. They're getting really annoyed with the White House, too, because essentially they're calling the White House callous. They're really upset about some comments in particular that were made today by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. He was talking on CNBC and seemed to downplay the seriousness of the impact of the shutdown on workers. Here's what he said.
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WILBUR ROSS: I don't really quite understand why because the obligations that they would undertake - say, borrowing from a bank or a credit union - are, in effect, federally guaranteed. So the 30 days of pay that some people will be out, there's no real reason why they shouldn't be able to get a loan against it.
CORNISH: And we've been focused on the Senate, but House Democrats, are they offering anything new in terms of these negotiations?
SNELL: Yeah. Behind the scenes, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is working on a new proposal that would detail all of the border security spending they would be willing to do once the government reopens. Now, that's the important part, right? Once the government reopens. And what I'm told is that all together the money they're talking about proposing could meet or exceed the president's demand for $5.7 billion for a border wall. It just wouldn't be spent on the border wall. It would be spent on other types of border security, which Democrats say they gladly would support.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Kelsey Snell. Kelsey, thank you.
SNELL: Thank you.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
For government workers who aren't getting paid, the shutdown feels more dire every week, every day. Savings dry up. The bills keep coming. In the small town of Oakdale, La., working at the federal prison was a ticket to financial security - good salary, good benefits. Now the people with those jobs are making extreme decisions about how to keep their families afloat. Our co-host Ari Shapiro traveled to Oakdale to meet some of them.
ARI SHAPIRO, BYLINE: If Louisiana is a boot, Oakdale is the ankle, smack in the middle of the state, more than three hours' drive from New Orleans or Houston. A typical family in Oakdale makes about $30,000 a year. People at the prison earn thousands more than that from day one, so these were the jobs people were excited to get.
COREY TRAMMEL: In all of my years, I never thought that America couldn't pay their workers.
SHAPIRO: Corey Trammel is one of the local union leaders at the Federal Correctional Institution.
TRAMMEL: I thought of a whole lot that could go wrong in the prison setting but never to have an employee look me in the eyes and tell me, I cannot afford child care; I cannot afford gas to get to work; I can't afford my mortgage. How do you answer something like that?
SHAPIRO: The union arranged for us to meet some of the workers in town who are most affected by the shutdown - corrections officers, case managers, secretaries. We sat down with them at the Burger Inn, a local restaurant that's been in Oakdale since the '70s.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Five dollars even is your change, Sir. Thank you very much.
SHAPIRO: The managers are offering a special $5 meal for federal workers. Many of the people we met told us they can't even afford that right now, like Nathan Dyer. He's a big, burly guy who looks the part of a prison guard.
NATHAN DYER: I pray every morning on my way to work.
SHAPIRO: What is the prayer that you say?
DYER: Just hoping it - you know, it'll end soon. I think about a lot. Like, my little boy's birthday is Friday. And me and my wife talked about last night, like, we - I mean, I know years down the road, he'll never remember 'cause he's 2. He won't remember. But we're talking Friday night about, like, what are we going to buy him, you know what I mean?
SHAPIRO: The emotions just pour out of everyone. This conversation is the first time in a month that some of these people have let down their defenses with each other.
ANITA KADROVIC: We have a armor up, so some of the emotions that we've seen in here today we normally don't see because we're all supposed to be tough. We work in a prison. We're not supposed to show feeling.
SHAPIRO: This is Anita Kadrovich, a single mother. She spends her days driving inmates to medical appointments, but she's been postponing her own medical care. She has rheumatoid arthritis.
KADROVIC: Walgreen (ph) has called me five times to come get my prescriptions and stuff. I can't. I live 45 minutes away from Walgreens, so I'll make one trip whenever it gets time where I have to go and get my medicine and stuff and bring it home.
SHAPIRO: She has the time to make the 45-minute drive, but she doesn't have the gas money, so she needs to stack her errands before she goes to the town of Alexandria. A lot of people are having trouble buying gas. It's under $2 a gallon right now, and some still can't afford the commute to work. So the prison has set up cots for employees who can't make it back and forth each day.
KADROVIC: It's a good idea to have the cots and stuff for the staff. Well, when you're a single parent and you have teenage kids at home, you have to go home at night to make sure they're OK and they're taken care of. And you can't just leave them home alone.
SHAPIRO: Anita's son is 16 years old. She's canceled his after-school activities. There's no money for them even though she is still working more than 40 hours every week.
KADROVIC: And, you know, so now it's breaking everybody down. And then you got inmates taunting you, saying, oh, you didn't get a check today (laughter).
SHAPIRO: They do that.
KADROVIC: Yes, they do that.
SHAPIRO: A lot of federal workers are in very difficult situations where they're not dealing every day with inmates who are trying to take advantage of those difficult situations. And that must make it all the more challenging. I mean, you're talking about being taunted. Can any of you tell me about how the inmates are responding to or trying to take advantage of this?
DYER: You know, these inmates - you know they see - like you said, they see us not getting a paycheck, so that makes them more apt to try to bribe you. Hey, man, look; I'll give you $1,500 you bring a cellphone in, or I'll give you $500 for a pack of cigarettes. And it might not stop at a cellphone. It could be anything - dope, a gun. It puts that much more stress on everybody as a whole.
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
DYER: It's insane.
TIFFANY KIRKLIN: A lot of them think it's funny. I had one tell me he made more this month than I have. And he's - it's true because he got a paycheck, and I did not.
SHAPIRO: That's Tiffany Kirklin. Prisoners work jobs behind bars and get paid less than minimum wage, still more than the guards are making right now. As bad as this situation is, it just seems to keep getting worse each day the shutdown continues. One event that happened last week is on everyone's mind. Nathan is the first one in the circle to bring it up.
DYER: Like, this dude tried to take his life. And he's - you know, he's a good person. And, like, it's that serious to people. Like, people don't understand.
SHAPIRO: The whole group knows the prison guard who attempted suicide. He posted on Facebook about the pressure of the shutdown just before he tried to kill himself. The man is expected to make a full recovery.
DYER: It's unbelievable how many people don't realize. Like, I hear people, like, on different radio stations and stuff. Like, I heard today, and it made me so mad. I was furious. I heard these two guys say that - they were talking about how, like, restaurants and stuff will give you discounts. And they were like, these federal workers - they're, like, stray cats. You feed them once, and they're going to keep staying around. Like, I wanted to beat my stereo plum out the truck.
SHAPIRO: And when you're at work, you look around, and you know that everybody there...
DYER: Yeah, everybody's suffering.
SHAPIRO: ...Is going through what you all are describing.
KIRKLIN: You don't know what somebody's situation is. I don't know...
SHAPIRO: This is Tiffany.
KIRKLIN: Yeah, I don't know what Nathan's situation is. And we can say, well, they should have had savings, but you don't know what they had to go through. People are having to get second jobs. My husband can't be here tonight because he's working a second job.
SHAPIRO: What kind of job did he take?
KIRKLIN: Right now he's stocking at a convenience store.
SHAPIRO: Nobody who met us at the Burger Inn wanted to talk about politics. Border wall or no wall, they just said they resent powerful people using them as ammunition in this fight. As union leader Ronald Morris put it...
RONALD MORRIS: We don't want to be pawns in anybody's game.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SHAPIRO: In another part of the program, we'll explore how the consequences of this shutdown are rippling out across the town of Oakdale beyond the government employees who've been working without pay.
RODRICK JAMES: Them few hundred had a ripple effect because they have to go a barbershop, get haircuts. They had to come to different kind of restaurants and eat. Oh, that's not got to cease when you're not getting a paycheck, so everybody start suffering on the back end of this.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
One country, two men who say they're president - that's the state of play today in Venezuela one day after opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself interim president. This is awkward because Venezuela already has a president, Nicolas Maduro, who, while increasingly isolated, is refusing to step down. The U.S. is backing Guaido in this fight. And today, the State Department ordered some of its diplomats out of Venezuela. NPR's Philip Reeves is in the capital, Caracas. Hey there, Phil.
PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: Hi.
KELLY: So let's get up to speed on the latest just in terms of state of play. One key question as this unfolds has been, who controls the military? And they announced their allegiance today. Tell me what happened.
REEVES: Yes, the defense minister, General Vladimir Padrino Lopez, went on TV. He was surrounded by generals from the army's high command all wearing their uniforms and medals. And he announced that they view Maduro as the legitimate president of Venezuela and their commander in chief. He launched into a diatribe about what he called a coup that's being launched by forces on the far-right aided by what he called imperialists.
Venezuela has eight strategic military command centers around the country, and all of their commanders also separately announced their support for Maduro, a number of them doing that on state-run TV as well. So the army top brass for now is behind Maduro. If he loses their support, it's very likely game over for him. And the opposition, as you know, have been appealing to the army to abandon him and talking about an amnesty, although it's not yet clear how widely that amnesty would apply to the high command.
KELLY: And what about Maduro himself? Has he been spotted today?
REEVES: Oh, yes, very much so (laughter). He's been live on TV, making a lengthy speech at the Supreme Court. He is wearing his presidential gold chain and his presidential sash and holding a copy of the Constitution and explaining why he feels that Guaido's announcement that he's the interim president is illegal. At one point, he broke into English and said, hands off Venezuela. There were many attacks on the United States and particularly on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. He again, as with the military, is characterizing this as an attempted coup which was orchestrated by the U.S.
KELLY: Some very clear signaling going on there. What about Guaido? Do we know where he is?
REEVES: I don't think we do know where he is, but he has been heard from. He's been tweeting, mostly so far tweets thanking the long list of countries mostly in the Western Hemisphere that have stepped up and recognized him as the interim president of Venezuela after he made that announcement in such a dramatic fashion in front of a cheering crowd in the heart of Caracas yesterday. So he's been doing that.
And there's been one very important development as far as he's concerned, which concerns the fact that the U.S. is now saying that not only do they support and recognize him, but they plan to channel revenues towards him. And that means revenues from the oil that they buy off Venezuela, which is a considerable amount of money.
KELLY: Right, it's, like, a billion dollars a month. What kind of leverage is the U.S. hoping that might buy?
REEVES: Well, it has to be a very serious issue for the Maduro government. Venezuela's oil revenues are their main source of money. The industry is in collapse, but it's still something that is vitally important for the survival of the Maduro regime. So the statement made by John Bolton today that...
KELLY: The U.S. national security adviser.
REEVES: ...Yes - they're going to concentrate on trying to channel these revenues towards what the U.S. considers the legitimate government of this country - is a big development in this drama.
KELLY: And, Phil, you mentioned the huge crowds that were out on the streets yesterday to support Guaido. Are they back today?
REEVES: No, they're not. I went to the same area where there was a river of people yesterday going towards that big gathering where he made his announcement. And today it's different. Many shops are shut. The traffic is light. And on the street, there is a feeling of anxiety because Venezuelans have dared to hope for change before and been disappointed. And I think they know that this drama is not yet over by any means.
KELLY: NPR's Philip Reeves reporting on a fast-moving situation there in Caracas, Venezuela. Thank you, Phil.
REEVES: You're welcome.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
In Nicaragua, two prominent journalists who ran a popular cable news outlet are facing charges of terrorism. The government accuses them of stirring up anti-government anger. As NPR's Carrie Kahn reports, their case is the latest attack on the press in Nicaragua since a crackdown by President Daniel Ortega began nearly a year ago.
CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: The news program on cable outlet 100 Percent Noticias has long been a daily staple for Nicaraguans.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "IV PODER")
UNIDENTIFIED NEWSCASTER: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: That's until December 21. All of a sudden, the nightly news roundtable is abruptly interrupted. Seconds later, viewers hear news director Lucia Pineda's breathless pleas.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "IV PODER")
LUCIA PINEDA: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: "This just in. The latest news. There are riot police here at the station trying to enter," she says. In the background, you can hear loud crashes. Then the cable outlet's signal is cut completely. Pineda, the station's owners, Miguel Mora and his wife, Veronica Chavez, were hauled off to prison. More than 550 people have been jailed since protests broke out last April against President Daniel Ortega and his wife, now the country's vice president. More than 300 people have been killed. Mora and Pineda remain in Nicaragua's infamous Chipote prison, charged with fomenting hate, spreading fake news and terrorism, charges that face a possible 20-year prison sentence. Chavez was released.
VERONICA CHAVEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: "The charges against my husband are illogical. They have no legal basis. We are reporters. We show what is going on around us. If that's inciting hate then every reporter in the world is guilty of that," says Chavez. Ortega has shut down other media outlets and five nongovernmental groups. I spoke with Chavez in the office of the only human rights organization left operating in Nicaragua. On the street below were two unmarked vehicles. They followed Chavez here, as they do everywhere she goes. Attorney Julio Ariel Montenegro represents the journalists, as well as more than 75 other defendants facing similar anti-state charges.
JULIO ARIEL MONTENEGRO: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: Montenegro, who spent most of his legal career as a state prosecutor, says unfortunately, there is no longer an independent judicial system in Nicaragua. He says, instead, defendants face an orchestrated collaboration by prosecutors, police and judges. Natalie Southwick of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists says aggression against Nicaragua's tiny independent media has intensified rapidly.
NATALIE SOUTHWICK: It's just a sign of how much conditions there have deteriorated and how much cause for concern. These reporters have for their safety.
KAHN: Fifty journalists have fled to Costa Rica. Nicaragua's most prominent journalist, Carlos Fernando Chamorro, announced this week he, too, had joined them. President Ortega and his wife have characterized independent media workers and civic leaders as coup plotters. They rejected a permit for a planned march today, accusing the coalition of business leaders who had made the requests of also participating in attempts to overthrow the government. Veronica Chavez says it may appear that Ortega has quashed freedom of expression in Nicaragua.
CHAVEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: "But with our case, they overplayed their hand this time." She says both of the jailed journalists have vowed to stay strong. Carrie Kahn, NPR News, Managua, Nicaragua.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Late this afternoon, fragile signs of progress toward ending the partial government shutdown. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have been talking this afternoon. President Trump has said if they can come to an agreement to reopen the government, he might support it. Nevertheless, it's been 34 days of government workers going without pay, 34 days of a shutdown President Trump once said he was prepared to own politically.
Deal or no deal, how could the shutdown affect the president going forward? Well, to answer that question, I'm joined by David Winston. He's a Republican strategist. He worked for former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Welcome to the program.
DAVID WINSTON: Good evening. Thanks for having me.
CORNISH: So far, it appears the president's approval ratings have not fared well. Multiple polls show he's being blamed by a majority of people. Can you parse those numbers for us?
WINSTON: I'll try. There are two pieces. One, his job approval is about where it's been for a long time, which, granted, it has not been very good, but it's not like it's moved a lot. Having said that, the blame - because to some degree, he said that in terms of when he initially had that conversation with both Schumer and Speaker Pelosi that he, you know, he would take the blame. Well, it's been assigned to him. So having said that, that's in place.
But the real challenge here moving forward is - and the public is not happy about this shutdown. The real challenge here is the - what's the resolution? What's the solution? And what the electorate is looking at is who is going to solve that. And that's why today's initial movement is at least going to be seen as somewhat of at least an attempt to move that forward.
CORNISH: Now, why do you think that's the case? When we think back to some of the other offers and ideas that have come to the forefront, you saw people in the president's base, especially some activist commentators, who complained that he was caving - right? - or complained about his move to compromise.
WINSTON: Well, I - look. I mean, I think, clearly, he believes - and this is where you've got sort of the conflict of two perceived mandates, right? President Trump believes he got a mandate in 2016, and the wall was a part of that. And he feels that he's responsible for delivering on that. Speaker Pelosi has the inverse response to that in terms of what happened in 2018, her sense of that, given the sense - given the focus on the caravan and immigration is that she has the opposite view.
And so it's sort of you have the sort of irresistible force versus the immovable object sort of at play here. And really where the country is at is just, you know, solve this. Get the government back open. Let's actually work through immigration, but let's move things forward. Which is, again, why what I think you see Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer doing is at least if we're having votes, there is a discussion occurring.
CORNISH: But if you have a president who's very much thinking about his base, what have you learned in the numbers about where they are in terms of the wall? I mean, so far, what we've been seeing are numbers that say they want the wall and they're willing to let him fight for it.
WINSTON: Oh, absolutely.
CORNISH: So that doesn't give him much room, right?
WINSTON: No, it doesn't give him much room. I mean, absolutely, when you take a look at the Republican base, they want a wall. And, by the way, I would say in terms of Speaker Pelosi, her base absolutely doesn't want a wall. But this gets to the sort of dynamic of the electorate that sometimes people forget it's independents who decide who has a majority coalition.
CORNISH: Are there enough of them left?
WINSTON: Oh, yeah. No, no. They decided the last election. Bear with me. When Republicans won the majority back in 2010 - and this is according to exit polls - we won independents by 19. In this election, we lost them by 12. They decided who holds the majority. As they are, they're sort of the political center. And so the challenge here when you actually ask independents who do they think should be solving this problem, 51 percent say both. Right? And so the challenge of both parties is, how are they going to address the independents' concern because that's how you have a majority coalition.
CORNISH: A few seconds left. What do you think this means for future White House priorities?
WINSTON: I sort of - one at a time, I guess, is sort of my response to that. Let's get through this. I mean, I would suggest that one of the challenges here is, look, there have been some economic progress made, but you've got to build on it because there are too many people still perceiving themselves and are concerned about living paycheck to paycheck. And how do we help them break out of that cycle?
CORNISH: David Winston, Republican strategist, president of The Winston Group. Thank you for speaking with us.
WINSTON: Glad to be on. Thanks for having me.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
So I am ticketed to fly next week - a couple of flights, which means I read with some unease the warning sounded today by air traffic controllers and airline pilots and flight attendants and others in the nation's aviation industry. What they are warning is that as this shutdown drags on, it could soon compromise the safety and security of air travelers. Well, we asked NPR's David Schaper to check it out.
DAVID SCHAPER, BYLINE: Few industries are as reliant on the federal government as aviation. Pilots need federal air traffic controllers to keep planes a safe distance from one another. Airlines need government safety inspectors to certify planes. The feds license pilots and certify training, and federal transportation security officers screen passengers and their luggage at airports. And the list goes on. But after 34 days of many of those safety-critical employees working without pay and others not working at all, those who fly the planes are not happy about it.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SARA NELSON: We are less safe today.
SCHAPER: Sara Nelson is president of the Association of Flight Attendants.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NELSON: We understand that the critical networks - of layers of safety and security are not in place because we have people furloughed who fill those roles.
SCHAPER: Nelson spoke at a news conference at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., today along with pilots, air traffic controllers, aviation safety specialists and others. Three major U.S. airlines are also warning of the shutdown's financial toll. Southwest says it cannot launch a new service to Hawaii as planned because government approval of the route is on hold. JetBlue warns that the aviation system is near a tipping point, adding that the longer the shutdown goes on, the longer it will take for the air travel infrastructure to rebound. And American Airlines says it is affecting bookings and revenue.
The airlines worry about longer lines and wait times for passengers to get through security as TSA officers increasingly are calling supervisors reporting that they are unable to work their shifts because of the financial strain. One airport in particular where wait times have soared in recent days is Baltimore's, where at a news conference today Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, sharply criticized President Trump for the shutdown.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LARRY HOGAN: Of course we're concerned about safety. The whole issue is about border security. And yet, we're going to leave our airports and our coasts, you know, with no security. It makes no sense.
SCHAPER: Meanwhile, the toll is mounting on those security officers, aviation safety specialists and air traffic controllers who are working without pay.
LARRY MCCRAY: People are starting to become angry.
SCHAPER: Larry McCray is a traffic system specialist for the FAA and among those showing the strain of working more than a month without getting a paycheck.
MCCRAY: People are becoming angry on a daily basis - becoming more and more difficult to maintain.
ERIN BOWEN: The longer this continues - the longer you have folks who are mandatory employees coming in but not receiving a paycheck to do the job you're asking them to do, the more stress they're under.
SCHAPER: That's Dr. Erin Bowen, an expert in aviation psychology at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. And she says research shows that stress makes it difficult for people to do their jobs well.
BOWEN: And when your job is to do something like separate aircraft safely in the sky over a crowded city, those are not the folks you want who are distracted by what is really a preventable stressor.
SCHAPER: Other experts agree, saying the air travel system today is still as safe as it has ever been, but the government shutdown could bring a tipping point soon where safety and security could be compromised. David Schaper, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF TOSHIKO AKIYOSHI'S "KISARAZU JINKU")
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
In 2010, Panera started opening nonprofit cafes called Panera Cares. They told customers, pay what you can afford. Sarah Gonzalez with our Planet Money podcast looks at how that experiment turned out.
SARAH GONZALEZ, BYLINE: The last Panera Cares cafe looks pretty much like any Panera with a few little differences, like there's this wall of day-old bread when you walk in.
BARRY COMBS: This bread wall's for anybody else that's in need. We have a bin here, and you can add what you can. Grab a loaf of bread. Bring it to the cashiers, and we slice it for you.
GONZALEZ: Barry Combs is the manager of the Boston cafe.
COMBS: Everything is suggested amounts.
GONZALEZ: Here, you pay whatever you want. Instead of cash registers, there are clear donation bins.
Plexiglas, plastic.
And all the prices on the menu are just suggested prices.
OK, I'm going to do the broccoli cheddar soup.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: It's up to you to just place your value in the bin, however much you wish to donate.
GONZALEZ: I got a 20, so I'll do that.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Thanks so much. We really appreciate that.
GONZALEZ: The former CEO of Panera Ron Shaich started opening pay-what-you-want cafes hoping that enough wealthier customers would pay more than the suggested price so the needy could eat for less.
RON SHAICH: I fundamentally believed that there were enough good people in the world, that they would do the right thing.
GIANA ECKHARDT: My first impression of the idea was, this will never work.
GONZALEZ: Giana Eckhardt is a professor of marketing at Royal Holloway, University of London who was very skeptical of this experiment. She studies consumer behavior and says it went against everything she knew about how consumers behave. She says how people feel about a social issue like hunger doesn't really affect individual purchases made at a checkout counter. It depends more, she says, on things like how much cash you happen to have in your pocket when you walk in. Eckhardt observed the cafes for years. They ended up attracting a lot of homeless people.
ECKHARDT: And so you would see all of these shopping carts around, which also smelled in addition to the people themselves. And so the managers had to come up with rules about the size of bags that you could bring in.
GONZALEZ: Pretty early on, Cares cafes started telling customers that if they didn't have enough money to pay, they could volunteer for an hour in exchange for a meal, clean under the counters. But in the end, they were not attracting enough generous customers for Panera to break even.
ECKHARDT: What ended up happening is the people who were not food insecure did not want to eat lunch with people who were food insecure.
GONZALEZ: Almost nine years into the experiment, every Panera Cares cafe closed except for the one in Boston. But Ron Shaich still considers the experiment a success.
SHAICH: You've served millions of people over many, many years.
GONZALEZ: The one remaining pay-what-you-want Cares cafe is still losing money. The manager says they cover about 85 percent of their cost. Panera makes up the rest. But Eckhardt says there are more successful pay-what-you-want models, like the ones that make people feel like they're getting a gift.
ECKHARDT: So you think, oh, I've received a gift from someone that I don't even know, and this I-should-repay-that-gift is a very strong instinct inside people, I think.
GONZALEZ: Another thing that would work better - no prices. If you see even a suggested price, Eckhardt says that's the amount you think you should pay. With no price, people actually give more. Sarah Gonzalez, NPR News.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Some called him the godfather of underground film, but Jonas Mekas was a champion of all kinds of moviemaking. For nearly seven decades, Mekas was an anchor of the film community in New York City. He was an author, a critic, a film distributor and a movie maker whose influence extended far beyond his adopted home. Jonas Mekas has died yesterday at the age of 96. Ben Shapiro has this appreciation.
BEN SHAPIRO, BYLINE: Jonas Mekas came to New York City in 1949 from his native Lithuania after surviving a Nazi work camp. He bought a movie camera and began filming his surroundings right away, launching a lifelong passion for cinema, as he told me in 2006.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
JONAS MEKAS: I'm obsessed. I'm possessed. I mean, once you are in cinema, you cannot stop.
SHAPIRO: Mekas filmed life as he encountered it - his friends serving dinner, a pretty woman in the park, his lonely reflection behind the counter of a diner. He called them diary films, and he made hundreds of them, building small moments into movies lasting anywhere from a few minutes to over five hours.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
MEKAS: My films consist of, like, 30 seconds, one minute - little films like little poems, like sketches.
SHAPIRO: The camera work is often shaky. Images linger or speed by in a flurry. The soundtracks could be music or his own voice reflecting on his experience, as during his visit to Vienna in 1972.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNEY TO LITHUANIA")
MEKAS: (As himself) I begin to believe again in the indestructibility of the human spirit.
SHAPIRO: In 2006, film critic Amy Taubin said that Mekas' films evoke a sense of time gone by.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
AMY TAUBIN: It's more like a memory of an image than, you know, a big 35-millimeter image that has immense detail. The ghostliness of the image was something that he was intentionally after.
SHAPIRO: In the 1960s, Mekas was at the center of the New York avant garde art scene. His friends included Andy Warhol. And a decade later, Mekas helped to preserve Warhol's early films. He and his friends turned an old courthouse in Manhattan into Anthology Film Archives, today one of the largest collections of avant garde and underground films in the world. And he kept making his own, adopting digital video when he was in his 80s.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
MEKAS: From beginning with the Big Bang, life is always moving ahead. We should not be so attached to the past. Everything keeps changing, and it's beautiful that it's like that.
SHAPIRO: Jonas Mekas posted his most recent film to his website last August. It's his portrait of his visit to The Lamb pub, a famous literary haunt in London. For NPR News, this is Ben Shapiro in New York.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Maroon 5, along with rappers Big Boi and Travis Scott, will be performing at this year's Super Bowl halftime show. And they face a lot of criticism and pressure to back out. Numerous artists reportedly passed on the opportunity to perform to signal solidarity with Colin Kaepernick and other players who have taken the knee during the national anthem in protest of racial injustice. All this got us thinking about musician protests of the past, so we're joined by our friends of the show and legendary DJs Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito Garcia for a little bit of history. Hey there, guys.
ROBERT GARCIA, BYLINE: Hello.
ADRIAN BARTOS, BYLINE: Hello. Hello. Hello.
CORNISH: Hey. Bobbito, you've been thinking about anti-apartheid protests from the mid-'80s.
GARCIA: Yes.
CORNISH: So for the context here, the U.N. had called for a cultural and economic boycott of South Africa because of its white rule and official policy of racial segregation. First of all, tons of musicians actually ignored the boycott, right? Like, they played South Africa anyway.
GARCIA: Yes, they did. They crossed the line of the boycott for personal gain. You know, the whole thing was really a mess, right? Because, I mean, you had artists from South Africa exiled from the country having expressed disdain for the political system there. And then you had other artists who could perform to make the decision against it. And there were artists who boycotted.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SUN CITY")
ARTISTS UNITED AGAINST APARTHEID: (Singing) Ain't gonna play Sun City.
CORNISH: And the focus comes to fall on Sun City, a whites-only resort during apartheid. And this becomes, in a way, a kind of symbol, right?
GARCIA: Yes. Steven Van Zandt, who is a member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, corralled a phenomenal amount of support - Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen. I mean, we're talking about as American as you can get when it comes to creating rock. He also did something kind of against the grain in pop and rock music at the time which was he enlisted the help of Run D.M.C., which were, you know, as major as one could imagine.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SUN CITY")
ARTISTS UNITED AGAINST APARTHEID: (Rapping) We're rockers and rappers, united and strong. We're here to talk about South Africa. We don't like what's going on.
BARTOS: The co-producer of the record was Arthur Baker, one of the most important producers of electro and early hip-hop. You know, Steve might be the more recognizable character out of the production crew, but Arthur Baker is equally as important.
CORNISH: Bobbito, for you, when you listen back to this song and you think about it in the context of what kind of statement it's trying to make at the time, how strong was that statement? How significant was that moment?
GARCIA: This protest song against Sun City was not only a statement for the artists, but it came at a moment when MTV was at its zenith in terms of reach to an audience that was completely emerging and new - high school and college students. But, you know, this song was a cog in a ginormous - it's a national shift because in 1994, apartheid ended.
CORNISH: I want to stay with this period of time because there's a song I remember very much from 1985, which is "We Are The World."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WE ARE THE WORLD")
CYNDI LAUPER: (Singing) Well, well, well, let's realize...
CORNISH: And that was a song that brought together artists - essentially, I guess - to raise money and awareness for the famine in Ethiopia. Let's take a listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WE ARE THE WORLD")
USA FOR AFRICA: (Singing) We are the world. We are the children.
GARCIA: Stretch, should we hold hands?
(LAUGHTER)
BARTOS: Hold on. I need a lighter.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WE ARE THE WORLD")
USA FOR AFRICA: (Singing) So let's start giving.
GARCIA: Wait. Is that Audie singing backup?
BARTOS: (Laughter).
CORNISH: Listen. It might as well have been because I think the thing that was remarkable about this song is everyone and their mother was in it, right? Can you talk about, again, this as a political moment? Is that how it was remembered? Because now it has a little bit of a schlocky reputation.
BARTOS: I felt "Sun City" was, you know, more about getting active and being aware, whereas "We Are The World" felt a little bit - kind of just a feel-good dressing.
CORNISH: Yeah. It's also easier to be against famine maybe than, at the time, it was to be against racism. I don't know.
BARTOS: Sure. "We Are The World" just asked you to feel something, whereas "Sun City" is asking you maybe to take a stance.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SUN CITY")
ARTISTS UNITED AGAINST APARTHEID: (Singing) Relocation to phony homelands. Separation of families, I can't understand.
CORNISH: Bobbito, do you think artists today have more or less of a platform for politics than the moments we were talking about?
GARCIA: Well, in our modern era, artists have an incredible reach on a daily basis in their followers' minds and hearts. I think it's every artist's responsibility, once they get that platform, if they have a consciousness about what is righteous and what is not, to express that.
I think the power of seeing Bob Dylan with Run D.M.C. and Gil Scott-Heron and Miles Davis - and I can't escape the idea of being on my hand-me-down couch in my living room watching these videos for the first time. And I hope that artists can have the vision that perhaps not only can they make a change in our modern era, but they can be an inspiration for artists 20, 30 years from now in the way that these artists were back then.
GARCIA: That's Bobbito Garcia and Stretch Armstrong. Thank you both for talking about this with us.
BARTOS: Thanks, Audie.
GARCIA: Why, thank you, Audie.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
On Capitol Hill today, on what is Day 34 of a partial government shutdown, the Senate voted on two proposals to reopen the government. It's safe to say no one thought either of those bills would pass, and they didn't. Senate leaders are still trying to negotiate at this hour, but the White House says any plan to reopen the government would need to include a down payment on a border wall.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Meanwhile, over on the House side, Speaker Nancy Pelosi says her strategy is unchanged. No negotiation on border funding until the shutdown ends.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NANCY PELOSI: We are doing what we have been doing all along, working on our congressional responsibility to write bills to keep government open.
KELLY: Pelosi may not be negotiating, but there is a group of 30 moderate House Democrats trying to break the logjam, and we're going to meet one of them now. Dean Phillips is a freshman Democrat from a swing district in Minnesota. He joins me now from Capitol Hill.
And Congressman, welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, and welcome to Washington, although I'm not sure this is quite exactly what you thought you were signing up for.
DEAN PHILLIPS: Well, thank you and thank you.
KELLY: I want to understand exactly what this letter that you and 29 others have written is proposing. If I may sum it up, you wrote to Speaker Pelosi, and the gist is, let's guarantee a House vote on whether to fund a wall or not, if the president will agree to reopen the government?
PHILLIPS: It is. And I do support the speaker's perspective. That is, the precedent that shutdowns create for this country, the gravity, for both now and the future, is worth holding our ground for. And with that said, we have reasonable people on both sides of the aisle that know that we can achieve a solution. And the sad truth is I've only been in Washington now for a few weeks, but the palpable distrust within the halls and walls of Congress prevents something that seems so easy when you're on the outside, as it did to me for so many years, from being accomplished.
And this letter was simply trying to bridge the gap of distrust, if you will, ensuring to our friends on the other side of the aisle and the president if we reopen government, there is a appetite to get this done. That is our message. We think it's reasonable. And yet I understand why there's distrust on both sides. And that's why we find ourselves in this stalemate. But I can say that we...
KELLY: Have you had any kind of - pardon me. Have you had any kind of response to your letter?
PHILLIPS: I had a very thoughtful thank-you for the letter, and it comes from other freshmen, as you referenced. We are a small but mighty group. Actually, the freshman class between Democrats and Republicans, a hundred strong, has an unbelievable sense of collegiality, like-mindedness. We certainly come from different backgrounds, life experiences and perspectives. But there is a growing belief in that we as a freshman class have a responsibility to bring process back to Congress, regular order back to Congress. And we are doing what we can with the limited resources available to us right now.
KELLY: Right. The message from all y'all has been, we didn't start the shutdown, but let's try to find a way to end it. Let me ask. I mean, is your honest sense that there is any movement on the House side? We're seeing maybe some glimmers of movement on the Senate side of negotiations going on behind doors. Are you seeing any of that on the House side?
PHILLIPS: I have sensed that there is - that there are - there's conversation going on. I think there are small groups, larger groups. And ultimately, leadership holds the cards. That's how it works here. I recognize that. I was part of a group just last week that visited the White House, a group of Republicans and Democrats as part of the Problem Solvers Caucus to send a message to the president right at the table and to his face that there is like-mindedness between both sides if you simply open the government.
I do think we are recognizing the human toll this is taking. This shutdown is affecting our national safety, our security, our economy, our image, our future, and most importantly, human beings. I just spent the last hour on the phone with people in my district who are suffering because of this. And we have to recognize that we have a shared interest in ensuring this doesn't happen again. And there are conversations going on right now about how we can prevent this nonsense and return to the responsibility that we came here for.
KELLY: In the moments we have left - as you alluded to, it is Speaker Pelosi who's going to have to indicate some kind of flexibility for House Democrats to move this forward. Are you seeing any indication of that happening?
PHILLIPS: I do believe, again, it's predicated on a reopening of government. In that case, most assuredly there will be movement. I've never believed this was an issue of money and resources. We are a nation blessed with ample resources to take care of our needs. It's how we allocate them. There is a like-minded belief on the Democratic caucus that we need enhanced border security, and we certainly need immigration reform. We're making our way there. And I'm eager to get to it. We need the government to reopen to get there.
KELLY: Congressman, we'll leave it there. That's Congressman Dean Phillips, Democrat of Minnesota. Thanks very much for taking the time.
PHILLIPS: Many thanks. Bye-bye.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
U.S. diplomats are defying Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's order to leave the country. The Trump administration says it no longer recognizes Maduro's presidency. It is dealing instead with the head of Venezuela's National Assembly. NPR's Michele Kelemen has more on this standoff.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is ignoring Maduro's demand that U.S. diplomats leave Venezuela within 72 hours. Pompeo told the Organization of American States today that the U.S. considers any actions and declarations by Maduro as illegitimate and invalid.
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MIKE POMPEO: The regime of former President Nicolas Maduro is illegitimate. His regime is morally bankrupt. It's economically incompetent, and it is profoundly corrupt. It is undemocratic to the core.
KELEMEN: Venezuela's ambassador to the OAS accuses the U.S. of promoting a coup d'etat and an atrocity against Venezuela's sovereignty. But most of the other ambassadors at that meeting are backing the U.S. position, denouncing Maduro's rule and urging security forces not to crack down on protesters. Secretary Pompeo says those forces should protect the interim president, Juan Guido, and stop arresting citizens who are rising up.
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POMPEO: So I reiterate our warning about any decision by remnant elements of the Maduro regime to use violence to repress the peaceful democratic transition.
KELEMEN: The U.S. is offering $20 million in initial humanitarian aid. And national security adviser John Bolton says officials are looking at ways to cut off revenue streams to Maduro. Bolton also told reporters outside the White House today that U.S. diplomats are staying in Caracas.
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JOHN BOLTON: Our personnel are still there. They've been invited to stay by the legitimate government. And consistent with their safety, that's our intention. But we're working really around the clock here to do what we can to strengthen the new government.
KELEMEN: The State Department is evacuating family members and nonessential personnel, and Pompeo says the U.S. will take what he calls appropriate actions to hold to account anyone who endangers the safety and security of the U.S. mission. Still, one former Foreign Service officer, Molly Montgomery, is worried.
MOLLY MONTGOMERY: This really does put our diplomats in the middle of a game of chicken that is in the midst of an already really volatile situation. And I would also just respectfully say to Secretary Pompeo that action after the fact isn't good enough.
KELEMEN: Montgomery, who's now with the Albright Stonebridge Group, says usually diplomatic security is extremely conservative and doesn't let politics come into play.
MONTGOMERY: Senator Marco Rubio has said that allowing our diplomats to leave would be tantamount to recognizing Maduro's continued authority. And I would just say that our diplomats are not political pawns, and so their safety should come first.
KELEMEN: Much will depend on whether Venezuelan security forces remain loyal to Maduro or switch sides to protect the interim president backed by the U.S. The State Department says it is monitoring the security situation in real time, 24 hours a day, and is prepared to do what's needed to keep Americans safe. Administration officials have not ruled out military options, though they say they're focused on economic and diplomatic pressure. Maduro meantime says he is closing Venezuela's embassy and consulates here in the U.S. Michele Kelemen, NPR News, the State Department.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The last 24 hours haven't been good for the journalism industry. Three large media companies have announced significant layoffs. They include the digital media upstart BuzzFeed, also the media division at Verizon, which includes The Huffington Post, Yahoo and AOL, and Gannett, which owns USA Today as well as local newspapers across the country. To talk more about digital journalism's latest struggles, we are joined by Edmund Lee. He covers the industry for The New York Times. Welcome to the program.
EDMUND LEE: Thanks for having me.
CORNISH: So tell us about the scope of this latest round of layoffs. How significant are they for these companies?
LEE: So the first company to really sort of get into here is BuzzFeed, I think. They announced laying off 15 percent of its workforce - a little over 200 people. That's pretty big for them. Verizon Media Group, which owns AOL and Huffington Post, they also announced a significant layoff - about 8 percent. But that's, like, 800 people. So that's a lot of people there. Gannett took a bunch of cuts as well, but they've been cutting for years now. So this is a little less - I don't want to say less significant, but it's more par for the course for them.
CORNISH: Are we looking at a situation where these companies are actually not profitable or just not profitable (laughter) to their shareholders?
LEE: The situation is that some of these companies are not profitable, and they need to become profitable - BuzzFeed, for example. Other companies like Gannett have decent profits at a lot of their papers, but they're shrinking. They're just getting smaller. And I think that's the hard thing to sustain. So in either case, the future of business is a little bit in doubt. And so cutting staff relieves some of the pressure as terrible as that is with people losing their jobs.
CORNISH: Focusing on digital media for a second - what are some of the specific challenges facing those companies?
LEE: For digital media companies, advertising is a huge problem. Right now, Google and Facebook take the lion's share of those dollars. And as big of an audience as these companies have, like BuzzFeed, they're just not getting enough dollar per viewer from advertisers as they would otherwise. And I think that's a huge existential problem going forward, at least for their business.
CORNISH: Can you talk more about the role of Google and Facebook?
LEE: The conceit around the Internet is it's sort of vast and endless and all kinds of places to go. In reality, it's really just Facebook and Google and sort of everyone else.
CORNISH: You mean where people are spending their time.
LEE: Exactly. And so as a result, advertising dollars largely go to these two platforms. The BuzzFeeds and the Vices and the Vox Medias of the world - their audiences pale in comparison. And it's just that much harder for a digital publisher, despite the good content that they create and the great journalism that they do, to attract those ad dollars or at least in a way that is sustainable for them going forward.
CORNISH: In the meantime, there is this ongoing discussion about the spread of fake news when it comes to social media on platforms like Facebook. What does all of this mean - this industry kind of shakeup - for journalism online?
LEE: So that's actually been the pitch that a BuzzFeed might make to Facebook, which is, hey, look, you're having a fake news problem; you're having problems with Russian trolls and misinformation; use our content; we have good, vetted content that people like; so pay us for that and make sure that, you know, it's good for your community, and you don't have to worry about fake news. At the same time, Facebook's whole identity is wrapped up in user-generated content. So it's a hard switch for them to make. I think they understand the argument, but it would be a fundamental change for them. So that's the tension right now between publishers and platforms.
CORNISH: Now that we've seen layoffs, what are the next steps ahead? What do you anticipate will be the move for companies that have pretty much focused on using an advertising model in order to pay for their journalism?
LEE: So I think the big digital media companies - BuzzFeed, Vice, Vox Media, Refinery - they're going through kind of an identity crisis, an existential crisis, whatever you want to call it where, in the next 12 to 18 months, some kind of big action is going to have to happen. One of those things could be big mergers. That - you could see BuzzFeed tie up with one of these other online publishers where they get even bigger. The reason for that is that by getting bigger, you have more scale. You can sort of lobby for more ad dollars. You can negotiate better with the Facebooks and the YouTubes of the world. And if they can't make something like that happen, they're going to have to go into some kind of, like, a pay model like The New York Times. And that's anathema to how a lot of these digital publishers started. They want it to be as widely available as possible. They like virality. Paywalls kind of hinder that.
CORNISH: Edmund Lee. He reports on media for The New York Times. Thank you for speaking with us.
LEE: Anytime.
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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Around 800,000 federal workers are off the job or working without pay right now. And despite negotiations between Senate leaders this afternoon, many of those federal workers will likely miss their second paycheck tomorrow. It's been more than a month since the shutdown started. And when people lose paychecks, it ripples out into the communities where those workers live.
Our co-host Ari Shapiro is reporting today from the small town of Oakdale, La., where it seems that everyone knows somebody who's been touched by the shutdown.
ARI SHAPIRO, BYLINE: Good morning.
JAMES KIRKLIN: Hey, good morning.
SHAPIRO: Hey, I'm Ari.
J. KIRKLIN: All right - James.
SHAPIRO: How's it going, James? Nice to meet you.
Let's start at the center of this crisis and work our way out. James and Tiffany Kirklin have both worked at the Federal Correctional Institution in Oakdale for five years.
TIFFANY KIRKLIN: Matter of fact, we started the same exact day (laughter).
SHAPIRO: They're raising three girls in this one-story house on a corner lot with a trampoline in the backyard. And on this rainy day, there's nowhere to take the kids. No gas money means they can't drive anywhere. No new after-school activities either - fees are too high. Twelve-year-old Mandi is in the seventh grade.
MANDI KIRKLIN: We can't do softball. We can barely do basketball.
T. KIRKLIN: It's hard to hear the kids say things like that. You know, they don't understand. And their classmates don't understand. And a lot of the teachers don't know that both their parents work for the federal government, so they don't know that they're not getting a paycheck. And all my family's gone, so we have his family here to kind of help out, you know?
SHAPIRO: James, is it hard to ask for help from relatives?
J. KIRKLIN: Yeah, it is. It is very difficult. I mean, it's - kind of makes - make you feel like your self-worth is down when you can't support your own self, especially when you're used to having two government incomes and you have nothing...
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
J. KIRKLIN: ...You know?
SHAPIRO: Tiffany and James are both working more than 40 hours a week at jobs that are paying them nothing right now. Tiffany has spent hours on the phone with creditors asking to delay car payments, insurance payments. She canceled the cable. She leads us to the kitchen and opens the deep freezer. It's mostly empty.
T. KIRKLIN: I know the other day, we were in the grocery store, and I want to say it was Natali asked for something. I kind of just broke down in the grocery store because we've never had - not had money for extra food, you know? Now, we might not have the extra money to go bowling, but we've never not had the extra money. I've never deprived my kids of food.
SHAPIRO: Now that this has been going on for some five weeks, how does this week feel different from two or three weeks ago when this was still just starting?
T. KIRKLIN: I think the biggest difference is when you look at your checking account and you see you - well, last week I had $2,500 in the checking account, and this week I have 900. And you know that you're spending more money, and there's nothing coming back in.
J. KIRKLIN: The longer it goes, you know, it's kind of like, you know, the lights dimming. You know, most people can hear the light at the end of tunnel. The lights going away for us, I mean, 'cause it doesn't seem like it's going to get any better.
SHAPIRO: So that's the view from the bullseye of the crisis here in Oakdale, La. Now let's follow the circles outward to Canal Coffee, where Rodrick James wears a bright-pink T-shirt with his nickname Coffee Man.
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SHAPIRO: He's one of Oakdale's small business owners.
RODRICK JAMES: With the government shut down, when they start - it start out just - they thought that it just will affect just federal workers and everything. Now it's starting to affect our small business.
SHAPIRO: There's about 8,000 people that live in Oakdale, and the federal prison employs a few hundred. So explain why those few hundred people not getting paid has a ripple effect through...
JAMES: Oh.
SHAPIRO: ...This town of thousands.
JAMES: Well, I would say them few hundred had a ripple effect because they have to go a barbershop, get haircuts. They had to come to different kind of restaurants and eat. Oh, that's not got to cease when you're not getting a paycheck, so everybody start suffering on the back end of this.
SHAPIRO: The barbershop isn't just a hypothetical example. Rodrick James introduces us to Justin Germaine Boyd, the best barber in the entire parish, the Coffee Man says. This barber isn't cutting hair right now. In the middle of the afternoon, he's sitting in Canal Coffee, sipping a drink.
Are you seeing fewer people come and get their hair cut since federal employees stopped getting paid?
JUSTIN GERMAINE BOYD: Oh, in the last month, most of the guys that come in from the federal prison - it's been real slow for them, you know?
SHAPIRO: In Oakdale, a typical family makes about $30,000 a year. Compared to that prison, workers got paid well. Boyd says at his barbershop, the guys who worked at the prison always gave the best tips.
What does that mean for your income?
BOYD: On a average week before the shutdown, I would do at least 20 to 25 heads a day. I literally cleared $300 a day in the barbershop. Since this shutdown, my weekdays, I may get up to, like, 180.
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SHAPIRO: When the barber, the Coffee Man and the federal workers aren't making the money they used to, people don't eat out as much. And Megan Crawford feels that. Her family owns the Burger Inn right in the center of Oakdale.
MEGAN CRAWFORD: Burger Inn's an icon. People who've moved away - when they come home, their first stop is Burger Inn.
SHAPIRO: So when you look at the amount of money that you've made this January compared to other Januarys...
CRAWFORD: It started to really fall off after that first paycheck was missed. And so it's definitely fallen off tremendously the past week.
SHAPIRO: We've been talking to people who have been working for the last month without getting paid. So how do you see that here at this restaurant that you own?
CRAWFORD: It affects us as a business down to our employees. We're cutting hours of our employees, having to cut workers altogether because we are not having the influx.
SHAPIRO: Tell me about that. How much have you had to cut back?
CRAWFORD: We're working short shift. So normally we work seven a shift. We work - we've cut back to six. Last week, I think we were down $400 on our payroll just from cutting.
SHAPIRO: Let's go out one more layer. The mayor's office is our outermost circle, encompassing the whole town of Oakdale. And even people here are feeling the pain. The mayor's administrative assistant is married to a prison employee who's working without pay. The mayor's own wife is one of the government workers not getting a salary right now. Mayor Gene Paul sits in an office full of football memorabilia. A clock on the wall interrupts us.
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GENE PAUL: That's my Saints one.
SHAPIRO: That's your - is that your Saints cuckoo clock?
PAUL: Yeah.
SHAPIRO: Now that we're approaching the end of the month, people's bills are due. At least this is one place the mayor says the city can help.
PAUL: You know, we're going to work with them. We're not cutting no one's water off. I mean, we're just not going to do that. They're going to have services, you know, until this thing gets resolved. And that's how we survive. Oakdale survives on sewer and water. I mean, that's our income.
SHAPIRO: You mean the city's income.
PAUL: Yeah.
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
PAUL: The city's income.
SHAPIRO: So if people aren't paying their water and sewer bills...
PAUL: So if they don't pay, it affects our operation.
SHAPIRO: Someday this crisis will be over. Government employees will get a check for these weeks they've been working without pay. But then the mayor says there's a broader fear.
PAUL: It's a long-term insecurity in a sense, you know, because you don't know what's going to happen a year from now. Are they going to play with me next year?
SHAPIRO: Who would make a down payment on a house or open a small business with that kind of insecurity, he asks. How can anyone build a life around this kind of uncertainty?
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
In the latest issue of The New Yorker, you'll find a story about Germany that opens with an account of a sickening crime - a 14-year-old girl, Susanna, never came home from a sleepover. Her body was eventually found in woods not 10 miles from her house. She had been raped and strangled. German police were quick to identify a suspect - a 21-year-old named Ali Bashar who lived in a nearby shelter for refugees. He and his family fled back to the family home in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq.
The case from last May has activated fault lines across Germany. Yascha Mounk wrote The New Yorker story and joins me now in the studio. Hi, Yascha.
YASCHA MOUNK: Hi.
KELLY: Your Letter From Germany explores how this one teenager's death became a political weapon.
MOUNK: Yes. This is obviously a very tragic murder case, but what's most striking about it is that as I was travelling across the country from north to south, from east to west, she kept popping up, as it were. So I was at this huge far-right rally in the eastern city of Chemnitz - 8,000 people marching against Angela Merkel's relatively generous refugee policy. And in the first row was a poster of Suzanna's face made up like a funeral notice with the place and the name of her death prominently displayed on it.
KELLY: As you reported this, you traveled all over the country. And you found a very different reaction and level of tolerance for immigration and refugees in different parts of Germany. Explain.
MOUNK: Yeah. So one of the fascinating people I spoke to for the piece helped to organize that big far-right protest in Chemnitz. And he essentially said, look, from our perspective, west of Germany is already lost.
KELLY: Lost?
MOUNK: If people in Cologne or Munich went on the streets to protest against the country's immigration policy, and I quote, he said, "hordes of Arabs would beat up the children in school the next day. But here in Eastern Germany, there's still few enough people with migrant roots that we can keep them out if only we create a sufficiently hostile atmosphere to them."
KELLY: There are a lot of layers to Susanna Feldmann's story, one of which is that her mom, Diana Feldmann, is herself a Jewish immigrant from Moldova. And her father was a Kurd who grew up in Turkey. Is that right?
MOUNK: Yeah, that's right. So one of the really fascinating pieces of the story is that this family is itself a representation of Germany's multi-ethnic future. The murdered girl's mother said, look, I didn't have a problem with her going and hanging out at this shelter for refugees because she'd been friends with her murderer and his family for a while. You know, in school, they always tell people, go and make friends with kids who are from somewhere else. And it wasn't really very political.
But she has been radicalized as a result of this experience. And so when you look at her Facebook page today, it very clearly blames Angela Merkel for the death of her child. She calls for very restrictive immigration policies, and she sympathizes with the far-right.
KELLY: How about for you? How has reporting this story changed your view of the country where you were born and grew up?
MOUNK: Well, I think it made me very worried about the strength of the far-right in the country. I did not expect the people who want to exploit crimes like this one to be so sophisticated and so effective in what they do. I also was a little taken aback by some of the complacency from the local authorities.
So when you look at this murder case, the suspected murderer had committed a string of other crimes and nothing had ever really happened to him. And so I think one of the ways to respond to this ferment is to make sure that the authorities do their job in order to give the bulk of German citizens, who are not xenophobic, the confidence they need that they're going to be safe.
KELLY: What is the status of the suspect's case, by the way? Has he been charged, convicted?
MOUNK: He has been charged. And his trial is going to take place in the coming months.
KELLY: I'm curious - as Germany wrestles with these questions about immigration and national identity and the far-right, to what extent does German history - does World War II hang over this?
MOUNK: Very strongly. So at one point, I was at a different protest in the southwest of Germany. And the lady holding the speech there said, look, the German mainstream wants us to feel guilty for the past. And they're using that in order to justify a policy that would change this country radically. Well, we shouldn't feel guilty in that kind of way anymore. We shouldn't allow them to use this against us.
So the debate between the part of Germany which takes the lessons of World War II seriously and thinks that it has to be at the root of what it means to be German today and the people who angrily reject this reading of history is at the core of Germany's debate today.
KELLY: Yascha Mounk. He is an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University and author of the Letter From Germany in this week's New Yorker. Yascha Mounk, thank you.
MOUNK: Thank you so much.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
We're going to bring in now NPR's White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe, and she is going to give us the update on what's happening now. Ayesha, what have you learned from the White House point of view tonight?
AYESHA RASCOE, BYLINE: So the White House is kind of responding to these talks between McConnell and Schumer meeting to kind of break this stalemate. So Trump was asked about their talks, and this is what he had to say.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: One of the ideas suggested is they open it and they pay a sort of a pro-rated down payment for the wall.
CORNISH: OK. That idea, pro-rated, what does that mean?
RASCOE: It's not really clear what he meant by pro-rated. So you have the White House saying they would be open to this three-week, short-term spending bill to open the government, but that they would need, they said, a large down payment on the wall. Now President Trump is saying that could be a pro-rated down payment on the wall. It's not really clear what that means. But the bottom line is, there has to be some wall funding for this to go forward with the president's support.
So there has been some movement here from the White House because in the past, the White House had said they would not support a short-term spending bill. They wanted a long-term deal and not to just kind of kick the can down the road a few weeks. So they seem to be at least willing to kind of consider reopening the government, but they still say these are their demands that have to be met.
CORNISH: OK. Seems to be willing to consider, right? (Laughter) There's a lot of qualifiers there. Does this mean they see a viable path forward?
RASCOE: It's not clear whether there is a path forward here. It doesn't seem like both sides are really there yet when it comes to a compromise. In some ways, the situation seems to be where it has been for the past few weeks. You have the White House still asking for wall money. And Speaker Nancy Pelosi responded to Trump's comments, and basically she said it is not reasonable to include money for a wall in a deal to reopen the government. So she's still taking that position, and the Democrats have made clear they're not providing that funding.
So but I guess at least you have the two sides talking to each other. And there does seem to be some pressure building, now that you had those two bills fail in the Senate, and that perhaps there could be some middle ground here where the government would be reopened for a short amount of time, three weeks, and while some type of compromise is worked out.
CORNISH: Were the Senate votes driving this thaw?
RASCOE: It seems like it. The president is saying that Republicans are really standing together in the Senate, and he kind of held out the vote for his plan as an example of them, of Republicans standing strong. The problem is the president's plan got fewer votes than the Democrats' plan. And more Democrats - I mean more Republicans broke ranks to vote for the Democrats' plan than the opposite. So this was not really a victory for the White House, and it does make it harder for them to argue that they have the support they need to keep the government closed until they get a wall.
And then in addition to all of that, you have all of these polls coming out basically showing that President Trump's approval is falling and that the public is blaming him for this shutdown. And they're also saying, the public is saying, that a shutdown is not worth - a wall is not worth a government shutdown.
CORNISH: That's NPR's White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe. Ayesha, thank you for your reporting.
RASCOE: Thank you.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
After weeks of a stalemate, today's two failed Senate votes and countless hours of unpaid work by federal workers - a glimmer of progress. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer met this afternoon to discuss a three-week stopgap bill that could reopen the government. Meanwhile, President Trump says he's open to a compromise with Democrats if it includes a down payment on a border wall. There's no deal, but it's more movement than we've seen in a while.
I'm joined by Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. Welcome to the program.
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: Hi, Audie - good to be with you.
CORNISH: So when we talk about this potential compromise, my first question is about the idea of a down payment. What would that mean? How much money would that be?
VAN HOLLEN: Well, this is a new issue that President Trump just threw into the mix after we'd proceeded on the Senate floor to bring together a bipartisan group of senators to agree to support an amendment - a bipartisan amendment to reopen the government for three weeks - not ideal but the best option right now - and use that time to work out a longer-term solution. It could include border security issues. It could include immigration issues. And that was a good news moment in the United States Senate.
Just as we were sort of leaving the floor there together on a bipartisan basis, we got news that the president would only accept a three-week opening of the government if he got, quote, "a big down payment on the wall." And it's not clear exactly what he means, but the whole purpose of this bipartisan effort was to say, let's take time out, and let's use that time to have a negotiation. We're not going to have any preconditions other than an understanding that we're going to try in a very serious way to work all this out.
CORNISH: What makes you think in three weeks you could find areas of compromise that you couldn't find in the last 34 days.
VAN HOLLEN: Well, when you're trying to negotiate under this effort the president's undertaken to hold the country hostage, it's very, very difficult. And one of the reasons is because nobody, Republicans or Democrats, want to reward the tactic of a government shutdown because that will just encourage the president to engage in future shutdowns.
In fact, one of the areas where there's growing bipartisan consensus is that whatever agreement is ultimately reached includes legislation that would essentially prevent government shutdowns. There are ways to do it. But the main point here - and this is what we thought was a positive step this evening - was a pretty strong bipartisan group of senators saying, let's take this time out; let's take a breather, and let's work this out. We do think that we can find a solution here.
CORNISH: I want to jump in because, also, CNN is reporting that the White House is also preparing a draft proclamation to declare a national emergency. Do you have any recourse to stop such a move if the White House tried to use that technique to find its money for its border security?
VAN HOLLEN: Well, the Congress doesn't have a viable response to that because it would ultimately require legislation and enough votes to overcome a presidential veto. So the effort to address that abuse of power would be through the courts. And the reality is the only crisis that we've got here is the one that President Trump has created by shutting down the government, something he said back in December he'd be proud to do. And it would be quite an abuse of power to call for the use of emergency powers when the only real crisis here is the one that was created by the president with the shutdown.
CORNISH: I realize for Democrats very much so it's important that the president be the one to take the blame for this shutdown, but voters are looking at both parties and seeing a problem. So what do you say to the thousands of government workers who hear you talking about not rewarding tactics and things like that and who are, you know, standing in line at food banks?
VAN HOLLEN: Well, and I was just with many of them yesterday at a food bank. And Senator Cardin and I visited with a group of small businesses in our state of Maryland today. And absolutely you have a situation now where people are being punished, federal employees who aren't getting paychecks and others. That is exactly why, Audie, you had a group of bipartisan senators come today after the other two votes had failed and said, let's have a fresh start; let's have this three-week timeout and use that time constructively. And that's what I hope we will do. And Senator McConnell and Senator Schumer are working, I believe, to try to accomplish that.
CORNISH: That's Chris Van Hollen, Democratic senator from Maryland. Thank you for speaking with ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
VAN HOLLEN: Thank you.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
If you've spent time in the dating world, you might be familiar with ghosting - when someone you're seeing suddenly vanishes and stops answering your calls. Well, with low unemployment rates and a solid job market, ghosting is now affecting employers. NPR's Emily Sullivan reports.
EMILY SULLIVAN, BYLINE: Kris was a good lifeguard - so good in fact that after a year of working at a waterpark in Cincinnati, his bosses promoted him to head lifeguard and promised him a raise. His new duties were more than just keeping an eye on the water.
KRIS: I did the daily schedule and rotation for all lifeguards, and I tested the water slides and the chemical levels in the water as well.
SULLIVAN: But six months into his new position, his paycheck remained the same - eight bucks an hour instead of the 10 he was promised.
KRIS: Week after week, I would ask about it, and management would keep making excuses.
SULLIVAN: Then an announcement - Kris' manager said they would cut all employees' pay by 10 percent due to financial difficulties. So he decided...
KRIS: If they really don't care about me and they don't value me and what I do for the waterpark, then maybe I'll just stop doing it.
SULLIVAN: He ghosted. On a busy summer day, he didn't show up to open the park. He ignored his manager's calls.
KRIS: I ultimately caused, like, the shutdown of the water park for that Friday.
SULLIVAN: Kris estimates he cost the park between 15 and $20,000 in lost sales. Now, he's working at a Fortune 500 company. While he doesn't regret ghosting, he doesn't want his current bosses to know about it. That was a few years back. And now Kris' exit strategy is increasingly common - even the Fed has noticed. In a report last month, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago noted that more employees are ghosting. The Fed says ghosting is a situation where someone stops coming to work without notice and then becomes impossible to reach. Raquel Anaya, a recruiter in Florida, says she's seen a spike in no-shows in interviews and first days on the job.
RAQUEL ANAYA: I think most of the time it's that people interview in more than one place concurrently, and we get edged out on offers. So instead of just saying, I got a better offer, they just stop.
SULLIVAN: She says she understands but that if an applicant who disappeared reapplied to her firm, she'll remember that they ghosted, and that doesn't look good. Anaya blames the influx of ghosting on a hot labor market with lots of opportunity. So does Andy Challenger, of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a job placement firm.
ANDY CHALLENGER: I think a lot of the stories that we hear from companies is people ghosting in industries where jobs are the most plentiful and good employees are the most scarce.
SULLIVAN: Industries like tech and engineering. And he says ghosting is a learned behavior. Employers ghost applicants all the time and can fire workers without two weeks' notice. So in response, employees or applicants might say...
CHALLENGER: I'm just going to ghost them. I'm not going to respond to the calls and texts and voicemails that they leave me because, in some ways, it feels like revenge.
SULLIVAN: Challenger doesn't recommend ghosting, no matter how bad a boss is.
CHALLENGER: People leave without notice are missing out on one of the most satisfying parts of the human experience, which is quitting a job that you hate, right? Even if you do it politely, that can be cathartic.
SULLIVAN: But Kris, the former lifeguard, cites one big reason for not telling off his bosses. He wanted to hit them where it hurt - financially.
KRIS: I feel like I made a bigger dent than I would have if I had just said, OK, I'm done.
SULLIVAN: But he says he'd never ghost on an employer that treated him with respect. Emily Sullivan, NPR News.
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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
In a pre-dawn raid in Florida, President Trump's longtime former adviser Roger Stone was arrested. Stone is a colorful character and longtime presence in conservative politics going back to the Nixon administration. He's now been indicted as part of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Stone, who is usually spotted in expensive suits, appeared in federal court wearing jeans and a blue polo. On his way out of the courthouse, he raised his arms, flashed a victory sign and pledged his loyalty to the president.
NPR justice reporter Ryan Lucas is here to tell us more about what exactly happened in that courtroom. Hi, Ryan.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Hello there.
KELLY: Start with the charges. What exactly has Roger Stone been charged with?
LUCAS: Well, the indictment contains seven counts, one each for obstruction of an official proceeding and witness tampering. And then five counts relate to alleged false statements that Stone made to congressional investigators. At its heart, what the indictment alleges is that Stone was directed by Trump campaign officials to contact WikiLeaks, find out what hacked Democratic emails the organization had in its possession and what its plans were for releasing those materials. And it was WikiLeaks, remember, that published those Democratic emails that the U.S. government says were hacked by Russia.
The indictment also alleges that Stone later took steps to try to hide the details of his efforts to contact WikiLeaks and find out what the organization was up to. Now, it is important to say that Stone was not charged with conspiring with WikiLeaks or Russia.
KELLY: No, more pointing toward possible cover-up rather than crime, these charges - OK, to give people a sense of where all this was happening, Stone was taken into custody at his home in Florida. He made his initial appearance in court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. What did he say?
LUCAS: Well, as you said earlier, the FBI raided Stone's home. It was before dawn. In TV footage from the scene, you can hear agents yelling, it's the FBI; open the door. In court, Stone has read the charges. He was then released on this quarter-million-dollar bond. Afterwards, he stepped out onto the courthouse steps and talked to reporters.
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ROGER STONE: I will plead not guilty to these charges. I will defeat them in court. I believe this is a politically motivated investigation.
LUCAS: Now, he also said that under no circumstances would he testify against President Trump. You get a bit of a sense from that tape there was a raucous scene it was outside the courthouse.
KELLY: Yeah.
LUCAS: Some of the onlookers were chanting, lock him up. Stone appeared to almost enjoy it. He had a smile on his face. I'm told that he loves this sort of fight. At one point, as you noted, he flashed that V for victory sign, which of course is a gesture that was made famous in American political history by a man he once worked for, President Richard Nixon.
KELLY: Indeed. What is the current occupant of the White House or his staff saying about all this?
LUCAS: President Trump's lawyer Jay Sekulow says the indictment does not allege Russian collusion by Stone or anyone else, says that it focuses on alleged false statements that Stone made to Congress. And this has been essentially what we've heard from the president's camp to most of Mueller's indictments. They say these charges have nothing to do with Russia and nothing to do with the president.
KELLY: Allow me to put to you, Ryan, the question I think I put to you just about every time there's a new twist in all of this, which is to say pretty much daily - hourly, I'm sure it feels like. What does today's news tell us about the broader picture, the shape of the Russia investigation?
LUCAS: Well, Stone is the sixth Trump associate to be charged by Mueller in this investigation, the 34th individual overall to face charges. And over the course of this investigation, Mueller has documented multiple contacts that Trump associates had with Russians or with Russian proxies.
Now, with this Stone indictment, Mueller is providing the most-detailed account yet of contacts that folks associated with the Trump campaign allegedly had with WikiLeaks about those hacked Democratic emails. And Stone is presented as intermediary of sorts between WikiLeaks and the campaign, which is something he's denied. There's a line in the indictment that caught my eye. It says, senior Trump campaign official was directed to get in touch with Stone about what WikiLeaks had and when it would release it. That official is not identified, but the bigger question is, who directed him?
KELLY: Indeed. NPR's Ryan Lucas, thank you.
LUCAS: Thank you.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
That indictment we've been talking about contains numerous references to contacts between Stone and people involved with the Trump campaign throughout the summer and fall of 2016. NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith has been building a timeline of events and has this update in light of the new information alleged by prosecutors.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Let's start with July 22, 2016, just days before the Democratic Party convention.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: WikiLeaks released thousands of emails from the DNC appearing to show favoritism towards...
KEITH: Those emails roiled the party convention and prosecutors alleged that day an unnamed senior Trump campaign official was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases or other damaging information WikiLeaks had on the Clinton campaign. The indictment doesn't say who directed the senior campaign official to get in touch with Stone, but it does say that from there on out, Stone told the Trump campaign about potential future WikiLeaks releases.
Three days later, Stone allegedly asked intermediaries to make contact with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who lives in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. It is worth noting that even this early on, private security firms and the Clinton campaign were drawing connections between the WikiLeaks email dump and Russian intelligence. This was Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook on ABC on July 24, 2016.
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ROBBY MOOK: And it's troubling that some experts are now telling us that this was done by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump.
KEITH: In what would be a pattern, the Trump campaign dismissed such claims as Team Clinton trying to distract from the contents of the hacked emails. At a press conference that week, candidate Donald Trump denied any connection to Russian President Vladimir Putin. But then he encouraged Russia to go after Hillary Clinton's emails.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.
KEITH: What we know now is that Russia may have been listening. That very day, according to court documents, Russian intelligence attempted to hack into Hillary Clinton's private email server. Later that summer, Stone helped build suspense that WikiLeaks had more coming.
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ROGER STONE: I actually have communicated with Assange. I believe the next tranche of his documents pertain to the Clinton Foundation. But there's no telling what the October surprise may be.
KEITH: By October 2016, speculation had reached a fever pitch.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange promised us that something big was coming.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #3: The question everybody has on their mind is, what exactly does WikiLeaks have?
KEITH: October 4, Julian Assange was set to make an announcement. The day before, according to the indictment, Stone wrote to an unnamed supporter involved in the Trump campaign - quote, "spoke to my friend in London last night. The payload is still coming." But then the announcement from Assange came via video stream.
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JULIAN ASSANGE: The material that WikiLeaks is going to publish before the end of the year is of a significant moment.
KEITH: Without delivering the goods, WikiLeaks tweeted, we hope to be publishing every week for the next 10 weeks. Prosecutors write that day, Stone got an email from a high-ranking Trump campaign official asking about the status of WikiLeaks' releases. Stone answered saying WikiLeaks would release a load every week going forward. It's unclear whether he had insider information or was just parroting WikiLeaks' tweet. The latter is what Stone says happened. Then on October 7, The Washington Post published its own October surprise - an unrelated blockbuster.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #4: ...Of a video that captures Donald Trump making vulgar comments about women back in 2005.
KEITH: The "Access Hollywood" video was arguably the darkest moment of the Trump campaign. Less than an hour later, though, WikiLeaks released the first tranche of emails hacked from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. According to the indictment, an associate of the high-ranking campaign official sent a text to Stone that read, well done. Almost immediately, Trump started talking up WikiLeaks on the campaign trail.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMP: They want to distract us from WikiLeaks. It's been amazing what's coming out on WikiLeaks.
KEITH: And day after day, week after week, the drip, drip, drip of WikiLeaks releases kept coming until Donald Trump was elected president. Roger Stone says he's innocent. Trump's lawyers deny there was any collusion. Tamara Keith, NPR News.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The shutdown has brought a lot of stories about people suffering over the last month. Now, a brief moment to talk about how good people can be to one another.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Our co-host Ari Shapiro reported yesterday from the small town of Oakdale, La. And one of the voices he brought us was Nathan Dyer. He is a prison worker whose young son has a birthday today. Here he is.
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NATHAN DYER: My wife talked about last night, like, I mean, I know years down the road he'll never remember it because he's 2. He won't remember it. But we talked Friday night about, like, what are we going to buy him? You know what I mean?
KELLY: Ari is back in the studio now. And I gather, even before this story aired, you were getting signs it was going to hit everybody the way it hit me in there - just choke us all up.
ARI SHAPIRO, BYLINE: Yeah. We included that clip of tape in a promo for the story that started airing yesterday morning, and immediately, I got this flood of message from listeners saying, how can we help?
KELLY: It wasn't even my story, but I also was getting flooded by listener messages. One of them called my voicemail while we were on air while this story was airing and left this message. This is Barbara Scott of Goochland, Va.
(SOUNDBITE OF VOICEMAIL MESSAGE)
BARBARA SCOTT: My heart just went out to this gentleman, and I would like to send a check to him. It will be small. I'm old and retired.
SHAPIRO: We got so many messages like that on Twitter and Facebook and email and voicemail. And I referred all of these listeners offering gas cards, gifts, money to the local union president, Corey Trammel. And when I called him today to check in, he was kind of amazed.
COREY TRAMMEL: There was another 50 people this morning. And last night, I probably seen 50 to 75 emails.
SHAPIRO: He said it gave him so much hope just to hear from parents of young kids, people who might not have much still saying, what can I do?
TRAMMEL: We have grown men that's never even met us crying for us because that's how big of a deal. And, dude, that's American. That's exactly what that is.
KELLY: That does feel American. Meanwhile, what happened to Nathan, the man whose son has his birthday today, turning 2?
SHAPIRO: We also called Nathan this afternoon, and he was totally in shock.
DYER: Me and my wife, you know, we sat at the table last night and just couldn't believe that all of this was happening.
SHAPIRO: You know, he was anticipating that not having been paid for a month today was going to be a really hard day, his son's birthday, where he would not be able to provide for his kid. And I asked him how he will look back on this day now.
TRAMMEL: I can't wait till he gets older to where he can understand so I can go back and show him that, you know, there still is good people in this world, you know, that they'll look out for a complete stranger to make sure that, you know, they're OK.
KELLY: Beautiful end to a really tough story. Thanks, Ari.
SHAPIRO: You're welcome.
KELLY: It's our co-host Ari Shapiro following up to his reporting yesterday from Louisiana.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The stakes keep getting higher in Venezuela in the campaign to oust President Nicolas Maduro. Today, his challenger, Juan Guaido, appeared at a rally in the capital, Caracas, and reeled off the countries that have recognized him as Venezuela's interim president.
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JUAN GUAIDO: (Speaking Spanish).
CORNISH: While Guaido was speaking, so was Maduro a few miles across town at a press conference. His message - he's not going anywhere. And NPR's Philip Reeves is in Caracas now. And, Philip, I want to start with Guido and his gathering. You were there. Can you tell us a little bit about what happened?
PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: Yes. Guaido appeared in a plaza in the heart of the city. It was billed as a press conference, actually, but it became a rally because several thousand supporters showed up. He arrived in a dark suit and tie, looking relaxed. He smiled a lot. He interacted with the crowd who occasionally broke into chants of president, president. And he took some questions from the media.
And two things really stood out. One is that he's raising the pressure in this duel with Maduro. He's called for more open-air meetings across the country tomorrow and Sunday and then a big week of demonstrations next week. He says his campaign is going to stay on the streets until Maduro goes and free and fair elections can be held because he and the U.S. and many, many others say that the presidency is Nicolas Maduro is illegitimate because the election that won him a second term is a fraud. And the other thing that stood out is the emphasis he's placing on nonviolence. He really wants this campaign to be a nonviolent campaign.
CORNISH: Given how Maduro treated the opposition in the past, isn't Guaido at the risk of arrest?
REEVES: Yeah, he is. And he talked about that, saying that if he's arrested, his supporters should carry on with his campaign. And he's also encouraging them to reach out to people who they know in the police or in the army and persuade them to switch sides because, as he puts it, we're the future.
CORNISH: We mentioned Maduro's kind of counter-event. What did he have to say?
REEVES: Well, yes. I mean, Maduro was speaking at the same time to the press and to the media in his presidential palace about five miles away. And, you know, he was behind the barricades, continuing to complain that this is an attempted coup orchestrated by the U.S., calling it a desperate act and the part of an economic war waged by Washington to get Venezuela's oil. That's a very familiar theme with him.
He did say he'd be willing to engage in talks, saying that even if I have to go to these naked, I'm willing to do so. It was a rather compelling moment. But previous talks, remember, with the opposition haven't proved fruitful. And Guaido's indicated that he's not interested in these. His mantra is, Maduro must go, then there's a transitional period under his interim presidency and new elections.
CORNISH: In the meantime, what's the status of the U.S. diplomats whom Maduro says he's expelling?
REEVES: Well, you know, this is a very critical issue here. The nonessential staff and families headed out to the airport this morning in a convoy. But of course staff is staying. Maduro gave U.S. diplomats 72 hours to leave the country on Wednesday when he severed diplomatic relations with Washington. But the U.S. says that that order is invalid because it no longer recognizes him as president. And the deadline set by Maduro comes up on Sunday. And, really, what happens then? You know, it isn't clear. Guaido, meanwhile, who's, remember, declared himself interim president, says - he says that the American diplomats should stay and that the U.S. Embassy should stay open.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Philip Reeves. Philip, thank you.
REEVES: You're welcome.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Well, relations between Venezuela and the U.S. have been challenging for a long time. It's been nearly nine years since the U.S. had a full ambassador in Venezuela. The man who held that job is on the line now, Patrick Duddy. Ambassador Duddy, welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
PATRICK DUDDY: Thank you very much for having me.
KELLY: Well, let me ask you, as someone who has served as U.S. ambassador under both Republican and Democratic administrations, do you agree with the current U.S. policy with no longer recognizing President Maduro and siding with the opposition leader Juan Guaido?
DUDDY: Yes, I do. This is really an evolution, not so much a departure. In recent years, the U.S. has in fact sanctioned several dozen senior Venezuelan officials for either undermining democracy, their complicity in various illegal activities or for egregious human rights violations.
Beginning some months ago, we also restricted access for the de facto regime of Nicolas Maduro to the U.S. financial system. Things have changed both internally and externally in recent months. And I think that recognition of Juan Guaido as the interim president is a logical development. The administration of Nicolas Maduro has led the country to the brink of complete disaster. It's really a failing state now. And his last election was widely viewed as a complete sham.
KELLY: On the other hand, he did win it. And there are many critics who would argue that the U.S. should get out of the business of regime change in Latin America.
DUDDY: Well, what you're asserting - that he won - was really a kind of choreography, which is why it's not just the United States, but most of South America, the EU, Britain, Canada, are all recognizing Guaido. And to a very large extent, what we have seen in the last few years has been a very careful effort by the United States to make clear our unhappiness and, indeed, concern for the well-being of Venezuelans. But at the same time, the U.S., for instance, has refrained - at least, to this point - from directly sanctioning the oil industry, which is their principal source of income, out of fear that it would impose even greater hardship on the Venezuelan people.
KELLY: What are the risks of this approach, of backing someone as president who has never been elected president of this country?
DUDDY: Well, it is certainly a very dangerous moment in Venezuela. Now, Guaido emerges from what is widely recognized as in fact the last genuinely democratic institution in the country. But Nicolas Maduro remains the de facto president with apparently the support of the military.
KELLY: What is the risk if things don't go the way the U.S. would like to see them go in Venezuela? Nicolas Maduro stays in power. With Russia and China and Iran and other countries lined up behind him, do we risk good even further deterioration in U.S.-Venezuela relations?
DUDDY: Well, it would be hard for things to be any worse than they are now.
KELLY: Fair.
DUDDY: But certainly things will continue to be very, very bad. Now, what will happen with the oil industry is an open question. Maduro has announced that he's pulling all of his diplomats out of the country. The U.S. remains their largest client for oil. So how he hopes to finesse this issue and whether or not the U.S. agrees to continue both to purchase Venezuelan oil and what will happen with the receipts from those purchases is not clear to me.
KELLY: That's Patrick Duddy, former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela. He is now director of Duke's Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Ambassador Duddy, thank you.
DUDDY: You're very welcome.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
News cameras captured the FBI's arrest of longtime Trump associate Roger Stone at his home in Florida this morning. A crowd chanting lock him up met Stone at the courtroom steps after his indictment.
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ROGER STONE: There is no circumstance whatsoever under which I will bear false witness against the president, nor will I make up lies to ease the pressure on myself.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
But by late afternoon, all eyes were on the White House Rose Garden. There, President Trump announced he would sign a stopgap bill to fund the government and continue negotiations over increasing funding for border security even though it did not include money for his border wall.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: They keep drugs out, and they dramatically increase efficiency by allowing us to patrol far larger areas with far fewer people. It's just common sense. Walls work.
CORNISH: We're going to talk about this now with our regular week in politics team. I'm joined by E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and Brookings Institution. Hey there, E.J.
E J DIONNE, BYLINE: Good to see you, Audie.
CORNISH: And David Brooks of The New York Times, welcome to the studio.
DAVID BROOKS, BYLINE: Thank you.
CORNISH: So the president once said he'd own the shutdown. He did. How did he handle it? Who wants to go first?
DIONNE: He capitulated. This is remarkable. He said, I'm shutting the government down because I want a wall. And there is no wall here. He is taking the deal he could have gotten a month ago without any shutdown at all, without any of the damage that happened and without any of the damage to his poll numbers, which really have been tanking. And I think it was very important that Democrats stand up here because they were saying, we'll negotiate anything, but we will not negotiate under pressure like this. And I think it's a great victory for Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, but particularly for Nancy Pelosi.
CORNISH: Although let me jump in here for a second because the speaker was asked today, look; did we all just witness a failed power play by the president? Here's what she had to say.
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NANCY PELOSI: The point is today we have come to a way to go forward to debate the best ways to protect our border. I don't see this as any power play.
CORNISH: David Brooks, she's taking the high road there.
BROOKS: (Laughter) Yeah.
CORNISH: What do you think of that response?
BROOKS: I don't know anybody who doesn't think it's a massive defeat for the president. I'm a Mets fan. I know what losing looks like. And this is taking it to a new level. You know, his approvals - the latest poll I saw, 34 percent approval, the lowest ever - Mitch McConnell like - acting like he wasn't in the same universe as Donald Trump, most Republicans feeling that way.
On the way over to the studio, I turned on "The Sean Hannity Show" to see where - how his folks reacting, and Hannity was trying to defend the deal. But his callers were having none of it. They said they were depressed and down. And so it's possible Trump's ratings will go even lower because he's sort of offended the middle, and now he's sort of offended at least a piece of his base.
DIONNE: Ann Coulter, who was one of the people who pushed him to this strategy, basically said that now he's more of a wimp than George H.W. Bush, which is really negative in the light of the far-right. Breitbart's headline was "Very Disappointed." I think there is just no question that it's a capitulation. And what's really difficult for Trump is the lesson here is, stand up to him, and you can win. That doesn't bode well for him going forward.
CORNISH: Right. This also comes after the back and forth over the State of the Union with the House speaker saying basically, no, you can't come while the government is shut down. And we'll see if that goes forward. Given that this is a stopgap, given this debate will go on for another few weeks, will we be in the same place three weeks from now?
BROOKS: I really find hard to believe that Trump is going to do anything but capitulate again in three weeks. I just don't see why he set this up so he has - in another three weeks, he's got to say, I'm sorry; it's not going to happen again.
CORNISH: But he said he might pull other levers. Haven't his people talked about...
BROOKS: He might do the emergency thing.
CORNISH: ...Emergency declaration?
BROOKS: And then it would go to the courts and then maybe to the Supreme Court. But his political standing will not be better in three weeks. Republican support will not be better in three weeks. The people willing to stand with him will not be better in three weeks. It's just the function of these things that you - people who shut down the government always have a great first move because it seems so bold. They never have a second or third or fourth move. And I - there's still going to be no second or third or fourth move for him.
DIONNE: I was with a group with Pelosi today. And one of the things that she said is that they are going to look at legislation to ban shutdowns in the future. And I think this would be a very good thing for all sides of our politics. Essentially if you don't have a bill, you continue funding it the previous year - or the current year. So you just can't use this tactic anymore. This was very painful. It was very dangerous. You looked at what was happening with the airlines. We should argue about politics in other ways. That's why I think this is so important. It may actually be the shutdown that will end all shutdowns. But maybe that's wishful thinking.
BROOKS: That's what Woodrow Wilson said.
DIONNE: (Laughter).
CORNISH: Now, coming back to the Justice Department news of the day - special counsel Mueller's indictment of Roger Stone. Stone's basically been accused of lying to the House Intelligence Committee. The background to this is there's always been scrutiny of Stone over what he did or didn't know about the source, content, timing of the 2016 DNC email hack which was traced back to Russian intelligence according to U.S. security officials.
So the question is, how does this add to the president's troubles, right? You now have the majority in charge. Adam Schiff, head of House Intelligence, already is, like, you know, I've got some ideas and more questions about this person who, you know, Mueller is saying lied to us - David?
BROOKS: Well, Stone has been a famous sleazeball and self-admitted sleazeball since the Nixon days. He doesn't hide that fact. Even I was surprised by the audaciousness of his lying. One of the things he lied about - he said he had no text or email contact ever with a certain radio host. On the day he said that to a congressional committee, he just exchanged 30 texts with the guy. And so that's just audacious lying.
I actually think in terms of the whole overall picture, it shows that Trump surrounds himself with very bad people. But it also suggests there's probably no collusion. If there was a direct channel between the Trump campaign and the Russians, why would they be having Donald - Roger Stone begging a radio host for information? They wouldn't be doing that. They'd actually have a channel. And so to me, in a weird way, this suggests there probably was no direct channel or collusion.
DIONNE: See; it's funny. I read this very differently. Perhaps not surprisingly, I think that the lies that Roger Stone was telling - you know, for example, something from the Mueller report - after the July 22, 2016 release of stolen DNC emails by Organization 1, senior Trump official was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases. It was very clear that the Trump campaign wanted this information, and it was widely known that this information had been stolen by the Russians.
So I think this is actually another step toward the collusion story. And we also - we obviously already have mountains of evidence about various meetings that Trump officials had with Russian officials. So I think this is one more step in that direction. The question that we'll have to answer is, what did Trump know about all of this? It's very hard for me to think even Trump would - you know, who can be disengaged - would not know anything about what was going on.
CORNISH: David, I'm going to give the last word to you. Looking at the whole of the day in Trump today politically, does this bode well for the next two years?
BROOKS: People who are on his side were saying that if he loses this showdown with Pelosi, it would end his presidency. That's a little overdramatic. But it's hard to see a lot of people wanting to walk up any hills with him at the moment, and I include even my Republican friends.
CORNISH: E.J., for you, do you see something hopeful maybe for Democrats?
DIONNE: Well, oh, - well, I see something hopeful for the country - I mean, putting aside it is clearly a victory for Pelosi. But I think it says that when we go about governing ourselves, we ought to have real debates about things like border security, but we should do them in an absolutely normal way. And this was a victory for normal, small-d, democratic politics.
CORNISH: E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and Brookings Institution, thank you.
DIONNE: Thank you.
CORNISH: David Brooks of The New York Times, thank you so much.
BROOKS: Thank you.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
President Trump's announcement that shuttered federal agencies will reopen for three weeks came with another promise.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I will make sure that all employees receive their backpay very quickly or as soon as possible.
KELLY: The president is talking about the 800,000 workers who were furloughed or working without pay during the shutdown. But contract employees far outnumber regular employees in the federal government, and there is no certainty about what will happen to them. Here's NPR's David Welna.
DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: Greg Hanna is the president of Toeroek Associates, a Colorado-based firm with 60 employees. About two thirds of their business is assessing contamination and liabilities at Superfund sites under contracts with the Environmental Protection Agency. Hanna says its shutdown has hit them hard.
GREG HANNA: If it weren't for having the other part of our business that is not shut down, we would be looking at being very close to bankruptcy.
WELNA: The last thing Hanna wants to do is lay off idled workers. But while the EPA's been shuttered, he's received no payments for hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of invoices for work already performed, and that's left him with a cash flow crunch.
HANNA: What happens is people have vacation time and can, you know, continue to get paid. So you're - still have ongoing payroll expenses that you have to meet, but your cash stream has dried up or, in our case, you know, significantly dwindled.
WELNA: Other federal contractors have been shut down entirely by the shutdown.
CELESTE VOIGT: They don't pay me. I'm a private business owner. I get nothing.
WELNA: Celeste Voigt sells lunches in two federal workplaces in South Dakota that have been shut down. She's had to let all four of her employees go.
VOIGT: You shut your business down, and you leave yourself enough money to start it back up when they decide to open, which doesn't mean I have money to pay my employees. It just means I have enough money to just get it open.
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TINA SMITH: Today we are introducing a bill that is called the Fair Compensation For Low-Wage Contractor Act.
WELNA: At the Capitol, Minnesota Democratic Senator Tina Smith rolled out a bill last week in a room filled with furloughed low-wage federal contract workers.
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SMITH: What this is about is that every day, people go to work as federal contractors or employees for contractors just like you around this table and around tables all around the country.
WELNA: One of the contractor employees was Audrey Murray.
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AUDREY MURRAY: I've worked eight hours for the Smithsonian. I've been furloughed since January 1. I also work for a contractor at the State Department. I am now a single mother. I lost my husband last year. I bought me a house in the process. Ma'am, I'm worried about how I'm going to pay my mortgage.
WELNA: The bill to make whole people like Audrey Murray is backed so far by 14 senators all on the Democratic side of the aisle. Maryland's Chris Van Hollen is one of them.
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: We're not talking about compensation going to people at high salaries. What it would do in its current form is cap the total reimbursement at people who are making 50,000 a year.
DAVID BERTEAU: Our concern is that it's pretty hard to tell where to draw the line of who deserves this and who doesn't.
WELNA: That's David Berteau. He heads the Professional Services Council, a trade group for federal contractors.
BERTEAU: Within the federal government civilians, there's no cap that says if you make above this level, you don't get your money back. You get your money back at any level at which you were operating for the federal government. We think the same should apply for contract workers who are put in unpaid status.
WELNA: And federal contractor Hanna says while the congressional fix sounds simple, it would effectively be paying contractors for having done nothing.
HANNA: It's not quite clear how those payments would actually work under the procurement rules that we all have to work under. But, I mean, I'm certainly in favor of it if they're able to do it.
WELNA: It's never been done before, but then no other shutdown's hit contractors like this one has. David Welna, NPR News, Washington.
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The World Bank is looking for a new president. The current president, Jim Yong Kim, abruptly resigned. Traditionally, the president of the huge global development bank has been an American. But now, there are calls to open up the position to international candidates. NPR's Jackie Northam reports.
JACKIE NORTHAM, BYLINE: Since the World Bank was formed in the wake of the Second World War, the U.S. has always chosen its president. That's because the U.S. is the largest shareholder in the World Bank Group. Nancy Birdsall, the founding president of the nonpartisan Center for Global Development, says it's part of a tacit agreement that the Europeans have gone along with for decades.
NANCY BIRDSALL: They have a deal where the Americans get the head of the World Bank and the Europeans have a lock similar on naming the head of the International Monetary Fund.
NORTHAM: But President Trump's openly hostile attitude to multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and his confrontational stance towards European allies could shake up the nomination for a new leader of the bank. Johannes Linn, a former World Bank vice president now at the Brookings Institution, says the U.S. doesn't have a veto on the choice.
JOHANNES LINN: If the U.S. puts forward a candidate who is not credible or could even raise significant opposition, then, you know, it's possible that a credible candidate from elsewhere could get the support of a majority of voters.
NORTHAM: Linn says the board introduced a merit-based selection process several years ago, but so far, it hasn't made much of a difference. The last time a World Bank president was chosen in 2012, there were strong international candidates, but an American still got the position. Birdsall says Jim Yong Kim's seven years in the job got mixed reviews. She said he was able to secure a $13 billion capital increase for the bank. But she says his attempts to restructure the organization only created more problems.
BIRDSALL: A lot of people internally expressed a lot of concern including about a kind of hemorrhage of very good, experienced longtime staff at the top level during Kim's stint there, including many women.
NORTHAM: The change in leadership comes as the World Bank is facing competition from regional development banks. China, which receives loans from the World Bank, has launched its own massive international development program. Congressman Andy Barr, a Republican from Kentucky, says that undermines U.S. interests overseas.
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ANDY BARR: You know, it's not a stretch to see a kind of colonialism that is going on and why the United States would tolerate taxpayer funds going to an international organization, a multilateral development bank that is in turn enabling an adversary to grow its influence around the world. That's the concern.
NORTHAM: Barr says for that reason, he can't see anyone else but an American leading the World Bank. Some of the names being floated include David Malpass, a senior Treasury Department official, and Nikki Haley, former ambassador to the U.N. Ivanka Trump's name briefly rose to the surface, but administration officials say the president's daughter is not a contender. Nominations for the post open February 7. Jackie Northam, NPR News, Washington.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
"The Invisibles," a German film about Jews who hid from the Nazis in wartime Berlin, opens today here in the U.S. The documentary drama is based on the real-life accounts of four survivors. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley met one of them and sends this report.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: Hanni Weissenberg, now Hanni Levy, survived the war by hiding in the capital of Nazi Germany. Early in the movie, we meet her as a 17-year-old, sitting in her Berlin apartment with the Gestapo pounding on the door.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (Shouting in German).
HANNI LEVY: (Through interpreter) That's when I knew it was now or never. It was time to disappear. When they knocked like that, usually you had to open. But I didn't.
BEARDSLEY: Levy slipped out of the apartment and escaped the roundup that day. She had been living alone after her parents died of illness, working in a factory sewing parachutes. In February 1943, the Nazis rounded up and deported the last Jewish forced laborers like Levy. After her escape, she found refuge with friends of her parents, removed the yellow star the Nazis forced Jews to wear, dyed her hair blond and began a new life as Hannelore Winkler.
LEVY: (Through interpreter) You just had to push away your fear and become someone else. I had to try to lose myself in the masses and forget that I was scared and that I had been subject to the Nazi race laws. I had to act like a regular Berliner, and this is what saved me in the end.
KELLY: Barbara Schieb is a historian with the German Resistance Memorial Center. She says in occupied countries Jews often went underground and were sometimes helped by resistance movements. But for Jews in Berlin, where potentially everyone was a Nazi and there was no organized resistance, people hid in plain sight, relying on the help of German friends.
BARBARA SCHIEB: They just said, I'm somebody else. They invented a new Aryan-sounding identity. And for this, they needed helpers. They needed a home, something to eat, money, of course. They needed false documents. They were visible. You see it in the film quite well.
BEARDSLEY: "The Invisibles" director is Claus Rafle, a veteran filmmaker.
CLAUS RAFLE: I made this film because I thought these stories of people who have to hide them self in their own town and to have to climb into different identities, these stories are so full of tension and emotions because every day is full of risks.
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BEARDSLEY: As the film ends, Hanni Levy takes the stage for Q-and-A with a rapt audience.
LEVY: (Foreign language spoken).
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UNIDENTIFIED PHOTOGRAPHER #1: Levy?
UNIDENTIFIED PHOTOGRAPHER #2: Levy?
BEARDSLEY: And she poses for pictures with Michael Muller, the mayor of Berlin.
MICHAEL MULLER: (Foreign language spoken).
BEARDSLEY: "It's great to have Levy's optimism and energy," Muller says. "She helps us account for our difficult past and learn for the future."
MARIANNE ENZENSBERGER: I adore this lady, that she can forgive everybody. I would never be able to do that.
BEARDSLEY: That's 72-year-old Marianne Enzensberger, who is not Jewish. She's just watched the film with her friend, Marianne Rosenberg, whose father was Jewish and survived Auschwitz. Both women say they're worried about the rise of the far-right in Germany and Eastern Europe today.
ENZENSBERGER: I'm very angry - angry about what's happening in that German people, I mean, they say, it's so many years ago it happened. But it's not true. Some people, of the youngsters, they don't know about anything.
MARIANNE ROSENBERG: Yeah. And most people don't want to talk about this time.
ENZENSBERGER: They think it's boring and - don't start again.
BEARDSLEY: The women say this film is important, but they doubt young people will go see it. But 26-year-old Sophie Achenbach was stunned by "The Invisibles." She says she knew about the horrors of Auschwitz, but she never imagined the daily injustices that led up to the Holocaust.
SOPHIE ACHENBACH: If you watched the movie and you think about the daily lives they had, the Jews couldn't go to the doctors, they couldn't use the public transportation. Like, all these things. And this, I never thought about.
BEARDSLEY: Like most Jewish survivors, Hanni Levy left Germany after the war, and she has lived in Paris since 1946. Achenbach says it's wonderful to see her come back to Berlin and receive such an emotional welcome. Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Berlin.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The longest government shutdown in American history is coming to an end.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I am very proud to announce today that we have reached a deal to end the shutdown and reopen the federal government.
CORNISH: President Trump caved on his demand for a $5.7 billion border wall with Mexico in order to reopen the government. Congress has passed the bill. It's an early political win for Democrats and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
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NANCY PELOSI: Our unity is our power, and that is what maybe the president underestimated.
CORNISH: NPR congressional correspondent Susan Davis has covered all 35 days of the shutdown saga. She joins us now. And, Sue, I think the first question at least for the 800,000 Americans who were out of work might be asking is when they're going to see a paycheck.
SUSAN DAVIS, BYLINE: They will see a paycheck soon. The deal that they reached today includes backpay for all of those 800,000 workers. They will not get their paycheck today, but they will get it within days, not weeks.
CORNISH: In the meantime, this deal - how did it come together?
DAVIS: It's pretty straightforward. It's essentially just a punt. It's a three-week stopgap funding bill to get the government open until February 15. What the - what they did do is establish a committee that is going to have to negotiate within those three weeks the terms of a spending bill for Homeland Security. This is going to give Democrats and Republicans a chance to keep fighting over border security.
They reached this kind of abrupt deal today I think in part because the Senate proved this week that they couldn't pass the wall. They didn't have the votes in the House. The president's back was increasingly up against the wall here. There were news reports today about airports across the country starting to face increasing delays over staffing demands. And I think just the pressures of the increasing hardships that were being put on Americans and increasingly on the economy just made this not sustainable for the White House any longer.
CORNISH: But is there a chance that we're going to be in another shutdown fight in three weeks? I mean, people have been calling this a stopgap.
DAVIS: You know, the president at the White House today did say he was going to keep fighting for the wall. He has moved the goalposts a lot on what it means exactly to build a wall. He went from wanting a full wall to steel slats to some kind of physical structure to being open to technology. It's still not entirely clear what the president wants to get here to claim that he had a win.
Democrats point to the fact that they're actually very willing to work with the president on a number of border security measures. The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, today outlined all kinds of things Democrats would be willing to spend money on, things like enhanced drug inspections, more security at legal points of entry, money to help with the humanitarian crisis at the border. But they continue to say they will not support anything that is seen as building the wall.
You know, I always say the thing to remember in this entire shutdown fight is this from the beginning was a political fight. The wall was always the central campaign promise of the president. And I think in that regard, you have to look at today as a serious political blow to the president who on day 35 of the shutdown ends it with nothing he didn't have at the beginning of the shutdown fight.
CORNISH: How's that playing with his base?
DAVIS: Some of the loudest anti-immigrant voices in the Republican circles, people like Ann Coulter, came out very quickly attacking him. Up here on Capitol Hill, I think Republicans still remain very loyal to the president. They continue to take his cues from him on this. Some loyalists like North Carolina Republican Congressman Mark Meadows says he still wants the president to consider declaring a national emergency to build the wall if Congress won't do it.
There aren't really a lot of upsides for the president here. You know, in the past month, his personal approval has taken a hit. The Republican Party's approval has taken a hit. There were signs the economy was starting to go on a downturn. And politically, it also had the effect of really elevating the profile of Nancy Pelosi, who just regained the speaker's gavel. I think in some ways, it strengthened her hand in this and future negotiations, and she did kind of prove that she can keep Democrats together when it counts going up against the Trump administration.
CORNISH: That's NPR congressional correspondent Susan Davis. Sue, thank you.
DAVIS: You're welcome.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Let's bring in one of the senators who's going to be voting on this, Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. Welcome back.
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: Mary Louise, great to be back.
KELLY: Was anything achieved by this shutdown?
VAN HOLLEN: Oh, this was a shameful and unnecessary shutdown from day one. So the answer is no. The president's decision to shut down the government simply imposed lots of pain and financial hardship not only on 800,000 federal employees but Americans throughout the country. And so I'm glad we reached today. I wish it had been for not just three weeks, but three weeks is the best available option, and we need to make the best of it.
KELLY: Stay with that three weeks, which is how much time you have got. President Trump is threatening to shut the government down again if he does not get money for a border wall or a deal. Can you reach a deal on border security by February 15?
VAN HOLLEN: Well, I believe we can. This is actually a proposal that was floated by myself, Senator Cardin and a bipartisan group of senators in the last 36 hours. We proposed an amendment last night on the Senate floor to reopen the government unconditionally for three weeks but with the understanding - and there was a discussion on the floor of the Senate last night - that we would work in good faith to try to resolve border security issues. There's no dispute about the need for strong border security. And we would discuss other immigration issues and other priorities. So it is important that we - I realize what a narrow, narrow path that is...
KELLY: Yeah. And when you say you're...
VAN HOLLEN: ...To get through the House and Senate.
KELLY: ...Committed to working in good faith, would you be open to working for a border bill that included some money for a wall? I mean, there are already are sections of a wall up along the border.
VAN HOLLEN: So this will be part of the negotiation. There are many other priorities that come before any additional barriers. As you pointed out, long before the president was sworn in, we had 700 miles of barriers and fence. I can tell you what's not going to happen. We're not going to see the 2,000-mile big Wall of China the president talked about during his campaign that he said he was going to be - you know, paid for by Mexico. But you can see...
KELLY: No, but he suggested a little bit of flexibility in his remarks at the White House today, talking about a see-through - not a concrete wall - see-through steel barrier. What I'm asking is, are Democrats going to give an inch on this in order to keep the government open, you know, past February 15?
VAN HOLLEN: We are going to have a good-faith discussion on the most effective border security. And what we have said all along is we're going to base our judgment on what the experts tell us is needed. As we know, we already have fencing in certain strategic areas. If experts indicate that a couple more miles are necessary in a particular area, obviously that's a matter of discussion and negotiation.
I would point out that in the existing $1.3 billion appropriation, the one that the president stopped from happening, there were funds for some additional barriers in strategic locations. So when the president shut down the government, he also shut down, at least temporarily, funding that had already been approved last year on a bipartisan basis.
So as you were pointing out - look; this has come about because the president said during the campaign that he was going to build this 2,000-mile-long wall like the Wall of China. And now that's not going to happen. He shut down the government. I hope he realizes that that's not going to happen. We can get back to a sober and same conversation about smart border security and...
KELLY: That prompts my last question. In the seconds we have left, what is a sober and sane conversation look like in Washington in 2019? I mean, is this the new normal in an era of divided government?
VAN HOLLEN: Well, I hope not. I will say that what I hope will be included in any final agreement is a provision to prevent this kind of government shutdown at least for the foreseeable future. There are legislative ways of accomplishing that, and there's growing bipartisan support to do that. I also hope that in addition to the fact that we're able to make federal employees whole, that we also deal with the service contract employees who have been totally left out in the cold.
KELLY: Senator, we'll leave it there. That's Democratic Senator...
VAN HOLLEN: Yeah.
KELLY: ...Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. Thanks so much.
VAN HOLLEN: Good to be with you.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Senior U.S. diplomats and European lawmakers have been in Nicaragua this week as the political situation there grows even worse. More than 300 people have been killed and hundreds more imprisoned since a crackdown on opponents of President Daniel Ortega began in April. NPR's Carrie Kahn reports from the Nicaraguan capital, Managua.
CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: Dozens of armed riot police lined the large traffic circles here in the capital. The busy intersections have been a popular gathering spot for demonstrations which have been prohibited without a police permit. Police have also been staged along the main road leading to a hotel where the delegation of European Union legislators have been listening to civic leaders and political opponents.
Earlier this week, Nicaragua's powerful business chamber, COSEP, along with the American Chamber of Commerce and a local economic think tank requested a demonstration permit. While they weren't surprised the request was denied, the reason police gave them and broadcast on national TV and radio stunned them.
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UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: Nicaragua's head of police accused the business leaders who for years had been staunch allies of President Daniel Ortega of using diabolical violence, terror and fear to overthrow the government. COSEP head Jose Adan Aguerri says he has heard the government accuse opponents and protesters of being so-called coup plotters before, but he says he believes this is the first time he personally and others in the business community have publicly been accused of the same.
JOSE ADAN AGUERRI: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: "If they have something against us, then prove it. Charge us. We are here and not going anywhere," says Aguerri. Tens of thousands of Nicaraguans have fled the country since Ortega launched a crackdown here, jailing hundreds of protesters, political opponents and reporters. Two prominent journalists have been jailed for more than a month after police stormed their cable news outlet, destroying property and confiscating equipment. The two were supposed to be in court today to hear the evidence against them, but their case was postponed.
Senior U.S. State Department officials did meet with Ortega this week according to a statement on the U.S. Embassy's website. The officials say their mission was to find a peaceful solution to Nicaragua's current crisis and a return to democracy and human rights protections. No further information was provided. An email seeking comment from Nicaragua's vice president, Rosario Murillo, Ortega's wife, was returned with only gracias in its content. Carrie Kahn, NPR News, Managua, Nicaragua.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
It's been a split-screen kind of day here in Washington. On the 35th day of the partial government shutdown, there's a deal to reopen the federal government at least temporarily.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
That is one big headline today - the other, the arrest of Roger Stone, President Trump's longtime informal adviser. Before dawn this morning, FBI agents dressed in body armor descended on Stone's house in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
CORNISH: A few hours later, before a Florida judge, Stone was indicted on seven counts, including obstruction of an official proceeding, making false statements and witness tampering. All the charges stem from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Outside the court, Stone vowed to fight the charges.
KELLY: OK, so let's dig into what those charges are and what they may reveal about the Mueller investigation. To do that, I am joined now by Jennifer Daskal. She was a Justice Department lawyer in the Obama administration. She now teaches at American University's school of law. Jennifer, good to have you here.
JENNIFER DASKAL: Thank you.
KELLY: So your take on the central question of how this indictment may advance our understanding of what happened between Donald Trump and his campaign and Russia.
DASKAL: So in a lot of ways, the indictment confirms what's already been known, but it does so in a very detailed and diligent way, highlighting the great number of channels of communication between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks of course was the recipient of Clinton campaign communications that we know were stolen by Russia.
KELLY: There's a line that's drawing a lot of attention, a kind of a clue that's dangled. This is Page 4 of this 24-page document. It's referring to July 2016, and it describes a senior Trump campaign official who was directed to contact Stone about releases to WikiLeaks. What we don't know is who directed a senior Trump campaign official. We assume Bob Mueller knows.
DASKAL: Right. We assume that Bob Mueller knows. And we think that, I mean, this looks like another building block in what is increasingly looking like a pretty strong collusion case. It's not the smoking gun, but it is another very solid building block that shows that a senior Trump campaign official was directed to contact Stone. The Trump campaign was involved. It was active. It was working via Stone to learn about and potentially coordinate to some extent the dumps that were ultimately released of the emails.
KELLY: But when you say a strong collusion case, let me push you on that. We had David Brooks of The New York Times in the studio earlier. And he said, to him, the takeaway is that the president, then candidate, may have surrounded himself with a lot of questionable people. However, would they have needed to go through all of the things that this indictment lays out, as you say, in great detail if there really were a direct channel straight to the Kremlin?
DASKAL: So there's - collusion doesn't necessarily mean that there's a direct channel straight to the Kremlin. There's other means of establishing collusion. And this, again, is a - is one building block that shows a lot of different connections that lead back to the Kremlin. And ultimately, I mean, we have to wait and see what Mueller ultimately produces. But you're seeing, I think, a very careful building structure of what may very well be a collusion case at the end of this.
KELLY: So did we learn anything today in your view that tightens the web around the president himself?
DASKAL: So there's nothing here that leads directly to the president necessarily. Again, there's language about a senior Trump campaign official. There's other language in the indictment about senior campaign Trump officials. And so it certainly suggests that people that were very close to Trump, if not Trump himself, knew a lot of what was going on. But again, there's nothing in here that specifically leads directly back to Trump.
KELLY: And based on your close read, what does this indictment tell us about the direction that Mueller and his team are heading?
DASKAL: Again, I think they're building a very careful case. There - this is now the sixth Trump adviser charged. It's building a real web, and it's suggesting some potential collusion, at least coordination.
KELLY: And next shoe to drop - I mean, you said this is the sixth. Who's left of significant stature and interest but who has not yet been indicted or charged or cleared?
DASKAL: So, you know, it's impossible to predict. We don't know for sure. But of course Bannon's around. Miller's around. There's other folks that are still out there that may have information, and we just got to wait and see.
KELLY: All right, that's Jennifer Daskal. She worked in the Justice Department under President Obama. She now teaches constitutional and national security law at American University. Jennifer Daskal, thanks for stopping by.
DASKAL: Thank you.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Roger Stone is also a self-described dirty trickster. The white-haired bespectacled Stone has been a force in conservative politics since the Nixon administration. In another part of the program, we hear more about Stone's relationship with the Trump campaign. But for more about Stone's rise in politics, we're going to turn now to NPR's Tim Mak. Tim, welcome to the studio.
TIM MAK, BYLINE: Thanks a lot.
CORNISH: So he's always been considered a character - right down to his look, right?
MAK: That's right. Roger Stone is a one-of-a-kind individual. He's got bright white hair. He lives in South Florida. He's always believed that a white shirt and a tan face equals confidence. He's very much at home in Miami where he spends a lot of time. And he's a flamboyant dresser. He's also got a tattoo he's very proud of - the face of Richard Nixon on his back.
CORNISH: Let's talk more about Nixon because that is the era - right? - where Stone first emerged on the political scene.
MAK: Obviously that had a lot of impact on him. He even raised his arms with his fingers in a victory sign...
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UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: Go Roger. Go Roger.
MAK: ...Evoking that memory of Nixon leaving the White House when he resigned. He did work for Nixon. And he was elected president of the Young Republicans when he was in college.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: Watergate dominated this convention because the Republican Party's important youth arm was about to be taken over by Roger Stone, a 25-year-old political operative.
MAK: And in the '70s, he helped pioneer the rise of campaign financing through outside political groups.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: Among the revolutionary changes in American politics the past few years has been the rise of the political action committees, called PACs.
MAK: He then went to work for Reagan in 1976 and 1980.
CORNISH: After this, he parlays his influence into a lobbying firm - with a name we might be familiar with now - Black, Manafort, Stone.
MAK: Yeah, they were a powerhouse in the 1980s.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #3: Joining us now are Roger Stone, who belongs to one of Washington's most successful consulting firms.
MAK: Unlike a lot of other lobbyists then, they were willing to work with unsavory characters and were paid handsomely.
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ROGER STONE: What we provide for our clients, be them foreign countries or corporations or individuals, is a superior understanding of how Washington works.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #4: Manafort of Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly stands with his partners at the receiving end of $31 million in subsidies.
MAK: In 1992, the public watchdog group The Center for Public Integrity lists their firm as one of the lobbying firms to profit most by doing business with foreign governments that violated their people's human rights.
CORNISH: I want to talk then finally about his relationship with Donald Trump. How did they come together?
MAK: Well, they first met in 1979 in and around the time that Stone was working on the Reagan campaign. They've had an up-and-down relationship, but you get the sense that it has been one based on enduring respect. Stone has always been an informal adviser to Trump. He repeatedly urged Trump to run. He remained a very vocal supporter of the president and has said, even today, that he would never turn on Donald Trump.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Tim Mak. Thanks for your reporting.
MAK: Thanks a lot.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The federal government is going to be fully open for the next three weeks at least. This afternoon, President Trump did something he swore he wouldn't - open the government without funding for a border wall. Why did he do that, and what could the consequences be?
Marc Lotter is here in the studio to take those on. He was a special assistant to President Trump and also served as press secretary to Vice President Pence. Marc Lotter, thanks for stopping by.
MARC LOTTER: Thank you for having me.
KELLY: Any way to read this other than a retreat by the president?
LOTTER: I think what the president's doing is taking the Democrats at their word who said they would not negotiate while the government was closed down. So this gives the government, this gives the legislature three...
KELLY: He's taking them up on the offer they put on the table 35 days ago.
LOTTER: And he showed his commitment to border security. They showed their commitment to wanting the government reopened first. So now we have an opportunity - three weeks. We have conferees that have already been announced from the Senate side - obviously the House will follow suit - to see if they can actually produce a border security bill that includes funding for a barrier where the Customs and Border Protection experts think it's most needed.
KELLY: Thirty-five days, 800,000 employees who have gone without pay. What did the president get for this?
LOTTER: I think what - well, what we're going to get, we're going to find out, we're going to see in three weeks - if we can get a deal done. And clearly the Democrats were resolute in their commitment to not negotiating on this issue while the government was shut down. The president remained equally committed.
But I think when we saw that - we've now gone through two paychecks, and you - we saw the impact of the partial shutdown going out into the airports and what we saw today with - I think it just proves that we've got to get the government reopened. And if the Democrats...
KELLY: Do you think that was the tipping point...
LOTTER: I do.
KELLY: ...The LaGuardia...
LOTTER: And if the Democrats are serious about negotiating in good faith, I think the president said, we'll take you up on that offer.
KELLY: But again, I asked you at the beginning, is this a retreat? Is this a retreat?
LOTTER: I don't think so because we still have...
KELLY: What word would you choose?
LOTTER: I would say we are basically opening up a new opportunity. And that will be if the Democrats want to negotiate on this. They have said from day one...
KELLY: They have said they wanted to negotiate from day one, and here we are.
LOTTER: And here we are. So we will see. We've taken - we have taken the objection - their main objection off the table now that the government has been reopened. And so let's see if they are serious in following up and having an honest discussion about border security. And when so many Democrats have said in the past - and through this shutdown, we've seen Steny Hoyer and others say there are areas where barriers and walls work. So let's see if they can back that up and put that into a bill that can pass both chambers.
KELLY: What is the message from the White House today to all of the federal workers and their families and the communities who've been affected by this? The president went out of his way to say they will get backpay - fine. They will not get interest if they had to take out loans. Contractors will maybe, maybe not - we don't know what's going to happen, if they're going to get paid for this or if they'll be working again. What's the message?
LOTTER: Well, I think the first message - the president said it today - was thank you. Thank you for continuing to do your jobs. Thank you for continuing to honor your mission and your commitment even though you weren't getting paid. You will be getting the backpay...
KELLY: But what was that sacrifice for if the president didn't get his wall?
LOTTER: Well, we don't know if the president's going to get the wall yet, and that's where this next three weeks is going to be critical. The president was absolutely clear today that if by February 15 we don't have a deal in place, we may either enter another government shutdown, or he could take the emergency action that is allowed to him under the law to continue and do that border funding and border security without the appropriation and the approval of Congress.
KELLY: Do you believe that would be the right move - to shut down the government again in three weeks if there's still no money for a wall?
LOTTER: I don't think that's probably where it's going to end up. I don't think anybody on either side of the aisle wants to see that happen again. I think if we can get - obviously you're going to have to have another continuing resolution or a budget agreement to go through the end of October. And then it'll remain to be seen if the president needs to take emergency action or other legal - there are a few other legal opportunities he could pursue.
I think when we look at it, the president hopes that the Democrats will meet him in the middle. And when you look at the fact that even now, five, almost seven days since the president made his offer last Saturday, we'd still not gotten a counterproposal from the Democrats on what would they accept.
KELLY: Real quick, in a sentence, how do you expect this to play with the president's base?
LOTTER: I think they'll be initially upset. And I think when we get to the end game where we are now starting to enter, if he can still get border security, they will forget the in-and-out of Washington politics and legislative affairs to get us to the end result.
KELLY: I'm going to wager that's going to be a hard sell for people who have not seen a paycheck now for two Fridays, two weeks running. Marc Lotter, former White House adviser - he now serves on the advisory board of the Donald Trump campaign. Thanks for coming in.
LOTTER: Thank you.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
For the first time, the shutdown appears to have slowed air travel today. Hundreds of flights into and out of New York's LaGuardia Airport and a few others face significant delays. That's because too few air traffic controllers showed up for work. NPR's David Schaper covers transportation and the airline industry. He joins us now. And David, first give us a sense of the scale of the airline delays today.
DAVID SCHAPER, BYLINE: Well, there was a brief ground stop - a hold, essentially - on flights that were going to LaGuardia in New York, and also to Philadelphia and Newark, as well. Meaning those planes that are bound for those airports, particularly LaGuardia, were held at the gate or on the taxiway at the airport that they were leaving from and then not allowed to take off so they wouldn't face any delays while in flight and then have to circle around and maybe even get diverted to another airport. So and then those planes that arrived late, they're delayed and taking off again from LaGuardia to go to their next destination. And that's how the ripple effect of delays just goes across the country.
And the FAA says the reason for these delays was an increased number of employees at two air traffic control facilities on the East Coast who were out on sick leave today. And when there's too few air traffic controllers to safely manage a very congested region like New York, the FAA wants to slow the flow of traffic to put a little more distance between the planes, especially when they're taking off and landing. It's similar to what they do with bad weather, but this was obviously a human-focused problem.
CORNISH: Right. I mean, I don't know if you have a sense yet about why air traffic controllers were not coming in. And by that, I mean was this an organized sickout?
SCHAPER: Well, it doesn't appear that it was. At least, nobody is saying that it was. But there were just two facilities where there were more employees than usual who were calling in sick today. It's possible that they organized this on their own, but the union that represents the air traffic controllers says there was no organized sickout by the union. The president of that air traffic controllers association says the union does not condone employees joining any sort of coordinated activity like that that could compromise safety.
But he also says that many of the air traffic controllers are reaching what he calls the breaking point. It's a very stressful job, and the added strain of doing that job without pay, wondering how they'll pay the rent, the mortgage or other bills, could be a dangerous distraction to people whose sole focus should be on keeping the planes a safe distance from one another while flying over crowded cities. So there's really no margin for error, and the stress might just keep people away from work.
CORNISH: You mentioned the idea of a breaking point. Does anyone think that this also influenced the deal to reopen the government?
SCHAPER: Well, actually, many in the aviation industry think so. There are a lot of folks at the airlines who have been dreading a day like today, where the shutdown would actually delay flights and disrupt travel. Privately, some of them have been saying that, you know, maybe this is the kind of thing that we need to happen to encourage the White House and Congress to reach some sort of agreement to end this shutdown. This was costing the aviation industry quite a bit of money. The travel industry, an association there, says it was about a hundred-million dollars a day that was being lost in lost revenue because of the partial government shutdown and the disruption to air travel.
CORNISH: That's NPR's David Schaper. David, thanks so much.
SCHAPER: My pleasure.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The longest government shutdown in U.S. history is over. A short-term deal to reopen the government for three weeks was announced today, but federal workers across the country still haven't been paid, and government offices are still shuttered. That put mayors from communities across the country in a tough spot, including Dayton, Ohio, Mayor Nan Whaley. We're catching up with the mayor at the airport with more than 200 others for the annual gathering of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
Welcome to the program.
NAN WHALEY: Thanks, Audie.
CORNISH: So you all have been meeting for the past couple of days. What were the impacts of the shutdown that you were all discussing, things that were affecting cities?
WHALEY: Well, I mean, typically they were affecting all of us in a really similar way. You know, first - I mean, I'm sitting at the airport and was super grateful for the TSA agents in Dayton and across the country who have been so kind and nice when you know they're not getting paid, keeping things moving. And that seemed to be tough. Also, you know, our food banks have seen shortages, so that - the communities have had to pick up on making sure our food banks stayed open. When we try to do deals for, like, development - have been slowed down because those places, like HUD, have nobody.
Finally, in Dayton, we worked really hard, and the state government did a great job to make sure that people got their SNAP benefits early. But we're worried because they got the checks two weeks early, and then they'll have to last six weeks. And so even with the government opening, we're going to have to do a lot of discussion to make sure that children have food by the end of February.
CORNISH: Right. I've read that local food banks around Ohio and in Dayton have been bracing for increased demand - right? - from furloughed federal workers. As mayor, how has the shutdown affected your city's ability to provide services for your residents?
WHALEY: Well, you know, we always say and the mayors across the country have said, you know, in local government, you keep on plowing the streets and picking up the trash. And one of our comments this week were, could you imagine if local governments shut down, especially when we had, you know, 9 or 10 inches of snow in Dayton? It just keeps on going. And, you know, really we just wanted the federal government to do what their baseline responsibility is, which is to be open. So we're really pleased with this news. And now we can all go back home now that it's opened back up (laughter).
CORNISH: Are you concerned that another shutdown is around the corner, given that this deal is temporary?
WHALEY: Well, I'm hopeful. Look; I mean, of course we're in a new era of the federal government being nearly unable to do the bare minimum. But I am hopeful. I mean, I think they can work on this issue while people are working. And let's hope we are at the better sides of people's humanity when they're thinking about the future and how tough this has been for the country this past 30-some days.
CORNISH: What do you have to say to President Trump or to leaders in Congress about how this shutdown has played out?
WHALEY: Look; I think, you know, what Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have said over the past month about, hey, let's just open it up and talk about border security as Democrats - like, I've never heard the Democrats say they were against border security, but having the discussion be more thoughtful and not just be about one specific point, like a physical wall, doesn't make much sense, especially as mayors I talked to talk about the vulnerabilities in ports and where most of, you know, illegal substances come through. We're most - you know, we're more concerned about those areas that need real border security, and that's something we're interested in.
CORNISH: That's Nan Whaley, mayor of Dayton, Ohio. Thank you for speaking with us.
WHALEY: Hey, great to be on.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The debate over the border wall and immigration policy has reached, of all places, the jazz world.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANTONIO SANCHEZ'S "TRAVESIA INTRO")
KELLY: Today, the drummer and composer Antonio Sanchez is releasing a dramatic new album inspired by the stories of migrants arriving at the U.S. southern border. Sanchez was born in Mexico and is also a U.S. citizen. He's perhaps best known for his unusual solo drum set score of the 2014 movie "Birdman." Our reviewer, Tom Moon, says you can find that same cinematic flair on his new project called "Lines In The Sand."
TOM MOON, BYLINE: The album begins with commotion on the street, sirens, shouting voices, immigration enforcement officers in action.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Officer, this is wrong.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: This is going national, guys.
MOON: The album ends 70 minutes later with a reading by Mexican-American poet and activist Jonathan Mendoza.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANTONIO SANCHEZ'S "LINES IN THE SAND (PART 1 AND 2)")
JONATHAN MENDOZA: I pledge allegiance to my abuello, to the callouses on his Sierra Mountain hands, to the guitar he'd hold through the desert, strapped to his back like a weapon. I pledge allegiance to the music we make from our survival.
MOON: It's a recent immigrant's conflicted take on the Pledge of Allegiance, and it's as close as Antonio Sanchez gets to protest music. He uses these spoken word passages to frame sprawling, sometimes epic original compositions meant to honor the journeys and the dreams of immigrants.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANTONIO SANCHEZ'S "LINES IN THE SAND (PART 1 AND 2)")
MENDOZA: I pledge allegiance not to the border, but to my father's rusted car, not to the exodus, but to the knapsack on my great grandfather's belt, not to genocide...
MOON: Along the way, there's some ripping virtuosity from the five members of Sanchez's band, which is aptly named Migration.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANTONIO SANCHEZ'S "BAD HOMBRES Y MUJERES")
MOON: And there are vivid soft-to-loud contrasts. As a composer, Sanchez thinks in terms of long arcs. Two pieces here last longer than 20 minutes, and both feature moments of storm-clouds-gathering tension like this.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANTONIO SANCHEZ'S "TRAVESIA (PART 1 TO 3)")
MOON: These develop slowly and eventually surge into big, splashy melodies.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANTONIO SANCHEZ'S "TRAVESIA (PART 1 TO 3)")
MOON: Sanchez is 47 years old. He studied classical music growing up and came to the U.S. in 1993 to attend Berklee in Boston. He immediately found himself in demand. He's performed with Chick Corea and other jazz stars and has played for years with guitar master Pat Metheny. You can hear Metheny's influence on this album in the windblown, wordless vocal melodies Sanchez uses here.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANTONIO SANCHEZ'S "LINES IN THE SAND (PART 1 AND 2)")
MOON: It's always tricky when a composer of instrumental music claims a work is about a specific subject, especially a hot-button issue like immigration. Antonio Sanchez understands that. He says that, like many, he was incensed by the scenes of family separation at the border, yet he avoids expressions of anger or outrage. Instead, these fluid, fast-changing pieces focus on the life-altering journeys themselves, evoking the spirit and determination necessary to make them.
KELLY: The latest by Antonio Sanchez is "Lines In The Sand." Our reviewer is Tom Moon.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We've talked a lot on this program about plastic in the oceans. China is the biggest culprit when it comes to marine plastic, but Indonesia is second. Two young women on Bali are on a mission to change that beginning with plastic bags. Michael Sullivan has this report.
MICHAEL SULLIVAN, BYLINE: How young are they? Young enough that one of them couldn't make our weekday interview.
MELATI WIJSEN: She's at school.
SULLIVAN: That's 18-year-old Melati Wijsen talking about her Bye Bye Plastic Bags co-founder and 16-year-old sister, Isabel.
WIJSEN: She's just halfway through grade eleven, and she's putting her focuses more into graduating high school.
SULLIVAN: The two sisters started Bye Bye Plastic Bags when they were just 12 and 10 years old after a lesson at school about influential world leaders and change makers, including Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi.
WIJSEN: My sister and I went home that day thinking, well, what can we do as kids living on the island of Bali? See, we didn't want to wait until we were older to start making a difference. It wasn't even a question, really. It was more like, what can we do as kids right now?
SULLIVAN: The answer was right in front of them - literally, on the beach in front of their home.
WIJSEN: You know, it got to the point where at weekends, when we would go to our childhood beach - if we would go swimming, there was a plastic bag that would wrap around your arm. Or running through the rice field, and you're seeing farmers plant on top of plastic. And you say, just enough is enough.
SULLIVAN: A quick online search, she says, revealed that 40 countries in the world had already banned or put a tax on plastic bags.
WIJSEN: We thought, well, if they can do it, come on Bali, come on Indonesia. We can also do it. And so without a business plan, a strategy or a budget, like my mother will tell you (laughter), we went forward with the pure passion and intention to make our island home plastic bag-free.
SULLIVAN: They got some friends together, got online to start a petition and got over 6,000 signatures in less than a day, she says. They never looked back, spreading awareness through school and community workshops and beach cleanup campaigns, drawing international attention and that of local politicians, too.
WIJSEN: I think one of the biggest tools that pushed us forward was our decision to go on a food strike, which is one of our idol's tools of - how, you know, Mahatma Gandhi, he also had peaceful ways of reaching his goals of getting attention. So that was a huge inspiration for us. And we - within 24 hours, we had a phone call, and then the next day, we were picked up from school and escorted to the office of the governor.
SULLIVAN: He signed a memorandum of understanding with the sisters to work together toward eliminating plastic and later announced the goal of making Bali plastic bag-free by 2018. That didn't happen. But Wijsen says dealing with politicians in general has taught her some things.
WIJSEN: I always say it feels like dancing like the politician - with the politician. It's, like, three steps forward, two steps back and again and again. And it's almost like the cha-cha. But I learned a lot of different things.
SULLIVAN: The sisters have given a TED Talk, been invited to the U.N. in New York and spoke at last year's IMF World Bank meeting in Bali. And last month, the new governor announced a new law banning single-use plastic on the island, thanks in part to the sister's efforts and those of other like-minded NGOs. Melati Wijsen was thrilled by the news but says there's still lots to be done, spreading the no plastic gospel not just in Bali or Indonesia but across the globe.
WIJSEN: So we're actually now in 28 locations around the world, and it's all led by young people - kids in middle school, high school or university.
SULLIVAN: And that, she says, might be the best part about the journey so far.
WIJSEN: Because this is, you know, where we - we literally prove that kids can do things, and Bye Bye Plastic Bags has become this platform where kids can feel like their voices are being heard. For us, everything is happening in our lifetime, right? So we have to be the ones to start working towards the future and the world that we want to be part of.
SULLIVAN: For NPR News, I'm Michael Sullivan in Denpasar, Bali.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We're going to start the program today by talking about the latest indictment from special counsel Robert Mueller's office. Yesterday, after an early morning raid by the FBI, Mueller charged longtime Trump associate Roger Stone with obstruction of justice, making false statements to Congress and witness tampering. A few hours after his arrest, Stone said he intends to plead not guilty. And he said...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ROGER STONE: The charges today relate in no way to Russian collusion, WikiLeaks collaboration or any other illegal act in connection with the 2016 campaign.
MARTIN: That was outside of the courthouse, as you might imagine. In a few minutes, we're going to tell you more about Roger Stone and where he fits into the political scene. But first, we want to focus on what exactly this indictment means. So once again, we've called former federal prosecutor Seth Waxman.
Welcome back, Mr. Waxman. Thanks so much for joining us once again.
SETH WAXMAN: Thank you for having me.
MARTIN: So the special counsel charged Roger Stone with lying to Congress, obstruction of justice and witness tampering, but he didn't charge him with the underlying crime of conspiracy. I wanted to ask, what's your take on that? Because the indictment seems to contain plenty of evidence pointing to coordination between Stone and WikiLeaks.
WAXMAN: Yeah. He clearly seems to - could have charged conspiracy. On its face, it's an obstruction, witness tampering, indictment. But from my view, this is really just another piece in the puzzle. And if you assume the underlying investigation is a check into the conspiracy, a potential conspiracy between the Russians and the Trump campaign to influence the 2016 election, this could be a - what we would call in the legal world an overt act in furtherance of that conspiracy.
In other words, if the Russians were offering dirt on Hillary Clinton in exchange for, say, a promise to reduce or eliminate sanctions on the Russians, then how that dirt got out into the public arena would be a part of that conspiracy, a overt act in furtherance of that conspiracy. So it seems that if Mueller ultimately brings a wider conspiracy case, this is one of the legs or prongs of that conspiracy that was part and parcel of the wider conspiracy. But it's not been charged as such at this time, obviously.
MARTIN: But can I just focus a little bit more on this? Would it be a crime for Roger Stone to have coordinated with WikiLeaks? I mean, WikiLeaks isn't Russia, and it's Russia that the special counsel has charged with hacking the Democratic email accounts and so forth.
WAXMAN: Well, it could be. So, for example, this idea of a quid pro quo - of the Russians offering dirt on Hillary in exchange for a promise to reduce or eliminate sanctions on Russians - that would be a crime, a bribery scheme, for example. If Roger Stone knew about that scheme and intentionally acted in a way to facilitate that scheme by causing the Russians to work with WikiLeaks and the Trump campaign to work with WikiLeaks to get that dirt out into the public arena, and he did that knowingly and intentionally, he could be a part of that wider conspiracy.
On the other hand, if all he did - he had no idea about that underlying criminal conduct and was simply doing a favor, for example, for the Trump campaign, then no, he might not be. So it really goes to what his knowledge was and intent, like in many crimes.
MARTIN: The indictment contains a paragraph alleging that an unnamed senior Trump campaign official was directed to contact Stone about additional WikiLeaks releases of stolen emails, and it doesn't say by whom. I was wondering what this suggests to you. I mean, does it suggest that the special counsel is closing in on someone very close to the president, somebody very senior?
WAXMAN: Yeah, it sure seems that way, right? I mean, that's the phrase or paragraph in the indictment that raises the most questions and is kind of the most interesting to look at. And so it's one senior campaign official being directed by an even higher senior campaign official. And what we know about the campaign, there weren't - there just weren't that many people at the top of the ladder there.
So, you know, it's speculation as to - now as to who that is. But I think what we can clearly say is we've moved out of the world of speculation and into the world of clear evidence - that's - you know, the highest members of the Trump campaign were involved in this effort to get the dirt out through WikiLeaks.
MARTIN: So finally, before we let you go, do you have any sense, based on what we've seen so far, where the special counsel is headed from here?
STONE: Yeah. I mean, you know, this is a perfectly set up conspiracy investigation where you start low and work your way up the ladder to the highest rungs of that ladder. And we're clearly getting there, with Paul Manafort having been addressed, now Roger Stone having been addressed. It's my belief that the next step in which - maybe the final step is to look at Don Jr. and Jared Kushner, whether that's indictments for lying to Congress or dropping the wider conspiracy indictment and submitting a report to Congress.
So I think we're - you know, we're clearly heading towards the end, whether that means an additional month or two or three to six months. You know, it's just difficult to say from the outside, but we're clearly reaching the very top. And I think Bob Mueller's going to take a shot at flipping Roger Stone. You know, he'll issue indictments if he has a basis to against Jared Kushner and Don Jr.
And I think the only person left then is the president himself, and I'm of the opinion that he won't indict a sitting president. I'm also of the opinion that that's not a proper thing to do. I know there's very well-reasoned positions on the other side. But I think we are heading down the glide path to the end of this investigation in the terms of several months hopefully at most.
MARTIN: That was Seth Waxman, former federal prosecutor. He's currently a partner at the law firm of Dickinson Wright.
Mr. Waxman, thanks so much for talking to us once again.
WAXMAN: Thank you for having me.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Now we're going to take a few minutes to talk about Roger Stone. Who exactly is he? Now, you might have heard the name because he's had a long career in and around politics. And many, including possibly even himself, might argue he's spent his career on the dirtiest side of politics. To tell us more about him, we decided to call someone who has spent quite a bit of time learning about him. Morgan Pehme is a journalist and one of the directors of the Netflix documentary, "Get Me Roger Stone." And he's with us now from our bureau in New York.
Morgan Pehme, thanks so much for joining us.
MORGAN PEHME: Thank you, Michel.
MARTIN: So he came to notoriety early. As early as the 1970s, he was on Nixon's Committee to re-elect the president. He became the youngest person to testify to the Watergate grand jury. And later, he became associated with lobbying for some of the world's most notorious dictators. But what exactly does Roger Stone do? Why would somebody get me Roger Stone?
PEHME: Well, Roger is a practitioner of the dark arts of politics. If you want something done that is unscrupulous or unseemly, Roger is your man. And he is enormously adept at being a dirty trickster, and he has successfully pulled off dirty tricks for a number of people who have wound up in the White House.
MARTIN: So let me play a clip from the documentary where journalists, the people working on the film, asked him how he feels about being called a dirty trickster. Let's listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "GET ME ROGER STONE")
PEHME: Well, I'm stuck with it now. It's going to be in the first paragraph of my New York Times obit, so I might as well go with the flow. The only thing I can think of worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
MARTIN: So he is a dirty trickster.
PEHME: Yes, he is - and proud of it. Roger is only too happy to play the villain and to bask in the glory of his malevolence. And he seems to turn up again and again at every low light in American history throughout the time of his life.
MARTIN: Well, as we know from the clip, he does like attention and seeks attention. And he's got this tattoo of Nixon's face on his back, which he's only too happy to show people. You know, he's known for his expensive clothes and things of that sort. But the question is, is he really that important? Because whenever he gets into trouble, as he does from time to time, people say, well, he really isn't there. He wasn't that important. He didn't really do those things. So the question I'm going to ask you is, is he really that significant a figure? And how close really is he to Donald Trump?
PEHME: Well, he certainly is an important figure over the last several decades. He is oftentimes the person that people point the finger at when something nefarious is done in politics. Sometimes Roger is responsible for those deeds, and sometimes he's not. That being said, you know, there are a number of occasions that we detail in our film where Roger was deeply involved in history-shaping events.
And certainly, in the case of Donald Trump, Roger was literally the first person to suggest to Trump to run for the presidency back in the mid-'80s. And then, meticulously, he spent the next 29 years bringing that vision to reality. And Roger was there every step of the way. And every 4 years, he would float this trial balloon of Trump running for the presidency, and he was roundly ridiculed for that. But it was Roger who ultimately got the last laugh.
MARTIN: Speaking of the last laugh, you know, there are those who even now argue that journalists, mainstream journalists have not taken Donald Trump seriously enough. They saw him as kind of a buffoon and really didn't take seriously not just his potential impact but also the malevolence that he often brings to public discourse. Could the same be said of Roger Stone? Is it that he has been seen as kind of this picaresque, amusing figure? But has his real role in American public life in your view been taken seriously until now?
PEHME: Well, Roger is such a colorful character as a bodybuilding, pot-smoking dandy swinger that it's easy to get lost in that veneer. But that veneer is a distraction from the real powerful and highly negative effect, in my opinion, that he's had on our politics. And I do think that Roger has been underestimated and misunderstood over the years, and that has been to the detriment of his opponents. And Roger has a profound understanding of the dark heart of the American public and how to speak to us in a way that will manipulate and move us to be in service of his agenda. And it was that insight that he lent to the Trump campaign.
For instance, Roger and one of his campaign associates, Sam Nunberg, by most accounts seemed to have been the founders of this idea to build the wall - that it was a great campaign rhetorical tool for Trump to use. And it meshed with the idea of Trump being a builder. And apparently, Trump was at first reluctant to embrace that idea. He thought it sounded kind of stupid. But then when he floated it in a campaign rally, it was immediately embraced. So, you know, Roger understands that hate is a more powerful motivator than love. And he has used that approach to great effect.
MARTIN: That's Morgan Pehme. He co-director the Netflix documentary "Get Me Roger Stone."
Morgan Pehme, thanks so much for joining us.
PEHME: Thank you, Michel.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Now to the other major story we've been following - the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. The president and Congress finally reached a deal to reopen the government - at least, for the next three weeks. But as NPR's Shannon Van Sant reports, agencies that were closed for the 35-day shutdown might take some time to get back up to full speed.
SHANNON VAN SANT, BYLINE: The Smithsonian and other museums and the National Zoo will reopen on Tuesday. While a third of the country's national parks were closed, some remained partially open during the shutdown. Kristen Brengel is a lobbyist for the National Parks Conservation Association.
KRISTEN BRENGEL: So now the staff are going to have to go back into the parks and look for damage, make sure things are OK, ensure that historic sites are still well-protected.
VAN SANT: Other agencies are making plans as well. The IRS will rush to prepare for tax season. But some projects backed by grants and loans under the USDA's Rural Development Program may be delayed for months. Florida's Gulf Coast Children's Advocacy Center was granted $343,000 for a new facility to help child victims of rape and domestic abuse. The center's director, Lori Allen, says plans for construction have stalled.
LORI ALLEN: At this point, we're kind of at a standstill. We're really not sure what direction we need to go. And unfortunately, federal workers have been out of work for over a month.
VAN SANT: Even after the government reopens, impacts of the shutdown will continue to be felt. Brengel says the national parks have lost an estimated $15 million in ticket fee revenue. That goes towards paying for repairs and educational programs.
BRENGEL: That $15 million has pretty much evaporated, so that will hurt some parks going into the summer season if they had projects that they had teed up.
VAN SANT: Parks will also have to hurry to hire seasonal employees like rangers and law enforcement, a process which normally begins early in January.
BRENGEL: This shutdown can possibly result in having very damaging impacts on the spring and summer season if they can't get these folks hired in the next couple of weeks.
VAN SANT: The White House says federal workers will receive backpay in the coming days, though it's not certain exactly when they can expect their checks. The shutdown's effects have been felt in the private sector as well. John Arensmeyer is the head of advocacy group Small Business Majority.
JOHN ARENSMEYER: I think what we've learned from this shutdown is how the ripple effects of this - how widespread they are and how important it is that we keep in mind that there are many, many hundreds of thousands, millions of lives at stake for seemingly small decisions by the government. And we really can't have this happen again.
VAN SANT: The longest shutdown in U.S. history is over, but for many, a long and difficult process of recovery has just begun.
Shannon Van Sant, NPR News, Washington.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We're going to talk more about this in the Barbershop. Now, that's where we invite interesting people to talk about what's in the news and what's on their minds. And we wanted to dig in on a couple of things that this shutdown has made painfully clear. One - there are many misperceptions about federal workers, and two, some of the wealthiest Americans, including a few in this administration, have no clue about how the other 99.9 percent of the country lives.
Now, this was a epitomized by comments commerce secretary Wilbur Ross made on CNBC on Thursday. He said he didn't understand why some federal workers had to go to shelters for food. And he said he didn't understand why people didn't just take out loans. And here's Trump's daughter-in-law Lara offering a take that struck many as clueless.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LARA TRUMP: Listen, this is - it's not fair to you. And we all get that. But this is so much bigger than any one person. It is a little bit of pain, but it's going to be for the future of our country.
MARTIN: Well, obviously, to a lot of people, it's more than a little bit of pain. But we wanted to talk more about this gap between the super wealthy and everybody else. And it's been an issue for some time, but it's being amplified, as we said, by the recent shutdown and also by the political environment, both the election that was just held and the one coming up. Newly-elected representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has called for a 70 percent tax rate on earnings above $10 million. And the Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren, who's announced she's exploring a run for president, has proposed a tax on the assets of the super rich.
So we thought this would be a good time to bring together three people who've been thinking about this knowledge gap and the income gap. Here with me in the studio is Dani Tucker. She's a fitness instructor in Washington, D.C. And we've spoken with her many times in the past about issues facing working people, especially single moms.
Welcome back.
DANI TUCKER: Thank you for having me.
MARTIN: Joining us from Seattle, Eric Liu, author of "You're More Powerful Than You Think: A Citizen's Guide To Making Change Happen" and a foreign policy adviser to President Bill Clinton.
Welcome back to you as well, Eric.
ERIC LIU: Great to be with you.
MARTIN: Nick Hanauer is a tech investor, a frequent commentator on income inequality and a vocal advocate for a $15 an hour federal minimum wage. And he was the first non-family investor in Amazon, so he doesn't mind telling you that he's on the fortunate side of the wealth gap. And he's with us from Montana.
Nick Hanauer, thanks so much to you as well for coming in.
NICK HANAUER: Thank you.
MARTIN: So I'm just going to start by asking each of you, what struck you most about the comments that you heard from Wilbur Ross, from the president and from Lara Trump about this? And, Dani, why don't you start? And try not to let your head explode because...
TUCKER: (Laughter).
MARTIN: I know you have a lot of thoughts about this.
TUCKER: What - I mean, you know, that's not my circus, and those ain't my clowns. That's what we thought, like we always think every time we watch TV. Because it's the man that's in contentment going to give his - you know, to say it about the man that's in despair. You can't do that. You've never been there, so you can't speak. How come I can't walk into a bank? Because I walk into a bank, they see a burden. You walk into a bank, they see a blessing - big difference. They see your name, they know they're going to get their money back. They see me - you've got to go. You ain't got - you don't have anything to offer.
MARTIN: You had very specific effects from the shutdown even though you don't work for the federal government.
TUCKER: Oh, most...
MARTIN: Tell me about that.
TUCKER: I'm a fitness instructor. I read about Mr. Hanauer. How're you doing? And he has a business. He's a gazillionaire. Nice to meet you. I'm a fitness instructor for seven years. My - his business - you know, does things and makes money. My business is a way for people to get healthy that can't afford it. So for seven years, I've saw a loss. I depended on this season. OK?
MARTIN: So you get most of your business at the beginning of the year.
TUCKER: Became a shelter, OK? So the money that I was supposed to make there, pay bills - I've got, you know, kids in college, (unintelligible) - I couldn't get that because my federal government's - workers are not working. My contract workers are not working. The people that work for companies who need stuff from the federal government can't get it, so they're not working.
MARTIN: So normally, at this time of year, you'd have maybe 80 people per class.
TUCKER: Yeah, 80 to 100 - this is my Super Bowl.
MARTIN: And so...
TUCKER: ...Need this money.
MARTIN: And so how many have you been having?
TUCKER: Twenty.
MARTIN: Twenty - so...
TUCKER: And not just 20, but then I've had to collect food for 80. So now I've given you my rent money because here's the thing. Today is the day, and a way needs to be made. That's what they don't consider when he's sitting on Congress talking about policy, talking about walls. Oh, you're going to suffer a little bit, so - but you're - in the long run, it's going to help the country. I don't need the country right now. I need right now for them to come to class, but they can't. But they need to eat, and I'm the only one with money. And this is my rent money, so this is what we're going to. Right now, we're going to pull this in, and we're going to take care of this need, and we'll worry about my rent later.
MARTIN: I hear you. I hear you. Nick and Eric, what struck you most? Maybe Eric, why don't you start? What struck you most about what you heard?
LIU: Well, I mean, first of all, there's just the obvious, colossal sense of being out of touch. But I think there's a deeper problem going on here. You know, there was a headline last year about a study that said that four out of 10 Americans would not be able to make an emergency payment of $400 if if the need arose. And at the time, it got a little bit of attention in the news, and then we went on with our lives.
And what this administration did with this shutdown was basically to run a nationwide scaled experiment in real life. What would happen when lots of working people, lots of middle-class people, would stop getting paid for 35 days? And not just the ways in which they would suffer, but the ways, as Dani's talking about, the ripple effects, the second order effects that touch every neighboring business in a community? It goes out there. And I think what it highlights is that when you have the kind of severe, radical inequality that we have right now, not only is the middle class incredibly fragile but so is the legitimacy of the system itself, right?
When you hear Dani's voice talking about this, it's not just that this was a dumb shutdown. It's that there's this deep, deep sense that the game is rigged. And people have always assumed the game is kind of rigged. But when you have a Cabinet secretary like Wilbur Ross saying, you know, why can't you get a loan? Why can't you just go - you know, ride it out here? It adds insult to injury. It's not just that the game is rigged, but it's rigged by the very people in the cabinet right now of such great means that they are completely out of touch with the experience of trying to make ends meet.
MARTIN: Nick, what struck you about it?
HANAUER: Yeah. Well, I mean, I - you know, I substantially agree with Eric. You know, that - I think just to level set on how unequal our society has become - you know, the median family in America today earns about $59,000 a year. If they had been held harmless by rising inequality since 1980, they'd earn about $86,000 a year. If the median family had fully participated in productivity gains since 1980, they would earn $101,000 a year. And that gap is why people are so appropriately angry and so obviously economically fragile. And...
HANAUER: So - go ahead.
MARTIN: Yeah. No - yeah.
MARTIN: One of the things I was going to ask you is, though, is it - is this - and this goes to the question I was going to ask you. From your vantage point, is it that the system is the problem, or is it the people in these roles should maybe take a seat? Because I'm reminded of the fact that - you know, Franklin Roosevelt was very wealthy, but he understood the problems of working people. So...
HANAUER: Yeah.
MARTIN: So is it the - is the problem policy, or is the problem personnel?
HANAUER: Oh, you know, it's a mixture of both. And those two things are inextricably intertwined. We obviously live in an age framed by trickle-down economics and neoliberalism. And certainly, Donald Trump, if he thinks anything in that thick brain, thinks that the richer the rich get, the better one - everyone else will be. And certainly, that's the view of Wilbur Ross. Obviously, swapping those two clowns out for better, smarter and more empathetic people would be good. But, you know, I think, in my own opinion, the deeper problem is not personnel. It is policy and our understanding of what it is that makes the economy go. Because even in the Obama administration, people were unwilling to go as far as we needed to to solve these problems because they were imprisoned by neoliberalism.
MARTIN: OK. So let me just - in the three minutes we have left, I'm going to ask each of you, as briefly as you can, what should happen now in your view? And maybe, Eric, you want to start?
LIU: Well, I think what we should take note of is that this shutdown didn't end just because insiders in D.C. were feeling the pain. They were feeling the pain because we were in this moment over these last 35 days of an incredible surge of bottom-up citizen power. People were organizing - not just activists on the progressive left who were calling congress members and so forth but actually workers. You think about the air traffic controllers in LaGuardia and around the East Coast who essentially - they didn't strike, but they kind of sat it out, and they started sending a signal of, if this keeps going, we can make things worse.
And you think about the ways in which everyday neighbors and friends and - who are connected by family or other ties to the people who were furloughed over these 35 days started organizing to support their friends and neighbors. We saw a surge of people pulling together in a way that made me somewhat hopeful that whoever is in the administration, we have a possibility here of labor flexing its muscle again, of activists getting off the sidelines and people realizing they've got to speak up if they don't want the game to stay rigged and everyday folks looking at each other and realizing, I can't just let my neighbor not make rent this week. I've got to do like Dani did and actually turn my fitness studio into a place that can serve meals and put people up. And that's a silver lining for me out of this shutdown.
MARTIN: Dani, what do you want to see happen now?
TUCKER: I'm speaking to the people that have - that have a way, that have a financial way. Reach out to those of us that you are hearing on these shows and be able to provide financial help. We know the people that need it, including ourselves. Because them clowns down there are not going to do anything. We're going to be back here in three weeks - know this. We're going to be back here in three weeks because the narcissist - he just can't understand. OK? So forget them, OK? Work with us. We're making a way. You've seen it all over the news where we're feeding and we're turning our businesses into that and that. If you have a financial way to help us, and you don't mind doing that, reach out to us and do that because that's what we need. We need money.
MARTIN: OK.
TUCKER: That's what we need.
MARTIN: Nick, very briefly, what do you think should happen now?
HANAUER: Yeah. People have to push back against all this - all the trickle-down lies, all this nonsense about, you know, the richer the rich get, the better off everyone will be. People need to lean into OAC's policy proposal to tax great wealth at 70 percent, Elizabeth Warren's idea of a wealth tax on huge fortunes. These are good ideas that will not harm economic growth and will benefit the country.
MARTIN: And you'd be willing to accept that yourself.
HANAUER: Absolutely. Absolutely.
MARTIN: You'd be willing to take that big haircut.
HANAUER: (Laughter).
MARTIN: OK. All right. That's Nick Hanauer, Eric Liu and Dani Tucker. Thank you all so much for talking to us. Obviously, much more to say about this topic.
Thanks, you all, so much for talking to us.
TUCKER: Thank you.
LIU: You bet.
HANAUER: Thank you.
TUCKER: Thank you, gentlemen.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Venezuela is in the midst of a tense political standoff as two men claim to be the country's leader. Earlier this week, opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself the country's president. Meanwhile, the current president, Nicolas Maduro, refuses to step aside. The U.S. is trying to bolster Guaido's claim to power. Today, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was at the United Nations Security Council pushing countries to recognize him and declare Nicolas Maduro's presidency illegitimate, saying now is the time to pick sides. NPR's Michele Kelemen has this report.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: Secretary Pompeo says the U.N. Security Council meeting was long overdue. He described what he calls scenes of misery that are now the norm in Venezuela thanks to, quote, "Nicolas Maduro's socialist experiment."
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MIKE POMPEO: We're here because Maduro has reduced ordinary Venezuelans who once lived in prosperity to rooting through dumpsters to find something to eat.
KELEMEN: Russia's ambassador argued that the security council is supposed to discuss threats to peace and security, not the internal matters of member states. Vasily Nebenzia tried, but failed to block today's debate.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
VASILY NEBENZIA: (Through interpreter). The meeting which we are being forced to be present is another element of the strategy of the United States to effect regime change in Venezuela. We regret that in this an ethical ploy, the United States is involving the security council.
KELEMEN: Secretary Pompeo blasted Russia, as well as Iran, Syria, Cuba and others for supporting what he calls Maduro's mafia state.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
POMPEO: It's not a surprise that those who rule without democracy in their own countries are trying to prop up Maduro while he is in dire straits, nor are these countries supporting international norms as they cynically claim. China and Russia are propping up a failed regime in the hopes of recovering billions of dollars in ill-considered investments and assistance made over the years.
KELEMEN: Venezuela's foreign minister accused the U.S. of leading a coup, but said his country is open to talks with the Trump administration. Russia's ambassador said U.S. officials are using, quote, "Bolshevik-style statements" about disconnecting the Maduro regime from its sources of revenue. Russia's ambassador is also questioning whether the Trump administration is preparing military options. Secretary Pompeo wouldn't address that, but did issue a stark warning to Venezuelan security forces about U.S. Embassy personnel in Caracas.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
POMPEO: Do not test the United States in our resolve to protect our own people.
KELEMEN: The U.S. has brought home family members and nonessential personnel, but Pompeo says the U.S. Embassy will remain open despite Maduro's decision to break off ties. Michele Kelemen, NPR News, Washington.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
So that was the U.N. Security Council in New York. While the U.N. Security Council was debating the Venezuela political crisis in Venezuela's capital, Caracas, this was going on.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing in Spanish).
MARTIN: NPR's Philip Reeves is in Caracas, and he's with us now. Phil, what are we listening to there?
PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: Well, that's a rally that took place in the middle of Caracas. The crowd's singing the Venezuelan national anthem while on the stage is Juan Guiado, the man who's very much in the center of this confrontation that's happening here, this political drama. This is Guiado's second street rallies since declaring himself interim president in front of a huge crowd in this city on Wednesday and taking the oath and then immediately being recognized by the U.S., Canada, many Latin American nations and others. So he's taking his challenge to Maduro to the streets. And he says, despite the risk of arrest, he's going to carry on doing that until Maduro leaves. There's going to be a week of mass protests next week, he says.
MARTIN: So that sounded like a much smaller crowd than the ones you had described earlier. What do you make of that?
REEVES: Oh, yes, it was far smaller. I mean, the one on Wednesday was absolutely massive. This was a couple of thousand people. I think one reason is that Guiado announced this meeting late last night. Transport is pretty hard in Caracas, and people are worried about violence of course. But this is also actually a cabildo, and now that's a kind of open-air town hall meeting. The opposition, led by Guiado, have held a lot of these in recent days around the country. It's a new way of pressuring Maduro. They use these to explain to people their view that Maduro's presidency's illegitimate because he won his second term, which has just begun, on the basis of a rigged election.
And today, at this cabildo, this meeting, Guiado went over some of his main themes. He talked about the victims of Maduro's government, political prisoners, people who'd been tortured and killed. And he also talked about the amnesty that he and the National Assembly, which he heads, is offering the military and the police and appealed for the security services and civil servants to swap sides and abandon Maduro.
MARTIN: So what's your sense of the rest of Caracas? What's the mood there elsewhere as this is all playing out?
REEVES: Well, you know, the reception at that rally was warm. And there were, you know, some big cheers. And people chanted, president, president, and yet it felt subdued. And if you talk to Guiado's supporters, they they do say they see this as a key moment of change. But no one seems entirely confident. And you sort of see that and feel that if you drive around the city. A lot of the city's quieter than usual. You see more soldiers and National Guard around on the streets.
The presidential palace where Maduro's based has more soldiers outside of it than before, although today I saw people in red T-shirts and red baseball caps going into the palace. Presumably, that's the uniform of the Chavistas that support the Maduro government. And presumably, they were heading for counter-rally in the palace in favor of Maduro, who says he's not going anywhere and that he's the victim of an attempted coup masterminded by the U.S. - a view which, by the way, is shared by Russia and others of his international allies.
MARTIN: So, you know, speaking of the U.S., on Wednesday, Maduro severed relations with the U.S. and gave American diplomats 72 hours to leave. That deadline expires tomorrow. What is happening with them?
REEVES: Well, the U.S. Embassy's up in the hills that overlooks Caracas. I went up there today. It's very quiet. The embassy is, of course, heavily fortified, as they always are. Maduro has said that the diplomats within it must leave Sunday and close the embassy. The U.S. says it doesn't recognize that order from Maduro because they say Maduro is no longer president in Washington's eyes. Nonessential staff and families have actually left, they did so yesterday. But the rest of the mission is staying. And Juan Guiado says that, as interim president, they have his permission to do so.
So we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. If Maduro chooses to make this into some form of showdown, he's taking a big risk. The U.S. has made it pretty clear that there'll be strong retaliation if he harms any of its diplomats. And they've said in Washington that no options are off the table.
REEVES: That's NPR's Philip Reeves in Caracas. Philip, thanks so much for talking to us.
MARTIN: You're welcome.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Finally today, let us meet a modern renaissance woman. You might know actress and comedian Amanda Seales from her role as Tiffany in the hit HBO show "Insecure." But over the years, you might have caught her on MTV as the host known as Amanda Diva. She briefly toured with the R&B group Floetry. You might have caught her on college campuses with her show "Smart Funny & Black." And then there's her podcast, Small Doses, her workshops on stopping street harassment, not to mention her wildly popular Instagram and Twitter pages. So yes, she is busy. And now she has a new standup special premiering tonight on HBO. It's called "I Be Knowin'." And Amanda Seales is with us now from NPR West in Culver City, Calif. Amanda, thank you so much for joining us.
AMANDA SEALES: Thank you for having me.
MARTIN: Congratulations on everything.
SEALES: Thank you so much.
MARTIN: Yeah. But I'm wondering with everything I just mentioned - your stint on MTV, your time touring, the, you know, the years you spent putting in work on "Smart Funny & Black," what does it mean to you to have this special on HBO? Does it stand for something? Does it seem like a milestone in some way?
SEALES: It's absolutely a milestone. I'm having a private screening event that is essentially my wedding reception. Like, we literally have a wedding cake with a topper because this is my wedding. Like, I'm marrying my future as somebody who is hopefully a comedic voice and a trusted and thoughtful comedic voice. That's what I want to go down as. And so yes, as far as a milestone, this cements that.
MARTIN: There's a hilarious opening scene in your HBO special where you talk about everybody the special is not for. Let me play a bit of that clip. Here it is.
(SOUNDBITE OF COMEDY SPECIAL, "I BE KNOWIN'")
SEALES: Everybody except for racists, rapists, sexists, misogynists, narcissists, you know, folks that are calling the cops on black folks just living our lives. Yeah, it ain't for you. It ain't for Trump voters or coons or people who don't believe that white men can be terrorists. It ain't for bullies. It ain't for poachers. It ain't for abusers and even people who keep asking me, Amanda, can I pick your brain? No. God. It also is not for people who don't take care of their kids and even people who take their shoes and socks off on planes. Who raised you?
(LAUGHTER)
MARTIN: OK. So that's a list. That's a long list.
SEALES: (Laughter).
MARTIN: Who is the show for then?
SEALES: Well, I wrote this and I perform this specifically to connect with black women. Anybody else who enjoys it, I mean, feel free. But as part of a cultural base that honestly is very far too often not spoken on behalf of, spoken for or spoken to, I wanted to give us something to add to our own canon of representation.
MARTIN: One of the things that I noticed, though, about it is that unlike some of the other African-American women that - working in comedy that that people might know - and I'm not going to...
SEALES: Yeah.
MARTIN: I'm not going to embarrass you by naming them. But I'll just simply say that - who a lot of whose acts seem to be focused on sex or wanting to have sex or not getting enough sex, a lot of your humor focuses on things that happen to people at work - right? - or people who work in offices or people who, you know what I mean? Everything from street harassment to being ignored in public to being misunderstood at work. And I'm going to play a short clip from - I can't play the whole conversation because you have to let it unfold. But I'll just play a little bit, and then we can talk a little bit more. Here it is.
(SOUNDBITE OF COMEDY SPECIAL, "I BE KNOWIN'")
SEALES: When you a black person in any office, you stay ready 'cause you're always wondering, how black am I going to have to get? And what that really means is you're going through a series of checkpoints on how you gon' (ph) check somebody on a scale of Stacey Dash to Nat Turner.
MARTIN: OK. So what really fascinated me about this - again, like, this whole bit is a lot longer than here - but what really got me is how people in the audience, like, they jumped up and cheered. Like, they were jumping up. It was like if - you get a car, and you get a car. But it was almost as if saying, I'm going to bring a customer service orientation to everyone. You know what I mean? It was like this really mundane thing about respect and being - having to be respected and being...
SEALES: Microaggressions.
MARTIN: And yet people were jumping up wildly applauding and...
SEALES: Because it never gets addressed. It never gets addressed. You know, like, black women are in the workforce, like, toiling, you know, managing so many methods of racism, sexism, misogyny, chauvinism, eliteism, all the isms just to continue to aspire to excellence. And it just doesn't get talked about.
MARTIN: But it's also a lot of joy there. There's a lot of joy there.
SEALES: Oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARTIN: One of my favorites was about how black women are particularly good at compliments.
(SOUNDBITE OF COMEDY SPECIAL, "I BE KNOWIN'")
SEALES: We have taken compliments down to a precise science of conciseness where we don't even say a full sentence. We just say at you what we're looking at on you. OK, polka dots.
(LAUGHTER)
MARTIN: That's all you needed to say. Everybody around here just was howling. Do you - I was wondering how much you think your master's degree in African-American studies from Columbia - congratulations on that as well.
SEALES: Thank you very much.
MARTIN: Is there any way in which you think that experience informs your comedy?
SEALES: Well, I think it's less about that experience in terms of like doing the master's as much as it is the information I gained. And that has become an integral part of just like my voice and my comedic voice because I reference a lot of history as tools to discuss the present and to conceptualize a better future. I mean, there's a reason why I do a whole Harriet Tubman bit.
And I think on the surface, some people might think, oh, she's just, you know, like, she knows the history of Harriet Tubman. But really what that's about is acknowledging that, like, black women have been in these positions of having to be in full struggle and full greatness all at the same time. And I think like we've been learning about Harriet Tubman for so long as this picture on a wall, but she was a human. She was a person. She had to deal with, like, customer service issues while helping to bring slaves to freedom. And I just found that concept, like, so fascinating.
MARTIN: There are people who work in comedy who are complaining that the environment has become too restrictive. I mean, there are some comedians who have said that they won't work on college campuses, for example, because people are so easily offended. And I wonder - and, you know, that's a whole other conversation. I'm not going to mediate that. But I was going to ask you for your take on that because you do still work on campuses.
SEALES: I do. And I make a point of, like, letting them know what's up, you know, because I think the reality is that we - the college campuses have a different vibe than we had when I was in college. You know, like, professors have to provide trigger warnings. Like, there's just a different conversation that's happening on these campuses around conversation. So for instance, like, I have a joke in my special where I say I'm trans thug. I was born in this body, but within me lives Suge Knight. And I remember doing a show. And there was a trans person in the audience who felt offended by that statement. And they were offended by me saying trans and not referring to trans people. And it was clear that my intent was not to offend and not to distract from and not to demean.
So, you know, at that point, as a comedian, you're just like, well, I can't account for the things that are going to offend everybody. Right? Once you start adjusting to like every individual, you're killing yourself.
MARTIN: Well, what's next for you?
SEALES: What's next for me is a tour. So we're announcing tour dates on Monday. It's really exciting to just see this milestone turn into more milestones.
MARTIN: That's Amanda Seales. She is an actress, a comedian, a television personality, a podcast host. Her new comedy special "I Be Knowin'" premieres on HBO tonight. Amanda Seales, thank you so much for talking to us.
SEALES: Thank you.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Restaurants serving Chinese or Taiwanese food in the U.S. often use the same few words in their names. Think golden and dragon. But NPR's Hansi Lo Wang has been noticing a different trend in New York City.
HANSI LO WANG, BYLINE: Down underground in a Manhattan subway station, a wok full of napa cabbage and carrots are stir-frying in Edward Huang's first restaurant. Slow-braised beef noodle soup and rice bowls topped with minced five-spice pork are all served from this galley kitchen crammed inside a bustling food court. Huang says the dishes were inspired by visits to his family in Taiwan, and so was the restaurant's name - Zai Lai.
EDWARD HUANG: My family's parting words are always zai lai - come back soon, literally. But it's, like, a see you soon, come back soon sort of idea.
H. WANG: At first, though, spelling out that Mandarin phrase in English letters - Z-A-I L-A-I - was not what Huang had in mind for branding his Taiwanese restaurant.
HUANG: People come, and they say, oh, is it Zay Lay (ph)? We had - you know, some of our employees in the beginning had trouble pronouncing it. And I wanted to avoid that headache.
HONGYUAN DONG: Well, I guess the only difficult sound here is the Z.
H. WANG: Hongyuan Dong teaches Chinese at the George Washington University in D.C. Here's how he coaches his students on pronouncing that Z sound in Mandarin.
DONG: So it's similar to Ds in English. So it's not zai (ph) - it's dsai (ph).
H. WANG: Dong says he's seen other new restaurants with Mandarin names written in pinyin. It's a system of transliterating Chinese characters using the Roman alphabet. Pinyin was first adopted by the Chinese Communist Party, and now it's an international standard that's popping up even on restaurant signs in Washington, D.C.
DONG: Actually, I noticed a new restaurant called Lao Ban. There's no English because lao ban (ph) means the boss in Chinese.
H. WANG: That's another sign, Dong says, of how much more common Mandarin is in U.S. culture today.
HEATHER LEE: I think it means that we're ready to engage mainland China. We're speaking in the language of mainland China.
H. WANG: Heather Lee is a historian at New York University Shanghai. She's researched the history of Chinese restaurants in the U.S., including when names in Cantonese rather than Mandarin were often spelled out using English letters. Over the years, many other restaurants have adopted some common keywords in their English names like panda and Great Wall. Lee says the transition towards Mandarin names marks a shift in who's running the restaurants and the kinds of customers they're trying to attract.
LEE: They're linking up with a wealthier professional population from mainland China. A lot of them seem to have connections to Taiwan as well.
H. WANG: For Jason Wang, it was a connection to the city of Xi'an in northwest China that he wanted to preserve right in the name of his family's restaurant chain in New York - Xi'an Famous Foods. The first part of the name is spelled with an X-I. It's one of the hardest sounds to pronounce for many non-Mandarin speakers. And Wang says putting that X on his restaurant storefronts has helped the business grow.
JASON WANG: Let's just keep things authentic. You know, let's keep the X. Let's keep the spice in the food. Let's not make it too easy for people. People like discovering stuff, you know. They don't really like everything handed to them on a platter.
H. WANG: Wang adds it's also a matter of taking pride in his Chinese heritage.
J. WANG: Why are we ashamed of the stuff that we call our food or what we call our restaurants? I think that is also why we've become more confident in presenting the actual names versus trying to hide it behind some sort of euphemism of a name.
H. WANG: Back underground in the subway station at Zai Lai, Patrick Dixon (ph) is waiting for his order - a steamed pork bun.
PATRICK DIXON: You know, if I wanted, like, authentic Chinese cuisine, I'd consider the place that actually has, like, Chinese words in it before a place that has, like, just panda, you know?
H. WANG: Dixon's a frequent customer at this restaurant. He says part of the draw is its name - Zai Lai.
You know what it means?
DIXON: No. I have no clue. What does it mean?
H. WANG: It means come again in Mandarin.
DIXON: Oh, that makes sense.
H. WANG: Especially since he's planning to Zai Lai again and again.
Hansi Lo Wang, NPR News, New York.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Finally, today, we're betting you know Henry Winkler as The Fonz on "Happy Days" or more recently from his Emmy-winning turn as the acting coach Gene Cousineau on the HBO comedy "Barry." But if you have a grade-schooler in your house, especially one who struggles to read, then you're probably very glad that he's also the co-author of the children's chapter book series "Here's Hank." The stories follow the daily adventures of a kid named Hank Zipzer, who is kind, funny, observant and tries really hard but still finds himself struggling at school. Henry Winkler knows a lot about that because he, too, is dyslexic, and he's brought that experience to bear in his books.
This week, the latest installment in the "Here's Hank" series comes out. It's actually the last in the series. It's called "Everybody Is Somebody," and we thought this would be a good time to speak with the one and only Henry Winkler. Henry Winkler, thank you so much for joining us.
HENRY WINKLER: Oh, my goodness. I'm so happy to be here.
MARTIN: Well, congratulations on everything, especially the Emmy...
WINKLER: Thank you, thank you.
MARTIN: And we're going to talk about that in a minute. But, first, we, of course, we want to talk about the books. And I'm thinking that there are probably two groups of people out there - people who know you as an actor - and a very successful one at that - and people who had no idea that you'd been an ambassador for people with learning differences. And, of course, there's everybody who's so grateful that you are. I was wondering when you figured out that you had this learning difference.
WINKLER: I was actually 31. And my stepson, Jed - he was having trouble, and we had him tested. And everything that they finally said to us at the evaluation at the result of all the tests - I went, oh, my goodness. That's me. And so, at 31, I found out I wasn't stupid, that I wasn't lazy, that I had something with a name.
MARTIN: How did it feel when you found out that you had something with a name?
WINKLER: That's interesting because I - the first thing that happened is that I was so angry because I was grounded 97 percent of my high school career. My parents thought I was being lazy. And I - if I stayed at my desk long enough - so I was really angry. And then - now, I realize maybe if I was not dyslexic, if I didn't have that challenge, I might not have had the tenacity to get here into this studio to talk to you this afternoon.
MARTIN: So why don't we stop for a minute, and just tell us what dyslexia is and what it's like to live it.
WINKLER: First of all, it is the wiring in the brain, and it's hereditary. For every child, there is a different degree. Some people - it works on their ability to read, do math. Some people write backwards. When you're reading, you miss words. They drop off the page or the words start swimming. But, for every child, it is a personal journey.
What I have found over the years, talking to kids today, is that our journeys are similar - the feeling of inadequacy, of embarrassment, of, oh, my gosh, am I going to have a future because I don't have the immediate moment of being able to achieve? It is the same when I was in grade school in the '50s to young people today graduating from high school.
MARTIN: How did you cope all those years? I mean, I think that, you know, you have an MFA, auditions and cold readings and memorizing scripts. I mean, how did you handle it all those years?
WINKLER: I thought I was stupid until recently, actually. You take that mantle with you when you're - it's said often enough and when you're young enough. There is a - an emotional component I think that comes along with learning challenges, where I had for myself no sense of self. It took me a very long time to put that in place. The auditions I would memorize as quickly as I could - because I couldn't read the page and act at the same time - to make an impression on the casting person or on the director and the producers. So I would memorize as much as I could, and I improvised the rest. And when they said, well, you're not doing what's written on the page, I said I'm giving you the essence of the character.
MARTIN: Do you think that humor was a cover?
WINKLER: Definitely. I used humor because I was so embarrassed all the time. When I got "Happy Days," we read the scripts on Monday morning at 9 o'clock around the table with all the producers and the heads of the departments. And I was embarrassed for 10 years because I could not read what was on the page. I just tripped over words, and everybody just kind of tolerated it. So I used humor to cover all those mistakes for all those years.
MARTIN: You know, that's all the more reason why I think, you know, reading about what you went through and, frankly, reading the books, the way you described the experience of the eye-rolling, the name-calling, the adults who were impatient, the people who think you're being lazy - after having gone through that, you are not only willing to talk about it, but you decided to write these books about it. And to...
WINKLER: Well, you know, I...
MARTIN: ...Put all that out there. And I was just wondering - what made you do that? What made you decide to write about it...
WINKLER: But, Michel, I didn't think I was going to be a spokesperson. There was a lull in my acting career in the early 2000s. And my agent at the moment said, why don't you write books about your learning challenges for kids? And I said I can't do that. I'm stupid. I can't write a book. And he said OK. I'm going to introduce you to Lin Oliver. Lin Oliver knows everything about children's literature. So we met for lunch, and it turned into this incredible other career of Hank Zipzer and 29 novels.
MARTIN: He's been in 29 - he's been a character in 29 novels. This is the 12th of the "Here Is Hank" (ph) series...
WINKLER: Yes, he's in second grade...
MARTIN: Yeah.
WINKLER: ...In "Here's Hank."
MARTIN: Well, you know, it says - in the author bio on the back page, it says that of all of your career accomplishments that you're most proud of co-authoring this series. Is that true? Why is that?
WINKLER: It is absolutely the truth because it is not hyperbole. It is - when I first started with Lin, I'm telling you as my name is Henry, it never dawned on me that I would have my name on a book. And this last installment is called "Everybody Is Somebody." And...
MARTIN: Well, why is that the last one? What's up - I mean, what's up with that...
WINKLER: Well, you know what? It was time. It was time.
MARTIN: He's in second grade. I think he...
WINKLER: He's...
MARTIN: ...Could go a little farther. I don't know...
WINKLER: He could go to third.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
WINKLER: Yeah, it's true.
MARTIN: Sixth.
WINKLER: But the last moment of "Here's Hank," of "Everybody Is Somebody," he's lying in bed that night. And he thinks to himself, I'm going to be somebody.
MARTIN: That's lovely.
WINKLER: Well, it touches me, I'll tell you because it's very easy for me at 73 to become 8 and remember what it was like.
MARTIN: Well, congratulations on all that. And thank you for all the books and...
WINKLER: Well, I didn't know what else to get you.
(LAUGHTER)
MARTIN: I want to talk about the acting for a minute because you're on a streak. You won your primetime Emmy for your role in "Barry." Do you kind of feel like you're getting a second look, a second wind? Or what do you think...
WINKLER: No, I don't think of it as a second wind, but I sure know that this moment in my life is pretty extraordinary. So whether I win awards or not, I'm, at this moment in time, a major winner.
MARTIN: That is the actor, director and author Henry Winkler talking to us about his latest and his last installment in the "Here's Hank" series, which he writes with his co-author Lin Oliver, talking to us from NPR West. Henry Winkler, thank you so much for talking to us.
WINKLER: I thank you for inviting me. What a pleasure, Michel.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We're going to begin the program today by trying to answer a couple of big questions that you might have been thinking about. In a few minutes, we're going to talk about the moral arguments for and against the border wall that President Trump and his allies want to build on the southern border.
But first, we want to talk about Venezuela, where the standoff continues between President Nicolas Maduro and Juan Guaido, the head of the National Assembly, who has declared himself interim president. Guaido is backed by several Latin American neighbors as well as the United States, Canada and Israel. And more countries say they'll recognize Guaido if Maduro doesn't call new elections within a week. Maduro rejected that demand today, and he accused what he called the empire - the United States - of trying to launch a coup d'etat in Venezuela.
And that is language that at least a handful of Democratic members of the U.S. Congress and some progressive activists have been using to describe the situation. That includes Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who tweeted, quote, "a U.S.-backed coup in Venezuela is not the solution to the dire issues they face" - unquote. The Latin American editor of The Wall Street Journal, David Luhnow, weighed in on Twitter to say no, this is not a coup in the works. We have David Luhnow on the line now to consider the question.
Welcome. Thanks so much for talking to us.
DAVID LUHNOW: It's a pleasure.
MARTIN: So let me just say that you posted a long Twitter thread about this, and we don't have time for the entire thread. But if maybe you could kind of condense your argument using an analogy that you think maybe Americans would understand?
LUHNOW: Sure. Well, basically, what I'm saying is, you know, imagine living in a world where the U.S. president began to stack all the institutions like the Supreme Court just with political hacks instead of professional people. And the midterms came. Democrats won two thirds of Congress, and the president said, no, I don't recognize that, so I'm going to eliminate Congress with the courts, and I'll set up my own congress with my supporters. And then when it comes time for his re-election, he bars the Democrats from running. Any of the top politicians that the opposition party has are thrown in jail or forced into exile.
They run elections, and the president wins again, but no one recognizes the election as free or fair. And even the guy who's in charge of the voting - electronic voting system says there's fraud. So that's essentially what's happened in Venezuela.
And the real Congress there - the one that is the last democratically-elected body - is saying, hey, you know, our president's broken the Venezuelan Constitution many times. And that is the coup - not us, as the democratically-elected body trying to follow Venezuela's Constitution and saying, we no longer recognize the president. We are going to put the head of the National Assembly as interim president and call for new elections. So that, in a nutshell, you know, is trying to create an analogy where people might understand where the Venezuelan opposition is coming from.
MARTIN: So the bottom line for the United States, Canada and the Latin American countries that have already said that they support Guaido - their argument is that he is the last winner of an actual election, of a legitimate election.
LUHNOW: That's right. Maduro's re-election was recognized as a sham by 60 countries, including most of the world's major democracies. So his - this all started when he took his oath of office for his second term, which was essentially deemed an illegitimate term, in front of his fake Congress. And the real Congress said, not so fast. We think you're breaking Venezuela's Constitution.
MARTIN: The Associated Press has a story today about Guaido traveling secretly abroad, including to Washington, to gather support. I mean, how are people receiving that there? Does it look to them there that the U.S. is interfering in Latin American governance again?
LUHNOW: Yeah. I think it divides largely along sort of partisan or ideological lines. I think many in the Latin American left are saying, this is the U.S. interfering once again in Latin American politics. As we all know, there's a long history of U.S. interference in Latin American politics. But that history is actually quite old now. I mean, certainly in recent decades, there hasn't been much in terms of direct interference in democracy. But it's still viewed - there's obviously a history there and a legacy that creates - any situation like this paves the way for it to be viewed that way.
However, there are some - I think most of, from what I've seen, most of the people on the center and some on the left are saying, you know, hang on a minute, guys. If we for years argued against authoritarian dictatorships on the right, we have to be consistent and argue against authoritarian dictatorships on the left. It is sort of one of those quirks of history that right now, the three fully authoritarian governments in Latin America are all left-wing - Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. And they're very repressive regimes.
You know, back in the day, back in the '60s and the '70s, it was U.S. supporting these right-wing military dictatorships. And I think that image of the U.S. backing - you know, the old phrase, he's a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch - well, you know, that's no longer the case.
MARTIN: That's The Wall Street Journal's Latin American editor David Luhnow talking to us from Mexico City.
David, thanks so much for talking to us.
LUHNOW: It's been a pleasure. Thanks to you.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We've been focusing very much these past few weeks on the impact of the government shutdown. But now that the government is more or less reopened, the conversation turns again to border security. Democrats, congressional Republicans and the president all say they agree that a border security package is necessary, but the disagreement comes over what that should look like. And some Democrats - most significantly, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi - have laid down a very specific marker on a wall, calling it an immorality.
So today and next week, we decided to engage that question with thinkers from different perspectives. First, we're going to hear from Shaun Casey, the founding director of the Office of Religion and Global Affairs at the State Department, appointed by former secretary of state John Kerry. He's now the director of the Berkeley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs at Georgetown University.
Professor Casey, welcome. Thanks so much for joining us.
SHAUN CASEY: It's great to be here. Thanks, Michel.
MARTIN: So Speaker Pelosi might be one of the most high-profile people to make the argument that the wall is immoral, but she isn't the only one. As briefly as you can, what's the basis of that view?
CASEY: Well, I think it's in response to a view that says God wants the wall. In fact, it is divinely ordained. I don't think Speaker Pelosi would be making a moral argument here if it weren't for the fact that there are people out there saying no, God wants this wall.
MARTIN: The issue of what it means to be displaced, to have your life disrupted by war or the whims of cruel rulers, is a very big part of the Judeo-Christian tradition. I mean, I'm thinking of - there are - you know, there are so many texts that offer comfort to people in exile. I'm thinking, like, Jeremiah's letter to the exiles, where he tells them not to lose hope and to - you know, be where they are and to prosper there because their day is coming. So those are a very big part of the tradition. But what about walls, per se? Do walls have some specific theological importance?
CASEY: Well, the answer is no. In a sense, if you look at the entire biblical record from beginning to end, you see walls are just things. In some cases, they protect cities under siege. But there's no general principle that says every city deserves a wall, and God builds a wall around his or her chosen people. In fact, the Hebrew bible is a story of people on the move. From the very beginning, even out of the Garden of Eden, people are leaving. The Hebrew people are chosen by God because they are exiled. And that is, in fact, their entire story.
MARTIN: Is in part the sort of a theological or spiritual or religious impetus for the Pelosi view that this is a rich country and that people who have more are required to offer comfort and shelter to people who have less - particularly people who are in dire distress?
CASEY: I think it's even deeper than that. It's woven into the American DNA that we are and have been a location for the oppressed, those who flee persecution. You can come to America, enjoy the freedom. Now, that has not been unregulated, and no one is saying, let's have an open border. Let's let everybody come across who wants to. That's part of the diatribe against Pelosi. Oh, she's for an open border. All the Democrats want is an unrestricted access. And that's not true. I mean, that's just factually wrong.
MARTIN: But if the argument is that a wall is an immorality, there are already points across the international border where physical barriers exist.
CASEY: Right.
MARTIN: So why, then, aren't the Democrats arguing for a dismantling of those physical barriers that already exist?
CASEY: Contiguous walls do not exist. We do not have a continuous wall on either our northern border or our southern border. We let people cross under normal crossings. That's part of our generosity. That's part of our openness. Now, in the name of security, we do regulate it. But what the wall is about is keeping certain folks out. It's keeping Muslims out, allegedly. It's keeping rapist Mexicans out. So there's a lie, and that's part of the immorality that Pelosi sees - that the wall is being built for purposes that are less than explicit - to keep certain folks out.
MARTIN: You know - and you've written certainly about this - that white evangelical Christians have become some of the president's most ardent supporters. Presumably, they read the same texts that you do and that Nancy Pelosi does. Why do you think that people see this so differently?
CASEY: Well, I think there are different schools of interpretation, there are different biblical interpretive practices. Like, the classic example is when then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions invoked Romans 13.
MARTIN: OK, tell people what Romans 13 says...
CASEY: So...
MARTIN: ...For those who don't know.
CASEY: Romans 13 says that God has given government authorities to rule. Now, some of President Trump's evangelical advisory board says, well, there you have it. The most famous one is Robert Jeffress, the pastor, who says, that gives the government the authority to do whatever, whether it's assassination, capital punishment or evil punishment to quell evildoers like Kim Jong Un. That is a deeply held worldview in certain pockets within the evangelical world - that if you make it to the top of a political scrapheap in a country, God put you there.
MARTIN: How do you think religiously committed people in the U.S. are confronting this issue of the wall?
CASEY: Well, I think there is a minority of American Christians - they're overwhelmingly white. They're overwhelmingly Republican. They're overwhelmingly influenced by this sort of ragtag group of folk, you know, on the evangelical advisory board the White House has - who are going to endorse any kind of strongman move the president makes because ultimately, a passage like Romans 13 and this very strict, narrow misinterpretation of it authorizes that view.
Now, when Bill Clinton was president, when Barack Obama was president, they were not cut the kind of political slack that is being cut towards Mr. Trump today. So the selective enforcement, the selective observation of this theological principle is to be telling. They can't apply it consistently across just even the last 10, 15 years in states. That's a minority phenomenon. I think most American Christians are somewhere between. They're not taking this alleged literal interpretation of Romans to the bank every day. And where you find this view very deep and very strong is in a certain select segment of white evangelicalism today.
MARTIN: That's Shaun Casey. He directs the Berkeley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs at Georgetown University. He formerly was the founding director of the Office of Religion and Global Affairs at the State Department. He was kind enough to join us in our studios in Washington, D.C.
Professor Casey, thanks so much for talking to us.
CASEY: You're welcome. Great to be here.
(SOUNDBITE OF TORO Y MOI SONG, "ORDINARY PLEASURE")
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We'd like to return to that controversy surrounding the Catholic high school group from Kentucky. It's underlined racial and political divisions in this country. While in Washington, D.C., earlier this month for the anti-abortion March for Life, the group was filmed wearing Make America Great Again hats. They engaged in a confrontation with a Native American man and members of a group known as the black Hebrew Israelites. That episode and the explosive reaction to it is also exposing tensions within the Catholic Church regarding support for President Trump. NPR's Sarah McCammon reports from Covington.
SARAH MCCAMMON, BYLINE: For Bishop John Stowe, the controversy that has erupted in recent days around the boys from Covington Catholic High School is raising bigger questions, not just about who's right and who's wrong in this complicated story.
JOHN STOWE: The image that it created did damage to the church.
MCCAMMON: Stowe leads the Catholic Diocese of Lexington, Ky., south of Covington. In an op-ed for The Lexington Herald-Leader, Stowe wrote he's dismayed by what he sees as, quote, "the association of our young people with racist acts and a politics of hate."
STOWE: And I think when you have a president now who, throughout his campaign, was demeaning of immigrants, was demeaning of women - to consider that as the person who's pro-life - I think it's problematic when we give him a pass on everything else because of those positions.
MCCAMMON: Stowe says Make America Great Again hats have no place at the March for Life. He says church teachings obligate Catholics to care for all life, including immigrants and refugees. But that message isn't going over well with some Catholics.
RANDALL TERRY: Show some dignity, Bishop. I know you can hear me. Show some courage.
MCCAMMON: Outside the Covington Catholic Diocese on Friday, longtime anti-abortion activist Randall Terry led a tiny band of protesters, who stood on the sidewalk carrying signs with statements like, Bishop Stowe, a wolf in sheep's clothing.
TERRY: Stop playing politics with the church.
MCCAMMON: Terry has been known for decades for leading anti-abortion protests and, at times, blocking access to clinics. He says he's unhappy with Lexington Bishop Stowe and other local Catholic leaders who've promised an investigation into the incident. One of those leaders, the bishop in Covington, issued a letter later on Friday, apologizing for acting too quickly and suggesting he may have come down too harshly on the students. Wearing a Make America Great Again hat, Terry said the whole episode has demonized Trump supporters within the church.
TERRY: This is all about the hat. That's why I'm wearing it. They want to paint everyone who supports President Trump as a racist, and that's just a lie. It's a damnable lie.
MCCAMMON: Terry lives in Memphis and is a Catholic convert. Some local Catholics here agree with him. Fred Summe is with Northern Kentucky Right to Life. He says he supports President Trump's policies on abortion and thinks that issue should be the top priority for Catholics.
FRED SUMME: Other issues we can reasonably disagree on, issues like how should we address the immigration situation, capital punishment, the environment. These are all issues that reasonable Catholic or Christian minds can differ.
MCCAMMON: Other Catholics here in Kentucky have a harder time finding candidates to align with their political beliefs. Jessica Heavrin (ph), who lives in Lexington, says she voted third party in 2016 because she opposes both abortion and many of Trump's policies. Heavrin says she's concerned about how the controversy around Covington Catholic High School reflects on her church.
JESSICA HEAVRIN: For anyone outside the faith looking in, they're thinking, well, you have a bunch of Catholic kids who are being taught in the Catholic school, and they're all wearing, you know, the Trump paraphernalia. What does that tell you? That the school is promoting and allowing that to happen.
MCCAMMON: While Heavrin supports the goals of the March for Life, she says the image of the boys from Covington Catholic in their red Make America Great Again hats reflects poorly on the church and doesn't represent what she and many of her fellow Catholics believe.
Sarah McCammon, NPR News, Covington, Ky.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
OK. Let's talk some more about the hat. You know which one I'm talking about - the red Make America Great Again hat, the MAGA hat. Why is the hat such a big deal? Washington Post fashion and culture critic Robin Givhan has been thinking about that. And she's with us now in our studios in Washington, D.C. Welcome back. Thanks so much for joining us.
ROBIN GIVHAN: Thank you.
MARTIN: You wrote a whole column about the MAGA hat. You said that the Make America Great Again hat is not a statement of policy anymore. It's a declaration of identity. So, first of all, why do you say that? And what is that identity?
GIVHAN: Well, I mean, I think the MAGA hat, you know, did start out as a - you know, as sort of innocuous political swag. And then it came to represent, you know, the Trump administration, the Trump campaign. And people who were wearing it I think were, at that point, focused on various policy ideas, whether it was tax cuts or a point of view when it comes to foreign policy or immigration. But I think what happened is that the hat was essentially kidnapped, weaponized by Charlottesville and by white supremacists and by the violence that went on in some of those rallies by a minority of people at those rallies.
But that hat came to I think, in the broader culture, start to represent a lot of really dark forces. And it has come to represent, also, this idea of making America great again as in, oh, it once was great in some distant past. And things happened to make it less great.
MARTIN: So political figures have used fashion to make statements before, like Hillary Clinton had the blue pantsuits that then became the white pantsuits because that's something that the suffragists wore. And even though Barack Obama wasn't really known for his fashion, I mean, there were symbols associated with him that people made into fashion. Like, the Shepard Fairey "Hope" poster was a thing for a while...
GIVHAN: Right.
MARTIN: Is it your contention that this is at a different level, it has some broader cultural meaning apart from the political figure itself?
GIVHAN: Yeah. I mean, I do think it's different from those things because - the groups and attitudes and sensibilities and moods that it's associated with. And I think, you know, there is this notion that simply because you put on the hat means that, you know, you are all these terrible things. And I don't necessarily think that is the case. And I don't think most people presume that to be the case. But I do think that there's this sense that if you put on that hat, you are knowingly shrouding yourself in something that has all of these dark connotations and, in knowingly doing that, that implies that you're OK with it.
MARTIN: Is that symbolism, in your view, equally understood by those who wear it and by those who receive it or see it?
GIVHAN: Sometimes not, sometimes it does. I mean, you know, I think, you know, you can look back in - at much darker periods in history, you know? And there are those who might argue that, oh, I'm wearing this because I'm a history buff. But the broader culture at large knows what it means, historically.
MARTIN: Well, you draw the analogy to the Confederate flag.
GIVHAN: Right.
MARTIN: I mean, you say that - in your column, you say that to wear a MAGA hat is to wrap oneself in a Confederate flag, which you also see as a provocation. Now, along those same lines, there are plenty of people who will say, no, it's not. It's a reflection of history. It's a reflection of Southern heritage. It's not meant to be provocative or racist. And to that, would you say, are these people just not willing to be honest about what they're trying to say?
GIVHAN: Yeah, I would say that. I mean, I think that if you are making this argument that it is purely a matter of celebrating history, then you have to I believe also recognize the full breadth of that history. And so you can't wear something like a Confederate flag or wave a Confederate flag and say that it only represents this tiny sliver of history when, in fact, there is this really broad history, the bulk of which is pretty negative, at least for a pretty large group of people of color, that, you know - you have to recognize that that is part of the story that you're telling.
MARTIN: So tell me a little bit more about what reaction you're getting to the column.
GIVHAN: Yeah. I mean, I would say that the reaction is as polarizing as the hat is. The people who agreed with the column are very vocal in expressing that. And then there are people who simply say that, oh, you're reading way too much into the hat, or you, in fact, are a racist because this is what you see in that hat. But I would say that the ones who are perhaps most eloquent in their - the defense of the hat really are the ones who are saying the dark terrible things that you described, do not reflect what's in my heart, do not reflect how I feel about immigrants or how I feel about women, you know?
They still feel that the hat is representative of something that goes directly to how they think their government should be run. And, you know, and I say to them that, yes, I understand what your intent is. My argument is that that benign intent has been drowned out, overwhelmed, eradicated by quite a malignant intent.
MARTIN: Well, it proves your point, once again, that fashion isn't just fashion. Fashion is communication and culture, right?
GIVHAN: Yeah. And it's not simply what you are trying to communicate. It's also - you know, fashion is connected to the broader culture, and all of those outside forces change the meaning of what you wear.
MARTIN: That's Washington Post fashion and culture critic Robin Givhan, the Pulitzer Prize-winner joining us in our studios in Washington, D.C. Thank you so much for joining us.
GIVHAN: Pleasure.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Tomorrow, furloughed federal employees will return to work after more than a month off the job. This means they'll be able to see their colleagues, start digging through their inboxes and, of course, start to receive their paychecks. But, as NPR's Rebecca Ellis reports, for some, this return is bittersweet, as federal workers face the possibility of another shutdown in just three weeks.
REBECCA ELLIS, BYLINE: Towanna Thompson is excited for tomorrow.
TOWANNA THOMPSON: I'm ready to go back on Monday. I'm bored, and my family's tired of looking at me.
ELLIS: Thompson is spending her last day out of work with her grandson, picking up lunch and groceries from a food bank run by Jose Andres' World Central Kitchen. The nonprofit has been providing free meals for furloughed employees and their families in downtown D.C. for the last few weeks. She's ready to get back to work tomorrow. But she's also wondering how long she'll be able to stay on in her job as a program analyst for the Department of the Interior. The bill President Donald Trump signed funds the government only through February 15.
THOMPSON: I think it's stupid. Why do you want to open us up for three weeks, and then we have to go back and do this again? You know, Trump needs to wake up and smell the cappuccino.
ELLIS: Thompson says even though the shutdown is over, she's still budgeting. She's getting groceries today at World Central Kitchen. She'll keep going to the library instead of paying for cable or Internet. She's not going to see the doctor.
THOMPSON: I put off some medical procedures elected that I really need. But I'm going to wait for those, you know, just until after three weeks.
ELLIS: This time is for paying people back.
THOMPSON: I've relied on friends and family. You know, now I have to pay back stuff that I begged, borrowed and stole.
ELLIS: She's not the only one here today viewing the shutdown's end with some wariness.
BERNADETTE ARMAND: I'm more cautious than optimistic.
ELLIS: Bernadette Armand (ph) is glad she'll finally be getting paid. But she says she'll still likely need these donations from the kitchen throughout this week, if not longer.
ARMAND: We were - we've been out here sort of working for free for many weeks now. And I think that the government showed that they can sort of get used to that.
ELLIS: Chef Jose Andres, who runs the kitchen, posted a video saying food will be served until this Friday. Though, if the government doesn't stay open, he promises to set up shop once more.
JOSE ANDRES: If for some reason things go wrong again, we will be there for them.
ELLIS: Some federal employees are convinced things will go wrong. Jared Hautamaki is an attorney at the EPA. During the shutdown, he'd been to food banks like Jose Andres' and picked up extra shifts at Home Depot. Tomorrow, he'll return to the EPA. But he's not cutting back on the shifts.
JARED HAUTAMAKI: I plan on working as many hours as I can at Home Depot the next three weeks to prepare for the worst.
ELLIS: Hautamaki is not optimistic that the government will stay open after February 15.
HAUTAMAKI: I'm still budgeting that we're not going to get a check until two weeks from now.
ELLIS: And then another week after that, and...
HAUTAMAKI: We're shut down again.
ELLIS: A lot of federal employees view these three weeks as a chance to pay the bills they've fallen behind on. Tax examining assistant Paul Kiefer had spoken with NPR during the holidays. Back then, he'd been furloughed from the IRS for about a week and was worried about not making his credit card payment.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
PAUL KIEFER: Whether or not I can pay for the electricity, get any food, pay for the rent, whether or not I'm going to be thrown out onto the street.
ELLIS: Last Friday, he realized he'd made it through. He's going to keep his home in Austin, Texas. And he was ecstatic.
KIEFER: First thing that pops into my mind was, hallelujah. I can finally make my payments.
ELLIS: He'd been desperately hoping for this next paycheck.
KIEFER: I didn't have that. I was - it was that - would have been pretty much a death sentence.
ELLIS: Kiefer is diabetic, and on top of everything else, he was running dangerously low on medication. Now he knows he can afford another batch.
KIEFER: So at least I have the opportunity to give myself a little bit of cushion.
ELLIS: For Kiefer, three weeks is good enough.
Rebecca Ellis, NPR News.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
I think it's fair to say that we are in a loud moment. Our politicians are loud. Our music is loud. Our movie blockbusters are loud. Still, introverts are having a moment. Books have been written and TED Talks have been given about the virtues of quiet, sensitive people. So the question is, has that newfound appreciation left the extroverts out in the cold? Mark Oppenheimer thinks so. He's a father of five, and he recently wrote a piece for The Washington Post about his 5-year-old daughter Anna titled, "How To Raise An Extroverted Child In A World That Loves Introverts." In it, he describes his concerns about an exuberance that knows few boundaries in a world that lets say doesn't always appreciate that.
Well, it's been kind of sad around here with the government shutdown. And, also, I thought this would be a good time to call up Mark and Anna and hear more about extroverts. And they are with us now from their home in New Haven, Conn. Mark, Anna, welcome. Thank you both so much for talking to us.
MARK OPPENHEIMER: Thank you.
ANNA: Thank you.
MARTIN: Anna, can I start with you since you are the star of the piece?
ANNA: Sure.
MARTIN: Tell me about yourself. What do you like to do?
ANNA: I like to read Harry Potter so I can become a genius.
MARTIN: Oh, yeah. That's good, yeah. Anything else? I hear you like parties.
ANNA: Well, I like to do magic so I can go to Hogwarts when I'm 11.
MARTIN: Oh, OK. That sounds good. OK. Well, Mark Oppenheimer, thank you for letting us talk to Anna and visit her and brighten up our day.
OPPENHEIMER: She would have it no other way. She doesn't say no to invitations.
MARTIN: When did you notice that your daughter is very outgoing? You mentioned that some of the other kids in the family, your wife, not so much.
OPPENHEIMER: Right. So she's the fourth of our five children. And, you know, these categories are, obviously, kind of invented, right? No one human is everything. But our third daughter, who's now 8, is definitely a lot like my wife, which is to say she doesn't like big parties and doesn't like big crowds and gets easily overwhelmed. And Anna, who came three years after her, was exactly the opposite from a very young age. She just would always rush to crowds, greets people with hugs, loves parties. And it was obvious from the moment she had a personality that this was the personality she had.
MARTIN: Well, give an example if you would.
OPPENHEIMER: Oh, sure. For one thing, there's - she doesn't like to leave the classroom until she's hugged a certain number of people in her kindergarten class (laughter). That's pretty typical of her. There was not long ago a party that she was invited to, and we were going to suggest that she skip the party because the child was someone whom she wasn't terribly fond of. They didn't have a great connection. And she said, but I want to go to the party. And we said, well, you don't even like so-and-so that much. And she said, well, that's true, but I love parties.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
OPPENHEIMER: So that's - her attitude on life is that it doesn't really matter whose party it is. It's a party.
MARTIN: She's very self-aware. It seems like that. Anna, you like people a lot, right?
ANNA: Yeah.
MARTIN: Yeah. How come do you think that? Why do you think you like people so much?
ANNA: Because, well, I only like certain people. I only like people that are nice to me.
MARTIN: Really? Well...
ANNA: Yeah.
MARTIN: ...Because your dad was telling a story once about how you walked up to people. And you try to say hi to them, and they don't say hi back.
ANNA: Well, I probably would tap them on the shoulder. If they just didn't like that and still didn't answer, I'd probably just walk away and ask my dad if they would help me get them. And if that person still didn't like it, I just, well, go away because they probably didn't want to be bothered.
MARTIN: (Laughter) Why do you think it is that some people don't want to be friends? Or what do you think that is? Are some people shy, and you're just not shy? What do you think that is?
ANNA: Not shy person, I would probably say. But I would not say that I just ran into crowds giving people hugs. I would not say that. I would probably say - I would probably go to crowds, yeah. Maybe that's true. I'd probably wouldn't say that I hug people a lot.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
ANNA: And I'd probably say that I just talk to people a lot.
MARTIN: Exactly. Mark, your piece is very funny, and I understood what you're saying about how, you know, we're in a moment where there's sort of a something in this argument that there's something better about introverts but you have, also, a deeper point about the message you think society is sending to girls who are extroverts. Could you talk a little bit about that?
OPPENHEIMER: Yeah. I mean it's very hard to read some of the pro-introvert literature (laughter) without getting the sense that what's being exalted is a certain kind of quiet and reserve and what is often referred to - especially with girls - as poise. And that seems like code for don't be too exuberant. Don't put yourself out there too much. Don't be too loud. Don't be too in your face.
And so the flip side of that is, what if you're a girl coming up in the world who likes being loud and exuberant and in people's faces? I think there's lots of wonderful ways people can be. But we're in a moment where you're reading a lot of books. I mean, the airport bookstores are filled with business guides saying, hire the person who is really quiet. And that has its own kind of prejudice that - you know, that I think does have a cost.
MARTIN: What have you come to about Anna? Like, what advice are you giving her about how to manage that?
OPPENHEIMER: Yeah, I want her to be her. And I think the world is going to, you know, have to deal, you know? I'll give you an example. About three summers ago, she walked up to an older woman on the playground and just introduced herself and said hi and started chatting. And the woman turned to me with this kind of spiteful look and said, you have to teach her not to talk to strangers. And I thought, well, I actually think it's great to talk to strangers.
I think we need to talk to people we don't know more. And we need to walk up to people more often and break down barriers and get to know them. And so I would, in a million years, not counsel her not to talk to strangers. I think people need to do more of that. I think she's kind of a role model for me.
MARTIN: Well, that's a very good thought there. So let's say - I want to say goodbye to Anna. Anna, do you have any thoughts for people who are maybe not as bold as you are about talking to people that they don't already know? Do you have any advice for people who are shy?
ANNA: Well, I think I already know a person that doesn't like talking to people as much as me. Megan (ph), right. That's her name, Megan.
OPPENHEIMER: And what's your advice for her? Like, would you be able to teach her how to talk to people better?
ANNA: Well, I don't think I could do that. People can't change their opinions. She's shy. I can't change that she's shy. I think if I could change her, I probably wouldn't. People don't change the way they act...
MARTIN: Well, that's a very good point (laughter).
ANNA: ...That she's shy. And I don't think she should change it.
MARTIN: Well, thank you. That's Mark Oppenheimer. And his daughter, Anna, joined us from their home in New Haven, Conn. Mark Oppenheimer wrote a piece called "How To Raise An Extroverted Child In A World That Loves Introverts." He wrote that for The Washington Post, and he also hosts a podcast on Jewish identity called Unorthodox. They joined us from New Haven. Mark Oppenheimer, Anna, thank you both so much for talking to us.
OPPENHEIMER: You're welcome.
ANNA: You're welcome.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
In San Francisco, officials worry the rising cost of living is pushing out communities that have long histories in particular neighborhoods. So the city has created several cultural districts to preserve those legacies and help long-term residents. From member station KQED, Chloe Veltman reports on one of them - the nation's first official transgender district.
CHLOE VELTMAN, BYLINE: The most common sound in the Tenderloin neighborhood these days is the sound of construction.
(SOUNDBITE OF CONSTRUCTION VEHICLES OPERATING)
VELTMAN: New cafes, condos and experimental art spaces are popping up in a neighborhood once flush with gay bathhouses and bars. Among the neighborhood gems is Aunt Charlie's lounge. It's one of the Tenderloin few remaining gay drinking spots.
HONEY MAHOGANY: This place has really been a centerpiece for the community, a place for people to meet, you know, during the day, at night.
VELTMAN: Honey Mahogany is a trans political activist and drag artist who's appeared as a contestant on "RuPaul's Drag Race." The Tenderloin is densely populated with transgender people, which makes Mahogany feel at home.
MAHOGANY: All over San Francisco, people - because they can't put me in the box of male or female, because I'm tall, because I'm black, for whatever reason, I get stared at. And in the Tenderloin, I find that that doesn't happen.
VELTMAN: Mahogany is a co-founder of San Francisco's Transgender Cultural District, one of six designated in the city. Mahogany says the district came into being to help prevent her community and proud LGBTQ heritage from being pushed out as a result of development and skyrocketing rents.
MAHOGANY: With gentrification, we're seeing the continued destruction of a lot of the old buildings. And with the destruction of these buildings, we're also losing the stories that go along with them.
VELTMAN: Stories like the one about how the district got its official name as the Compton's Transgender Cultural District.
MAHOGANY: This used to be the Compton's Cafeteria.
VELTMAN: The site in August 1966 of one of the first recorded LGBTQ uprisings - for years, policemen had been giving the many transgender people who hung out at Compton's Cafe a hard time.
MAHOGANY: One day, a policeman came in and started harassing some of the women that were there. And they had had enough and decided to throw their coffee in the police person's face.
VELTMAN: The ensuing brawl lasted several days.
MAHOGANY: Three years before the Stonewall riot.
VELTMAN: Around the U.S., cities have been busy naming cultural districts. A few decades ago, there were fewer than 100. Now, there are around 600. Most of them focus on highlighting local culture and history to attract crowds, says Ruby Lopez Harper, of the national arts advocacy nonprofit Americans for the Arts.
RUBY LOPEZ HARPER: These cultural districts really drive a lot of economic development for their area, which can be a really big benefit when those areas are trained to revitalize.
BRIAN CHEU: But it needs to be really able to serve the members of those communities.
VELTMAN: That's Brian Cheu. He oversees cultural districts at San Francisco's Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development. San Francisco voters recently passed a ballot measure allocating several million dollars in annual funding for the city's cultural districts, which Cheu says will be used to benefit long-standing residents.
CHEU: Like focusing on those small businesses where the owners come from that community, where the employees come from that community.
VELTMAN: Compton's Transgender District plans to break ground on a new community center with a small business incubator in the coming months. And there's talk of acquiring real estate to help keep the neighborhood affordable. Honey Mahogany isn't entirely opposed to gentrification as long as it doesn't push residents out. She says people in the Tenderloin deserve clean streets, warm homes, even good coffee and fine art.
MAHOGANY: If we're not fighting to provide economic opportunities for our community and if we're not fighting to improve our neighborhood, I'm not sure what we're fighting for.
VELTMAN: A fight that transgender people in this neighborhood started more than 50 years ago at the Compton's Cafeteria - and which Mahogany says is still being fought today. For NPR News, I'm Chloe Veltman in San Francisco.
(SOUNDBITE OF POETICAL TYRANT'S "INTO THE DRUMS")
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Emergency rooms are among the most expensive places to get medical care, even for minor problems. That's our starting point for our latest Bill of the Month. Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal from our partner Kaiser Health News is here in the studio to explain. Welcome.
ELISABETH ROSENTHAL: Thanks for having me.
SHAPIRO: So tell us about this month's patient and how he wound up in the emergency room.
ROSENTHAL: This patient is a 40-year-old man named Matt Gleason. He did what many of us do and should do. He got a flu shot at work. But it didn't quite go the way he expected.
SHAPIRO: All right, let's hear what happened from reporter Alex Olgin of WFAE in Charlotte. She went to visit Matt Gleason recently.
ALEX OLGIN, BYLINE: Matt Gleason is incredibly organized and thorough. His house is immaculate, and he's been scrutinizing his medical bills for years.
MATT GLEASON: I've been doing that for the past 10 years.
OLGIN: So when it was time to choose an insurance plan at work, he had his data. He went for the low monthly cost and high deductible. He's 40, healthy and rarely goes to the hospital.
GLEASON: But it stings a whole lot more when you actually do have a visit.
OLGIN: In October, he decided to get a flu shot at his office.
GLEASON: This was right downstairs and free. Why not?
OLGIN: He was sitting at a table, waiting the obligatory 10 minutes post-shot. And then he fainted. He has a history of fainting, and I can relate.
When it happens to me, there's, like, a couple signs. And I sort of know it's coming. Is that your case?
GLEASON: For me, I maybe have I'm going to say 10 to 20 seconds. Like, I just feel my head start to go, and then I'm out.
OLGIN: He woke up on the floor with the nurse and someone from HR standing over him. They were on the phone with 911. Once the paramedics came and sat him up, he started vomiting. That was an unusual symptom for him.
GLEASON: So at that point, I was like, OK, you can take me to the ER.
OLGIN: An ambulance took him to a hospital in suburban Charlotte. After about an hour, he got an electrocardiogram to check his heart while video chatting with a doctor.
GLEASON: She didn't notice any abnormalities. But to be on the safe side, she wanted to order all these tests. She just had a bunch of tests. And so I just said, OK, I'll go with it.
OLGIN: Gleason ended up getting a blood test, a urine test and a chest X-ray. After five more hours, he saw another doctor in person, who sent him home. Two weeks later, the bills started coming.
GLEASON: I wasn't expecting $4,700 pre-insurance.
OLGIN: That didn't include the ambulance or doctor's bill. Altogether, after insurance, he owed his entire deductible for just this visit to the hospital.
So how are you feeling about the whole situation currently?
GLEASON: Disgruntled (laughter), bewildered, annoyed, kind of mad - the whole process is broken.
OLGIN: He's learned more about that broken process as he tried to fight this bill. After lots of phone calls, he finally got the hospital to send him the full list of all its charges, something known as a charge master. It was 250 pages. He searched for the fee he was charged.
GLEASON: Fortunately for me, it didn't take me very long 'cause my role as an analyst, I deal with gobs of data.
OLGIN: He found the fee he was charged didn't match the one on the price list. He was infuriated. He says imagine going to a McDonald's drive through and having the employee ask you...
GLEASON: Is this a preventative hungry visit or a actual hunger visit? Because there's pricing differences. And the person who made your Big Mac is sending you a bill for $5. And then because you had three items ordered, you now get charged a facility fee.
OLGIN: He says health care, like eating at a restaurant, is a service. But with health care, the patient has no understanding of the costs upfront.
SHAPIRO: OK, that's reporter Alex Olgin talking about the bills that Matt Gleason got after he fainted and went to the emergency room. Elisabeth Rosenthal, explain what's happening here.
ROSENTHAL: Well, the first thing to know is when you get a flu shot, some people faint. So, you know, take your time. Don't get up too quickly. That's a normal reaction. But the key in this case is that once someone calls an ambulance - and even more, once that ambulance delivers you to an emergency room, which they are going to do - you're kind of on a conveyor belt to high medical bills.
SHAPIRO: So his colleagues called 911. He went to the emergency room. The doctor ordered all these tests. Was all that really necessary?
ROSENTHAL: Well, you don't want to second guess an emergency room doctor because they're always thinking about what's the worst that could happen. But, you know, they're saying they ordered all these tests because they were worried he had a heart attack. Well, then why did he sit around for seven hours? A chest X-ray, a urine test - that story just doesn't add up medically.
SHAPIRO: So he is now personally on the hook for about $4,000. Is he going to have to pay all of that?
ROSENTHAL: He probably will because unless he can say a service wasn't delivered, which I'm - you know, we see the records; it was - he's probably going to have to pay.
SHAPIRO: Tell us more about the price list that he got. Those have been in the news a lot lately.
ROSENTHAL: Yeah. I mean, what we saw is as of January 1, the federal government said all hospitals had to post their price lists online. He got that price list. As he found out, they're often 250 pages long. They're in code. They're in medical abbreviations. So they're not that useful for hospital shopping at the moment. Hopefully, they will be over time. But at the moment, unless you're a kind of data person or a medical person, they're very hard to decipher. And it really wouldn't have helped him in advance.
SHAPIRO: Right.
ROSENTHAL: So the lesson for me is use 911 sparingly. I fell in New York after I was running, had a big bump, and my head was bleeding. Passersby said, we're going to call an ambulance. I was like, no, don't do that. If 911 is called and you don't feel like you need an ambulance, you can say, no, I don't have to go. People just kind of get swept up. And they should know what's at the end of that conveyor belt is potentially $5,000.
SHAPIRO: That's Elisabeth Rosenthal, editor-in-chief of Kaiser Health News. Thanks a lot.
ROSENTHAL: Thank you.
SHAPIRO: And if you have medical bills that you want us to investigate, go to NPR's Shots blog.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
This month, we've been looking at what's ripe for disruption in 2019. Now we're going to take a moment to think about that term, disruption. Tech entrepreneurs pride themselves on their ability to disrupt industries. And they have, from newspapers to transportation. The Harvard professor who coined the term disruptive innovation still sees it as a force for good. But as NPR's Laura Sydell reports, disruption also has consequences.
LAURA SYDELL, BYLINE: Harvard University professor Clay Christensen wasn't trying to disrupt anything when he began the research that became his now iconic 1997 book, "The Innovator's Dilemma." He just noticed how certain companies - say, the computer maker Digital Equipment Corporation, DEC, or Sears - went from industry leaders to struggling has-beens.
CLAY CHRISTENSEN: I've always wondered, why is it that companies that are successful have such a hard time to sustain their success?
SYDELL: It's impossible to fit all of what his research uncovered into this story. But he saw that big, established companies were often undone by smaller, innovative players that came along with cheaper and more affordable products. Henry Ford turned the automobile into a mass-market product, which made it faster and easier for people to travel. But it wasn't so great for the saddle and stagecoach industry.
CHRISTENSEN: And overall, it's a good thing. It hurts to be disrupted, but it also creates markets.
SYDELL: Fast forward a century or so. Today's tech world worships at the altar of disruption. Entrepreneurs dream of upending entire industries. Amazon disrupted books and then all of retail. The smartphone disrupted the film and camera industries. Companies have gone bankrupt. People have lost jobs. Facebook disrupted advertising and news.
DAVID CONWAY: What we're building is absolutely disruptive.
SYDELL: David Conway is the co-founder of SmartBins. His aim is to disrupt the food packaging industry. Anyone who's purchased bulk items knows it's kind of awkward. You have to find a pen, write the bin number on a tiny twist tie, and the stuff can spill out. Conway says his company has tech to make it easy.
CONWAY: That's what SmartBins is doing, is bringing shopping the bulk aisle from a little niche market to mainstream, making shopping bulk as easy as prepackaged.
SYDELL: Conway is speaking to me at an event for the tech accelerator Alchemist, which supports startups like his. We're in a large space in Silicon Valley called the Aspiration Dome. He says the big upside is that his technology creates less waste than packaged goods. So it's better for the environment. Of course, Conway admits even his small disruption may take away jobs from people who work in packaging.
CONWAY: There's always a dark side to anything. I mean, look at what's gone on with Facebook and Google - like, a lot of people's private information. But guess what? We're in the early stages of all this. And people are going to make mistakes. But I can tell you, everybody is in here to make the world a better place.
SYDELL: Many would disagree that they are doing that. There's fake news, data breaches and jobs lost to automation. But the fact that Conway is at the ready with a response to criticism about disruption is a sign of a shift in the mindset of the tech community. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg famously told his developers to move fast and break things. That phrase is being reexamined.
HEMANT TANEJA: What does it mean to create the new world order with technology but not necessarily in a way that's just moving fast and breaking things?
SYDELL: Hemant Taneja is a managing director at the venture capital firm General Catalyst. He now believes that Facebook was careless.
TANEJA: And the reason this happened is because they didn't think hard about how to police the nefarious use cases of that technology. It's not about the technology. It's how we implement. And what are the use cases we want to enable?
SYDELL: Taneja says now before he funds a company, he wants to know that the founders are looking for what could go wrong before it happens so they can prevent it.
TANEJA: Capitalism is a privilege. I think if we don't build businesses that are broadly good for society, I don't think this entire system really lasts.
SYDELL: But many investors and entrepreneurs may have a hard time slowing down long enough to be a constructive force in the world when they are making so much money disrupting it. Laura Sydell, NPR News.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The fight isn't over. Even though federal workers went back to work today after a historic 35-day partial government shutdown, lawmakers still have to reach an agreement on border security. They have three weeks to do that, and if they fail, there could be another shutdown. President Trump said he's doubtful a deal will be reached. He told The Wall Street Journal that he personally thinks the chances are less than 50/50. We asked Democratic Representative David Price of North Carolina about that prediction. He's a member of the conference committee that's working to find a resolution.
DAVID PRICE: That isn't exactly a positive signal going in. What he should be saying is that he's not going to shut down the government again. He's - he understands that you don't pay ransom to kidnappers. And we're - we can't get into the business of threatening a shutdown anytime there's an issue we really care about.
CORNISH: So to you, what is the main sticking point going into this three-week period?
PRICE: I can't say right now what the main sticking point is. I hope that there are many more points of agreement than there are disagreement. And when you have thing - disagreements you can't reconcile, then you wait to fight another day. But in the meantime, you secure what you can. That's the way a negotiation needs to work. The larger immigration agenda - still resolving the situation of the DREAMers and doing our part with international refugee flow, doing something about temporary protected status, ending these family separations. That's a huge agenda. It cries out for attention.
If there's some way to address this or begin to address it in the context of these three-week discussions, I for one would like to see that happen. But the immediate objective is to get a Homeland Security appropriations bill passed for the current year. And that of course mainly will focus on border security.
CORNISH: Would Democrats accept temporary protections for DREAMers? These are the undocumented immigrants who came as children. Or will you push for permanent protections like a pathway to citizenship or something like that?
PRICE: Well, of course we'll push for a permanent solution. And that should include a pathway to citizenship. You know...
CORNISH: So you see that as part of this three-week discussion and something that you guys are pushing for.
PRICE: It could be. We may focus more narrowly on the border security issue just to get the Homeland Security bill in place. But we certainly need to deal with the president's betrayal of the DREAMers. You know, he put forward a supposed compromise a few weeks ago saying he'd do a temporary protection for the DREAMers and a partial solution on temporary protected status, two problems that he created, by the way, in order to solve another problem he created, which was the shutdown. So that's pretty much a nonstarter.
But if the question is, do we need to address the DREAMers situation; do we need to address temporary protected status; do we need to do our part with this international refugee crisis, of course we do. And if this three-week negotiation can then begin to work on that or can open the door to further work on that, I certainly hope it will.
CORNISH: Senator James Lankford, a Republican from Oklahoma, this weekend was quoted as saying there's a sword of Damocles hanging over lawmakers for the next three weeks. Does that sound accurate to you?
PRICE: It's only if the president makes this once again a - kind of a ransom-demanding situation. I think it's usually a mistake to tie an issue to a shutdown threat. And it's a tactic that you simply cannot reward because then the question is, what's the next issue, and what's the next shutdown threat? So...
CORNISH: But is there a scenario in which - for Democrats, are there conditions where you just feel like you could not give ground that would actually end up putting at risk another shutdown 'cause the three-week deadline would come?
PRICE: Listen; the shutdown happens only if the president doesn't sign a reasonable bill. There will be things he objects to, things I object to, things everyone objects to in any kind of agreement that we bring forward. But we will do our very, very best to forge an agreement that will pass both houses. And then the question is, does the president sign it, or does he demand that he have his way and throw another tantrum and have another shutdown? I very much hope that that won't happen and that the people on the Hill here who can persuade him, starting with the Senate majority leader - that they simply won't let that happen.
CORNISH: You sound really fired up. And I'm wondering. Are people coming to the table still smarting from the last couple weeks? I mean, are people even in a mood to compromise?
PRICE: I think people are in a mood to get this solved. I don't think we're fired up in the sense that we're going to have our way or no way, but we know there's going to have to be some give and take, and we also know that we need very much to pass our appropriations bills. Of course, Homeland Security is the immediate focus. And the key to that appears to be getting a border security compromise worked out.
CORNISH: That's David Price, Democratic representative from North Carolina. He's on the conference committee working to find a resolution on border security. Thank you for speaking with ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
PRICE: Thank you very much.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Federal employees who didn't get paid for the last month will receive back wages as soon as the government can process its payrolls. But even after workers get their finances in order, it may take longer to repair morale and the appeal of a federal government job, as NPR's Brian Naylor reports.
BRIAN NAYLOR, BYLINE: For 10 years, Jared Hautamaki has worked at the Environmental Protection Agency as an attorney. He was looking forward to getting back to work today but has just about had it with the federal government as an employer.
JARED HAUTAMAKI: Federal employees are demonized by Congress and industry and the public. It's just not a good place to be.
NAYLOR: Hautamaki says he was already thinking about getting a new job. And after a 35-day shutdown, he predicts he won't be alone.
HAUTAMAKI: I think this is just going to further kill morale. It's going to hurt recruiting. Federal employees are already underpaid. This does nothing to retain stability in the federal workforce.
NAYLOR: Studies have shown federal workforce morale was already on the decline for a number of reasons. The Trump administration instituted a hiring freeze and then a pay freeze. Now, with the shutdown, Max Stier, of the Partnership for Public Service, says working for a federal agency feels even less rewarding, especially for those workers with a sense of mission.
MAX STIER: I think that is what is most troubling for the federal workforce. Yes, it had real financial implications. But even more than that, it disrupted the core value proposition of the job, which is to be able to make a difference, to work for a purpose.
NAYLOR: In a tight job market federal employees, many of whom are highly educated, would likely not have a hard time finding other jobs. Jessica Klement, of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, says the effects of the shutdown are likely to be long lasting.
JESSICA KLEMENT: Federal employees, as I've learned over the years, take great pride in the work that they do for the federal government. And every day for 35 days, they turned on the television and were told, you have nothing to worry about. You're going to get back pay. Or are you even essential if you're not working during this government shutdown? There is untold morale problems coming from this that we'll see play out, I think, over the next few days, weeks and probably even years.
NAYLOR: One area where the impact will be felt into the future is in recruitment. The federal workforce is already aging. There are five times as many IT workers in government over age 60 than under 30. Klement says bringing in younger workers is crucial, but it's not been made any easier over the last month.
KLEMENT: The federal government already has a recruitment problem, right? Less than 7 percent of the workforce is under the age of 30. If you are 22, 23, graduating from college this coming spring, you watched this play out for the last 35 days. Are you saying to yourself, sign me up for that - probably not.
NAYLOR: And especially not with the possibility looming of a renewed shutdown in just a few weeks. Brian Naylor, NPR News, Washington.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Watch a video on YouTube, and you'll see a list of recommendations for what to watch next based on what you're watching at the moment and your search history. But it doesn't take much to go from a video that's fairly innocuous to one that promotes conspiracy theories.
That happens frequently enough that YouTube has come under pressure to change its algorithm. It says it will now promote fewer videos of what it calls borderline content. NPR's Andrew Limbong has more.
ANDREW LIMBONG, BYLINE: In a blog post, YouTube defines borderline content as things that, quote, "misinform users in harmful ways" but don't quite violate their community guidelines. The company specifically cites flat Earth conspiracies...
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: We do not believe that we're flying in space whatsoever. We don't believe the Earth moves at all.
LIMBONG: ...Phony miracle cures and 9/11 truth videos.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Western civilization is doomed unless we face the unanswered questions of 9/11.
LIMBONG: There are plenty of other misinformation videos on YouTube, from anti-vaccine rants to conspiracies of school shootings being faked.
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JOHN BOUCHELL: In my utterly qualified, expert opinion, there are several troubling facts being dispensed that I refuse to accept.
LIMBONG: These misinformation and conspiracy videos will still all exist on YouTube. They just won't be recommended to you. You'll have to look for them.
Google, which owns YouTube, declined to offer anyone up for an interview, but the company says it will, quote, "work with human evaluators and experts from all over the United States to help train the machine learning systems that generate recommendations."
Zeynep Tufekci is an associate professor at the University of North Carolina studying the social impacts of digital technology and artificial intelligence. She says the big problem with the YouTube recommendation machine is that it's designed to get you to spend as much time on the platform as possible so they can sell more ads. The accuracy of the content doesn't matter.
ZEYNEP TUFEKCI: Just like a cafeteria, you're going to get people to eat more if you serve unhealthy food again and again and again before they even have a chance to finish their plate.
LIMBONG: And its effect - she adds that it's increasingly schoolchildren turning to YouTube for information and getting fed these types of videos. She wrote about the issue a while back in The New York Times.
TUFEKCI: And I got flooded with examples and comments. Like, parents would put their kid in front of YouTube with a video from NASA - right? - some very innocuous, interesting content, which YouTube is full of. And 45 minutes later, the kid would come back and say, Mom, the moon landing never happened.
LIMBONG: YouTube is rolling out these changes to its recommendation machine gradually in the United States first, affecting less than 1 percent of all YouTube content. But Tufekci says it's around the rest of the world - Brazil, Indonesia, Sri Lanka - where misinformation on YouTube truly has the power to destabilize societies.
Andrew Limbong, NPR News.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
After 17 years of fighting in Afghanistan, the U.S. is looking for a way out. That involves trying to strike a deal between the Taliban and the Afghan government. Diplomats over the last decade have often tried and failed to get these two sides to agree. Now a U.S. delegate, Zalmay Khalilzad, is in Afghanistan, making another attempt. For more we're joined by Chris Kolenda. He is the only person to have both fought as a U.S. commander in Afghanistan and held diplomatic talks with the Taliban. Welcome to the studio.
CHRIS KOLENDA: Ari, thank you very much for having me.
SHAPIRO: So this envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, started by meeting with the Taliban last week in Qatar. Now he's in Kabul, talking with the Afghan government. You know better than almost anyone how difficult it is to get these two sides to agree. Do you think there's anything different today from those past unsuccessful efforts?
KOLENDA: I think there are a couple of things. The first one is the Taliban have said they're very concerned about their country becoming a second Syria, that because of all of the tensions in Afghanistan, the rise of ISIS and, of course, the ongoing war, they're worried that something like a disputed outcome to a presidential election could be the match that blows the powder keg up and creates a new level of chaos. Secondly, I think you've got a situation in which, at least from the U.S. and Taliban standpoint, one another is beginning to recognize or not object to the other's aims.
So the Taliban have said repeatedly that they do not want Afghanistan to be a threat to its neighbors, which is code for no al-Qaida or international terrorist presence. They've also made positive statements about human rights for women and children and Afghans of all ethnicities. And at the same time, the - or the United States has said we have no interest in a permanent presence there. Then what you have is both sides not objecting to the war aims of the other. And that provides you a basis.
SHAPIRO: Sounds like you're optimistic that there actually could be an agreement here.
KOLENDA: I think there could be an agreement. The devil is going to be in the details, of course. And you want to avoid a situation in which the U.S. is making tangible commitments now in exchange for Taliban future commitments, which they could then backslide upon.
SHAPIRO: Women's rights and minority rights have come a long way in Afghanistan since the war started. Is there a concern that this kind of a deal could sacrifice some of those gains?
KOLENDA: There's a lot of concern in Afghanistan, particularly among Afghan women. I'm very concerned that as we're hearing statements from Ambassador Khalilzad's team about what was discussed in Doha - we hear about the terrorism issue. We hear about the withdrawal issue. We're not hearing about human rights. The silence has been deafening on that. And I have to believe that over the course of six days, the issue of human rights was discussed. And I hope his team will update their talking points to address that issue because it's central to this conflict.
SHAPIRO: We're talking as though a deal between the Taliban and the Afghan government is a prerequisite for the U.S. to leave Afghanistan. But why is that the case? Why can't the U.S. just say, we're done, and get out?
KOLENDA: Well, you could have an Afghan withdrawal and 280 characters or less.
SHAPIRO: A tweet.
KOLENDA: Right. And then I think what you'll see is the realization of everybody's worst fears, which is Afghanistan descending into this new level of chaos and an unmitigated humanitarian disaster.
SHAPIRO: Right now the U.S. is talking to the Afghan government and the Taliban. But those two groups aren't talking to each other.
KOLENDA: Right.
SHAPIRO: That seems like a pretty big step that still has to be taken in order for any deal to be worked out.
KOLENDA: It's absolutely critical. And everybody recognizes that there will be no peace in Afghanistan until, ultimately, you have a conversation among Afghans about how they're going to live together with one another. The way that the Taliban have framed this peace process in their own minds is make an agreement with the Americans first because that's who they believe the main conflict is with. And after that, make an agreement with the Afghan government.
SHAPIRO: Chris Kolenda is founder of the Kolenda Strategic Leaders Academy. He's participated in past peace talks with the Taliban. Thanks for joining us today.
KOLENDA: Thank you, Ari. I appreciate being on the show.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
At the risk of sounding like "Groundhog Day," it's another pivotal week for Brexit, Britain's exit from the European Union. Tomorrow, members of Parliament plan to vote on amendments to the Brexit plan. This is largely the same plan they emphatically rejected two weeks ago, throwing the entire process in chaos.
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JOHN BERCOW: The ayes to the right, 202.
UNIDENTIFIED MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT: Oh.
BERCOW: The noes to the left, 432.
UNIDENTIFIED MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT: Wow.
UNIDENTIFIED MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT: Oh.
CORNISH: Let's take a few moments now to better understand the person whose job it is to wrangle the mess that is Brexit, British Prime Minister Theresa May.
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PRIME MINISTER THERESA MAY: Brexit means Brexit.
This is an historic moment from which there can be no turning back.
I choose to believe in Britain and that our best days lie ahead.
UNIDENTIFIED MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT: Yeah.
CORNISH: For help, we called on Sam Knight, staff writer for The New Yorker. He wrote a profile of Theresa May last year painting a picture of her this way.
SAM KNIGHT: She's dutiful. She's straightforward. She's fundamentally honest. She doesn't tweet. She's - she's in many ways a leader who seems to be in short supply at the moment.
CORNISH: Yeah, she sounds kind of great. Tell me what the downside is.
KNIGHT: (Laughter). The downside of that is that at a moment, as she says, of fundamental change or a turning point, she is someone who I think sees politics as having a serious conversation with your officials, looking at the range of options, choosing the option - which might not be the best option, but it won't be the worst option - and then kind of batting for it.
And in a situation like Brexit and something as divisive and complicated as this, she is in danger of choosing a middle way, if you like, that runs the risk of pleasing nobody at all.
CORNISH: I want to come back to this in a moment. But let's look a little bit at her history in politics. What was her reputation coming up the ranks?
KNIGHT: So Theresa May's big job in politics before becoming prime minister was being home secretary from 2010 to 2016. And home secretary in the U.K., you're in charge of the police. You're in charge of borders. You're in charge of immigration. It's a very challenging job that is often the end of political careers.
And she was the longest-serving home secretary since the Second World War. So I think her reputation was definitely of a safe pair of hands, if you like, when the referendum happened in 2016 and produced this unlikely result.
CORNISH: You spoke to many people who could talk about her as a leader, meaning just being in the room, you know, where decisions are made and what she is like. What did they tell you?
KNIGHT: People who work with Theresa May, over the years, defend her kind of extremely stoutly and are extremely loyal to her because she is fundamentally straightforward. She has enormous stamina. You ask her to be somewhere at 7 o'clock in the morning, she will be there ready to go.
Her performance in the House of Commons trying to sell this deal over the last few months has been - even for people who might passionately disagree with it, no one disputes her honesty and her desire to do the right thing by the country.
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MAY: What I, members of the Cabinet and the whole government are doing is working to ensure that we leave the European Union with a deal.
KNIGHT: However, she's not someone who's comfortable with lots of voices in the room making contesting points. She likes to have a very small group of people who she trusts implicitly. Looking back on it, one of the things that's clear about her handling of Brexit, a phrase that really stayed with me during my reporting was, you know, she bunkered it.
You know, she took this into the bunker in Downing Street and tried to crack it with a very small group of people. And when you're trying to do something as complicated and as divisive as this, you know, trying to sell it, you need friends. You know, you need people who are going to stand up for you.
CORNISH: You write that this is a leader who is awkward and can come off as stiff and who can come off as shy. But you also talk about her being a good listener and someone who really pursues something she believes in to the end. Why is she not suited to this moment? I mean, why do people have their doubts?
KNIGHT: I think there are - there are two versions of that. There's a public-facing version of that. This is not a gifted speaker. This is not someone who really particularly believes in Brexit, I would say, in this sort of - with a capital B. You hear her talking about the deal that she struck with the European Union. And she gets out in front of the criticism. She says, look, this deal isn't perfect. You know, this is a compromise. You know, she's a grown-up in lots of ways, which is easy to admire. But it's not that easy to - to fall in behind and to feel excited about that, if someone's talking about the future of your country.
And then I think on the actual sort of - the hard, nitty gritty politics of this, you know, when I talk to officials and people who've worked closely with her, she doesn't leave the script. You know, there has not been a stage in the last two years where Theresa May has gotten on a plane and gone to Paris and gone for a walk with Emmanuel Macron and said, advisers, leave the room. We're going to talk about the future of Europe and what this thing looks like.
You know, this is a real kind of close-quarters politics in which people have to be talked 'round and glad-handed and convinced and cajoled and persuaded. And that is not in her makeup and hasn't been throughout her career. You know, it's - it's - it feels almost unfair that this fundamentally dutiful and, I think, brave person is in a position where a bit of schmooze wouldn't hurt. You know what I mean?
CORNISH: Sam Knight is a staff writer for The New Yorker. He's based in London. Thank you for speaking with us.
KNIGHT: Pleasure.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, got a firsthand look today at the devastation from a cathedral bombing in the southern city of Jolo. The explosion, during Sunday Mass, killed at least 20 people and wounded more than a hundred others. A militant group aligned with ISIS has claimed responsibility. Michael Sullivan has more on the group's troubled history in the region.
MICHAEL SULLIVAN, BYLINE: In May 2017, fighters from the Abu Sayyaf and other ISIS-linked groups occupied much of the city of Marawi on the island of Mindanao. It took the Philippines' military five months to dislodge them and declare victory, leaving much of the city in ruins and many of the fighters dead - down but not out.
SIDNEY JONES: I think you can be very sure that what happened in Jolo is not the last gasp of a group on the edge of extinction.
SULLIVAN: Sidney Jones is director of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict in Jakarta, Indonesia.
JONES: I think you have to put this in the context of a lot of other pro-ISIS activity in Mindanao since the end of the Marawi siege.
SULLIVAN: After that siege, she says, the authorities said that ISIS in the southern Philippines was defeated. But it wasn't. The coalition of groups involved dispersed into different areas, Jones says, but they didn't go away.
JONES: And there have been a persistent series of bombings in different parts of the Philippines of which this is the biggest.
SULLIVAN: Including the first suicide bombing carried out by a foreigner last July that killed 10 people. Zachary Abuza, a professor at the National War College who tracks Southeast Asian terror groups, predicts Sunday's bombing will become a useful propaganda tool for ISIS to recruit more.
ZACHARY ABUZA: If you are a foreign fighter from Southeast Asia, you are now going to be more attracted to go into the Abu Sayyaf simply because they are demonstrating their ability to continue the fight.
SULLIVAN: He says the timing of Sunday's attack - less than a week after an overwhelming majority of Muslims in the south voted for an autonomy plan aimed at ending decades of conflict - is no accident.
ABUZA: They're trying to provoke a heavy-handed government response that will, in turn, alienate the local community.
SULLIVAN: And that kind of response, says Sidney Jones of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, would be a huge mistake - one that's been made before.
JONES: One of the worst tactics used by the Philippines government is the idea that you eradicate terrorism by killing those involved, not by understanding who's involved and not by trying to look at the network.
SULLIVAN: Networks that show no sign of being shut down anytime soon. For NPR News, I'm Michael Sullivan in Bangkok.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Texas says it's preparing to purge the names of thousands of noncitizens from the state's voter rolls. This past Friday, officials announced they had flagged almost 100,000 people. But voting rights groups say the state's list is misleading, and state officials' motivations are largely political. Ashley Lopez, of member station KUT in Austin, reports.
ASHLEY LOPEZ, BYLINE: The state has put together a list of about 95,000 people. These are people who registered as noncitizens when they got their driver's license within the last 22 years but have also registered to vote in that time. In a statement, Texas Secretary of State David Whitley says it's part of his office's commitment to use, quote, "all available tools under the law to maintain an accurate list of registered voters." His office declined an interview request. But Nina Perales with MALDEF, a Latino legal defense group, says this isn't a list of people who voted illegally. It's a list of people who were naturalized.
NINA PERALES: What the secretary of state is doing - and knowingly doing - is taking a list of people who have recently become U.S. citizens and registered to vote, whom the secretary of state knows got their driver's licenses or state IDs while they were still permanent resident immigrants.
LOPEZ: And in Texas, that's a lot of people. Perales says every year roughly 50,000 Texans become naturalized citizens. Even though naturalized citizens have the right to vote, state officials and even President Trump say this list is a sign they need to crack down on illegal voting. Grace Chimene, with the nonpartisan League of Women Voters of Texas, says they're wrong.
GRACE CHIMENE: They're throwing it out everywhere. And it is very worrisome to us because we are very concerned that they are going to use this as a way to try to suppress the vote in Texas.
LOPEZ: And that's what Nina Perales says she thinks this is all about.
PERALES: The timing of the Texas secretary of state's announcement, falsely claiming that there are tens of thousands of noncitizens on the rolls, we think is directly related to the very high number of Latinos who were registered and were voting in the most recent election.
LOPEZ: In 2018, there was a closely watched Senate race between Republican Ted Cruz and his Democratic challenger Beto O'Rourke. O'Rourke lost by 2.6 percentage points making it the closest Senate race in 30 years. Grace Chimene, with the League of Women Voters, says she's worried that focusing on purging the voter rolls will intimidate new citizens from participating in elections altogether.
CHIMENE: We should be celebrating these new citizens and that they're going to vote in Texas.
LOPEZ: Other states, including Florida and Colorado, have tried similar voter purges aimed at alleged noncitizens. Before the 2012 election, Florida compiled a list of roughly 180,000 names. After local officials combed through it, only 85 people were removed from the rolls. Perales says she thinks Texas officials will also eventually have to back down and admit their list is misleading too.
PERALES: You know, for us, the concern is that the side harms are going to be pretty significant in terms of voter discouragement and possibly purging people off the rolls who should not be purged.
LOPEZ: All of this comes as Texas lawmakers begin their legislative session. One bill under consideration would require people to show proof of citizenship when they register to vote. For NPR News, I'm Ashley Lopez in Austin.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Now a story about a disruptive technology that's not quite ready to disrupt, at least the hospitality industry.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Back in 2015, there was a lot of buzz around a new hotel in a remote area of Japan.
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SETH DOANE: The opening of a small, low-cost hotel doesn't usually warrant international attention.
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TIM HORNYAK: Would you check into a hotel staffed by robots?
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GAYLE KING: The machines can check you in. They can carry your luggage. They can even offer travel suggestions.
CORNISH: The Henn-na Hotel was the world's first robot hotel, even got that title from "The Guinness Book Of World Records" - a robot concierge, robot porters and entertainers and robot vacuums.
ALASTAIR GALE: One of the first things you see is this massive robotic arm that is used to store people's luggage.
SHAPIRO: That's Alastair Gale, who covers Japan for The Wall Street Journal. He recently spent a night at the hotel.
GALE: And you go in, and you turn the corner, and then you see these two dinosaurs - velociraptors, to be precise.
SHAPIRO: Yes, talking robot dinosaurs at the reception desk.
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COMPUTER-GENERATED VOICE: (Speaking Japanese).
CORNISH: Gale says those dinosaurs were the first red flag that something was amiss in robot paradise.
GALE: The dinosaur is not capable of copying your passport or other ID, so what happens is a human member of staff comes out from sort of behind a curtain and completes the job for the dinosaur.
SHAPIRO: Probably those tiny dinosaur arms. Turns out many of the robots are not great at their jobs.
CORNISH: Gale says the piano playing robot in the lobby doesn't actually play the piano.
SHAPIRO: The robot porter can't reach most of the rooms because it can't climb stairs or go outside.
CORNISH: And the front desk, well...
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COMPUTER-GENERATED VOICE: Please ask me a request, but don't ask me a difficult question because I am a robot.
SHAPIRO: Gale says the seven humans on staff were spending most of their time trying to recharge the robots or help guests when the robots failed.
GALE: It was just impossible for the staff to keep on top of everything. And what happened was they, you know, told the staff, well, you're just going to have to work extra overtime, you know, to deal with the robot problems.
CORNISH: One guest on TripAdvisor commented, this robot hotel is badly in need of some humanizing.
SHAPIRO: Which is eventually what happened. Gale reports that as of this month, the Henn-na robot hotel has, for lack of a better word, fired over half its 243 robots.
GALE: You know, it's quite sad because it does feel like - a bit like a sort of robot graveyard where there's robots around the place that are, you know, unplugged or in bags or sort of just been chained off.
CORNISH: Elsewhere you might hear about technology making human jobs obsolete. But at the robot hotel, the robots' jobs are being reclaimed by humans.
GALE: Interacting with human beings is very complicated, and it's something that if it doesn't go smoothly, it could be a very jarring experience. You know, you just get frustrated. That's not the kind of experience you want to have. So you don't want to annoy your guests. And it's going to take a while before they've - you know, they get it right.
SHAPIRO: But don't worry. Those dinosaurs at the front desk - they made the cut. The velociraptors are still gainfully employed.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MR. ROBOTO")
STYX: (Singing) Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto - domo, domo. Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Federal employees are back to work today now that the longest government shutdown in U.S. history is over. But this return to normal could be temporary. Members of Congress have just three weeks to strike a deal on border security or risk another shutdown. NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson joins us now to talk about what comes next. Mara, welcome to the studio.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Glad to be here, Audie.
CORNISH: So next steps - what's supposed to happen on Capitol Hill?
LIASSON: What happens is that conferees from both parties, both houses of Congress, meet for the first time on Wednesday. Democrats have not specifically ruled out spending any money for border barriers. They don't want the president's wall, but they are open to other kinds of barriers. Donald Trump gave an interview to The Wall Street Journal where he was a little bit pessimistic. He put the odds at getting a deal that was acceptable to him at less than 50/50, and he is continuing to talk about getting his wall done one way or another, meaning that if he doesn't like the deal Congress comes up with, he could declare a national emergency and spend on unobligated Pentagon funds...
CORNISH: Right.
LIASSON: ...On his own to build a wall.
CORNISH: And then you had White House press secretary Sarah Sanders. She was asked about the prospect of a repeat shutdown today. Here's what she said.
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SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS: The president doesn't want to go through another shutdown. That's not the goal. The goal is border security and protecting the American people.
LIASSON: That being said, the president did tell The Wall Street Journal that shutting down the government remains an option. But everyone I've talked to on both sides of the aisle thinks that another shutdown is not likely given the financial and political costs of the one we just went through. It's hard to imagine the president would say, sure, let's go back to long lines at airports, no IRS checks, federal workers at food banks. More likely, according to most of the people I've talked to, is if Congress can't come up with a deal acceptable to him, then he would declare a national emergency.
CORNISH: And the stakes are high, right? I mean, we now know more about the political and financial costs. What have we learned?
LIASSON: What we learned is that the Congressional Budget Office has calculated what it thinks the shutdown costs. This is CBO Director Keith Hall.
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KEITH HALL: There is a permanent loss, however, right? You lose the government output for five weeks. That's never made up. So we think on net, we're still going to be about $3 billion short on GDP.
LIASSON: So what Hall is saying is that according to his projections, the shutdown cost the country $11 billion over the first two quarters of this fiscal year, but 8 billion of that can be replenished. Now, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow disagrees with the CBO's findings. He says in a $20 trillion economy, the shutdown will not cause permanent damage; it's a very, very tiny fraction.
CORNISH: Now, what about the political costs? I mean, at this point, how much damage was done to the president politically?
LIASSON: Well, he definitely took a hit not just because he didn't get the wall because he still might and because for many immigration restrictionists, the wall isn't even their top priority. But Republicans who are disappointed in the president are disappointed because he went into this macho standoff and lost to Madam Speaker. And he looked incompetent. It looked like he didn't have a strategy.
But most Republicans I've talked to say although he's - has been hurt in the short run, his approval ratings have gone down - in the long run, if he can still show his base that he's fighting for the wall, he can come out of this. This is still very early in the 2020 cycle, and we have seen in the past a shutdown's political effects can evaporate. In 2013, the Republicans shut down the government, took a huge hit. And then that story was completely forgotten when the Obamacare website debuted and crashed. So the - I guess the best thing for the president is that this happened very early in this year.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Mara Liasson. Mara, thanks for your reporting.
LIASSON: Thank you.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Donald Trump has built his presidency on attacking undocumented immigrants. At the same time, his properties have relied on the labor of people who are not in the country legally. After newspapers began reporting on this contradiction, Trump properties started firing those workers. The Washington Post says just 10 days ago, the Trump National Golf Club in New York's Westchester County fired around a dozen people who'd worked there for years.
Victorina Morales tells a similar story. She spent five years as a housekeeper at another Trump golf club in Bedminster, N.J. She's not been back to work since The New York Times reported her claims last month. I spoke with her earlier today, and Morales told me that when she worked at the Bedminster club, a supervisor knew she was undocumented.
VICTORINA MORALES: (Through interpreter) They knew that I didn't have documents, and the supervisor, Jorge, took my ID photo in the laundry room, and a cousin of his took me to a place to get fake documents. He told me that I had to pay for them, and I said, sorry, but I don't have money to pay for that. He told me not to worry about it, that he would cover it and I could pay it back.
SHAPIRO: Her lawyer, Anibal Romero, represents a group of employees from at least two of Trump's golf clubs. I asked him whether he believes that all of Trump's properties rely so heavily on undocumented workers.
ANIBAL ROMERO: When Victorina Morales came to my office in October, she said to me that there were many, many workers at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster who were undocumented, and many of them shared similar stories - that they were recruited, that they were coerced into doing work they didn't want to do, that they were threatened with deportation.
And after Victorina's story came out, I started receiving anonymous calls from people who claimed they have worked for Donald Trump, who told me very similar stories that, you know, management knew that they weren't legal, that they were not - they did not have health benefits. They didn't have pension plans that were offered to other people, that there was a two-tiered system - the documented workers and the undocumented workers.
SHAPIRO: President Trump's son Eric, who helps run the day-to-day operations of the business, gave a statement to The Washington Post where he said, we're making a broad effort to identify any employee who has given false and fraudulent documents to unlawfully gain employment. Where identified, any individual will be terminated immediately. What's wrong with that?
ROMERO: The workers are the victims. The employers recruited them, brought them into the organization, told them to go purchase fraudulent documents. It is not illegal to work in the United States, but it is illegal when you knowingly hire undocumented immigrants. It's actually a federal crime, a very serious federal crime. That is why we are asking for a complete and thorough investigation. If Homeland Security were to conduct an investigation and look at business records, I am certain they will find that there has been document fraud, tax fraud, Social Security fraud, health insurance fraud.
SHAPIRO: You're talking about the kind of crackdown that Homeland Security has done on poultry processing plants or convenience stores or other businesses. You'd like to see that kind of an inspection of Trump properties.
ROMERO: I think Homeland Security needs to investigate this to determine who knew what. When did they find out, and why wasn't anything done? And just to be clear, I've already been in contact with the FBI, and I've been in contact with new Jersey attorney general's office and New York state authorities because I believe my clients are victims.
SHAPIRO: There are undocumented immigrants all throughout the U.S. labor force, and this is more noteworthy because it is a Trump property. But isn't what you're describing just a larger symptom of the problem with the U.S. immigration system that has to do with a lot more than just one president, Donald Trump?
ROMERO: Correct, and look; at the end of the day, we all know they're here. Eleven million undocumented immigrants, good people, decent people - they're working. I think it's time for Congress to sit down - Democrats and Republicans - and find the real solution. And it's virtually impossible to remove 11 million people. So this debate is actually laughable. Most of these people want Social Security numbers. They want a work permit so that they can contribute to the Social Security Administration. They want to contribute to the IRS. I think it's time that Congress sits down and finds a real solution to this problem.
SHAPIRO: That was Anibal Romero and Victorina Morales. They were in town to meet with lawmakers. And we reached out to the Trump Organization's corporate offices for comment on this story. As of now, we have not heard back from them.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
An unusually large outbreak of measles is raising alarm across the Pacific Northwest. Officials in Washington state have even declared a public health emergency, as NPR's Patti Neighmond reports.
PATTI NEIGHMOND, BYLINE: So far, 35 cases of measles have been confirmed in Washington state alone, mostly among children under 10. Washington state epidemiologist Dr. Scott Lindquist says this is likely only the beginning, since many of the families with sick kids traveled to very public places.
SCOTT LINDQUIST: Like Costco or Ikea or the airport or a professional basketball game.
NEIGHMOND: And because the telltale measles rash may not appear for four days into the illness, people may not know they're infected and could easily, unwittingly expose others to this extremely contagious virus.
LINDQUIST: And our big concern is for folks that are immunocompromised, pregnant women, young kids or those that are unvaccinated could be at risk for this disease.
NEIGHMOND: Infants can't be vaccinated until they're 1 year old. Pediatrician Peter Hotez with Baylor College of Medicine's National School of Tropical Medicine says people often forget or just don't even know how severe measles can be.
PETER HOTEZ: Before widespread vaccination, measles was the single leading killer of children in the world. And to this day, it still kills 100,000 kids. It causes measles pneumonia, measles encephalitis, deafness. Measles is a bad actor.
NEIGHMOND: Most of the children infected with measles in Washington state were not vaccinated against the disease. Hotez.
HOTEZ: In the Pacific Northwest, you have a very aggressive anti-vaccine lobby, with websites - by some estimates, up to 480 misinformation websites, all amplified on social media.
NEIGHMOND: Like Washington and Oregon, about half of all states in the U.S. allow parents to opt out of vaccinating their children if they have a personal or philosophical objection.
Washington state officials are now beginning the arduous and costly task of tracking down everyone who might've been exposed to the virus and cautioning them to be on the alert for symptoms, including runny nose, red eyes, fever and the rash. If they believe they're infected, Dr. Lindquist says, they should contact their health care provider and isolate themselves at home, so they don't expose others.
Patti Neighmond, NPR News.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
When French composer Michel Legrand died Saturday at the age of 86, he was celebrated for many achievements. There were his three Academy Awards, his more than 200 film and TV scores and his romantic melodies for such top 40 hits as "The Windmills Of Your Mind" and the theme from the "Summer Of '42." As Jeff Lunden reports, there was even more to Legrand.
JEFF LUNDEN, BYLINE: In his summer of 1942, Michel Legrand was preparing to attend the Conservatory of Music in Nazi-occupied Paris and study with the famed Nadia Boulanger. He told The Guardian in an interview last September, quote, "she was so demanding, but she was extraordinary. She made me."
(SOUNDBITE OF PERFORMANCE OF MICHEL LEGRAND'S "HARP CONCERTO")
LUNDEN: Legrand really was a musical polymath. He devoted much of the latter part of his life to classical composition. This is his "Harp Concerto" from 2014.
(SOUNDBITE OF PERFORMANCE OF MICHEL LEGRAND'S "HARP CONCERTO")
LUNDEN: But one of Legrand's lifelong loves was jazz. He heard Dizzy Gillespie's big band in Paris after the war and eventually worked with him and with other jazz greats like John Coltrane and Miles Davis.
(SOUNDBITE OF MICHEL LEGRAND AND MILES DAVIS' "THE DREAM")
LUNDEN: Jazz informed some of Legrand's film scores. He collaborated with director Jacques Demy in 1964 on "The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg" in which all of the dialogue is sung.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (Singing in French).
LUNDEN: Michel Legrand was already booked with a full slate of concerts this spring when he died on Saturday.
(SOUNDBITE OF MICHEL LEGRAND'S "SOUS LES PONTS DE PARIS")
LUNDEN: For NPR News, I'm Jeff Lunden in New York.
(SOUNDBITE OF MICHEL LEGRAND'S "SOUS LES PONTS DE PARIS")
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
As lawmakers debate funding for border security over the next three weeks, one subject sure to come up is staffing the Border Patrol. When President Trump took office two years ago, he signed executive orders to hire thousands more border agents and immigration officers. The agency got tens of millions of dollars for new staff, but they have not hired anywhere near the number they were supposed to.
Molly O'Toole writes about this in the Los Angeles Times. Welcome.
MOLLY O'TOOLE: Thanks for having me.
SHAPIRO: How big is the gap between the aspirations and the reality? I mean, how many were supposed to have been hired, and how many actually were?
O'TOOLE: So 15,000 total - 5,000 Border Patrol agents, about 10,000 for ICE. And what we know is, basically, they're nowhere close to that. In fact, they're still under the minimum staffing levels that were required by Congress. So we're talking about thousands of vacancies beyond the order that way exceeds that that the president issued two years ago.
SHAPIRO: There's been all of this attention at the border. There's been all this money put into staffing up. Why hasn't it gone that way? Why hasn't it worked?
O'TOOLE: Well, there's a lot of factors in this. There are problems with hiring and retention at Border Patrol and ICE that pre-exist the Trump administration. Especially for Border Patrol, it's really difficult for them to hold on to the agents that they have. They're incredibly low-paid. They're stationed often at these isolated places along the border. In terms of sort of morale or how people view it as an agency to work for within the federal government, it's one of the lowest-ranked.
And they're uniquely targeted by cartels. There's a lot of corruption issues because they're sort of low-paid, in the middle of nowhere. They can be offered a lot of money to sort of look the other way as drugs or people, other things are smuggled. So those are pre-existing problems for the Border Patrol. So that's one of the factors.
And then when you look at that, if they're supposed to then go from, essentially, you know, 19,000, 20,000 agents and then add on 5,000 more Border Patrol agents in just a few years, if they already have these pre-existing problems, then how are they going to meet that?
SHAPIRO: The consulting firm Accenture was hired to help staff up Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That relationship did not work out. What went wrong?
O'TOOLE: I think the thinking was that the government has, for a long time, had trouble doing this, so let's go into private industry. Let's go outside and see if they can do it better. And so they awarded this contract in November 2017 to Accenture, which is sort of a multinational management consulting firm. It was for almost $300 million. They had pledged to hire 7,500 new officers for CBP within five years.
Instead, what we have is, from November 2017 to now, only 33 people have been hired under that contract, about 60 million has been allocated for it.
SHAPIRO: So tens of millions of dollars to hire thousands of people, and 33 were actually hired.
O'TOOLE: Exactly. That has been the result. And the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security raised all sorts of issues with this contract. What they found is that Customs and Border Protection was actually having to step in and do the work that they had agreed or already paid Accenture to do.
So there've been a number of problems with this contract to the extent to which there's now a partial stop work order. And then in March, they'll decide whether they're going to kill the contract completely.
SHAPIRO: Right now, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is talking about border security and how much money to spend on what. What does this lesson tell you about the challenge of staffing up at the border?
O'TOOLE: Well, I think that's part of what's really interesting about the record-breaking shutdown that we had. We didn't hear all that much. Actually, the White House had sort of tucked into its demand from Congress. Yes, 5.7 billion for the border wall, which has sort of been the main sticking point.
But they also had tucked in, you know, another 800 million to hire more Border Patrol and immigration officers. And the Democrats have suggested that hiring more - giving more money for hiring is something that they'd be willing to consider.
SHAPIRO: Except it sounds like they can't even spend the money that they have to hire more.
O'TOOLE: Right. So then that, I think, is a legitimate question that people are raising. DHS has said, and in our article, they were quoted sort of pushing back, saying, look; we're supposed to meet this hiring surge; we're supposed to get to minimal staffing levels beyond this hiring surge, but we can only hire to the amount that we're appropriated.
And it is right that they've basically requested hundreds of millions to hire thousands of officers since the executive order, and Congress has mostly not really provided them that money. Lawmakers' argument is, you haven't justified the need for this surge, and you aren't responsibly spending the money that you've already been given, with the Accenture contract being a key example. So that's sort of where things stand.
SHAPIRO: Molly O'Toole, thanks so much.
O'TOOLE: Thanks for having me.
SHAPIRO: She's an immigration reporter at the LA Times.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Some in conservative media have berated President Trump for ending the government shutdown without any guarantee of funding for a border wall. They've called him wimpy.
Now, though, let's hear from rank-and-file Trump supporters - people who voted for him 2016 and have stuck by him ever since. North Country Public Radio's Brian Mann reports from rural upstate New York.
BRIAN MANN, BYLINE: Temperatures are in the single digits when I find Ivan Green warming up and having breakfast at a shop in the farm and mill town of Brushton. He just got off the night shift at a factory nearby. He's a big Donald Trump fan.
IVAN GREEN: I like the fact that he wants the wall up, and I support him 100 percent on that. I like - I pretty much like everything about what he's done.
MANN: Polls show President Trump's support faded during the government shutdown, but this rural district in northern New York backed Trump in 2016 and voted Republican again in last November's midterms. Interviews here found many of his core supporters, like Green, haven't budged.
GREEN: I'm behind him. I know some people live off the government; they're not happy about it.
MANN: Green says those 800,000 federal workers who went without paychecks - that's a small sacrifice if it forces Congress to pay for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
GREEN: I'd hate for somebody to come over here and rape my daughter, murder her, murder my mom and then go back over there and not get caught. So yeah, I think the wall's a great idea.
MANN: In fact, there's strong evidence that immigrants and undocumented workers are less likely to commit violent crimes than U.S. citizens. These communities are about as far from the Mexican border as you can get in the continental U.S. The Canadian border is just up the road, so people here don't have much actual experience with undocumented migrants.
The Trump voters I talked to accept his claim that people coming from Central and South America pose a serious danger.
MAURICE BERTRAND: I've got grandchildren and great-grandchildren now. And I fear for what's coming down the road.
MANN: Maurice Bertrand is a farmer in Canton, N.Y. He's furious at Democrats for blocking Trump's demand for $5.7 billion for the wall. Here's how Bertrand describes Trump's opponents in Congress.
BERTRAND: These smart-asses with their college degrees.
MANN: If the president feels like he needs to shut the government down again to twist their arms, are you for it, or do you think that's a bad idea?
BERTRAND: Absolutely. You know, it's like a kid that doesn't listen. He's got to hurt before he understands. So if the country's got to hurt a little bit, and it's a small price to pay, yup.
MANN: Voters like these are in the minority in the U.S. as a whole. Surveys show most Americans hated the partial government shutdown, and a majority blamed President Trump. And even some Trump supporters say they're not sure he played this fight the right way.
AMY WHITE: The border wall - I mean, yeah, I want to be protected, you know, just like everybody else.
MANN: Amy White lives in the tiny town of Russell, N.Y. She says the government shutdown felt, to her, like bad strategy - a standoff in Washington that hurt regular people way out here in rural America.
WHITE: It just seems like there's other ways of doing it than, you know, putting people out of work and, you know, losing their income. And it just seems like there's got to be a better way, but I don't know what that way would be.
MANN: White says she, too, still backs the president and still wants his wall built. Polls show the overwhelming majority of conservative voters still trust his leadership. But her doubts about the wisdom of the shutdown are reflected in polls that show Trump losing ground in recent weeks nationwide, even with some of his core supporters - white men without college degrees, evangelicals and registered Republicans.
Brian Mann, NPR News, Canton, N.Y.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Nearly all the lettuce in this country is grown with water from the Colorado River, which means a 19-year drought along the river has far-reaching implications. Neighboring states are still trying to come up with a deal by Thursday to avert a crisis. Lauren Sommer of member station KQED and NPR's energy and environment team reports.
LAUREN SOMMER, BYLINE: The Colorado River touches seven states, goes through the Grand Canyon and reaches the faucets of 40 million people from Denver to Los Angeles. But it starts as just a trickle high in the Colorado Rockies.
(SOUNDBITE OF WATER TRICKLING)
BRAD UDALL: One of the cool things about a snowmelt is it's really efficient. I mean, and so it tends to all get in the river.
SOMMER: Brad Udall is a climate scientist at Colorado State University. And a few summers ago, we were at the very spot that runoff becomes a river. No question, the 19-year drought here has been bad. But climate change is making things worse.
UDALL: You heat up the climate, you are going to get fundamental impacts on the water cycle. We've known this for almost 50 years now.
SOMMER: A warmer atmosphere sucks up water, drawing it out of plants and soils. Udall says that means less runoff going into the river, potentially cutting the flow 20 percent by mid-century. Even today, states downstream are using more water than there is most years.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BRENDA BURMAN: These are the lowest reservoir levels in my lifetime.
SOMMER: In December, Brenda Burman, commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, told everyone, find a solution.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BURMAN: We are quickly running out of time.
SOMMER: States like California and Arizona have been negotiating a deal to share water, to cut back so reservoirs don't hit critical lows. And Burman said if they don't do it by January 31...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BURMAN: We will act, if needed, to protect this basin.
SOMMER: But getting everyone to share water - that's the tricky part because of an invisible pecking order, the water rights system. It all depends on who started taking water first.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: Another place where water is badly needed, the Californian desert.
SOMMER: One farming community in California, the Imperial Valley, has some of the oldest water rights.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: Presently, it will be used by thousands of farmers, who will transform the arid desert into fields of green crops.
SOMMER: Today, the Imperial Valley uses more Colorado River water than Arizona and Nevada combined. And yet, if there's a shortage, they wouldn't have to give up water until almost everyone else has. But the drought deal being negotiated would require everyone to chip in.
BRUCE KUHN: We cannot give so much that we injure/cause harm to our community.
SOMMER: Bruce Kuhn is on the board of directors of the Imperial Irrigation District. He knows how tough these decisions can be. He was on the board in 2003, when, after decades of using more than its share, California was being forced to cut back. He voted to sell some of Imperial's water to San Diego as part of that deal.
KUHN: I was voted out of office over that vote. I was the swing vote. I lost friends, and I lost business associates over that.
SOMMER: Kuhn's customers were farmers who were not happy. Now Kuhn is back on the board with another water-sharing vote in front of him. At public meetings, some haven't let him forget the past.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MEETING ATTENDEE: Bruce, how did that work for us?
SOMMER: The idea of sharing water doesn't go over well.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MEETING ATTENDEE: This is a wrong deal. It's another chip away at our water right.
SOMMER: Kuhn and the other directors say they'll support the water-sharing plan if they're offered the right incentives. Kuhn hopes his friends will stay with him.
KUHN: One thing I will not lose this time, I will not lose customers. I sold my business a year ago.
SOMMER: Arizona still hasn't agreed to the deal yet either. If that doesn't happen by the end of January, the federal government says it will step in to decide the future of the Colorado River. For NPR News, I'm Lauren Sommer.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
This morning, at its annual conference in Seattle, the American Library Association gave out its prizes for children's and young adult literature. Its awards include the prestigious Caldecott and Newbery medals. NPR's Lynn Neary reports.
LYNN NEARY, BYLINE: The ALA announces a long list of prizes every year, from the Coretta Scott King Awards, which celebrate a 50th anniversary this year, to a brand-new digital media award. So when the time came to announce the two best-known awards, Jamie Campbell Naidoo, president of the Association for Library Services to Children, couldn't resist keeping the suspense going just a little longer.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JAMIE CAMPBELL NAIDOO: All right. Are you ready? You've been ready, right?
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: Yeah.
NAIDOO: All right. So this year's winner of the Randolph Caldecott Medal for outstanding illustration of children's books is "Hello Lighthouse."
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Cheering).
NEARY: This is the second Caldecott for Sophie Blackall, who wrote and illustrated "Hello Lighthouse." Blackall was not available for an interview because she's travelling in Burma.
Mary Fellows, chair of the Caldecott committee, said Blackall's book is exquisite, filled with detailed illustrations that depict life in a lighthouse.
MARY FELLOWS: There are cutaways of the lighthouse so we can see the interior. There are these wonderful uses of swooping and swirling seagulls and crashing waves and Northern Lights. And it's a feast of color.
NEARY: Fellows said the judges chose the winner from a field of nearly 1,000 books. They read them over the course of a year, but only met face-to-face for the first time during the conference.
FELLOWS: And over hours and hours and hours, we talk. But it also becomes a process of embracing new loves during the course of this discussion and, sometimes a little regretfully, letting go of old loves that we have.
NEARY: The Caldecott, along with the Newbery Medal, which is given for the most outstanding contribution to children's literature, is highly anticipated by the entire children's book industry, but none more so than the writers. This year's Newbery Medal winner, Meg Medina, author of "Merci Suarez Changes Gears," thought she might hear some news about the award last night.
MEG MEDINA: I waited up for a little while. I said, oh, nobody has called, so, you know, that's it.
NEARY: Medina was so sure she didn't win that when the call came this morning, she says it felt surreal.
MEDINA: When I think of the Newbery, I think of all the books over the years that I have read and loved - the books that shaped my children's lives. And I just hold them in such high regard. And there's a piece of you - it always feels like it couldn't possibly be you, and it was. And that was the amazing thing.
NEARY: Medina's book is about an 11-year-old Latina girl and her family as they learn to adapt to changes in their lives. She believes it's a story with a universal message.
MEDINA: The family is Latina. They're the Suarez family in south Florida, but they're able to speak to families everywhere, across all kinds of backgrounds. And that's, I think, a really important thing and a beautiful thing, especially right now.
NEARY: Medina loves the idea that her book will always have the stamp of the Newbery on its cover and that winning the medal means it will be around for a long time. Perhaps, she says, her grandchildren will find it on a library shelf one day. Lynn Neary, NPR News, Washington.
(SOUNDBITE OF JONATHAN LARSON SONG, "SEASONS OF LOVE")
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The hit Broadway musical "Rent" made it to the small screen last night on Fox TV.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: "Rent" is live, and it starts right now.
CORNISH: The show, originally staged in 1996, is about struggling artists trying to survive in New York's East Village, many living with AIDS. Broadcasting musicals live has become a new format for network TV, and this time, one of the big stars got a big break, just not the kind actors normally hope for.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
VANESSA HUDGENS: A visit to the hospital confirmed that Brennin Hunt, our Roger, has broken his foot.
CORNISH: Not a leg, just a foot. The show still went on though not quite as it had been billed. Here to talk more about it as NPR's Glen Weldon. Hey there, Glen.
GLEN WELDON, BYLINE: Hey, Audie.
CORNISH: So as we said, this was supposed to be live. This accident happens. So what exactly went to air last night?
WELDON: Most of what we saw - just about everything was pre-recorded. It was the dress rehearsal from the previous night. The very last part of the show, the big finale, was live.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSICAL, "RENT: LIVE")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters, singing) Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes, 525,000 moments so dear.
WELDON: You saw poor actor Brennin Hunt - that poor kid - with his foot propped up on a table at center stage. They also brought back the original off-Broadway cast to sing "Seasons Of Love," and that was live as well.
CORNISH: Why didn't they have understudies? Help me understand (laughter)...
WELDON: This is...
CORNISH: ...How this works.
WELDON: This is exactly what I thought. That's the question I had until I was corrected by a friend who actually works on Broadway. He told me that you don't train your understudies, generally speaking, until after opening night when all the decisions are made because you're just changing everything at the last minute. So you wait until everything is locked, and then you start training up your understudies. Now, they had a great ensemble, and they could have tapped somebody to take over the role for the night I suppose. But this production was really ambitious and complicated. It was performed in the round, on multiple stages, with multiple levels, with cameras zooming around. And in this audio, you can kind of hear the density of what was happening.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSICAL, "RENT: LIVE")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character, vocalizing).
WELDON: It's all about the blocking in a situation like that. So if you threw somebody in there - just be like sending them into a meat grinder.
CORNISH: So this essentially I guess dress rehearsal, which is what you all saw - some of the Twitterati was saying that maybe people (laughter) weren't giving it their all. Were the actors holding back?
WELDON: Yeah, that's not how dress rehearsals work, though. This wasn't a tech rehearsal where they do just kind of walk through it. This was a full dress rehearsal with a very, very enthusiastic crowd. And I mean, judge for yourself. This is Brandon Victor Dixon, who played Tom Collins, tearing the roof off the dump with "I'll Cover You." I don't think this guy was holding back.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSICAL, "RENT: LIVE")
BRANDON VICTOR DIXON: (As Tom Collins) Oh, lover, I'll cover you, yeah.
WELDON: And the big one at closer, "La Vie Boheme," was as raucous and as fun as it needs to be though they cleaned the lyrics up for TV.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSICAL, "RENT: LIVE")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters, singing) La vie boheme.
CORNISH: As we said, network TV is turning more and more frequently to this live show extravaganza kind of format. What are the lessons learned here?
WELDON: Lesson one, wear boots with a reinforced ankle just because theater is a contact sport. There were some technical glitches early on and the sound mix - always tricky with these things because there is an audience there. And they love it, and they are loud.
(CHEERING)
WELDON: But you need that - right? - because when they've done this without an audience - they did "Peter Pan" and "Sound Of Music" - they're done on a big, empty soundstage, and it feels like it. They're just dead. There's no energy. There's no life. You need an audience. That's what theater is.
CORNISH: Finally Glen, can you talk about the choice of the play itself? I mean, it first appeared on Broadway in 1996. It very much kind of captured that moment. I don't know if it still holds up.
WELDON: Well, I love this show. I don't always like it, but I love it because these songs just - they get their hooks in you, and it's just so open and earnest and heartfelt and shaggy and sad. It's basically a puppy, this show. And also you have to remember this was a cultural phenomenon at the time. This was "Hamilton" before "Hamilton" was "Hamilton." And one last thing - I think if you break it down, this show is about making art and making connections as acts of resistance, and I can see why that might still resonate today.
CORNISH: Glen Weldon from the NPR Arts Desk and NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. Thanks so much, Glen.
WELDON: Thank you.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Can a fruit fly get angry? And if so, is it anything like the anger we hear from this guy?
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LEWIS BLACK: I was told my tax dollars were going to murdering monkeys in space. And now you're telling me they're just faking it in a Jacuzzi?
SHAPIRO: That is the comedian Lewis Black. As part of NPR's series on anger, Black and NPR's Jon Hamilton explore the biological roots of a powerful emotion with a bad reputation.
JON HAMILTON, BYLINE: For Black, anger is a job.
BLACK: The anger that I do onstage is - I'm acting.
HAMILTON: But his performances are fueled by real anger. And Black has spent decades thinking about how this emotion works in his own brain.
BLACK: My anger comes from a collection of things that occur during the course of a day that build up. So by the end of a day, 67 things have happened to me that have gone into my anger bank.
HAMILTON: What sort of things?
BLACK: Idiotic debates that go on in Congress, health care, your cable provider.
HAMILTON: Onstage, Black leans forward. He shouts. He gestures with an index finger.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BLACK: Right now I'm on Snapchat. That's right - Snapchat. This is what I've sunk to.
HAMILTON: To a scientist, he looks a lot like a belligerent dog or an irate gerbil. David Anderson is a neurobiologist at Caltech who studies aggression in animals.
DAVID ANDERSON: Practically every sexually reproducing multicellular animal shows aggressive behavior. Fruit flies show aggression.
HAMILTON: Anderson is the co-author of a book on the neuroscience of emotion. He also studies fruit flies.
ANDERSON: They fight over females. They fight over food. They threaten each other. They put their wings up in the air. They charge at each other.
HAMILTON: So are these animals angry? Anderson says that depends how you define the term.
ANDERSON: We use anger to refer to our experience - our conscious experience of rage, the feeling that you are about to explode, the feeling of irritation.
HAMILTON: But feelings are hard to study in a fruit fly and other animals, so scientists like Anderson focus on their behavior or on biological changes like heart rate and hormone levels and brain activity. By these measures, aggression appears remarkably consistent across species. For example, Anderson says both animals and people may take out their aggression on innocent bystanders. His cat does this.
ANDERSON: It can be staring out the window, and a neighborhood cat strolls by. Its back arches. It hisses. Its tail goes up, and it turns around and attacks my other cat who's been sitting placidly by, minding her own business.
HAMILTON: Anderson says animals also can act angry long after the source of their irritation is gone. Both Anderson and Black say anger and aggression can be useful. Black says expressing anger during performances helps him maintain his internal balance.
BLACK: I have the best blood pressure of anybody I know, and I think it has to do with the fact that I've spent a lot of my life yelling and screaming about things onstage.
HAMILTON: He may be right. There is evidence that expressing anger can reduce levels of a stress hormone. On the other hand, extreme outbursts may trigger a heart attack. And of course, being on the receiving end of this emotion can hurt. But for Black, anger is a powerful motivator.
BLACK: What anger is good for, too, is to generate energy to move on to figure out how to do something. And that's really what it's good at in terms of the community. You get angry and go, what do we do?
HAMILTON: Anderson says in the animal world, an aggressive response can help a creature survive if it's attacked or robbed.
ANDERSON: If a squirrel steals a nut from another squirrel, there is an adaptive value to arousing the squirrel who is the victim of the theft and having it chase at the other squirrel and beat him up and try to recover has nut.
HAMILTON: Anderson says in both animals and people, aggressive behavior tends to be associated with physical responses like a racing pulse, higher blood pressure and elevated levels of hormones, including testosterone. And he says the similarities raise a question about brain evolution and aggression.
ANDERSON: You look at dogs fighting. You look at fish fighting. You look at flies fighting. They're all fighting with each other. You look at people fighting. Is that because they're all using the same basic brain mechanisms and brain chemicals?
HAMILTON: There is a working theory that because aggression is so common - because it's not just a reflexive response - the feeling behind it must be common, too. If so, that suggests the potential for anger is something we're born with. There's an ongoing debate among scientists about whether that's true, but Black thinks it is, and so does Marcel Just, a neuroscientist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
MARCEL JUST: I'm sure there's a strong biological component.
HAMILTON: Just is one of a few scientists who have actually studied anger in human brains, and what he found was surprising.
JUST: Even though everybody's anger feels very personal - and how could my anger possibly resemble yours? But in fact, if we were both in an MRI scanner and measured the activation, the pattern would be rather similar.
HAMILTON: Just was part of a study that trained a computer to recognize the brain activity associated with anger in people, and it was able to identify the emotion most of the time. Just says one way the human brain may differ from an animal's is in the circuits used to control emotions, including anger. And he says our ability to use these circuits probably depends more on nurture than nature.
JUST: One of the things that we learn from our families, from our parents, from our teachers is how to deal with our various emotions and most particularly anger.
HAMILTON: Lewis Black says he's spent much of his life learning how to deal with his anger, and he understands why the emotion gets such a bad rap.
BLACK: It's where it leads to that it's gotten its rap. Disgust - you may lose a friend, you know? Anger - you could kill a friend.
HAMILTON: So Black says when he's out performing, he often finds himself trying to make sure an audience doesn't get too angry. And if he finds his flight home has been delayed, he stays calm.
BLACK: Here's a million-dollar tip. You sit on that anger, and you just empathize with the person whose job it is to deal with you.
HAMILTON: Jon Hamilton, NPR News.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Fans and foes of the political consultant Roger Stone battled outside a Washington courthouse today.
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UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS #1: (Chanting) We love Roger. We love Roger. We love Roger.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS #2: (Chanting) Lock him up. Lock him up.
CORNISH: Stone himself was unusually understated inside the courtroom. He pleaded not guilty to seven criminal charges. In a moment we'll look at where the whole special counsel probe on Russia and Trump associates stands. First, NPR national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson is here to talk about Roger Stone. Welcome to the studio.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Thanks, Audie.
CORNISH: So those chants sounded like frankly two groups ready to come to blows. Can you talk about the atmosphere outside the courthouse and also inside?
JOHNSON: Yeah, the crowd outside the courthouse got kind of wild. There were people with signs calling Roger Stone a dirty traitor and others blasting Hillary Clinton, who of course was Donald Trump's political opponent in 2016. When he finally arrived this morning, Roger Stone was flanked by about four or five police officers to help him move through that crowd. Photographers wound up taking a picture of Stone with his hands up getting wanded as he went through security.
But once he got into the courtroom, Stone was actually kind of subdued. He wore a blue suit, a blue tie, blue pocket square. But he didn't say much. He made a lot of expressive faces - lifting his eyebrows at the judge - but not a lot of comments.
CORNISH: Stone has pleaded not guilty to false statements and obstruction charges that he's facing. Did we learn anything more about the case against him?
JOHNSON: Not any tantalizing new details. Today the heart of the indictment accuses Roger Stone of misleading Congress, about his contacts with WikiLeaks and people in the Trump campaign in 2016 just as WikiLeaks was dumping emails to hurt the Clinton campaign and help Donald Trump. This whole thing lasted only about 15 minutes. The judge told Roger Stone not to contact any witnesses in the case, not to apply for a passport. And he's due back in court for a longer hearing on Friday afternoon here in D.C..
CORNISH: You know, Carrie, you're describing Roger Stone as not saying much in the courtroom. He didn't say much as he left. This is not a guy known for being quiet. So what's going on here?
JOHNSON: Yeah, it's hard to say if this is a deliberate strategy. Remember Stone gave lengthy remarks after his arrest last week in Florida, including a livestream interview with the website InfoWars. Then he flashed a V sign for victory. Today there was nothing like that. And maybe that he's worried the judge in his case, Amy Berman Jackson, might impose a gag order on him. The same judge imposed a gag on Stone's former business partner Paul Manafort when he was charged with wrongdoing. We're going to find out later this week if Stone is able to keep quiet. We know other people won't. In fact someone was playing the Russian national anthem when I walked out of the courthouse this afternoon.
CORNISH: Finally there has been a flurry of interest in when this Russia investigation might end. Is there any sense of that from what you heard in the courtroom?
JOHNSON: We have a few clues. Yesterday the Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker told reporters he thinks the special counsel investigation may be close to being completed. Whitaker says he hopes Robert Mueller turns in his final report as soon as possible. The special counsel didn't want to comment about that. In court today one of the special counsel prosecutors, Jeannie Rhee, said Roger Stone is going to be tried jointly by the special counsel lawyers and lawyers from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C. We've seen that before.
It may be the special counsel will pass the baton to regular Justice Department prosecutors when the special counsel team decides to disband. This investigation, though, is less than two years old. Authorities have now charged six people close to President Donald Trump and dozens of Russian officers and businesses, so they've been very active.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Carrie Johnson. Carrie, thank you.
JOHNSON: My pleasure.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
We're going to look back now to February 2016. Chris Christie, then the governor of New Jersey, had just dropped out of the race for president. It was time to make a decision. Who should he endorse? Well, that February 26, Christie turned up unannounced at a campaign press conference in Fort Worth, Texas, and stunned reporters by saying this.
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CHRIS CHRISTIE: I am proud to be here to endorse Donald Trump for president of the United States.
CORNISH: Six weeks later, Christie was announced as the leader of candidate Trump's transition team. And we're going to let our co-host Mary Louise Kelly pick up the story from here.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, BYLINE: The story is that through the summer and fall of 2016, Christie crisscrossed the country with Trump, led his debate prep, sat in on classified briefings, all of which gave Christie a front-row seat on the Trump campaign, all of which he writes about in his new memoir, "Let Me Finish."
Governor Christie, welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
CHRISTIE: Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to speaking to you.
KELLY: And we are looking forward to speaking with you. So it is hard to think of a campaign that continues to cast quite such a long shadow two years into a presidency, but questions about Russia, as you know, continue to dog and define Trump's presidency. So start there. You sat in the meetings. You were in Trump Tower all the time in 2016. Was there collusion?
CHRISTIE: Listen; I don't think there was. I never saw any evidence of it. And I don't think the campaign was organized enough to collude.
KELLY: You didn't see evidence of collusion, and you think they were too disorganized to collude.
CHRISTIE: Yeah. I think this group was still trying to hire field reps in Pennsylvania in August. I hardly think that they were organized enough to put together a Tom Clancy-type operation with Russia.
KELLY: I mean, here's what I keep wrestling with with the collusion question. You say it's far-fetched. However, you and I are sitting here speaking just a few days after the arrest of Roger Stone, the sixth of the president's advisers to be charged in the Russia investigation - a lot of that to do with false statements to the FBI...
CHRISTIE: Right.
KELLY: ...To investigators. If there was nothing to cover up, why does everybody keep lying to the FBI and other investigators?
CHRISTIE: Well, in my experience as U.S. attorney for seven years in New Jersey, dumb people and bad people lie all the time even when they don't have to. I'm not surprised that they're lying. I don't think you can draw the conclusion that, well, if they're lying, they must be lying about something. I have great faith and confidence in Bob Mueller. I worked with them when I was U.S. attorney and he was director of the FBI. And I think he's run this investigation with great integrity, and I have confidence that Bob Mueller will do it the right way.
KELLY: Stay with your point about the kind of people who the president surrounded himself with during the campaign, during the transition and now in his presidency. You called them grifters, weaklings, convicted and unconvicted felons. What does it say that this is the type people who Donald Trump brings into his inner circle?
CHRISTIE: Well, I think that there's been a lot of really bad personnel choices - Mike Flynn, Jeff Sessions, Omarosa Manigault and some of the other folks that he brought into the White House - that had no business being in the White House. And I think, you know, it's difficult for someone who has run a family business beforehand with no shareholders and no board of directors to understand how important each and every one of those personnel decisions are.
KELLY: Your official role, as we mentioned, was leading the transition. You assembled 30 binders full of names of people to be considered for the top jobs, drafts of executive orders - 30 binders which you say got thrown in a dumpster right after the election.
CHRISTIE: Yes.
KELLY: Literally in a dumpster.
CHRISTIE: Literally.
KELLY: How do you know that? Did you see it?
CHRISTIE: I was told.
KELLY: Like, where? Out behind Trump Tower or...
CHRISTIE: No, in Washington, D.C., they made a ceremonial tossing out of that information. And by they, I mean Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon.
KELLY: Why?
CHRISTIE: Well, I mean, listen; a decision was made, and I was told by Steve Bannon, as I write in the book, to let me go two days after the election and that that instruction was given to him by Jared Kushner. Now, I think, to let me go is one thing. To get rid of the work of 140 people that I led for six months was monumentally stupid. And I think that the administration has paid a price for that, and the country has paid a price for that act of arrogance and that act of selfishness because they wanted to now be in charge of what was going to happen.
KELLY: Does the president not bear some responsibility here, though? He could get those binders fished out of a dumpster if he had wanted to follow an orderly by-the-book or by-the-binder transition plan.
CHRISTIE: Listen; he's accountable for everything that happened. Now, he's not responsible for that decision, and I know for a fact he didn't make that decision. They told him we're going to fix the transition. There's problems here. We'll take care of it. And given everything else that he had going on at that time, I don't know that it was his responsibility to delve into exactly what happened. But what I will tell you is that he's paid the price for it. The well-researched, well-crafted executive orders that we had viewed by a panel of lawyers, you would've been much better off working off those executive orders rather than ones that were written by Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller on the back of an envelope in some office of the White House.
KELLY: On Jared Kushner, there's a long history between you and his family, Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law, history going back to your time as a prosecutor in New Jersey. You prosecuted the case against Jared Kushner's dad for tax evasion and witness tampering, among other charges.
CHRISTIE: Correct.
KELLY: Charles Kushner was convicted. He went to prison, and you say the son held a grudge. How did that manifest when you two were working together?
CHRISTIE: (Laughter) Well, the way it manifested itself, if you read the book - and there's entire chapter called "Jared's Meltdown" where when Donald Trump brought me in to ask me to be chairman of the transition, Jared came into the meeting uninvited and began to make the argument as to why that decision should be held in abeyance because I had been, in his words, unfair to his father and therefore untrustworthy. And ultimately, Donald said, Jared, Chris was doing his job. You're trying to get in the way of this, but I've made my decision. And Chris is going to be in charge of the transition.
KELLY: The president had your back in that first conversation.
CHRISTIE: And a number after that.
KELLY: Yeah, but on the getting fired from the transition, I'll just ask it bluntly - did he sell you out? I mean, he could've blocked that.
CHRISTIE: Well, listen; I think he - I think what happened was he gave in to the - what was described to me by Steve Bannon, who said - the kid is what he referred to Jared as.
KELLY: This was Bannon's nickname for Jared Kushner.
CHRISTIE: Yup. The kid has been taking an ax to your head with the boss ever since I got here. So I think that ultimately the president just decided that he could end the battering that he was taking at the hands of his son-in-law.
KELLY: Just to follow on that, there have been reports of late that Jared Kushner is basically kind of de facto operating as White House chief of staff. Do you have any insight into whether that's true?
CHRISTIE: I don't know if it's true, but let me say this - there is simply no one more influential in the White House on the president than Jared Kushner.
KELLY: That's who he listens to.
CHRISTIE: It's not the only person he listens to, but I don't think anyone has more influence than Jared has.
KELLY: Do you still talk to the president?
CHRISTIE: All the time.
KELLY: What kind of advice do you give him?
CHRISTIE: Well, my advice I give is between me and the president, Mary Louise. But what I tell him, for instance, let's say, about the most recent incident regarding a shutdown of the federal government - with a Democratic legislature my entire time as governor of New Jersey, and if you're going to do something confrontational with your legislative body, you better have a plan for a way in and for a way out in case things don't go well politically. And I think he was convinced by others that they were going to be able to handle this situation for him and that he would be able to get them to give in. We learned that that's not the way it worked. And I think he learned a big lesson in the last 35 days. And we're going to see how the next 21 days get handled as a result.
KELLY: Chris Christie - the book is "Let Me Finish: Trump, The Kushners, Bannon, New Jersey And The Power Of In-Your-Face Politics." Governor, thank you.
CHRISTIE: Thank you, Mary Louise.
CORNISH: We've reached out to Jared Kushner for a response, and we're still waiting to hear back.
(SOUNDBITE OF CUTS' "BUNSEN BURNER")
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
In Chicago, the actor Jussie Smollett was assaulted in the early hours of this morning. Chicago police have confirmed that they are treating the attack as a possible hate crime. Smollett is gay and multiracial. He stars in the hit Fox TV drama "Empire." It's about a family that owns a music company, and Smollett plays Jamal, a gay character struggling to win his father's approval. Here he is singing on the show.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "EMPIRE")
JUSSIE SMOLLETT: (As Jamal Lyon, singing) So what? I'm gay. It don't matter. God ain't made you no better than me. When I pray...
SHAPIRO: For more on this attack, NPR's Colin Dwyer joins us now. Hi, Colin.
COLIN DWYER, BYLINE: Hi, Ari.
SHAPIRO: What can you tell us so far about this assault? And what do we know happened?
DWYER: So to start off, I must preface this with the fact that details remain a little bit sketchy at the moment, but we do know some facts from the Chicago Police Department. They say that he was walking down by the waterfront section of downtown Chicago when two individuals assailed him. They started hurling racial epithets at him, started hurling homophobic slurs at him as well. And they gained his attention through that, and they started beating him up.
And at this point, there are some actually disturbing details in the police report. They say that he had an unknown chemical substance poured on him during the course of this thing. And then before that attack was done, the two individuals apparently wrapped a rope around his neck, according to police. Those individuals actually fled on foot. And now the police are trying to find out who they are.
SHAPIRO: You mentioned homophobic and racial slurs. Police are investigating this as a hate crime. Tell us more about that.
DWYER: That's correct. So they obviously see this as a potential situation in which this was either racially motivated or motivated through homophobia or perhaps both it seems. So police are now calling out to the country as a whole asking for tips on who these two people might be. One bright side to this is that it does seem that Smollett is feeling OK. He's in good condition, according to the police. He actually brought himself over to the hospital shortly after this. And he seems to be in good condition.
SHAPIRO: He brought himself to the hospital. He was not taken there by ambulance or anything.
DWYER: That's correct.
SHAPIRO: He's a very popular figure in Hollywood. I've seen a huge response on social media today. Tell us more about what the reaction has been.
DWYER: That's right. So almost immediately the moment that this news broke, we saw an outpouring from his colleagues and co-workers and friends across the industry. That includes Kerry Washington, Viola Davis. The co-creator of the show, Danny Strong, actually came out with some really strong words. He said whoever did this, do not forget that you are nothing but hate-filled cowards while Jussie's talent and activism will continue to shine a bright light onto the world for decades to come.
SHAPIRO: That's NPR's Colin Dwyer covering this assault on the actor Jussie Smollett in Chicago. We're going to continue following this story as we get more details. Colin, thanks a lot.
DWYER: Thank you so much, Ari.
(SOUNDBITE OF ROSTAM SONG, "GWAN")
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
This week gives us one vivid illustration of how complicated the U.S.-China relationship can be. Tomorrow negotiators from the two countries meet for another round of trade talks. And just yesterday American prosecutors unsealed two sweeping indictments against China's giant telecommunications firm Huawei. One of those indictments alleges that the company and its CFO violated U.S. sanctions on Iran. The other charges the company with stealing trade secrets from T-Mobile.
And we're going to explore that now with Mark Cohen. He led the China team at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office until last year. Before that, he dealt with intellectual property issues at the U.S. embassy in Beijing. Welcome.
MARK COHEN: Thank you, Ari.
SHAPIRO: This indictment reads like a screenplay. It describes in detail how Huawei tried to steal the technology powering a T-Mobile robot named Tappy so that it could build its own robot in China. The part I want to zero in on is this allegation that while this was all taking place, Huawei launched a formal program to reward employees who stole confidential information from competitors. How big a deal is this?
COHEN: Well, it's a pretty big deal. I think it supports the narrative coming from the Trump administration and elsewhere that China has embarked on a very holistic campaign to acquire U.S. technology, often illegally. And here you have a bonus program that's intended to incent employees to go ahead and steal proprietary information, which actually Huawei's own local management in the U.S. said its employees should not adhere to because they have to abide by U.S. law.
SHAPIRO: Do you think these indictments signal a change in the U.S. approach to this problem?
COHEN: They signal an escalation in an approach. The Department of Justice, the FBI announced a special effort last November to deal with economic espionage from China. I think China is viewed as a greater competitive threat. And we've seen some major cases with major losses to U.S. industry.
We always knew that there were state policies to encourage China to domestically innovate, whatever that means. And we always saw these incentives to lure back employees, Chinese Ph.D.s from the U.S. or elsewhere to work on important projects. In the Huawei indictment, we now have an indication of a corporate incentive from a major Chinese company basically to steal, which further underscores the threat that is posed by this type of activity.
SHAPIRO: So let's talk about the trade negotiations that resume tomorrow. How does this major public accusation of criminal behavior against one of China's biggest companies affect the conversations happening between the U.S. and China about trade?
COHEN: Well, the trade issues are huge. We're talking about half a trillion dollars or so in bilateral trade, $250 billion with potential 25 percent tariffs. By comparison this is relatively small, this isolated matter. But I believe it is very supportive of the U.S. narrative about the need for systemic changes in China regarding intellectual property protection and particularly trade secret protection.
But in addition to that - and I think this is more fundamental to what the administration is saying - China has created a system that abuses global IP norms, that tolerates immoral activity when it serves the national technological interests. And this case, to a degree, is a pretty convincing instance of where that toleration has led to conspiracy to steal from a company based in the U.S. and to acquire technology illegally.
SHAPIRO: The behavior described in this indictment seems so, for lack of a better word, shameless and persistent and widespread. It's hard to imagine that a public indictment like this is going to make much of a difference in what China decides to do going forward.
COHEN: You know, pursuing individuals or pursuing companies, you know, is one way to make the case. Hopefully it creates some deterrence. I think this case, to a very large extent, is at least about deterrence as it is about anything else that this kind of behavior, this kind of encouragement of theft of trade secrets will not be tolerated by the U.S. And not only that, it will be disclosed to the world, severely contradicting Huawei's statements that they don't tolerate this type of behavior.
SHAPIRO: Mark Cohen, thanks so much for joining us.
COHEN: My pleasure.
SHAPIRO: He's senior fellow at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
There's another factor that could affect these trade talks - China's economy. It's slowing down. And American companies are feeling it. Yesterday, the construction machinery company Caterpillar said its earnings would be flat this year. They cited China's slowing economy. President Trump says the slowdown gives his negotiators leverage in their efforts to change Beijing's trade policies. NPR's Jim Zarroli reports.
JIM ZARROLI, BYLINE: Right now China and the United States are engaged in all-important talks aimed at ironing out their differences over trade. If the talks don't succeed by the end of March, President Trump has threatened to increase tariffs on Chinese imports. As Trump sees it, the United States has an advantage over Beijing.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: China very much wants to make a deal. We'll see what happens. I like where we are right now. We're doing great as an economy. They're not doing very well because of the tariffs.
ZARROLI: Trump says China needs the U.S. right now, so it has no choice but to give in to U.S. demands. There's no question China's economy is slowing. Eswar Prasad of the Brookings Institution says consumers are buying less. Apartments are sitting empty. Retail sales are down.
ESWAR PRASAD: For instance, the sale of cars - in particular, luxury cars - has fallen quite sharply.
ZARROLI: But China expert Patrick Chovanec of Silvercrest Asset Management says despite Trump's claims, what's happening in China right now has little to do with U.S. tariffs.
PATRICK CHOVANEC: Contrary to popular opinion, I don't think that U.S. trade pressure is actually a major factor in why China's economy is slowing. China's economy would be slowing anyway.
ZARROLI: China's growth, he says, has been fueled in large part by massive construction of roads, housing, office buildings and factories. It's built more infrastructure than it needs. And it's made a lot of loans to state-sponsored companies that probably shouldn't have gotten them. David Dollar, a former emissary to China in the Obama administration, says that kind of lending and spending can't go on forever.
DAVID DOLLAR: For a long time, they had very rapid growth of credit. And that was pushing investment and keeping their growth in some ways artificially high. And now they're paying the price for that.
ZARROLI: Over the years, China has sometimes tried to cut back on bad loans. It's doing so again right now. And some companies are failing as a result. And Dollar says that's what's causing the current slowdown. Eswar Prasad says U.S. trade pressure is complicating an already bad situation for the Chinese. But that alone isn't going to force China to make concessions.
PRASAD: The Chinese do want a deal. But they don't want it so badly that they're willing to capitulate to the U.S. on all of the demands the Trump administration has made.
ZARROLI: And even if China wanted to make dramatic changes, there's a limit to how much it can do. David Dollar says China's reliance on state-owned enterprises and its lax intellectual property protections are deep-seated problems. They won't change overnight.
DOLLAR: I think the most you could expect would be China making some initial steps. But they're not going to change their whole system overnight because the U.S. is demanding it.
ZARROLI: What China can do now, he says, is offer to buy more U.S. exports and open up some of its markets to outside competition. And he says those are the kinds of concessions that are most likely to be made at the current talks. Jim Zarroli, NPR News, New York.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
OK, it is not news that the Midwest gets cold in the winter. But this week could be the coldest in a generation. Today parts of the Dakotas and Minnesota hit -27 degrees. That's not just uncomfortable, it's dangerous. To understand what those kinds of temperatures do to the human body, Dr. Jeff Schaider joins us now. He's chairman of Emergency Medicine at Cook County Health in Chicago. Thanks for being with us.
JEFF SCHAIDER: Hi, Ari.
SHAPIRO: OK, I spent the first eight years of my life in Fargo, N.D., so I know what extreme cold feels like. But what is actually happening physiologically to our skin and our lungs when our bodies are exposed to these temperatures that are so far below zero?
SCHAIDER: Well, I think, you know, obviously it's a stress on the body. And I generally divide it into two phases as far as the cold goes. Number one, people often think about the cold affecting you on your skin in frostbite. And the other thing is when your body temperature drops as a result of being exposed to the cold more prolonged. And obviously, you know, both these things can cause severe injuries, sometimes death as well.
SHAPIRO: In the kinds of temperatures we're talking about - I mean, as far as 25 below zero - how long does it take for those kinds of effects to set in?
SCHAIDER: From a frostbite perspective, I've seen patients develop frostbite with an approximate 10 to 15 minutes after being exposed to these extreme temperatures. So people would actually get outside, you know, walk down the street for about 10 minutes or so and develop frostbite in the back of their ears by not wearing a hat. So, you know, we always tell people very, very important - this is common sense obviously - they need to cover their extremities to not be exposed to these extreme temperatures.
SHAPIRO: And in terms of the internal effects when the body temperature cools that you were describing?
SCHAIDER: Exactly. So that's what - we call it medically when the body temperature goes lower, it's called hypothermia. Initially when you're exposed to the cold you'll obviously shiver and try to warm your body up. That's your initial response. But as your body gets colder and colder, your response to the cold actually becomes less and less. You'll stop shivering then your body temperature will start dropping at a more rapid rate. And if you think about your body as I guess an engine, as it gets colder it moves slower. Your mind thinks slower. Your heart moves slower. And as time goes on, you become confused. You can go into a coma. And your heart would go slower. Your blood pressure will drop. And it really affects your whole body. And people could die from the cold in these types of circumstances.
SHAPIRO: Are there common mistakes that people make when they try to go outside in these kinds of temperatures?
SCHAIDER: Of course. I mean, we all make mistakes. But, you know, obviously in this type of situation, if you go out and you think you will not be exposed to the cold, you have to anticipate that might happen. If you're in the car, bring additional clothes, bring a blanket, bring an extra hat, extra gloves just in case something happens to your car. Alcohol does play a role too. People that go out and drink might walk outside because they don't feel the effects of the cold that much when they're intoxicated. And then in these types of situation they might be exposed to the cold for a long period of time and their body temperature would begin to drop.
SHAPIRO: Dr. Schaider, thanks so much for talking with us today.
SCHAIDER: Ari, thank you so much.
SHAPIRO: That's Jeff Schaider, chairman of Emergency Medicine at Cook County Health in Chicago.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
After weeks of stalemate and chaos, Britain's Parliament has finally agreed on a way forward on Brexit.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Three ayes to the right - 317. The noes to the left - 301. So the ayes have it. The ayes have it.
SHAPIRO: Today, lawmakers in London voted for an amendment that would send Prime Minister Theresa May back to the European Union to ask Brussels to renegotiate a deal that she had already signed off on, the very deal lawmakers rejected in an historic defeat for the prime minister a couple weeks ago. To find out what today's vote means, we have NPR's London correspondent Frank Langfitt on the line from the British Parliament in London. Hi, Frank.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: Hey, Ari. How are you doing?
SHAPIRO: This is a big turnaround from...
LANGFITT: (Laughter) It is.
SHAPIRO: ...When we were talking to you about the prime minister's defeat. What does it mean?
LANGFITT: Well, it's interesting. She was the happiest I've seen her (laughter) in the House of Commons in a long time. And what it means is she now has some path forward. You know, all along, she kept complaining that Parliament would say what it didn't want, and now she has something - some idea of what they support. And this is what she had to say in victory today.
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PRIME MINISTER THERESA MAY: It is now clear that there is a route that can secure a substantial and sustainable majority in this house for leaving the EU with a deal.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Here, here.
MAY: We will now take this mandate forward and seek to obtain legally binding changes to withdrawal agreement.
SHAPIRO: OK, a deal requires two sides. So what does she do next?
LANGFITT: She's got to go back to Brussels, and specifically what she's going to ask about is concessions on what's of course been the biggest sticking point, the future the Irish border. We've talked about this a lot. And the big problem is to figure out a way that the United Kingdom can break away from the EU - their economies have been intertwined for more than four decades - and not create the need for a hard border amid customs posts on the island of Ireland. Now, May's current Brexit deal had avoided that by keeping the U.K. in a customs arrangement with the EU until they can sign a - sort this out. But May and many MPs are really afraid that they're going to be trapped in this for years and still be stuck under the thumb of the EU.
SHAPIRO: EU leaders have said repeatedly that...
LANGFITT: Yeah (laughter).
SHAPIRO: ...They gave their final offer; they're not open to renegotiating. So how did they respond to today's vote?
LANGFITT: Well, they said the same thing they always said, Ari. The European Council president - his spokesman, the spokesman for Donald Tusk - he said this isn't up for renegotiation. The Irish government said the same thing after the vote. May admitted that people at the EU - they don't have much - has little appetite for this deal, like, going back and reopening the deal.
And there was also a lot of skepticism even in Parliament. You know, there was one MP - said that continuing to go back to the EU when they've said no was sort of the definition of insanity. And Brexiteers have talked about ways around this. One of things they've talked about is using technology to avoid a hard border. And there's a member of Parliament here named Caroline Lucas. She's with the Green Party. And she said the prime minister was being completely unrealistic about the solutions, and the idea that she would get any different reaction from Brussels - this is what Caroline Lucas said.
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CAROLINE LUCAS: Will she not recognize that what she is chasing here are heated-up fantasies that have already been rejected by the EU, and they depend on technologies that don't exist?
SHAPIRO: Heated-up fantasies - all right, well...
LANGFITT: Yes (laughter).
SHAPIRO: ...Frank, there were some other amendments related to Brexit that Parliament voted on today. Tell us about them.
LANGFITT: Yeah. Most of them were designed to kind of actually take control of this process from the prime minister. And the prime minister's had a terrible run, actually won most of them except one. And this is a very important one. And it says the U.K. Parliament would reject the U.K. leaving the European Union without a withdrawal agreement, some kind of deal. And the point of this is to block what's called a no-deal Brexit that could do a lot of economic damage to this country. And so what's interesting is if May can't get a deal from the EU, she can't get one through Parliament, it's clear there's a majority here - do not want this country just, you know, walking away from the EU and really hurting the economy and affecting people's jobs.
SHAPIRO: That's NPR's Frank Langfitt speaking with us from Parliament in London. Thank you, Frank.
LANGFITT: Happy to do it, Ari.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The top U.S. intelligence officials were up on Capitol Hill today to give their annual assessment of the global threats facing the U.S. Those threats range from North Korea to China, Russia and ISIS. As NPR's Greg Myre reports, the intelligence chiefs largely agreed with each other but seemed a bit out of sync with their boss, President Trump.
GREG MYRE, BYLINE: President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un are planning another summit in about a month, and the president says his ultimate goal is the dismantling of that country's entire nuclear program. But Dan Coats, the Director of National Intelligence, sees it this way.
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DAN COATS: We currently assess that North Korea will seek to retain its WMD capabilities and is unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and production capabilities because its leaders ultimately view nuclear weapons as critical to regime survival.
MYRE: Coats was one of six national security officials sitting side by side as they took questions from members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. While the president tends to discuss many national security questions in black-and-white terms, the intelligence chiefs offered more nuanced and somewhat different assessments. Maine Senator Angus King asked CIA Director Gina Haspel about the nuclear deal with Iran that Trump withdrew from last year.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ANGUS KING: Since our departure from the deal, they have abided by the terms. You're saying they're considering, but at the current moment, they're complying.
GINA HASPEL: Yes, they're making some preparations that would increase their ability to take a step back if they make that decision. So at the moment, technically they're in compliance.
MYRE: In Syria, Trump says the Islamic State caliphate has been defeated, and he has ordered the withdrawal of the roughly 2,000 American troops there. The first stages of the pullout have begun. But Coats offered a cautionary note.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
COATS: While we have defeated the caliphate, with a couple of little villages left, we should not underestimate the ability of terrorist groups, particularly ISIS.
MYRE: Several senators, Republicans and Democrats, also joined the intelligence officials in taking a tougher line on Russia than the president. FBI Director Christopher Wray said the Russians are pressing ahead with fake social media accounts that attempt to sow divisions in the U.S.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
CHRISTOPHER WRAY: Not only have the Russians continued to do it in 2018, but we've seen indication that they're continuing to adapt their model and that other countries are taking a very interested eye in that approach.
MYRE: A theme that came up repeatedly was the long-term challenge posed by China. The Justice Department announced criminal charges Monday against Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant. And U.S. officials say the company seems to be operating on two different levels. Again, here's Angus King.
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KING: It seems to me they have to decide they're either going to be a worldwide telecommunications company or an agent of the Chinese government. They can't be both. And right now, they're trying to be both.
MYRE: Senators and the spy chief cited China's ongoing theft of U.S. intellectual property as well as its desire to challenge U.S. political and economic influence around the globe. Wray called China his biggest concern.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
WRAY: The Chinese counterintelligence threat is more deep, more diverse, more vexing, more challenging, more comprehensive and more concerning than any counterintelligence threat I can think of.
MYRE: And on that at least, the intelligence chiefs and the president appear to be in full agreement. Greg Myre, NPR News, Washington.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE DELI'S "GUITAR CHOP SUEY")
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Yesterday the U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions that effectively halt U.S. purchases of oil from Venezuela. It's the most drastic step so far in Washington's efforts to push out Venezuela's authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro and help opposition leader Juan Guaido. The U.S. says he is Venezuela's legitimate leader. Reporter John Otis looks at the role that oil sales play in this power struggle.
JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Venezuela depends on oil for nearly all of its export income. And about 40 percent of its oil is sold to the United States for cash. Venezuela also sells oil to China and Russia, but those proceeds go towards paying back Venezuelan debt. That's why, for the Maduro government, the U.S. is such a vital customer. But now the U.S. has slapped sanctions on Venezuela's state-run oil company known as PDVSA. The U.S. claims that Maduro and his inner circle divert billions in PDVSA profits to their personal accounts and to pay off military officers said to be propping up Maduro's government. Here is U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton at yesterday's announcement.
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JOHN BOLTON: We have continued to expose the corruption of Maduro and his cronies and today's action ensures they can no longer loot the assets of the Venezuelan people.
OTIS: The Maduro government had been receiving $11 billion annually in U.S. oil sales. Under the sanctions, any further U.S. payments would go not to Maduro but into bank accounts that could be used by Juan Guaido, Venezuela's self-proclaimed interim president. Thus, Maduro is unlikely to keep sending oil North, says Amy Myers Jaffe of the Council on Foreign Relations.
AMY MYERS JAFFE: You're Maduro and you need cash. You're not given cash to Guaido's account, so you're not going to send any oil here - period.
OTIS: On state TV Monday night, Maduro called the sanctions a prelude to a U.S. invasion.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT NICOLAS MADURO: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: He said the U.S. government wants to strip Venezuela of its property, riches and money and then take over our territory. Maduro then addressed the U.S. president.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MADURO: Donald Trump hunts up Venezuela.
OTIS: Analysts say that Venezuelan oil, which had amounted to 7 percent of American imports, can be replaced and they predict little impact on the U.S. economy. But the sanctions will likely cause even more agony for Venezuela. For starters, the U.S. is one of the few countries with refineries that can process Venezuela's heavy crude. Now Maduro must scramble to find new buyers for the half-million barrels that he used to sell to the U.S. on a daily basis. What's more, a cash crunch resulting from the U.S. sanctions could collapse Venezuela's oil industry, says Francisco Rodriguez, a Venezuelan economist.
FRANCISCO RODRIGUEZ: We will see, if Maduro remains in power, a decline of around 40 percent in Venezuelan oil production within the next few months.
OTIS: All this will mean more misery for average Venezuelans. But Bruce Bagley of the University of Miami says that if sanctions helped force out Maduro it would bring immediate relief to millions.
BRUCE BAGLEY: They're already being hurt. More than three million have left the country - inflation. And the conservative estimate is going to be one million. It could be as high as 10 million. People can't get medicine. They can't get food. They are being jailed and suppressed. There is nothing much left to preserve.
OTIS: However, as recent history in Cuba, Syria and North Korea shows, sanctions are no guarantee of regime change. For NPR News, I'm John Otis.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
There was a mass shooting in central Florida last week, and you may not have heard about it. Many national news outlets barely mentioned it. We were one of the programs that didn't cover it at all. Now, part of that decision-making - the body count. Five people were killed in Sebring, Fla., when a 21-year-old man shot five women in a SunTrust Bank. Four were bank employees, and one was a customer.
Writer Carl Hiaasen writes about this in his most recent Miami Herald column. Hiaasen lost his brother to a shooting last year at the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, Md. Welcome to the program.
CARL HIAASEN: Thanks for having me on.
CORNISH: Now, there have been many shootings since the time you lost your brother in Annapolis. What was it about this one that made you write this column?
HIAASEN: Well, it was close by, first of all. I live in Florida. I have my whole life. And I know Sebring a little bit, and it's a small town. But second of all, it was - you know, it was an execution-style killing that was horrific in every way. And the fact that it got so little attention spoke to the desensitizing of the national conscience on this kind of crime, which is a shame. And it's - part of it is human nature. You see enough of these headlines that you read the headline, and you stop there. And part of it is just wanting to look away. And that we can't afford to do.
CORNISH: You write, God help us if this is what we've become - numb to home-grown slaughter unless the body count hits double digits. If you were an on-duty editor - right? - and had heard about a shooting, how would you decide whether or not to cover it, how much space or airtime to give the story?
HIAASEN: You know, if it were up to me, they would all be covered as expansively as the shooting in Annapolis where my brother and four others at the newspaper lost their lives. And that got a great deal of attention at the time because the shooter had targeted journalists, and I think it made it a more newsworthy story in some editors' minds. But the truth is that every shooting like this should be covered. I would have covered it as a major story. I certainly would have covered it more than whatever Roger Stone was babbling about that morning, you know?
CORNISH: There's also a school of thinking about covering every shooting further desensitizes people.
HIAASEN: Well, it might. What is the option? You wait for the body count to get in double digits. Do you wait for there to be a classroom of children involved? What makes one killing less newsworthy than another? If it was an ISIS guy who walked into that bank, it would have been the lead story for days and days and days. This is just another angry, white, male loser who had access to a weapon. And so it becomes routine. And the fact that we even think of it as routine is obscene. But to not cover it would be hiding a level of tragedy that happens almost every week to somebody and somebody's family. So that would be the most irresponsible thing a journalist could do.
CORNISH: Do you think that more people are starting to ask this question? I know for communities of color who often feel like crime and killings are overlooked...
HIAASEN: Yes.
CORNISH: ...By the media, they've felt this for a long time.
HIAASEN: Absolutely, with total justification, with total justification. And I think, as the family of someone who died that way and as having met many, many others, I think there is a sense of singular purpose and commitment that every life does matter. It's important that we're slaughtering each other in this way that we have to contemplate regardless of the age of the victims, the color of the victims, the occupation of the victims.
The shooting in Sebring - four of them were bank workers who were there. They were made to lie down on the floor and executed along with the customer. How can that not be a major news story? How can that not affect anybody who's ever walked in a bank to put their paycheck in a bank account? I mean, it hits home. It should hit home.
CORNISH: It sounds like what you're asking is for the media to think about these stories differently when they first break, right? Not should we cover this, but why wouldn't we cover this?
HIAASEN: Exactly. If we don't shine a light on it and write about it and react with some humanity and horror every time it happens, we'll never get past it. We'll never get better as a society.
CORNISH: You wrote that your brother would want you to write in the strongest words that what happened at the SunTrust Bank was every bit as horrifying, heartbreaking and newsworthy as what happened in his newsroom in Annapolis. Now that you've had an opportunity to do this writing, how has it helped you reconcile with his death?
HIAASEN: Well, this is the second time I - you know, I've written about it. It took me a couple months after he was killed. I mean, I don't know that - I didn't write it to help myself, and I don't know that it does. That pain never goes away. And waking up every day thinking it was a nightmare - I don't think that ends for the families and loved ones of any victims.
And what Rob would have wanted - and I knew he felt because we talked about it after Parkland. We talked about it after Sandy Hook. We talked about it after the Pulse shootings - was that every one of these is a tragedy on almost an inconceivable scale. And you can't rate them or put them in order. I mean, he would say look; just because I was an editor and columnist who got killed, my death isn't more important and newsworthy than a bank teller in Sebring, Fla. I know he would want me to say that as strongly as I could, and I tried.
CORNISH: Carl Hiaasen, thank you for speaking with us and for sharing your story.
HIAASEN: Well, thanks. Thanks for having me on.
CORNISH: Carl Hiaasen is a Miami Herald columnist and best-selling writer. He spoke to us from his Florida home.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Pivoting now to basketball. The Golden State Warriors defeated the Boston Celtics over the weekend, marking a milestone for the Warriors' coach.
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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #1: And that'll do it. The Warriors win their 10th in a row.
SHAPIRO: Saturday's victory was the 300th regular season win for Coach Steve Kerr. Here's Ben Golliver, NBA writer for The Washington Post.
BEN GOLLIVER: Three hundred wins is a little bit arbitrary in the NBA, but the impressive part is how fast he did it.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Kerr notched those 300 wins faster than any other coach in NBA and professional sports history.
GOLLIVER: He was really able to mold a young team into his own vision of how basketball should be played, and that's why you've seen this just incredible success. They've been to the finals every single year with Steve Kerr as their coach. And they are on track to go to their fifth straight finals this season.
(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #2: Here comes Curry, Curry down the middle, alley-oop to Durant.
Back to Klay Thompson for three, puts it in.
SHAPIRO: This team has been stacked with star power since Kerr's arrival in 2014. But senior writer Chris Ballard of Sports Illustrated says big talent doesn't always equal big success.
CHRIS BALLARD: It's easy to say, oh, it's just all talent. But lots and lots of talented teams have either succeeded for a year or maybe two years and then imploded. So really what we should be crediting Steve with is the ability to keep these guys happy, motivated and comfortable together.
CORNISH: And Kerr always credits his success to his players. Here he is speaking with a local ABC affiliate.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Three hundred wins for you. What does that mean to you?
STEVE KERR: It means I'm very thankful for being dealt four aces in a poker game.
SHAPIRO: By four aces, he means his all-star squad. Like any dominant team, it is easy to hate the Warriors. But Ballard says it's pretty hard to hate Steve Kerr.
BALLARD: Steve has this remarkable ability - when you meet him, within a couple minutes, he's able to make every conversation about the other person in a way that's genuine.
CORNISH: And with another NBA final in sight, there seems to be no stopping Kerr or his team.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #3: KD - there it is. No Warrior team's ever made 10 threes in a quarter until right now.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BASKETBALL")
KURTIS BLOW: (Rapping) Basketball is my favorite sport. I like the way they dribble up and down the court, just like I'm the kind of the microphone...
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Let's take a closer look now at where the Mueller investigation stands. We're joined by former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade. She's now a professor at the University of Michigan Law School. Welcome.
BARBARA MCQUADE: Thanks very much, Ari.
SHAPIRO: Let's start with that tape from the Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker yesterday where he described the state of the Mueller probe.
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MATT WHITAKER: The investigation is I think close to being completed and I hope that we can get the report from Director Mueller soon as we - as possible.
SHAPIRO: Is it safe to say that Whitaker knows how close Mueller is to being done with his work?
MCQUADE: I think he likely does know how close Mueller is to being done with his work. You know, unlike Jeff Sessions, he's not recused, even if he has Rod Rosenstein or others handling more of the day to day oversight. No doubt he has been briefed. He said he was and knows what's happening.
SHAPIRO: Rod Rosenstein is the deputy attorney general who had been serving as acting attorney general overseeing the Mueller investigation. And how do you interpret those words close to being completed?
MCQUADE: Well, I'm not quite sure what to make of it. You know, you hear him hesitate a little bit. He clearly wasn't ready for the question. So I don't know that it was planned. And he hedges a little bit. But it does sound like Robert Mueller is in the closing phases at least of this case. You know, there a number of loose ends. They just did these search warrants at Roger Stone's residences. There is this sealed matter involving a company owned by a foreign nation.
The sentencing of Richard Gates has been extended until March. So there's some loose ends up there that would cause one to think that he's not really ready to be done. But I suppose it is possible that Robert Mueller could write a report about the core aspect of his investigation - that is links between Russia and the Trump campaign - and then have other prosecutors finish up these loose ends. That may be a way to square those two somewhat incompatible theories.
SHAPIRO: The list of people charged so far in this investigation includes a lot of former top aides to President Trump - a former campaign manager, national security adviser, a personal lawyer and fixer. Do you think this list will grow before the investigation is over?
MCQUADE: I don't know but I'm sure there's some other people who are still under scrutiny. For example I have to believe that Robert Mueller is looking at the transcripts from the testimony of a number of people who testified before Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow project now that Michael Cohen has pleaded guilty to lying about the timing of those negotiations. They would only have asked him to plead guilty to that crime when he was already facing eight other felonies that carried with them substantial prison time if they thought they needed it to lay the groundwork for him to testify about those matters later.
And so I think it is quite possible, if not likely, that additional people could be charged with that. You know, people in the Trump organization like Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Junior were certainly people who have testified in Mueller's sentencing memorandum. He did talk about one of the areas where Michael Cohen was particularly useful was providing information about circulating his testimony with others before testifying before Congress. And so I think there's some hints there that that's an area that they're very closely looking at.
SHAPIRO: Does it make sense to you that a prosecutor would wait until the final stages of an investigation to charge the people who are most close to this president?
MCQUADE: I do. It actually makes a lot of sense that you sort of work your way up, that you talk to all of the peripheral players first and the more egregious offenders last so that you have all the information to try to determine what that person's culpability was.
SHAPIRO: Among the various crimes related to Russia, nobody yet has been specifically charged with conspiracy to influence the election. Do you think prosecutors are holding their ammunition there or do you think we have seen most of the picture at this point?
MCQUADE: Well, again, hard to say but I do think that they have laid the groundwork if they can find the evidence for bringing those charges. There's a charge, an indictment against the 12 Russian intelligence officers, for hacking. And that indictment I think you could expand that conspiracy. It was a conspiracy to defraud the United States by interfering with the fair administration of elections.
And what was really interesting about the way that's defined is it is not limited solely to stealing and hacking emails. It also includes the dissemination of those emails as part of that conspiracy. And so I can imagine if you had some American or other person who was involved in providing advice as to the content or the timing or coordinating the messaging about those things then those people could be added in a superseding indictment under the very same theory.
SHAPIRO: That is Barbara McQuade, who was a U.S. attorney in Michigan under the Obama administration. Thank you so much.
MCQUADE: Thanks very much, Ari.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Two icons of French film and fashion have been on display at a Paris auction house. Actress Catherine Deneuve is selling off her wardrobe designed by Yves Saint Laurent. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley has this look at what the two of them accomplished together.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Speaking French).
(APPLAUSE)
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: Hundreds of people stuffed the Christie's auction room to see Catherine Deneuve's stunning Yves Saint Laurent collection. There was a beaded dress designed for her first meeting with Alfred Hitchcock in 1969 and a metallic velvet-draped evening gown Deneuve wore the 2000 Oscars. Francois de Ricqles, president of Christie's France, says the special sale reaches back to the couple's first encounter.
FRANCOIS DE RICQLES: It's Yves Saint Laurent, Catherine Deneuve. You know, in France, it means a lot. She went to visit him in 1965 with a photo, asking him to dress her for a presentation to the Queen Elizabeth in Buckingham.
BEARDSLEY: And so began their decades-long collaboration and friendship. Saint Laurent dressed Deneuve for many of her films. One of the most memorable was Luis Bunuel's 1967 "Belle de Jour," where the 24-year-old Deneuve plays a prim housewife-turned-prostitute.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BELLE DE JOUR")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character, speaking French).
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character, speaking French).
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character, speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: Fashion writer Dana Thomas says the shy designer empowered the beautiful actress.
DANA THOMAS: They became great friends, and they had a lovely complicity. He could see how to set off her beauty. Yves Saint Laurent gave women power, and I would say what - the most powerful actress - French actress in cinema is Catherine Deneuve. And one of the things that made her come across even stronger on film were the clothes that Saint Laurent designed for her.
BEARDSLEY: Saint Laurent is said to have revolutionized fashion for women by appropriating the symbols of the traditional male wardrobe and tailoring them for the female form. Deneuve was one of the first to wear Saint Laurent's black tuxedo for women known as Le Smoking. In the 1960s, Le Smoking was considered scandalous because it was worn over bare flesh. At the auction, art conservator Laurence Didier has bought a pair of shoes and a gown. She says everyone wants a whiff of the alchemy between Deneuve and Saint Laurent.
LAURENCE DIDIER: Each person here - man, woman - they are crazy about both of them. They want to have something of both of them because it's a dream.
BEARDSLEY: That dream has brought in a million dollars so far. Le Smoking went for 26,000. Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Paris.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Officials in the Midwest are warning many residents to limit their time outside due to the extreme cold. But a group of racers in remote northern Minnesota are seriously bucking that advice.
(CHEERING)
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Dozens of skiers, runners and cyclists set out yesterday morning to run a 135-mile race.
KEN KRUEGER: It's 22 below with a wind chill of 46 below.
CORNISH: That's Ken Krueger. He directs the Arrowhead 135 race.
SHAPIRO: Participants head from International Falls on the Canadian border to the small town of Tower, Minn.
KRUEGER: The whole course is wooded. You don't see a house until you get to the finish line.
CORNISH: Now, if that doesn't already sound hard enough, the runners also pull sleds behind them with emergency supplies - a stove, sleeping bag, matches.
KRUEGER: And they weigh approximately 35 pounds.
SHAPIRO: Some years, only 20 percent of the racers finish, but that's all part of the draw.
KRUEGER: Maybe some people want a warm race, but most of them want a tough race. They want the challenge. They want the bragging rights. And if they get a, quote, "easier year," it's almost like they were cheated out of a race.
CORNISH: Already, a number of this year's racers have dropped out.
RUSSELL LOUCKS: A variety of reasons. We did have one drop because of frostbite.
SHAPIRO: That's Russell Loucks. He's a race official. Racers have also quit because their drinking water froze or because of mechanical issues.
LOUCKS: Tires go flat or something breaks or something and it's 22 below, and you really can't take your gloves off for more than 30 seconds.
CORNISH: Loucks himself hasn't participated in the race.
LOUCKS: Oh, hell no. (Laughter) These people are crazy.
SHAPIRO: But cyclist Leah Gruhn just finished the race for the seventh time.
LEAH GRUHN: Once you finish something like this, you kind of look, you know, into the rest of your life and ask yourself, oh, what other things are out there that I don't think that I am able to accomplish but maybe with some planning and work I actually could? So I think it's really empowering.
CORNISH: The bikers and skiers have mostly finished by now, but most of the runners won't wrap up until later tonight and tomorrow.
SHAPIRO: Expected lows tonight at the finish line - 30 below zero.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE PIANO GUYS' "LET IT GO")
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Congress has less than three weeks to reach a border security deal and avert another government shutdown. Lawmakers have formed a bipartisan conference committee with members from both the House and Senate. Its first meeting is tomorrow.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
President Trump puts the odds of striking a deal at, quote, less than 50/50. Yesterday we asked a Democrat on the conference committee, Congressman David Price of North Carolina, about the president's remarks.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
DAVID PRICE: What he should be saying is that he's not going to shut down the government again; he's - he understands that you don't pay ransom to kidnappers.
CORNISH: Today I asked a committee Republican, Congressman Steven Palazzo of Mississippi, if he thought they could reach a deal.
STEVEN PALAZZO: Well, I think if the Democrats come in and act in good faith - well, we're looking forward to them actually coming to the table and providing a plan.
CORNISH: Now, the president says if he doesn't like the deal, he'd consider declaring a national emergency. Would you support him in that move?
PALAZZO: You know, I hesitate to say yes, but I do say yes. Being a national security person and understanding that my constitutional responsibility is to provide for the common defense of this nation - and it depends on whether you're in the camp where you just think this is all make-believe and a manufactured crisis or you really, truly know that there's a lot of bad things happening at our border. But I hope we don't have to get there. I hope we can provide, you know, a bipartisan compromise to securing our border and give it to the president and he will accept it and sign it into law and we can put this behind us.
CORNISH: Your district has several Coast Guard installments, right? And those service members - they were affected by the government shutdown greatly. There's staff at a NASA facility in your district. Can you say to those workers with confidence that we won't end up in the same place three weeks from now...
PALAZZO: Well, obviously I wish I could (laughter). I wish I had a crystal ball and I could say that. But what I will tell our men and women in the Coast Guard and our NASA employees and contractors and the other federal employees that were furloughed - you know, thank you for your sacrifice. I think they also...
CORNISH: ...'Cause some of those people - right? - the federal contractors - they won't even get paid back after the fact.
PALAZZO: That's correct. And you know, this isn't how we like to do business. We shouldn't be coming to these nuclear options where we're shutting the government down.
CORNISH: Some things we've heard that could be on the table - more immigration judges, more border patrol agents - right? - increased spending on border technology like drones. These are things where we understand that both parties agree. But for you, are there things that are non-negotiable, or are the - is the door open to those options as well...
PALAZZO: Well, no, I mean, say again...
CORNISH: ...Without a wall, I mean.
PALAZZO: We put (laughter)...
CORNISH: Can you get all that and no wall and feel good about your negotiation?
PALAZZO: Well, see; we keep saying wall, and we should be say securing the border. So I am...
CORNISH: Right, but we didn't get here all these months because people thought that was an option, right?
PALAZZO: Right.
CORNISH: I mean, for a long time, the word was there should be a physical barrier, a wall. Is that still, you think, going to be a sticking point?
PALAZZO: Well, I think if you call it a physical barrier and get away from the wall, then it's less of a sticking point. It could be, you know, vehicle barriers. It could be pedestrian barriers. And I'm one of those guys. I'm for all of the above. Whatever you want to call it, let's not get bogged down in semantics of a wall. But put that where it's appropriate. Put boots on the ground where appropriate. You know, we have the ability to do that. Add to the CBP. Add to the judges. Add to the facilities. But we have to address this. The American people are just fed up.
CORNISH: I want to ask one more thing, which is, you recently introduced a bill that would allow Americans to help fund the wall by buying government bonds. Have you given up on the president's original proposal to have Mexico pay for it?
PALAZZO: Well, (laughter) that's a good question. You know, all options are on the table. And let's just pick something that works, and let's secure our border, protect Americans. And it's a win for both parties. But most importantly, it's a win for our children and our future.
CORNISH: Congressman Steven Palazzo of Mississippi - he's a Republican on the bipartisan conference committee tasked with striking a deal on border security in the next three weeks. Thank you for speaking with ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
PALAZZO: Thank you.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
California's Pacific Gas and Electric, one of the nation's largest utilities, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection today. PG&E says that's the only way it can handle billions of dollars in potential liabilities from back-to-back years of wildfires. California officials are still investigating PG&E's role in November's Camp Fire. That was one of the most destructive wildfires in state history. It killed 86 people and incinerated communities in and around the Northern California town of Paradise. From Paradise, NPR's Eric Westervelt reports.
ERIC WESTERVELT, BYLINE: PG&E argues it has no choice but to file for Chapter 11 given the flood of lawsuits and their stock reduced to junk status. In a statement today, the utility said bankruptcy will facilitate an orderly, fair and expeditious resolution of the liabilities that continue to arise from recent wildfires. UC Berkeley law professor Ken Ayotte is an expert on corporate bankruptcy.
KEN AYOTTE: Chapter 11 is really the best way to deal comprehensively with all the liabilities they have.
WESTERVELT: Ayotte says a key impetus for the filing - in California, utilities can be held liable for wildfire damages if the company sparked the blaze regardless of whether they were negligent. PG&E got a rare bit of good news last week when the state's fire agency said in a report that it doesn't think the company's equipment started a massive 2017 blaze in wine country known as the Tubbs Fire, which killed 22 people. But that report isn't the final word, and the company still faces scores of lawsuits from 2017 and 2018, including the historic Camp Fire. Ayotte says the utility has to show Wall Street investors it's working to put a cap on potential fire damages.
AYOTTE: It's going to continue to hang over their heads until they address it. So I think Chapter 11 makes a lot of sense here.
WESTERVELT: But to many fire victims and their many lawyers, it doesn't make sense.
MIKE DANKO: When PG&E says, oh, safety is our most important priority, no, it's not. Their only priority is profits.
WESTERVELT: Attorney Mike Danko represents a large group of wildfire victims suing PG&E. He sees bankruptcy as a PG&E ploy to get around paying for what he calls the company's long history of negligence and safety violations, a history that Danko believes shows PG&E is too big and too poorly managed to survive bankruptcy as is.
DANKO: Why do we have a for-profit company running a utility? You have to ask whether that model even works.
WESTERVELT: And Danko's clients are asking whether they'll get the compensation they're seeking at the end of a complex process that could take up to two years. Law professor Ayotte says given the pecking order of Chapter 11, survivors have reason to worry.
AYOTTE: The bankruptcy process says everyone gets paid fairly in accordance with their priority. But if you're an unsecured creditor, like a fire damage victim, it may mean that what comes out of the bankruptcy process may not be 100 cents on the dollar in terms of full recovery.
WESTERVELT: State Senator Bill Dodd, whose district includes many 2017 wildfire victims, says that new uncertainty re-victimizes survivors. It would then likely fall to the state legislature, and, by extension, taxpayers, to make fire victims whole.
Today, the utility's acting CEO, John Simon, pledged yet again to improve the company's safety culture. He called it our most important responsibility. I'm standing here outside the company's sprawling staging center near Paradise where a small army of PG&E trucks is heading out to continue to try to restore services to Paradise and surrounding towns, towns that now are mostly eerily empty that remain filled with debris, ash, burned out cars and fallen trees, towns where people may want a measure of justice and compensation more than new power lines to nowhere. Eric Westervelt, NPR News, Paradise, Calif.
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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The FBI says it's completed an analysis of the mass shooting in Las Vegas back in October 2017. That's when Stephen Paddock killed 58 people. Nearly 900 others were injured in the melee. Paddock then shot and killed himself. It was the single deadliest mass shooting in modern American history. The FBI could not find any clear motive. NPR's Leila Fadel joins us now from Las Vegas. And, Leila, first of all, tell us a little more about the FBI's probe into this.
LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: So the FBI shared its key findings from this report from the Behavioral Analysis Unit. And experts spent nearly a year poring over information and evidence, and they still couldn't find a single, clear motive. The shooter wasn't driven by a religious, social or political agenda. He acted alone. They didn't find a manifesto, a suicide note, a video or really anything to explain why he did this. But the report also said that often shooters don't have any singular big motive behind these really senseless acts of violence. They say it's often a combination of things like in this case. The report found that the shooter was at least in part driven by the desire to die by suicide. And remember; he did kill himself at the end of this horrific shooting. And he wanted to be infamous.
CORNISH: Now, what makes the FBI think that he wanted to die?
FADEL: Well, the report's findings depict a man whose physical and mental health were declining. He wasn't a healthy 64-year-old. And apparently, he was making plans that you make at the end of your life, and he wanted to take control of how he died. And he might have also been inspired by his father, who was a bank robber and fugitive and was on the FBI's top 10 Most Wanted list in 1968. This was also very carefully planned. The shooter stockpiled weapons and ammunition, and he went on this year-long buying spree. He had 47 firearms the day he opened fire on these people.
And he was researching police tactics and response, ballistics, and he was going to different sites to figure out where he could inflict the most damage on a lot of people. But he didn't have a particular grudge against the people he shot or the hotel he chose to do it from. He just wanted to hurt people. And the FBI report found that the shooter didn't have much empathy, that he saw people through this transactional lens. And so hurting people that were just out having fun matched his personality.
CORNISH: So many people were affected by this. What are survivors saying today?
FADEL: Yeah. I spoke with Mynda Smith, and her sister was shot and killed, and her name was Neyshe Tonks. She was a single mother of three boys - those boys now being raised by their grandparents here in Las Vegas. And she said she'd rather that the shooter take the reasons he did this to his grave than he be alive.
MYNDA SMITH: Honestly, to not have the answers in exchange for not having to deal with him, I'm OK with that. You know, I truly believe that if he had lived, he would have just made my parents' life miserable. He - you know, we would have been caught up in trials and having to listen to things that he would say.
FADEL: The Las Vegas police closed their investigation over the summer - also found no motive, no why. So no one's looking into that anymore. And a lot of people really do want to know why. But for others, this aftermath has been just traumatizing and emotionally exhausting and that they're - the last thing they're thinking about is the motive.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Leila Fadel. Thank you.
FADEL: Thank you for having me.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Reality TV rarely confronts the issue of sexual assault, which made last night's episode of "The Bachelor" all the more unusual.
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CAELYNN MILLER-KEYES: This is a conversation that I have to have in relationships because it's a part of who I am. It's part of my story. It's, like, not an easy thing for me to talk about.
SHAPIRO: That's contestant Caelynn Miller-Keyes opening up to her bachelor about a sexual assault she experienced in college. She goes on to tell him how difficult it was to seek treatment and justice. Emma Gray has been following this. She's a senior women's reporter for Huffington Post. Welcome.
EMMA GRAY: Thanks for having me.
SHAPIRO: For people who don't often watch "The Bachelor," how unusual is this?
GRAY: I believe this is the first time that we've seen a contestant tell her story or his story of sexual assault on the show. And the show has been on since 2002. So it's a pretty big deal.
SHAPIRO: And it was a long, detailed story that seems like it could easily have been abridged, and it wasn't.
GRAY: Yeah. It was presented in a way that really gave the audience a chance to sit and listen to Caelynn tell her story. And she went into deep and pretty eloquent detail about the assault and the aftermath of that assault.
SHAPIRO: What went through your head as a critic, as a woman who has written about women's issues as you were watching this on a show like "The Bachelor?"
GRAY: I wasn't completely surprised that this conversation was airing. Caelynn was a former Miss North Carolina. And this was actually a very large part of her platform. So this was not the first time that she spoke about this really harrowing story publicly. She has been an advocate for survivors. But my feelings on it were sort of a mixed bag. There is something about the structure of this show that sets up trauma to be used as currency, something that proves you have suffered enough to be worthy of finding love. And inevitably, even when conversations and topics are handled really well and really delicately, as I'd argue they were here, it still feels a little inherently exploitative.
At the same time, this is a show that has a massive audience of millions. It's frustrating to me as a viewer and as a critic to watch the show pretend to exist in a world where these kind of experiences don't occur even though statistically, you know, 1 in 6 American women will experience a rape or attempted rape in her lifetime. So in all likelihood, Caelynn is far from the only contestant on this show who has experienced sexual assault. And when you have so many people watching, especially women, especially young women, it can be really valuable to affirm them and show that these experiences are not only common but also not something to be ashamed of and not something that makes you less deserving of love.
SHAPIRO: Do you think this episode signals some kind of a larger change in the culture of reality television or the American culture generally? Or is this just a, quote-unquote, "very special episode" of "The Bachelor?"
GRAY: All reality television reflects the moment that it is produced in in some capacity. And in the last two years, the public conversation about sexual assault has become much more open and mainstream. So I'm not surprised that a show like "The Bachelor," which does respond to its time - albeit within the constraints of its primary structure - would be impacted by that.
I can also see them seeing this as a way to address an issue that they have shied away from in the past. There was an alleged sexual misconduct scandal that occurred on their summer show, "Bachelor In Paradise," a couple years ago that was not handled very well by the show. They received a lot of criticism. So I could see them thinking that this might be the best way for them to explore something as difficult to talk about as sexual assault.
SHAPIRO: Emma Gray, senior women's reporter for the Huffington Post, who hosts the podcast about "The Bachelor," "Here To Make Friends," thanks so much.
GRAY: Thanks for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF LOWERCASE NOISES' "THE HUNGRY YEARS")
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Our next story is about a Russian linked to all of the following events - Russia's occupation of Ukraine, the Internet troll farm that interfered in the U.S. presidential election and a large-scale clash with the U.S. military in Syria. We're not talking about Russian President Vladimir Putin but rather the man referred to as Putin's chef. NPR national security correspondent Greg Myre has this improbable tale.
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GEORGE W BUSH: Morning.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Morning.
(CROSSTALK)
GREG MYRE, BYLINE: There's this photo from a 2006 summit that shows Russian leader Vladimir Putin hosting U.S. President George Bush at a dinner in St. Petersburg. Standing behind him in a tux and a white bow tie is the caterer, Yevgeny Prigozhin. And why should we care about Prigozhin, the man known as Putin's chef? I asked Angela Stent, the head of Russian studies at Georgetown University and author of the forthcoming book "Putin's World."
ANGELA STENT: He epitomizes a real renaissance man in contemporary Russia, which is to say that he runs some very high-end restaurants.
MYRE: That's nice. Anything else?
STENT: He was the one running this Internet Research Agency, this troll factory in St. Petersburg that managed to mobilize thousands of Americans from 5,000 miles away to demonstrate and protest in the 2016 election.
MYRE: OK, that gets your attention.
STENT: And then he also runs Wagner, which is one of the - I guess it's the largest mercenary private military group in Russia. And his troops are in Syria. They're in Ukraine.
MYRE: It can be confusing tracking the key figures around Putin and how they fit into the Russia investigation in this country. But Yevgeny Prigozhin is one name worth knowing. He's burly, bald, age 57, and he's largely invisible even in Russia.
DIMITRI SIMES: He doesn't have much of a public persona in Russia. Until very recently, he was virtually unknown.
MYRE: Dimitri Simes heads the Center for the National Interest, a Washington think tank.
SIMES: This is not a person who speaks at important political or business meetings. This is not a person who regularly appears on TV.
MYRE: Prigozhin spent most of his 20s in prison on robbery and fraud convictions. He rebuilt his life with hot dog stands, which evolved into a catering business. Then...
MICHAEL KOFMAN: He proceeded to get a big break catering high-profile events. One was Vladimir Putin and French President Jacques Chirac in 2001.
MYRE: Michael Kofman closely follows Russia at the research organization CNA.
KOFMAN: Eventually he got a massive contract for feeding the Russian military and the Russian armed forces, which is probably where most of his money come from.
MYRE: Vladimir Putin dodged the question when asked recently about his putative chef.
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PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: (Through interpreter) All my chefs are members of the Federal Security Service. They're all military personnel of different ranks. I have no other chefs.
MYRE: And regarding Russian mercenaries, Putin said...
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PUTIN: (Through interpreter) If they comply with Russian laws, they have every right to work and promote their business interests anywhere in the world.
MYRE: Those interests extend to Syria. In a dramatic confrontation last year, hundreds of Russian mercenaries tried to seize an oil facility held by the U.S. and its allies. Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told Congress he first wanted to make sure the attackers were not part of the actual Russian military.
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JIM MATTIS: Senator, the Russian high command in Syria assured us it was not their people.
MYRE: Once that was cleared up...
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MATTIS: My direction was for the force then was to be annihilated.
MYRE: And it was. The Americans say more than 200 Russian mercenaries were killed in withering airstrikes before they retreated. Meanwhile, Robert Mueller's team indicted Prigozhin last year on charges that he funded the Internet company that interfered in the 2016 U.S. election. Prigozhin responded with a rare public comment, saying, quote, "Americans are very impressionable people. They see what they want to see. If they want to see the devil, let them see one."
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UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting in Spanish).
MYRE: And one place to look may be Venezuela. Media reports say hundreds of Russian mercenaries have flown in to support the embattled president, Nicolas Maduro. The Kremlin denies this. Greg Myre, NPR News, Washington.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
When Lady Gaga floated into the Super Bowl halftime show two years ago, she did something that would have been hard to imagine just a decade before. In that most macho venue, Gaga belted out a song that had become an unofficial anthem for the LGBTQ community.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BORN THIS WAY")
LADY GAGA: (Singing) Rejoice and love yourself today 'cause, baby, you were born this way. No matter gay, straight or bi, lesbian, transgendered life, I'm on the right track, baby. I was born to survive.
SHAPIRO: For many of Gaga's fans, the lyrics of "Born This Way" were words to live by. As part of our series American Anthem, NPR's Lynn Neary looks back at the song's origins and legacy.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BORN THIS WAY")
LADY GAGA: (Singing) I was born to be brave.
LYNN NEARY, BYLINE: Tim Cox understands the excitement that Lady Gaga can generate when she performs live. Now 26, he's been one of her devoted fans - a little monster as she calls them - since he was 15. The first time he saw Gaga sing "Born This Way" in concert, he was overwhelmed.
TIM COX: I broke down. I was hysterical with joy, with emotion - just completely lost myself in the song.
NEARY: Adolescence was painful for Cox. He was bullied for being gay before he really understood what that meant. He felt like something was wrong with him and contemplated suicide more than once. Eventually, Cox found a sense of belonging with other Lady Gaga fans. They talked to each other via a YouTube channel he set up. In a lot of ways, he says, Lady Gaga saved his life.
COX: I have her signature, autographed, tattooed on my arm over a scar from a suicide attempt.
NEARY: Cox says when "Born This Way" came out, the lyrics felt like a shield against the insecurity he felt about not being accepted.
COX: Because you're not the one saying it anymore. Someone's defending you, and it's in a song, a song that is playing on repeat on the radio that everyone is talking about. And all of a sudden, the idea that you were born this way and can't change who you are isn't just something that you feel. It's something the entire world is being forced to understand.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BORN THIS WAY")
LADY GAGA: (Singing) My mama told me when I was young, we are all born superstars. She rolled my hair and put my lipstick on in the glass of her boudoir. There's nothing wrong with loving who you are, she said, 'cause he made you perfect, babe. So hold your head up, girl, and you'll go far. Listen to me when I say, I'm beautiful in my way 'cause God makes no mistakes. I'm on the right track, baby, I was born this way.
NEARY: The song has a driving beat, making it perfect for dance clubs. But Tracy Young, a celebrity DJ who plays at gay parties and Pride events around the country, says that's not the only reason people still love the song.
TRACY YOUNG: I think she hit it dead on.
NEARY: Young, a lesbian, says anyone who has struggled to come to terms with their sexual identity responds to those lyrics, born this way. Whether at a dance club or a Pride parade, Young says people love to belt out those words loud and proud.
YOUNG: It's definitely one of those songs that will always be played in every Pride stage, and I think that was her intention.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BORN THIS WAY")
LADY GAGA: (Singing) Ooh, there ain't no other way, baby, I was born this way. Now I'm on the right track, baby, I was born this way.
NEARY: Even though Elton John hailed "Born This Way" as the new gay anthem when it first came out, there was also a backlash against it. Lady Gaga was criticized for imitating Madonna's hit "Express Yourself." She was even accused of exploiting her gay fan base, a charge music writer John Savage dismisses.
JOHN SAVAGE: Obviously, Lady Gaga wanted to say something about her gay audience and what she thought about the position of gay people. She wanted to do something that was affirmative. I don't think that was cynical.
NEARY: What people don't realize, says Savage, is that Lady Gaga's lyrics have a history, which she knew about. While compiling a discography of queer music, Savage unearthed a copy of a song by a singer named Valentino, which came out in 1975.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I WAS BORN THIS WAY")
VALENTINO: (Singing) Just because I'm happy, I'm carefree, and I'm gay, yes, I'm gay. It ain't a fault. It's a fact I was born this way.
NEARY: A few years later, a second version of the song was released by gospel singer Carl Bean. In a 2011 interview, Lady Gaga told Howard Stern that recording was one of the inspirations for her song.
(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO SHOW, "THE HOWARD STERN SHOW")
LADY GAGA: There's a preacher, Carl Bean, in Los Angeles, and I believe he's gay. And he has a song called "Born This Way," and it's, like, this big sort of, like - it's almost like a sermon.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I WAS BORN THIS WAY")
CARL BEAN: (Singing) Help me, Lord. Tell the world I was born this way.
(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO SHOW, "THE HOWARD STERN SHOW")
LADY GAGA: He sings, I was born this way, and I remember - I went online. I was, you know, researching. And I heard this song, and I just said, man, does that answer every question.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I WAS BORN THIS WAY")
BEAN: (Singing) From a little, bitty boy, yeah, yeah. I was born this way, hey, hey, I'm now going to tell the world about it. Yeah. I was born this way.
NEARY: Bean was pursuing a music career when Motown asked him to record the song. He says he had always known that he was gay, so it felt like a perfect fit.
BEAN: I always say the lyric found me and it was very natural.
NEARY: Bean, now a retired pastor, was the founder of Unity Fellowship Church. He ministered to gays and lesbians and was an activist during the AIDS crisis. Bean says when he heard that Gaga was inspired by his recording, he was flattered.
BEAN: I felt it was a great tribute. And it was the continuation of saving lives. So, you know, it has just been a blessing to my life. And it's been a blessing once again to even another generation's life through the take that Gaga did on it.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BORN THIS WAY")
LADY GAGA: (Singing) Don't be a drag. Just be a queen, whether you're broke or evergreen, you're black, white, beige, chola descent, you're Lebanese, you're Orient. Whether life's disabilities left you outcast, bullied or teased, rejoice and love yourself today 'cause, baby, you were born this way.
NEARY: As much as "Born This Way" has been embraced as a gay anthem, Tim Cox says it's also an anthem for anyone who feels outside the mainstream. And he thinks it's the kind of anthem that has staying power.
COX: You know, 50 years from now when she's not singing anymore, I would not be surprised if the song that she's remembered for most is "Born This Way."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BORN THIS WAY")
LADY GAGA: (Singing) I was born this way. I was born this way. I'm on the right track, baby, I was born this way.
NEARY: Lynn Neary, NPR News, Washington.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BORN THIS WAY")
LADY GAGA: (Singing) Give yourself prudence and love your friends so we can rejoice your truth. In the religion of the insecure, I must be myself, respect my youth.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Bernie Sanders is looking at running for president again. The Vermont senator hasn't yet said what he plans to do. Back in 2016, he created a powerful progressive movement in a thin primary field. Now, though, many Democrats are adopting his positions on issues such as health care and the minimum wage, which means progressive voters have a lot more choices, as NPR's Asma Khalid reports.
ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: Bernie Sanders' first decisive victory in 2016 came in the New Hampshire primary. He crushed Hillary Clinton by more than 20 points. Even before he had an office on the ground, Elizabeth Ropp was making homemade signs for Sanders.
ELIZABETH ROPP: Bernie inspired me because as somebody who's lived without health insurance for most of my adult life, I want there to be a single-payer health care system.
KHALID: Ropp is part of Sanders' New Hampshire steering committee that still occasionally meets.
ROPP: I do want to see Bernie run again in 2020. We do need Bernie to run even if the field is crowded.
KHALID: Sure, she is intrigued by a few other candidates. For example, she likes how Elizabeth Warren is critical of Wall Street, but she's not sure she can forgive Warren for remaining neutral in the 2016 primary between Clinton and Sanders. There is no doubt Sanders has changed the Democratic Party.
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BERNIE SANDERS: That is why we are all here together to say in this country, we're going to have a minimum wage which is a living wage - 15 bucks an hour.
KHALID: Earlier this month, when Sanders reintroduced a bill to raise the minimum wage, every Democrat in the Senate considering a run for president co-sponsored that legislation.
ARNIE ARNESEN: He has made it legitimate to talk about things that a lot of us used to mumble.
KHALID: Arnie Arnesen is a radio show host and former New Hampshire politician who considers herself Sanders' ideological twin. She is grateful that he ran in 2016 because she says he helped expose some of the rot in her own party. But 2020 is not 2016.
ARNESEN: And my question is, does he provide added value in this campaign for 2020? Or are there a lot of people that are sort of - carry very similar messages, even somewhat similar styles, that could take that message and move it forward?
KHALID: Sanders has helped craft the Democratic platform, but Arnesen wonders whether he's the right candidate to take that message into the White House.
ARNESEN: Does it have to be him? I don't think it does. And I admire him. I admire him to pieces.
KHALID: Arnesen is excited by many of the candidates considering a run for the presidency. She thinks they all carry elements of Sanders' message, but she's also looking for something new.
ARNESEN: I think that it's time for us to start creating a new bench. And the new bench isn't old. It shouldn't be white. It probably shouldn't be male.
KHALID: Some Sanders supporters also say the environment has changed since 2016. Sure, they want someone they agree with on policy, but Bill Stelling, who runs an art gallery in Manchester, wants something else.
BILL STELLING: We're looking for somebody right now who can stand up to the nasty, nasty campaign that our idiot in chief, the president, is going to run in 2020.
KHALID: Stelling is not convinced Sanders is the right person for that job. He's impressed with California Senator Kamala Harris. He thinks she's fearless, and he's intrigued by Beto O'Rourke from Texas. This week, he's going to a Draft Beto house party. He wanted to spread the word, so he posted about it on Facebook.
STELLING: You know, I immediately got some snarky comments from progressives.
KHALID: Stelling is frustrated by what he sees as infighting and stubbornness among some of his fellow progressives.
STELLING: You know, it's so counterproductive.
KHALID: But loyal Sanders supporters insist Sanders is pushing everyone else left, and they worry that if Sanders himself does not join the 2020 race, other candidates will eventually moderate their messages. Asma Khalid, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MNDSGN'S "HOMEWARDS")
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
For educators, the snow and subzero temperatures force a tough decision on closing schools. This winter, the NPR Ed team has noticed a trend. School administrators trying to soften the blow by announcing - even celebrating - snow days with some catchy videos. NPR's Elissa Nadworny reports.
ELISSA NADWORNY, BYLINE: In Swartz Creek, Mich., a suburb of Flint, school was canceled this week. Here's how students and parents found out.
(SOUNDBITE OF YOUTUBE VIDEO, "SCCS ANNOUNCEMENT 1-29-19")
BEN MAINKA: (Singing) I heard about a winter storm. It's cold and dreary. Stay home. Stay warm. It's cold and it's a snowy winter morning.
NADWORNY: In a video on YouTube, Superintendent Ben Mainka and High School Principal Jim Kitchen put on cool sunglasses.
(SOUNDBITE OF YOUTUBE VIDEO, "SCCS ANNOUNCEMENT 1-29-19")
JIM KITCHEN AND BEN MAINKA: (Singing) It's a snow day, a winter cold day. Stay home and just play. It's a great family day.
NADWORNY: There are tons of these videos. Everyone from Rock Falls, Ill., to Missouri Valley, Iowa, to Decatur, Miss., wants in on the fun, with varying degrees of musical talent.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO MONTAGE)
UNIDENTIFIED SINGER #1: (Singing) And we're closed Tuesday 'til the roads are cleared by the snow plow man. And we're closed Tuesday...
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Hey, I'm staying home from school today.
UNIDENTIFIED SINGER #2: (Singing) Make it grand and take it easy.
BRIAN MCCANN: It's funny. It's a little mini phenomenon.
NADWORNY: That's Brian McCann, the principal of Joseph Case High School in Swansea, Mass. Last winter, he starred in a snow day take on the musical "Chicago."
(SOUNDBITE OF YOUTUBE VIDEO, "ALL THAT SNOW (SWANSEA PUBLIC SCHOOLS SCHOOL CLOSURE PSA)")
MCCANN: (Singing) Hey there, kids, the super's called no school 'cause all that snow. You see, the roads...
NADWORNY: There's fake snow. McCann is singing center stage with a group of students dancing around him. Teachers and students were involved in the highly secretive project.
MCCANN: We had a code name for it. We called it Project Voldemort. So just like the villain in "Harry Potter," you couldn't ever mention the name.
NADWORNY: They finished making the video in the fall. And then...
MCCANN: We just waited and waited until we had a snow day.
NADWORNY: Finally, snow arrived. They hit publish. It was such a big hit that this year, there is a sequel.
MCCANN: We have one in the can, and we cannot wait for the flakes to come down in southeastern Massachusetts.
NADWORNY: For now, students in Swansea are in school, so they'll just have to keep watching last year's video on YouTube.
(SOUNDBITE OF YOUTUBE VIDEO, "ALL THAT SNOW (SWANSEA PUBLIC SCHOOLS SCHOOL CLOSURE PSA)")
MCCANN: (Singing) There's no school today, so just stay home and play....
NADWORNY: Elissa Nadworny, NPR News.
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MCCANN: (Singing) In all that snow...
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The world's two biggest economies are trying to resolve a trade war that has rattled nerves and markets on both sides of the Pacific. The U.S. and China began a new round of trade talks today here in Washington. Negotiators have just over a month to make a deal or run the risk of more tariffs. NPR's Scott Horsley reports.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Photographers got a quick peek this morning as the high-level talks got underway in the diplomatic reception room next door to the White House. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer sat on one side the polished conference table directly across from China's vice premier, Liu He. President Trump often complains about America's trade deficit with China, which has only grown in the last two years. White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow says one goal of these talks is a bigger opening for U.S. exports.
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LARRY KUDLOW: Give our people the chance to sell to China. We will export a ton. Our export sales will roar - roar.
HORSLEY: China has already signaled a willingness to buy more American goods such as soybeans and natural gas. But U.S. negotiators are also looking for more structural reforms, including an end to China's intellectual property theft and the forced transfer of American technology. On Monday, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment against the Chinese telecom giant Huawei, accusing that company of trying to steal trade secrets from an American firm, T-Mobile. While the administration says that criminal case is not related to these trade talks, it does illustrate a longstanding U.S. complaint about the way China does business.
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JOHN DEMERS: The playbook is simple - rob, replicate and replace.
HORSLEY: John Demers heads the Justice Department's National Security Division. At a Senate hearing last month, he described a deliberate Chinese strategy of economic espionage.
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DEMERS: Rob the American company of its intellectual property, replicate that technology and replace the American company in the Chinese market and, one day, in the global market.
HORSLEY: Syracuse economist Mary Lovely, who's a former editor of the China Economic Review, says Beijing has taken some steps to address the U.S. concerns. In recent months, China has increased penalties for stealing intellectual property and has moved to outlaw the forced transfer of technology.
MARY LOVELY: Will that be enough? I don't know. But the Chinese have certainly signaled that they're willing to make structural reforms.
HORSLEY: China has a history, however, of backsliding on such promises. So U.S. officials say whatever is agreed to will have to be enforceable. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told CNBC both countries want to make a deal, but he doesn't expect any quick breakthroughs.
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WILBUR ROSS: We're miles and miles from getting a resolution. And, frankly, that shouldn't be too surprising.
HORSLEY: Still, Lovely sees some encouraging signals, including the presence of a high-ranking Chinese delegation here in Washington and the planned meeting tomorrow between Vice Premier Liu and President Trump.
LOVELY: Those certainly are signs that the parties believe that some type of deal could be done.
HORSLEY: The alternative could be costly unless there's a deal or at least an agreement to keep talking by the beginning of March. The administration has threatened to increase tariffs on some $200 billion worth of Chinese imports from 10 to 25 percent. Lovely says that wouldn't be good for anyone.
LOVELY: The tariff battle, I think, has been fairly mindless. A lot of the tariff revenue is coming out of American consumers' pockets.
HORSLEY: The administration says China is under pressure to make a deal because of its slowing economy, but American companies have also felt the pain of China's slowdown, and that could create pressure on U.S. negotiators as well. Scott Horsley, NPR News, the White House.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The Federal Government is once again open, but if lawmakers can't cut a deal that President Trump will sign, there could be another partial government shutdown in a little more than two weeks. In an effort to prevent that, a bipartisan group of 17 House and Senate negotiators kicked off formal talks today to come up with a funding agreement for the Department of Homeland Security. There is broad agreement in Congress on what it takes to secure the border, except for when it comes to President Trump's demand to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
NPR congressional correspondent Susan Davis is tracking these negotiations and joins us now. Hi, Sue.
SUSAN DAVIS, BYLINE: Hey, Ari.
SHAPIRO: President Trump tweeted this morning that these talks are a, quote, "waste of time" if they don't result in a wall." What did today's meeting reveal about how likely it is that this deal ends with the president getting to claim a victory on this?
DAVIS: I think the next two weeks are going to see a lot of verbal gymnastics on exactly what does it mean to have a barrier on the wall. One of the conferees today is Georgia Republican Congressman Tom Graves, and he kind of talked about this dynamic. And here's what he said.
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TOM GRAVES: I suspect we might have some discussions about terminology and words we use, but whether it's deterrence, whether it's obstructions, whether it's walls, whether it's barriers, I think we are here for a very narrow purpose and scope, and that is to provide the necessary resources to secure our homeland.
DAVIS: Democrats have put a first offer on the table. It includes a lot more money for things like customs offices, customs officers, technology, repairs at ports of entry and lots more for humanitarian aid. But they made a very specific point not to include any new money for physical barriers.
I will say Democrats have not drawn a red line here. They have given themselves some wiggle room. When they are pressed about could they support any kind of physical barrier, one of the leadership's - one of the members of leadership, Hakeem Jeffries, said this week that they could do so if there was evidence-based reasons for them.
SHAPIRO: How big is the scope of the deal that they're talking about? I mean, are things like protections for Obama-era DACA recipients on the table?
DAVIS: President Trump had put that on the table during the shutdown when they were trying to reopen government. Those have been taken off the table again. From the perspective here on Capitol Hill, lawmakers are saying don't expect a big immigration deal here. This is not going to be about DACA. It's not going to be anything else outside of these funding issues for the border.
It's worth reminding people that this fight is over a bill that is just the annual funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security. It's only for calendar year 2019. And Nita Lowey, who's the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said her goal today is just to pass those seven outstanding spending bills and include a little bit of more money for disaster relief. No big immigration deals are expected to come out of this.
SHAPIRO: Is that how President Trump, who would have to sign such a bill, sees it?
DAVIS: I mean, that's always the open question here. Will the president sign it? He's constantly moving the goalposts. There was a lot of jokes inside the room today that, left to their own devices, lawmakers would have cut a deal weeks ago. He is and will remain the wild card.
SHAPIRO: Just in the few seconds we have, there's talk of a bill that would prevent these shutdown dramatics from happening every six months or a year - any likelihood of that happening?
DAVIS: There is a growing number of proposals coming from lawmakers up here. Rob Portman is a senator from Ohio. He's got a proposal a lot of senators are jumping on. Essentially it says, if you've got up to a funding deadline and Congress hadn't passed a stopgap funding measure, one would kick in automatically. It's certainly a popular idea to end all shutdowns. But I will note that there's a lot of opposition from it from appropriators and from members of Congress who say it would give too much of the power away of the purse. So it's not expected to be included in this round of talks.
SHAPIRO: NPR congressional correspondent Susan Davis. Thank you.
DAVIS: You're welcome.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
This next story is a bit of a good news, bad news tale. The good news is that a new study has found smokers who switched to e-cigarettes were much more likely to quit than people who use nicotine patches or gum or similar products. The bad news - that those who successfully quit tobacco were often hooked on e-cigarettes. NPR's Richard Harris has the story.
RICHARD HARRIS, BYLINE: E-cigarettes are far less hazardous than the ones you light up. American health officials worry about their addictive nature, but British health officials tend to look more favorably upon them. That's certainly the case for Peter Hajek, a public health researcher at Queen Mary University of London.
PETER HAJEK: We know that there are millions of smokers out there who successfully stopped smoking by switching to vaping, but that's different from having a randomized trial.
HARRIS: So Hajek and his colleague studied nearly 900 people who wanted to quit smoking. Half randomly got e-cigarettes. The other half got traditional treatment - nicotine patches plus gum, lozenges, nicotine inhalers or whatever kind of oral nicotine they preferred.
HAJEK: The e-cigarettes were significantly more effective than nicotine replacement treatment.
HARRIS: As they report in The New England Journal of Medicine, about 10 percent of those with standard treatment quit smoking for at least a year while 18 percent of the people given e-cigarettes had quit. That's hardly a miracle cure.
HAJEK: The figure may sound low, but these type of clients would - if they were quitting on their own, the quit rate would be about 3 percent.
HARRIS: In his view, if the technology can more easily wean people away from the much more hazardous act of tobacco smoking, that's a good thing. American health officials and scientists are generally much more leery about vaping, especially among young people. Nicotine can affect brain development. Belinda Borrelli, a psychologist at Boston University, says vaping has vastly increased among high schoolers and young adults.
BELINDA BORRELLI: The good news is that traditional smoking has gone down in these populations. But the question is, if we have many adults using e-cigarettes, are we going to renormalize the addiction essentially?
HARRIS: She says people who vape to help them stop smoking should at least have a plan to get off the e-cigarettes afterwards.
BORRELLI: So the e-cigarettes shouldn't be thought of as a lifelong commitment.
HARRIS: Hajek says it's true that many people do keep vaping, but at least it's easier to quit vaping than smoking. Sure, he says, it doesn't solve the problem of nicotine addiction, but that's far less harmful than tobacco use.
HAJEK: And so it would be very similar to drinking coffee. You know, you've got a lot of people who have to have their cup of coffee every day. They do it because there's a stimulant drug in it, and it's very similar to using pure nicotine without the toxins, which actually kill people. So from our point of view, this side of the pond, this is now not a public health issue anymore.
HARRIS: But it very much remains one in the United States. Richard Harris, NPR News.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
President Trump took aim again today at one of his favorite targets - his own intelligence team. Quote, "the intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive," he tweeted. In a follow-up moments later, "perhaps intelligence should go back to school." The president was talking about Iran and what dangers that country may pose. And what provoked him was this - testimony yesterday before the Senate Intelligence Committee from the leaders of the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency and this man.
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DAN COATS: I'm here today with these exceptional people who I had the privilege to work with in making sure that we can do everything we possibly can to bring the intelligence necessary to our policymakers, to this committee and others.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
That would be Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. And despite his very pleasant-sounding tone there on subject after subject, from Iran to North Korea to ISIS, testimony from Coats and other U.S. intelligence leaders contradicted the president's stated views and policy. Let's bring into the conversation someone who has spent a lot of time navigating between presidents and the spy agencies that serve them, former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke. Hey there.
RICHARD CLARKE: It's good to be with you.
KELLY: Good to have you with us. Now, we should acknowledge that remarkably, this is not new for President Trump to publicly insult his own intelligence chiefs. But what did you make of this back-and-forth yesterday and then again today?
CLARKE: Well, part of it, I thought was quite good. We have the director of national intelligence, who is a former Republican senator and who doesn't have a lot of background in intelligence. Some of us were concerned he wouldn't do a good job and he might politicize intelligence. In fact, he's done the exact opposite. He's protected the professional intelligence analytical community and given them the cover to stand up and do their job independent of policymakers and to write a good report, which they publicly released yesterday. So that's to the plus. To the negative is, of course, the president attacking his intelligence community publicly. Look. I've been on both sides of this. I've been an intelligence analyst, and I've been a policymaker.
KELLY: Yeah.
CLARKE: And there's a natural give and take between the two. And if the system works, one usually upsets the other. But to do it publicly just undercuts the entire intelligence community - the morale, their standing. There's no value to having a public feud.
KELLY: Of the numerous disconnects on Iran, on North Korea, on ISIS, was there one that leapt out at you?
CLARKE: Yeah. I would add the Russian election interference to that list - so Russian election interference, Iran, North Korea, ISIS. There's language in the report that obviously the administration wouldn't like. But on all of those issues except for North Korea, they're factual statements. They're not value judgments. Iran is in compliance with a nuclear agreement. Russia did interfere in the 2016 election. ISIS does still, quote, "command thousands of fighters and maintain over a dozen networks."
The only value judgment is when they say North Korea is unlikely, in the intelligence community's judgment, to give up the WMD. That's their judgment based on a lot of expertise and presumably intelligence. If the president disagrees with that, fine. But why do we have to have him do that publicly? I doubt he's actually read this report, by the way.
KELLY: One disconnect that struck me watching - unless I missed it, neither Coats nor anybody else up there testifying pointed to the situation on the U.S.-Mexico border as a...
CLARKE: It's not in the report.
KELLY: ...National security threat.
CLARKE: No. The Mexican...
KELLY: How do we square that?
CLARKE: Well, because it's not a national security threat, and it's not a crisis. It's the dog that didn't bark here. It's not in the report because it's really not a crisis.
KELLY: Very quickly - you have direct experience of working for a president who chose a path of action at odds with what the intelligence might suggest. You were in the White House in the run-up to 9/11. Did you see parallels?
CLARKE: No, not really. What's disturbing here is there's attack across the board on the intelligence community, and he's really not using intelligence to shape policy.
KELLY: Former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, we will leave it there. Thanks so much for taking the time.
CLARKE: Thank you.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The U.S. is trying to negotiate a peace deal between the Taliban and the government of Afghanistan. They hope that an agreement between these two groups could open the door for American forces to leave the country after 17 years of war. Many Afghans have strong feelings about this. Shoaib Sharifi has been getting reaction from people around the country. He's the BBC's Kabul bureau chief. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
SHOAIB SHARIFI: Thank you, Ari.
SHAPIRO: A deal between the Taliban and the Afghan government is still a long ways off, but do most people that you've talked with view this possibility with more excitement or fear?
SHARIFI: There are mixed feelings particularly in the cities, but in rural areas - because in the last 17 years, a lot of people in rural areas have had to deal with literally nonstop conflict, there is a hope, not a mixed feeling. There's a hope that come - no matter what happens, a return - if the return of the Taliban means an end to current conflict, it's a big achievement for those people on the ground level.
SHAPIRO: And then compare that with the attitudes in cities like the capital, Kabul, where you live. What is the attitude there towards the possibility of a peace deal between the government and the Taliban?
SHARIFI: In the northern city of Mazar, I talked to a female painter who has a shop in the city. And she's worried that under the Taliban regime, women were not allowed to go out of their homes without being accompanied by a male. And even painting was forbidden under the Taliban. So for her, a return of the Taliban with the same strategies and approach they had 20 years back would mean immediate loss of her profession and, as she put it, imprisoned in the - in their homes.
So overall there is a feeling people are trying to digest that maybe the Taliban has also transformed in the last 18 years, and people hope the Taliban understand that there have been a lot of progress in terms of education and human rights overall. So it's hope that it's a new Taliban with a new approach, with an understanding of new realities in Afghanistan.
SHAPIRO: You know, people who were born after the U.S. invasion are almost adults at this point. And so there are people who don't remember life under the Taliban. How realistic is it that a power sharing agreement that included the Taliban today would be more accommodating to minority and women's rights than Taliban rule was 20 years ago?
SHARIFI: The Taliban - a lot of manpower, the fighting forces on the ground are not the Taliban who were fighting 20 years ago. They're also the new generation. We found that they were more keen on taking selfies and filming people with mobile phones. In fact, a female colleague of mine and I talked to this Taliban, and he didn't seem to mind and talk to her. So somehow...
SHAPIRO: Her face was not covered. Her hair was not covered.
SHARIFI: Her face was not covered. She even had makeup. And this is the first time after 18 years people saw the Taliban on the streets of Kabul. So somehow this new generation of Taliban - they have also been affected - technological progress as well as overall progress in Afghanistan in the past 18 years.
SHAPIRO: As you know, there have been talks before, and they've never led to an agreement. Do people in Afghanistan think this time might be different?
SHARIFI: Well, yes, and this is not because the Taliban are serious. It's more because this time, the American side of the table is more serious to take the talks to a more practical results. And all of that is sort of overshadowed by that mixed feelings of what kind of a deal, what sort of a deal the two sides would agree on. And what would it mean for conflict as well as for what this country has achieved in the last 18 years?
SHAPIRO: Shoaib Sharifi of the BBC speaking with us on Skype from Kabul, thank you very much.
SHARIFI: Thank you, Ari.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Negative 23, negative 29, negative 31 - somewhat unbelievably, those are the temperature readings today in parts of the Upper Midwest. Dangerous, bone-chilling, record-setting cold has closed schools and businesses, canceled thousands of flights, even suspended mail delivery in some states. From Chicago, NPR's David Schaper reports.
DAVID SCHAPER, BYLINE: It is ridiculously cold in Chicago today, and the wind is biting. It is bright and sunny, but that big, bright yellow and orange ball in the sky is doing nothing to warm the air. Forecasters summed it up well when they said the sunshine today would be, quote, "ineffectual."
JON DAVIS: We got down this morning at O'Hare to minus 23. That is the coldest reading in Chicago since January of 1985.
SCHAPER: Jon Davis is chief meteorologist of the risk management firm Riskpulse. He says about a month ago, there was a rare warming of the stratosphere disrupting the polar vortex which usually sits over the arctic.
DAVIS: The polar vortex split, and then many areas of the hemisphere got cold. First it was Europe, then it was China, then the third part of it is then over us right now and is the reason for the cold.
SCHAPER: As a result, 200 million people of the continental U.S. are experiencing freezing temperatures. That's 70 percent of the country, with 70 million people suffering in subzero conditions that will last at least through Thursday and some facing life-threatening windchills of up to 65 degrees below zero.
Social service, city and state agencies across the Midwest are reaching out to the homeless and other vulnerable residents to bring them into warming centers. Because of a significant strain on the natural gas system, Xcel Energy in Minnesota is urging residents to turn down their thermostats to a chilly 60 degrees. Good luck with that. And the dangerous cold is affecting shipping companies, too.
CHARLES MILLER: There's not many trucks out on the road today.
SCHAPER: Charles Miller is with the logistics company Evans Transportation Services outside of Milwaukee.
MILLER: Diesel has a gel point essentially where the wax in the diesel itself will start to congeal.
SCHAPER: That means eagerly anticipated shipments of Super Bowl party staples like beer and avocados for guacamole are delayed. But by game time, temperatures here are expected to soar, rising as much as 60 degrees over today's 20-below readings. David Schaper, NPR News Chicago.
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ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Today the Department of Education closes public comment on proposed new rules for handling college campus sexual assault cases. The comments are coming in so fast the website is having trouble keeping up. Over the past two months, more than a hundred thousand comments have been logged. Secretary Betsy DeVos says the rule changes she's asking for will make the process more fair to the accused. Joining us to talk about this is NPR's Tovia Smith. Hi, Tovia.
TOVIA SMITH, BYLINE: Hi, Ari.
SHAPIRO: OK, so it sounds like there's a last-minute rush to get comments in. What are people saying?
SMITH: Yes, the pace has really been picking up all week, so the website has been slow. People are getting error messages. And now advocates are already calling for an extension of the deadline. There's no word yet on that. But meantime, the comments keep coming in. They range really from long legal analyses to very personal and emotional stories from both sides. Some are thanking DeVos for beefing up protections for the accused, and others are expressing a lot of anger and anxiety, some writing really intimate descriptions of traumatic assaults and telling DeVos that these regulations will really make it harder for students to feel safe and for victims to get help.
SHAPIRO: Can you tell whether a majority of the comments are leaning one way or the other?
SMITH: Well, we don't have an official count, but it seems pretty clear that those in opposition outnumber those in support, at least online. And that has a lot to do with how activists have been mobilizing their people. Survivors' advocates especially have been running these big campaigns on social media and hosting comment-writing events, especially on college campuses.
SHAPIRO: I understand you went to one of those events. Tell us about it.
SMITH: Yeah, I went to Boston University where students got a - kind of a crash course in how to use a template that activists made, sort of a Mad Libs-style kind of thing to make submitting comments easier. And these students were writing about several things - for example, how the proposed rules would essentially let schools off the hook from having to automatically investigate certain cases, like if an assault happens in an off-campus apartment or if a student tells a coach about an assault instead of one of a few designated officials.
Another issue is how DeVos wants to narrow the definition of sexual harassment so that the only cases that would count would be those that are so severe they deny a student access to school activities. And one student I spoke to there, Julia Mullert, called that shocking.
JULIA MULLERT: Like, if you're at the point where you need to drop out of a class or stop going to class - I mean, you already have to take a hit to your education before they can do something about it. I mean, it's awful that it has to reach that point to be taken seriously.
SHAPIRO: Tovia, are you seeing the same kind of mobilization on the other side from people who support these proposed changes?
SMITH: On a much smaller scale. I spoke with Cynthia Garrett, who heads a group called FACE that represents accused students and their families. She says the new rules would make the system more fair by, for example, allowing schools to demand more evidence of misconduct before a student can be punished and by guaranteeing that accused students would be able to at least indirectly cross-examine their accuser. So Garrett has been encouraging comments mostly from those who say that they were victims of a biased system.
CYNTHIA GARRETT: Somebody that's expelled or suspended suffers greatly. I mean, they are suicidal.
SMITH: So now officials will have comments like that one and many, many, many more to read through. Presumably some combination of humans and machines will do the job. Then officials have to respond, explaining their reasoning for what they will or won't change. And this could take many months, even more with litigation expected to challenge these regulations. So it might be quite a while before any of these new rules take effect.
SHAPIRO: That's NPR's Tovia Smith. Thank you.
SMITH: Thanks, Ari.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
All right, let's dig in on these border negotiations with Democratic Congressman Henry Cuellar of Texas. His district sits on the U.S.-Mexico border, and he sits on this conference committee that's trying to find a compromise. We have caught him just off Statuary Hall in the Capitol. Congressman, good to speak with you.
HENRY CUELLAR: It's a pleasure. Thank you so much.
KELLY: I want to start with how you are feeling about prospects for a deal. I noted President Trump saying he's doubtful a deal will be reached. He said he thinks the chances are somewhere below 50-50. Where do you put them?
CUELLAR: You know, I work with our colleagues. We're appropriators. And, of course, we work with our Senate appropriators - Democrats and Republicans. I think appropriators, by nature, are deal-makers. We sit down, and we work things out. So I feel that if there's no outside influence - you know, we're talking about the president - if they just let us do our work, I feel very confident that we can work something out.
Nobody wants to see a shutdown. As you know, our position was very simple - keep the government open, pay the employees and negotiate. And that's where we are. We ended up, after a 35-day disaster, back in square one. So we want to negotiate now.
KELLY: Well, I mean, you just put your finger on the challenge, which is, it seems, looking at this from the outside, that the biggest issue isn't whether you in Congress can come up with a solution. You did it before with Senator Mitch McConnell's plan. The challenge is coming up with something that the president will sign. Are you any clearer on that today - on what he would accept?
CUELLAR: We have no idea. With all due respect to the president, he does change his mind. As you know, originally, back in December, we thought we had a deal. And the Senate had a deal, and we were ready to go with that deal. But then it changed. And all the sudden, he said, no, I want $5.7 billion, and I'm not going to change my mind. And it's still on that.
But originally, we, you know, we thought we had a deal. So that's why I feel confident that we can sit down and actually negotiate.
KELLY: To drill down on this, are there specific items you want to see on the table in these talks?
CUELLAR: Well, listen; if you want to stop drugs, where do most drugs come? According to DEA, or according to CBP, ports of entry. So we need to modernize...
KELLY: Legal ports of entry, you're saying.
CUELLAR: Yeah. Legal ports of entry.
KELLY: Official crossings.
CUELLAR: Official crossings. So we put technology - the modern X-ray machines. You look at K-9s. You look at personnel - men and women in blue. And you secure those ports of entry. If you look at the latest drug case in New York, what do they say? Most drugs will come through ports of entry or through fast boats or submarines. So Coast Guard needs to have their equipment, also, to stop those folks on that.
KELLY: I guess what I'm driving at is, can you give us any more insight into what exactly the sticking point is at this moment in negotiations?
CUELLAR: What the sticking point, I think, at the end is going to be - my opinion - is the president wants a show and tell, which is this, quote, "wall" - fence. That's what he wants. He wants to fulfill a campaign promise. He thinks this 14th-century solution is the best way to secure the border.
KELLY: Last thing to ask you, which is this - to what degree hanging over these talks is that the president might decide to bypass you all - to bypass Congress if Congress doesn't give him what he wants - declare a national emergency or just send more military to build a wall?
CUELLAR: Well, you know, keep in mind, can he declare? He can. Can he win? Probably not. I mean, there'll be lawsuits everywhere. I mean, notice how he's handled this emergency. If there was an emergency, what do you do? You declare it on the moment. You don't say, let me look at this; let me think about it; oh, I'm going to do this.
KELLY: You're saying it's telling that he's threatened to declare an emergency but, so far, has not.
CUELLAR: Yeah. I mean, if it's an emergency, he would've declared it already. And by the way, listen; the border crime rate - murder, rapes, assault - is lower than the national crime rate. In fact, my hometown of Laredo is about three, four times safer for 100,000 individuals than Washington. The most dangerous thing I do on the border is when I leave the border, come to Washington, D.C., because it's so dangerous here. And again, I'm not talking about the politics. I'm talking about FBI stats. So I mean, you know, when they talk about the crisis, what crisis are you really talking about?
KELLY: Henry Cuellar - he is a Democratic congressman from Texas. Thank you so much, Congressman, for taking the time.
CUELLAR: Thank you.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Today the Federal Reserve sent a strong signal that it will stop raising interest rates for a while. Interest rates have steadily gone up over the past four years, one reason why mortgages have gotten more expensive. The Fed's apparent turnaround comes as economic growth is slowing in the U.S. and overseas. This news sent stock prices sharply higher. We're joined by NPR's Jim Zarroli now. Hi, Jim.
JIM ZARROLI, BYLINE: Hi.
SHAPIRO: Explain what the Fed did today.
ZARROLI: Well, the first thing it did was it decided not to raise interest rates. Now, that was totally expected. That's no surprise. But what was a surprise, what really jolted the financial markets was not what the Fed did but what Fed officials said both in the statement they released after the meeting and in Fed Chairman Jerome Powell's press conference which took place shortly afterward. And that indicated a much softer tone on interest rates.
Last year, the Fed raised interest rates four times, and this is something that has an effect on borrowing interest rates or interest rates for borrowing, whether you're talking about mortgage rates or auto loans. And in fact, this has had some effect on the housing market and on the auto market because consumers end up paying more. So what the Fed said today is just a sea change from what it was saying even just six weeks ago.
SHAPIRO: Well, can you explain what it is they said that indicates this is not just a one-off decision not to raise interest rates but actually a shift in approach?
ZARROLI: Well, it was partly what they didn't say. I mean, a month ago, the Fed was talking about gradual rate increases, which is something it does when the economy is going strong and there's a worry about inflation rising and the Fed wants to sort of nip it in the bud. This time around, they took out any reference to further rate increases and said it would exercise patience. That was the word that everyone sort of seized on, patience. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said there's a lot of evidence that economic growth is solid, but he said the case for raising interest rates is weakening. So it appears this current round of interest rate increases is over for now. Powell made clear he can reverse course again, but rate hikes appear to be over.
SHAPIRO: What's happening in the economy right now that would make the Fed decide to change course like this?
ZARROLI: Well, you know, the case for higher rates is sort of not as strong as it was. That's really at the bottom of it. The U.S. economy has been growing at a good clip, especially last year. Unemployment rate is way down. The Fed has been worried about this, worried that it will lead to inflation, but now conditions have changed somewhat on this. The statement today issued by the Fed referred to muted inflation pressures and also readings on financial and international developments. In other words, the global economy is slowing. That's clear. And that has a way of affecting growth in the United States. So just in general, the economy is in a different place now, and the Fed believes it can sort of just stand back and watch for a while.
SHAPIRO: President Trump often attacks the chairman of the Federal Reserve. Do those attacks have anything to do with the decision that he made today?
ZARROLI: Yeah. Trump has - you know, all presidents like to keep - like the Fed to keep rates low. Trump is unusual in that he talks about it publicly. He's - you know, he's sometimes even suggested that he would like to dismiss Fed Chairman Powell. He's used words like loco to describe Fed policy. You know, the Fed is supposed to be insulated from political pressure. It's not supposed to - it's not used to dealing with direct criticism this way, and Powell was asked today at the press conference whether Trump's comments have had an impact on the Fed, whether it's affected the turnaround. What he said was - he sort of dodged the question. He said, my only motivation is to do the right thing for the American people. Whatever the reasons, it sent the stock market way up.
SHAPIRO: NPR's Jim Zarroli, thank you.
ZARROLI: You're welcome.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
American industries have spent several months adjusting their business practices to deal with these tariffs, and numbers are just starting to come in that show us the real impact of the trade war on U.S. companies. Bloomberg reporter Andrew Mayeda has been following this and joins us now. Thanks for coming into the studio.
ANDREW MAYEDA: Thanks for having me.
SHAPIRO: There are a lot of factors that go into a company's bottom line. So how much can you actually tell right now about what these tariffs are doing to American companies?
MAYEDA: I think there's no question that it's having an impact. We are starting to see companies report the effect on their earnings. A big one was Apple. They said that they're selling less iPhones in China. Caterpillar said that this was having an impact. This is a company that makes construction equipment, the yellow stuff that you see at construction sites - NVIDIA, Intel. So there's no question that this is rippling across the U.S. economy.
SHAPIRO: So you gave a couple examples, like Apple and Caterpillar, of American companies that aren't selling as much in China. What about companies that use raw materials imported from China to manufacture in the United States? Are we seeing issues there?
MAYEDA: Yeah. Probably the best example would be Harley-Davidson. Recently they reported lower-than-expected results. Their profit was hit by tariffs. But it's not just the China tariffs in that case. It's also global tariffs imposed on steel and aluminum by the Trump administration.
SHAPIRO: When you look at the scale of the impact, is this more along the lines of an annoyance and inconvenience, or is it a real economic impact, something that could lead to slower economic growth, maybe even a recession down the line? How severe is it?
MAYEDA: If you actually look at the big-picture forecasts of the impact - for example, the IMF says that if we have a worst-case trade scenario, the global economy is going to be less than 1 percent smaller than what it otherwise would've been. That is not catastrophic. I think what people are concerned about is that there's some type of confidence shock. That is to say that, you know, businesses start investing less. Consumers start spending less. And it gets into this negative feedback loop where reducing confidence leads to slower growth.
And you're right. We are in about the 10th year of a global expansion. We're nearing the end of the economic cycle. Investors are on edge. I mean, the music will end at some point, and we will have a recession. And if we have a serious, bruising trade war, that will not be good for the global economy.
SHAPIRO: Is this affecting small businesses in a similar way to the giants - you know, the Apple, Caterpillar, Harleys of the world?
MAYEDA: Yeah, absolutely. There are companies in the U.S. that are on the edge right now. Big companies like Apple, like Caterpillar - they can shift their supply chains. They can move their supply chain from China to Malaysia or Vietnam. A smaller company doesn't have that flexibility, right? So if their input costs are rising, things can get very bad very quickly for some of these companies.
SHAPIRO: Can you give us an example of one of those small businesses that's really feeling this?
MAYEDA: Well, we talked to a company that makes weather stations. So these are stations that people set up in their backyard. And this company is trying to decide how it can get around these tariffs. They can't just move their supply chain around Asia. This CEO that we talked to is actually considering potentially moving production to Mexico. So that's the exact opposite thing that President Trump wants.
SHAPIRO: Are you seeing a pattern in the way that companies are adapting to this?
MAYEDA: I think that they're kind of running through a menu of options. One of the options, as I mentioned, is to move your supply chain to a place like Malaysia or Vietnam. There's no question that that is happening. Some companies are actually engaged in what's called tariff engineering. So if I have a certain good that is hit by tariffs, as it stands now, I could slightly change the way that the good is manufactured so it is actually not covered by tariffs. And there's no question, as the president is actually hoping for, that some companies are reshoring to the United States.
SHAPIRO: We're talking about tariffs that have been in place for several months. But if the U.S. and China don't reach a deal, tariffs are scheduled to rise even more on March 1. What are companies saying they'll do then?
MAYEDA: Yeah, I think that if there is no deal to end the trade war, then I think that, you know, we're just going to see kind of this ongoing grind of hitting bottom lines. We're going to see, I think, probably the stock market take a hit. I think that if there is a total collapse of talks, if we were to see Liu He walk out of the White House today in a storm...
SHAPIRO: The Chinese negotiator.
MAYEDA: Yes, that's right, yeah. That would not be a good scenario, and I would expect stocks to sell off quite sharply from that.
SHAPIRO: That's Bloomberg reporter Andrew Mayeda, who covers global economics. Thanks so much.
MAYEDA: Thanks for having me.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Venezuelans were on the streets again today.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Chanting in Spanish).
KELLY: Again they are demanding that President Nicolas Maduro step down. The campaign to oust Maduro is supported by the U.S., and the U.S. has added to the pressure by imposing tough sanctions on Venezuelan oil. Let's go to NPR's Philip Reeves in Caracas for the latest. Hi again, Phil.
PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: Hi.
KELLY: So today's protests - give me a sense of the scale.
REEVES: Well, they varied in Caracas. On the east side of town, which is an opposition stronghold, there were thousands of people on the streets. They chanted. They waved banners. They were out there for two hours. And at the end, they sang the national anthem together. On the west side of town in the slums, though, which used to be the strongholds of Hugo Chavez and then, after him, Maduro - still considered to be government strongholds.
I didn't see any protests at all. I saw people lining up to buy food. And I did see a lot of cops and National Guard. And from that, I deduce that Maduro is coming down hard on working-class and poor areas. He's tried to prevent these protests from spreading into those areas. These are people who've suffered the brunt of chronic food and medical - medicine shortages and more recently power shortages of water cuts. And it's interesting that most of the 800-plus detentions that have happened over the last week and a half and a half have, according to human rights activists, happened in the poorer areas.
KELLY: So that is what it looks like. What do people say? You've been out in the streets trying to talk to people all day. What are they telling you?
REEVES: Yeah. I particularly spent time in an upmarket business area where there were a lot of protesters. I spoke to Damia Framgie (ph), who's a lawyer age 29. She took part in previous years in protests, and she thinks this time it's different.
DAMIA FRAMGIE: I do think we're going to make it, and I think we are being really well guided. And the support - it's important 'cause for the first time, we're being recognized internationally, and they're going to run out of money 'cause they're not going to be selling oil. So that's our ticket to freedom.
REEVES: But you still find that people are reluctant to talk to journalists. They're still worried about the threat posed by security agencies and the intelligence service. This man, Pedro (ph), did agree to talk but declined to give his full name, and I asked him why.
PEDRO: Because it's dangerous here. I mean, this not kidding. I mean, they are not playing with toys. This is a very strong dictatorship that have disappeared people, that had more than 300 political prisoners.
REEVES: So Pedro, although you say it's dangerous here, you've come out onto the streets.
PEDRO: Oh, yes, absolutely. It is - I mean, it's now or never.
KELLY: Some of the voices there from the streets in Caracas - Phil, I want to check in on a couple of points you've been helping us keep track of. One is, where is the army? I mean, you keep telling us that where the army lands and who they support is going to be a huge deciding factor in how all this plays out.
REEVES: Yes indeed. I think it is very important. I think it's the decisive factor if you want to choose one. So far we haven't seen any sign that the high command of the military is splitting from Maduro.
KELLY: And what kind of impact are you seeing from the U.S. decision to stop Maduro's government from earning money by selling oil to the U.S.? We heard protesters talking about it. Has Maduro or his government responded?
REEVES: Oh, yes, he has, and he's responded with a great deal of anger. This is worth roughly a billion dollars a month to his government, so it's a major problem for him. He desperately needs those funds. Interestingly, there are reports which started to emerge last night and have grown today that a big Russian passenger plane has arrived at an airport outside Caracas, and an opposition lawmaker who's a former central bank director is saying that he's been told that this plane was hired to transport 20 tons of Venezuelan gold. And of course the speculation is that this is another way of raising funds in a desperate situation that Maduro is using by sending gold to Russia.
KELLY: Well, all kinds of plots of potential intrigue swirling there. Last question - do we know what opposition leader Juan Guaido's next move might be or even where he is?
REEVES: All eyes are on Saturday. He's called a very big mass, nationwide demonstration, a nonviolent protest again on Saturday. I think that could be significantly bigger than what we have seen today.
KELLY: Thank you, Phil.
REEVES: You're welcome.
KELLY: NPR's Philip Reeves in Caracas, Venezuela.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Fifty years ago today, the Beatles climbed to a London rooftop and performed together for the first time in more than two years.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BEATLES: (Singing) Jojo left his home in Tuscon, Ariz.
SHAPIRO: It was a small concert, just the Beatles, keyboardist Billy Preston, a film crew and a small audience huddling in the cold.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BEATLES: (Singing) Get back, Jojo.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
No one knew it then, but this would also be their final performance together.
KEN MANSFIELD: When you were on the roof, it was like something is happening here. I don't know what it is, but something magic's happening here.
KELLY: That's record executive Ken Mansfield. He was part of that audience that day, and he memorialized the experience in his book "The Roof: The Beatles' Final Concert."
SHAPIRO: A film crew was documenting the production of the group's album "Let It Be." They'd hoped to film the Beatles before a big audience in an exotic location, but at the time, the members of the band weren't getting along. Filming the final scene on the roof was a compromise.
MANSFIELD: This was a time of dissension, if we should use that word. Somebody said, we just need to go up on the roof. This was just an easy answer to just - to get it over with.
KELLY: Turns out that was exactly what they needed. Mansfield says on the cold roof that day, all the band's tension melted away.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BEATLES: (Singing) Get back. Get back to where you once belonged. Get back. Get back. Get back to where you once belonged.
MANSFIELD: Well, this is one single moment that is something I'll treasure forever - is, they started playing. And John looked over at Paul, or Paul looked over at John. And I was just, like, 4 to 6 feet away. And I saw this look on their face. It was like, you know what? This is us. It doesn't matter what's going down and all the problems and everything. This is who we are. We're mates. We've been together for so many years. And we are a good rock 'n' roll band, and that's what we're doing right now. And, man, they start having a good time. You know, John's throwing out these one-liners, and they're just rocking out.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BEATLES: (Singing) Don't let me down. Don't let me down.
MANSFIELD: I wrote in the book that they came up on the roof without a sound check, but they walked back down with a soul check.
SHAPIRO: They also walked back down after the police broke up the performance because of noise complaints. Mansfield says the whole thing took a while to sink in.
MANSFIELD: When we left the roof that day, nobody talked to each other and then next morning still couldn't quite figure out what I'd experienced. I didn't realize it was going to be one of the historical moments in rock 'n' roll, but I knew something had happened.
KELLY: Historic because, again, it was the Beatles' last live performance as a group. They had conquered the world, and they went out with an ironic line from John Lennon.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JOHN LENNON: I would like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves. I hope we passed the audition.
(LAUGHTER)
SHAPIRO: Fifty years later, safe to say they did.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Now, on this day of historically low, even dangerously low, temperatures in the upper Midwest, we bring you a story about how scientists are learning about climate change. They're getting more and better data. And now there is a push to use that data to help people cope with the extremes we know are coming. Joe Wertz of StateImpact Oklahoma and NPR's energy and environment team reports.
JOE WERTZ: Kirk Wilson is a burly guy with a big beard and a booming laugh who climbs tall towers for a living. He's parked his work truck next to one in a cow pasture in central Oklahoma. The outside of the truck features a colorful sticker for the jam band Phish. The inside is a heap of tools and boxes of precision instruments.
KIRK WILSON: And I'm just going to make a note of the serial number that's on this one.
WERTZ: The meteorological electronics technician grabs his climbing harness, which is a little snug on top of all the layers he's wearing to keep warm.
WILSON: We're changing the sensor that's at the top of the tower that measures the wind direction.
WERTZ: Wilson climbs to the top of a 30-foot tower. Another tech on the ground uses a sensitive GPS receiver to make sure everything is aligned before it's tightened in place.
CHRISTOPHER BIESCHKE: Three hundred fifty-four, 96, 179.
WERTZ: When this station is back online, it'll resume beaming bursts of observations on the wind and air pressure, temperature, soil moisture and solar radiation. On this day, the real-time info is helping forecasters track a winter storm. Long term, the measurements will fill enormous data sets used for climate science and agriculture, industry and government. Oklahoma has 120 of these stations scattered across the state, one of the largest and most sophisticated such sensor networks in the country.
CHRIS FIEBRICH: Yeah. So this chamber right here is where we calibrate both barometers.
WERTZ: Chris Fiebrich manages all this information at the headquarters of Oklahoma's Mesonet, where techs test sensors and banks of computers analyze and publish the field data.
FIEBRICH: We're not only collecting the data every five minutes, but we're trying to get it out to the decision-makers within five minutes.
WERTZ: Those decisions could be small ones, like postponing a high school football game, or ones with much higher stakes, such as predicting catastrophic flooding and wildfires.
FIEBRICH: We run a fire danger model for the state so that firefighters can know sort of how fast a fire might spread if it were to break out today or how high the flames might be. And that helps them pre-position things or get things ready.
WERTZ: Scientists who authored the recent National Climate Assessment say states should use more of this data for early warning systems that help communities prepare and adapt to the effects of climate change, dangers like droughts and epidemics.
KRISTIE EBI: There's enormous possibilities for how we could use early warning systems to make our health systems much more effective.
WERTZ: Kristie Ebi is a professor at the University of Washington who studies the health risks of climate change. She says in Phoenix, officials are using weather and climate data to predict and prepare for deadly heatwaves. In Singapore, the data are used to create a seasonal forecast for dengue fever.
EBI: It gives you four months' notice. If you've got four months, think of all the things that you can do in four months.
WERTZ: But Ebi says information isn't action. She says scientists had warned that climate conditions in Houston and Miami could mean more mosquitoes and outbreaks of Zika virus. They published a scientific paper. National media did stories.
EBI: But there was essentially no significant public health response.
WERTZ: The next step, Ebi says, is finding ways to respond to our increasingly accurate predictions about the effects of climate change. For NPR News, I'm Joe Wertz in Oklahoma City.
(SOUNDBITE OF COLLEEN'S "GEOMETRIA DEL UNIVERSO")
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Kim Bok-dong died in Seoul, South Korea, on Monday at the age of 92. She was a prominent activist who advocated on behalf of the thousands of girls and young women forced to work in temporary brothels for the Japanese military during World War II. They were sex slaves known as comfort women. Kim took up the cause because she was one herself. Kim Bok-dong told her story around the world. Here she is speaking with Stephen Park of the YouTube channel Asian Boss. He was asking, what was she advocating for?
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KIM BOK-DONG: (Speaking Korean).
KELLY: Kim's answer - an apology from Japan for dragging us away and making us suffer.
Let's bring in Alexis Dudden, professor of History at the University of Connecticut. Professor Dudden, welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
ALEXIS DUDDEN: Thank you so much for having me.
KELLY: You met Kim Bok-dong. Is that right? Describe her for me. What was she like?
DUDDEN: She was a force of nature. And I think the last time she made international news was last September when she staged a one-woman protest outside the Foreign Ministry in Seoul, South Korea. She was in a wheelchair, covered in blankets and under umbrellas five days after having surgery for cancer. But that wheelchair image sort of recalls Al Pacino at the end of "The Godfather." I mean, she really was...
KELLY: She wasn't quitting.
DUDDEN: ...A power. She was not going to quit. And she was literally swearing to the end, her anger unmitigated, that this was still going on so long after the horrific history had happened.
KELLY: Yeah, I saw her quoted as saying she was forced to be with as many as 15 men a day. And on weekends, it was more like 50 men a day. I mean, it's mind-boggling.
DUDDEN: Yes, and that was common throughout the system. The girls - young women - were shipped throughout the areas of the Japanese Empire, especially as it expanded into Southeast Asia. And soldiers would line up outside these stations and go in to so-called release their tension. And on weekends, it was a free-for-all with up to 50 a day.
KELLY: God. How did Kim Bok-dong go about making the experience that she and so many others lived through into a global issue now - I mean, in the 1990s and now in the 21st century?
DUDDEN: Right, and that's really what she should be remembered for because from the beginning, she recognized the horror of her personal history. But she took it broader and connected with victims throughout the empire. But she also made it transgenerational. And what she and another survivor, Gil Wok-on, did in 2012 was establish something they called the Nabi, the Butterfly Fund, a foundation for cash that in the future, should the Japanese government pay reparations as they continued to seek, then the money would not go to the women themselves. It would go into this global fund. And it's dispersed throughout the world to current victims of sex slavery and sexual violence during wars in their own countries.
KELLY: You hinted at this, but I'll ask directly. Did Kim Bok-dong ever get that apology that she wanted from Japan?
DUDDEN: No, and that's why she was Al Pacino at the end. She never felt that she had been sufficiently dignified in a way that she would define as an acceptable recognition of her suffering.
KELLY: Alexis Dudden, thanks so much for speaking with us.
DUDDEN: Thank you so much.
(SOUNDBITE OF THIS WILL DESTROY YOU SONG, "I BELIEVE IN YOUR VICTORY")
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
We journalists spend a lot of time on Twitter - a lot. Along the way, we come across a lot of snark, occasional poignancy and, once in a blue moon, utter hilarity, as in a thread of tweets by writer and one-time child actress Quinn Cummings.
QUINN CUMMINGS: Gather round, gentle readers. It is time I tell the story of the worst decision I have ever made in an office.
KELLY: Across 25 tweets, Cummings spins the story of a difficult boss with a wounded ego and a solution actor Brian Dennehy hatched which required a publicity shot of said boss.
CUMMINGS: The door opened. I swear to you, even the phones stopped ringing for a second. Susan inhaled. Who the [expletive], she screamed, gave Brian a picture of my mother?
KELLY: That is right. She managed to give him a picture of her boss's mom. Well, her boss was not happy, as you heard, but on Twitter, people loved the story.
CUMMINGS: It's been retweeted - I just checked - a little under 18,000 times. Somebody tweeted that they had seen "Death Of A Salesman" on Broadway and that this story was almost as dramatic. That tweet was from Lin Manuel-Miranda. It is possible to joy faint, I now know.
KELLY: So Quinn Cummings decided to write more small stories like that one, a departure from her usual work and from the usual thing you come across on social media.
CUMMINGS: I spend a lot of time writing jokes about politics. It's been good for my career. I've ended up doing some ghostwriting. I've written political jokes for other people. This is fantastic. But what I can also do is remind people that life is not just politics. I've started to think of my stories as a chance to be a human again. You can hear about my complaining about the local grocery store, which is a Fellini film, or getting the dog to the vet. I try to make them very ordinary. It's a respite.
KELLY: You might be the first person I've ever interviewed to describe Twitter as a respite from that political craziness we are living through.
CUMMINGS: You know, when everyone else is zigging, you zag. So for the most part, they're funny. But I do write about the fact that my mother was an emotionally manipulative narcissist. You might be staggered at the amount of people who write to me privately and say, I can't tell that story because mine is still alive or I can't write the story because mine died, but my family will yell at me for speaking ill of the dead. But thank you for writing this because you make me feel better.
KELLY: And does it feel as though you're trivializing really important stuff in any way by breaking them down into a series of tweets?
CUMMINGS: That's a really good question. My answer is, if you feel that it trivializes it, feel free to unfollow me.
KELLY: I wasn't suggesting that at all.
CUMMINGS: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm sorry.
KELLY: I'm just thinking about Twitter gets so much criticism for being a place where people just fire off whatever random thought pops into their head. It's a hard place to work through something like your mom dying.
CUMMINGS: That came out more abrupt than I meant for it to. What I'm saying is it is a relatively new art form, medium, whatever it is you want to call it. And people are figuring out what they like there. If what I do makes people uncomfortable, I totally understand. I'm not going to change.
KELLY: Do you write the whole tweet thread out in advance and then break it up into tweets?
CUMMINGS: Yes. I'm very careful about how I construct it. There are certain sentences I want to be by themselves because they're a joke line. If I structure it in a certain way, I'm pacing how you read it.
KELLY: Yeah.
CUMMINGS: It's important to me that I do this right because I have people now supporting this, underwriting it on Patreon.
KELLY: Explain what Patreon is.
CUMMINGS: Patreon is the equivalent of a tip jar. You can reach out to your supporters and say, would you be interested in giving me a dollar a month? And then one dollar is taken off your credit card every month.
KELLY: It's fascinating hearing you describe the effort to figure out a business model here. You're a professional writer. You deserve to get paid for what you write. None of us have figured out how to do that on Twitter.
CUMMINGS: I got a kid in a liberal arts college. And even as a vegetarian, those lentils add up. If I'm not white-knuckling every month, it's a lot easier to write better jokes.
KELLY: Do you eventually, if you're trying to make a living here, have to figure out a way to tell these small stories on a bigger stage?
CUMMINGS: Here's the thing. If I write an essay now and I say, here, I've written it over on Medium, just click over and read it - the odds are low that they will click. If I can figure out in this time of great change how to be adaptive and a little creative, I can wait and see where my opportunities are.
KELLY: Writer Quinn Cummings talking to us about the small stories she shares on her Twitter feed. Thanks so much.
CUMMINGS: Thank you so much for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LET'S HAVE A PARTY")
WANDA JACKSON: (Singing) Some people like to rock. Some people like to roll. But moving and grooving's going to satisfy my soul. Let's have a party.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
That's Wanda Jackson singing her 1960 hit "Let's Have A Party." You may have heard this song by Elvis or Led Zeppelin, but you probably haven't heard of the person who wrote it, Jessie Mae Robinson. Born in Texas in 1918, raised in California, Robinson's songs have been recorded by hundreds of artists from Louis Jordan to Lana Del Rey. Music critic Meredith Ochs tells her story as part of our series The Women Behind The Songs.
MEREDITH OCHS, BYLINE: Whether she was composing party songs or heartbreak songs, Jessie Mae Robinson wrote with the concise, evocative language of a journalist. And she gave her characters dignity no matter who they were or what they were doing.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BLUE LIGHT BOOGIE")
LOUIS JORDAN: (Singing) They did the boogie real slow with the blue lights way down low.
OCHS: She often drew inspiration from her own life experiences. As an African-American a woman working mostly on her own in the 1940s and '50s, Robinson challenged a music industry determined to pigeonhole her into writing only blues and R&B.
(SOUNDBITE OF LOUIS JORDAN SONG, "BLUE LIGHT BOOGIE")
OCHS: But she loved Tin Pan Alley and show tunes, and she would not be confined by genre.
(SOUNDBITE OF PATTI PAGE SONG, "I WENT TO YOUR WEDDING")
OCHS: In 1952, Robinson had her first pop music crossover success when Patti Page recorded her song about watching the love of your life marry someone else.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I WENT TO YOUR WEDDING")
PATTI PAGE: (Singing) The organ was playing. My poor heart kept saying, your dreams, your dreams are through.
OCHS: Growing up in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, Robinson found a supportive community and plenty of opportunities to explore her creative interests. She became a champion tap dancer, competing at the old Largo Theater. She earned an Actor's Equity card, performing in WPA musicals like "Show Boat."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I WENT TO YOUR WEDDING")
PAGE: (Singing) I uttered a sigh, whispered goodbye.
OCHS: But Robinson also had a penchant for making up melodies and writing poetry. She was encouraged to become a songwriter by neighborhood friend Joe Adams, who'd go on to manage Ray Charles and Dootsie Williams.
(SOUNDBITE OF DINAH WASHINGTON SONG, "MELLOW MAMA BLUES")
OCHS: Williams owned a local studio where Robinson got her songwriting start. She caught a break in 1945 when a young Dinah Washington released this song.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MELLOW MAMA BLUES")
DINAH WASHINGTON: (Singing) I've got a mellow man who loves me and mellow whiskey in my glass.
OCHS: A self-taught musician, Jessie Mae Robinson wrote songs even when she had no access to an instrument. She'd hum melodies into a tape recorder and scribble lyrics on random pieces of paper.
(SOUNDBITE OF DINAH WASHINGTON SONG, "MELLOW MAMA BLUES")
OCHS: She didn't learn to drive until age 30. So early in her career, she'd take a bus to Hollywood and have her songs transcribed onto sheet music that studio musicians could read. It worked.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHARLES BROWN SONG, "BLACK NIGHT")
OCHS: In the early 1960s, Robinson started her own record labels. She named the first one after her daughter, June. She loved music but was tired of dealing with the industry. She was also physically tired. Her health was in decline, and in 1966, she sought treatment for a chronic throat problem.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BLACK NIGHT")
CHARLES BROWN: (Singing) My mother has the trouble. My father has it, too.
OCHS: The doctor suggested surgery, but she said no, fearful of permanently losing her voice.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BLACK NIGHT")
BROWN: (Singing) Black night is falling. Oh, how I hate to be alone.
OCHS: She died later that year at age 48, leaving behind a body of work that reflects who she was - soft-spoken yet self-possessed, imaginative and ambitious, a uniquely gifted composer with an eye for detail that most people overlook and the ability to pack so much emotion into just a few words. Generations of music fans continue to discover her songs, but I hope they discover her as well.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE OTHER WOMAN")
NINA SIMONE: (Singing) The other woman finds time to manicure her nails.
CORNISH: That's music critic Meredith Ochs on songwriter Jessie Mae Robinson. It's part of our series The Women Behind The Songs.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE OTHER WOMAN")
SIMONE: (Singing) And she's never seen with pin curls in her hair. The other woman...
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
There is a three-mile tall mountain in the middle of a crater on Mars, and scientists have been debating how it got there. A new study suggests the mountain is largely made from just dust and sand. To get the data for that conclusion, the researchers MacGyvered a navigation instrument on the NASA rover called Curiosity. NPR science correspondent Joe Palca has the story.
JOE PALCA, BYLINE: How do you know what a planet is made of? Well, you can learn a lot about the geology of a planet by measuring subtle changes in its gravity. High-density rocks give us stronger gravity signal than low-density rocks. But to make gravity measurements, you usually have to have an instrument called a gravimeter.
KEVIN LEWIS: And it kind of frustrated me that we didn't have a surface gravimeter on Mars.
PALCA: Kevin Lewis is a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University and a member of the Curiosity rover science team. One day, Lewis started thinking about something that popped up regularly on the rover's daily activity schedule.
LEWIS: Turns out every day we don't drive with the rover, there's this little five-minute activity called the SAPP-RIMU data collection activity.
PALCA: The RIMU is a navigational device, and the SAPP-RIMU data activity tells engineers the rover's precise orientation on the planet's surface. Inside the RIMU are three accelerometers, and accelerometers measure acceleration - duh. You actually have accelerometers inside your smartphone that measure your movements. Anyway, thinking about these accelerometers in the RIMU, Kevin Lewis had a kind of epiphany.
LEWIS: We don't have a gravimeter on the surface of Mars. But we have accelerometers, and gravity is just an acceleration.
PALCA: You may not think of gravity that way. But you can, and scientists do. So by adjusting the way the data from the RIMU were handled, Lewis now had his gravimeter. And he knew just what he wanted to do with it - try to figure out how a 15,000-foot tall mountain could form in the middle of Gale crater, the crater Curiosity landed in. It's a question many scientists have puzzled over.
MACKENZIE DAY: And there sort of have been two different schools of thought.
PALCA: Mackenzie Day is a planetary scientist at UCLA.
DAY: Craters are fundamentally big holes in the ground, so they're a really good place to accumulate things - to accumulate sediment, accumulate dust and sand.
PALCA: Day says the question is, was Gale crater once filled to the rim with sediment, and then most of that material eroded away leaving behind what's now called Mount Sharp?
DAY: Or is Mount Sharp something that developed in the middle of the crater as sort of a stacking of material in the crater center from winds coming down the sides of the crater rim?
PALCA: Could blowing sand and dust really pack together to build a three-mile tall mountain? Possibly, although Kevin Lewis says it runs against our expectations.
LEWIS: We don't normally see mountains just growing up as a haystack on the Earth.
PALCA: If the haystack model is right, the rocks at the base of Mount Sharp wouldn't be very dense. And as he and his colleagues report in the journal Science...
LEWIS: And what we found in this study is that the rocks are surprisingly low-density.
PALCA: So the haystack theory may be right. Lewis says he plans to keep collecting data from his MacGyvered instrument as Curiosity climbs up Mount Sharp to see if the initial results hold up. Joe Palca, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE POLISH AMBASSADOR'S "FOREST FUNK")
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Let's stick with the troops for a moment, specifically those serving in Syria and Afghanistan. Back in December, President Trump took many people by surprise when he said he would withdraw troops from Syria, arguing that the mission to defeat ISIS was already complete. Today, Senate Republicans sharply rebuked him for that. Enough Republicans sided with Democrats to advance a resolution that opposes the immediate withdrawal of soldiers in Syria and Afghanistan. The move was led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MITCH MCCONNELL: ISIS and al-Qaida have yet to be defeated, and American national security interests require continued commitment to our mission.
SHAPIRO: NPR's Tim Mak joins us now from Capitol Hill. Hi, Tim.
TIM MAK, BYLINE: Hey there.
SHAPIRO: This is a resolution. It doesn't actually reverse the president's policy. So what does it accomplish?
MAK: You're right. The resolution can't force a change in President Trump's policy regarding Syria or Afghanistan, but 43 Republicans out of 53 total in the Senate voted to rebuke him on his Syria policy today. It signals to the president that many members of his own party are not with him when it comes to a swift withdrawal and disagree with his belief that ISIS has been defeated. Here's what Trump said in a video message he posted on Twitter back in December.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We have won against ISIS. We've beaten them, and we've beaten them badly. We've taken back the land, and now it's time for our troops to come back home.
MAK: The unexpected announcement led to the resignation of the special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIS and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. And many in Trump's own administration have said that ISIS isn't defeated, that there are still thousands of ISIS fighters in the area, and they pose a risk to regional stability.
So the president can do a lot of things on foreign policy unilaterally, but ultimately on major changes relating to funding, relating to policy, he needs to maintain a coalition of support in Congress. And Congress is telling him quite strongly today he doesn't have their support on a quick withdrawal from Syria or Afghanistan.
SHAPIRO: How significant is it that the top Senate Republican, Mitch McConnell, led this effort?
MAK: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell speaks for a large group of hawkish Republicans who have a standing disagreement with the president's foreign policy instincts. Here's Senator McConnell on the Senate floor today.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MCCONNELL: The United States is engaged in Syria and Afghanistan for one simple reason - because our enemies are engaged there. Real dangers to us and to our allies still remain in both these nations, so we must continue to confront them.
MAK: McConnell is most often an ally of President Trump's, but on this issue, he felt strongly enough to lay down a marker on where he and the vast majority of senators stand. And it's kind of becoming a recurring theme on issues like NATO, on the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, on Russia sanctions. Republican lawmakers have repeatedly stood up to the president on his national security instincts. It really does seem like foreign policy is the one major area where Republicans aren't afraid to break with the president, unlike issues like health care or taxes or immigration.
SHAPIRO: Yeah. Are Republicans on the Hill signaling that they are more willing to openly break with the president on other matters of foreign policy?
MAK: You know, one issue to watch and one issue I'm watching is going to be how Congress reacts to U.S. support for the Saudis in the ongoing war in Yemen. Republicans like Senator Mike Lee and Congressman Ken Buck - they've joined with progressives like Senator Bernie Sanders to invoke the War Powers Act to stop U.S. military assistance from being provided to the Saudis. Back in December, the Senate voted to do just this, but the House didn't take it up. There's a good chance that the new House and Senate will address this issue and try to force the president's hand, leading to a confrontation regarding U.S. policy in Yemen later this year.
SHAPIRO: That's NPR's Tim Mak speaking with us from the Capitol. Thanks, Tim.
MAK: Thanks a lot.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The new book "Genesis Begins Again" is about a 13-year-old African-American girl who dreams of having smooth hair and skin many shades closer to her light-skinned mother and grandmother. Genesis says a prayer every night - Lord, turn it good. The prejudice and colorism she encounters don't just come from strangers or kids at school; her own family judges her for her dark skin. The book is for children around Genesis' age. It's the first book that Alicia Williams has ever written. By day, Williams is a teacher. And she told me that she relates to Genesis personally, and she's seen kids like Genesis in the classroom.
ALICIA WILLIAMS: In kindergarten, every year, we would have our kids come in. Whether they're Indian or African or African-American, they will come in - and in our classrooms would be multicultural crayons. Never, never, never do our kids of color choose a skin tone that's close to theirs. They go as light as possible. So even when we try to encourage them to - OK, honey, just - how about this brown one? - they would never, never, never shade it in hard.
SHAPIRO: What do you say to a kindergartner who is choosing a lighter colored crayon because they don't want to draw their own skin color as dark as it is?
WILLIAMS: This was the hardest part. But with the teacher I was working with, we would definitely - you know, honey, this is your color. And we would show - oh, this is my color - first model how it looks on us. Oh, look at my skin. I found the perfect color. But when the resistance is still there, I will find these ways to say - oh, my goodness. I just love your skin. It's so pretty. Oh, my goodness. When you color it, I just love it - so those encouraging words. And when there's other students around that might hear that, I'll find something else to compliment them on so not to make them feel any less than. But I just wanted to find little seeds to build them up.
SHAPIRO: Yeah. You know, I was thinking - Toni Morrison wrote "The Bluest Eye" in 1970, and it deals with some of the same themes. A character with dark skin is made to feel that she's ugly. She develops low self-esteem. Do you think we're still more or less where we were when that book was published almost 50 years ago?
WILLIAMS: Oh, my gosh, yes. Yes. I've seen it growing up, not just within my family. I've seen it within, you know, our community. And it's unfortunate that even - you think, OK, the thing like the brown bag doesn't happen; and oh, no, no one still goes around measuring the color of a baby's ears to see how dark they will be - or the cuticles. But...
SHAPIRO: I should mention - you say the brown bag. This is something where you hold a bag up to a child or a person's skin and see whether they are the color of the brown paper bag or lighter or darker.
WILLIAMS: Yes, the brown bag. Thank you for explaining that. Whether it be a brown bag or measuring - looking at the darkest part of a child, still having this idea - oh, honey, this is how dark your baby is going to be. And it's a negative connotation; you don't want your baby to be that dark. But that's it. We still talk about light skin versus dark skin. We still do that. So yes, we're still in the same place. When we have on - #TeamLightSkin and #TeamDarkSkin and that's for our kids who still use social media, it's like this whole thing starts all over again each generation.
SHAPIRO: You know, there's not a lot of risk in pointing out racism outside of your own community. But when you portray racism within somebody's immediate family - you know, somebody's parents, somebody's grandparents - judging them based on how light- or dark-skinned they are, that seems risky. That seems dangerous. Like, it's a thing you don't do. And in this book, you do it (laughter).
WILLIAMS: I'm terrified.
SHAPIRO: Really?
WILLIAMS: I am so terrified. You know how you say, you don't talk about this in front of white folks? You don't let them know what's going on in your house? I'm nervous about giving people words or ammunition.
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: I'm so nervous because, as a writer, you start thinking - is this going to be a good thing? Will I do more damage? Or will I help? Am I going to help? Because the whole thing was - how can I help heal some children? How can I heal them? How can I let them know they're good enough? Not just the ones that is dealing with colorism - but will they get that it's not just colorism that I want to heal them from but to let them know they're good enough?
Whether they're tall or short, you know, there's going to be somebody that's picking on them and saying - you're not going to be. You know, you're going to be in a box. You have your Jewish uncle's nose, and you have your red hair like your Irish auntie, and you have those freckles that won't ever go away. You know, there's always something that we're - across each ethnicity, there's always something. And I know my story's through colorism, so I'm just so nervous, though, that we'll focus on this minute thing and not see the broadness of it.
SHAPIRO: Given your fear - given the potential that people could use this as ammunition, what made you decide that it was important to do this anyway?
WILLIAMS: I saw children directly affected by colorism. I saw friends - I still felt the residue for myself, and I started developing different ideas about it. Whether, you know, people receive it or not, I know my intention and the impact that I want is to heal some people. It may not be for everyone, but I have to heal somebody. You know, they say there's one good book in you. I hope that this is not the only one, but this is the story because this is something I needed to hear. I needed to hear - I needed to hear that, OK, it's not going to happen overnight that I'm going to love myself. But you know, it's going to be OK. It's going to be OK.
SHAPIRO: There's an interesting thing you do in this book where, over the course of the story, you kind of sprinkle a trail of breadcrumbs of almost a reading list. You mentioned "The Color Purple," "Up From Slavery," "The Autobiography Of Malcolm X." An alert reader could walk away from this with a stack of books that they want to read next.
WILLIAMS: (Laughter) It's so hilarious. I wasn't thinking about it when I wrote it, but that was brought up to me. And I'm thinking, yes, because I read these books, and I look at the characters. There are even more because - that was edited out.
(LAUGHTER)
WILLIAMS: If we were going to teach "Genesis," we can definitely put a playlist together as well as some books together (laughter).
SHAPIRO: Yeah. Because you mentioned a playlist, this book name-drops so many musicians, from Nina Simone to Billie Holiday and Etta James, so many of the greats. If we're going to go out on a piece of music, what would you like us to play?
WILLIAMS: Billie Holiday. I wrote the manuscript to her, majority of it - Billie Holiday, "God Bless The Child."
SHAPIRO: Alicia Williams, her debut novel is called "Genesis Begins Again." Thanks so much for talking with us.
WILLIAMS: Thank you, Ari. I so appreciate it (laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GOD BLESS THE CHILD")
BILLIE HOLIDAY: (Singing) Them that's got shall get. Them that's not shall lose, so the Bible said and it still is news. Mama may have...
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The Trump administration says it made substantial progress this week in trade talks with China. Those talks culminated this afternoon in an Oval Office meeting between President Trump and China's vice premier. China announced a major new purchase of U.S. soybeans, but there was no such breakthrough on the administration's major structural complaints. More talks are expected in the coming weeks, and NPR's Scott Horsley joins us now from the White House. Hi, Scott.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Hi, Ari.
SHAPIRO: Explain what the president is trying to achieve through these talks.
HORSLEY: President Trump says he's trying to broker a comprehensive deal to end the trade war between the U.S. and China. Of course, it was Trump himself who escalated that war last year when he imposed stiff tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars in Chinese imports over what the administration says are unfair trading practices by China. In particular, the U.S. wants more access to Chinese markets and also an end to practices like intellectual property theft and the forced transfer of American technology. One question going into these talks was whether Trump would hold the line on those structural demands or if he would simply settle for, like, a big purchase order from China on soybeans. Trump told reporters he wants all of the above.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: This is a serious deal that we're doing. This could be done very quickly very easily, but it wouldn't be comprehensive. It would be small.
HORSLEY: In speaking with reporters after the talks, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer was pretty guarded about the prospects for actually making a comprehensive deal. He said there's still a lot of work to be done. But he did suggest it's a good sign that these talks didn't go off the rails during the last couple of days of very intense, very detailed negotiations. He likened it to a golf match where you can't win in the middle rounds, but you can lose. (Laughter) So the U.S. and China didn't lose in this middle round, but he said there's still a lot of putting left to come.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter) OK, so still a lot of work left to be done, putting left to come, whatever analogy you want to use. What does that entail?
HORSLEY: Trade Representative Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are expected to travel to China sometime in the middle of February for follow-up talks. That might have happened sooner, but we're just a few days away from the start of the Chinese New Year. So there is going to be a brief pause here in negotiations. If those talks go well, President Trump suggested it might set the table for an even higher level of negotiations.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMP: I think that, probably, the final deal will be made - if it's made - will be made between myself and President Xi.
HORSLEY: President Trump was already planning another round of nuclear talks next month with North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un. That might happen in Asia. So if he's in the neighborhood, Trump might use that as an opportunity for another round of trade talks with Chinese President Kim - Xi Jinping.
SHAPIRO: And there's a tight deadline here - this March 1 limit. What - it's coming right up.
HORSLEY: That's right. Come March 1, the U.S. tariffs on some $200 billion in Chinese imports are expected to more than double if there is no agreement. So that clock is ticking, and there could be a - you know, that could be a powerful motivator for both sides to make a deal.
SHAPIRO: Finally, what about this soybean purchase that the Chinese announced?
HORSLEY: Well, remember, China had been a huge market for American soybeans. And they all but stopped buying last year in retaliation for Trump's tariffs. They did start up buying soybeans again on a small scale last month during this sort of truce in the trade negotiations. And in the Oval Office today, China's vice premier announced plans to really ramp up those soybean purchases. Trump called that a welcome development.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMP: It's a sign of good faith for China to buy that much of our soybeans and other product that they've just committed to us prior to the signing of the deal - is something that makes us very proud to be dealing with them.
HORSLEY: Again, that doesn't deal with the more difficult issues of intellectual property protection and technology transfer. But it's certainly welcome news for a lot of Midwestern farmers who have been some of the big casualties caught in the crossfire of this trade war so far.
SHAPIRO: That's NPR's Scott Horsley speaking with us from the White House. Thank you, Scott.
HORSLEY: You're welcome.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Next we're going to hear from someone who's negotiated on trade policy with China. Amy Celico worked on China trade policy under President George W. Bush. She now advises U.S. companies who are doing business in China. Thank you for coming into the studio.
AMY CELICO: Great to be with you.
CORNISH: From the point of view of you and your clients, these tariffs - have they kind of hurt China and been a win for the U.S., put us in a better position for these trade talks?
CELICO: Well, I certainly agree with President Trump that that does give the U.S. side leverage. The Chinese certainly don't want these tariffs to continue as they're looking at their own economy softening. And the tariffs will continue to hurt and hurt in a much more significant way if the tariff rate goes up on March 1. And so there is an incentive for the Chinese to want to make a deal. However, I think in the U.S., President Trump and the administration also face pressures to find a way forward rather than simply walking away from a deal and increasing the tariffs because that would hurt our economy, too.
CORNISH: What are some of those pressures?
CELICO: Some of those pressures of course are the fact that American businesses want to be in China. They want to be - American farmers, American companies want to be trading with China. And without having what will become this year the largest consumer market in the world - China - as a market for our goods and services, our companies will face pressure. And the stock market will dip. And as we have seen over the past few months, the administration is sensitive to those fluctuations in the markets.
CORNISH: What can you tell us about China to help us understand what it means to sit down and negotiate, especially when you're talking about issues that are bigger than, say, as Scott reported, a soybean order - right? - trying to get at longtime structural grievances that the U.S. has had, whether it's market access or intellectual property theft?
CELICO: Like you said, Audie, these are longtime concerns that the U.S. government has had with China. And so I have a lot of sympathy for the negotiators on the U.S. side right now trying to make progress where progress hasn't been achieved in the past. The Chinese government is looking in a more long-term way at these issues about what it is willing to give. The impact on the domestic economy...
CORNISH: Is that different from, say, the George W. Bush years that - where you were there?
CELICO: Well, I will say I think that there is a coming realization within China that foreign investors need to be in the market for China to meet its own economic development goals. And I think when we're talking about the George W. Bush administration years where China of course was doing very well, growing at record rates, they were starting to talk about indigenous innovation and starting to say, maybe we don't need foreign investment as much; we feel very strong now. Today, this year, this month, President Xi talked about the risks to the country. And in his speech earlier this month, he talked about the softening economy as a real risk.
CORNISH: What leverage do you think the Chinese have over the U.S.?
CELICO: I think the Chinese, like I said, can look at this in a more long-term way. And I think they recognize that the Trump administration wants and, in some ways, needs a win on trade. I don't think anyone expects that some kind of trade truce or de-escalation of trade tensions is going to eliminate the many, many growing tensions in the bilateral relationship.
CORNISH: But I ask because you heard the president say earlier that, this may come down to a conversation between me and President Xi. You know the players involved. What does that mean - is - given this president's temperament and approach when it comes to trade?
CELICO: I think the Chinese probably are hoping that if it is left to President Trump to negotiate a deal with President Xi, that he may accept some superficial gains that maybe his own administration and experts on trade policy would have said aren't enough to call it a victory. And so the Chinese recognize that, I think very much welcome a high-level meeting even in order to postpone the end of the talks. President Xi and President Trump together declared this was going to be a 90-day process. But even in December, President Trump hinted that if it needed more time, he would give more time. And so those tariff rates may not be going up on March 2 anyway.
CORNISH: Where do you see points of compromise?
CELICO: Again, I think that the Chinese government is starting to recognize that with its slowing economy, foreign investors in the market actually will help the economy meet some of its consumption-led growth goals. And so levelling the playing field for foreign players is something that is also in China's interest - the same things we've been asking for for more than a decade. And so there is an area of compromise - of course, also purchases. The U.S. government has said that they do want to see the trade imbalance righted in some ways. And so while we're not talking about eliminating a massive trade deficit, we are talking about that being an area where both sides win.
CORNISH: Amy Celico leads the China practice at the Albright Stonebridge Group. Thank you so much.
CELICO: Thank you.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
President Trump also said today that he will announce next week exactly where and when he'll meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for a second time in late February. Meanwhile, Trump's envoy for North Korea declared in prepared remarks today that Pyongyang has promised to destroy all of its plutonium and uranium enrichment facilities. Here's NPR's David Welna.
DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: A copy of special representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun's speech to a gathering of North Korea experts at Stanford University was released beforehand by the State Department. In it, Biegun says the U.S. seemingly is, quote, "farther away than ever before," unquote, from the goal of what he calls the final fully verified denuclearization of North Korea. And yet Biegun also says Kim Jong Un made a previously undisclosed promise to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in October. Kim said North Korea would, if the U.S. took unspecified, quote, "corresponding measures," dismantle and destroy all of its plutonium and uranium enrichment facilities where the fuel for nuclear weapons is made.
MICHAEL GREEN: It is more specificity than Donald Trump got in June, but verification, a declaration - what about the weapons? There are huge questions that it leaves on the table.
WELNA: That's Georgetown University North Korea expert Michael Green. He says those questions include...
GREEN: How would it be verified? Would the North Koreans provide a credible declaration of those facilities and allow inspections to make sure the international community got all of them? That's a big question. The second big question is, what about the plutonium and uranium they have already harvested and weaponized? They may have as many as dozens of nuclear weapons from what they've already done. Is that included? Apparently not, so it would leave the North with a considerable and dangerous arsenal.
WELNA: And that arsenal, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told Congress yesterday, is not likely to be dismantled.
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DAN COATS: We currently assess that North Korea will seek to retain its WMD capabilities and is unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and production capabilities.
WELNA: In today's speech, Special Envoy Biegun warns that the U.S. has what he calls contingencies should the diplomatic process with North Korea fail. David Welna, NPR News, Washington.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
There were closing arguments in the trial of Joaquin El Chapo Guzman today. He's accused of being one of the most notorious drug traffickers and leader of the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel. The case now goes to the jury. If convicted, Guzman could spend the rest of his life in an American prison. NPR's Quil Lawrence was at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn, N.Y., and joins us now.
And Quil, this is after three months of proceedings. How did the prosecution sum up its case?
QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: Well, that took all day yesterday, over six hours. And the prosecutor described a multibillion-dollar, multinational enterprise - an entrepreneur exporting drugs to the U.S. using at first a tunnel under the Arizona border; later using train cars filled with cooking oil that had false bottoms; building a canning factory so he could seal kilos of cocaine into La Comadre brand jalapeno chili cans, filling those with cocaine and shipping them to the United States; planes, fishing boats, submarines full of cocaine and cash - and point by point, connecting what cooperating witnesses had - and we'll talk about those in a second - what they had said with wiretaps, that Guzman allegedly set up his own secure communication system and taped and monitored everything sort of Richard Nixon-like. We can listen to a little clip of it.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JOAQUIN GUZMAN LOERA: (Speaking Spanish).
PEDRO FLORES: (Speaking Spanish).
GUZMAN: (Speaking Spanish).
FLORES: (Speaking Spanish).
LAWRENCE: Here he's just haggling over the price of heroin with a drug dealer in Chicago. But this allowed the prosecutor to say with each of these witnesses' testimony - well, how do we know that's true? Well, you heard it from his own mouth, meaning the defendant's own mouth, she was saying.
CORNISH: In the face of all this, the defense calls one witness, and that lasts 30 minutes. Can you talk more about what their closing arguments were, what their answers were to the charges?
LAWRENCE: I mean, the closing arguments were a lot longer, basically all day today. And the defense was a lot less technical than the prosecution and much more animated, discrediting these cooperating witnesses, which isn't hard because most of them are convicted drug dealers and multi-murderers. One's a notorious Colombian drug lord blamed for over a hundred murders, known as La Chupeta.
The defense attorney - he was crude at times. He was warned by the judge not to claim that the government is in some sort of a plot with these ulterior motives against El Chapo. And he kept on appealing to the jury just not to trust the government blindly. He said at some point, this isn't about justice; it's just about getting El Chapo. He said that these cooperating witnesses were going to go free in the United States in exchange for testimony. He said to the jury - they'll be free among you, so be careful. He even went a bit anti-immigrant, saying, we only bring in the best, talking about these cooperating witnesses. And he was claiming that Chapo Guzman was not the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, but it was really his partner Mayo Zambada who was the real drug kingpin.
CORNISH: What happens now?
LAWRENCE: Well, jury deliberations will start next week. They could take a while. I mean, there's so much - three months' worth of evidence. There were boxes and boxes of evidence in the court, including AK-47s and cans of the aforementioned chilis that used to smuggle cocaine. So they might have a lot to work through. But at the same time, it seems kind of lopsided, so much prosecution evidence and so little defense. And Guzman has escaped two Mexican prisons, but they say what he fears so much is being here in the United States where it's much harder to escape from prison. So that's why he feared extradition so much.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Quil Lawrence. Quil, thanks for your reporting.
LAWRENCE: Thank you.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The cold snap in the Midwest is shattering records. In some cities, school is canceled, mail delivery suspended. At least eight people have died from the cold. While you are hopefully huddled someplace warm, we're going to talk now with the man behind one of the most famous pieces ever written about extreme cold. OK, that's a subjective statement, but here is something we can say definitively. Peter Stark wrote the piece "Frozen Alive" more than 20 years ago, and today it is still one of the most popular stories on the website for Outside Magazine. Peter Stark, welcome.
PETER STARK: Thank you. It's great to be here, Ari.
SHAPIRO: Will you just start by reading the first paragraph of this story?
STARK: Sure. (Reading) When your Jeep spins lazily off the mountain road and slams backward into a snowbank, you don't worry immediately about the cold. Your first thought is that you've just dented your bumper. Your second is that you failed to bring a shovel. Your third is that you'll be late for dinner. Friends are expecting you at their cabin around 8 for a moonlight ski, a late dinner, a sauna. Nothing can keep you from that.
SHAPIRO: The story goes on to describe a near-death experience as the man tries to ski to his friend's house and ends up falling in the snow. Of all the things you've written in your career - and you have written a lot - why do you think this story keeps resonating after 20 years?
STARK: In my mind, it's the zombie story, the story that's about being dead or near dead, and it comes back to life every winter when it gets really cold.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter).
STARK: And I think one reason is that we're all humans. We all have a body. We all have the same physiology. And every one of us has been cold in some way or another at one point or another. And this is what happens when your body is taken to an extreme in that cold situation.
SHAPIRO: Tell us about the inspiration for this piece. I understand it was not your original idea to write it this way.
STARK: No. I was really interested in the physiology of cold, and so I came up with this idea of camping out on the coldest spot in the United States in the lower 48 states, Rogers Pass, Mont., on the coldest night of the winter and then writing about that experience and weaving in again the physiology of cold.
Well, when that coldest night of the year rolled around, it was going to be 50 below zero with a 50-mile-an-hour wind, and I decided this might be a really bad idea. So I stayed home, and I called my editor and said, you know, how about if I just camp in the backyard?
SHAPIRO: (Laughter).
STARK: And he said, no, no, no, (laughter) we don't want you to camp in the backyard. Why don't you invent a guy who goes out in cold like this and he gets in trouble and then use his experiences to tell the physiology of the human body responding to cold?
SHAPIRO: Did you do a lot of research with doctors and outdoors experts and actually dig into the science behind this?
STARK: Yes, I did. I did a tremendous amount of research into the physiology of cold. I interviewed actually an old acquaintance from Wisconsin who nearly died of hypothermia by skiing off the wrong side of a mountain in Montana on a 20-degree-below-zero day and getting caught in the woods to really get his sense of what went through his mind in those situations. And I interviewed emergency room doctors who had warmed up hypothermia victims and got a sense of what they were like when they came in.
SHAPIRO: The story concludes on a poetic and sobering note. Will you read this paragraph that's close to the end?
STARK: So this is at the - near the end when the victim who's had a near-death experience in the cold - but he's been rescued and brought to an emergency room, and so he slowly starts to come to consciousness. (Reading) You've traveled to a place where there is no sun. You've seen that in the infinite reaches of the universe, heat is as glorious and ephemeral as the light of the stars. Heat exists only where matter exists, where particles can vibrate and jump. In the infinite winter of space, heat is tiny. It is the cold that is huge.
SHAPIRO: Writer and journalist Peter Stark, thank you so much.
STARK: Thank you, Ari.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The U.S. is trying to negotiate a peace deal to leave Afghanistan. And some Americans who know the country best say the deal on the table now is effectively a surrender. That's what Ryan Crocker argues in The Washington Post this week. He was U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and has spent decades as a diplomat in the Middle East and Asia. Welcome.
RYAN CROCKER: Thanks for having me, Ari.
SHAPIRO: Do you think it's a mistake for the U.S. to negotiate with the Taliban at all, or do you just think this particular negotiation is misguided?
CROCKER: So here's the thing. The Taliban for years has laid out its position that they are ready to talk to us anytime. They will not talk with the government of Afghanistan because they consider it illegitimate. We caved on that. We are now talking directly to the Taliban. The Afghan government is not in the room. If that's the course we continue on, it will totally delegitimize the Afghan government. And I think there is no outcome I could see from doing that that wouldn't effectively be a surrender, and we're just negotiating the terms.
SHAPIRO: One of the arguments you make is that the U.S. won't be able to enforce any peace deal once American troops pull out. By that measure, would the U.S. have to stay in Afghanistan forever?
CROCKER: It's important to look at this in perspective. When I was out there - 2011, 2012, - we had well over 100,000 troopers. We're down now to a little over 14,000. The cost is much less. There still is a cost, but I think it is something we very much can bear. So it's a question of, are we going to see this through, both for our own national security - because Afghanistan, let's not forget, it's where 9/11 came from. Are we going to stand by our values? Because we've put a huge effort into the future of Afghan women and girls making - letting them take their place in society again. Well, that's not part of the Taliban agenda to say the very least.
SHAPIRO: In your description, I'm not hearing anything that sounds like, well, once this condition is met or once this box is checked, then it will be safe and prudent for the U.S. to remove its troops. It sounds like you're saying as long as there's a need, American forces should stay there.
CROCKER: That is exactly what I'm trying to say, Ari - that if there is a need, we need to be there. President Trump said this himself the summer of '17. It's not about calendars. It's about conditions. If that means a presence that may rise or fall in terms of troops on the ground, it is a price, I think, we can pay.
SHAPIRO: In your Washington Post piece, you say these negotiations bear an unfortunate resemblance to the Paris peace talks during the Vietnam War. And you write then, as now, it was clear that by going to the table, we were surrendering; we were just negotiating the terms of our surrender. And I think that some Americans would draw another parallel with Vietnam, which is this war has cost America too many lives and too much money. And those people would argue that it's time for the war to end whether or not the U.S. declares victory. How do you respond to that argument?
CROCKER: Well, here's a hard truth. You don't end a war by pulling your troops off the battlefield. The Obama administration tried that in Iraq, and the war grinds on to the benefit of Iran. Iran is - has done very nicely out of that. Look at Afghanistan. We will simply be handing over to a force that has more patience than we do, and that would be the Taliban. And we've seen that movie before.
SHAPIRO: You've talked about the consequences of leaving Iraq too early, leaving Vietnam too early, leaving Afghanistan too early. Some people will hear this as an argument for endless war.
CROCKER: So here's the thing I've observed over many, many years in the Middle East. We as Americans lack patience. We want to get 'er done. That's how we built our own great country. The rest of the world works on a different clock. What our adversaries have seen over time is that, boy, if you create problems, eventually the Americans will leave; they'll get tired of it; they'll want to move on to something else. So that's what our adversaries count on. That's what our allies fear. We need to be sending the signal right now that we will be where we need to be to protect our interests, to protect our values for as long as it takes.
SHAPIRO: Ambassador Crocker, thanks for speaking with us today.
CROCKER: Thanks very much for having me.
SHAPIRO: Former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker. He's now a diplomat-in-residence at Princeton.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Now to the power struggle in Venezuela where opposition leader Juan Guaido claims to be the country's legitimate president, and President Nicolas Maduro is holding onto power with the support of the armed forces. Now Guaido and his U.S. backers have embarked on a risky strategy to promote a military uprising. Reporter John Otis has more.
JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Nicolas Maduro, who has led Venezuela's socialist revolution for the past six years, is deeply unpopular. He's overseen food shortages, hyperinflation and a crackdown on dissent. But he's kept the military on his side. Analysts say he provides top-ranking officers with fat paychecks and control over lucrative assets, including the state oil company.
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PRESIDENT NICOLAS MADURO: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: In a recent speech, Maduro praised the armed forces as always loyal and never traitorous. But Juan Guaido, the self-proclaimed interim president, is trying to break that support through videotaped messages to the armed forces like this one.
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JUAN GUAIDO: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: Rather than a traditional coup, Guaido calls on officers to turn their backs on Maduro, keep their guns silent and allow his transitional government to take power. This week, U.S. national security adviser John Bolton issued a similar statement.
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JOHN BOLTON: We also today call on the Venezuelan military and security forces to accept the peaceful, democratic and constitutional transfer of power.
OTIS: According to John Polga, a Latin America specialist at the U.S. Naval Academy, it may be just a matter of time before Maduro's support starts to crack.
JOHN POLGA: I think the first general that defects from that coalition is going to be the first in a long line of dominoes to fall.
OTIS: Still, a military coup could quickly spiral out of control. David Smilde, a sociology professor at Tulane University and an expert on Venezuela, says a coup could lead to a military government even more radical than Maduro's.
DAVID SMILDE: One of the most likely coups would be from somebody that thinks Maduro is driving the revolution off the cliff and wants to save the revolution.
OTIS: Another possibility is a split within the armed forces leading to shootouts between factions loyal to Maduro and those backing Guaido. Then there is the presence in Venezuela of Colombian guerrillas, armed mafias and drug trafficking gangs, says Amy Myers Jaffe of the Council on Foreign Relations.
AMY MYERS JAFFE: Maduro could step down. He could go to some neutral country that will take him. But it doesn't mean that all the militarized factions in the country will lay down their guns and report to the new government.
OTIS: Evan Ellis, a research professor at the U.S. Army War College, agrees.
EVAN ELLIS: I think it would very quickly become a violent criminal mess. It would become a - basically a free-for-all.
OTIS: The military's top brass has so far remained loyal to Maduro. Gaudio has offered amnesty to those who switch sides. But many officers may still fear prosecution for corruption, human rights abuses and other crimes should the opposition take power. In addition, Smilde says, many remain committed socialists and resent the calls for a coup, especially those coming out of Washington.
SMILDE: You know, one of the things that keeps the military together is ideology, the anti-imperialists revolution that they're defending. And so I think the United States pressuring in that direction is probably not the most productive.
OTIS: Venezuela's Defense Ministry did not reply to requests for comment. For NPR News, I'm John Otis.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Record-setting cold temperatures are paralyzing parts of the Midwest while other parts of the country are bracing for bad weather that never came. That's welcome news in Atlanta. The city is gearing up to host the Super Bowl this week and the hundreds of thousands of visitors that come with it. As WABE's Emma Hurt reports, after some high-profile missteps, the city is still coping with winter weather paranoia.
EMMA HURT: Atlanta seems ready for the Super Bowl. Downtown workers have been told to work from home to make way for visitors. The state legislature isn't in session either. The weather is looking pretty clear and mild until the game, too. But earlier this week...
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BRIAN KEMP: Well, good morning, everyone. Thank you for being here on short notice.
HURT: New Governor Brian Kemp and other top officials wanted to talk about the couple inches of precipitation in the forecast. Everyone was worried about ice and past winter weather scars. Here's Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms.
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KEISHA LANCE BOTTOMS: And because we don't want a repeat of 2014, we have already begun to pre-treat our streets.
HURT: What happened in 2014? Two inches of snow fell in an hour and paralyzed the city. Offices and schools let out early. Everyone rushed to get home at once, clogging iced-over roadways. It's been called the snowpocalypse and the ice jam. And the country noticed. "Saturday Night Live" even did a skit featuring a now-iconic at Atlantan, Buford Calloway.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE")
TARAN KILLAM: (As Buford Calloway) I told you, Sethery, we don't know how to handle snow. I'm not one of those - from one of those Northern states like Vermont or South Carolina.
SETH MEYERS: (Laughter) OK.
HURT: But it wasn't a joking matter in Georgia. Thousands were stuck in cars for nearly 20 hours. Some slept in their offices. Brian Robinson worked for then-Governor Nathan Deal during the storm.
BRIAN ROBINSON: We cannot afford to have what we had happen on that day in 2014 where children were trapped on buses, unable to go to the bathroom, second graders with no food and no heat. We can't have that again.
HURT: So now he says the pendulum has swung towards caution. Better to have a few fake snow days than another disaster. Rebecca Burns is a longtime Atlanta journalist.
REBECCA BURNS: We're not idiots in Atlanta. We know how to drive. We can get around.
HURT: In 2014, she wrote about how Atlanta's lack of cohesive urban planning and transit laid the groundwork for the chaos.
BURNS: When you have a place that is designed solely around all the cars of the millions of people in a metro area funneling in and out of one small area downtown and you release all those cars at once and then you throw some snow into it, that's where the disaster comes from.
HURT: It scarred the city's psyche, she says. And let's not forget one other embarrassing winter weather event in 2000.
BURNS: The last time the Super Bowl was in Atlanta, there was an ice storm, and everything was a disaster.
HURT: So this year, a risk of ice the week of the Super Bowl - Atlanta overcorrected, and then it kind of drizzled, and the sun came out. Patriots fans in town are laughing. But to Atlantans who remember 2014, better safe than sorry. Caleb Torres is from Atlanta and is a Super Bowl volunteer working downtown.
CALEB TORRES: Who needs snow to have a snow day, right? We can have our snow days whenever we want a snow day. Cold rain - that sounds like a snow day.
HURT: And another bonus - unlike a normal Atlanta weekday, traffic wasn't miserable. For NPR News, I'm Emma Hurt in Atlanta.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
As the Senate has been debating pulling out U.S. troops from Syria, more disturbing information has come out today about the conditions for some in that country. The World Health Organization says that in the last two months, at least 29 children have died as their families fled the conflict for a camp in Northeastern Syria. Most died from exposure to the cold on the trip or at the camp itself.
NPR's Ruth Sherlock was there a few days ago. She's left Syria and joins us now on the line. Welcome back, Ruth.
RUTH SHERLOCK, BYLINE: Thank you.
CORNISH: So the WHO is sounding a warning about the conditions for these thousands of people - right? - who are streaming into this camp. Can you tell us what it was like there?
SHERLOCK: I mean, the conditions are just awful. You know, the U.S.-led offensive in Northeastern Syria against ISIS is ongoing. And there's many airstrikes going on, and this is causing so many people to flee. Camp officials told us that as many as 23,000 people have arrived at the camp in just the last eight weeks. So they're overwhelmed, and they just don't have the resources to cope.
Some of the people who arrive at these camps have been walking for days. They don't have the proper clothes. They arrived cold and often wet, soaked to the skin. You know, it was raining when we were there, and they were standing in these long lines, waiting for tents. But there aren't enough tents to go around, so some of these people have to then sleep outside, exposed to the elements. And that's what's causing some of these terrible deaths that the World Health Organization noted.
But there's also another tragic side to this, which is that people who do have heating are exposed to risks from those heaters. They're having to use these kerosene heaters that are very dangerous and can set tents alight. Last week, a 7-year-old girl died in a tent fire in al-Hol camp just a few days before we arrived there. And we've also heard about other similar cases where this has happened.
CORNISH: Right. This is just one camp. What's the overall displacement situation?
SHERLOCK: Well, as much as half of the country's population is displaced internally or outside of the country. That's some 11 million people. And although there's been a trickle of people returning from neighboring Lebanon to Syria, the vast majority still think it's too dangerous to go back either because of the war, which is ongoing, or because they face arrest by the Assad regime. Many are living in awful conditions similar to those that we saw in al-Hol camp.
CORNISH: Syria is a country with multiple conflicts at this point, right? There's the war against ISIS that's being led by the U.S. with local fighters. There's the civil war between the government and rebels that's been going for nearly eight years. Where do these conflicts stand now?
SHERLOCK: Well, there's currently only a little pocket of ISIS left. However, people are concerned that should the U.S. withdraw or should the dynamics change on the ground again, ISIS could still re-emerge. And at the same time in parallel, there's a civil war going on in the country. The Syrian government has the upper hand in that, but rebel forces still control the northern province of Idlib where there are millions of people. And now the Syrian government and the Russians, their allies, have said they might plan to attack that area.
CORNISH: Finally, you were in Northeastern Syria. What were people thinking about this idea of the U.S. withdrawal?
SHERLOCK: People feel angry and betrayed. Kurdish officials say they've lost the lives of thousands of young men and women in the U.S.-backed fight against ISIS, and the U.S. withdrawal could now expose them to new threats - a takeover by the Syrian regime or an attack by Turkey, who says that the authorities - the Kurdish authorities there are allied with militants that it sees as terrorists. But also, you know, Kurdish officials we spoke to said privately they don't necessarily believe the withdrawal will happen as quickly as President Trump would like. They understand the political divisions that are happening in the U.S. over this.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Ruth Sherlock. Ruth, thanks for speaking with us.
SHERLOCK: Thank you.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Nearly three months after the midterm elections, North Carolina's 9th District still doesn't have representation in the U.S. House. That's because the state board of elections there declined to certify the race due to allegations of vote-by-mail fraud. Today Governor Roy Cooper appointed new members to that state board, and those five people will soon have to decide whether a whole new election is necessary. NPR's Miles Parks has more.
MILES PARKS, BYLINE: On November 7, 2018, Dan McCready thought his run for Congress was over. McCready ran as a Democrat in North Carolina's 9th District. He trailed Republican Mark Harris by 905 votes, and he conceded the day after the election. That seems like a lifetime ago now.
DAN MCCREADY: Oh, boy, it's been such a whirlwind. The last couple of months feel like two years.
PARKS: McCready retracted his concession after the North Carolina State Board of Elections decided not to certify the race and instead began an investigation centered on a political operative hired by the Harris campaign named McCrae Dowless. Dowless had a reputation for helping vote-by-mail totals in the east part of the 9th District. Some voters have alleged that Dowless collected people's ballots, which is illegal in North Carolina. There have also been questions about whether all the ballots he allegedly collected were actually turned in. Here's McCready again.
MCCREADY: There was clearly a - you know, a culture of corruption that was built by my opponent. You know, exactly how much he knew and when he knew it I hope that we'll be able to uncover during the investigation.
PARKS: Harris was recently hospitalized and wasn't available for an interview. In the past, he said he talked to Dowless often and even had a, quote, "pastorally relationship with him." But he's repeatedly said he knew of no illegal activity. His campaign recently asked a state court to certify his election. A judge rejected that request last week. Harris and state Republicans argue that there aren't enough votes in question to overturn his 905-vote margin anyway. But during the hearing, an attorney for the state alluded to the possibility that investigators may have evidence that shows otherwise.
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UNIDENTIFIED ATTORNEY: I don't know currently what's in that material. I think I can say with some confidence, however, that the material that is there certainly suggests that the number of disputed votes more than sufficiently calls this margin into question.
PARKS: The public will know a lot more about that evidence in the next few weeks. The newly appointed state board made up of three Democrats and two Republicans is expected to hold a public hearing to go over what investigators have uncovered.
GERRY COHEN: No one really knows what the evidence is being presented. Will it show a large amount of fraud, a little, none?
PARKS: That's Gerry Cohen, a former special counsel for the North Carolina General Assembly. He says whether the board calls for a new election or certifies Harris, the rules require a bipartisan vote.
COHEN: We have had our state board of elections called to elections where there has been substantial evidence of fraud. We've had three local elections redone in the last three years in North Carolina, for example.
PARKS: If the board is deadlocked, Cohen says the U.S. House of Representatives could deem the seat vacant. In that case, the governor can call a new election. McCready, the Democrat who thought his candidacy was over months ago, says he now fully expects a new election to be called.
MCCREADY: To me, I think, this is a fight that needs fighting. It rises above Republican or Democrat or even one election. I mean, this is about what it means to be an American.
PARKS: His campaign has begun staffing and fundraising accordingly. Since early December, he's raised over $500,000. Miles Parks, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MICHAEL KIWANUKA SONG, "YOU'VE GOT NOTHING TO LOSE")
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
A failed bill in Virginia's state legislature is sparking a national debate about abortion and prompting Republican politicians, including President Trump, to weigh in. This morning, Trump tweeted - Democrats are becoming the party of late-term abortion. He was responding to a proposal backed by Virginia Democrats to remove several restrictions on the procedure, including later in pregnancy. NPR's Sarah McCammon covers reproductive rights and joins us from Virginia Beach. Hi, Sarah.
SARAH MCCAMMON, BYLINE: Hi there.
SHAPIRO: Tell us more about this Virginia bill. What would it have done?
MCCAMMON: Well, what's getting the most attention is that this bill would have removed a requirement that three doctors have to certify that a third-trimester abortion is necessary to protect a woman's life or health. There was an exchange this week in the Virginia House of Delegates that sparked a lot of controversy. It was between Republican Delegate Todd Gilbert and Delegate Kathy Tran. She's the Democrat who sponsored the bill.
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TODD GILBERT: How late in the third trimester could a physician perform an abortion if he indicated it would impair the mental health of the woman?
KATHY TRAN: Or physical health.
GILBERT: OK.
TRAN: OK.
GILBERT: I'm talking about the mental health.
TRAN: So, I mean, through the third trimester, the third trimester goes all the way up to 40 weeks.
GILBERT: OK.
MCCAMMON: Gilbert pressed Tran on whether abortions would be allowed up until a woman goes into labor. She said there's no limit in the bill, but that decision would be made by a woman and her doctor.
SHAPIRO: Now, that bill was voted down by a Virginia House subcommittee this week, but it has launched a big debate about third-trimester abortions. How is that debate taking shape?
MCCAMMON: Right. President Trump is criticizing Virginia's Democratic governor, Ralph Northam. In a radio interview yesterday, Northam was asked for his views on the bill. And he said third-trimester abortions are complicated and often occur when it would be impossible for a baby to survive outside a woman's body.
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RALPH NORTHAM: So in this particular example, if a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that's what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.
MCCAMMON: And President Trump called those comments terrible. And other Republicans have accused Northam of supporting infanticide. Northam responded with a press conference a little while ago today. He is a pediatrician. And he's counseled families in tough situations, he said. He says Republican lawmakers are trying to score political points here and that they should not interfere in these difficult decisions.
SHAPIRO: What is known about abortions that take place late in a pregnancy? How common are they and what are the typical reasons for them?
MCCAMMON: Well, there's not a lot of really detailed data. But the Guttmacher Institute, which does support abortion rights, says a little over 1 percent of abortions take place at some point after 21 weeks, which is still well within the second trimester. Medical groups say third-trimester abortions are very unusual and often do happen because of severe complications for the fetus or the woman and that abortion can be the safest option for women in some of these cases.
And I should mention, Ari, we're likely to see more of these debates in the months to come. For example, in New York, they just passed a law allowing abortions after 24 weeks to protect a woman's life or health. And with all the changes in the U.S. Supreme Court, there's a big tug of war over abortion rights - conservatives wanting to restrict them, liberals wanting to expand them. And we're going to see more of that in the months to come.
SHAPIRO: NPR's Sarah McCammon. Thank you.
MCCAMMON: Thank you.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
So it's nearly February. How are you doing with those New Year's resolutions? Did you make one to save more money? Well, NPR's Chris Arnold might be able to help. He covers personal finance for Life Kit, NPR's collection of audio guides on how to live a better life, including one powerful thing you can do to save more money.
CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: We are going to start in caveman times. All right, you are a cave man - just go with me here - or a cave woman. And you're super hairy, and you're, like, roaming the savannah. You're fighting for your life every day. There's wolves and saber-toothed tigers, and they're creeping up behind you all the time. It's like, whoa.
(SOUNDBITE OF JUNGLE CAT GROWLING)
ARNOLD: Now, is this the best time to be thinking about saving and your 401(k) retirement account? I mean, no, of course not. Cave men don't think about that stuff. You need to survive the day and eat food and don't get eaten yourself. And OK, we're being stupid and corny here. But this is in fact a good lesson about saving money because the point is that we are hardwired to focus on the present and immediate gratification. And it's been that way for a very long time. And this is, like, the opposite of what your brain has to do to focus on saving money.
BRIGITTE MADRIAN: We tend to overweight how we feel in the present - our current situation - relative to what things can be like in the future.
ARNOLD: That's Brigitte Madrian. She's a behavioral economist at Brigham Young University.
MADRIAN: I study all of the ways that households make mistakes in managing their money and how to improve financial outcomes for consumers.
ARNOLD: And Madrian says when it comes to saving for the future, there is one thing that research has proven to work really well. You have to make it automatic.
MADRIAN: The right way to do it is the easy way to do it. And the easy way to do it is through payroll deduction because the money you never see is the money that you're much less likely to miss. So if your employer is offering a retirement savings plan such as a 401(k), you should absolutely be participating in your 401(k) because you can sign up once, and then you can just leave it alone.
ARNOLD: And if an employer plan is not an option, Madrian says you can still set up a retirement investment account yourself and get money from every paycheck or from your bank account every two weeks auto-deposited into it. Now, a lot of people will say that, look; I can't afford to save money like that. I mean, I'm - I don't make that much money. And these days it's true that many people are living paycheck to paycheck, and finances are really tight.
MADRIAN: But what's also true is that many of those households that are living on the edge end up having to turn to expensive forms of credit when they get hit by financial shocks.
ARNOLD: But here's the really amazing thing. Using this automatic approach to saving, many people can save much more money than they think they can.
MADRIAN: Yeah, and there have been studies that have shown that, you know, if people increase their contribution rate by, you know, a couple of percentage points a year, within a few years, you can get a large fraction of people, you know, who started out saving 3 or 4 percent a year up to 10, 11, 12 percent a year, and they haven't even noticed it.
ARNOLD: And there's some pretty astounding evidence now that this works no matter how much money you make. The U.K. recently implemented a new law, and it says that the entire working population of the country - the entire country has to be enrolled in a retirement savings plan. So that means from people who flip burgers at McDonald's up to, like, big-deal company executives - you get enrolled in an automatic savings plan, and all companies have to do it.
CHARLOTTE CLARK: There are 1.2 million employers in the U.K. - every single one of them.
ARNOLD: Charlotte Clark is the U.K. government official in charge of implementing the savings program. She says they started off with people saving 2 percent of their salary. They just bumped it up to 5 percent, the employer is kicking in part of that. People can opt out if they want to.
And how is it working? I mean, how many people are sticking with it and deciding that they can afford to save for the future?
CLARK: So it's been much more successful than we thought. I - so over 90 percent of people stick with it.
ARNOLD: Ninety percent of people hang in there and keep saving because it's automatic.
CLARK: And we didn't think if you did it across the whole of the population you'd end up with that sort of number. My view is defaults are really powerful.
ARNOLD: Defaults are really powerful, meaning if you can take that first step and get money automatically going into a retirement account, the odds are overwhelming that you're going to be able to save a lot more money going forward. Chris Arnold, NPR News.
CORNISH: Like Kit is NPR's new family of audio guides for navigating your life, everything from finances to diet and exercise to raising kids. Check out Life Kit guides wherever you get podcasts or at npr.org/lifekit.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Venezuela is on edge as opponents of authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro plan a massive protest for Saturday. The U.S. is backing the opposition and has not ruled out sending troops. If that happens, Maduro warned yesterday the U.S. may face a, quote, "Vietnam War in Latin America."
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Maduro has survived challenges before in part because of the support of the Venezuelan army. I spoke today with Milos Alcalay about this. He was a Venezuelan diplomat for many years and lives in Caracas. Alcalay told me he hopes and believes that, for Maduro, this time is different because of the man who has unified the opposition, Juan Guaido, the head of the Venezuelan National Assembly and self-declared interim president.
MILOS ALCALAY: He is now one voice for all of the different political parties. This is very important because before that, there were many, many leaders who were having - from different political parties - their perspective. But in this moment, there is only one voice - the voice of the president of the National Assembly or, constitutionality, is also the president at interim. And this has made a hope for all the Venezuelans to arrive to the democratization. So whether we are in this process, the government has reacted very violently with 40 manifestantes who were killed, with hundreds of Venezuelans in prison. And of course this has a very strong impact of people who do want a return to democracy and to freedom.
CORNISH: People are also watching the military closely. Right now the army supports Maduro. The top brass has stood by him. What could change things?
ALCALAY: The things can change for three important reasons. One is the people. We have had a Venezuelan spring - the people in the street. There's expression of a river - a human river of people who are supporting Juan Guaido. And this is one very important component - the support of the people. The second important component is international support. Many of our neighboring countries are suffering. The president sent more than 3 million Venezuelans because of this situation - have gone to Colombia and Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, creating a lot of social problems. And the solution of Venezuela must be made in Venezuela. And the only reasonable way is to push for elections.
And the third component is what you're saying, the military. Of course the military are - especially the command of the military, are our government. But there is a lot of unrest in the military forces. You can see that there are more than 100 military who are in prison. Thousands of military have stepped out from the army. And of course this huge corruption that existed has made the sort of complicity with Mr. Maduro, but there is unrest.
CORNISH: Would the opposition welcome or discourage U.S. intervention in the form of troops?
ALCALAY: Of course that the opposition would like to get rid of this dictatorship through peaceful ways. But nevertheless, if the government continues harassing and continues giving the demonstrations and putting in prison - I think that in order to survive, any help will be received. Hopefully, I insist, that we continue as much as possible on the diplomatic solution and a multilateral solution.
CORNISH: If there is a peaceful solution, what would it look like?
ALCALAY: In the history, there are examples of a president who recognized that their time is over. The time of Maduro is over. And the time for democracy is to reconstruct the institutions and to have free elections to - that will allow us to return.
CORNISH: Milos Alcalay, thank you so much for speaking with us.
ALCALAY: Thank you for the interview, and good day.
CORNISH: That's Milos Alcalay, a former Venezuelan diplomat. He now supports opposition leader Juan Guaido.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Warner Bros. says the next Batman film will drop in 2021, and it looks like Ben Affleck won't be sticking in the main role.
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SHAPIRO: Affleck first donned the cape in 2016, and he has worn it in three feature films. Several actors have played the role on the big screen, each with their own unique take. And here to talk us through some of the best and worst caped crusaders is NPR's resident Batman expert, Glen Weldon, author of "The Caped Crusade: Batman And The Rise Of Nerd Culture." Hi, Glen.
GLEN WELDON, BYLINE: Hey, Ari.
SHAPIRO: Is it Batmen - Batmans (ph) - Bat - what's the plural of Batman?
WELDON: It's a good question. It's attorney's general, but I think you can get away with Batmen.
SHAPIRO: OK, Batmen. There was some controversy when Ben Affleck was originally cast as the latest of these Batmen. How did that shake out, and how did Affleck do?
WELDON: It was more a nontroversy (ph). People were just making fun of his accent, thinking that he'd be like, (imitating Boston accent) get away from the car, Riddler. But that didn't turn out. He didn't leave much of an impression on the character because he wasn't given much to do.
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EZRA MILLER: (As Barry Allen) What are your superpowers again?
BEN AFFLECK: (As Bruce Wayne) I'm rich.
WELDON: When he had a really good scene, like with Ezra Miller in "Justice League," he had a good scene partner, then it worked. But otherwise, he was kind of a non-issue.
SHAPIRO: Who's your favorite big-screen Batman?
WELDON: Well, this is an asterisk, but Kevin Conroy voiced the role in "Batman: The Animated Series."
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KEVIN CONROY: (As Batman) Do I look stressed out to you?
LOREN LESTER: (As Robin) You? Get out of town.
CONROY: (As Batman) Exactly. I think I need a vacation.
WELDON: And there were a couple theatrical releases that spun off from that. In terms of capturing all the nuance, all the facets of this character, he's my guy.
SHAPIRO: OK. What about the worst?
WELDON: Well, you know, George Clooney, bless him. I mean, he - again...
SHAPIRO: I forgot he was a Batman.
WELDON: He was in the middle of this Joel Schumacher film which was filled with neon and garish. And he was just playing stoic, which came off as stiff.
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GEORGE CLOONEY: (As Batman) Hi, Freeze. I'm Batman.
WELDON: And he kind of tilted his head and looked at his scene partner and in the way he did when he was on "ER." And, you know, he's developed since then, but he wasn't much of a Batman.
SHAPIRO: So many big-screen Batmen are so self-serious, one that really does not take himself all that seriously - Lego Batman.
WELDON: Yeah. He was a long time coming. He was a parody of all the Batman who took themselves too seriously.
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WILL ARNETT: (As Batman) I don't talk about feelings, Alfred. I don't have any. I've never seen one. I'm a night-stalking crime-fighting vigilante and a heavy metal rapping machine. I don't feel anything emotionally except for rage.
WELDON: And Will Arnett just knocks it out of the park with that.
SHAPIRO: In addition to all the big-screen Batmen - Val Kilmer, Christian Bale and on and on - there are small-screen Batmen. Let's talk about Adam West.
WELDON: Adam West - iconic, indelible. He created a Batman who, if you think about it, was on a comedy show who didn't realize he was on a comedy show.
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ADAM WEST: (As Batman) Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb.
WELDON: He played it absolutely straight. That was the key to that character. And he'd never winked at the audience once. You know, careful, chum, pedestrian safety. That's great. That's what made that character such an icon.
SHAPIRO: We just saw a huge reinvention of Spider-Man with the latest animated "Into The Spider-Verse" film. We now have an Afro-Latino Spider-Man. We have a Spider-Girl. Do you think we could see something similar with Batman, a total reinvention of the role?
WELDON: There is no reason why we wouldn't. What is a Michael B. Jordan doing right now? You know, what is a Henry Golding from "Crazy Rich Asians" - what is Justin Baldoni from "Jane The Virgin" - there is no reason he has to look like he's always looked. He doesn't need to be a white guy with dark hair. He could be anybody. Again, Michael B. Jordan has the abs. He's got the shoulders. He's got the chin. That's pretty much - put him in there. Put him in the suit.
SHAPIRO: You can paint those abs on. Anybody can have the ads with CGI. Why do you think we keep coming back to this character?
WELDON: Because ultimately, even though he seems like he's all dark and grim and gritty, he's a creature of hope. His thing is what happened to me will not happen to anyone else because I will punch crime in the face until it doesn't. And ultimately, that's altruism, right? To me, that's a message of hope.
SHAPIRO: That's Glen Weldon, one of the hosts of our Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast. Thanks, Glen.
WELDON: Thank you.
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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The U.S. has begun production of a new nuclear weapon. Supporters of the weapon say it's needed to counter Russia, but critics worry it's taking America back to a time when nuclear weapons were more likely to be used. NPR's Geoff Brumfiel has more.
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GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: It wasn't that long ago when the military had plans to use nuclear weapons all over the place.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: July 1962. These troops were the first in our Army's history to engage in a tactical exercise supported by live nuclear firepower.
BRUMFIEL: That's archival footage from the Nevada desert. Hundreds of troops rehearsed an attack, but before they went in, they fired a tiny nuclear weapon at a simulated enemy position.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: It detonated perfectly, releasing its lethal radiation.
BRUMFIEL: Back then, that was how some thought nuclear war would look - nukes small enough to knock out just a couple of city blocks used together with conventional weapons like tanks and troops. Of course, that's not what happened. Radiation and other factors made nuclear weapons a bad fit for the battlefield. And as the U.S.'s conventional strength grew, battlefield nuclear weapons became less important.
MATTHEW KROENIG: And at the end of the Cold War, the United States said, well, that was kind of stupid. Why did we have all this stuff? Let's get rid of it.
BRUMFIEL: Matthew Kroenig is at the Atlantic Council. He also worked on nuclear strategy in the Pentagon. The U.S. dismantled nearly all of its battlefield nuclear weapons, but Russia took a different path. It has kept thousands of battlefield nukes in storage.
KROENIG: So today, Russia has nuclear landmines, nuclear torpedoes, nuclear depth charges, nuclear artillery, nuclear short-range missiles.
BRUMFIEL: And the Trump administration believes Russia would be tempted to use some of these weapons in a conflict. If that happened, Kroenig says, the U.S. wouldn't be able to respond in kind. The only nukes it has left are big weapons designed to fight an apocalyptic nuclear war. So the administration has begun converting an existing larger warhead into a new smaller low-yield weapon more like the old battlefield nukes.
KROENIG: What the low-yield nuclear weapons do is say, no, actually, we have a range of options. If you use a low-yield nuclear weapon, we can respond with one, two or three of our own.
JEFFREY LEWIS: I mean, well, it's insane.
BRUMFIEL: That's Jeffrey Lewis, a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, who's not a fan of battlefield nukes. The Trump administration's new warhead sits on the same missile that now carries a much more powerful nuclear weapon. So if the U.S. did use it for some reason...
LEWIS: All the Russians are going to see is that a missile that only carries nuclear warheads is heading toward Russia. And Russian policy, as Vladimir Putin has said many times, is not to wait for it to land.
BRUMFIEL: In other words, Russia could unleash an attack on the U.S. just to be safe. Olga Oliker is with the International Crisis Group. She says just the existence of smaller U.S. weapons could cause the Russians to take battlefield nukes out of storage.
OLGA OLIKER: They think, wow, we need to deter that. No way our conventional weapons deter that. We have to emphasize the nuclear capability.
BRUMFIEL: She says that could end up countering the vastly superior conventional forces of the U.S.
OLIKER: They're throwing away an advantage.
BRUMFIEL: The Trump administration says several of these new smaller weapons will be ready to enter service later this year, but the administration's long-term plans for more battlefield nukes face a bigger obstacle - newly elected Democrats have vowed to block them. Geoff Brumfiel, NPR News, Washington.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The Pentagon is sending thousands more active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border. Orders were signed today for an initial deployment of 2,400 troops with more to follow. NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman joins us now with more. Hi, Tom.
TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: Hey, Ari.
SHAPIRO: Is this a surprise?
BOWMAN: You know, it really isn't. Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan raised the issue publicly at a White House meeting a few weeks back. And, of course, troops were first sent to the border last year in the run-up to the midterm elections. Now, the numbers have since come down, but the Department of Homeland Security asked the Pentagon for more assistance.
So today, orders were signed for another 2,400 active-duty troops to be sent to the border within a couple of weeks, another 1,100 active troops within a month. And they'll join the active-duty troops there already, about 2,300, with the Guard troops there, another 2,100. And they'll be stringing concertina wire, providing mobile surveillance transport for Customs and Border Protection.
SHAPIRO: Why does the Trump administration say these troops are needed right now?
BOWMAN: Well, there's a lot of wire to string, a lot of razor wire - 150 to 160 miles mostly in California and Arizona. And the additional active troops will bring the numbers back up to the original force of almost 6,000 that were deployed last fall. Now, President Trump says the numbers of migrants heading to the border - it's a crisis, a threat to national security. He said it's an invasion. But there's a lot of skepticism in D.C. and along the border about whether this is necessary.
And also at the Pentagon, people I talk with say, listen; this is a waste of money. You don't use active-duty troops for this. You can use - they don't believe there is a crisis or an invasion. They say you can use some Guard troops for this. And, of course, all of this is happening in the midst of a fierce debate about whether to provide funding for the border wall President Trump wants to build.
SHAPIRO: Right. Members of Congress are negotiating on that right now. How do they play into all of this?
BOWMAN: Well, members of Congress - two days ago, there were - Pentagon officials testified before the House Armed Services Committee about military assistance at the border. John Rood, who's the undersecretary of defense for policy, was there. And he basically didn't mention anything about these additional troops heading to the border.
And today, the chairman of the committee, Democrat Adam Smith of Washington state, put out this blistering statement. He said he only learned about the deployment by making a phone call to acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, although Shanahan mentioned it at a press briefing. I actually asked him about this. Are you going to send more troops? He said a few thousand. So Adam Smith, the congressman, put out a statement saying, quote, "this was at best an error in judgment and at worst flat-out dishonesty by Pentagon officials."
SHAPIRO: That's NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman on the deployment of thousands more troops to the U.S.-Mexico border. Thanks, Tom.
BOWMAN: You're welcome, Ari.