RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
National Cathedral here in Washington, D.C., often hosts big, important ceremonies, like the funeral of President George H.W. Bush last month. It's also the workplace of some of the most skilled stonemasons in the country, and those masons are in the midst of a massive renovation project. Here's Mikaela Lefrak from our member station WAMU.
JOE ALONSO: All right. Let's see, Mikaela. Step on these planks.
MIKAELA LEFRAK, BYLINE: All right.
ALONSO: You good?
LEFRAK: I think I'm good.
ALONSO: Welcome to the top of the world.
LEFRAK: This is what it sounds like to be on scaffolding 300 feet above the nation's capital. The cathedral's head stonemason, Joe Alonso, is showing me around its central tower.
ALONSO: We're probably 60-some feet higher in elevation right now than the top of the Washington Monument. This is probably going to be the biggest stone restoration job in this country, not a doubt.
LEFRAK: Seven years ago, a rare earthquake hit Washington. The cathedral remained open, but it sustained more than $30 million in damage to its Gothic pinnacles, finials, buttresses and spires.
ALONSO: Every one of these pinnacles that you see have rotated and moved and have snapped. So they're all loose.
LEFRAK: The cathedral's construction took most of the 20th century. It's the sixth-largest cathedral in the world. Stone workers, many from Italy, carved its Gothic details, like gargoyles and angels, by hand. Inside a dusty masonry shop around the corner, stonemason Andy Uhl carves a hunk of limestone with a steel chisel and mallet. It will eventually form part of a pinnacle, replacing one that fell off during the earthquake.
ANDY UHL: And this whole building was done this way, one chip at a time.
LEFRAK: Nearby, carver Sean Callahan is drawing up designs for the top of the pinnacle with a stubby pencil.
SEAN CALLAHAN: And once I have that all plotted out, then I can start carving.
LEFRAK: Uhl and Callahan say there's lots of work for them here in Washington thanks to all the federal government buildings and monuments. They've carved everything from delicate flowers on the White House to eyebrows on angels atop the cathedral.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL TOLLING)
LEFRAK: But their trade is a dying art. Callahan says his biggest job competitors these days are robots.
CALLAHAN: They can't do everything a person can do, but robots are getting better every day at reproducing this type of work.
LEFRAK: At National Cathedral, the human crew has great job security. The cathedral still has to raise about 20 million more dollars to complete the earthquake repairs. Alonso says there are at least five more years of work to do. But to him, every chip in the stone is worth it.
ALONSO: And it's just incredible. I still - as a stone mason, you look at this thing, and it just - it still amazes me.
LEFRAK: From the top of the tower, he points out local and national landmarks. And with the wind whipping around us, it really does feel like the top of the world.
For NPR News, I'm Mikaela Lefrak in Washington.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
There's a new probe in orbit around the moon. And sometime earlier in this new year, it's expected to land on the Moon's far side, the side we never see from Earth. It is a Chinese probe. And as NPR's Joe Palca explains, although it's essentially a scientific mission, it's also laying the groundwork for sending Chinese astronauts to the moon.
JOE PALCA, BYLINE: It only makes sense to send machines to the moon before trying to send humans.
JIM HEAD: Before Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, the United States sent 21 robotic missions to the moon to prepare the way.
PALCA: Jim Head is a planetary scientist at Brown University. He says he's convinced the Chinese are doing the same thing.
HEAD: The robotic program is providing all the kinds of background that you would need for building space suits and things like that, like lunar rovers. So they're building towards human exploration, for sure.
PALCA: That's not to say there won't be interesting science to come from the mission. Briony Horgan is a planetary scientist at Purdue University.
BRIONY HORGAN: This mission is really exciting because it's the first time any space agency will have landed on the far side of the moon.
PALCA: Horgan says scientists know the far and near sides are very different.
HORGAN: The far side is actually much more primitive. It contains really ancient crust that dates back to the very, very early solar system. There's rocks all over the far side that are over 4 billion years old. And now we're really excited to see what those look like up close.
PALCA: Now, it may seem odd that, with so much to explore on the far side, all the landing probes to date have gone to the near side.
HORGAN: That's mostly because it's a lot easier to communicate with, right? I mean, we can actually see the near side. And so we get direct radio communication with the entire near side of the moon.
PALCA: Horgan says the Chinese have solved that problem by adding a third component to the mission. The first component is a lander. The lander carries the second component, a mobile rover.
HORGAN: And then the third component is a satellite that's going to stay in orbit above the far side of the moon and act as a relay between the Earth and the far side of the moon.
PALCA: It might be handy if U.S. lunar missions could also use the relay satellite. But that's not likely. Official collaboration between NASA and the Chinese space program is essentially prohibited by law. There are also restrictions on exporting U.S. space technology to China. But Brown University's Jim Head says some amount of collaboration just makes sense.
HEAD: Why would we send a spacecraft to the same location to do exactly the same thing when we can optimize the amount of scientific return for the United States and for other countries by collaborating as best we can?
PALCA: And while China may not be as forthcoming as NASA about what their civilian space program is up to, Head says they're not completely opaque, either.
HEAD: If you talk to the right people, they are not holding things back. There are security issues there from their point of view, as well as ours. But nonetheless, they've been very forthcoming with their civilian space program.
PALCA: The United States has its own lunar ambitions. The Trump administration has asked NASA to focus on returning humans to the moon. It's just possible there will already be Chinese astronauts there when they arrive. Joe Palca, NPR News.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Since the passage of the Clean Air Act, air quality throughout the country has steadily gotten better but not everywhere. In one community near Pittsburgh, air pollution has actually been getting worse. Read Frazier of The Allegheny Front explains why.
REID FRAZIER, BYLINE: From her front porch, Collette Williams points out the lights from U.S. Steel's big plant a half-mile away.
COLLETTE WILLIAMS: So if you stand, like, on that over here or, like, if you look right in between that building right there, you can see the mill right there.
FRAZIER: The mill is U.S. Steel's Clairton Coke Works. The region's steel industry is a shell of what it once was. But the Clairton Works, about 20 miles south of Pittsburgh, remains North America's largest producer of coke, a key component of steelmaking. It's basically pure carbon made from baking coal at high temperatures. The process can create a lot of pollution.
WILLIAMS: That's, like, a white smoke. And then over there is, like, a dark smoke.
FRAZIER: According to the EPA, the air here is some of the worst in the country. It's a big concern for Williams, whose 13-year-old son SaVaughn has severe asthma. A long list of daily medications keeps his lungs open.
WILLIAMS: So that's his albuterol solution. That's what goes in a machine.
FRAZIER: About three years ago, his asthma started flaring up, leading to ER visits, more doctors and more medication. Around this time, regulators say, the plant's air pollution got worse. It's impossible to say whether SaVaughn's problems were linked to the Coke Works. But one research team found asthma rates for kids in Clairton are double the countywide rate.
WILLIAMS: I'm really hurt and upset about my son because he can't be a normal kid. He can't run around and go play and stay over other kids' houses because I don't know how his asthma is going to react.
FRAZIER: There are around 20 coke plants in the U.S. And many have violated clean air laws. In Clairton, it's been a problem for decades. Regulators reached major settlements with U.S. Steel over the plant's pollution violations in 1979, 1993, 2007, 2008, 2014 and 2016. But after every agreement, the plant would again fail to meet requirements.
JIM KELLY: Well, apparently, what we were doing in the past wasn't working.
FRAZIER: Jim Kelly is deputy director at the Allegheny County Health Department. In June, it tried something new. It issued an order threatening to idle parts of the plant if U.S. Steel didn't cut pollution.
KELLY: We're just not seeing that dedication to maintain the facility and maintain just good, basic operational practices.
FRAZIER: Chip Babst is an attorney for U.S. Steel, which is appealing the county's penalty.
CHIP BABST: To be honest, I would have to characterize it as aggressive and adversarial.
FRAZIER: Parts of the plant date to the '50s. Babst says the company has invested a lot to retrofit some older equipment. Environmental groups want the Coke Works to replace older units if it's going to stay open. But Babst doesn't think the plant needs new equipment to meet its requirements.
BABST: I mean, I guess you could always say new is better, but new is very, very expensive.
FRAZIER: The company says idling part of its operation would force dozens of layoffs and could damage expensive equipment. One man is especially worried about all of this.
RICH LATTANZI: My name is Mayor Rich Lattanzi, city of Clairton.
FRAZIER: Mayor Lattanzi works at another U.S. Steel plant nearby that processes steel made with coke from Clairton. The Coke Works makes up a third of the tax base of his city, which has been shrinking for decades.
LATTANZI: Do you realize what happened to the city of Clairton and the city school district if we closed that mill down? We would not be here today. We'd be like a ghost town.
Not a problem. I'm a safety guy.
(LAUGHTER)
FRAZIER: Lattanzi takes me on a drive by the plant and points up a hillside. He's 54 and remembers when pollution from the operation was so bad, this hill was bare. Now it's covered in trees.
LATTANZI: Years ago, nothing was able to grow - nothing. Even this right here's crazy to have trees here. It was all, like, stones and nothing.
FRAZIER: He says he wants clean air, too, but wants the plant to stay open. A decision on whether parts of the plant will have to be idled is expected in a few months. For NPR News, I'm Reid Frazier in Clairton, Pa.
(SOUNDBITE OF AUDITIVE ESCAPE'S "LIGHT RADIO")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
It is up to a new Congress in this new year to resolve a government shutdown. Roughly 800,000 federal employees are unsure when they'll be paid. President Trump demanded $5 billion to help build a wall on the border with Mexico. Democrats offered less for various border security measures. The president told Fox News last night he's ready to talk.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOX NEWS BROADCAST)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: So I'm ready to go any time they want. No, we are not giving up. We have to have border security, and the wall is a big part of border security - the biggest part.
MARTIN: The president spoke amid confusion about what he really wants. His outgoing chief of staff, John Kelly, said the administration ditched the idea of an actual wall a long time ago, instead favoring fences, technology and more border guards. NPR's White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe joins us now. Ayesha.
AYESHA RASCOE, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: Happy New Year.
RASCOE: Happy New Year. (Laughter).
MARTIN: I'm assuming you, like me, did not go out and party it up last night 'cause we had to talk about the news this morning. So thanks for making the sacrifice.
RASCOE: (Laughter). Yeah.
MARTIN: Democrats - let's get right to it. Democrats and Republicans have been stuck in this stalemate for a long time now. Thursday, Democrats take control of the House. What's expected to change?
RASCOE: Well, at this point it doesn't look like much will change. But you will finally have some concrete action where, up until now, we've had a lot of talk. So Democrats plan to put forward legislation that would fund the government. Basically, it will provide, like, a year of funding for most of the departments and agencies that are currently shut down. For the Department of Homeland Security, which is at the center of this wall fight, it would provide this stopgap spending bill. And that would basically just push the issue back to February.
But this does not include any wall or barrier funding. So it's not clear it's going to go anywhere. Trump is saying you cannot have border security without a wall. And Republicans in the Senate say they won't bring up anything that Trump doesn't support. So it seems like this impasse will remain, even if Democrats pass their bill in the House on Thursday.
MARTIN: I mean, what leverage is even left for either party?
RASCOE: Well, so right now it seems like the White House wants to use the shutdown to pressure the Democrats to come to the table. Basically, you have all of these people out of work. Something has to be done. President Trump is arguing that the government needs to be reopened and that Democrats need to show that they're concerned about border security. But he's making this case at the Democrats with Democrats set to take over the House after they gained all these seats in an election where Trump made immigration a top issue. So his leverage is not what it would have been before the midterm elections.
Democrats, of course, say they're offering money for border security, just not for a wall, and - which they don't see as effective. And they see it as a symbol of what they oppose about President Trump's immigration policies. And Democrats have their own base that they're trying to play to. And basically, they're arguing President Trump said he would own the shutdown. He said that Mexico would pay for the wall. And that - that's their argument that they're making.
And so they're trying to move ahead without any funding for the barrier - I mean, for a barrier or for a wall. But ultimately, something is going to have to give. The question is who is going to do the giving...
MARTIN: Right.
RASCOE: ...And what it might look like. They need each other at this point, the president and the Democrats. They're going to have to come together on something.
MARTIN: Right. So I guess if we thought it was tough for the last Congress to get anything done, 2019's going to be a doozy, right?
RASCOE: It - it will. There won't be - there's no shortage of areas of disagreement. And there's going to be a lot of things that they're just going to bump heads on. And this is an example of the start of it.
MARTIN: All right, NPR White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe with the latest. Thanks so much, lady, we appreciate it.
RASCOE: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MARTIN: Now to Russia, where an American citizen has been detained. The FSB - that's the Russian security service - says that Paul Whelan was taken into custody late last week on suspicion of espionage. Here in Washington, the U.S. State Department put out a short statement saying essentially that they're just aware of the arrest.
This comes weeks after a Russian operative was convicted of conspiracy here in the U.S., trying to influence U.S. policy ahead of the 2016 presidential election. For more, we've got NPR's Lucian Kim on the line with us from Moscow. Lucian, Happy New Year.
LUCIAN KIM, BYLINE: Happy New Year. Good morning.
MARTIN: Any new details? Good morning. Any new details come out about this arrest yet?
KIM: Well, not really. All we have is this very terse statement from the FSB that was issued yesterday. And it basically named this American citizen, identified as Paul Whelan, who was arrested, quote, "in the act of spying in Moscow" last Friday. And we know that a criminal investigation for espionage has been opened.
As you mentioned, there's also the State Department's statement from yesterday - also very terse - saying the U.S. is aware of the detention and expects Russia to follow its obligations under international conventions. What that means is providing access to this individual by U.S. Embassy officials. But we don't know anything about this person except the name given by the FSB. And the State Department is not commenting due to what it calls privacy considerations.
MARTIN: So I mean, it's hard to ignore the fact that this arrest is coming really close after this Russian national, Maria Butina, pled guilty to conspiring to act as a Russian agent and basically infiltrate American political groups. I mean, are these connected? It would seem real weird if they're not.
KIM: Well, of course there's a lot of speculation right now that this might be a Russian response to Butina's detention and plea deal and that this American citizen accused of espionage may be used to swap out Butina. President Vladimir Putin has been asked about her. And he's said that she was forced to make a confession to U.S. prosecutors because he maintains she never had any Russian government duties.
He's also said the charges against her are baseless and that he's not indifferent to her case. What's interesting is at the same time, he said that Russia will not arrest innocent people just to use them as bargaining chips.
MARTIN: So we also remember last year - right? - Russia expelled 60 U.S. diplomats after the Trump administration kicked out 60 Russian diplomats. So this has been going on for a while. As we look down the pike at 2019, what's the state of the relationship between the U.S. and Russia?
KIM: Well, just about those diplomats - at the time, the Trump administration indicated that those Russians it expelled were intelligence officers working under diplomatic cover. And of course, the arrest last week is not the best way to end the year.
MARTIN: Right.
KIM: In February we expect the Trump administration to withdraw from a 1987 arms control treaty that the U.S. says Russia is violating. President Trump also doesn't look like he will meet President Putin anytime soon because it looks like the White House has made that - a future meeting contingent on Russia releasing two dozen - two dozen Ukrainian navy sailors that it's captured.
Of course, in the U.S. we have the Mueller investigation grinding on. We have the Democrats taking over the House. And these are - of course are also factors that will affect U.S.-Russia relations. So unfortunately, not a lot of bright spots looking forward into this new year.
MARTIN: All right, buckle up. NPR's Lucian Kim from Moscow. Thanks so much, Lucian.
KIM: Thank you, Rachel.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MARTIN: All right, we're going to turn now to North Korea, where Kim Jong Un, North Korea's leader, has given his annual new year's address. And in this televised speech, Un says he remains committed to complete denuclearization but only if the U.S. keeps its promises. Kim Jong Un also said he'd be willing to meet with President Trump again, anytime. NPR's Anthony Kuhn joins us now from Seoul. Anthony, happy 2019.
ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: Happy 2019, Rachel.
MARTIN: So just from that snapshot I gave, it doesn't seem like Kim Jong Un is paving the way for a breakthrough on the nuclear issue, does it?
KUHN: No, not at all. The speech was pretty much what analysts expected - especially those analysts who predict that this stalemate on the nuclear issue is going to drag on well into the new year. What Kim said is that, you know, he's serious about improving relations with the U.S. and denuclearizing.
But North Korea's been pointing out for a while that since the Trump-Kim summit in June, they have made gestures such as dismantling nuclear and missile test sites. And so now it's up to the U.S. to reciprocate by easing sanctions or providing some sort of security guarantee. And there is an or-else. Let's hear some tape from Kim's speech here.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LEADER KIM JONG UN: (Speaking Korean).
KUHN: "If the U.S. fails to keep the promises it made before the world," he says, "if it misjudges the patience of our people and continues to use sanctions and pressure against our republic, then we'll have no choice except to seek a new path to secure the sovereignty and interests of our country."
Now, he didn't say what exactly that new path is, Rachel, but it sounds a lot like the old path of hostility and confrontation with the U.S. - except now with a more lethal nuclear arsenal. And also, we might note that the setting for this, the scene for this speech was different. He was sitting in a wood-paneled, bookshelf-lined office, which was apparently intended to look more like a president's office than a dictator's bunker.
MARTIN: Does he have a wood-paneled, bookshelf-lined office? Or is that a stage set? (Laughter).
KUHN: We don't know.
MARTIN: Unclear.
KUHN: I've never been in his office.
MARTIN: (Laughter). So what's he holding out for?
KUHN: Well, you remember the Trump-Kim summit in June. People saw right then that that was the vaguest of deals and that the U.S. and North Korea have completely different understandings of denuclearization. And they have, you know, emphasized this time and again, that when they say denuclearization, that includes getting rid of the U.S. nuclear umbrella that protects South Korea and Japan.
And today, Kim added in his speech, you know, no new strategic weapons on the Korean Peninsula and an end to U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises. So it seems that North Korea is holding out for another summit where they're going to try to squeeze more concessions out of President Trump.
MARTIN: Meanwhile, south, in South Korea, the U.S. and the South were supposed to strike this new deal on the U.S. military presence. And this was supposed to happen by New Year's Eve. And it didn't happen, right?
KUHN: Right.
MARTIN: So what's going on there?
KUHN: Well, the White House wants all allies to pay more. According to South Korean media, they're asking Seoul for a 50 percent increase. And they want to cut their five-year agreements down to just one so that they strike a deal with South Korea, and then they ask all other allies for similar terms. And South Korea has said no.
Seoul was not happy about the U.S. pullout from Syria. And they're also worried about the resignation of Mattis, who tried to reassure allies, including South Korea, that he wouldn't either - the U.S. wouldn't pull out, and they also wouldn't attack North Korea without consulting with them first.
MARTIN: All right, NPR's Anthony Kuhn from Seoul, reporting on Kim Jong Un's annual address. Anthony, we appreciate it.
KUHN: No problem. Take care, Rachel.
MARTIN: Take care.
(SOUNDBITE OF TRAMPIQUE'S "EARTH")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
It has been one year since the Republican-controlled Congress slashed corporate and personal tax rates. The promises and boasts at the time assured years of economic growth.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PAUL RYAN: This is the kind of tax reform and tax cuts that get our economy growing to reach its potential. This gets us better wages, bigger paychecks.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And, ultimately, what does it mean? It means jobs - jobs, jobs, jobs.
MARTIN: That was President Trump, proceeded by outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan. So how are things going today? The economy is still strong, with growth topping 4 percent in one quarter of 2018. And unemployment remains at a near 50-year low. But how much of that has to do with those tax cuts? Noel King put that question to Richard Rubin. He covers tax policy for The Wall Street Journal.
NOEL KING, BYLINE: A year after the tax cut took effect, where do we stand?
RICHARD RUBIN: We've gotten some of what we would expect and some of what the proponents had hoped for. I think we've seen some increased investment, but it decelerated some in the third quarter. We've seen unemployment continue to drop, but it was already on the way there. We've seen people have more money in their pockets. And so we've seen some economic growth, particularly in the short run, because people had money to spend as their paychecks got bigger in the first part of the year from the individual side of the tax cuts. And now what we're looking for to really see is, is that going to last? Is there going to be not just a one-time bump from people having money in their pockets and spending? But is there going to be the kind of sustained, prolonged economic boom with 3 percent growth year after year after year that the administration says is possible and that - most economists were pretty skeptical of the ability of this tax law and other administration policies to get the U.S. economy there.
KING: So some wait-and-see here.
RUBIN: Some of the facts are clear. There are bigger budget deficits. It was a large tax cut. And people will feel that on the individual side as they're filing their returns in the coming months. And one other thing I'd add is that companies are still trying to figure this out about what incentives they have. A lot of the pieces of this law are really complicated, particularly on international taxation. And Treasury Department has been putting out tons and tons of regulations over the course of 2018. And companies are still really trying to grapple with that to understand exactly what the new incentives are. And so what you've seen from companies so far is they've really - they've done a lot of share buybacks. We saw that early in the year and continuing throughout the year. Companies had free money, and they bought back their own shares. And we've seen some additional investment but not necessarily as much as the administration had hoped.
KING: You mentioned a trend that we've been seeing in which companies that got the tax break used some of the extra money that they had to buy back their stock. And that raised eyebrows. Why is that?
RUBIN: Well, it raised eyebrows 'cause it's not a direct investment. It's, you know - it really is trying to prop up the share price. It's trying to help investors. You know, you've seen some companies do dividends, as well. The counterarguments - that would be this - that if you get more money to investors, then companies that might want investment or might have the need for investment can get money from those investors. But the buybacks have become a political football, for sure, because the opponents of the tax law can easily point to them and say, look. The people who are benefiting here are really the shareholders.
KING: It's not the employees, which this was supposed to benefit.
RUBIN: I would say two things about that. One is that employees, for sure, were supposed to benefit from the corporate tax cuts. But that was going to take time. It was the causal chain that we just talked about of tax cut and then investment and then productivity growth and then hiring - was never going to be a one-year proposition. And then on top of that, of course, employees are getting tax cuts on the individual side, as well.
MARTIN: That was Richard Rubin of The Wall Street Journal talking with our co-host Noel King.
(SOUNDBITE OF SOLAR HEAVY'S "CATCHING COMETS")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un, says he is ready to meet with President Trump at any time. He made that offer in a televised New Year's address. He also recommitted himself to abandoning nuclear weapons but only if the U.S. sticks to its promises. NPR's Anthony Kuhn joins us now from Seoul to talk about what all this could mean. Good morning, Anthony. Happy New Year.
ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: Happy New Year, Rachel.
MARTIN: So after the Singapore summit last year, when President Trump met face to face with Kim Jong Un. Trump says, quote, "We are ready to write a new chapter between our nations." So in light of this address from Kim Jong Un, are you seeing any evidence of a new chapter?
KUHN: No. The speech was pretty much what analysts expected. And it didn't leave much room for optimism that the current stalemate over the nuclear issue is going to be broken soon. Kim said in his speech that he's serious about improving relations with the U.S. and completely denuclearizing the Korean peninsula. But he also - you know, he continued the North Korean line, which for months has been, look. We've made gestures to the U.S., such as dismantling nuclear and missile test sites. And now it's up to the U.S. It's the U.S.'s turn to reciprocate by easing sanctions or giving some sort of security guarantee. Let's hear a clip of Kim speaking today.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LEADER KIM JONG UN: (Speaking Korean).
KUHN: "If the U.S. fails to keep the promises it made before the world," he says, "if it misjudges the patience of our people and continues to use sanctions and pressure against our republic, then we'll have no choice except to seek a new path to secure the sovereignty and interests of our country."
And he did not say, Rachel, exactly what this new path is. But he did describe the old path as one of the most hostile relations in the world between the U.S. and North Korea and has suggested that he might go back to that. Also, we noted that he was speaking from a very plushly upholstered sofa in a wood-paneled office. And, clearly, this appeared to make him look like a - calculated to make him look like a mature statesman rather than a dictator.
MARTIN: So what exactly does he want right now, Kim Jong Un?
KUHN: Well, you remember from the summit in Singapore that they reached the vaguest of deals and that the U.S. and North Korea have completely different understandings of denuclearization. And the - North Korea has stuck to their definition, which is that they expect the U.S. to remove the U.S. nuclear umbrella that protects South Korea and Japan. And from the U.S. side, that's not on the negotiating table. And today, Kim added on. He said, we want to see an end to U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises that President Trump suspended after the summit.
MARTIN: I want to pivot to the South because the U.S. and South Korea were supposed to strike this new deal about the price of keeping U.S. military footprint in South Korea. And they were supposed to agree to this by New Year's Eve. They didn't. So now what?
KUHN: Well, the U.S. is asking for all its allies to cough up more money. South Korean media report that the U.S. is looking for a 50 percent increase. And South Korea says no to that. Seoul was not happy about the U.S. pullout from Syria and the resignation of Mattis. And they point out, look. If you pull out of South Korea, you're not just undermining our defense. You're undermining the entire U.S. military posture in Asia.
MARTIN: NPR's Anthony Kuhn from Seoul. Thanks so much, Anthony.
KUHN: You bet, Rachel.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
In 2018, we saw a lot of devastating wildfires in the state of California. During our coverage, we heard from people conflicted about whether or not to rebuild in the same areas that burned to the ground. But just weeks after the deadly Camp Fire, a massive, new housing development was approved in a high-fire-risk area near Los Angeles. Reporter Emily Guerin from member station KPCC took a look at the financial bet of rebuilding.
EMILY GUERIN, BYLINE: Back in September, the Orange County Board of Supervisors approved a new housing development called Esperanza Hills. It's 340 luxury homes on an undeveloped patch of land. It's got amazing views of hills and canyons. And Kevin Johnson thinks it's a disaster waiting to happen.
KEVIN JOHNSON: This site is probably the most dangerous site in Southern California that you could pick to put 340 new families into.
GUERIN: He's a lawyer for one of the environmental groups that opposes the project. And he says what makes this site so dangerous is that a huge wildfire swept through here just 10 years ago.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Yelling) Stacy (ph), come on. (Unintelligible). Go ahead and drive.
GUERIN: In this recording by Casper News (ph), a man is rushing his wife into their car as a helicopter dumps water on the flames nearby. People who lived through it said the evacuation was chaotic, and they barely got out. Ed Schumann's house and 380 others burned down that day. And he does not like the idea of adding hundreds more houses to the community.
ED SCHUMANN: Evacuating that more many people in the same limited infrastructure - it's a scary thought.
GUERIN: So why would anyone want to build in such a risky place?
DOUGLAS WYMORE: California is woefully deficient in housing units.
GUERIN: And he's right. That's the developer of Esperanza Hills, Douglas Wymore.
WYMORE: When somebody comes into develop, it's going to be the areas that aren't currently developed, right?
GUERIN: In fact, more than 60 percent of new houses on the West Coast are in high-fire-risk areas. But Wymore maintains that it is possible to build here safely. His homes will be fire-resistant, he says. They'll have lots of brush clearing and two water tanks for firefighting.
WYMORE: I think that the bottom line is you can mitigate it, and you can protect it.
GUERIN: So that's the developer. But why would the Orange County Board of Supervisors approve the project? Here's one factor.
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GARY LAMB: It will generate $8,250,000 in property tax.
GUERIN: That's Gary Lamb, who works with Wymore. At a public meeting last year, he listed off how much money the project will generate for the community.
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LAMB: Four million will go to the Placentia-Yorba Linda school district.
GUERIN: And since 2011, Wymore has donated nearly $50,000 to the political campaigns of various members of the OC Board of Supervisors. Now, none of the supervisors wanted to talk to me for this story. But at a meeting last May, Supervisor Shawn Nelson explained one reason why he was signing off on the project. The Fire Department had already given it the green light.
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SHAWN NELSON: If the Fire Department's satisfied, I'm not inclined to argue with them. I'm not a fireman.
GUERIN: But Timothy Kerbrat is a fireman in Orange County. And he says, from what he's seen so far, the project does meet state and local requirements.
TIMOTHY KERBRAT: Do they have access? Do they have water? Do they have a defensible space? Do they have hardened structures that they can protect? Are all those things occurring?
GUERIN: And in the Esperanza Hills project, he says they are. But here's the thing. If there's a fire, Orange County won't actually have to spend much of its own money to protect the neighborhood. The state and federal governments will reimburse them. Kimiko Barrett is a researcher at Headwaters Economics, which studies land use.
KIMIKO BARRETT: The consequences actually aren't borne by the people who are approving these developments.
GUERIN: She calls it a moral hazard. And until this changes, she says we're going to keep building in risky areas. For NPR News, I'm Emily Guerin.
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RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Rachel Martin with an update on the rescued cow. We reported yesterday that a cow was bound for the slaughterhouse when it slipped out of a truck and wandered around a New Jersey highway until it was caught. She was then taken to a shelter. And on this New Year's Day, we can give you more news. The shelter says the cow, named Brianna, has become a mother. The calf is a girl, appropriately named Winter, and Winter seems completely unaffected by her mother's tumble off a truck. It's MORNING EDITION.
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RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The sound of crowds out in the street in Brazil's capital, Brasilia, last night, welcoming the new year in traditional fashion. But 2019 is bringing a change for Brazil. Today, a new president is being sworn into office. His name is Jair Bolsonaro, a retired army captain from the far right. We're joined from Brasilia now by NPR's Philip Reeves. Hey, Phil.
PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: Hi, how are you doing?
MARTIN: Doing well, thanks. So this is a huge day for Brazil, also for Latin America more broadly. Can you just give us a sense of how important this moment is?
REEVES: Well, it's extremely important. This is a real moment in history. Latin America's largest nation is installing a populist president, a seven-term congressman with no executive experience, a man who admires Brazil's past dictatorship and has a Cabinet of whom about a third are retired military officers and chosen a foreign minister who's described climate change as a Marxist plot. So this is a moment in history, a turning point.
MARTIN: What's it like in Brasilia on the Inauguration Day?
REEVES: (Laughter) Well, I'm afraid it's damp and overcast...
MARTIN: Oh (laughter).
REEVES: ...Rather disappointingly. Nonetheless, you know, officials here are expecting big crowds for the inauguration of possibly half a million. So there's a huge security operation. But it's also New Year's Day, and Brazilians really celebrated, as you know. And so let's see whether they turn up or how - and how many of them decide to carry on partying somewhere else.
MARTIN: I mean, Bolsonaro had been seen as this very divisive figure, right? During the campaign, hundreds of thousands of Brazilians, especially women, were on the streets urging people not to vote for him. So is that changing?
REEVES: Yes. I mean Bolsonaro was elected in October with a very comfortable margin of some 10 million votes. Polls indicate, though, that since then, he's become even more popular. It seems Brazilians have really high expectations of him. And you often meet people here who say that they don't agree with everything Bolsonaro stands for. But anything's better than the leftist government that ruled for most of the last decade and a half, a period that saw the country's worst ever recession, a massive corruption scandal and an epidemic of violent crime.
I was actually out in the streets here when the new year dawned earlier today, talking to people about their new president. And I met Alan (ph) Hubner, a computer programmer, and I asked him to tell me why he supports Bolsonaro.
ALAN HUBNER: Security. Yeah, I want to feel safe here, you know?
REEVES: Hubner told me that he's gay, and Bolsonaro, of course, is notorious for making offensive homophobic comments. A lot of LGBT Brazilians are worried about what his presidency might mean for them. And I asked Hubner about that, and he says, in a country where there are tens of thousands of homicide every year, making Brazil safer matters more to him than anything Bolsonaro said in the past.
HUBNER: People say that he is homophobic. Oh, he's a homophobic. He going to kill gays. I don't believe he going to kill gays. I believe that everybody's getting killed here. It doesn't matter if you're gay, if you're straight, if you're black or white. Everybody's getting killed here.
MARTIN: I mean, that's going to be a huge issue that Bolsonaro's going to have to deal with, clearly, if people feel that way. But what can you tell us about other policy agenda - the other policy agenda items that Bolsonaro is going to focus on?
REEVES: Well, all eyes are going to be on what he does with the environment. He's been talking about withdrawing from the Paris climate change agreement. Bolsonaro is also a big fan of President Trump and used some of his tactics during the election campaign, communicating directly, for example, via Internet. So we're going to see a shift here towards the U.S., and that has regional implications, for example, in the handling of Venezuela.
Meanwhile, domestically here in Brazil, Bolsonaro wants to greatly increase the public's access to firearms. That's very controversial. So we'll see what happens there.
REEVES: All right. NPR's Phil Reeves from Brasilia, the capital of Brazil.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Netflix recently put some of the power of storytelling into the hands of viewers. The series "Black Mirror" is a lot like "The Twilight Zone," right? Each episode is a unique, science fiction tale. But the episode that debuted this past weekend called "Bandersnatch" isn't a single linear story.
You, the viewer, are constantly asked to pick outcomes for the main character. It's kind of like those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books. For example, earlier in the movie, you got to pick which box of cereal he opens, and that changes the story arc from that point forward.
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CRAIG PARKINSON: (As Peter Butler) How about you decide what you want for your breakfast.
JANKO ROETTGERS: This is obviously just a simple choice. But from there on, it gets more and more complicated.
MARTIN: That second voice there is Janko Roettgers from Variety magazine. He's been reporting on how Netflix and the "Black Mirror" team pulled all this off, and he spoke to our co-host Noel King.
ROETTGERS: You make very hard choices at some point, and sometimes it also throws you off a little bit. And maybe you even find one of these questions only has one choice.
NOEL KING, BYLINE: Do you know how many possible outcomes there were, given all of the choices that you make for this character, this young man?
ROETTGERS: Netflix did the math on this, and they say there's 1 trillion possible permutations of this show. In reality, you wouldn't notice the difference between many of these. But there are quite a few different outcomes. So I got to see this a couple of weeks ago at Netflix, and I spent 90 minutes, I think, exploring it. And so I got to see quite a bit of this, and I thought I saw almost everything.
But then a couple days ago, I watched it again with my wife, and she made just a few different choices. And not only did she see a lot of things in a different order, but she also arrived at an ending that I had never seen before. So it kind of almost felt like she watched a completely different movie.
KING: That is amazing. I didn't realize that the small choices had so much impact down the line. So how did Netflix pull this off? I'm just trying to imagine filming this, and it must have been kind of a logistical nightmare.
ROETTGERS: Yeah, and even before they started to film this, they had to develop their own script-writing tool for this that would kind of help them branch the narrative, try to figure out which choices end up where, how they can bring all these strings back together and so forth. And I talked to the masterminds behind "Black Mirror," and they said at first it was pretty much a nightmare. At some point, even the script-writing tool kind of broke down. And they had never a script crash on them before. But in this case, it actually happened.
KING: So the main character is a young man, and there are points at which you can choose paths for him that you know will put him in harm's way versus paths that will seemingly, like, just put him on a, you know - a bus or something, right? And I found myself really thinking about what kind of person I was particularly when the show sort of started getting slow and I'd choose to make some action happen.
Do you feel like you learned anything about yourself as you made choices on whether to put this young man in harm's way and potentially make things more interesting, or to keep him out of danger but maybe be a little - a little bored?
ROETTGERS: That is a really good question. I think the show plays with that as well. Do you want to have good entertainment, or do you want to actually empathize with the characters and kind of give them an easy way out, if you will? They also played with the question of whether the character has any choice because you make choices for him.
But at some point, it's also the question, do you actually have any real choices because if you arrive over and over again at the same point, is it the script writers that kind of dictate where you go? Are you dictating where this character goes? It's a really interesting thing, and I think it's kind of a "Black Mirror" take on interactivity, if you will.
KING: Janko Roettgers reports for Variety. Janko, thanks so much. This was fun.
ROETTGERS: Thanks for having me.
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RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We're going to start this hour with a story of that U.S. citizen who's being held in Russia on suspicion of spying. The State Department has confirmed the detention but hasn't provided further details. Russia's security services have given a name, though, Paul Whelan. Today, his family released a statement saying he is not a spy. They said they learned of his arrest on Monday morning from the media and are, quote, "deeply concerned for his well-being."
Let's ground this development in what we do know about the relationship between the U.S. and Russia. To do that, we've reached Ambassador Daniel Fried. He's a veteran U.S. diplomat with a focus on Russia and Central Europe. He's served under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Ambassador Fried, thanks for being here.
DANIEL FRIED: Thanks for the opportunity.
MARTIN: So I guess it would be helpful if you could help us understand how the Trump administration - or any administration, for that matter - needs to navigate a moment like this.
FRIED: The Trump administration Russia hands are now waiting to hear from the Russians about when they can have access to - to Paul Whelan. The Russians are obligated, under bilateral treaties, to give us access, let - in other words, let somebody from our embassy in Moscow see him. So they're waiting for that. It's supposed - it ought to happen today at the latest.
So they're waiting to see, and they're hoping the guy will be released quickly. Otherwise, this could devolve into another U.S.-Russia standoff. We've had these in the past.
MARTIN: The Trump administration will be waiting for details of any alleged crime that Paul Whelan has committed.
FRIED: Well, that's right, details and, more likely, invented details. I would be skeptical of anything the Russians said about Paul Whelan.
MARTIN: What kind of leverage does President Trump have at this point?
FRIED: Well, the - there is some speculation that the Russians arrested Paul Whelan as some kind of retaliation for the arrest and conviction of Butina, the Russian woman accused of basically violating U.S. law by representing Russian interests with the NRA and other organizations - Maria Butina.
So it's possible that a la the Cold War, the Russians are interested in some kind of swap. But the administration, at least people I spoke to yesterday, raised the issue of Pastor Brunson. That is the American cleric in Turkey who was falsely arrested and triggered some Russian - some U.S. pressure on the Turks before he was released. So it may be that the Trump administration pushes back against the Russians in other areas.
Relations are bad right now. And we're going to see how the admin - the Trump administration responds. But this feels like the beginning of a Cold War-style standoff rather than some legitimate - legitimate arrest of a U.S. spy.
MARTIN: You mentioned other areas where the U.S. could push. What are they?
FRIED: Well, the U.S. weapon of choice these days, the kind of default mode, is sanctions. There are - there are still - despite our existing sanctions on Russia right now, there's a lot of headroom to escalate if we chose to do so. We chose sanctions against the Turks, who are, after all, an ally. And we even imposed some. And as I said, people in the Trump administration yesterday were talking quietly about that option. We will see what they do. But they don't seem in a - an accommodating mood.
MARTIN: So here we are, Ambassador. You and I have spoken several times over 2018, different machinations of the U.S.-Russian relationship. What are you thinking as you look down the pike at the new year? How would you describe the relationship between the U.S. and Russia at this moment? And how can you see it evolving, especially as we anticipate the end of the Mueller probe?
FRIED: U.S.-Russia relations are as bad now as they have been since before the end of the Cold War, either the early 19 - early, mid-1980s, before the Reagan-Gorbachev relationship developed in a positive way, or even the early 1960s with standoffs over Berlin.
So relations are bad. I see no sign that they're going to get particularly better. And the reason is not this U.S. administration or the last one. The reason is Vladimir Putin. His conditions for good relations with the U.S. are those no U.S. administration can or should accept.
MARTIN: Daniel Fried, distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington. Ambassador Fried, thank you, as always. We appreciate it.
FRIED: Thanks for the opportunity. Happy New Year.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Among the sweeping consequences of the ongoing federal government shutdown, immigration courts across the country are closed. From member station WHYY, Laura Benshoff reports that diverted cases could further strain a system already plagued by backlogs.
LAURA BENSHOFF, BYLINE: Immigration attorney Matthew Archambeault spent the last day of 2018 tidying his office in Philadelphia. But he hasn't yet called up clients to tell them they don't have to show up in court.
MATTHEW ARCHAMBEAULT: I kind of mentioned it to a few of the clients that, you know, there might be a chance that their hearings are not going to go forward because of the government shutdown. I don't like to get into it too much to them because it can be confusing.
BENSHOFF: Confusing because a delay in their hearings doesn't actually have anything to do with the facts of their cases. And the government shutdown could end at any time. When the government shut down, the U.S. Department of Justice, which oversees federal immigration courts, sent out a notice. Immigration cases scheduled for hearings during the shutdown would be reset. The exception are the courts that work with immigrants who are already detained.
Those federal employees are working with no guarantee they'll be paid. Ashley Tabaddor, an immigration judge in Los Angeles and the president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, says this is all happening when these courts already face a heavy workload.
ASHLEY TABADDOR: We don't even have the time to be able to adequately really consider each case, much less have to spend extra time to think about what we're going to do with all the cases that have to be rescheduled.
BENSHOFF: She says she alone has about 2,000 pending cases. Nationally, the immigration court backlog is more than 700,000 active cases. The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University keeps stats on federal immigration. It estimates it would take 3 1/2 years to clear that backlog. Tabaddor says adding time to the backlog isn't what President Donald Trump says he wants. His demands for funding for a border wall partially contributed to the impasse.
TABADDOR: It's quite ironic to shut down the immigration court because of the differences on immigration.
BENSHOFF: As for cases themselves, it's hard to generalize if a delay is good or bad. Here's attorney Matthew Archambeault again.
ARCHAMBEAULT: Every immigration attorney who's honest will tell you that sometimes getting cases delayed is the best thing for the case.
BENSHOFF: For example, if an immigrant doesn't have a good claim, a delay may mean more time in the U.S. or maybe qualifying for another form of immigration status in the interim. Or stretching out a case can hurt. It may keep someone who qualifies for asylum now from getting it later, for example, if immigration policies become more restrictive. In either situation, Archambeault says he's telling his clients to be prepared to go to court just in case. For NPR News, I'm Laura Benshoff in Philadelphia.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Now to California, where a new state law is going into effect today, a law that will require police to make documents related to police shootings public. But at least one city has given the OK for that paperwork to be destroyed before the deadline. From member station KPCC in Los Angeles, Frank Stoltze reports.
FRANK STOLTZE, BYLINE: The city of Inglewood sits just west of Los Angeles, has about 100,000 residents and 180 police officers. In early December, its city council voted to destroy more than 100 police records at the request of the police chief. He said in a memo that the files were no longer needed nor legally required to be kept. The council's resolution also said they were taking up valuable space.
These are some of the department's most sensitive files on officer shootings, uses of force and other internal affairs investigations and date back as far as 1991. Many would have become public for the first time today under a new state law designed to make policing in California more transparent.
That law also opens to the public files on officers who've lied or engaged in a sexual assault while on duty. The ACLU's Peter Bibring says Inglewood's decision to destroy the files can only mean one thing.
PETER BIBRING: This last-minute push to shred documents rather than allowing them to become public under California law almost certainly means those documents would show problems that management doesn't want the public to see.
STOLTZE: Calls to the police department and mayor went unreturned. Inglewood acted legally. The new California law doesn't require police to keep records beyond current requirements. That's five years for shootings. Attorney Milton Grimes has represented the families of people shot by police in this LA suburb.
MILTON GRIMES: Old records tell us sometimes what people are thinking and doing and whether there's a pattern. And we cannot better this police department unless we're able to show that there's a bad pattern.
STOLTZE: The U.S. Justice Department identified some of those patterns when it found in 2010 that the department lacked clear use of force policies and oversight, following the shooting of three unarmed people in four months.
Inglewood is retaining its most recent shooting records in keeping with state law. That means Trisha Michael will have access to files regarding the shooting of her twin sister and sister's boyfriend. But she says the dozens of other families of people shot or beaten by Inglewood police will be deprived a chance at the truth.
TRISHA MICHAEL: There's a lot of unsolved, mind-bothering questions people still think about. You know, this is the opportunity for people to go back and try to figure out what happened.
STOLTZE: Not in Inglewood, which appears to be the only city in the state that decided to erase large parts of its shooting past. For NPR News, I'm Frank Stoltze in Los Angeles.
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RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
For the Tree of Life congregation in Pittsburgh, 2019 is going to be a year of rebuilding. In late October, members of that synagogue gathered for Shabbat service. Their prayers were interrupted by gunfire.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: Good morning. We're coming on the air right now with breaking news for those...
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MARTIN: Eleven Jewish worshippers have been killed at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. A man has been charged with hate crimes and could face the death penalty.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: The massacre at a synagogue in Pittsburgh has again revealed the ugly anti-Semitism that still exists in the United States.
MARTIN: In the aftermath, the synagogue's rabbi, Jeffrey Myers, vowed that hate would not close his building's doors. It's now been two months since that tragedy. In a conversation with our co-host Noel King, Rabbi Myers explained what has kept him hopeful.
JEFFREY MYERS: Such a outpouring of love and support from not just around the immediate community or even the United States, but from around the world. I'll give one example. There was a young boy who had his bar mitzvah also on October 27 in another synagogue. And upon his reflection of the horrific events of that day, he felt he needed to do something.
So he took some money that was gifted to him for his bar mitzvah and sent a donation to our synagogue as his way of connecting with us and sharing in his sorrow and at hoping for a brighter future. And I thought, wow. That just took my breath away. And to me, that's so uplifting.
NOEL KING, BYLINE: I wonder, though, over the past couple of months whether or not your perspective has changed at all on anti-Semitism in this country.
MYERS: I don't think my perspective has changed at all. Many felt that this sort of horrific massacre was inevitable at some point in the history of the Jewish community in the United States. It was going to happen. Many were surprised that it didn't happen, I guess, historically sooner than it did, but that it was going to happen at some point.
KING: You know, people will hear you say that there was a sense of inevitability, and they'll say, you know, no one should have to live like that. This is the United States of America. What do you say to people who don't understand what it's like to be in the United States and to know that anti-Semitism does exist?
MYERS: This one has probably the longest-running form of bigotry in existence in humanity because it's been around literally almost as long as the Jewish people have been around. I'd like to think in some, you know, rosy sort of view of the United States that our country was founded because people were escaping bigotry and prejudice in Europe and came to a new place to build a new life. And yet there's some disappointment there in that the hopes that people could escape those forms of bigotry didn't materialize. It still exists. Americans still preach words that wound and hurt fellow citizens.
KING: Rabbi, you've been advocating for political leaders and for people of all parties and all faiths to eliminate the word hate from their vocabulary. Why?
MYERS: When we use words of hate, to use that word only once, we're creating a more dangerous world because those words lead to actions such as the massacre that occurred in Tree of Life on October 27. So if one could just be careful and think about what they say and how they use their words, people may come to realize, wow, my words really have an impact. I can be really more careful about those choices.
KING: Having had time to reflect, I wonder do you have a message for the man who committed these murders?
MYERS: I think that's the first time I've been asked that question. To me, it's such an unconscionable act that it defies answers. I don't think that anything I could ask, I would find a suitable answer that would soothe my soul, ease my pain or burden. So I don't have anything that I would ask at this time. I don't know if I ever would.
KING: Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, thank you so much for being with us.
MYERS: A pleasure to have a conversation with you.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
A little more than a decade ago, the city of Juneau, Alaska, became one of many American cities that stopped adding fluoride to its tap water. At the time, science predicted more cavities. That prediction has now proven true. From member station KTOO, Jeremy Hsieh reports.
JEREMY HSIEH, BYLINE: Jennifer Meyer is a public health researcher with a new study in the journal BMC Oral Health. She talks about tooth decay and cavities the way dentists do. She calls them caries. And after studying what happened in Juneau to children under 6, this is her takeaway.
JENNIFER MEYER: By taking the fluoride out of the water supply, the tradeoff for that is children are going to experience one additional caries procedure per year at a ballpark of $300 more per child.
HSIEH: She can talk about it in terms of money because she studied the complete set of Medicaid dental claims filed for kids in Juneau's main zip code. She's got a year's worth of data before fluoride went away and another year's worth after, for about 1,900 kids total.
When you talk about children under 6, here's what happened. When the water was still fluoridated, kids on average had about 1 1/2 cavity-related procedures per year. After fluoride was gone, that went up to about 2 1/2 procedures a year. And that got expensive.
MEYER: The cost to have a fluoride management program to actually fluoridate the water is pennies by comparison to what it costs to treat a cavity.
HSIEH: It could be more expensive for anyone, not just the public cost of providing dental care through Medicaid. But Meyer says people with less money are especially vulnerable when fluoride goes away. For example, people with more resources might choose to give their kids fluoride tablets. That would mitigate the absence of fluoride in the water supply for those children.
The new research isn't winning over longtime fluoride opponents like David Ham. He was active in the movement to take fluoride out of Juneau's water in 2006. He calls fluoridation a Band-Aid fix.
DAVID HAM: My issue is that we're asking the wrong question here. You know, and let's get to the root cause and put a tax on sugary drinks and all of these other things or do whatever we can to support good health through good diet.
HSIEH: Ham says community water fluoridation takes away his right to pure water. He also says fluoride is harmful. But the CDC, World Health Organization, European Union and other government and medical institutions have long held that low levels of fluoride in drinking water are safe.
For NPR News, I'm Jeremy Hsieh in Juneau.
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RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
In this new year, there is change afoot at the Pentagon. After the abrupt exit of former Marine Corps Gen. Jim Mattis, Patrick Shanahan steps up to become the acting secretary of defense. He was Mattis' No. 2, the deputy secretary of defense. And his background is in defense contracting. So what difference will his leadership make at the Pentagon? We're going to ask Todd Harrison. He's a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Todd, good morning. And Happy New Year.
TODD HARRISON: Good morning.
MARTIN: So Mattis, as you know, was a well-respected leader, had the respect of troops. He got a lot of bipartisan support. And he left in this controversial way, citing real, substantive differences with the president. That's going to mean a difficult challenge to navigate, I imagine, for Patrick Shanahan. How does he step into the breach?
HARRISON: Yeah. So I think, in some ways, it's going to be difficult. In some ways, it might be easier. So Patrick Shanahan comes into the job, really, with a background in business and engineering. He actually came from the commercial side of Boeing, not the defense side. And so what he was brought in to do as deputy secretary of defense is kind of run the back-office side of DOD, the business side. And Secretary Mattis focused on where he was most comfortable - on, you know, handling ongoing military operations, strategy, foreign policy, those types of issues. And that's where Secretary Mattis tended to clash with President Trump.
So now you've got Deputy Secretary Shanahan stepping into that role as acting secretary. And he doesn't come with the same kind of policy agenda or, you know, strongly held views about ongoing military operations, how they should be conducted, where we should be in the world, where we should not be. So in some sense, you know, he may be a bit less prepared than Mattis was. But he's also - that's going to make him less likely to clash with the president on some of these issues.
MARTIN: Does that also mean he will be less likely to push back against the president, as Jim Mattis was known for doing? Advocating for a slower or reconsidered troop withdrawal from Syria, for example, or pulling out of Afghanistan. He was quite vocal to the president, talking about what he thought should happen there. Is Shanahan not likely to do that?
HARRISON: Yeah, I think we'll have to wait and see. But I don't think Shanahan is, you know, going to come to the job with the same strongly held views that Mattis had. So, you know, I would expect he probably doesn't push back as much. And, you know, even if he did, it's not going to carry the same weight in this administration as it did when Secretary Mattis was pushing back because Mattis, of course, was a well-respected, you know, four-star general who had, you know, previously been a combatant commander, had served in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. And so I don't think, you know, Shanahan's resistance to these types of moves by the Trump administration would actually carry that much weight.
MARTIN: All right. Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic Studies talking about the change in leadership at the Pentagon. The former deputy secretary of defense, Patrick Shanahan, begins his first day as acting secretary of defense. Todd, thanks. We appreciate it.
HARRISON: Glad I could do it.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Happy New Year, I'm Rachel Martin. And like a lot of you, I was in airports over the holidays. And at least once I was sniffed out by a TSA dog, which was fine. And I don't remember if the dog had pointy or floppy ears. But apparently, it matters. The TSA is moving towards more floppier dogs. That's according to the agency's administrator, who told the Washington Examiner that floppy-eared dogs seem to go over better with passengers. Safety first, but I guess it helps if they're cute too. It's MORNING EDITION.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Today marks an historic moment in Ireland. For the first time, women will have broad access to legal abortions. The government passed a bill legalizing abortions last month. For more on the change, we turn NPR's London correspondent, Frank Langfitt, who's been following this. Hi, Frank.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: Hi. Good morning, Rachel.
MARTIN: Good morning. So describe the scope of this. How is life different today for women in Ireland than it was yesterday?
LANGFITT: Well, for pregnant ones, it's very different. For the first time beginning this morning, women can call in to a government help line for advice on a pregnancy and receive guidance on obtaining an abortion. They'll also, obviously, get other guidance. There are lots of ways to handle a pregnancy, of course.
If they're nine weeks pregnant, they'll be given the name of the nearest general practitioner who provides abortion services. So far, there are about 165 clinics in the country that have signed up to participate. And they'll offer an abortion pill. The names are actually not being published, of these clinics, because there is fear, certainly from the clinics, of being targeted by anti-abortion groups.
If a woman is more than nine weeks pregnant, she can then be referred to the nearest hospital to provide abortion procedures. There are just nine that have agreed so far to do that. But still, even though the numbers are not enormous in terms of the opportunities for women and where to go, it is a huge shift in the country. You got to remember, Rachel, as recently as 2016, at least several thousand women travelled from Ireland to England and Wales to have an abortion.
MARTIN: All right. So is the government putting any limits on abortions?
LANGFITT: It is. It is. You know, it's still - there's still a very strong conservative streak in - in, certainly, parts of the country. And abortion is now generally forbidden after 12 weeks. So, for instance, if an abortion were to fail and a woman's pregnancy exceeds 12 weeks, it would be illegal to attempt a second abortion, except for certain circumstances, particularly involving risk to the life of the mother, health of the mother. Doctors who carry out an abortion after 12 weeks, in certain circumstances, that aren't covered could face a fine or imprisonment of up to 14 years.
MARTIN: So Ireland is obviously tethered to the Catholic Church, very socially conservative, has been anyway. So this is a huge change. Can you just remind us the arc of this?
LANGFITT: Sure.
MARTIN: How did it come to be?
LANGFITT: Yeah, so back in May, politically, there was a landslide vote to repeal a constitutional amendment in Ireland that had banned nearly all abortions. But really, this goes back over the decades, and it's the culmination of years of dramatic social, economic and religious change in the country.
Now, you remember not so long ago, Ireland was poor. But the economy took off in the 1990s and drew back a lot of Irish emigrants, people who'd been in U.S., Australia, England. They came back with more liberal ideas.
The biggest factor though has been the collapse of the authority of the Catholic Church. And, of course, this has happened, to a certain degree, in the United States following the child sex abuse scandals. Also in Ireland, you had these church-run workhouses that took children away from unwed mothers. The church tried to cover up a lot of these things.
And so over four decades, what you've seen is mass attendance has gone from about 80 percent, and now it hovers around 35 percent.
MARTIN: And the pope was there recently, right? I mean, did you see evidence of the church's waning influence through his visit?
LANGFITT: He was. I was there for the visit, and it was - Rachel, it was night and day. It was so striking. Back in '79 when Pope John Paul II went, there was - to Ireland, there was an outpouring of affection. He held mass in Dublin for 1.2 million people.
This time out, Pope Francis, it was just a small fraction of that. And in the crowds, they weren't that thick in Dublin, waiting for the popemobile. And even - you could even hear some boos from victims of clerical sex abuse who'd come out to protest the church - so a huge shift in Ireland in terms of the authority and the affection for the Catholic Church.
MARTIN: NPR's Frank Langfitt for us this morning. Thanks so much, Frank.
LANGFITT: Happy to do it, Rachel.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHEQUERBOARD'S "DUNES")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
On this first day of 2019, the power in Washington is about to shift. On Thursday, Democrats take the House majority. But the more things change, the more they stay the same.
On the eve of the new year, Democrats announced a new plan for reopening the federal government, but Republicans have already signaled they are unlikely to accept that deal. I'm joined now by NPR White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe. Hey, Ayesha.
AYESHA RASCOE, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: So what can you tell us about the Democrats' spending package? What does it look like? Is it - is it an earnest effort at a compromise?
RASCOE: Well, I'm sure they would say it is, but as with many things these days, Republicans would probably disagree. So it is some concrete action where up until now, you've had a lot of talk. Basically, it would provide a year of funding for most departments and agencies that are currently shut down. And then for the Department of Homeland Security, where this whole fight over the wall is happening, it would just provide this stop-gap fund - spending bill, basically pushing the issue back to February.
But there is no wall or barrier funding in this. So it's not clear it's going to go anywhere. Trump has said you cannot have border security without a wall, and Republicans in the Senate say they're not going to bring anything up that Trump won't sign. So even if this passes, it's not clear that - that anything will happen with the legislation that Democrats pass.
MARTIN: But they have to negotiate. I mean, they have to find a way out of this moment. Does either side have any leverage left?
RASCOE: So at this point, it seems like what the White House is focused on is trying to pressure the Democrats with the shutdown, with people being out of work saying, look, you have to come to the table, and you have to kind of show that you care about border security by giving us this money for the wall. But, of course, President Trump is making this case after Republicans lost the House in the midterms. So his leverage is greatly diminished.
And the Democrats, they're coming in kind of with the wind at their backs in the House at least. And they're saying, look, we want border security but not a wall. And they - which they don't think is effective - and they are also going to throw into President Trump's face that he said that he would own a shutdown and he would take responsibility for it and that Mexico is supposed to pay for this, even though Trump is saying that Mexico is going to indirectly pay for this.
But as you said, something has to give. There - there are hundreds of thousands of people not getting paid. And so the question is who is going to give, and what that might look like.
MARTIN: President Trump closed out 2018 with an interview with Fox News. And we've got a clip of what he said. Let's play that.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I'm in Washington. I'm ready, willing and able. I'm in the White House. I'm ready to go. They can come over right now. They could have come over any time. I spent Christmas in the White House. I spent New Year's Eve now in the White House. And, you know, I'm here. I'm ready to go.
MARTIN: Sounds like he's just sitting there, waiting for the Democrats to come over and knock on the door. Presumably, he's in the mood to negotiate?
RASCOE: Well, he's in the mood to talk. I don't know about negotiating. That's the question. Like, what is he going to give the Democrats that would make them come to the table? Because what the White House has been offering has not been enough. So what can they give to them that would make the Democrats want to make a deal? That's the question.
MARTIN: NPR's Ayesha Rascoe, thanks so much.
RASCOE: Thank you.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Well, as we mark this new year, take note. We are now just 672 days away from the 2020 presidential election. Sorry about that. And already four Democratic contenders have announced they're either running or are considering running.
Senator Elizabeth Warren is the most high-profile of those. She announced yesterday in a video message to supporters that she is forming an exploratory committee.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ELIZABETH WARREN: I'm in this fight all the way. Right now, Washington works great for the wealthy and the well-connected. It's just not working for anyone else.
MARTIN: The field of Democrats is likely to open up to two dozen names all told. So how can Democrats distinguish themselves from one another? We're going to ask Anita Dunn that question. Back in 2008, Dunn helped to distinguish Senator Barack Obama from the others running for the Democratic nomination. She served as the communications director for the presidential campaign, and she joins us now. Anita, Happy New Year.
ANITA DUNN: And a Happy New Year to you and to your listeners.
MARTIN: Thanks for being here. So what do you make of Senator Warren's timing? What are the benefits and the risks of getting out so early ahead of the rest of the crowd?
DUNN: I thought her timing was brilliant. Anytime you make news between Christmas and New Years, you basically have a clear field. Even with the government shutdown, it was still, I thought, a very strong way to end the year and begin the year for her.
I also thought that the way she did it is symbolic of the way people are going to do these announcements now, which is direct communication to their supporters. She also had a very clear message, which is going to be the chief differentiator for all these candidates in 2020.
MARTIN: I mean, you talk about what is differentiating her. In her message, she focused on economic inequality and really seemed to be tacking even more left. Is that how you think of her? Is that how she is positioning herself in this race?
DUNN: You know, I don't think - I don't think of it as left or right when it comes to Elizabeth Warren. She has a consistent record over the years of fighting the economic issues for the middle class. It is what propelled her into the administration - into the Obama administration. It is what propelled her into the United States Senate. And it is what has made her an effective United States senator.
How that translates to the presidential campaign level will be interesting to see for all of these candidates who are thinking about running. But for Elizabeth Warren, economic inequality and economic issues around the middle class and the lower-middle class, how people get taken advantage of, have been the propelling value of her political life.
MARTIN: Although, she's had - she's had a lot of publicity as of late for really getting into it with President Trump, so much so that some Democrats have warned that she has too much political baggage. And this is the challenge for Democrats - right? - how much to engage Trump in a back-and-forth about things that aren't related to policy. What are the pitfalls as you see them?
DUNN: The winner of the Democratic nomination will be the candidate who successfully figures out how to engage Trump, how to challenge Trump, how to take him on on issues and how to communicate with the voters who voted for him in 2016. And that's why this is going to be a primary process we need to have as Democrats because it's not clear the most effective way to do this.
In 2016, we saw an entire field of Republican candidates not do it effectively. Each Democrat is going to figure out their way, but the person who wins the nomination will be the person who figures this out.
MARTIN: Do you think Elizabeth Warren handled it right?
DUNN: I think everybody will have their fits and starts along the way. Everybody will kind of feel out what their style will be.
MARTIN: That sounds like a no.
DUNN: It's not a no. It's not a yes because I don't tend to think that things that happened in 2016 - 2018 are going to be determinative of who wins the nomination in 2020.
MARTIN: All right. It's a couple years away.
DUNN: It's a couple of years away. And every candidate is going to make their mistakes in this, Rachel.
MARTIN: I mean, it sounds like you like her though. I mean, there's a long list of people who are thinking about throwing their hat in the ring - Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, faces we know - Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders. Does she stand out in that crowd, or do you like someone else?
DUNN: I'm like a lot of Democrats. I like whoever can beat Donald Trump, and I - and I like almost - I like all the candidates who are running. I know many of them. I've worked with some of them. They're all very, in their own ways, effective, great public servants. And that's why this is going to be a very valuable primary process for the Democratic Party. We as a party have issues to sort out, and this primary process will allow us to do it.
MARTIN: Is it going to be dangerous to have so many in the field, though, to get these candidates all battered up before the general?
DUNN: No, I think the larger field means that it's harder for one candidate to become a lightning rod, at least at the beginning. And it gives some of the lesser-known candidates time to develop their messages. Having an open primary process is better for this party than a small group of people who ran. I didn't think 2016 was healthy for the party. I think this is healthier.
MARTIN: Anita Dunn, former communications director for Barack Obama. We appreciate your time this morning.
DUNN: Well, thank you for having me, and Happy New Year.
MARTIN: Happy New Year.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
France rang in 2019 under a cloud of heavy security. In the wake of a recent terror attack and social unrest that spread out across the country, France's president, Emmanuel Macron, used his annual address to call for unity. Jake Cigainero has the report from Paris.
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JAKE CIGAINERO, BYLINE: The excitement of the hundreds of thousands of people on the Champs Elysees on New Year's Eve was a stark contrast to another crowd that has gathered here each week since November, the French yellow vests, a national movement that started as a protest against a fuel tax, but has morphed into a larger expression of middle- and working-class discontent. The French interior minister said more than 10,000 police and soldiers had been deployed in Paris for the celebration.
France has been on high terror alert since the shooting at the Christmas market in Strasbourg last month, and the yellow vests had also called for a peaceful gathering on the Champs Elysees. But their protests have frequently turned violent. However, there were no clashes with police or any major incidents on New Year's Eve.
Earlier in the evening, President Emmanuel Macron gave the presidential New Year's address in a televised speech. Standing in his office in the Elysee Palace, Macron said his three wishes for 2019 are truth, dignity and hope.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
PRESIDENT EMMANUEL MACRON: (Speaking French).
CIGAINERO: Macron says, "for me, the lesson of 2018 is we want to change things in order to live better, and we want to innovate in our plans for democracy, politics, economy and the environment. But," he said, "to do this, France cannot close itself off to the world."
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
MACRON: (Speaking French).
CIGAINERO: "It would be dangerous if our situation drives us to ignore the world around us. Quite the opposite," Macron says. He said the government will continue to roll out his ambitious reforms, including in education and taxes, some of which sparked the yellow vest movement more than a month ago.
After a particularly violent day of protests last month, Macron tried to calm tensions by canceling the fuel tax that caused the uproar in the first place. He also raised minimum wage. Following his concessions, there was a significant drop-off in yellow vest numbers, but protesters have continued to gather, although fewer and fewer each week.
Just a few weeks ago, more than 280,000 people had turned out across France, according to authorities. But over the weekend, only a few hundred yellow vests gathered in Paris. However, yellow vest organizers say they plan to return in full force in January. Post-holiday protest will be an indicator of how much steam the movement really has left. For NPR News, I'm Jake Cigainero in Paris.
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NOEL KING, HOST:
For hundreds of years, goldsmiths in Senegal have been crafting some of the world's most intricate jewelry. But outside of Senegal, their artistic tradition has largely gone unnoticed. Now the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C., is showcasing the jewelry. Here's NPR's Nurith Aizenman.
NURITH AIZENMAN, BYLINE: I'm at the exhibit, and I spot Marian Ashby Johnson. She's peering into a glass case containing an enormous necklace, three pendants of elaborately layered gold.
MARIAN ASHBY JOHNSON: I'm still admiring my own pieces of jewelry - bring back so many memories.
AIZENMAN: They begin in 1963, when Johnson joined her husband on a work trip to Senegal's capital, Dakar. Walking the streets, she noticed all these hole-in-the-wall workshops where artisans were crafting gold jewelry unlike anything she'd ever seen. It was made from filigree.
JOHNSON: Thread of gold. That's what it is.
AIZENMAN: A gold wire that's impossibly thin, which they twist and layer into these dense yet astonishingly delicate lace-like forms. The technique dates as far back as the 12th century in Senegal, but Johnson soon realized goldsmiths were melting down many of the older pieces to make modern designs. She decided to buy up as many as she could.
JOHNSON: I realized I should do this now or it wouldn't be done at all.
AIZENMAN: Some items she couldn't afford. She'd watch as exquisite designs were destroyed right in front of her.
JOHNSON: Some of them, I found copies of them later. But in many cases, they were gone. I never found them again.
AIZENMAN: Still, Johnson ultimately managed to amass more than 250 pieces, the best of which have formed the core of this Smithsonian exhibit. Amanda Maples, the curator, says she also wanted to tell the story of the women who've been wearing this jewelry for hundreds of years, including a class of powerful women whose influence still reverberates through Senegalese culture.
AMANDA MAPLES: These women known as signares, which are around in the 18th and 19th century.
AIZENMAN: The signares were mixed-race descendants of European merchants and high-status Senegalese Wolof women. By the 1700s, many of them had emerged as independent businesswomen in their own right. The typical signare might own ships, manage trade networks, employ men.
MAPLES: She can speak several different languages, European and Wolof.
AIZENMAN: Maples says she'd be renowned for her patronage of musicians, her glittering dinner parties and, most of all, her opulent fashions.
MAPLES: They were thought of as these women that had the most voluminous cloth ensembles, really bright, huge gold jewelry. I mean, they had the biggest gold jewelry. And they would parade through town so people could see how much wealth they had and how successful they were.
AIZENMAN: Oumou Sy is a top fashion designer from Senegal. The Smithsonian commissioned her to recreate a signare's outfit.
OUMOU SY: (Speaking French).
AIZENMAN: "A head wrap in a conical sugarloaf shape, a gown of sumptuous fabric with huge, puffed sleeves. And, of course..."
SY: (Speaking French).
AIZENMAN: "...Gold filigree - necklaces, earrings, bangles, toe rings." And yet there's an ugly side to the singares' story. Hudita Nura Mustafa is an anthropologist who's studied the signares' influence in current Senegalese culture.
HUDITA NURA MUSTAFA: This wealth and power and beauty and influence was gained through, perhaps, morally ambiguous methods.
AIZENMAN: Mustafa notes that the signares generally built their wealth through quasi-marriages with European traders, many of whom made their money either directly or indirectly through the transatlantic slave trade. The signares themselves also owned slaves. But Mustafa says today's Senegalese are also mindful that these were African women who found a way to thrive at a time of European encroachment.
MUSTAFA: They are recognized and held up as icons of a negotiation of being able to bridge and balance many worlds.
AIZENMAN: Hilary Jones is a professor at Florida International University who's written a history of mixed-race peoples in Senegal, and she says for modern women in Senegal...
HILARY JONES: You know, what they see are women who were incredibly successful, who created a kind of space for themselves against all odds.
AIZENMAN: Oumou Sy, the fashion designer, says you can see the signares' influence in the way modern Senegalese women use fashion to project dignity and self-assurance. It's an attitude so celebrated in Senegal, it has a name, sanse.
SY: (Speaking French).
AIZENMAN: "Sanse means to dare," says Sy, "to present yourself in your finest without fear." Nurith Aizenman, NPR News.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
At some point in their lives, many artists spend time painting themselves - self-portraits that express who they are at a particular moment. Washington's National Portrait Gallery is showing over 70 such works. Edward Hopper, at 21, is moody in a charcoal turtleneck. Diego Rivera does not disguise his double chin. Jim Dine has no chin, eyes or mouth. He's headless. He just etches his bathrobe. NPR's special correspondent Susan Stamberg has more.
SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE: Why are there so many self-portraits?
KIM SAJET: Artists will tell you they're available.
STAMBERG: Kim Sajet is director of the Portrait Gallery.
SAJET: In the middle of the night, when the urge strikes, you've got yourself.
STAMBERG: Or they can't afford a model or they're vain or - curator Brandon Fortune's theory - they're working out technical problems.
BRANDON FORTUNE: But they're also done as a kind of self-reflection, to present a persona to the world that may not be true or authentic but is the character that the artist wants to be remembered as.
STAMBERG: Alice Neel's self-portrait, begun when she was 75, is as authentic, as vital, as she was on NPR at age 79.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ALICE NEEL: I am known primarily for my obsession with humanoids. That's true.
STAMBERG: Painting herself, seated in a comfy blue and white striped chair, Neel was ruthless and brave.
FORTUNE: She's entirely nude. Her breasts are sagging.
STAMBERG: Her belly bulges. Her lips turn down. There's a brush in her right hand, a bright, white rag in the left.
FORTUNE: She said at one point that this portrait was really hard to make. She said, it was so hard that my cheeks got red with the effort.
STAMBERG: No wonder. Alice Neel is taking on the entire history of nude paintings, mostly starting in the 16th century made by men. Historically, the male gaze was loving, lustful, idealistic.
FORTUNE: And she just flips it. She takes control of the gaze. It's her gaze. She takes control of the way that her body is going to be presented.
STAMBERG: An act of truth and audacity - so different from the way painter Thomas Hart Benton showed himself in 1924. He was on Martha's Vineyard, crazy about his new wife, Rita, and the movies.
SAJET: Thomas Hart Benton's portrait makes him look out to be some Hollywood, dashing superstar.
STAMBERG: Swashbuckling, black-moustached, muscled and hunky.
FORTUNE: Stripped to the waist...
STAMBERG: Hunky.
FORTUNE: It is definitely an assertion of vigor, wouldn't you say?
STAMBERG: Indeed - and sexy.
FORTUNE: Very much so.
STAMBERG: The photograph Walker Evans took of himself in 1934 is neither vigorous nor preening. He was working for the Farm Security Administration, hired to document the Depression's effect on Americans.
FORTUNE: He's, at the end of the day, photographing misery and seeing how people are forced to live during this terrible time in our history.
STAMBERG: Walker Evans' eyes hold pain. His face is full of compassion. He has seen awful things, and making sure we see them, too. There's no way not to see Chuck Close's self-portrait. He has taken 16 big, Polaroid glossies, each one measuring 20 by 24 inches, and linked them mosaic-like into a huge color image - about 9 by 7 feet huge.
FORTUNE: We are seeing Close's face, bearded, wearing his round glasses, looking straight out at us.
STAMBERG: The work is especially gripping now as Chuck Close's National Gallery exhibit was recently canceled after accusations of sexual harassment, for which he apologized. His self-portrait was done following a personal tragedy. The artist was left paralyzed after a spinal artery collapse in 1988.
FORTUNE: He made this Polaroid the following year. And he's looking for ways to make art that can be done by someone who is a quadriplegic.
STAMBERG: But he's also - I mean, it's so rich with meaning or a way to interpret it is saying, I'm going to surmount this. I'm larger than what's happened to me. I'm still here.
FORTUNE: I think you're absolutely right.
STAMBERG: They're all still here in this National Portrait Gallery show on view until mid-August - messages to the future in oil, lithograph, pencil, charcoal, video - how artists saw themselves, how they wanted us to see them. In Washington, I'm Susan Stamberg, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF GRANDBROTHERS' "LONDON BRIDGES")
NOEL KING, HOST:
The leaders of North and South Korea met three times in 2018. That was unprecedented. But during all of this diplomacy, people who have actually lived under the North Korean regime, defectors, have urged some caution. From Seoul, NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports on one of those people.
ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: Kim Myong Song remembers rushing to cover a high-level meeting of North and South Korean officials early one morning in October. Kim is a reporter for one of the country's biggest daily newspapers, The Chosun Ilbo. He also happens to be a defector from North Korea. On the way to the meeting, Kim says, South Korea's unification ministry, which is in charge of inter-Korean relations, called and barred him from covering the event.
KIM MYONG SONG: (Through interpreter) I felt so betrayed and angry. I could understand it if I was an inexperienced newcomer, but I've been covering the ministry for six years.
KUHN: The ministry never really explained why they barred Kim. Its actions come at a time when the leaders of the two Koreas seem intent on taking unprecedented steps towards improving relations. Speaking at a cafe near the ministry, Kim says officials were apparently concerned that having a defector in the room could offend the North Korean officials and derail the talks.
KIM: (Through interpreter) North Korea considers defectors as traitors to the country and the people, and they harshly criticize their activities in South Korea.
KUHN: Other journalists, defectors and human rights activists sprang to Kim's defense and slammed the ministry's action. Among them was defector Choi Kyong Hui, president of a civic group called South and North Development. She points out that Kim was going to cover talks in South Korea, not North Korea.
CHOI KYONG HUI: (Through interpreter) In a democratic society, no individual or official has the right to restrict journalists working for the people's right to know.
KUHN: The ministry later met with defector groups, but they never apologized to Kim. Kim left North Korea in the 1990s after listening to South Korean radio broadcasts. He was amazed to learn from them that North Korea's poverty and famine were largely the result of its own policies.
KIM: (Through interpreter) Once I found the truth, I grew to hate the North Korean regime. I didn't want to sit and watch the North Korean television jabber every day. I felt a strong urge to experience life in the outside world.
KUHN: After years on the run in China, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia, Kim finally made it to South Korea in 2002. Now, Kim says he fears that amid the diplomatic courtship between the two Koreas, defectors are being silenced, and South Korea may be falling into a trap.
KIM: (Through interpreter) Our government is betting everything on peace negotiation with the North. I'm concerned that they're leaning too far to one side. The nature of the North Korean regime hasn't changed.
KUHN: President Moon Jae-in is himself a veteran human rights lawyer, and he's spoken up for press freedoms. But Moon Chung-in, a special adviser to the president on foreign affairs and national security, says that this administration wants to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue first.
MOON CHUNG-IN: North Korean defectors might not enjoy the same benefit as they enjoyed during the previous, you know, two conservative governments, but that's a reality. Face it.
KUHN: Such talk makes Kim Myong Song apprehensive about his future as a journalist. He says before the government banned him from covering the inter-Korean meeting, the peace process had actually given him hope that someday he could report from Pyongyang as a South Korean correspondent. Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Seoul.
(SOUNDBITE OF SOULAR ORDER'S "COMING HOME")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
In recent months, delegations of evangelical Christians have been traveling to the Middle East, meeting with leaders of Islamic countries and Muslim clergy. They say it's about promoting religious freedom. Critics say the true motives are rooted in end-times theology. Jerome Socolovsky reports.
JEROME SOCOLOVSKY, BYLINE: When the evangelical delegation met with Saudi Arabia's crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, in early November, the Christian Broadcasting Network's Chris Mitchell noted their influence in his on-the-spot report.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
CHRIS MITCHELL: And the delegation, which represents millions of Christians, met with the crown prince and other senior leaders.
SOCOLOVSKY: That meeting followed audiences with the president of Egypt, the king of Jordan and Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates. Johnnie Moore runs an evangelical PR firm and is a former vice president of Liberty University. He goes on many of these trips and is impressed with the faith of the people he meets.
JOHNNIE MOORE: As a devout evangelical Christian, I believe what the New Testament says. You know, Jesus is my savior. I believe he's the way, right? But when every time an imam or leader of a Muslim nation - when they begin a speech and they say, in the name of God, the compassionate and the merciful - you know, that speaks to me.
SOCOLOVSKY: Moore hopes the trips promote religious freedom in the Middle East. He says they're not about opening the doors to Christian missionaries.
MOORE: All we want is for what it was like when the Prophet Muhammad, you know, himself was alive, which was a very pluralistic region. You know, there were Christians and Jews. There were synagogues, and there were churches.
SOCOLOVSKY: The meetings come amid a relative thaw in relations between these countries and Israel, who all view Iran as a serious threat. John Fea, a history professor at Messiah College in Pennsylvania, says these trips are about both religion and politics.
JOHN FEA: All of these people have a deep and vested interest in what happens to Israel. They are all operating under a particular form of Christian theology that privileges a future place for Israel in sort of end times prophecy.
SOCOLOVSKY: According to that prophecy, Fea says, Israel's establishment in 1948 was a harbinger of the second coming of Jesus, and any development that strengthens the Jewish state could make it happen sooner. Fea says many of the Christian leaders are frequently seen at the White House. He says what bothers him is that they didn't challenge the Saudi crown prince about the war in Yemen and other human rights abuses.
FEA: These pro-Trump evangelicals tend to see religious freedom and religious liberty as more important than these other injustices at this moment, and that's where my criticism falls.
SOCOLOVSKY: Participants in the trip insist they did ask Mohammed bin Salman about the slaying of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. They also say their meetings open an important channel of Muslim-Christian dialogue and counter religious extremism.
JOEL ROSENBERG: The question is not about what is going to happen in the end of days. The question is, what's going to happen tomorrow?
SOCOLOVSKY: That's Joel Rosenberg, the organizer of the delegations. He's a Christian author who writes novels about apocalyptic battles in the Middle East, such as his "Last Jihad" series. He says he has nothing to hide.
ROSENBERG: I'm an open book, literally. I've sold five million copies of these books. Some of them deal with prophecy; some do not. But I'm very open and I'm very Googleable on the topic.
SOCOLOVSKY: Whether or not these trips to the Middle East accomplish what the participants hope, their positive statements about Islam are certainly a departure from the negative views of many other conservative evangelicals.
Jerome Socolovsky, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE CINEMATIC ORCHESTRA'S "NECROLOGY")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
In the early hours of the new year, American Border Patrol agents fired tear gas into Mexico. They say they were aiming at about 150 people who were trying to breach the border fence and enter the U.S. NPR's Daniella Cheslow has more.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Coughing).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking Spanish).
DANIELLA CHESLOW, BYLINE: Migrants cough and bend over as they walk through a haze of tear gas in Mexico, near Tijuana. It's dark out in this video from Reuters. And these men, women and children were trying to climb over and under the fence of the U.S. border. They were part of a caravan of thousands of Central American migrants who left Honduras on foot in October.
They say they're fleeing violence and poverty at home. They've been waiting in Mexico ever since for a chance to apply for asylum in the U.S. Some decided to take matters into their own hands and cross illegally. One man pleads with border agents in video aired by NBC News.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking Spanish).
CHESLOW: He says, "I understand, but why not give an opportunity to women and children who need it?" The Department of Homeland Security says the migrants were, quote, "a violent mob" who attacked U.S. agents with projectiles. An Associated Press photographer at the scene says the migrants threw rocks after the tear gas was fired. Twenty-five migrants were detained, and others returned to Mexico. Amnesty International says firing the tear gas was cruel and inhumane and calls for an investigation.
This is the second time American agents have fired tear gas at the migrants. In November, Mexico called for an investigation after U.S. Border Protection officers fired gas across the boundary. Border fortification has paralyzed Washington. Today is the 12th day of a partial government shutdown, after President Trump demanded $5 billion for a wall, and Democrats refused to issue the funding.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We have to have a wall as part of border security, and we're working on it.
CHESLOW: Democrats take control of the House Thursday and plan to vote on a bill to end the shutdown. They say it will not include funding for the wall. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen toured the border over the weekend. Her visit came after two Guatemalan children died in U.S. custody in December.
Daniella Cheslow, NPR News, Washington.
NOEL KING, HOST:
Congressional leaders are going to go to the White House today for a briefing on border security.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Which happens to be what the current government shutdown is all about. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders says the lawmakers will be briefed by senior officials from the Department of Homeland Security. This, though, is the administration's attempt to convince lawmakers they need to fund the president's border wall and end the stalemate that has led to this partial shutdown. When Democrats take control of the House tomorrow, things are also likely to become even more complicated.
KING: NPR congressional correspondent Susan Davis is with us in studio. Good morning, Sue.
SUSAN DAVIS, BYLINE: Good morning.
KING: So who is invited to this meeting today, and what's on the agenda?
DAVIS: The president invited the top eight congressional leaders, so that includes the two top Republicans and Democrats in both the House and Senate. The White House, as you said, called it a briefing, which is rather unusual because I think congressional leaders are pretty firmly understanding the nuances of this debate here. But it is the first shot that they've had to bring everybody into the same room since the holidays and hopefully begin to create some kind of a path out of this.
KING: Are we seeing - are you seeing any movement toward a compromise, toward a path out?
DAVIS: There's been movement, but there hasn't been much compromise. House Democrats, earlier this week, announced what their plan is going to be this week. They are going to put a bill onto the floor that will fund the government and reopen it and continue the negotiations over the Department of Homeland Security funding. The White House has already called that a non-starter, so there's not much room for compromise there. However, the president, on Twitter - and Twitter is his main mode of communication over the course of the shutdown - did tweet at incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, saying he wants to make a deal.
KING: Well, the Democrats take over the House tomorrow, so how does that change the dynamic of these negotiations?
DAVIS: The White House has taken this position that they see Nancy Pelosi as being somehow hobbled by these negotiations, that it's weakening her as she's coming into power again. I'm not sure the Democrats really see it the same way. I think that they see this, especially as they come into power on Thursday and take control of the House of Representatives, as a chance to paint a contrast with a president who has been rather erratic over the course of these negotiations.
Remember, this started when the president said he would not sign a bill to fund the government that he had already promised he would sign. So Democrats see it as a chance to vote to reopen the government and then throw the ball back into the president's court.
KING: So in this briefing today, do we have a sense of whether Democrats are entering into it in a stronger position than the president and Republicans?
DAVIS: You know, you still need all three to cut a deal. What is interesting is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has essentially taken a backseat in these negotiations. From the beginning, he said Senate Republicans were not going to do any test votes or, you know, symbolic votes. We just need the president to tell us what he'll sign, and we'll put that on the floor. And he has put that burden on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi to figure out what that path is with the president.
The challenge here - and that's going to continue to be the challenge - is that this is an issue where the two parties are pretty dug in, and it is an incredibly symbolic issue over, not just this wall, but the president's entire immigration policy. And so far, there just really hasn't been much room in the middle here to reconcile the two.
I will say, I think as public pressure may change on this, it might change the needle a little bit. I think a lot of Americans weren't really fully feeling the partial shutdown effects. It's been the holidays. People haven't been paying attention to the news. Everyone's back at work. They're tuning into the news. And it might put more political pressure, on one side or the other, to be the one that essentially blinks and caves in and reopens the government.
KING: Sue, let me ask you a last question. Last night, Mitt Romney - of course, a former Republican presidential candidate who will be sworn in to the Senate tomorrow - published a very critical op-ed in The Washington Post. What was it about?
DAVIS: He essentially is - seems to be carving out a role that two former senators, Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee, played in the Senate, which was to be Republican Party critics of the president and, really, on a matter - on the matters of character and how the president conducts himself in office. It was a really interesting op-ed. I think it's going to raise a lot of questions about who Mitt Romney wants to be in the Senate and whether he himself may be considering angling to run against the president in 2020.
KING: Interesting. NPR's Sue Davis. Thanks, Sue.
DAVIS: You're welcome.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KING: All right. So from tension in Washington to friction with Russia.
MARTIN: All right. That's where American citizen Paul Whelan is still in custody on suspicion of espionage. And now Paul Whelan's family members are speaking out, coming out against Russia's accusations. Here's Whelan's brother, David Whelan, speaking to Canada's CBC News.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DAVID WHELAN: Paul has a law enforcement background. He is a Marine. He has worked in corporate security. And he is very aware of both the rule of law and the risks of traveling in countries that may have risks to travelers.
MARTIN: Also, of course, just last month, a Russian operative was convicted here in the U.S. for trying to influence American policy around the time of the 2016 presidential election.
KING: NPR national security correspondent Greg Myre is with us now. Good morning, Greg.
GREG MYRE, BYLINE: Good morning, Noel.
KING: So for the first little while, we didn't know that much about Paul Whelan, but now his family has started talking. What are they saying?
MYRE: Well, an interesting story. I mean, he first went to Russia back around 2006. At that time, he was actually deployed with the Marines in Iraq. But he got a two-week break, and he was a single guy, so he chose to go spend some time in Russia, enjoyed it, developed a real affinity for the country. It's clear. He's gone back several times. He was going - went back this time for the wedding of a fellow ex-Marine who was marrying a Russian woman.
His family got very nervous when he didn't get in contact last Friday, feared the worst over the weekend, learned on Monday that he was, in fact, being held. And so now they're working with the State Department and other U.S. officials to try to figure out what his situation is.
KING: What do we know about what Paul Whelan currently does for a living? What is this man's job?
MYRE: Right. So he's the director of global security for a company called BorgWarner, outside Detroit. It's a big auto supplier. And he has businesses all around the world, but his family is stressing that this trip to Russia was simply a private two-week visit, was not a work-related trip.
KING: Since yesterday, has there been any response from the Russian government and/or from the U.S. government?
MYRE: No, they've been saying very little. Russia first announced his detention a few days ago. The State Department confirms an American is being held but are not saying anything beyond that. Again, the president has often made it - when Americans are being held abroad, he's made it a big deal. He hasn't spoken out yet.
KING: And we don't know why that is at this point?
MYRE: We don't. We don't. Again, we're not hearing much from either side. Obviously, the case of Maria Butina comes to mind, the Russian woman who pleaded guilty just on December 13. So people are wondering if there is a connection there.
KING: There's a kind of tit for tat. Greg, we are at a point where there's a lot of tension between the U.S. and Russia. Does this strike you - does this arrest strike you as a blip or as a major development?
MYRE: Well, I would see it as part of this major tension. And again, Putin was asked - the Russian president, Vladimir Putin - was asked just on December 20 about the Maria Butina case. He said he was concerned, but he said we're not going to do tit for tat. And yet, eight days later, we see this arrest. So I would - I think the best way to look at it is part of this bigger turmoil we're seeing in the Russia-U.S. relationship.
KING: NPR's national security correspondent Greg Myre. Thanks, Greg.
MYRE: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KING: All right. So while we've been monitoring shutdowns and showdowns, a group of scientists have been tracking some things going on 4 billion miles away from Earth.
MARTIN: Right. So just after midnight on New Year's Day, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft zoomed by a celestial object that is nicknamed Ultima Thule. It was going at 32,000 miles per hour, taking pictures as it passed.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
ALICE BOWMAN: We've just accomplished the most distant flyby. We are ready for Ultima Thule's science transmission at 0200 UTC today, science to help us understand the origins of our solar system.
(APPLAUSE)
MARTIN: Scientists obviously very excited. This is the farthest object NASA has ever explored in space, and the scientists plan to take some other high-quality images of the object today.
KING: Marina Koren of The Atlantic was with those scientists on New Year's Eve. She's with us in the studio now. Good morning, Marina.
MARINA KOREN: Good morning.
KING: All right. So what is Ultima Thule, and why were these scientists so amped to see it, to get to it?
KOREN: So Ultima Thule is one of potentially millions of icy objects that orbit way out at the edge of the solar system, well beyond Pluto. And these icy objects are left over from the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago.
And so because it's very cold and dark out there, these objects have remained relatively unchanged since then, and that's what's most exciting to these scientists because to visit Ultima Thule means seeing the solar system as it once was and maybe getting some clues about how it came to be. So they were really excited. There was champagne. There were party hats.
KING: (Laughter) Before this mission, what did the scientists know about Ultima Thule?
KOREN: They knew little, actually. They knew enough about its orbit to know where to go. They suspect - they suspected that Ultima Thule was red in color because it spent its lifetime just being roasted by cosmic radiation. But they didn't know what else they might see, and that's because, from Earth, Ultima Thule looks like a tiny speck of light. You know, before, the flyby, scientists weren't even sure if they were approaching two objects or one.
KING: Wow, so at this point, we have gotten a fuzzy picture. It looks kind of like a snowman. What other information do scientists want to get from it in the next couple days?
KOREN: Right. So in the next few days and weeks, we're going to be seeing more and more high-resolution images of this object. And I think we'll be seeing more surface features of this object. And yeah, I think it's a very exciting time because if the flyby went as intended, if the cameras - and there were three on board, so it took a lot of pictures as it went by - if the cameras got the good shots that the scientists wanted them to get, we'll be seeing the most distant object ever explored by humanity.
KING: That is incredibly cool. Let me ask you about the New Horizons spacecraft, because this is the craft that originally got us those amazing photos of Pluto. It's quite a superstar, as far as spacecraft are concerned. What's next for it?
KOREN: It is. It is. New Horizons has had quite a trip across the solar system. It left Earth in 2006, and then, as you said, it made the Pluto flyby in 2015, and it produced some really stunning pictures. And so I think right now engineers are going to have to decide whether they have enough time to look at another target, whether they have the right - enough fuel.
KING: To leave it out there and maybe look at something new and cool. Marina Koren of The Atlantic. Thanks so much.
KOREN: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF ERIC LAU'S "STAR TREKKING")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
President Trump has invited members of Congress over to the White House today for what is being called a briefing on border security. And border security is at the heart of the standoff right now that's led to a partial government shutdown, specifically, the president's push for more than $5 billion for a border wall.
NPR congressional correspondent Susan Davis is in the studio with us this morning. Hey, Sue.
SUSAN DAVIS, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: So a briefing is sort of a one-way street. We invite you over. Experts talk. It's not really a conversation, not really a negotiation.
DAVIS: (Laughter).
MARTIN: So what is exactly supposed to happen today, and what difference is it going to make in the shutdown?
DAVIS: It's a really curious decision that the White House made. I think, partly, this is probably for the optics of the shutdown to look like they're working to get the end of a deal. I think that, you know, congressional leaders have been pretty clear about what it's going to take, and it's going to take a compromise. And it still is not clear where the White House is willing to give on this.
Remember, the White House is the reason we are part - or is essentially the reason we're in this shutdown because the White House has indicated to Congress back in December that they would sign a government funding bill. And the president was the one, after the Senate Republican majority had already passed it, changed his mind and pulled the rug out from Congress and has not yet been able to move that negotiation forward. It's been a weird shutdown. We've been through a couple of these now.
MARTIN: Right.
DAVIS: So we have something to compare it to. Usually when we're in a shutdown, you know, they stay in D.C., and they keep fighting and it kind of dominates the news. This one happened over the holidays. It's been pretty quiet. And I think the political heat here has been kind of hard to read because people, the public, hasn't been as plugged into this one.
I think that dynamic might change this week as people are returning back to work from the holidays, as it becomes more and more clear that hundreds of thousands of Americans are going without pay right now because they're federal workers. And we'll see how those changes kind of shift the political calculus.
MARTIN: But who does have the most to lose? I mean, they've been fighting over who gets the blame, right? At first the president said, I'll take the blame because it's worth it to me. And the Democrats are like, fine, do it. And then the president's like, no, just kidding, it's the Democrats' fault.
DAVIS: (Laughter). It's a very sophisticated debate. I think it's hard to say. And it's hard - the thing is that shutdowns tend to end with really unsatisfying conclusions. They just reopen the government, and the fight does - it continues. I think the president sees this as having a lot to lose here because the border wall has become a very big symbol of his presidency and his campaign and a core issue to his base.
Part of the reason why we got here is conservatives in the House were really encouraging the president to fight on this issue because, I think, if he is seen as wavering here that it goes - it could weaken his support among the base, which has really stuck by him through basically everything. And he doesn't - he has shown no interest in giving on this.
And if he wants border wall money, he's going to have to give Democrats something in exchange. We have seen these negotiations before. Often that comes in the form of immigration legislation, something that would be a bit of a give-and-take to get both parties behind it. He hasn't really offered anything yet. He's still just making a demand.
MARTIN: And, of course, Democrats take control of the House...
DAVIS: Yeah.
MARTIN: ...Tomorrow. How's that going to change this particular dynamic, and then more broadly, life for the president?
DAVIS: Sure. House Democrats, expected to be led by Nancy Pelosi, have already made clear their first order of business is going to vote on funding bills to reopen the government. I think that that's going to put a little bit more pressure back on the Republican Party and on the president to say, what are you going to do with these? Especially their bills that have already passed the Senate. So we know these bills can pass Congress.
You know, I think for the perspective here, in terms of the shutdown, the president has much bigger concerns coming about Democrats taking over the House. They are planning to launch any number of investigations and oversight investigations into his administration, into his business dealings, into the ethical behavior of members of administration. So if the president is looking to Congress for confrontation, he might want to get past this shutdown 'cause he has much bigger problems coming his way in 2019.
MARTIN: NPR congressional correspondent Susan Davis. Thanks, Sue.
DAVIS: You're welcome.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Rachel Martin. The woman believed to be the oldest person who ever lived maybe wasn't. Two researchers now suggest Jeanne Calment of France may not have been 122 years old when she died in 1997. Instead, they hypothesize it was actually her 99-year-old daughter who had assumed her identity after she died. The French researcher who helped validate Calment's age, Jean-Marie Robine, says the new theory is false. Do you have any idea how many people would have needed to lie? It's MORNING EDITION.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Syria's war has devastated so many lives, uprooted so many families and businesses for that matter, including one of Syria's oldest chocolate makers, a company called Ghraoui - a brand synonymous in the Arab world with something special, a gift of handmade chocolate or fragrant candied fruit. Now this company has reopened in a country that hasn't been so welcoming to immigrants. Joanna Kakissis has the story from Budapest.
JOANNA KAKISSIS, BYLINE: Andrassy Avenue in Budapest is lined with luxury boutiques representing the finest names in Europe. The name Ghraoui stands out. This boutique's from Syria. Inside, there are sculpted walls and ceiling murals designed by the same man who crafted Cartier jewelry shops. But the jewels inside the glass cases here are handmade, hand-painted chocolates. Noemi Czinkoczky wears plastic gloves to select them for curious Hungarians.
NOEMI CZINKOCZKY: Yeah. And they ask, like, what makes this chocolate special? And so we tell them how much effort goes into each piece of chocolate.
KAKISSIS: She does not have to brief tourists from the Middle East.
CZINKOCZKY: People recognize the name. Like, they just come in and, oh, my God, is this Ghraoui - the Ghraoui? Like - and we say, yes, the Ghraoui, that one that you know from before.
KAKISSIS: Bassam Ghraoui, who ran the company, came from one of Syria's oldest merchant families. He wore tailored suits and loved classical music. He named one chocolate after an opera by composer Franz Liszt.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Singing in foreign language).
KAKISSIS: And he supplied chocolate to the Queen of England. His wife, Rania, says he believed in his chocolate.
RANIA GHRAOUI: That was amazing me that every time he wanted to taste his own chocolate, he has this spark in his eyes and he look at it as if he's seeing it the first time. And then he's so happy.
KAKISSIS: But war forced the Ghraoui family out of Syria.
R. GHRAOUI: You know, you don't really leave your country. You take it with you - the smell, the memory, everything.
KAKISSIS: Roses from Damascus, pistachios from Aleppo, apricots from Ghouta - here's Bassam talking with a Chinese news network.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BASSAM GHRAOUI: You need very good machines. But you need, really, people who is in love with the art of making chocolate.
KAKISSIS: He flew many of his staff from Syria with him to Budapest. They reopened their factory in Hungary, where they could afford real estate and labor costs in Europe.
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD YELLING)
KAKISSIS: Hungary was not kind to Syrian refugees walking through Europe in 2015. Hungarian police attacked them with batons and water cannons at the border.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRIME MINISTER VIKTOR ORBAN: (Speaking Hungarian).
KAKISSIS: Prime Minister Viktor Orban has repeatedly declared that Hungary is not a nation for immigrants, but his administration welcomed the Ghraouis. They had money. Bassam Ghraoui invested in Hungary and made this promotional video celebrating his company's relaunch there.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
B. GHRAOUI: We are looking to build a beautiful presence in Hungary and to put Hungary on the chocolate map of exporting high-quality chocolate.
KAKISSIS: Then just as the company was taking off again, he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. He died in May. His wife Rania now finds solace in the Budapest boutique they built together.
R. GHRAOUI: It make me feel that I'm with him. And it make me closer to him, much closer to him. And this is the only way for me.
KAKISSIS: Her eyes filled with tears, but she wiped them away. There's work to do. The shop is full. And Syria's legendary chocolatier is expanding to Paris. For NPR News, I'm Joanna Kakissis in Budapest.
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ALICE BOWMAN: We've just accomplished the most distant flyby - science to help us understand the origins of our solar system.
(APPLAUSE)
NOEL KING, HOST:
That was mission operations manager Alice Bowman announcing yesterday that NASA's New Horizons probe had successfully reached the furthest object in our solar system ever visited by a spacecraft. It's a minor planet named Ultima Thule. That's about three years after New Horizons recorded the clearest images yet of Pluto.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
One of the collaborators on that project was a scientist from England by the name of Brian May. You might also know him from his day job.
(SOUNDBITE OF QUEEN SONG, "BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY")
MARTIN: Yep, that Brian May, the guitarist from Queen, he is also an astrophysicist. And not only did he contribute to New Horizons, but he wrote a song to celebrate its journey.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NEW HORIZONS")
BRIAN MAY: (Singing) Limitless wonders in a never-ending sky. We may never, never reach them. That's why we have to try.
KING: May tells us it's his first solo release in more than 20 years. It's called "New Horizons," and he says he was inspired by how the mission was emblematic of mankind's will to question and go out adventuring.
MAY: You know, this is exploration - almost Victorian-style if you like. It's just there, so we have to know about it. So the song became about that, you know, the indomitable spirit of man to explore the universe around him.
MARTIN: In a way, the song is actually a kind of duet. It features the famous voice of Stephen Hawking.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NEW HORIZONS")
STEPHEN HAWKING: The revelations of New Horizons may help us to understand better how our solar system was formed.
MAY: Stephen published a message to the New Horizons team in 2015 on the event of that Pluto flyby, so I put a couple of little soundbites of Stephen in the song with the approval of his family, which makes me happy because we were friends towards the end of his life. So yeah, he's kind of with me on the record.
KING: Considering Brian May's success last year with the Queen biopic "Bohemian Rhapsody," which grossed more than $700 million worldwide, it's safe to say his 2019 is off to a pretty good start, too.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The president shapes the public character of the nation. Trump's character falls short. That is a quote, an excerpt. Actually, the headline of a scathing new Washington Post op-ed by Mitt Romney. The former Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential candidate praised President Trump's tax cuts and his hard line on China. But the gist of this op-ed is a moral and ethical takedown of the president of the United States by a new senator from his own party. This comes as Trump meets with congressional leaders today to talk about border security and presumably come up with a plan to end the partial government shutdown.
I'm joined now by Republican strategist Scott Jennings. He was a senior adviser to Mitt Romney in the 2012 campaign. Scott, welcome back to the program.
SCOTT JENNINGS: Good morning. Thank you.
MARTIN: I want to read a little more from this op-ed. Basically, Mitt Romney is saying here that President Trump has, quote, "not risen to the mantle of the office." He says the president has failed to lead with honesty or integrity. What is your former boss doing here? I mean, he hasn't even been sworn in yet, and he's attacking the president this way right out of the gate.
JENNINGS: Yeah. I think Senator Romney, Senator-elect Romney is doing what he said he would do during the campaign. I recall back in the summer, he wrote in The Salt Lake Tribune that he was going to speak out when the president does things that he doesn't like. He said he was not going to speak out on every tweet, but that if the president is acting in a way he doesn't approve of, he won't hesitate to speak out. I think he's also doing what a lot of Republicans do, which is separate policy from behavior and style. And that is not something that is unique to Mitt Romney. A lot of Republican voters did that when they voted for Donald Trump in 2016. So Mitt Romney has a six-year term, and he represents a state that won't mind if he tackles the president every now and again. And I expect he'll keep doing that.
MARTIN: Although at one point, Romney appeared to get over his moral qualms with Trump because he was vying to become his secretary of state. So he has changed his mind before.
JENNINGS: He has. I wonder if Mitt Romney is not delivering a little bit of payback to Donald Trump, who sort of led him on for secretary of state and then went with Rex Tillerson, of course, there, during the transition. These two guys have a long and interesting history. I suspect this won't be the last chapter that's written. But these Senate terms being six years, it does give you a lot of political freedom, especially at the beginning, to do things that you don't immediately have to answer for from voters back home.
MARTIN: I want to shift and talk about the shutdown and the border security in that fight. But just briefly, do you think this means Mitt Romney wants to position himself to run against President Trump in 2020?
JENNINGS: No. I can't imagine that to be the case. I mean, I guess if something catastrophic happened to President Trump and he could not run, perhaps Mitt Romney would be a candidate. But my view is Donald Trump is as strong in the Republican Party as he has been during his term, and if he wants to be the nominee of the GOP, he will be that nominee, regardless of Mitt Romney, or John Kasich or anyone else runs against him.
MARTIN: So the president is meeting with lawmakers today at the White House. It's day 12 of this shutdown. Democrats don't have a lot of incentive to back down. Should the president at this point ease up on his demand for the $5 billion for the wall, do you think?
JENNINGS: Well, you're right. They don't have a lot of incentive to back down, and the president hasn't given them much. But he ought to. In my opinion, the president ought to put something back on the table that he put on the table back during their previous negotiations, and that's fixing DACA. Fixing DACA was part of the president's four-pillars strategy way back earlier in 2018. It's something he has endorsed before. That would give pause, I think, to this Democratic strategy of letting this thing run out for a very long time. A lot of these new members of Congress ran on a fix for DACA. I think a very fair deal here would be 5 billion for the wall in exchange for DACA. That's a win for everybody...
MARTIN: Although...
JENNINGS: ...And gets us past this issue.
MARTIN: Sorry to interrupt you, Scott, but even as outgoing chief of staff John Kelly said in an exit interview, the administration gave up on the idea of an actual physical wall a long time ago, that it was always more about border security, technology. Maybe the president hasn't gotten the memo on that, but do you think that's ultimately where it's going to end up, anyway?
JENNINGS: Well, I think that the president says he wants a wall, and John Kelly no longer works there. So (laughter) I don't know, as we message this publicly, what this thing's ultimately going to look like. But I know what the president's going to call it, and that's a wall. And I know the Democrats are going to continue to say they don't want just wall funding. That's why I think there has to be something here, something new, to get past the impasse. That's why I think reintroducing DACA as part of this deal could be that something new that gives everybody a way to go home and say, look what I negotiated for you.
MARTIN: Which, in the end, is what everyone wants, to be able to save face and say they won. Republican strategist Scott Jennings for us this morning.
Scott, thanks, as always. We appreciate it.
JENNINGS: Thank you very much.
NOEL KING, HOST:
All right. Now to a story about parents of children with severe mental illnesses. They face a lot of challenges, and sometimes they're forced to make excruciating decisions. A family in Illinois had to give up their son to get him treatment, and now they're trying to change that system. Christine Herman of WILL has the story.
CHRISTINE HERMAN, BYLINE: Jim and Toni Hoy adopted their son, Daniel, as a toddler.
TONI HOY: He was severely neglected as an infant. Literally starving and left for dead.
HERMAN: That early trauma affected Daniel's brain development. And as he grew, he started to show signs of serious mental illness.
T. HOY: It was pretty horrific. He held knives to people's throats. He broke almost every door in the house. At the same time, he's a little boy. And he didn't want to be that way. He didn't like being that way.
HERMAN: Toni home-schooled Daniel and his three older siblings in the north Chicago suburbs. But in 2005, she had to go back to work.
T. HOY: Our son just fell apart. After being six weeks in a public school classroom - something kids do every day - he couldn't emotionally handle it and had his first hospitalization.
HERMAN: Daniel was 10. He was diagnosed with several conditions, including PTSD, reactive attachment disorder and severe anxiety. He began therapy and medication, but the violent outbursts got worse. He was in and out of the psychiatric hospital 10 times in two years. The doctors said the only way to stop the cycle was for Daniel to get months, maybe years, of specialized intensive treatment away from home. But the family couldn't get coverage - not from his dad's private insurance and not from Medicaid, which Daniel had because he was adopted out of foster care.
T. HOY: We were told that we had to pay out-of-pocket for it.
HERMAN: At least a hundred-thousand dollars a year, which they didn't have. Then one night, Daniel picked up his brother, Chip, threw him down the stairs, and punched him over and over before their dad pulled them apart. Daniel went back to the hospital, and that's when the child welfare agency gave Toni and Jim Hoy an ultimatum.
T. HOY: If you bring him home this 11th time, we're going to charge you with child endangerment for failure to protect your other kids. And if you leave him in the hospital, we'll charge you with neglect.
JIM HOY: If any of our other kids got hurt once we brought him home, they would take the other kids. They put our back against the wall, and they didn't give us any options.
HERMAN: Jim says they decided to abandon their 12-year-old son at the hospital.
J. HOY: I went and I told Danny that we were not going to pick him up. And to this day, it is the most gut-wrenching thing I've ever had to do in my life. I mean, I love my son. But it was the only way we figured we could keep the family safe.
HERMAN: It was also a last-ditch attempt to get Daniel the help he really needed. That's because when child welfare takes custody, the agency must provide the treatment. It was a solution of sorts, but at a terrible price.
J. HOY: I mean, I was crying terribly. And I think Danny was crying because I was crying, but he said, I understand, Dad. You got to keep everybody safe. And I think the whole conversation ended with me giving him a great big hug, and I just didn't want to let him go.
HERMAN: The Hoy family was not alone. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of families feel forced to do this every year. But it's unclear exactly how many. Two-thirds of states don't even keep track of the numbers. A previous study did discover that at least 12,000 families in 19 states had given their kids up just to get them mental health care. Heather O'Donnell is a mental health advocate in Chicago.
HEATHER O'DONNELL: If these kids had leukemia or diabetes, they would have gotten help long, long, long before.
HERMAN: O'Donnell blames years of inadequate funding. There's been less for mental health, especially early intervention. And when kids can't get help, they deteriorate until they're getting repeatedly hospitalized.
O'DONNELL: Which is asinine, (laughter), and truly unfortunate. I mean, we just wait for tragedy.
HERMAN: Daniel lived in three different treatment centers over the next three years. His parents visited as often as they could.
DANIEL HOY: It was never a question in my mind that my parents would always be there for me.
HERMAN: Today, Daniel is 24 and has been stable for several years. Eventually, Jim and Toni sued Illinois and won a settlement to regain custody in 2010 when Daniel was 15. They also got money to pay for his care themselves.
D. HOY: They helped me through so much that it would almost have been impossible to continue treatment without them with me.
HERMAN: He works nights for a shipping company and lives with his girlfriend and their toddler daughter down the road from his parents. His dad, Jim, really loves that.
J. HOY: I feel so privileged that he's having a bad day, he comes over and talks to us about it.
HERMAN: Toni says it's shameful that families get torn apart by a system that's supposed to help.
T. HOY: Kids do need services, but they also need the support of their families. And when they have both, a lot of kids can be a lot more successful.
HERMAN: Many states say they are working on the custody problem, some of them only after getting sued. In Illinois, a federal judge ordered Medicaid officials to completely overhaul its system so kids can get treated earlier, and January is the deadline for them to roll out those changes. For NPR News, I'm Christine Herman.
KING: And that story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, Side Effects Public Media and Kaiser Health News.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The partial government shutdown is now on its 12th day. And it's starting to take a toll on some of America's national parks. While many of the parks have stayed open, they are doing so without full park service staff.
NOEL KING, HOST:
Right. So volunteers and businesses that depend on the parks are passing out garbage bags and asking visitors to follow the rules - stay on the trails; don't start illegal campfires. Still, it is not easy. Annie Semmelroth co-owns a company called Stone Adventures. It's a rock climbing guide business in Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California.
ANNIE SEMMELROTH: Every year, in the high-season weeks, we hear stories about fistfights over camp campgrounds, people who park illegally. On Instagram, we see people who are climbing in Joshua trees or hanging hammocks. All of that activity is illegal.
KING: She says this year is no different but...
SEMMELROTH: The park is not staffed as it usually is. And so the local community is taking it upon themselves to try to step in to do something.
MARTIN: Semmelroth is also worried about the desert ecosystem.
SEMMELROTH: It's very fragile to human impact. So one example is the topsoil. It's very easy to destroy that if it gets turned over by, say, tire wheels or people running and skidding or throwing it. That topsoil dies. And it can take years for it to grow back.
MARTIN: Joshua Tree now says campgrounds in the park will close today, citing health and safety concerns. Meanwhile, at Yellowstone National Park, the climate is very different.
TRAVIS WATT: It's white. Everything's covered in snow.
KING: That is Travis Watt. He's general manager of the Three Bear Lodge and See Yellowstone Alpen guides. They run snowmobile and snow coach tours. After a previous government shutdown, outfits like his got concessions to operate even during a shutdown.
WATT: All the guides are encouraging people to take care of things, clean up after themselves and be respectful of the rules. And that even - there's not a lot of overseeing, I guess, or guidance. But - and they're doing a really good job that way. It's just, unfortunately, so many of really our friends and colleagues are out of work right now.
MARTIN: Clean up after yourselves, and be respectful - also good advice for the lawmakers debating the shutdown.
NOEL KING, HOST:
Refugees have been called security threats. They've been depicted as invaders. Now a new critically acclaimed play called "Noura" puts the experience of Iraqi refugees onstage. The writers have ties to the Middle East. Productions were staged in Washington and New York this year and will eventually be in regional theaters. NPR's Deborah Amos has the story.
DEBORAH AMOS, BYLINE: When Heather Raffo, an award-winning playwright and actor, ran a writers workshop in New York with women from the Middle East, she heard a common theme. The women wrote powerful personal stories of leaving home and country forever.
HEATHER RAFFO: The handful of them that had fled within an inch of their lives to become their full selves unapologetically was so breathtaking. And it's only because they had to - to survive.
AMOS: The stories inspired her to write and star in "Noura," part-refugee tale, part-Ibsen's "Doll House" (ph) reimagined. Before she opened in Washington, Raffo tested out the authenticity with readings in immigrant communities. The men weren't so sure.
RAFFO: But that woman would never swear like that, the wife.
AMOS: The women said they identified with Raffo's central character.
RAFFO: And then you hear tee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee in the corner. And it's three Christian Iraqi women going - well, no, that's exactly how it goes down at home when we're angry. So you get that when you go into a community and get what people think.
AMOS: The drama has struck a chord with audiences at a time when the question - who gets to be an American? - is a heated political debate. After the New York performance, she heard from immigrants in the audience - this was their story, too.
RAFFO: Jewish-Americans, Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans - they wanted to stay for the talkback and just say, this is my grandmother's story. This is my family's history.
(SOUNDBITE OF PLAY, "NOURA")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (Singing unintelligibly).
AMOS: The plot features Noura and her husband, Tareq. They fled Iraq eight years earlier, and they've made it with American passports and even American names - Nora and Tim and a son named Alex.
(LAUGHTER)
RAFFO: (As Noura) (Unintelligible) You get to meet Maryam tomorrow.
AMOS: But questions of belonging and identity surface when a 20-year-old refugee arrives from Iraq on Christmas Eve. The play is a searing portrait of the emotional cost of displacement.
(APPLAUSE)
SARAB KAMOO: I could see my mom and her, and I could see my aunts in her. There's nothing that happens in this play that I'm not like - oh, yeah, of course.
AMOS: Sarab Kamoo has been to the performance three times, she says, to see refugees portrayed as she knows them in real life onstage for the first time. Sara Hassan has been to the play twice.
SARA HASSAN: It's a very interesting, like, combination of things. It's like - it's this amazing, like, familiarity of, like - look, they mentioned this food I love and this food I grew up with. And like, the words - it's so cool to hear it on a stage. And you look at the audience, and a lot of them are American. And it's like - if anything, I start wondering, what are they thinking?
AMOS: Born in Baghdad 25 years ago, her parents left Iraq when she was a toddler. For her, the play expresses unspoken family pain.
HASSAN: One, I really just wish my mom could have seen it because it's, to me, putting words so much to what I think she and my grandparents might have felt, having left their country and not really being able to ever go back to their home.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Laughter).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Hello, everyone.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Hello.
AMOS: Women from the writers workshop often come to see the production. Mentored by Raffo, their personal narratives are the inspiration for struggles over identity, says Monna Sabouri.
MONNA SABOURI: I am a scrambled egg - neither egg yolk, neither white - inseparable, American and Iranian.
AMOS: The writing workshops opened a path for her to examine her family's story at a time when paths for immigration to the U.S. are closing for endangered relatives.
SABOURI: I don't know if this is a term that's coined yet. But diasporic guilt of - I should be there; why am I here? - was a thing that all of the women in our workshop were talking about.
AMOS: Playwright and star Heather Raffo is an unusual voice in the theater. Her mother is an American from Michigan; her father, an Iraqi Christian from Mosul, his family scattered by war.
RAFFO: My family doesn't live there anymore. I have two cousins left in the country, and that's out of over a hundred.
AMOS: Raffo says she can translate the refugee trauma for an American audience.
RAFFO: And that's because I grew up as a blonde, white Michigan girl that has an entire Iraqi family. So I'm always a bridge builder. I'm always in between.
AMOS: A bridge that's worth the journey.
Deborah Amos, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF ABAJI'S "SERENITY")
NOEL KING, HOST:
This week, a massive trade deal begins to take effect - without the United States. It was called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Now it's the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. It's going to ease trade between 11 countries. Some analysts expected that this pact would fail after President Trump pulled the U.S. out, but it didn't. So what does that mean for the countries that stayed in and for the U.S.? Matthew Goodman is the senior adviser for Asian economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Thanks for coming in.
MATTHEW GOODMAN: Good morning.
KING: So briefly, what is this trade agreement meant to do for these 11 countries?
GOODMAN: Well, it's going to open markets. There are some substantial tariffs and other barriers in these countries - Japan, Vietnam, others. It's going to open those markets up for exporters from the other countries and actually provide some real economic stimulus to these countries. Some of the estimates show that Vietnam could grow as much as 10 percentage points more than it would have done otherwise. And Japan is going to grow more. So it's going to be good for them economically.
KING: Was the deal weakened at all when the United States pulled out - because at the time, there were questions about whether or not the center could hold?
GOODMAN: Yes. Actually, very much so. This was originally an agreement of 12 countries, including the United States, that represented about 40 percent of the global economy. It's now down to about 15 percent of the global economy. So right there, the economic impact is less. And then the U.S. was effectively the leader that was driving a lot of the - particularly the tougher rules that were established under this agreement. Japan, quite surprisingly, stepped up after the U.S. pulled out and, working with Australia and Singapore and others, managed to push it over the line. And so that was a little bit against expectations. But Japan did a great job of moving this thing forward.
KING: What does easing trade restrictions between these 11 countries that are not the United States mean for the United States?
GOODMAN: Well, it's going to be a loss for some of our exporters. One of the widely discussed examples is the beef market in Japan. So Japan maintains a tariff of about 38.5 percent on beef imports coming into the country. That tariff is going to be reduced for Australia and other competitors of the United States. It already has been reduced as of a couple days ago, and it's going to gradually drop to 9 percent. U.S. cattlemen are going to continue to pay 38 percent if they want to sell into this very lucrative market. So that's just one example of the kind of loss to the U.S. from a sort of microeconomic, sectoral perspective. Macroeconomically, not a huge impact on the U.S. - but some of these particular sectors are going to be hit.
KING: Can we say whether or not the U.S. is in a worse position economically with this new agreement, with these countries being involved in it than if no deal had ever been struck?
GOODMAN: I mean, I think that for those specific sectors - yes - that's for sure - the cattlemen, for example, or the digital economy. That's another important area of this agreement. There were new rules established on keeping the Internet open, making sure that data could flow across borders substantially, you know, freely. You don't have to store data in a country. We've lost now our participation in all of that. And I think that's going to affect, potentially, you know, this core part of our future economy. So I think it's a blow.
Beyond the economics, I think it's important, also, to stress what else has been lost here. TPP was also about sending a signal to this important region that the U.S. was engaged and had committed to the region. And by pulling out, I think it's really sent some questions about our commitment to this important region, where China is rising and others are uncomfortable with that.
KING: Matthew Goodman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, thank you.
GOODMAN: Thank you.
NOEL KING, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Noel King with the story of a Mississippi man who got a surprise in the mail. Actually, make that 47 surprises. Dale Dickerson ordered his wife one diamond bracelet for Christmas online, but he opened the box to find 48 of them. Dale called the company and sent the extra bracelets back. In return, it sent the Dickersons a pair of diamond earrings as a thank-you. Quite appropriately, the name of the company is Jewelry Unlimited. It's MORNING EDITION.
NOEL KING, HOST:
Sports metaphors have a way of working themselves into casual conversation. But interestingly, conversations about the war against ISIS are no exception. President Trump's declaration that ISIS had been defeated and that he'll withdraw U.S. troops from Syria led to serious debate. Some of his critics have started using football metaphors. Here's commentator Mike Pesca.
MIKE PESCA, BYLINE: Last week on CBS's "Face The Nation," Democratic Senator Chris Coons spoke in opposition to the presidential decision to withdraw troops from Syria, saying, we're so close...
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FACE THE NATION")
CHRIS COONS: We shouldn't fumble the ball on the five-yard line.
PESCA: Then this week on CNN, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham grabbed the analogy and ran with it - backwards by about five yards.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LINDSEY GRAHAM: They're inside the 10-yard line in defeating ISIS, but we're not there yet.
PESCA: So close, but not as close. Then there was an NBC News story which quoted an unnamed U.S. Special Forces commander saying, we're on the two-yard line. We could literally fall into the end zone. We're that close to total victory to wiping out the ISIS caliphate in Syria.
Those words were said nine months ago at the time Rex Tillerson was still the secretary of state and H.R. McMaster was national security adviser. So you could interpret U.S. success as tantalizingly close but actually moving backwards bit by bit, or you could just conclude that it's less likely that victory is in sight than the analogy is inapt. Analogies work by taking an abstract or even unknowable concept - in this case, the war against an amorphous enemy - and putting it in terms that an audience can understand.
Most Americans could not tell you the results of the Abu Komal offensive, or the command and control structure of ISIS or even if ISIS is Sunni or Shia. But they know when a football team has the ball on the two or five or 10-yard line, they should score a touchdown. Actually, based on statistics from over 30,000 scenarios, the sports analytics firm numberFire determined that the odds of throwing for a touchdown from the 10-yard line are 19 percent and from the five are 31 percent, a running touchdown from the five happens less often than 20 percent of the time, but push it out to Lindsey Graham's 10-yard line, and you get a rushing touchdown 8 percent of the time.
So even these imagined yard lines, selected to convey the relative ease of the mission, indicate the opposite. And what would a field goal against ISIS be worth? Furthermore, what's a turnover? That ISIS defeats the U.S. military? And is the U.S. ahead in this game? If so wouldn't withdrawing, which is to say, running out the clock and ending the game, be the best strategy? I don't think the senators and military men who purvey these analogies would argue that. They'd likely say comparisons to yard lines aren't meant to be precise, but evocative. The only problem is they evoke not just a proximity to the goal, literally, but they imply a clock and a rules-based structure that the situation doesn't warrant.
There is one notable thing about these analogies. They're all football. If you remember five years ago, then-President Obama referred dismissively to the Jihadi groups which had inherited al-Qaida's mantle by saying, quote, "the analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms, that doesn't make them Kobe Bryant." I don't know if it's deliberate or unconscious, but talk of goal lines and fumbles, as opposed to an NBA hall of famer, makes clear the current situation in Syria is a whole other ball game.
KING: Commentator Mike Pesca hosts the Slate podcast "The Gist," and he wrote "Upon Further Review: The Greatest What-Ifs In Sports History."
NOEL KING, HOST:
Paul Whelan, a U.S. citizen, remains in detention in Moscow. Russia's domestic security service, the FSB, has said he was detained because he was, quote, "conducting spying activity." Whelan is a retired Marine. His family says he was in Russia to attend a wedding. They've released a statement saying that he's innocent. Here's his brother, David Whelan, talking to CBC TV yesterday.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DAVID WHELAN: There's no chance that the Russians are making an accurate accusation. Paul has a law enforcement background. He is a Marine. He has worked in corporate security, and he's very aware of both the rule of law and the risks of traveling in countries that may have risks to travelers.
KING: Earlier this morning, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told journalists that the U.S. is demanding answers from Russia and seeking consular access to Whelan. And Russia's foreign ministry has now said they did allow the U.S. access to him. Earlier, I talked to John Sipher. He's a former member of the CIA's Clandestine Service.
You served in Moscow. You ran the CIA's Russia operations. What do you think is happening here? Does Paul Whelan fit the profile of a U.S. spy?
JOHN SIPHER: Absolutely not. I think the best way to look at this is if you look at Vladimir Putin as a Cold War KGB spy, it's best to look back at the Cold War for some examples here. And probably the best example that comes to mind for me is the case of Nicholas Daniloff. Nicholas Daniloff was a U.S. news and world reporter in Moscow who was arrested three days after a Russian KGB officer was arrested in New York gathering - or, excuse me - classified materials from a U.S. source.
And the Russians did that, obviously, for political reasons - to have someone to swap, to put pressure on the United States to give up the person that they had arrested that we were keeping in jail. And I think, in many ways, we can look at this in the same way. As you recall, a Russian woman, Maria Butina, was arrested recently, spying for the Russians and is being held in U.S. federal prison. I think this is a means of probably putting pressure on the United States to either release her or at least begin negotiations in that regard.
KING: Maria Butina's plea deal probably would have resulted in her getting a short prison term and being deported back to Russia, which does not sound like a particularly severe punishment. Why would Vladimir Putin or why would Moscow take the trouble of trying to get back at the U.S. for something that doesn't seem to be all that severe?
SIPHER: That's a great question. I think what this suggests is it's more severe than we think it is. You know, a lot of the press around Ms. Butina suggests that she just was a young student who was just doing networking and didn't seem to be doing much. And I understand that if you're looking at this from the outside and you don't understand how espionage works. But in our world, Ms. Butina would be something we would call an access agent, sort of the overt face of covert work, if you will.
If you're an operative - a Russian operative coming to the United States - and trying to figure out who you should go after as a target to become a spy, you need people that are out there in the community, in networks that can provide you assessment information on people who are out there, what their psychological profiles are, that type of thing.
So somebody like Ms. Butina would be a force multiplier for the Russian services. She'd be out there. She can advise them on the kind of people that she's meeting with so that the Russian intelligence services can make very strategic choices on who to go after.
KING: Well, will you - do you think that this will make U.S. officials think perhaps they didn't take Maria Butina seriously enough?
SIPHER: I think U.S. officials know what's going on here. I don't think it has become publicly. The fact that they've arrested her and they're considering jail time suggests to me that they have more on her than I think we know publicly, at least that's how I sense.
I think she was, in some way, probably helping the Russians to recruit someone to spy for them. And therefore, that's why they've taken it seriously. But the fact that the Russians and Mr. Putin have arrested this American suggests to me that they think getting Ms. Butina out's pretty important.
KING: All right. Let's listen to another clip from Paul Whelan's twin brother - this is on CBC TV yesterday. He was asked why he thinks Paul has been detained.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
WHELAN: I think it's too complicated to come up with a simple answer to what that is. I think that there are many reasons that Paul could have, and it could be completely arbitrary. Our goal, really, is just to get him home.
KING: All right. Without clear evidence that Whelan was, in fact, spying, can the Russians really prosecute him for espionage? And if they did, what could the potential punishment be?
SIPHER: They absolutely could punish him for espionage. There's a new - in 2012, the Russians redid their espionage law. And they made it so vague that, essentially, they can arrest anybody and charge them with espionage to serve 20 years in jail. Anybody who they consider, quote, "a foreign agent" involved in, quote, "political activities" or holding secret information that can be defined by the U.S. - by the Russian government - can be charged with espionage under the new law.
And it's an incredibly powerful law for the Kremlin because they can essentially grab anybody and define espionage to fit, you know, what they're looking for. So in this case, I think the Russians know that, essentially, if they snatch up someone who's got some vague connections to the U.S. government or to law enforcement, most people understand and assume that there's something there, even if there is nothing there.
KING: So a man who was a former Marine would sort of fit the profile of somebody who they could pick up and kind of run with this. Let me ask you what you see the role of President Putin here and the role of President Trump here. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says we want this guy back. Those are strong words. Do you think President Putin is testing President Trump, and if he is, what is he testing him on here?
SIPHER: Well, it's hard to say. I think President Trump is the wild card here. President Trump has - in the past, has made comments, you know, conflating, you know, Russian activity with U.S. activity. Remember when he made the famous comment that - about Putin was a killer, saying, well, we all have killers. I think President Trump - excuse me, President Putin - may be testing President Trump here. But it's hard to say.
The one thing I can say for certain, however, is this is not how the U.S. commits espionage overseas. We would never put a U.S. citizen without diplomatic immunity in harm's way this way, especially looking after low-level things like this. And so one thing I'm pretty confident of is that this person is not involved in any kind of coordinated intelligence activity on behalf of the United States. That doesn't mean it's not a big political deal.
KING: Very briefly, will the U.S, do you think, get access to Whelan?
SIPHER: Yes. They have to. I think, by law, they have a certain amount of time before the State Department can get access to him.
KING: John Sipher is a former member of the CIA's Clandestine Service and Senior Intelligence Service. Thanks for coming in.
SIPHER: My pleasure. Thank you much, Noel.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
For months now, in Kenya, excavators have been destroying buildings across the country's capital city. We're talking about brand-new multimillion-dollar malls, hotels, even beloved restaurants. The government says it's all an effort to fight corruption. Here's NPR's Eyder Peralta.
EYDER PERALTA, BYLINE: The Nakumatt Ukay building was an icon in Nairobi, a five-story shopping mall home to a 24-hour supermarket and - hands down - the best chicken joint in the city. And yet, just like that, two green excavators start tearing down walls. This was a building that few thought would ever come down, but the city government said it was built many years ago with a fraudulent permit over the Nairobi River.
Patrick Muthi, 29, watches with admiration as the excavator wiggles out of a tangle of steel and concrete.
PATRICK MUTHI: To me, it is a new start for our nation, like when it comes to following the law.
PERALTA: In a lot of ways, these demolitions have become symbolic of the Kenyan government's vow to fight corruption. Over the past few months, hundreds of buildings have been brought down. Some, like this one, have been standing for decades. Others were in the midst of construction.
PETER WANYANDE: Corruption, in this country, is systemic, and it is pervasive.
PERALTA: That's Peter Wanyande, a political scientist at the University of Nairobi. He says these buildings provide a perfect metaphor for what ails Kenya. They were built over rivers, in brazen violation of zoning laws and sometimes even on government land. It's clear that they were built after wads of cash were given to the right people. And no one said anything, not even the commissions set up to police such things.
WANYANDE: They did more shouting than actually acting. But it's partly because the system - corruption is so entrenched. The powerful and the influential are part of the corrupt groups in this country.
PERALTA: Indeed, in a speech, President Uhuru Kenyatta himself said his friends have called, begging him to stop the destruction. But he vowed to continue because all Kenyans have to realize, he says, the days of lawlessness are over.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT UHURU KENYATTA: No matter how much you think you know people in high positions, no matter how much money you have, that will not save you. That will not save you.
(APPLAUSE)
PERALTA: Wanyande wonders, though. Right now, he says, these operations seem cosmetic, not really touching the upper echelon of the Kenyan elite.
WANYANDE: It is selective. There are many that will not be brought down.
PERALTA: Out on the street, the reaction seems partisan. Those who support the president say he's fighting corruption. Those who don't say it's all politics. At the Nakumatt Ukay building, I find Michelle, a 40-year-old businesswoman, who only wanted her first name used to avoid being targeted. She says her favorite chicken place had just been renovated. They were busy all the time and provided jobs for a lot of Kenyans. This makes no sense, she says. And she's sure the demolition is being used to settle political scores.
MICHELLE: They probably want - one of them probably want to own it.
PERALTA: And so it's not about...
MICHELLE: No.
PERALTA: ...Like, reclaiming the river?
MICHELLE: No, it's all going back to them. This is not our land as Kenyans. It has its owners.
PERALTA: The government was supposed to decide on whether to demolish a hotel owned by Kenya's deputy president. Everyone was watching, waiting to see if they would punish one of their own. But on decision day, the government stopped all demolitions across the country. Eyder Peralta, NPR News, Nairobi.
(SOUNDBITE OF ERIC LAU'S "STAR TREKKING")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
There's a recent study out of Oregon that shows that race comes into play, even when it means administering lifesaving care. Specifically, this study shows black patients are 40 percent less likely to get pain medication than white people. Kristian Foden-Vencil of Oregon Public Broadcasting reports.
KRISTIAN FODEN-VENCIL, BYLINE: Differences in how races are treated by doctors in the ER are well-documented. Whites tend to get better care and have healthier outcomes. But until this study, it was unclear if the same was happening in an emergency in the back of an ambulance. Leslie Gregory always wondered. Now a physician assistant, Gregory got her start as one of a very few black, female EMTs. She remembers one call. The patient was down and in pain. Driving up, she could see he was black. Then one of her colleagues groaned.
LESLIE GREGORY: It was something like, oh, God. Here we go again.
FODEN-VENCIL: She worried her colleague thought that because he was black, he was acting out to get pain meds.
GREGORY: At the time, I remember it increased my stress as we rode up on this person because I thought, now, am I going to have to fight my colleague for more pain medication, should that arise?
FODEN-VENCIL: A group of researchers at Oregon Health and Science University decided to try to see if there was a difference in the way patients were treated on emergency calls. They looked at 100,000 medical charts of ambulance patients over three years. Black patients were less likely to receive pain medications compared to white patients, regardless of socio-economic factors like health insurance.
(SOUNDBITE OF BANG)
FODEN-VENCIL: At the end of a recent shift at American Medical Response in Portland, a row of ambulances files into the garage. Many emergency responders here bristle at the idea race plays a role in care. Jennifer Sanders has been a paramedic for 30 years.
JENNIFER SANDERS: I've never treated anybody different regardless.
FODEN-VENCIL: The very idea is distasteful, says paramedic Jason Dahlke.
JASON DAHLKE: No one I work with will explicitly and intentionally discriminate against somebody. It's not what we do. It's not the business that we're in.
FODEN-VENCIL: But Dahlke is willing to entertain the idea unconscious bias is at work in his field.
DAHLKE: Historically, it's the way this country has been. In the beginning, we had slavery and then Jim Crow and then redlining and all of this stuff that you can get lost in in, like, a large, macro scale. So yeah, it's there.
FODEN-VENCIL: So this study is given import. He mentions an older black patient he just treated. He was diabetic and complaining of extreme pain. Dahlke gave him glucose for low blood sugar but no pain meds. He says that's because by the time he'd stabilized his blood sugar, they'd reached the hospital. And would he have done anything differently if the patient had been white?
DAHLKE: Consciously, absolutely not. Unconsciously, that's what studies are saying.
FODEN-VENCIL: Dahlke thinks another issue at play may be that white patients are more comfortable asking for medications than patients of color. Former EMT Leslie Gregory agrees. She says after years of discrimination, many African-Americans have their own biases about the medical system. They just don't trust it.
GREGORY: How can a person of color not disrespect a system that is constantly studying and talking about these disparities but does nothing to fix it?
FODEN-VENCIL: The author of this new ambulance study, Jamie Kennel, says another reason disparities loom so large may be that EMTs work in a stressful and time-pressured environment.
JAMIE KENNEL: In these situations, providers are much more likely to default to making decisions based on stereotypes.
FODEN-VENCIL: So now ambulance agencies know unconscious bias may be at work. What are they doing about it? Robert McDonald with American Medical Response says he's looking at new training and a change in hiring practices.
ROBERT MCDONALD: We want to see more ethnicities represented in EMS that has historically been a white, male-dominated workforce.
FODEN-VENCIL: The first step, though, is for emergency workers to just be aware of the role bias may play in care. For NPR News, I'm Kristian Foden-Vencil in Portland.
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MARTIN: This story is part of a partnership with NPR, Oregon Public Broadcasting and Kaiser Health News.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Before she became the director of the CIA, Gina Haspel spent much of her career overseas and undercover. And she wants more CIA officers doing the same. In her one speech as head of the spy agency, she said a top priority is to...
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GINA HASPEL: Steadily increase the number of officers stationed overseas. That's where our mission as a foreign intelligence agency lies, and having a larger foreign footprint allows for a more robust posture.
MARTIN: But in an age of universal surveillance, this is a big challenge. Here's NPR's national security correspondent Greg Myre.
GREG MYRE, BYLINE: When a CIA officer goes abroad, it's important to, well, not look too American.
JONNA MENDEZ: So we would de-Americanize you.
MYRE: That's what Jonna Mendez did when she was chief of disguise at the CIA, a job that went far beyond wigs and makeup. If, for example, an American wants to appear European, here are a few key tips.
MENDEZ: They wear their wedding rings on different fingers.
MYRE: And in a restaurant...
MENDEZ: They eat differently than we do. They don't shuttle that fork back and forth.
MYRE: And on the street...
MENDEZ: They think that we are slouchy, a little sloppy. And they think that they can almost see that in our demeanor on the street because they stand up straight. They don't lean on things.
MYRE: And of course, you need documents that hide your true identity. Retired CIA officer John Sipher says it wasn't all that complicated when he started out in the 1980s.
JOHN SIPHER: I could use what we called pocket litter of driver's licenses and these kinds of things, and that would be enough if I was ever questioned at a hotel or even crossing borders.
MYRE: It's not that way anymore.
SIPHER: There's no doubt it's much harder to build and protect cover nowadays than it was 20, 30, 40 years ago. That's for sure.
MYRE: Many airports now scan faces and fingerprints that are matched against a vast database. Sipher says it could be tough today to enter the same country twice with different sets of documents.
SIPHER: You know, with the proliferation of social media and a lot of these open-source means of looking into people's backgrounds, if you don't have a consistent background and a cover that makes sense, it's going to be much more difficult to hide your true affiliation.
MYRE: Most everyone leaves digital footprints from a young age that can easily be checked years later - school records, work history, phone numbers, addresses. It's a dilemma for spies who need online personas, real or fictional, that look plausible without giving away too much. Here's the CIA's chief of recruiting, Sheronda. We're only allowed to use her first name.
SHERONDA: People here do use social media. And yes, specific guidelines are provided.
MYRE: Which she won't talk about. And if nothing turns up in an online search, well, that would certainly be suspicious. Here's Mary, a CIA undercover officer who spent most of her career abroad.
MARY: I think everybody has some sort of online presence. If you were to Google an officer, I'm sure that something would come up, whether it was college degree or whatever. I don't know. So I don't think nothing would come up.
MYRE: Some in the world of intelligence say it may now make more sense for spies to use their real names and their real personal data rather than create a fictional past. Consider the two Russians accused of poisoning a former Russian intelligence officer, Sergei Skripal, in Britain this past spring. Britain released security camera footage documenting their visit to the country under assumed names, notes John Sipher.
SIPHER: The British were able to put together an incredible mosaic.
MYRE: Armed with the photos, a private research group, Bellingcat, then used open-source Internet data to tease out the real identities of the men, tracing them back to their hometowns in Russia.
SIPHER: They were able to put together essentially everything that they did to prove that it was a Russian intelligence operation.
MYRE: Intelligence work is often a combination of electronic surveillance and clandestine, person-to-person contacts. As technology races ahead, electronic, or signals intelligence, keeps getting better. Old-fashioned spying between a CIA officer and a foreign source gets harder. But Jonna Mendez says you'll always need the human touch.
MENDEZ: It's a job of human beings. You have to find the people who have the access, and then you have to do what I think is one of the toughest jobs in the world. You have to convince them to give you that information.
MYRE: These are the people the CIA hopes to find.
Greg Myre, NPR News, Washington.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The power dynamic in Washington shifts today. A new Congress is sworn in, Democrats take control, and a familiar face becomes the new speaker of the House.
NOEL KING, HOST:
That's right. There was doubt and debate within the Democratic Party, but former Speaker Nancy Pelosi is expected to become House speaker once again. She's the only woman to have held that position, from 2007 to 2011, and the first thing on her agenda will be to introduce legislation to end this partial government shutdown. But Pelosi has made it clear that when it comes to the president's border wall funding, she is not budging.
MARTIN: We're joined in the studio by NPR congressional reporter Kelsey Snell.
Good morning, Kelsey.
KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Hey. Good morning.
MARTIN: So we're going to get to the shutdown and the wall. But first, I want to talk about what Nancy Pelosi has actually already done - even before assuming the speakership. She's made some rule changes. What can you tell us?
SNELL: Yeah. So Democrats plan to get all of these new rules in place as actually one of their very first orders of business. It's all part of this push that they're making to make government work better. They say that they want to kind of overhaul the ethics rules for Congress so that people can have more trust in the people who make the laws, something that a lot of people don't have right now (laughter).
MARTIN: Right. So what rules are going to make us do that?
SNELL: Yeah. So they hope to gain some trust by creating a kind of stark comparison between Republicans and Trump. And a big part of that is they want to make it easier to increase the debt limit. Now, you know we have had this fight over and over, it seems like, where there's a question about whether or not the government is actually going to make payments on debt that it already has.
MARTIN: Right.
SNELL: Their new rule would make it so that it automatically happens when they pass a budget. So that's the big first one that will probably impact people's lives the most. It will also make it harder for them to kick out a speaker of the House. And they want to make sure that no more members or staff can serve on corporate boards.
They think that would kind of separate Congress from private industry a little bit better. And they would extend bans on discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity and allow religious headwear to be worn on the floor of the House. That's for - largely to accommodate a request from Ilhan Omar, who is a representative who will be sworn in from Minnesota.
MARTIN: Who covers, yeah.
So let's talk about the shutdown...
SNELL: Yeah.
MARTIN: ...'Cause this really is the business at hand.
SNELL: (Laughter).
MARTIN: She's going to make all these rule changes, which is all fine and good. But there is a partial government shutdown. And she is going to try - is it an earnest effort to try to get the government to reopen with this legislation?
SNELL: Well, she referred to it as a Republican way to reopen the government. Basically, she wants to give Republicans the option of saying - hey, we're going to pay for six of the seven parts of the government that are closed down right now, let them be opened, fund them for the rest of the year...
MARTIN: Things that don't have anything to do with border security.
SNELL: Right. And leave the border security fight to go on for just about another month - give them one month to work out the Department of Homeland Security. But the president has basically already said that he's not interested in doing that. And you know, the Republicans in the Senate say they don't want to vote on anything that doesn't have the president's support. So it may not go much further than the vote today.
MARTIN: All right. One other story I want to ask you about - The New York Times published a piece yesterday about the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders in 2016, saying that there were these claims of sexual harassment, pay disparity by staffers. What are you learning about this?
SNELL: Well, the complaints were, in particular, made by female staffers who talked about mistreatment, sexual harassment and being paid much less than their male counterparts. And the Sanders campaign is not denying any of this. They are talking about how the campaign grew too fast. And they released a statement saying that harassment and discrimination are not tolerated by Bernie Sanders himself and that they took some steps in 2016 to fix the problems.
But they're also guaranteeing that anything going forward, whether it's a new campaign or just his work in the Senate, that there will be efforts to make sure that there is more parity between men and women and make sure that there is no discrimination of any kind.
MARTIN: But he hasn't said, one way or the other, if he's going to run for president...
SNELL: He has not. That was not part of the statement (laughter).
MARTIN: All right. NPR's Kelsey Snell.
Thanks so much, Kelsey.
SNELL: Thank you.
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MARTIN: All right. So we have been talking about this. The whole reason for the shutdown is the fight over the border wall.
KING: Yeah. There was this meeting between President Trump and congressional leaders yesterday, but there was no progress. The president wants a wall funded, and Democrats say no. The thing that has gotten lost in this debate is whether or not a wall could actually keep migrants out of this country.
MARTIN: Right. And we have talked about this before, but it is worth reminding all of us exactly what is happening on the border, what's the state of the actual barrier there and what would be effective. So no other person can better serve us in this moment than NPR correspondent John Burnett on the line from Texas, who has spent...
JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: Hi, Rachel.
MARTIN: ...His fair share at the border.
Hey, John.
So even as recent as yesterday, President Trump tweeted that the wall's already being built. What is there now?
BURNETT: Well, when the president talks about the urgency of a border wall, remember that a third of the border is already covered by some sort of wall. You've got 700 miles of barriers down here. There are vehicle barriers in the remote areas of the west desert and pedestrian fencing. They range from chain-link fences that are easy to cut to these 12- to 18-foot-tall iron bollard fences. You can see through them, and they're very hard to get over. And that's the standard construction for the replacement fencing now.
Remember, most of the big border cities are already walled off, like San Diego and El Paso and Brownsville. These were the most popular crossing points because undocumented immigrants could blend in with the urban population. And Customs and Border Protection uses all kinds of other technology. They've got video cameras mounted on poles that are monitored remotely, sensors buried in the ground and embedded in the walls, these big spy blimps tethered in the sky that look into Mexico and, of course, some 16,000 agents along the southern border that are watching and tracking.
MARTIN: But even Democrats agree that border security needs to be improved. So clearly, even all that technology isn't passing muster. It's not securing the border to the level that Democrats and Republicans would like to see.
BURNETT: Well, remember that illegal immigration is still down 80 percent from its peak in 2000. And there are just fewer and fewer incidents of chasing single males through the brush, which is what, you know, it used to be all about. What we're seeing now is an uptick of these families and children that are arriving from Central America asking for asylum.
And the thing is that most people who cross illegally, Rachel, are apprehended not trying to evade the Border Patrol. They're looking for these green-suited agents. And in the Rio Grande Valley, the wall is not even on the river. It can be a half mile inland, so they're already in the United States before they even see the wall.
MARTIN: So let's get back to this claim. The president keeps insisting that the wall, meaning his wall that he wants - the big physical barrier to run the extent...
BURNETT: Yeah.
MARTIN: ...That it's already being built. Is that true?
BURNETT: Well, what's under construction mostly is the replacement. And in San Diego, you see it. They're replacing these old Vietnam-era landing mats with these big steel bollards. Same thing in El Paso, they're replacing chain link fencing. There are 33 new miles of border fencing that are being built down in the Rio Grande Valley, though.
MARTIN: So there are parts of the border, you and I both know, that natural terrain is just so treacherous, really...
BURNETT: Yeah.
MARTIN: ...It would make it impossible to build a wall in some of the areas. Right?
BURNETT: Right. And in the flat areas, that's where it's practical. But many border agents will tell you that a wall is just not necessary or feasible in these remote mountainous areas. The terrain is its own deterrent, like the Chisos Mountains in the Big Bend area of far West Texas and the San Ysidro Mountains east of San Diego. It's the terrain that slows people down, and that enables agents to apprehend them.
MARTIN: All right. NPR's John Burnett for us in Texas.
Thanks so much, John.
BURNETT: You bet.
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MARTIN: All right. We're going to turn now to Russia, where American officials are trying to figure out why a U.S. citizen was detained there last week.
KING: Russia says Paul Whelan was detained during, quote, "an act of espionage." Whelan's family says absolutely not. He was in Russia for a wedding. The U.S. ambassador to Russia visited Whelan yesterday for the first time. And meanwhile, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that American diplomats are waiting for more answers from their Russian counterparts.
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MIKE POMPEO: We've made clear to the Russians our expectation that we will learn more about the charges and come to understand what it is he's been accused of. And if the detention is not appropriate, we will demand his immediate return.
MARTIN: All right. We've got Moscow reporter Charles Maynes on the line with us to talk about this.
Hey, Charles.
CHARLES MAYNES, BYLINE: Good to be with you. Hi.
MARTIN: What was communicated in that meeting between U.S. Ambassador Huntsman and Paul Whelan? Do we know?
MAYNES: Well, we don't have too much. So the State Department released a statement that said that U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman had visited with Mr. Whelan in Lefortovo Prison. This is a czarist-era prison with a long history for holding alleged spies and political prisoners in Russia. Mr. Huntsman had expressed support, offered the embassy's assistance - pretty standard stuff. He'd also spoken by phone with Mr. Whelan's family. But in the interest of privacy, they weren't providing any more details on the charges or the circumstances of the arrest, which of course are of great interest.
MARTIN: Right. But there are more details coming to light about Paul Whelan and, in particular, his tenure as a Marine. Right? What can you tell us about that?
MAYNES: Well, right. We know he was a former Marine. He served two tours in Iraq back in 2004, 2006. The Marine Corps, however, released Whelan's service record. And that showed he was convicted in 2008 of a court-martial on charges related to larceny, given a bad-conduct discharge. But his career from there - he goes on to work for law enforcement for a while.
He works currently for BorgWarner. This is a Michigan-based company. It deals with propulsion engines, where Mr. Whelan is head of global security. Now, BorgWarner has offices in Europe, in China but not in Russia. That said, Mr. Whelan has traveled to Russia frequently since 2007. And as you noted, his family says he was in town for a wedding.
MARTIN: So I mean, what are you hearing from people there? Are people - are Russians talking about this? Are officials there that you've been able to speak with discussing this in terms of a possible prisoner swap with Maria Butina, the Russian agent who was arrested and charged here in the U.S.?
MAYNES: Well, first of all, it's the middle of the kind of New Year's holidays here, so everything's shut down. But we have kind of a blockbuster story that appeared in the Russian press today, in Rosbalt. This is a Russian online newspaper that's pretty well-sourced with the security services. And they have what they claim are the first details of Whelan's arrest. They say that Mr. Whelan was caught receiving a flash drive naming Russian intelligence agents in the Metropol hotel. This was within this hotel room where he was staying for this apparent wedding.
And certainly, skeptics here in Moscow are discussing the circumstances of this. I mean, the idea of a flash drive in 2019 sounds a bit strange. Did Mr. Whelan even know what was on that flash drive? So there are some who suggest here that it was some kind of setup in a very made-for-TV moment. So essentially, wait for this video to be released on state television here in Moscow.
MARTIN: Yeah, interesting that Russia is already spinning out this narrative.
Reporter Charles Maynes in Moscow, thank you so much. We appreciate it.
MAYNES: Thank you.
NOEL KING, HOST:
Was the killing of a 7-year-old girl in Texas this week motivated by race? The girl's mother wants to know. Investigators who are hunting for the killer say so far, they don't have a motive. Florian Martin with Houston Public Media has the story.
FLORIAN MARTIN, BYLINE: It was a little before 7:00 Sunday morning near a Walmart in Harris County, just outside of Houston. LaPorsha Washington was on the way to get coffee with her four daughters in the car. Police say that's when a red pickup truck pulled up next to them, and a man described to be in his 40s opened fire. Washington was hit in the arm. Her 7-year-old daughter, Jazmine Barnes, was shot in the head and died at the scene. Four days after it happened, investigators still don't know much about the suspect and the motive. Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez says there seems to be no link between the family and the shooter.
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ED GONZALEZ: For now, our goal is finding this individual, this coward, this shooter, and finding this vehicle. And so that's our goal, and then everything's still on the table.
MARTIN: Some have suggested a racial motive. The victims are black. The suspected shooter is white. In a phone interview with CNN, LaPorsha Washington wondered herself if it was racial hatred. She says the shooter was able to see into her car when he opened fire.
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LAPORSHA WASHINGTON: So you see that it was a mother, a black mother, with four beautiful children, girls, in this car.
MARTIN: Sheriff Gonzalez says while murders happen all the time, this one stings in particular for many people because of the victim's age and the time of the year this happened.
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GONZALEZ: It's a time of celebration and fellowship, and closing out a year and starting a new one. All positive, wonderful things that as Americans we all celebrate, all stripped for this particular family. And I think everybody feels that pain.
MARTIN: He says the sheriff's office won't rest until the killer is put behind bars. For NPR News, I'm Florian Martin in Houston.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Here's a question to ponder. Does it really make a difference where you go to college? According to Derek Thompson, it depends. He's a staff writer at The Atlantic and has been tracking the research on this question. It's particularly relevant right now for prospective students about to make this very decision. We started in our conversation talking about the basic assumption that the more elite the university, the better your salary prospects are when you get out.
DEREK THOMPSON: Well, first I should just say that I shared everyone else's assumption. I mean, if you count up all of the billionaires in the U.S. and a lot of the president's Supreme Court justices, they are disproportionately coming from America's elite institutions. So you'd think, yes, of course, it matters. But sometimes, as economics shows us, that which appears obvious is not in fact true. So in 2002, there was a very famous paper by the economists Stacy Dale and Alan Krueger that came to the startling conclusion that for the vast majority of students, if you controlled for the characteristics before they attended those elite institutions, they couldn't find any effect that the elite institutions had themselves.
Most people who either get into Harvard or who are on the bubble of getting into Harvard are essentially of Harvard quality, anyway, no matter where they go to school. So by the time they enter the workforce in their 20s and 30s, they're essentially earning a Harvard salary. So essentially, the way that I sum this up when I talk to students, and especially the students now who are sweating these thin or fat packages of all the schools that they applied to, it matters much more the person you become at 18 than the institution you graduate from at 22.
MARTIN: I understand, though, there is some newer research that looked more closely at the impact of race and gender, which matters here, right? What does that say?
THOMPSON: That's right. Late last year, a new study from economists examined the exact same data set and came to two very interesting conclusions. First, among men, the study found no relationship between college selectivity and long-term earnings. No Harvard effect. But for women, attending a school that's more selective - made them more likely to earn more and less likely to get married.
So what it seems to find is that going to a really, really elite school, for women, makes them more likely to devote themselves to a career before they get married, delay marriage and childbirth itself, and then to work more even after you get married.
So you could sort of sum this up by saying that the effect of going to an elite school for women isn't so much that it makes them more productive per hour. It's that it makes them work more hours. It makes them think more about a career and the way that they should give that career preference over having a family in their late 20s and early 30s.
MARTIN: OK. So what about race?
THOMPSON: So in race, both papers came to the exact same conclusion. They found that for people who come from lower-income families or who aren't white, attending an elite institution like Harvard or Stanford or Duke has a big effect on earnings. And so the way that I think about this is, like, all right. These minority students, these lower-income students, they're listening to the same professors. They're sitting in the same chairs and taking the same tests as their whiter or richer peers.
So what exactly is happening? Well, what I think is happening is that if you're a kid from a high-income family, your parents already have a really rich network of internships and entry-level jobs they can plug you into no matter where you go to school.
MARTIN: Right.
THOMPSON: But if you come from a lower-income family that has less socioeconomic status then the college itself is serving as the plug into these higher-earning parts of the economy.
MARTIN: What does this mean for universities that are prioritizing diversity right now?
THOMPSON: I think it's really important that they try harder. If you look right now at the socioeconomic makeup of the most elite institutions in the United States, they are not representative of the U.S. They are representative of the already affluent. So these elite institutions have the ability to be factories of social mobility. They can take low-income and minority students and turn them into extremely high-earning adults.
But for the most part, they reserve their seats for students who are going to be affluent, anyway. They have the ability to be incredible duplicators of the American dream, but they are not in fact achieving that end.
MARTIN: Derek Thompson, staff writer at The Atlantic magazine. Derek, thanks so much.
THOMPSON: Thank you.
NOEL KING, HOST:
Netflix has pulled an episode of the satirical show "Patriot Act With Hasan Minhaj" from its service in Saudi Arabia. Minhaj spent that episode criticizing Saudi Arabia's autocratic leadership. NPR's media correspondent David Folkenflik has the story.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: From the outset of the episode, Minhaj laced into the country's rulers. He took particular rhetorical aim at its crown prince.
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HASAN MINHAJ: And it blows my mind that it took the killing of a Washington Post journalist for everyone to go, oh. I guess he's really not a reformer. Meanwhile, every Muslim person you know was like, yeah, no [expletive]. He's the crown prince of Saudi Arabia.
FOLKENFLIK: Minhaj detailed the links between Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. And he invoked the Saudis' deadly bombings of civilians in Yemen and restrictive laws against women. Minhaj also denounced American political figures for courting the prince and Silicon Valley for accepting money from the ruling Saud family through its stake in a Japanese conglomerate called SoftBank. SoftBank has major investments in Uber and WeWork.
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MINHAJ: WeWork won't let you expense meat, but you take money from Saudi Arabia. Let me - so you're against slaughterhouses unless they're in Yemen. But hey, try our co-working spaces. We got Philz Coffee.
FOLKENFLIK: And then Minhaj made a direct appeal.
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MINHAJ: So now would be a good time to reassess our relationship with Saudi Arabia. And I mean that as a Muslim and as an American.
FOLKENFLIK: Minhaj's program on Saudi Arabia first ran in late October. According to a corporate spokeswoman, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's Communication and Information Technology Commission wrote to Netflix in December that the episode broke the law. It cited a passage that bans material, quote, "impinging on public order, religious values and public morals." Netflix says it strongly supports artistic freedom but removed the episode last week to comply with local laws after doing due diligence. It previously dropped several shows from its Singapore service, citing that nation's stringent censorship laws. Netflix executives say the company's future financial prospects depend on its performance abroad. Here's Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings in remarks during a briefing for investors in October.
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REED HASTINGS: We hardly look at it U.S. and internationally, but we look at it internally almost all just globally.
FOLKENFLIK: David Kaye notes a pattern of repression of speech by Saudi Arabia, including Khashoggi's killing and the imprisonment and flogging of bloggers. Kaye is a law professor at the University of California at Irvine, who is a special rapporteur for the United Nations, monitoring freedom of expression worldwide.
DAVID KAYE: So, you know, the situation here isn't merely that Hasan Minhaj isn't able to be to be heard through Netflix in Saudi. But it's rather that the audience that he has is being denied a fundamental right to information that they have under international human rights law.
FOLKENFLIK: Kaye says companies often have more leverage than they think, as their services are popular.
KAYE: I think what we're seeing in the case of Netflix and Saudi Arabia is something that we see globally, which is this kind of tug of war between global companies and their audiences on one side and governments that are seeking to tamp down on free expression and access to information on the other.
FOLKENFLIK: Minhaj remains silent on Netflix yielding to censorship by the Saudis, first reported by the Financial Times. Yesterday, he tweeted - clearly, the best way to stop people from watching something is to ban it, make it trend online and then leave it up on YouTube. David Folkenflik, NPR News.
NOEL KING, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Noel King. The partial government shutdown means overflowing trash cans and museums being closed. But for one D.C. couple, it's personal. The two went to a D.C. court to get their marriage license, and we're told the marriage bureau is closed because of the shutdown. Still, they kept their sense of humor. Both have worked in Congress in the past and are familiar with dysfunction. They even created a hashtag - #mybigfakeGreekwedding
NOEL KING, HOST:
When Kristi Toliver was hired as an assistant coach by the Washington Wizards, she was just 1 of 3 active women coaches in the NBA. Coaching was a career goal for Toliver. She's also a WNBA star. She plays point guard for the Washington Mystics. But a problem emerged. If she wanted to coach in the NBA, she'd need to accept a tiny salary - $10,000 a year. Now, NBA assistant coaches typically make $100,000 a year or more. Some make over a million.
Howard Megdal broke this story for The New York Times. He's with me via Skype to explain why it is that a talented female coach is earning peanuts coaching men in the NBA. Good morning, Howard.
HOWARD MEGDAL: Good morning.
KING: So Kristi Toliver is a player and a coach. As a player, she makes a normal WNBA salary. As a coach, she's earning next to nothing - $10,000 a year. How did that happen?
MEGDAL: Well, it happened, in part, because progress has exceeded what the collective bargaining agreement between the players and the WNBA allow for. So the last collective bargaining agreement called for players to be able to be paid up to $50,000 as a team for offseason work. Now, that offseason work, by definition, did not include coaching because at that time, there were not coaches who were WNBA players.
So she came up against a very simple issue, which is that $50,000 was the max that could be paid to all the players for offseason work, and 40,000 of that had already been promised to her Mystics teammate Elena Delle Donne.
KING: So we've got a talented woman coach, and she can't make more than $10,000 a year. Did Kristi Toliver or the Wizards try to fight this? Because, as you lay out in your story, it is really galling. It just seems wildly unfair.
MEGDAL: And that is precisely it. It is galling and unfair. And, yes, they both tried to fight it. And the Wizards, to their credit, tried to do so as well.
KING: In your piece, you spoke to Kristi Toliver, and she seemed frustrated, but she also seemed pretty optimistic. What was your impression of her as a player, as a coach, as a person?
MEGDAL: I've covered Kristi for a long time. She's one of the brightest people that you're going to meet in any profession. So I wasn't surprised about it. I also think there's been an ethos in women's basketball, and really women's sports as a whole, that there's an effort to trailblaze today so that tomorrow's battles are a little bit easier to fight or don't even have to be fought at all. And I think that may play a part in it.
KING: Even though Kristi Toliver is only one person in this situation, this is likely to come up in a new contract negotiation - that this is a very unfair set of circumstances?
MEGDAL: It will definitely come up. The players association is very committed to this. And for the league, it's an opportunity to have a significant number of talented basketball minds coach, as well. So it's an extra influx of talent. So it really is something that both sides have a financial interest in getting solved.
KING: Could this have happened with a male player who also wanted to coach? Say you've got a talented point guard, and he says, in the offseason, I want to coach a women's team. Would he be in the same situation, where there is a cap on how much he could be paid as a coach?
MEGDAL: The short answer is nothing like that would occur. The cap is much higher than $50,000 on the men's side. The money is significantly different as a whole in the NBA. And as a result, it simply wouldn't be something that would be punitive for an NBA player who is tempted to do that.
KING: Howard Megdal is the editor of High Post Hoops, which is a site dedicated to women's basketball, and he broke this story about Kristi Toliver in The New York Times. Thanks, Howard.
MEGDAL: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SABZI'S "SPEARMINT SPEARS")
NOEL KING, HOST:
Singer, producer and songwriter R. Kelly is one of the bestselling R&B artists. But a new docuseries from Lifetime that debuts tonight called "Surviving R. Kelly" alleges he has a darker side. It features the stories of women who say Kelly abused them, isolated them and had sex with them as underage girls. NPR's TV critic Eric Deggans watched the series, and he talked to executive producer Dream Hampton. A warning - this story will talk about allegations of sex with minors and about physical abuse.
ERIC DEGGANS, BYLINE: Dream Hampton first interviewed Robert Sylvester Kelly back in 2000 for Vibe magazine. She knew the star faced controversy over his rumored marriage to protege and singer Aaliyah, who was only 15 when they wed. But she had no idea even darker allegations about his behavior would emerge.
DREAM HAMPTON: What began to become clear a few months after my story was published was that this was predatory behavior, that he had settled several lawsuits with teenagers. I missed it. I totally missed it.
DEGGANS: Now Hampton gets another crack at the story. "Surviving R. Kelly" features interviews with more than 50 people. They include Kelly's ex-wife, two brothers and former employees. A number of women alleged the singer developed a sexual relationship with them when they were underage and/or physically abused them. R. Kelly's denied such charges in the past and didn't respond to repeated inquiries from the program's producers. Jerhonda Pace, who says she was involved with Kelly at age 16, describes physical abuse which made her decide to leave him.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "SURVIVING R. KELLY")
JERHONDA PACE: The breaking point for me was when Rob slapped me, and he choked me until I blacked out.
DEGGANS: Kitti Jones was an adult when she says she began dating Kelly in 2011. She notes the singer had a way of indoctrinating women.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "SURVIVING R. KELLY")
KITTI JONES: He calls it training you. You definitely had to ask to go to the restroom, stand up when he walks in the room. You had to ask for your food.
DEGGANS: Andrea Kelly was married to the singer for more than a decade. She says his controlling attitude and constant cheating pushed her to consider suicide.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "SURVIVING R. KELLY")
ANDREA KELLY: So I just prayed and asked God for a sign, and something said to get my laptop. And I went to the National Domestic Violence Awareness hotline. And there are 17 questions. There was only two things on that list that Robert hadn't done to me.
DEGGANS: Dream Hampton says she centered the docuseries on the voices of these women and many others - average black and brown women too easily ignored by the wider world.
HAMPTON: I thought that they were really brave. And I knew that R. Kelly had been doing this for decades and that if we had 12 or 20 women who were willing to come on camera, there were hundreds more who weren't.
DEGGANS: "Surviving R. Kelly" details decades of disturbing allegations - the infamous leaked video, which allegedly showed the singer having sex and committing degrading acts with a 14-year-old girl in the early 2000s, and recent allegations from parents who say their adult daughters have been isolated by Kelly in something resembling a sex cult. Kelly denies all of it.
Given how allegations of sexual misconduct have derailed the showbiz careers of people like Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey, you have to wonder, why does R. Kelly still have a career? Although, there is a protest movement out there called #MuteRKelly. Some people in the docuseries suggest it's because Kelly victimized black and brown women. They say there would be more public outcry if Kelly's victims were white. Dream Hampton won't go that far. But she does want his fans, many of whom are black, to feel uncomfortable.
HAMPTON: I want them to be unable to loudly kind of declare their defense of R. Kelly. They can do it quietly. They can live with their little shame and play their R. Kelly records, but they should have some shame attached to that.
DEGGANS: "Surviving R. Kelly" makes that point in the most direct way possible by giving voice to those who say they've been overlooked for decades. I'm Eric Deggans.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Actor and comedy writer Bob Einstein died Wednesday at the age of 76. He won Emmys for his writing, and he was known for his on-screen roles in shows like "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and "Arrested Development," and before that, for his character Super Dave Osborne, the inept stuntman. NPR's Andrew Limbong has this appreciation.
ANDREW LIMBONG, BYLINE: In "Curb Your Enthusiasm," Bob Einstein plays Marty Funkhouser, a raspy-voiced friend who is a self-serious foil to Larry David's character on the show. The two argue about anything and everything, including the right time to leave an anniversary party.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM")
BOB EINSTEIN: (As Marty Funkhouser) You left my party before dessert. How can you do that? It's not proper etiquette.
LARRY DAVID: (As Larry David) I don't subscribe to the wait-for-dessert rule before you can leave a party.
EINSTEIN: (As Marty Funkhouser) No one cares what you subscribe to, OK? We were trying to recreate what happened 25 years ago. And I said, Larry, would you like to make a toast? And someone said, Larry went home to take a [expletive].
LIMBONG: Bob Einstein's roots in show business go back to childhood. His father, Harry, was also a comedian, who died shortly after performing at a roast of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Here's how Bob Einstein told that story to Jerry Seinfeld in a noisy cafe on the show "Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee."
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "COMEDIANS IN CARS GETTING COFFEE")
EINSTEIN: I had to hear about it on the radio in the morning.
JERRY SEINFELD: Right.
EINSTEIN: So I...
SEINFELD: Are we good? There's a lot of - OK. I'm just concerned about the sound.
EINSTEIN: I just got through telling the story that almost makes me cry, and you turn to [expletive] and say, are we good? That's OK. Let's make sure it's on tape.
LIMBONG: That stone-faced commitment to a bit was a signature of Einstein's since his appearances as Super Dave Osborne. This was a character who would appear on a number of variety and late-night shows. The joke was that Super Dave Osborne was a serious stuntman - an Evel Knievel-type wearing a jumpsuit and helmet - but the outlandish stunts would always end disastrously, with Super Dave taking some massive pratfall.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "SUPER DAVE")
EINSTEIN: (As Super Dave Osborne) OK. Pull forward a little bit.
LIMBONG: In this bit on his own show, he's strapped on a chair that's bolted to skis being dragged behind a truck. He's hoping to hit a ramp in order to do a jump over a bus. It doesn't end well. See, the truck is in reverse.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "SUPER DAVE")
EINSTEIN: (As Super Dave Osborne) Ready? Get set. Go. Oh, my Lord.
LIMBONG: It'd be obvious that Super Dave was actually replaced by a dummy before being hit. That was part of the charm. And it did help inspire a wave of physical stunt comedy, like MTV's "Jackass." In a 2008 interview with the CBC, Einstein said that the difference was his stunts were so extravagantly fictional.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
EINSTEIN: The only thing I didn't like about "Jackass" is kids could emulate it, and I don't like that. And a reporter asked me, well, can't kids emulate what you do? I said, yeah, if their father buys them a bus and puts them on top with a piano and then drives them under a bridge, they can emulate me.
LIMBONG: Einstein won two Emmys for writing on "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" and "Van Dyke And Company." When Bob Einstein would be interviewed on talk shows, he was always quick to tell a joke or share a story. Bob Einstein's younger brother, actor and filmmaker Albert Brooks, tweeted, quote, "a great brother, father and husband. A brilliantly funny man. You will be missed forever." Andrew Limbong, NPR News.
NOEL KING, HOST:
The political landscape of Washington, D.C., will look a little different starting today. A new Congress will be sworn in. Democrats will control the House. One of the first things they're expected to do is vote on a measure to end the partial government shutdown. But it may not go very far because President Trump is sticking by his demand for more than $5 billion of wall funding, and Democratic leaders have offered 1.3 billion for border security. That's it.
So this morning, we're going to talk about what the president is asking for, what he has promised and about how philosophical differences between the parties are keeping this shutdown going. I'm here with NPR congressional reporter Kelsey Snell in D.C. and NPR national correspondent John Burnett, who's down in Austin, Texas.
Good morning, guys.
KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Hi there.
JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: Good morning.
KING: So Kelsey, let me start with you. The wall has been the issue for President Trump since Day 1 of his presidential campaign. Here he is the day he announced his candidacy.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I would build a great wall. And nobody builds walls better than me. Believe me. And I'll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border.
KING: It seems worth trying to remember. What was the president originally calling for?
SNELL: Well, that seems - that was it right there. That was one of his very first campaign promises was that they would build a wall. And it became a chant. And it was a - this idea of a physical barrier - right? - that you had something to physically show that the United States was getting tough on border security. It's also kind of one of those things that he reliably returns to when he's under political pressure. Since he's taken office, it has kind of come up over and over again when, you know, he's facing pressure on major fronts. And that's certainly the case now. When he's facing Democrats taking the House and the looming Mueller investigation and all of this turmoil in his Cabinet, this is a theme that we have heard all of the time.
KING: So first, back then, we're talking about an actual, physical wall. But over time, there have been some questions about, is this what we mean still - a concrete wall?
SNELL: Right. So the wall is a political promise in a lot of ways. And what Trump's stuck to until just a few weeks ago was that political promise. But when he started to mention metal slats, people started looking into it. And as far back as 2017, the Department of Homeland Security was asking for a request for proposals on two different options - one made of concrete and one that you could see through. Either way, it would be a physical barrier between 18 and 30 feet tall. And it would be set up to prevent people from going over. Oh, and it also has to look pretty good from the U.S. side of the border. They want it to be aesthetically pleasing (laughter).
KING: Aesthetically pleasing, OK. One of the other big promises was that Mexico would be footing the bill.
SNELL: Yeah. That's another campaign promise but one that started to kind of fade. But, you know, it was really one of those major applause lines at rallies. And at a press conference shortly before he was sworn into office, this is what he said about it.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMP: I don't feel like waiting a year or a year-and-a-half. We're going to start building. Mexico, in some form - and there are many different forms - will reimburse us. And they will reimburse us for the cost of the wall. That will happen.
SNELL: Well, Mexico wants nothing to do with that, with building a wall. They have said that they aren't going to pay for a wall. And honestly, Trump has backed away from talking about Mexico paying for it. And that's how we got to where we are now, where Congress is debating how they might pay for it.
KING: And, Kelsey, just briefly, what exactly is the Democratic position on border security? - because the president regularly says they oppose adding security measures. They want open borders, which is false. What do Democrats want?
SNELL: They want border security in the form of sensors, drones and technology and training border agents. And that's something they want to keep working out. And that's why they have proposed a piece of legislation to reopen the government immediately for six of the seven portions of government that are closed right now and keep negotiating on the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees border security, for about a month.
KING: All right. Let's turn to NPR's John Burnett in Texas. John, the president wants a wall. What's there now?
BURNETT: Well, Noel, when the president talks about the urgency of a wall, remember that a third of the border is already covered by some sort of a barrier. You've got 700 miles down here covered with barrier. There are vehicle barriers in remote areas of the west desert and pedestrian fences, much of it - these 12 to 18-foot-tall iron bollard fences. You can see through them. They're very hard to get over. But this is the preferred construction style now, not concrete walls.
And remember. Most of the big border cities are already walled off from Mexico, like San Diego and El Paso and Brownsville. These used to be the most popular crossing points because undocumented immigrants could blend in with the urban population. But you - and you can't just talk about physical barriers. Customs and Border Protection has all this other technology. They've got video cameras mounted on poles. And they monitor them remotely - sensors buried in the ground and embedded in the walls, spy blimps tethered on the border, looking into Mexico and then, of course, some 16,000 agents stationed along the border, watching and tracking.
KING: What is the most effective thing at deterring migration?
BURNETT: Well, remember; illegal immigration is down 80 percent from its peak in 2000. And there are fewer and fewer incidents of old, chasing single males through the brush. What we're seeing is an uptick of families and children arriving, some in really large groups, at the border from Central America, asking for asylum. And the thing is that most people who cross illegally are apprehended not trying to evade the Border Patrol. They're looking for the green-suited agents to surrender to so they can ask for protection. And in the Rio Grande Valley down in the tip of Texas, the wall is not even right on the river. It can be a half-mile to a mile inland, so they're already in the United States before they even see the wall.
KING: John, the president has also said that construction on a wall has started and that there are construction crews working on...
BURNETT: Right.
KING: ...Parts of the border. Is that accurate? And does he deserve credit for it if it is?
BURNETT: Well, it's partially accurate, Noel. I mean, under last year's appropriation, there is quite a bit of construction going on, but most of it is replacement. For instance, in San Diego, they're replacing those old Vietnam-era landing mats with the steel bollards. In El Paso - I was there before Christmas. You can see crews replacing miles and miles of chain-link fencing, again, with these bollard walls. And then they're building about 30 miles of new border walls down in the Rio Grande Valley, much of it on top of an existing levee.
KING: And as you've reported before, of course, one of the big problems with the wall is the landscape down there, which is very varied. NPR's Kelsey Snell and John Burnett in Texas - thanks you guys.
SNELL: Thank you.
BURNETT: You bet.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Thirty-three years ago, NPR led its newscast with a headline that draws parallels to today.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: American journalist Nicholas Daniloff could be sentenced to death under Soviet law if he is convicted of espionage. It appears he will stand trial. Daniloff, yesterday, was formally charged with spying.
MARTIN: The year was 1986. Nicholas Daniloff had been working in Moscow as a reporter when he was arrested by the KGB. It happened just days after U.S. authorities arrested a Soviet employee of the United Nations in New York. After intense negotiations with the Kremlin, the two men were exchanged in a prisoner swap. More than three decades later, another U.S. citizen is now being held in Moscow. Paul Whelan was detained last week in Russia on suspicion of espionage. His family says he was there attending a friend's wedding. This, of course, comes after a Russian named Maria Butina pled guilty to a charge of conspiracy here in the U.S. We spoke with Nicholas Daniloff about the parallels he sees.
NICHOLAS DANILOFF: Well, I think the major thing is that it looks like the Russians are trying to set up a one-on-one exchange, Whelan for Butina, in Washington. And to tell you the truth, I'm surprised that they didn't arrest an American sooner than they did.
MARTIN: Why do you say that you're surprised it took as long as it did?
DANILOFF: Well, she was arrested some time ago, wasn't she? And she has been held in prison. And obviously, the Russians want to get her back as soon as possible. So 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.
MARTIN: The Russians stated that they caught Paul Whelan in the act of spying. That was the same accusation leveled against you. Did they present any evidence, in your case?
DANILOFF: Essentially, 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. Some of that material seemed to be photographs of Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan. And I was carrying this package with me when they arrested me. It was something that they had clearly planned for some time. Now, in the case of Whelan, what it seems to me they're trying to do is to fabricate a case of espionage against him. They're pretty good at doing that.
MARTIN: Can you take me back to the day you were arrested? What do you remember of it?
DANILOFF: I remember a great deal. I was arrested by an arrest team, thrown into a minibus, handcuffed, taken to a prison where I was then brought up into an interrogation room and interrogated for about four or five hours. At the end of that time, I was permitted to make a telephone call to the U.S. embassy, but it was a Saturday, and I knew that the only person I'd get at the embassy was a U.S. Marine. So I called my wife, and she raised holy hell. She organized, essentially, a big media campaign against the Russians for doing this, and the whole thing took off. It became an enormous international incident.
MARTIN: What were the conditions you were held in?
DANILOFF: I was in a cell with a cell mate. Sometimes it was cold in that cell. The one thing I would say is that I was not tortured physically, and I wouldn't expect Whelan to be tortured physically. But what you have to understand is that when you are snapped off a street, thrown into a prison, denied access to your embassy, you are being subjected to mental torture.
MARTIN: Vladimir Putin said during his annual address - his annual press conference, rather, an eye for an eye, or a tooth for a tooth, that that holds. But, he added, we will not arrest innocent people simply to exchange them for someone else later on. What do you make of that?
DANILOFF: Yeah. I think that's a marvelous deceptive statement. What the Russians are trying to do now is to fabricate an espionage case against him. When they say he was caught in an act of espionage, you know, that's a really interesting statement because to catch somebody in an act of espionage, you have to position an arrest team to witness that act of espionage.
MARTIN: It means they were surveilling him.
DANILOFF: Right. Exactly. And I imagine that that's where some of the difficulty lies.
MARTIN: Nicholas Daniloff, thank you so much for talking with us.
DANILOFF: You're welcome.
NOEL KING, HOST:
The southern Indian state of Kerala stayed partially shut down today. On Wednesday, there were protests after two women in their 40s walked into a prominent Hindu temple. When they did that, they defied a centuries-old tradition that bans women of menstruating age, 10 to 50 years, from going into the temple. NPR's Sushmita Pathak has the story.
(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting in foreign language).
SUSHMITA PATHAK, BYLINE: Protesters burned vehicles in parts of Kerala state. One person was killed during stone pelting. In the state capital, Thiruvananthapuram, police had to resort to tear gas and water cannons to control their rioters. Two women from the banned age group managed to enter the hilltop shrine under police protection on Wednesday. They started their ascent just after midnight, arriving at the temple around 3:30 in the morning. Social activist Trupti Desai has campaigned for women's entry into temples and mosques. Here she is on "India Today" congratulating the two women.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "INDIA TODAY")
TRUPTI DESAI: (Through interpreter) This is a historic win for equality and a triumph of women's strength.
PATHAK: Faithful believe that the celibate deity Lord Ayyappa, whom the temple is dedicated to, shouldn't have contact with young women. Some feel they may be a distraction to him, and others think menstruating the men are impure. Devotee Jayashankar Panicker feels betrayed.
JAYASHANKAR PANICKER: I am extremely disappointed by the fact that the Kerala government and the police department tried to sneak in these ladies into the shrine.
PATHAK: India's ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has called for a 48-hour strike starting today. The BJP, which is the party of India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has been spearheading the effort to keep women out of the temple, even though India's Supreme Court ruled in September that the ban was discriminatory. Despite that ruling, women were not let in. The two women who managed to enter on Wednesday are under police protection. Following their visit, priests temporarily closed the shrine to perform what they called purification rituals.
Sushmita Pathak, NPR News, Mumbai.
NOEL KING, HOST:
Yesterday was the first day of trading in 2019. U.S. markets started with a plunge but recovered to end the day slightly higher. Then came some big news from Apple. The company said demand for the iPhone is waning. David Wessel is with us now. He directs the Hutchins Center at Brookings, and he's a contributor to The Wall Street Journal.
Good morning, David.
DAVID WESSEL: Good morning.
KING: So I want to start by asking you about this Apple news. Apple CEO Tim Cook sent a letter to investors after the markets closed yesterday. And it said what exactly?
WESSEL: He basically said, we're not selling as many iPhones as we anticipated - or as many as market analysts anticipated. And the reason is because our sales in China, which is their third-biggest market, are way down. It's a sign that the Chinese economy is slowing. And it may also be a symptom of the tension between the U.S. and China. And it's really bad for the stock market because people were surprised by it.
KING: So potentially, the trade war having a negative knock-on effect on U.S. stocks. I know that everyone, David, is hesitant to make predictions about the economy. But as we look forward to 2019, what would or could lead to a market climb?
WESSEL: Right. So the stock market and the bond market as well seem very pessimistic about the near-term outlook for the U.S. economy. And after all, there are some signs of softening. Housing is not in great shape; there's waning consumer confidence. So if the incoming data suggests strength in the economy - perhaps the auto sales data that comes out today, the jobs data we get on Friday - that could really change people's mind or signs that China is not slowing as much as people fear. So that's one. Two is anything that's better than expected news on corporate profits would, of course, be a help - Apple, the opposite. Third, a trade deal would help. A trade deal with China would reduce the potential for some new economic cold war. And finally, I think the markets would feel better if it looked like Washington was functioning better.
KING: All right. So you mentioned two ways in which Washington is affecting this - the apparent dysfunction and the trade war - which makes me wonder whether any of these recent ups and downs have political implications for President Trump in particular.
WESSEL: I do. I really do think that. President Trump looks at the stock market as an electrocardiogram on the economy. That's how The New York Times put it the other day. Yesterday, he referred to the stock market's decline as a glitch. And significantly, he predicted that if he gets a trade deal with China, the stock market would rebound. So I think that the stock market's falling puts pressure on the president to cut a deal with China and to cut a deal with Democrats in Congress because if he thinks that will make the stock market go up, that is one way he measures his success.
KING: Could be interesting going forward. Let me ask you a last question about ordinary investors, people like you and me, not big investors. How are they reacting to this market roller coaster? Are people pulling out of the market, and should they be?
WESSEL: They are pulling out of the market. Thomson Reuters Lipper, which keeps track of these things, said that investors pulled a record $75 billion out of stock market mutual funds in December. Now, of course, the experts always tell us not to panic. And my reaction to that is - well, do you promise to tell us when it is time to panic?
(LAUGHTER)
WESSEL: And I think, basically, people shouldn't have money in the stock market that they're going to need to pay next month's mortgage or next semester's tuition. And if they're in for the long haul - if you're saving for retirement or if you have little kids saving for their tuition, experts usually say it's better to ride this out. Sure, it would have been nice to sell three months ago. But selling now is usually a mistake.
KING: David Wessel, thanks as always.
WESSEL: You're welcome.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Rachel Martin. If you're trying to fly from Vietnam to New York this August, hopefully you were one of the lucky few who snagged an amazing deal on Cathay Pacific. Usually, a ticket on that route goes for about $16,000. But on New Year's Day, the airline accidentally sold business and first-class tickets for around $675.
According to the South China Morning Post, 11 travelers snapped up the tickets and will be living the good life for the 20-hour flight. Yes, yes, I would like another glass of Champagne.
NOEL KING, HOST:
Bennett College needs to raise $5 million in about four weeks. The school in North Carolina is one of the few historically black women's colleges in the United States. And for years, it has struggled financially. Last month, the regional body that accredits colleges decided to revoke Bennett's accreditation. Bennett College is appealing that decision, and it is working to raise money. The president of the college, Phyllis Worthy Dawkins, is on the line with me now.
Good morning.
PHYLLIS WORTHY DAWKINS: Good morning.
KING: Why is Bennett College in such financial trouble?
DAWKINS: Really, it has to do with the market crash in 2008-2009. Followed by - shortly after that, with the federal financial aid program, there's a segment in that program that deals with parent loans. And then the students and their parents had to demonstrate more years of credit history. And so that impacted the number of students that could demonstrate a good credit history. And that hit them because many of their parents, or many African-Americans at that time, lost jobs.
KING: So enrollment at the school has fallen to just under 470 students, which is about half of what it was a decade ago. And what you're saying is it was the changes to these federal loans that were allowing students to go to school. When the terms of the loan changed, a lot of your students had to drop out.
DAWKINS: That is correct. And not only did it hit Bennett College, but it hit a lot of historically black colleges.
KING: The process that led to the school being threatened with the revocation of its accreditation - this has been a process that's been going on for several years now. When you go to court in February, what happens if you don't win? What happens to your student body? And what happens to the school?
DAWKINS: Well, we will enter into a lawsuit. So in February is the appeal process, OK? We are appealing the decision. If we do not win the appeal process, then we'll enter into a lawsuit with our accrediting body. And with each level, we maintain our accreditation, so the students will graduate at the end of the semester. Students' courses count in terms of credit-bearing courses.
And then that lawsuit - once we register that lawsuit, we will enter into that lawsuit up to two years and maintain our accreditation. At the same time, we will seek other accreditation bodies to see if we can be accredited by them. So our goal is to maintain our accreditation, keep Bennett College open for the future so that we can recruit and retain students.
KING: You've launched a major fundraising drive. How is that going?
DAWKINS: It's slowly showing a good return on our investment in our social media campaign. So far, we've raised over a million dollars towards the 5 million. So we're about 29 days out from the February 1 deadline, and so we're stepping up our efforts in a variety of different ways to raise those funds.
KING: Phyllis Worthy Dawkins, president of Bennett College, thank you so much for your time.
DAWKINS: You're welcome.
(SOUNDBITE OF AFFELAYE'S "MAYBE THERE")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The U.S. ambassador to Russia, Jon Huntsman, has been allowed to visit the American citizen now detained in Moscow. His name is Paul Whelan. He is a former Marine who was taken into custody last week during what Russia claims was an act of espionage. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the U.S. is still waiting for details about the charges against him.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MIKE POMPEO: We've made clear to the Russians our expectation that we will learn more about the charges and come to understand what it is he's been accused of. And if the detention is not appropriate, we will demand his immediate return.
MARTIN: Joining us now from Moscow, reporter Charles Maynes, who's been covering this. Charles, thanks for being here.
CHARLES MAYNES, BYLINE: Good to be with you.
MARTIN: What can you tell us about this meeting between the U.S. ambassador, Jon Huntsman, and Paul Whelan? What was communicated between the two men? Do we know?
MAYNES: Well, what we know is from the State Department, actually. They confirmed that Ambassador Huntsman met with Mr. Whelan in Lefortovo Prison. This is a prison in Moscow with a long history of holding alleged spies and political prisoners during the Soviet period. Mr. Huntsman expressed support, offered the embassy's assistance.
He also spoke by telephone with Mr. Whelan's family. But in the interest of privacy, they're providing no details on the charges or circumstances of the arrest - and, you know, might also point out that there's some real questions as to the delay to access to Mr. Whelan. Of course, he was arrested on December 28. And, usually, you get quicker access to someone like that.
MARTIN: Whelan's family rejects this whole thing. They say they don't believe he's a spy. They insist he was in Moscow for a wedding. We're also getting more details about his past, including a complicated history with the U.S. military. What can you tell us?
MAYNES: That's right. Yeah. Mr. Whelan's a former Marine. He served two tours in Iraq in 2004 and 2006. The Marine Corps, however, released his service records. And they show that he was convicted in 2008 of a court martial on charges related to larceny and given a bad conduct discharge. After his military career, though, he went into law enforcement.
Mr. Whelan most recently has been working BorgWarner. This is a Michigan-based company that does propulsion systems for car engines. They have offices in Europe, in China, through Asia but not in Russia. But that said, Mr. Whelan actually has traveled to Russia quite frequently, according to his family, since about 2007. And, of course, they say, as you note, he was in town for a wedding at the time of his arrest.
MARTIN: Is the Russian government staying sort of hush-hush on this or are they out there trying to frame their own version of events?
MAYNES: They are pretty quiet on it, but I think for a good reason. It's the holidays here. So this is sort of the grand national slumber after New Year's. Things really don't open up for a few days still. We did, however, see a report in the Russian media. This is from Rosbalt. This is an independent newspaper that's quite well-sourced within the FSB. And they, today, issued a story that provided some details of Mr. Whelan's arrest. Again, it's their version, citing FSB sources.
But they claim that the - he was caught essentially receiving a flash drive with - it contained names of Russian intelligence agents in his Metropol hotel room. That's in downtown Moscow. The problem is that skeptics feel that - look, it was a flash drive in 2019. You know, did Mr. Whelan even know what was on it? And the whole thing seems kind of very made-for-TV. So I think we're waiting for that to appear on state television here.
MARTIN: OK. Reporter Charles Maynes with the latest there in Moscow. Thanks so much.
MAYNES: Thank you.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Divided government is back in Washington, D.C. Today, the 116th Congress will be sworn in, giving Democrats control of the House of Representatives and new power to push back against President Trump, which they are already doing. The president wants $5 billion for a border wall, but the incoming speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, says that's not going to happen. The White House made another go of it yesterday, inviting leaders from both parties over for what it billed as a, quote, "border security briefing."
Maryland Congressman Steny Hoyer was at that meeting. He's the incoming House majority leader for the new Democratic-led House, and he joins us now. Congressman, thanks for being with us.
STENY HOYER: Good morning, Rachel. Glad to be with you.
MARTIN: Did you leave that meeting at the White House more or less confident that the shutdown will end?
HOYER: Well, it's tough to be confident with this president because he changes his mind regularly, and you can't always count on what he says in the meetings. However, having said that, I think the fact that we talked, we got the leaders together - clearly, the differences were not resolved, as you point out, but we are prepared today.
And I'm going to be offering two bills, all of which are Republican bills, all of which we've compromised on and included things that the Republicans wanted in their bills. And again, they were reported out of Republican committees and passed by Republican Senate and Republican House.
So we'll offer those. We trust they will pass the House, and we'll send them to the Senate. And frankly, government could be open tomorrow if the Senate passes bills they've already passed and send them to the president.
MARTIN: You're talking...
HOYER: And whether the president would sign them or not is - we'll have to see.
MARTIN: Well, he says that he won't.
HOYER: That's right.
MARTIN: I mean, you're talking about a bill that would separate out funding for the Department of Homeland Security, just compartmentalize the border security issue and continue debate on that...
HOYER: Yes.
MARTIN: ...But refund the rest of the government. And this is something, as you note, Republicans were on board with. Vice President Mike Pence even advocated for this. But the president changed his mind, said he wasn't going to sign it. He still says he's not going to sign it. So what's the point of bringing this forward again?
HOYER: Well, the point is to once again give the Senate and the president of the United States the opportunity to sign bills that they have already said they were for. They voted for them in the Senate. The president had agreed to open up government with those bills.
We've kept the February 8 date. We think it should've been till September 30 - the end of the fiscal year. But we've kept the February 8 date, which gives us another four weeks with government open, with government serving the American people, with the federal employees not traumatized by thinking they're not going to get a paycheck and not be able to meet their mortgage payment or their car payment or the kids' college payment. We think that's the right thing to do for our federal employees. But more importantly, it's the right thing to do for our country and for our citizens.
So we're going to give another opportunity with the change in control of the House. As you know, the Republicans' control of the House - a couple of weeks ago, they rejected what the Senate passed unanimously. And if they'd passed that and sent it to the president, the president would've been in a position where the Congress had unanimously agreed on a bill, and he would've had to make a decision on his own.
MARTIN: Let me ask you, Democrats have long wanted a solution for the so-called DREAMers. If the president were to give a DACA fix in exchange for border wall funding, would you do it?
HOYER: Look. That's certainly something that can be discussed. And we want to see DACA fixed. As a matter of fact, I had a meeting with the president, along with Dick Durbin and 23 other members of the Congress, at the White House many months ago. And the president said, and I quote, "if you guys send us a bill - pass a bill, I will sign it." He didn't say, if I like it or whatever. He said, if you pass a bill - in other words, if the Senate and the House could agree, he would agree.
Well, of course, he changed his mind some 24 hours later, unfortunately, so we got no solution. But that is certainly something that ought to be on the table and will be...
MARTIN: So...
HOYER: ...On the table as we, hopefully, open up government and then have discussions over the next four weeks as to how we can resolve the impasse. That's what democracy is about, and that's what ought to happen.
MARTIN: All right. Incoming House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Democrat from Maryland. Congressman, thanks for your time. We appreciate it.
HOYER: You bet. Thanks a lot. Good to be with you.
MARTIN: NPR congressional reporter Kelsey Snell is with us in the studio. She was listening into that interview. Kelsey, I asked Congressman Hoyer if he was willing to consider a DACA fix in exchange for border wall funding. He didn't say no.
KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Yeah, that's a little bit more flexibility than we had heard House - incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi had said previously, basically, no, they wouldn't consider that because she said the president's immigration policies are immoral. And that makes it really hard for Democrats to move.
I think that we need to remember that this is a lot about both sides talking to their base. And really, frankly, it's already a 2020 campaign. People are already thinking about who will be running for president. And Democrats really feel strongly that their base and a lot of the country are on their side on immigration. And the president clearly feels that his Republican base is with him.
MARTIN: So they're going to meet again - right? - on Friday...
SNELL: Yes.
MARTIN: ...The president and congressional leaders.
SNELL: That's the expectation. We don't have a ton of details about what that will look like. The idea that we understand is that they wanted to wait until Pelosi was actually speaker and has the actual ability to make a deal for Democrats there.
But, you know, it would take a lot to make people move out of this stalemate. It's been weeks. It's been more than weeks. These are the positions that Democrats and Republicans have been in for months. And so it's really difficult to see how they get out of this situation without some new kind of offering out there.
MARTIN: All right. NPR congressional reporter Kelsey Snell for us on the latest on the shutdown. Kelsey, thanks so much. We appreciate it.
SNELL: Thank you.
NOEL KING, HOST:
All right. Jon Huntsman, the U.S. ambassador to Russia, visited Paul Whelan in Russian detention yesterday. The State Department says Huntsman expressed his support and offered the embassy's assistance. Whelan was detained in Moscow over the weekend on charges of spying. His family says he was in Russia for a friend's wedding.
David Whelan is Paul Whelan's twin brother. He's on the line with us now from Toronto, Canada. Mr. Whelan, I know this is a hard time for your family. Thanks for joining us.
DAVID WHELAN: Thank you, Noel.
KING: So I understand Ambassador Huntsman spoke, by phone, to your family yesterday. What did he tell you?
WHELAN: He told us what we hoped to hear, which was that Paul was alive and well, considering the conditions - I mean, being held in a Russian jail - that he was now aware that we could start helping him to get a lawyer and to help get funds to him so he can buy personal things to - like toilet paper and things that you need in a Russian jail. So it was really just a good check to know that he was well and still alive.
KING: Some suggestion, though, there that your brother may be there for a while - a lawyer and supplies. Yesterday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said this about your brother's detention.
(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's been accused of. And if the detention is not appropriate, we will demand his immediate return.
KING: What do you think that means?
WHELAN: Well, it sounds to me, just from the conversations that we've had on our end and the information we've been able to gather, that no one still really knows the details for why Paul has been arrested. And we all know the allegations that he is alleged to be a spy. But there hasn't - I haven't - we haven't heard any details on the family side about why he's being held, certainly nothing to substantiate spying.
KING: Yesterday, the U.S. military told NPR that your brother was a Marine reservist who was discharged in 2008 for bad conduct and, in fact, indicted on a charge of larceny. That was after 14 years of service. Do you think that could be playing a part in the State Department's response? And is there anything that you want to say about that?
WHELAN: The bad conduct discharge was news to us this week in the family.
KING: It was?
WHELAN: That was a surprise. And I think it's not unreasonable to expect that people will try and put out their best self. And, you know, Paul, understandably, might not have wanted to share that with his family.
I don't think it has any implication or impact on this situation. I mean, I don't have any details to say that it doesn't, but it seems to be a relatively innocuous sort of thing. He's not a lawbreaker. He doesn't have a criminal record in the States. It just - it seems an extremely arbitrary situation that has somehow netted him.
KING: Have you or your family been able to speak with your brother or get him any kind of message through the ambassador?
WHELAN: We've just been able to communicate that we are thinking of him and that we are working on his behalf. But, no, none of us have been able to speak with him.
KING: I understand your brother is the director of global security for an auto parts company. As far as you know, did he go to Russia often? Did his work take him to Russia often?
WHELAN: It was my understanding that he had traveled to Russia for work at some point in the past. And 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's just one of many places that he has traveled to over the last, you know, 20 or 30 years. He's just always enjoyed travel. So I think Russia just happened to be a place that he was at the time.
KING: And you have said that Paul was in Moscow for a friend's wedding. Have you confirmed that? And have you heard from the friend that he was meant to be there visiting?
WHELAN: Yes. In fact, when Paul went missing on the Friday, we knew he went missing on the Friday because his friend, the groom, texted him and knew that Paul's lack of appearance at the actual wedding - I mean, sort of the whole purpose of being in Moscow - was very uncharacteristic of Paul. So we knew that that was sort of the timeline - when the groom filed a missing persons report with the embassy in Moscow.
And we had an inkling that there was a problem because even on Friday and Saturday, communications that would normally have been sent to my mom and dad and to our dog, because he dotes on the family pet - there was just nothing. It was completely out of communication. That was very uncharacteristic, too. So we'd spent the weekend sort of looking for information that might help us to know what had happened to him because he might have been mugged or in a car accident or who knows?
KING: And so this was entirely unexpected. David Whelan, the brother of Paul Whelan, who's in Russian detention on charges of spying. Mr. Whelan, thank you so much for your time.
WHELAN: Thank you, Noel.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The new Congress will be sworn in today. And Democratic lawmakers in the House plan to immediately vote on their plan to end the partial government shutdown. Presumed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is expected to bring a bill to the floor that would reopen most of the government but carve out the Department of Homeland Security, since that is the department that deals with border security, and then fund that on a temporary basis through early February to continue the debate over border security. Democratic leaders argue this plan would allow more time to reach a compromise over President Trump's $5 billion request for a border wall. The Democrats' bill is similar to one Republicans were ready to support just a few weeks ago. Here's Nancy Pelosi yesterday after a meeting between the president and top leaders from both parties that failed to end the stalemate.
(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?
MARTIN: Here to help us answer that question, White House Director of Strategic Communications Mercedes Schlapp. Thanks so much for being with us this morning.
MERCEDES SCHLAPP: Thank you for having me. Good morning.
MARTIN: You heard Nancy Pelosi. She says this is a Republican plan that they're putting forward. It is very similar to something that the Senate said they would pass. Why wouldn't the president support this idea?
SCHLAPP: Well, the Republican bill would include border wall funding, which is something that the House had passed in this past Congress. It was something that the president has made very clear of his position, saying, look. We will get this government open, but we need to make sure that there is border wall funding. And part of this process, as we know, is the process of negotiation. So that's why the president invited both Democrat and Republican congressional leaders to the Situation Room in the White House to be able to talk about how we can move forward in terms of the negotiation.
PELOSI: But, as you know, the Senate unanimously passed a continuing resolution weeks ago before Christmas that would keep the government open because Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, believed the president would support it. And then the president didn't support it. So how can Republicans even trust the president in these negotiations?
SCHLAPP: Well, obviously, the president and Mitch McConnell, they're constantly in communication, as well as now minority leader Kevin McCarthy. We knew at that point that the Senate bill was not going to pass the House. And also, the president, again, had talked about making sure that we have funding for the border wall. Here's what we're facing right now. And Secretary Nielsen attempted to talk about this yesterday at the meeting. But the Democrats, really, had very little interest in hearing the facts.
We are not in a status quo situation anymore at the border. We're at a crisis situation, which means that that status quo funding is not going to be enough. And so in essence, when you're starting to look at the fact that our border patrol agents - what they are facing right now is a lack of resources, a lack of legal authority and even a lack of facilities because of the large number of illegal migrants coming through the border. We've seen an increase of about 90 percent of illegal aliens crossing the border in the last two months...
MARTIN: Which is something - Democrats agree that there's a problem.
SCHLAPP: Yes, and...
MARTIN: And they want to increase border security. But...
SCHLAPP: Right, exactly. So we've been trying to negotiate this for months. The president, when - in the last negotiation which we had, which - it was - Vice President Mike Pence, as well as Jared Kushner and Mick Mulvaney, went over to the Hill, presented the offer. It was a good faith offer, a reasonable offer to increase border wall funding. And the Democrats, for days, left, went on vacation, went home and...
MARTIN: Correct me if I'm wrong, Mercedes, but it's my...
SCHLAPP: ...Didn't take it up.
MARTIN: It's my understanding that Vice President Mike Pence had negotiated a $2.5 billion bill that was a compromise. It's not the full...
SCHLAPP: Right.
MARTIN: ...Five billion. And then the president said no. So is the administration working at odds...
SCHLAPP: That is not correct. I think it's very important to understand that we have made it clear that it would be between the 1.6 and the five. This is what we call a negotiation. Obviously, the president's going to go with a high number. We're going to bring it back to...
MARTIN: So he would take 1.6.
SCHLAPP: The president is willing to negotiate. We are waiting on the Democrats to come back with a negotiated deal. Where the Democrats are stuck - it's literally between zero and 1.3 billion. And what was interesting is that during that meeting, it was the Democrats who actually - for example, Senator Durbin who said, we want strong border security. And we're saying, great. And then there was conversation - Nancy Pelosi - well, we don't want a concrete wall. The president said, well, we talked about steel slats. Then we had - we showed them pictures of the steel slats of what's being built, which is this physical barrier and this fencing. We are being very reasonable. We're ready to compromise. We're ready to negotiate. The Democrats, at this point, are - they're not willing to budge. They're staying stuck at the 1.3 billion.
MARTIN: So just to be clear, you're saying the president would accept 1.6. Democrats are saying 1.3, so this is a negligible difference.
SCHLAPP: Well, I'm not - we're not going to negotiate in public. This is, obviously, the conversations that the Democrats and Republicans should be having. The president made it very clear. He said, come back on Friday. Let's keep talking. Let's get to a solution. Let's get to a negotiation. We can get - we can make this deal. The question will be, will the Democrats be willing to negotiate? What we have seen thus far is that in the past two weeks when we did offer, we presented our offer to them, they said no. So now we're waiting on them for their counter offer.
MARTIN: We...
SCHLAPP: And at this point, where their counteroffer is - at the point that they're refusing to negotiate a budge from the 1.3 billion is it's making it tough for us to move along.
MARTIN: Let me...
SCHLAPP: We're not going to give up. And we're going to get - go ahead.
PELOSI: We just have seconds remaining. And I want to ask you about DACA because we just talked with Steny Hoyer, Democratic congressman. When I asked him if the president agreed to attach a DACA fix, in exchange, Democrats would fund the border wall. Congressman Hoyer said he was open to at least talking about that. Is that something the president would consider?
SCHLAPP: You know, the president is open about talking about DACA. As you know right now, it's in the process in the legal system, so it's going through the appeals process at this point. But again, this is on the - it's on the table. This is part of the negotiations. What we are asking for is for the Democrats to understand that we are dealing with very serious problems at the border. Just yesterday, Secretary Nielsen talked about the humanitarian crisis, how one out of three women are being sexually assaulted as they're coming...
MARTIN: Which...
SCHLAPP: ...Through the - taking the dangerous journey.
MARTIN: And I don't mean to cut you off. But I think that is a consensus. Democrats and Republicans both agree...
SCHLAPP: Right.
MARTIN: ...That something needs to be done. And I appreciate you taking the time to talk with us this morning. And I hope we can continue the conversation. Mercedes Schlapp, White House Director of Strategic Communications, thank you so much.
SCHLAPP: Thank you so much.
MARTIN: NPR congressional reporter Kelsey Snell was listening to that. Kelsey, there was a lot in there. I think it's unclear exactly where the president - it sounds like the president would give on the 5 billion number.
KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Well, that is the thing that we keep running into here and Democrats keep saying makes it really hard is that his representatives and other people who work in the administration say the president is willing to do something. But then they get into a talk, and that doesn't seem to be the case. It is also important to point out that Nancy Pelosi's staff says that she hadn't spoken to the president since December 11 before yesterday. So at that time, Democrats had an offer put out to the White House. And they said that the president didn't respond. So there is a difference of opinion on the facts here about who is offering what and when it's happening, which makes it really hard to cut a deal.
MARTIN: And we'll see what Democrats put forward today. NPR congressional reporter Kelsey Snell. Thanks so much, Kelsey, we appreciate it.
SNELL: Thank you.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Today's StoryCorps is a love letter to the written word. Alagappa Rammohan has amassed thousands of books. Rammohan immigrated from India to the United States in 1962. He came to StoryCorps in Chicago with his daughter.
PARU VENKAT: When I think of my earliest memories, I think of asking you homework assignments and you looking at my textbooks and falling in love with the textbook, and reading it almost from cover to cover and only answering my question hours later. So where does that come from?
ALAGAPPA RAMMOHAN: When I was young - I'll give you an incident, how I am hooked into this book business. When I am 9 or 8, when my parents give me one rupee - which is, like, $1 - you know what I do with that? I don't buy candy or anything. I just go to a stall where they sell children books. And I like all of them. So I asked what this one rupee can buy. So once I get eight books then I would come home. You know what I'd do? Even today I do this. I don't start reading the first page. I smell it.
VENKAT: I know you do. I remember that.
RAMMOHAN: You've seen it many times.
VENKAT: I've seen you do that many, many times.
RAMMOHAN: The fresh book, printed from the press, untouched, unopened. (Sniffing). I smell it.
VENKAT: Right.
RAMMOHAN: That's my connection with the book. The book became my friend. Better than my friends. You know, human friends. I feel that the author is talking to me, in person. Now, if I go and ask him for wisdom, he's a big guy. He might not talk to me. But now he's coming to me. And he says, I'm here. I'm talking. Listen to me. The book could be written in any language. It can say anything. It's a transfer of knowledge from one person to the other. It doesn't force you to read, but it is there. That book, in my point of view, is very sacred. You have to read all books...
VENKAT: Keeping an open mind.
RAMMOHAN: Open mind. Next time, you'll think, wait a minute. There is another viewpoint there. If you want to give anybody something, the very best, give a book. It opened, for me, how to live.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
INSKEEP: Alagappa Rammohan and his daughter, Paru Venkat. Plans are underway to build a library in his hometown, where his 10,000 books will go when he dies. Their conversation is archived at the Library of Congress.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
New York City has started a new kind of program aimed at supporting and training and expanding freelance workforce. The Freelancers Hub is what it's called. It offers classes and shared office space, along with tax and legal advice for free - skills that freelancers say they don't get from a traditional education. Here's NPR's Yuki Noguchi.
YUKI NOGUCHI, BYLINE: Nicholas Mc Millian (ph) was a successful firefighter with a secure job in Trinidad and Tobago, but his passion was moviemaking. So he left it behind to study film production in New York City. Then when he started freelancing three years ago, Mc Millian found his education left lots of practical gaps.
NICHOLAS MC MILLIAN: They don't really prepare you for a career. They don't really say, all right, this is how you go out there and make money and support yourself.
NOGUCHI: Film school didn't teach Mc Millian how to create websites, set prices or write and negotiate contracts. Therein lies a growing disconnect between today's education system and the training freelancers actually need. The labor market is rapidly changing, thanks in part to growth in apps that make gig work easy to find. But workers on contract also don't have employer-provided benefits or on-the-job training. And this is of particular concern to New York City, which estimates freelancers make up nearly 40 percent of its workforce. Julie Menin is New York City Commissioner for Media and Entertainment.
JULIE MENIN: That's a number that's going to continue to rise with the growth and advent of on-demand apps and other structural changes in the economy.
NOGUCHI: To address this training shortfall, in October, the city partnered with the Freelancers Union to open the Freelancers Hub. It's targeted primarily at those in creative fields, where work is especially competitive - design, film, photography and writing. The hub is located in Brooklyn, alongside the Independent Filmmaker Project. About two-dozen workers sit at rows of desks, couches and small tables. Members can also access a small theater and classrooms. Its classes explain benefits, or stress management, its most popular. All of it, free of charge.
Caitlin Pearce is executive director of the Freelancers Union. She says freelancers need to know how to do it all - budget for taxes and health insurance, and manage workflow and attract clients. And that's not all.
CAITLIN PEARCE: How do I brand myself? What business structure should look like. How do I actually plan for success? How much income do I need to earn?
NOGUCHI: Since it opened in October, 4,000 people have joined the hub. Its regulars include software engineer Lupe Canaviri Maydana, a Bolivian native who hopes to start freelancing next month. Maydana has sought advice on work visas, legal contracts and business cards. More critically, she says the hub has helped combat her fears of working solo. She's made contacts with other freelancers, from artists to musicians and fashion models.
LUPE CANAVIRI MAYDANA: Getting to know that kind of people and the way they do their freelancing. So it's kind of a new world.
NOGUCHI: Pearce says the Freelancers Union wants to make its lectures available online, but it also wants the physical space to foster networking and friendship among freelancers.
PEARCE: Because the concept is really about finding the expertise and the resources that exist within the community already, and really tapping into it and bringing it into one central place.
NOGUCHI: All of the training classes, for example, are taught by other freelancers. That includes Brian Lee, who taught a digital marketing workshop one recent evening.
BRIAN LEE: Both of them, they used to be freelancers. One...
NOGUCHI: The room is packed with people from a huge demographic range. Lee begins by telling them, start thinking of yourself as a business.
LEE: Freelancers don't want to spend money, even if it's software or tech that can help them grow their business. I think that's a fundamental shift that we have to make because businesses grow by investing.
NOGUCHI: New York is not alone in identifying the need for workforce training targeted at freelancers and gig workers. The city of San Francisco offers online training courses for freelancers. Several companies, including General Assembly, LinkedIn and Skillshare, offer similar courses for far cheaper than a conventional college course. But members say the main benefits of the Freelancers Hub have been social. Wendy Zhao, a film producer, says being around other freelancers helps her navigate the stress of lean times when paid work isn't available.
WENDY ZHAO: I could do so much during this time instead of just being sad and lonely and desperate and depressed. Like, I can learn more things. I can write. I can practice.
NOGUCHI: And that, she says, will hopefully lead to more work. Yuki Noguchi, NPR News, New York.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We have news about photosynthesis, the basic biological machinery of plants. Scientists have re-engineered it, creating genetically modified plants that are better at converting sunlight into stalks and leaves. They hope it'll lead to bigger harvests. NPR's Dan Charles has the story.
DAN CHARLES, BYLINE: There's a big old molecule, a protein, inside the leaves of most plants. It's called Rubisco.
AMANDA CAVANAGH: So I'm a big fan of Rubisco. It's probably the most abundant protein in the world.
CHARLES: This is Amanda Cavanagh. She's a researcher at the University of Illinois. Rubisco, has one job. It picks up carbon dioxide from the air and uses the carbon to make sugar molecules. It gets the energy to do this from the sun. This is photosynthesis, the way plants use sunlight to make food, the foundation of life. So yay for Rubisco.
CAVANAGH: But it has what we like to call one fatal flaw.
CHARLES: The flaw is Rubisco is not picky enough about what it grabs from the air. It also picks up oxygen, which is unfortunate.
CAVANAGH: When it does that, it makes a toxic compound. And so the plant has to detoxify it.
CHARLES: Plants have a whole complicated chemical assembly line that handles this detoxification, and the process uses up a lot of energy, which means the plant has less energy for making leaves or food for us. So Cavanagh and her colleagues at the University of Illinois and the U.S. Department of Agriculture spent the last five years trying to fix Rubisco's problem.
CAVANAGH: We're sort of hacking photosynthesis, you could say.
CHARLES: They experimented with tobacco plants just because tobacco's easy to work with. They inserted new genes into these plants which shut down the existing detoxification assembly line and set up a new one that's way more efficient. And they created super tobacco plants.
CAVANAGH: They grew faster, and they grew about 40 percent bigger or up to 40 percent bigger.
CHARLES: Sounds kind of remarkable. You are really redesigning nature to work better?
CAVANAGH: Yeah. I mean, that's our plan, maybe not nature, though. We're redesigning an agricultural product.
CHARLES: They're now trying to do the same thing with plants that we actually rely on for food, crops like tomatoes and soybeans, also cowpeas because that's an important crop in sub-Saharan Africa.
CAVANAGH: Which is where our funders are really interested in making the biggest impact.
CHARLES: The funders include the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation also funds NPR. Cavanagh and her colleagues published their work this week in the journal Science. Maureen Hanson, who's doing similar research at Cornell University, is really impressed.
MAUREEN HANSON: This is a very important finding. It's really the first major breakthrough showing that one can, indeed, engineer photosynthesis and achieve a major increase in crop productivity.
CHARLES: These more productive crops are still years away from farmers' fields, though. Researchers have to figure out whether engineering food crops like soybeans this way actually means more beans or just more stalks and leaves. And then they'll need to convince government regulators and consumers that the crops are safe.
Dan Charles, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Matthew Charles is believed to be the first prisoner to regain his freedom under a new federal criminal justice law. He walked out of a detention center in Kentucky last night. He's a man who made national headlines not long ago, ordered back to prison after the government claimed his sentence was reduced in error. Julieta Martinelli of member station WPLN was there when he was released.
JULIETA MARTINELLI, BYLINE: Matthew Charles has been through this before. He had already served 21 years of a 35-year sentence for selling crack cocaine when, in 2016, his sentence was reduced. He thought he'd have a chance to start over. He was out for two years. But the government appealed his release, and he was forced to return to prison in 2018. This time, he says, walking out feels very different.
MATTHEW CHARLES: I still had a dark cloud hanging over my head due to the fact that I know that the government had appealed the sentence. But, today (laughter), that dark cloud has evaporated because, thankfully, the U.S. attorney's offices also agree that enough is enough.
MARTINELLI: Charles was released as a result of retroactive changes to drug-sentencing guidelines by the so-called First Step Act, a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill signed into law by President Trump last month. In a court filing earlier this week, the U.S. attorney's office said they no longer opposed Charles' early release, citing the new legislation. In a written statement to NPR, U.S. Attorney Donald Cochran said it was never about his personal feelings towards Charles. He and the court were just following the law. Charles, now 52, says he's ready to put it all behind him.
CHARLES: Oh, I'm just really, really excited. I'm humbled. I'm thankful. I'm grateful. I'm just - I'm at peace within my soul.
MARTINELLI: As for what's next, Charles hopes his release will help to start the ball rolling for other drug offenders serving long sentences.
For NPR News, I'm Julieta Martinelli in Nashville.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We're in a rare moment in Washington, D.C., when President Trump is not the lead news story. Instead it's the Democrats who've taken over the House of Representatives for the first time in eight years.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
For the first time in two years, Democrats have the power to make a move. Under House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, they voted to reopen the government and included none of the money President Trump demanded for a border wall.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Is there any situation in which you would accept even a dollar of wall funding?
NANCY PELOSI: A dollar?
(LAUGHTER)
PELOSI: A dollar, $1 - yeah, $1.
INSKEEP: But she didn't sound very eager to go much higher.
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PELOSI: It's a wall between reality and his constituents, his supporters. He does not want them to know what he's doing to Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security in his budget proposal. He does not want them to know what he's doing to clean air and clean water and the rest in his department of interior and of EPA. He does not want them to know how he is hurting them. So he keeps the subject on the wall. He's a master of diversion.
INSKEEP: Pelosi spoke as new lawmakers from both parties settled into the Capitol. Combat veterans, many women, people of color and others posed for photos - quite dramatic scenes. Late in the day, President Trump emerged from the White House.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I have never had so much support as I have in the last week over my stance for border security, for border control and for, frankly, the wall or the barrier.
INSKEEP: Surveys have shown the demand for a border wall to be unpopular, though it is favored by many of his core supporters.
MARTIN: All right, so we are joined now by NPR's lead political editor, Domenico Montanaro, to get the latest on the shutdown, when it's going to end. He's got all the answers, right, Domenico?
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: All of them, always.
MARTIN: All of them, all the answers. OK...
MONTANARO: How's it going, Rachel?
MARTIN: It goes well. So Nancy Pelosi, one of the first items of business, passing this package of bills to keep the government open, no border wall funding. Is this going to go anywhere?
MONTANARO: Not really because Republicans aren't going to take it up in the Senate. And the president said that he would veto it if it passed Congress. So we're back where we've been. Nancy Pelosi says that what passed was, quote, "a mature way out" for the president because she's not giving in on the border wall. As we heard her say, she might take a dollar but that's about all.
And this measure would open the government back up, funding several agencies for a year. It would kick the fight over border funding another month, tied to funding for the Department of Homeland Security. Democrats point out this was basically what Republicans were set to pass before the president reversed course in December.
MARTIN: Well, Republicans up until this point, led by Mitch McConnell, have been fairly unified on this, saying, we don't want to take up anything the president's not going to sign. But there appear to be some cracks in that front right now.
MONTANARO: There are a couple cracks. At least two Republican senators are calling for funding the government without this border wall fight. That's Cory Gardner of Colorado and Susan Collins of Maine. Gardner said that Congress needs to take further action on border security, but that work should be done when the government is fully open. Collins said that the government basically should not be held hostage to this debate over border security. Oh, and by the way, Rachel, both of them are up for re-election in 2020.
MARTIN: Right.
MONTANARO: And we've seen Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell want to protect a lot of his members who are up for re-election. But so far, he's stayed on the sidelines. And a lot of people think he might be one way out of this because he would be needed to kind of move the impasse forward.
MARTIN: So President Trump came out yesterday. It was supposed to be the first press briefing, with Sarah Sanders, of the new year - instead a surprise visit by the president. What did he say?
MONTANARO: Yeah, it was not a press briefing. Instead, we had the president come out - seemed to be a direct response to Pelosi returning to the speakership, congratulated her but dug his heels in and tried to make the case again for the border wall funding.
MARTIN: All right, NPR's Domenico Montanaro. Domenico, thank you. We appreciate it.
MONTANARO: You're welcome.
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MARTIN: At one point, the president said if Congress doesn't give him the money that he wants to build a border wall, more than $5 billion, he'll just have the U.S. military do it. The president appears to be moving ahead with that idea.
INSKEEP: Yeah, the Pentagon is sending more U.S. troops to the border. Their job is to build or upgrade 160 miles of fencing. It's along the border in Arizona and California. Now, bear in mind, those two states are already mostly fenced. Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan described the deployment.
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PATRICK SHANAHAN: 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.
INSKEEP: Troops will also provide medical care to migrant families.
MARTIN: NPR's Pentagon correspondent, Tom Bowman, joins us this morning. Good morning, my friend.
TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: Hello, Rachel.
MARTIN: So how many troops are we talking about here?
BOWMAN: You know, at this point we don't know. And here's a challenge for the administration. There are about 2,300 active-duty troops along the border together with about 2,000 National Guard troops. Now, the deployment for the active troops wraps up at the end of the month. So they're going to have to make some decisions. Do we extend the current troops? Do we send more troops?
And I'm told that for the fencing portion of this, you're looking at more combat engineers. They could possibly be sent. And also Homeland Security's (inaudible) more medical units as well. Of course, two children died along the border in the custody of U.S. officials, so they need additional help - and also aviation units to provide surveillance along the border. So they're going to have to make some decisions pretty quickly because again, the deployment wraps up at the end of the month.
MARTIN: Right. And this - this is in addition to the U.S. troops who were already sent down there to manage the so-called caravan of migrants, right?
BOWMAN: That's right.
MARTIN: So it's also happening, obviously, during a partial government shutdown. So where are they going to get the money for this? Is this coming out of the Pentagon's previous budget?
BOWMAN: They're getting it from the Pentagon budget. And also, the Pentagon has not shut down. They're still - they're still working, as we see, along the border. So yeah, there's some grumbling about this at the Pentagon. It's a waste of money, or this is not what you use active-duty troops for. This is generally a National Guard mission. So privately, there is some grumbling about this. But they say, listen, this is a legal order from the president. We'll carry it out.
MARTIN: You mention decisions are going to have to be made soon. Do we have any idea, at this point, when - when we could see troops there on the border actually reinforcing fencing?
BOWMAN: Well, I don't have a sense of exactly when they're going to start this mission. But I'm told it could take several months. And this is, you know - talking about a lot of mileage here. So this could, you know, require a substantial amount of troops.
One official told me a few thousand troops perhaps. Another said, well, the current troops there could at least start this effort as you bring more troops in. But at this point, I know the Pentagon is working on this, planning this. And we don't have any specifics on it right yet.
MARTIN: All right, NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman for us this morning. Tom, thanks. We appreciate it.
BOWMAN: OK, you're welcome.
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MARTIN: All right, next we're going to turn to Israel, where thousands of new homes for Israeli settlers are being planned in the occupied West Bank.
INSKEEP: Most countries denounce Israeli settlements because they're spread out across land that Palestinians demand for their own state. The Trump administration has been tolerant, though, of Israeli settlements. In fact, a watchdog group says there's been a building frenzy in the settlements since President Trump took office.
MARTIN: NPR's Daniel Estrin has been visiting those areas in the West Bank. And he is on the line now. Good morning, Daniel.
DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: What can you tell us about - about these construction plans?
ESTRIN: Well, last week Israel advanced plans to build nearly 2,800 new settlement homes in the West Bank. And the big picture here, Rachel, is that in the last two years, during Trump's presidency, Israel has pushed forward a lot of settlement construction plans. And it's a big difference from the last two years of the Obama presidency.
This anti-settlement watchdog group you referenced, Peace Now, tracks these numbers. And it says that in Trump's first year of office, the number of housing plans that Israel advanced was about 2 1/2 times higher than the number in the last year of the Obama administration.
MARTIN: So, I mean, it's hard to overstate just how sensitive this issue is, right?
ESTRIN: Yeah.
MARTIN: I mean, so much of it plays into the history of the region, the identity of the peoples. Can you just explain kind of contextually how important this is for Israelis and Palestines - Palestinians, rather?
ESTRIN: Settlements are at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They are spread out in the West Bank. That's where Palestinians live, and that's where Palestinians want an independent state. And most countries want to see Israel give up at least most of the West Bank for Palestinians to have their own state. And they say that's the only way that there will be a solution to this long-running conflict. And the more Israel builds up its settlements, the more entrenched Israel becomes in that land.
MARTIN: So as we noted, you've been out visiting some of these very areas where Israel has - has made these plans, advanced the settlement construction. What have you seen there?
ESTRIN: Well, this morning I visited a small village, a Palestinian village called Nahalin. And across the valley is one of the biggest Israeli settlements. And it's growing. You can see the construction vehicles. You can hear the bang, bang, bang of the construction vehicles. They're building a new neighborhood to expand the settlement.
And I was surprised they were even working on a Friday, which is a weekend day here. And it's one of three settlements that surround this village where Israel has recently announced new planned housing. So the Palestinian mayor of the village said he feels he's being choked. He says this is unjust.
And then I drove to the settlement next door. And I met a devout Jewish Israeli there. And he said, well, this construction is good. God promised us this land in the Torah. This is our land. This is not their land. Palestinians don't deserve this land. Arabs have plenty of countries. This - there's only one Jewish state.
INSKEEP: Daniel, I want to note that you said that Israeli settlement construction plans advanced during the Obama administration and the Trump administration - just a little bit slower in the Obama administration. Is the point of view of the Israeli government becoming essentially what that settler told you, that no matter what any U.S. administration says, they're going to go ahead as much as they can?
ESTRIN: Well, I think a lot of - especially in the - in the settler community here, they believe that Trump is giving them a green light, whereas Obama gave them a yellow light. I remember being at a Trump election victory party in 2016. Settler activists were drinking Trump-branded vodka. They were hoping Trump would allow this to happen. And it seems - the numbers suggest that it is.
MARTIN: All right, NPR's Daniel Estrin for us this morning on these new plans. Israel is planning to construct new Israeli settlements on the West Bank. Daniel, thanks. We appreciate you sharing your reporting with us.
ESTRIN: You're welcome.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Last week came word that U.S. Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley had made a surprise trip to Kabul to meet with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. Milley is President Trump's choice to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The visit comes after the announcement in December that President Trump wants to cut U.S. troops in Afghanistan by half, from about 14,000 down to 7,000. Veteran foreign policy analyst Robert Kaplan this week wrote a New York Times op-ed provocatively titled "Time To Get Out Of Afghanistan." Kaplan spoke with Noel King.
NOEL KING, BYLINE: What exactly are you arguing here?
ROBERT KAPLAN: What I'm arguing is a number of things. We've been in Afghanistan for 17 years. What we've learned over the years in two decades is the American military can do a lot of wonderful things. But one thing it can not do is fix complex Islamic societies on the ground. And what I'm arguing is that there's really no possibility of a decisive victory over the Taliban after 17 years.
KING: Do you think there's a realistic scenario by which Afghanistan's democratically elected central government survives if the U.S. withdraws totally?
KAPLAN: I'm having trouble seeing it, frankly. The best-case, realist scenario is a kind of coalition regime between the Taliban and the democratic government that allows various warlord and tribal factions throughout the country to essentially govern on their own.
Remember, from the 1950s to the early 1970s when Afghanistan was relatively stable, even then the king in Kabul, who left in 1973, and the subsequent governments in Kabul did not govern the hinterlands. They essentially governed what's called the ring road, connecting the major cities in the country - Mazar-i-Sharif in the north, Herat in the West, Kandahar in the south and of course Kabul in the east and Jalalabad in the east.
KING: You are saying that there will be some pain in Afghanistan if the U.S. withdraws. The government will fall apart.
KAPLAN: It might fall apart. It very well might. But I believe it might fall apart whether we're there for another nine months or another five years. We've given this 17 years. As I wrote in my piece, we made big mistakes along the way. It did not have to turn out this way. No place is hopeless, but here is where we are now.
KING: People who want us to stay in Afghanistan, similarly to people who are upset about the pullout of U.S. troops in Syria, say, you know, the U.S. is assuming a different role in the world if it does these things; it is no longer a superpower; it is no longer a leading force; it'll be replaced by Russia; it'll be replaced by China; it'll be replaced by Iran. What do you think about that? Are you arguing fundamentally for the United States to see itself as or to play a different role in the world?
KAPLAN: No, I disagree with that point of view. I believe precisely for the United States to challenge China throughout Eurasia in the Indian Ocean, for the United States to stand up to Russia in the Baltic Sea - the Black Sea in Europe. It is necessary for the United States to find a responsible way to get its significant number of ground forces out of the Middle East and to deal with the Middle East through air and naval and cyber assets because ground troops are not like naval or air forces. They're in a place. They're susceptible to quagmire. They eat up large amounts of resources in Afghanistan. It's over $40 billion a year.
I don't know what the figure is in Syria, and we could better spend that money building dual-use ports, LNG facilities in Vietnam and Malaysia and the Philippines to compete with China's Belt and Road project, both maritime and on land. We've got to make some choices. We've got to pick some losers. And eventually, if the United States is going to peacefully compete with China for influence throughout Eurasia, it's going to have to deal with the Middle East in a far more economical way.
KING: You wrote something interesting in your op-ed. You wrote, (reading) the Chinese, Pakistanis, Russians, Indians and Iranians, meanwhile, may all be benefiting more from America's military operations in Afghanistan than the United States is.
KAPLAN: Yeah. Let me unpack this. The Chinese and the Pakistanis are spending $45 billion as we speak - 46 billion to build roads, railways and pipelines from Western China south through Pakistan all the way to the Indian Ocean port at Qatar. Meanwhile, the Indians and the Iranians are starting to build another pathway of roads, railway and pipelines from Central Asia south to the Iranian port of Chabahar.
So it's two competing pipelines and roads being built. One to the east of Afghanistan, one to the west, both eventually with spur lines that will connect into Afghanistan. And precisely because the U.S. ground presence and air presence - there may be just enough stability in Afghanistan to let these projects get started.
So in effect, indirectly, the United States' presence in Afghanistan is aiding the building of China's Belt and Road Initiative and Iran and India's competing initiative.
KING: You're not arguing that the United States should leave Afghanistan so that China and Iran's economic plans will end up a mess?
KAPLAN: Absolutely not. I'm not arguing that. All I'm saying is that our continued presence is helping them. So unless we see an end to the tunnel, a stable democracy that we can leave behind or even a stable enlightened authoritarian regime that we could leave behind, like something we have in Oman or Morocco or Jordan - unless we can see some light at the end of the tunnel, then, you know, the mission, given that it costs $45 billion a year, is becoming pointless.
KING: Robert D. Kaplan is a veteran foreign policy analyst and author. He's a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a senior adviser at the Eurasia Group. Thank you, sir.
KAPLAN: Thank you.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Israel says it plans to build thousands of new homes for Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. Most countries denounce Israeli settlements, and the U.N. Security Council disapproves. The settlements are spread across land that Palestinians demand for their own state. And a watchdog group says there's been a, quote, "building frenzy in the settlements since President Trump took office." NPR's Daniel Estrin has been visiting those areas. He's on the line. Hi there, Daniel.
DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: Hi, Steve.
INSKEEP: Where have you been?
ESTRIN: Well, this morning I was in a small Palestinian village. It's called Nahalin, and it's a really good place to see how Palestinians view the settlements being built or the settlement homes being built. And we saw that this morning. Across the valley is Beitar Illit. It's one of the biggest Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and it's growing. We saw the tractors. We heard the sounds of piercing the bedrock. They're building a new neighborhood on the edge of the settlement. And it's just one of three settlements that surround the village where Israel last week announced that it's planning new housing.
INSKEEP: Well, let's talk about that new housing. How big are these construction plans?
ESTRIN: Israel says it's building more than 2,000 new homes in existing settlements. And Peace Now, the anti-settlement watchdog group you spoke about, says, we can expect to see some of this construction starting as early as in a year. And what they say is - what's happening is very clear. They say since Trump became president, Israel has advanced big construction plans in the settlements. And that's a big difference from the last years of the Obama administration.
INSKEEP: Although, we should note, they built settlements under President Obama - or not under but during the administration of President Obama. They built settlements under the administration of President Trump. It sounds like the Israeli government attitude here is to proceed regardless.
ESTRIN: That's true. And even the building that I saw today across the valley are homes that were approved, assumably, under the Obama administration. It takes some years before you actually see groundbreaking. But yes, the idea here, especially among the settler community, is they feel that under Trump - you know, what was a yellow light to build under Obama is now a very big green light.
INSKEEP: Why is this significant in the long term, Daniel?
ESTRIN: Well, settlements, Steve, are really at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As you said, they're spread out across the West Bank. That is where Palestinians live. It's where Palestinians want to create their own independent state. And around the world, most countries want to see Israel give up West Bank land so Palestinians can have their own state there. And they say this is really the only way that can be - there can be a solution to the conflict. And the more Israel builds up its settlements, the more entrenched Israel becomes there.
INSKEEP: And we should note, I suppose, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been talking about granting the Palestinians something less than a state at this point.
ESTRIN: Yes. He's been very - he hasn't - he says he won't define it as a state. You know, that's the term that he may have talked about in the past. But he says he wants Palestinians at some point in the future to be able to control their own lives. But he won't call it a state. He said state-minus, even.
INSKEEP: OK. Daniel, thanks for the update - really appreciate it.
ESTRIN: Thank you, Steve.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Daniel Estrin, who's been traveling on the West Bank.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Robert Mueller's Russia investigation has put a very public spotlight on Moscow's intelligence operations against the U.S. But over the past year, indictments have piled up, one after the other, involving a different foreign adversary - China. NPR justice reporter Ryan Lucas reports.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: For all the attention paid to Russia of late, U.S. officials don't view Moscow as the primary long-term threat to American power and global influence. That distinction lies with China. Here's how FBI Director Christopher Wray recently described Beijing's rivalry with Washington.
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CHRISTOPHER WRAY: China's goal, simply put, is to replace the U.S. as the world's leading superpower. And they're using illegal methods to get there.
LUCAS: And it's those illegal methods that have caught the attention of the Justice Department. American officials say China is using cyberattacks to vacuum up U.S. government and business secrets. It's pressuring Chinese students and scientists to pilfer research from American universities and labs. And it's co-opting insiders at U.S. companies to steal confidential trade information.
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WRAY: Chinese government is not pulling any punches. They want what we have so that they can get the upper hand on us. And they're strategic in their approach. They're playing the long game.
LUCAS: That strategic approach includes targeting a range of high-tech industries, such as biotechnology, artificial intelligence and aerospace. Those match sectors Beijing tapped for development in its strategic plan released four years ago called "Made In China 2025." John Demers, the head of the Justice Department's National Security Division, recently spelled out for Congress how Beijing operates.
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JOHN DEMERS: The playbook is simple - rob, replicate and replace. 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.
LUCAS: In one recent example, a grand jury indicted three people in a Chinese state-owned company in November. They were charged with economic espionage related to the theft of trade secrets from a U.S. semiconductor company. That is just one of a handful of cases the DOJ has brought related to China's alleged theft of American intellectual property. In the last year, the Justice Department has announced charges against more than a dozen people and companies for allegedly attempting to steal economic secrets on China's behalf. The latest case was unsealed in late December.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Well, the U.S. Justice Department has announced a stinging indictment of the Chinese government. It's charging two Chinese nationals with carrying out an extensive hacking campaign.
LUCAS: The DOJ alleges the two Chinese men were part of a hacking group called APT10 and worked in association with China's Ministry of State Security. The hackers penetrated computer networks of more than 45 companies in 12 states, carting off hundreds of gigabytes of confidential data. The pair's hacking efforts ran for 12 years. Trying to continue to conduct traditional spy versus spy espionage against the U.S., one former CIA officer was convicted last year of spying for China, while another former CIA officer is to go on trial this year.
But it is China's relentless cyberattacks against American companies that are a particular source of concern and frustration for the U.S. government. China struck an agreement in 2015 with the Obama administration not to conduct cyberattacks for economic espionage. But U.S. officials say that after an initial drop-off, those attacks have ramped back up. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein did not mince his words when announcing the charges last month.
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ROD ROSENSTEIN: We want China to cease its illegal cyber activities and honor its commitment to the international community.
LUCAS: The Justice Department has vowed to push back against China's actions. One way it will do that, Rosenstein says, is by bringing more cases against individuals stealing on China's behalf. Ryan Lucas, NPR News, Washington.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. Everybody knows elephants are cute, but they also want what they want. Video from Sri Lanka shows a woman visiting an elephant rescue center. An elephant reaches its trunk out of its pen, seems to give her a hug. But...
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Laughter).
INSKEEP: ...It's actually deftly stealing her purse. In a tug of war, the woman did manage to retrieve her phone. The elephant got the purse and what it really wanted - the mangoes inside.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
You got to hand it to the NFL. The regular season began four months ago, immersed in controversy over player protests and declining TV ratings. And now here we are, the day before the playoffs start, with ratings back up and a lot of excitement about a postseason with, arguably, no clear favorites. Our co-host, Noel King, spoke with NPR sports correspondent Tom Goldman to give us a preview of what's to come this playoff season.
NOEL KING, BYLINE: So before we get to this weekend's games, what is behind the jump in TV ratings? What happened?
TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: Well, first, I will tell you what the ratings jump is. It's a 5 percent climb compared to last season. Since this season started, 46 of the top 50 rated TV broadcasts were NFL games. And then the average number of viewers streaming NFL games was up a whopping 86 percent.
Now, Noel, there are going to be some who say it's because the players have stopped protesting, or, at least, TV cameras are not showing them. But that's perhaps giving too much significance to the protests causing ratings declines the previous couple of years. Really, the main reason ratings are back up is that the games have been great - tons of passing and scoring this season. There were a record number of touchdowns, a record number of games decided by three or fewer points, and NFL fans like that.
KING: So is this kind of exciting football with all the scoring going to continue on into the postseason?
GOLDMAN: Probably not.
KING: (Laughter) That's a heartbreak.
GOLDMAN: Yeah, really. Sorry to let you down. In fact, offense did die down late in the season. Plus, Noel, as you well know, defense wins championships. And, in the playoffs, teams tend to slow things down. They play more conservatively, and a good defense becomes even more important.
KING: Getting boring, y'all.
GOLDMAN: (Laughter) Not boring. A lot of people love defense.
KING: (Laughter).
GOLDMAN: But those are the weirdos. OK (laughter).
KING: So let's talk about this weekend's wild-card round of the playoffs. These are the teams that are good enough to qualify for the postseason but not the teams with the best records who got the byes in this round.
GOLDMAN: Right.
KING: Which games do you - are you looking forward to most this weekend?
GOLDMAN: Let's break it down into Saturday and Sunday. I'm calling tomorrow comeback Saturday. All four teams playing - Indianapolis, Houston, Seattle, Dallas - all four had rough starts and turned their seasons around, none more dramatically than Indianapolis. The Colts began the season losing five of their first six games. Quarterback Andrew Luck had missed the entire 2017 season because of a hurt throwing shoulder. And there were doubts he could lead them out of the early season hole. But he did it, and the Colts look really good right now.
KING: All right. So that's Saturday. What about Sunday?
GOLDMAN: Sunday, you have Baltimore hosting the LA Chargers - no longer the San Diego Chargers. Now, Baltimore will start a 21-year-old rookie quarterback, Lamar Jackson. He's the youngest quarterback ever to start a playoff game. He's a dynamic player, fantastic runner, not as great of a passer yet. The Ravens also have the best defense in the NFL, and they're going against a very good Chargers team led by veteran quarterback Philip Rivers. A couple of weeks ago, these two teams played, and Baltimore's defense dominated. It should be an interesting rematch.
Then you've got defending champion Philadelphia against the Chicago Bears with their great defense. Now, Philly made it to the playoffs on the last day of the regular season behind backup quarterback Nick Foles, who, for a second straight year, has taken over after Philadelphia's starting quarterback was injured. Now, last season, all Foles did was lead the Eagles to the Super Bowl title. This season, he's led Philly to three straight wins, a playoff spot. And, Noel, eternally pessimistic Eagles fans are feeling the magic again.
KING: NPR's Tom Goldman previewing the NFL playoffs. Thanks, Tom.
GOLDMAN: You're welcome.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The Golden Globes are this Sunday. The awards show recognizes the best of the year in film and television. And over the last few decades, the Globes has developed a reputation as the weirder, livelier kid brother to Hollywood's flagship ceremonies, like the Emmys and the Academy Awards. Here to talk about the Globes, Scott Feinberg of The Hollywood
Reporter. Hey, Scott.
SCOTT FEINBERG: Thanks for having me.
MARTIN: You excited?
FEINBERG: You know, it's the first big one of the season.
MARTIN: It is, isn't it?
FEINBERG: It is exciting, absolutely.
MARTIN: I love an awards show. But I have to admit, I hadn't thought about this until we decided to do this story. I don't really know what the Golden Globes are about. I mean, I...
FEINBERG: (Laughter).
MARTIN: Where did these awards even come from?
FEINBERG: The thing is the Oscars were sort of the original baby about 91 years ago. And ever since then, other people have been trying to hop on the train and ride the coattails of that. And so the Golden Globes were one of the earlier ones to do that. They're in their 76th year. And they are put on by a group called the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which sounds very impressive.
And like the Academy, you kind of think this is a massive thing. But it's actually a group of only about 90 journalists, who write for outlets based around the world. And so the joke each year at the Golden Globes is that these are a lot of things that people these days don't like - Hollywood, foreigners...
MARTIN: Right (laughter).
FEINBERG: ...And the press. So...
MARTIN: Right.
(LAUGHTER)
MARTIN: Yay.
FEINBERG: But...
(LAUGHTER)
MARTIN: But it's also - it's fun because it's not just about the movies. So much great entertainment these days is in the form of television or limited series anyway. But talk a little bit about how the Globes approaches their categorization because it's different.
FEINBERG: Yeah. It's very different than the Oscars or most other award shows. In this case, you have one of the few times when both film and TV talent - both in the same room, being honored for the two different media. And the other thing that people love about it is that there is flowing booze and, to some degree, food. But nobody's really - wants to be seen on camera eating, but drinking is no problem.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
FEINBERG: And so it creates a looser atmosphere. Plus, people still sort of deep down feel that the Oscar's the big kahuna at the end of the day. So whatever happens here, they can have a good time. And it leads to some memorable moments.
MARTIN: Right. And it's always fun to see your favorite movie star talking to your favorite, like, sitcom star. And you're like...
FEINBERG: Exactly.
MARTIN: Oh, they're friends. I knew they'd be friends.
FEINBERG: (Laughter) Exactly.
MARTIN: Do the Globes end up making the same calls as the Oscars or the other award shows?
FEINBERG: They sometimes do. But it's very interesting because there isn't a direct reason why that would be the case. The Academy is a group of roughly 9,000 people who actually work on making movies. And then here, you've got a group of 90 people who report on movies.
And I think the Globes do sometimes influence the Academy in the sense that the Golden Globes are going to take place on January 6. And then Oscar nomination voting starts January 7 and runs for a week after that. And so sometimes, the picks of the Globes might steer Academy members towards certain movies that they hadn't already checked out or kind of tipped them in one direction or another. But there's no direct correlation.
MARTIN: There's other weirdness though, too. Right? There's a pageant for the children of celebrities.
FEINBERG: (Laughter) Well, they - it used to be less politically correct. And up until maybe a year or two ago, I think they called it Miss Golden Globe. And it was usually the daughter of a celebrity - you know, Jamie Foxx or Sylvester Stallone or somebody...
MARTIN: Right, Sylvester Stallone.
FEINBERG: Yes (laughter).
MARTIN: I think both his daughters one.
FEINBERG: He had three, I think. But first of all, the origin of it might have been to help attract stars to show up at the Golden Globes. Well, you honor their kids, they've got to show up. And there were a number of years when they were sort of a little shady. I mean, they were, actually, kicked off the air for a few years because of some strange, questionable voting practices.
It was almost like if you show up at the Golden Globes, you're going to get a Golden Globe. Now they've tried to - and I think quite successfully - regain a little bit of credibility, respectability. They have their own accounting firm that supposedly oversees the results to make sure they're kosher. And yeah, it's it's own thing.
MARTIN: I'm going to watch. You've convinced me. Although, it didn't take much. Scott Feinberg of The Hollywood Reporter, thanks so much. We appreciate it.
FEINBERG: My pleasure.
(SOUNDBITE OF AMBIENT JAZZ ENSEMBLE'S "ELEVEN DAYS")
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
For two years now, Republicans in Washington have always had the power to make the first move.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
They controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. Yesterday, Democrats gained the power to make a move. They passed a bill to reopen the government. It included no funding for President Trump's border wall.
INSKEEP: Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House for the second time, did not sound inclined to compromise when she spoke with reporters.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Is there any situation that you would you accept even a dollar of wall funding?
NANCY PELOSI: A dollar.
(LAUGHTER)
PELOSI: A dollar.
(LAUGHTER)
PELOSI: One dollar, yeah, one dollar.
(LAUGHTER)
PELOSI: But thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: The president wants to cut a deal.
PELOSI: A wall is an immorality. It's not who we are as a nation. And this is not a wall between Mexico and the United States that the president is creating here. It's a wall between reality and his constituents.
INSKEEP: Pelosi spoke as new lawmakers from both parties walked the Capitol getting their pictures taken - many women, many people of color, combat veterans, many others. Amid that ceremony, parts of the government are still shut down. And the Republican Senate is not even expected to vote on that House measure. NPR's Domenico Montanaro has been following all of this, and he's with us.
Hi, Domenico.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Dollar and a dream, Steve - dollar and a dream.
INSKEEP: There you go - all you need. It's all you need. How different does Washington feel this morning?
MONTANARO: You know, it is very different because Nancy Pelosi and Democrats are back in power for the first time in eight years. And Pelosi's, you know, a master tactician. She's somebody who's been through the legislating, you know, back and forth for many years. She knows how this game is played. And she feels like and other Democrats feel like they're riding a wave of momentum coming off the 2018 elections, which were largely a rebuke of President Trump. And they show no signs of wanting to give in to the president and give him even that dollar - perhaps a dollar, but not much more than that - for a wall that, you know, the president said Mexico would pay for. And they're not.
INSKEEP: Well, this is the way that Pelosi framed this first day. Let's hear some more of the new speaker of the House.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PELOSI: Two months ago, the American people spoke and demanded a new dawn. They called upon the beauty of our Constitution, the - our system of checks and balances that protects our democracy, remembering that the legislative branch is Article 1 - the first branch of government coequal to the presidency and to the judiciary.
INSKEEP: Although, the checks and balances mean the Democrats would have to, presumably, compromise at some point, wouldn't they?
MONTANARO: Yeah. I mean, it's the same thing as when President Obama was president, and you had John Boehner as speaker of the House. You know, the fact is this is divided government. And yes, Congress and the presidency are coequal branches. But that doesn't mean that Democrats who only control half of one of those branches can get everything they want also.
INSKEEP: We should mention that for a couple of years now or even a little more, President Trump has had overwhelming power to make the news. All he has to do is tweet or make a quick statement to reporters, and he dominates the headlines day after day after day. Yesterday, we had a situation where Democrats were in a position to be the ones making news because they were taking control in the House of Representatives. So we went through the day. The president didn't have the spotlight. And then abruptly, late in the afternoon, he stepped to the lectern at the White House briefing room. Let's listen to some of what he had to say.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I have never had so much support as I have in the last week over my stance for border security, for border control and for, frankly, the wall or the barrier.
INSKEEP: OK - speaks up for the wall there, Domenico. The president says the wall has support. He says the people of our country want a wall. Is that correct?
MONTANARO: Well, it's just not true. I mean, the fact that he wants to say that this is the most support he's had - you know, he may be getting lots of feedback and lots of reaction. There are certainly tens of thousands of people who will show up to his events who are supporters of his and give him that kind of feedback. But when you look at the polling, the confluence of polling has shown that more people blame the president for the shutdown than Democrats. And heading into this, more people than not - a majority, in fact, in our polling - showed that they wanted the president to compromise rather than shut the government down based on a wall.
INSKEEP: We hear a number of Republican lawmakers doing something interesting. When they talk about this, Domenico, they will say the American people want border security, which may well be true. But then what they're debating is a wall, which does a lot worse in polling, doesn't it?
MONTANARO: That's a great Washington trick. You know, conflate one thing to make your point about something completely different. Yeah. I mean, the fact is when you look at polling, people do say they want border security. They do say they want to stem a tide of immigration that's illegal to the country. But that doesn't mean that they necessarily want to pay billions of dollars for a wall along the border. In fact, they say they don't want to have to have taxpayers spend billions of dollars for a physical barrier. You know, at the same time, there are, obviously, pieces of the border that are fenced, that are - that do have walls. And the president brought people out yesterday to say that that works in certain places. And no doubt it works in certain places, but even the president himself has gone back and forth, saying that it's not maybe necessary in every part of the border.
INSKEEP: Very briefly, what are the Republicans who still control the Senate saying about all this?
MONTANARO: Well, right now, you've got at least some cracks in the Senate because you have two Republicans from Colorado and from Maine, who are up for re-election in 2020, who are saying, keep the government open without this border wall fight.
INSKEEP: Domenico, thanks for the update - really appreciate it.
MONTANARO: You're welcome.
INSKEEP: That's NPR political editor Domenico Montanaro.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
It's tough to measure how much the government shutdown is affecting the economy. But we know markets don't like instability, and there is a whole lot of that right now. The Dow has rallied after a stronger-than-expected jobs report this morning. But yesterday stock prices took a steep dive. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index was down nearly 2.5 percent, and the Dow fell even more. As NPR's Jim Zarroli reports, a grim profit warning from Apple has left a lot of investors worried about China's economic growth.
JIM ZARROLI, BYLINE: On Wednesday afternoon, Apple announced news that sent a chill through Wall Street. It said it made a lot less money during the last three months of the year than it expected. The news caused Apple's shares to fall more than 10 percent yesterday, its worst one-day performance in six years. And because Apple is such a huge company now, that sent all of the major indexes down, too. But economist Linda Lim of the University of Michigan says what happened in the market yesterday wasn't just about one company.
LINDA LIM: It's not just Apple, and it's not just smartphones. It's what it reflects of the second-largest economy in the world.
ZARROLI: Apple warned that it was hurt by slowing growth in China, and it blamed that in part on trade tensions. Washington and Beijing have been slapping tariffs on each other's imports. But Lim says the troubles facing China go beyond trade.
LIM: China's economy is slowing due to its own domestic dynamic.
ZARROLI: Lim says China is a more mature economy now, and mature economies don't grow as fast as developing ones. But China has also been hurt by the downturn in countries it does business with throughout Asia and Europe. These were points alluded to yesterday outside the White House by Kevin Hassett, who chairs the Council of Economic Advisers.
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KEVIN HASSETT: Make no mistake, the Chinese economy is on a path that we haven't seen in decades. That's something that will affect companies that operate in China.
ZARROLI: Hassett said it's not just Apple that's been affected. In an unusually frank statement, he said that a heck of a lot more companies that do business in China will probably issue warnings about slower profits in the weeks to come. Companies such as GM and Caterpillar have already expressed concern about China. Hassett went on to say that the slowdown is actually a good opportunity for the U.S. He said it gives U.S. negotiators more leverage in the current trade talks.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
HASSETT: There's a lot of room for positive gain in the Chinese negotiations. And I think the fact that their economy is having trouble right now shows that our policies have been effective at getting them to the table.
ZARROLI: But Mary Lovely, a professor of economics at Syracuse University, points out that the China slowdown can also hurt the U.S.
MARY LOVELY: It seems to me that it also shows that there's a great deal at stake here for the American economy.
ZARROLI: A number of U.S. companies now make as much as 10 percent of their revenue in China, including McDonald's, Starbucks and Intel. And Lovely says these include a lot of very big and innovative companies that also have large workforces inside the United States. In a global economy, she says, they're likely to be affected by what happens in China.
LOVELY: And I think it's kind of glib to be talking about warnings about future sales as bad for China but not bad for the U.S.
ZARROLI: Yesterday's big market sell-off suggests that a lot of investors understand that. And for now, they're responding by pulling their money out of stocks. Jim Zarroli, NPR News, New York.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Sorry to tell you that Herb Kelleher, the co-founder of Southwest Airlines and a pioneering businessman, died yesterday. He was 87.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Kelleher was probably the most recognized person in the airline industry. He had a big personality. He settled disputes by arm-wrestling. He went on TV with a bag over his head. Above all, he burnished the brand of a no-frills airline.
INSKEEP: We should settle disputes here by arm-wrestling...
MARTIN: Should we?
INSKEEP: ...Don't you think? Well, maybe not.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
INSKEEP: The bag - probably interfere with the microphone. Anyway, before all of that, Herb Kelleher was a lawyer in Texas. And in 1967, a client approached him with an idea for a low-fare airline that would serve just three cities in Texas - didn't take long for Kelleher to embrace the idea.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
HERB KELLEHER: Maybe, you know, like a minute (laughter).
GUY RAZ, BYLINE: That fast - wow.
KELLEHER: No, it was longer than that. I was just joking.
MARTIN: That was Kelleher in 2016 in an interview with Guy Raz on NPR's How I Built This podcast.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
KELLEHER: We told the public of Texas that you could fly at the lower fare. But if you paid the higher fare, we would give you a free bottle of whiskey. And so for a couple of months, we became the largest liquor distributor...
RAZ: (Laughter).
KELLEHER: ...In the state of Texas.
INSKEEP: Wow. OK. Southwest did face opposition from more established competitors. It was a more regulated time, and the company ended up in years of legal battles.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
KELLEHER: And in 1969, the board of directors had a meeting and talked about shutting the airline down - shutting the company down. And I said, well, how about if I litigate for nothing and pay all the court costs out of my own pocket? Would you be willing to continue under those circumstances? And they said, oh, sure (laughter).
MARTIN: Southwest Airlines finally flew its first flight in 1971. And as we all know, take off it did. It spread throughout the country and now is the airline industry giant we know it to be today. The key to success...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
KELLEHER: I knew nothing about airlines, which I think made me eminently qualified...
(LAUGHTER)
KELLEHER: ...To start one.
INSKEEP: Turns out Kelleher was right.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
After twice serving as the governor of California, Governor Jerry Brown is getting ready to leave office. The New York Times asked Brown what he'll miss, and he said pretty much everything. Quote, "I like sparring with the press. I like attacking my opponents. I like being attacked. I like the whole thing," he said. He went on to say people in this business like attention, and you get a lot of attention as governor. Jerry Brown got attention for a lot of things, especially for being one of the most outspoken leaders on the environment.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JERRY BROWN: Climate change is real. It is a threat to organized human existence.
MARTIN: Lauren Sommer of member station KQED and NPR's energy and environment team looks at what Jerry Brown accomplished to combat this threat and what he could not.
LAUREN SOMMER, BYLINE: One thing Governor Jerry Brown likes to clear up - he doesn't talk about climate change for himself.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BROWN: This isn't for me. I'm going to be dead. It's for you. It's for you, and it's damn real.
KEN ALEX: Jerry Brown thinks about this day and night. I don't think that's an exaggeration.
SOMMER: Ken Alex would know. He's been the governor's climate policy adviser for the last eight years. He remembers a couple Christmases ago when he put an out-of-office message on his email.
ALEX: My response said, I'm unplugging - no email, no nothing. And he wrote back. And he said, why? This is the time to be engaged. What are you doing? (Laughter).
SOMMER: And Brown has been engaged for a long time.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Are you going to listen to any more whales?
BROWN: Well, we're going to play yesterday's whales.
SOMMER: That's him in 1977, the first time he was governor, with scientists studying gray whales off California's coast, press corps in tow.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: I heard that you were going to come out here and talk to the whales.
BROWN: No, I came out here to see - the idea of the project is to put these hydrophones in the water.
SOMMER: Environmentalism wasn't exactly mainstream yet.
ALEX: He was promoting solar in the middle '70s - kind of astonishing.
SOMMER: Of course, it was Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger who signed California's first major climate law, but Brown turned up the volume. He set a goal to put 5 million electric cars on the road. This year, he signed a law requiring 100 percent clean energy by 2045. And when President Trump said the U.S. would lead the international climate agreement, Brown led his own movement of governments. He convened them in San Francisco this past fall.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BROWN: No more talk. Now is the time for action.
SOMMER: He took the message to China, even to the Vatican.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BROWN: For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
SOMMER: Climate change seemed to tap into his spirituality. Before he went into politics, Brown trained to be a Jesuit priest.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BROWN: When we deal with the environment and the fundamental conditions of nature, that's about as close to theology as, I think, you can get.
SOMMER: Brown even managed something quite rare these days - winning over Republican lawmakers for his climate policies, like California Assembly member Chad Mayes.
CHAD MAYES: My caucus had a seat at the table, literally, in his office. I think Governor Brown has understood that on the big issues, you need to have bipartisan support.
SOMMER: And yet, some of his harshest critics...
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD CHANTING)
SOMMER: ...Have been environmentalists.
ADAM SCOW: Well, Governor Brown has been a major disappointment on the issue of fracking and oil drilling.
SOMMER: Adam Scow is with the activist group Food and Water Watch. He wanted to see Brown phase out all oil production in California. The state is the nation's fourth largest oil producer. But Brown, being a political pragmatist, didn't think ending oil production was the answer.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BROWN: The real challenge is the consumption of oil, which has gone up under my administration - gone up 4 percent.
SOMMER: Cars and trucks are still the state's biggest contributors to global warming. Looking back, Brown admits he couldn't make a dent in that.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BROWN: We have to go even further, and I agree with that. So no, I'm not satisfied at all. We're on the road to disaster.
SOMMER: Governor-elect Gavin Newsom may not have to tackle that alone. Governor Brown says he still plans to work on climate change in his retirement. For NPR News, I'm Lauren Sommer in San Francisco.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Pope Francis has a message for U.S. bishops. Unify so you can confront the church's, quote, "crisis of credibility." In a letter to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the pope said the sex abuse crisis has broken people's faith in the Catholic Church, but the cover-up of the crimes has eroded that trust even more, he says. Over the past four months, Catholic dioceses across the U.S. have released names of over a thousand priests and others accused of sexually abusing children. That's according to the Associated Press, which also reports that another 55 dioceses have announced plans to release their own lists. Father Thomas Reese is a Jesuit priest and senior analyst with Religion News Service, and he joins us in our studios this morning. Father Reese, thanks for being here.
THOMAS REESE: Good to be with you.
MARTIN: What stood out to you in the pope's letter?
REESE: What stood out to me in the pope's letter was the way in which he understands that if you're going to reform the church, you just don't want to move around the boxes on the organizational chart. It's not going to be enough to establish new policies and procedures or establish committees. He understands that you have to change the culture of the institution. And social scientists would agree with him, whether it's a police force, a newspaper, a school. Whatever it is, you just don't - you have to change the culture of the institution. We see, for example, in the United States, we still have racism. We still have sexism. We have laws to deal with this, but we have to change people's hearts. We have to change the culture of our country to deal with these.
And the same thing's true of the church. The pope - it's funny. The pope has this reputation of being compassionate and forgiving, but when he talks to bishops and priests, he's tough. He tells them, you know, you're supposed to be humble. You're supposed to be listening. You're supposed to be servants of the people of God, not ambitious, not jockeying for positions.
MARTIN: But, you know, victims of sex abuse, their families, their supporters, have said the opposite about Pope Francis - that he talks a good game, that he says the right words, that he evokes compassion but that there isn't necessarily the action to back up those words. I mean, where do you see the actual reforms coming? How do you change a culture, and what moves is the pope making to do that?
REESE: Well, actually, a year ago, I think I might've said the same thing. The pope really didn't understand the sex abuse crisis in the church as well as he could have. But I think last year, he got an education. He found out that when he visited Chile, he was on the wrong page. He was defending the bishops. And then he went home, and he learned more and he got angry. And he demanded the resignations of all the bishops in Chile. That was a real turning point. He then started listening to victims. He started meeting with them. And that is extremely important, to hear their voices, hear their stories. That just tears your guts out when you hear those stories. And that was very important for him.
Now, you know, I think we still have a ways to go. For example, in the United States, we have zero tolerance for abuse by priests, and anybody who's accused is reported to the police. We encourage victims to come forward. We have zero tolerance, but we don't have a real good process for dealing with bishops who don't do the right thing. And that is something we really need to get.
MARTIN: The pope, in this letter, seems to indicate there are divisions in the American church when it comes to how to deal with this. What are they?
REESE: Well, I think there's fewer divisions on that. The bishops have been divided for a long time over political issues. There are the bishops who want to make abortion the only issue. They want the church to be a single-issue advocate. There are others who want to talk about the comprehensive, full, Catholic social teaching - concern for the poor and all of that. So that, I think, is where their divisions really are.
MARTIN: I want to just briefly ask you about the new kind of naming and shaming, for lack of a better moniker here, that dioceses are releasing the names of abusers. What's the significance? How can that help foment change?
REESE: That's very important. The bishops really never wanted to do that. They did put in procedures to deal with abusive priests, but they didn't really want to show all the dirty laundry. The Pennsylvania grand jury report showed that this has got to be done. It's going to be either done by attorney generals, or it's going to be done by the bishops. This is important for the healing process of victims. They want this. People need to be assured that these priests are not in ministry, that they've been removed.
MARTIN: Father Thomas Reese is a Jesuit priest and a senior analyst with Religion News Service. Thank you so much, Father Reese. We appreciate it.
REESE: Good to be with you.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Rachel Martin. A high school basketball coach in Missouri is under pressure after allegedly using his triplet sons to cheat during a game. Rick Luna and his Dora High School team were playing Licking High over the weekend. Parents and players from Licking accused Coach Luna of secretly swapping in one of his three sons to gain an advantage on the free-throw line. You know, being triplets, the referee didn't notice. An investigation is ongoing, but it won't change the final score. Coach Luna and his team won by 2.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The fishing in the Bering Sea off Alaska's coast is among the nation's most lucrative. Billions of pounds of fish are caught there each year. January marks the opening of a number of major fisheries in Alaska. And right now with the government shutdown, there are hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue at stake. That's because some of the boats are still missing federal permits and inspections needed before they can leave the docks. Nat Herz with Alaska's Energy Desk reports.
NAT HERZ, BYLINE: Dan Sullivan, a Republican senator from Alaska, spent his holiday season worried about fish. His office is a conduit to the federal government for the big companies that harvest fish off Alaska's coast. And parts of the federal government were shut down just in time for the opening of a big cod fishery on New Year's Day.
DAN SULLIVAN: Every day, every hour - I was getting emails on January 1, on December 31.
HERZ: The federal government tightly regulates the cod and other fisheries in the Bering Sea. The National Marine Fisheries Service certifies scales that are used to weigh fish. It also trains and debriefs independent observers who ride along on boats to collect data on fish being caught. And the whole agency is short-staffed because of the shutdown. Here's what you hear when you call the Alaska spokesperson for the fisheries service.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JULIE SPEEGLE: I will respond to your message in a timely manner once funds have been appropriated and the shutdown ends.
HERZ: With permitting and inspection obstacles, Sullivan's office was scrambling to get all the boats out to sea.
SULLIVAN: We thought the fishery was good to go, cleared hot. And yet, an issue arose that affected up to eight vessels - Alaskan fisherman - that kind of arose at the last minute that we were not aware of.
HERZ: The boats couldn't get their catch-monitoring plan - that's a data gathering system that ensures compliance with fishing regulations - approved because of the government shutdown, Sullivan says. His office managed to fix the problem with the help of the fisheries service. But now an even bigger season is getting ready to open January 20. The $750 million a year pollock fishery. You might not have heard of pollock, but it's everywhere. Here's Jim Gilmore, a spokesman for a trade group of companies that catch the fish off Alaska's coast.
JIM GILMORE: It's every McDonald's fish sandwich served in North America. It's imitation crab product. It's Gorton's fish sticks. And still, 70 percent of what we catch is exported.
HERZ: Crews are ready for the trip out to the Aleutian Islands. Boats have to stock food and fuel, but there's still uncertainty about who will be able to fish. The shutdown would only have to affect a small number of Bering Sea boats for the economic impact to be substantial. A single fishing trip for a large factory trawler can be worth millions of dollars. Pollock boats that can't get the permits or inspections needed can lease their fishing quota to other vessels if they have to. But, Gilmore says, that would present some serious logistical problems.
GILMORE: It's dealing with the practicalities of taking a $60-million fishing vessel with a crew of 130 people and taking it up to a very remote location and trying to make all that come together in a cost-effective way.
HERZ: One fisheries service branch that's still functioning - its law enforcement arm. It still has offices running in three different regions of Alaska. If boats venture out without the necessary authorizations, they could be cited. For NPR News, I'm Nat Herz in Anchorage.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Congressional leaders have been invited back to the White House today, but both sides are dug in to their positions, so there aren't a lot of expectations for a breakthrough to end the partial government shutdown. President Trump is demanding $5 billion in funding for his wall on the Mexican border. House Democrats, meanwhile, passed legislation yesterday which would keep border security funding at 1.3 billion. For the president, this is an issue that has been a priority since the early days of his campaign. A month after then-candidate Donald Trump announced he was running, in 2015, he traveled to the border city of Laredo, in Texas, to deliver this message.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: In certain sections, you have to have a wall. Absolutely.
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: And, by the way, the wall - the wall will save you a tremendous amount of money. But you absolutely - there are areas that you have to have the wall.
MARTIN: The mayor of Laredo, Peter Saenz (ph), welcomed then-candidate Trump at the time.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PETE SAENZ: We're excited to have Mr. Donald Trump here in Laredo, Texas. It has provided us an opportunity to present to Mr. Trump and his entourage what Laredo's all about.
MARTIN: We wanted to learn how the border debate looks from Laredo, so we have called up Mayor Saenz to talk with us this morning. Thanks so much for being with us.
SAENZ: Yes, ma'am. Thank you so much for invitation, Rachel.
MARTIN: Before we move to the present moment, I wonder if you could walk us back to when candidate Trump visited Laredo back in the day when he was running for president. You were able to tell him about the border issues that were facing your city. What did you describe to him?
SAENZ: What we did, we described, basically, what Laredo's all about. And we're the No. 1 land port in the entire Americas. We're the No. 2 port, behind Long Beach, as a port, overall port. We do over $200 billion worth of trade, primarily with Mexico. We have a strong relationship - economic and beyond - with Mexico, and this is why it's so sensitive for us here at the border as to how we deal with Mexico. Particularly, trade, you know, in general because we are a logistics warehousing distribution center...
MARTIN: Right.
SAENZ: ...An important center. We add and bring value to the state of Texas, but, of course, the nation as well. And so...
MARTIN: What did you tell him about the wall? Did you agree with him that a wall was a good idea or a bad idea?
SAENZ: (Laughter) Well, he asked. And, of course, we told him - he was insisting on this physical wall, and we told him that given the terrain and how the lay of the land there - you know, we have a network of creeks and waterways that actually empty into the river. And it's a rolling topography. It doesn't necessarily lend itself engineering-wise, I think, it doesn't lend itself for a physical wall.
And I think at that time - and I think you showed, or at least, you presented a part of that interview - he did concede that maybe through natural barriers, that those could serve as a barrier, as well. So but then again, he's been changing his mind on the size and type of fence, or barrier, or wall or whatever.
So anyway, our position there in Laredo is we don't need a physical wall. We have a natural barrier. And we expressed that to him. We consistently kept that position. I'm also the chairman of the Texas Border Coalition, which is really mayors and judges from Brownsville to El Paso, and consistently, we've kept that policy. You know, we could do without a physical wall. We're very much for border security. Believe us. We need border security.
MARTIN: That means more agents, better technology, things like that.
SAENZ: Yeah. We're proposing this virtual wall concept, which now through technology, more personnel - frankly, we work very closely. We're not a sanctuary city. We work very closely with the federal people there, all agencies, and it's our plan to continue with them. And also clearing the vegetation. We have dense vegetation there by the river banks. And working with Mexico, I personally have a very good, strong relationship with the mayor of Nuevo Laredo, who's our counterpart there at the Laredo port. And they're very open to cooperation, and their willingness to help out on these border issues...
MARTIN: Yeah. Let me ask you - so you say you don't need a wall. President Trump insists that you do. You are actually not in Texas at this moment. We're talking to you from Washington, D.C. You are here talking with lawmakers about the border issue. Can you tell us who you've spoken with and what those conversations have been like? Is your message getting through?
SAENZ: I think so. Or, at least, the attempt is very strong for us. We obviously visited with the people there in Texas - Senator Cornyn, Senator Cruz and our congressman, Henry Cuellar. We've been visiting with other new senators and congresspeople that were coming in just to impress on them, you know, the need. President Trump also stated as part of his leveraging momentum here for the wall is that he wanted to close the border.
And, of course, that would be catastrophic for us as a community, but also our state, state of Texas, and the nation. Millions of jobs depend on cross-border trade and commerce, and we've got to be very careful as to how we approach these things. I would prefer that that type of rhetoric is kept out because it does create all sorts of uncertainty in the markets, and more so in the trade business.
MARTIN: Just lastly, the president has asked the Pentagon to deploy troops to the border to build or upgrade existing fencing. Do you think that's a good idea? Do you need that?
SAENZ: Not in our area. Maybe in other areas. You know, there's got to be a solution to it, but it's got to be practical. And it's got to be, you know, effective and physically responsible. We personally feel that money could be applied somewhere else. So, you know, we're expecting good things, hopefully in the near future.
MARTIN: Mayor Pete Saenz of Laredo, Texas. Thank you so much.
SAENZ: Yes, ma'am. Thank you for the time.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
There are fewer than 230 fluent Eastern Band Cherokee speakers left. In North Carolina, two Cherokee brothers are working to save that language and their identity. From member station WUNC, Liz Schlemmer reports.
MICAH SWIMMER: You see that wood back there in the corner?
LIZ SCHLEMMER, BYLINE: Micah Swimmer points of the back of his classroom at a language school in Cherokee, N.C. There, printed sheets of paper display the names of fewer than 230 Eastern Band Cherokee members.
M SWIMMER: That is over than 16,000 enrolled members. That's all we have left that are fluent speakers.
SCHLEMMER: For more than 1,000 years, the Eastern Band Cherokee have been speaking their native language in what is now the North Carolina mountains. But today, most of the remaining speakers are over 50 years old. The Eastern Band dialect of Cherokee is considered severely endangered by UNESCO. Four days a week, Micah facilitates an all-day language session between young adults who are learning Cherokee and older, fluent speakers.
M SWIMMER: Because if we don't teach these adults how to talk, you can't make the kids talk Cherokee. If they don't have it at home from their parents, they're not going to talk it.
SCHLEMMER: About 40 miles away in Robbinsville, Micah's younger brother Jakeli Swimmer teaches Cherokee language and culture at a public elementary school.
JAKELI SWIMMER: Now, if you want something, you just say (speaking Cherokee).
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: (Speaking Cherokee).
SCHLEMMER: Both brothers say they're working to preserve their culture, as well as their family heritage and identity. Here's Jakeli.
J SWIMMER: If we're not speaking Cherokee, then what are we? Because that's what makes us unique.
SCHLEMMER: And they're running out of time.
J SWIMMER: Worst-case scenario for the language - I'll say 30 years.
SCHLEMMER: Like most Cherokee their age, neither Jakeli nor Micah are fluent. They both took language classes in high school and college. Jakeli writes down new phrases he learns in a little black notebook that he carries around with him. He says sometimes when he and his brother talk on the phone, they start out speaking in Cherokee.
J SWIMMER: We talk until we're uncomfortable, which is a few sentences. We'll talk - (speaking Cherokee).
SCHLEMMER: Then they'll switch to English. It might be surprising that these two Cherokee teachers aren't fluent in their language, but that's actually not uncommon for Native American language programs. Jioanna Carjuzaa runs the Center for Bilingual and Multicultural Education at Montana State University. She works with Indigenous language programs around the country.
JIOANNA CARJUZAA: We've been trying to really promote immersion programs, but there aren't teachers to teach these classes.
SCHLEMMER: About half of all languages indigenous to the U.S. and Canada have disappeared since 1492. Carjuzaa says through the 1970s, schools often discouraged students from speaking native languages, sometimes even punishing them for it. Parents stopped passing their native languages on, a generation gap emerged. Now many tribes are working to overcome that gap.
CARJUZAA: Speakers in multiple generations is how you save a language or keep it vibrant.
SCHLEMMER: Jakeli and Micah learned that from experience. Their parents weren't fluent, but their grandmother was. Jakeli says he wishes he'd spent more time listening to her when he was little, at an age when he could have just soaked up her words.
J SWIMMER: There are some days Grandma would just speak Cherokee. And it just kind of clicked. She might say something and go - point over there. And you might not know exactly what she's saying. But that instruction kind of leads you to that way.
SCHLEMMER: Jakeli and Micah's grandmother died in November at the age of 97. Micah removed her name from his list of remaining Cherokee speakers. Jakeli says his cousin told them, it's up to you now. You have to learn it. And speak it right. For NPR News, I'm Liz Schlemmer in Durham, N.C.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Now a story about rescued wolves and the troubled children who walk with them, how they're helping and healing each other. Gloria Hillard reports from a wolf sanctuary in the high desert north of Los Angeles.
GLORIA HILLARD, BYLINE: In hoodies and well-worn sneakers, these city kids are making their way up the mountain. Leading them is a wolf named Malo.
(SOUNDBITE OF WOLF HOWLING)
HILLARD: For many of the teens, this youth empowerment program called Wolf Connection is their last chance - kicked out of school, in gangs, in and out of foster homes. When program leader Amanda Beer asked them for one word that describes their strength, the tough kids struggle.
AMANDA BEER: The wolves never doubt themselves. They always have their own back. They also have each other's back. So let's hear this is who I am and this is my strength.
HILLARD: A tall boy, his eyes fixed on the ground, finally speaks.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Aggression.
(SOUNDBITE OF WOLVES HOWLING)
HILLARD: The wolves often respond this way, and when they do, the teens in the circle are respectful and silent. One of them is Charlie. We're not using the last names of the juveniles because some are victims of abuse.
CHARLIE: Sometimes they just howl just to encourage us, just to show us, like, you're not alone. I've learned a lot from them, like how they deal with their traumas and stuff.
HILLARD: Charlie has had his own trauma.
CHARLIE: When I was younger, my mom had a bad boyfriend/husband. He was a pedophile, and my mom first got with this person when I was, like, around 5.
HILLARD: The wolf Charlie gravitated to is Koda, who had been abused and chained to a pole as a roadside attraction in Alaska.
CHARLIE: And I feel how Koda feels.
HILLARD: When the kids listen to the stories of the wolves, they often hear their own story says Teo Alfero, the founder of Wolf Connection.
TEO ALFERO: These wolves and wolf dogs come from abuse, neglect, mistreatment, and the youth that we serve come from abuse, neglect and mistreatment.
HILLARD: Over the course of eight weeks, the teens interact closely with the wolves and wolf dogs, forming a strong bond says program leader Amanda Beer.
BEER: They start standing up straighter. They come in with a smile and maybe even a hug or they laugh and tell you story. And so we watch them transition.
HILLARD: Those positive outcomes were the subject of two studies conducted by Claremont Graduate University. They found that the teens grew in self-reflection and insight as well as being able to open up and trust others.
Near the end of the program, the teens meet in a sharing circle. Outside, strong winds buffet the canvas yurt. Inside, some stories come in a rush; others in bits and pieces. The kids with a defiant bravado just weeks earlier are quiet. Some have tears in their eyes. And sharing on this day is Leihla. She pulls the sleeves of her sweatshirt over her hands as she talks.
LEIHLA: I was like don't really like nobody, or every school that I went to I never liked. But knowing a lot of you guys' stories and...
HILLARD: The 15-year-old says in the beginning she wasn't hopeful that she would finish Wolf Connection's program.
LEIHLA: I didn't think I was going to be able to, like, be around so much people for that long - so yeah.
HILLARD: Leihla talks about a wolf named Mikey, shy and not comfortable around people. When he arrived, he was small and undernourished.
LEIHLA: After getting to know his story and the kind of wolf he is, it's like that's my wolf.
HILLARD: And Leihla's story...
LEIHLA: That's something I don't share or I don't want anybody to know because I don't want, like, nobody looking at me different, but with Mikey it's like it's OK.
HILLARD: During their last time together, Mikey, the wolf that didn't trust people, leans in close to the girl who, not that long ago, also shied away.
(SOUNDBITE OF WOLVES HOWLING)
HILLARD: For NPR News, I'm Gloria Hillard.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Chigozie Obioma's latest novel has an unusual narrator. Chinonso raises chickens and is profoundly alone in life till he sees a young woman who's about to hurl herself off a bridge. She is Ndali, who's despondent from a broken engagement - is drawn to his tenderness and protectiveness. He's drawn to her openness and vulnerability. They become involved. "An Orchestra Of Minorities" is a love story and a story of exile, Igbo folklore and a classical tragedy that is told not by any one character but Chinonso's chi. Let's ask the author about that. Chigozie Obioma, whose first novel, "The Fishermen," was a contender for the Man Booker Prize, joins us from member station WGVU in Grand Rapids, Mich. Thanks so much for being with us.
CHIGOZIE OBIOMA: Thank you very much, Scott. It's a pleasure.
SIMON: I don't want to get this wrong, so help us understand. What is a person's chi?
OBIOMA: So in Igbo cosmology, the Igbo tribe is situated in Nigeria in West Africa. So it's a person's guardian spirit. It is believed to be a spirit that - your intermediary but which also has the ability to help you negotiate your destiny. So we have a belief in predestination. And the chi is at the very center of that.
SIMON: The narrator, chi - if I might refer to the chi as the narrator chi - calls Chinonso my host. So does a person's chi stay with them?
OBIOMA: So there's been a very serious debate on where the chi is. And most Igbo, you know, religious scholars believe that the chi actually can inhabit a host. And some say that the chi leaves outside of the hosts like your shadow. It's always with you. But I do think that the chi can be seen as, you know, the equivalent of the Judeo-Christian concept of, say, the Holy Spirit or something like that.
SIMON: I was going to ask if you make that analogy. But I didn't - you know, I didn't want to try and twist cultures.
OBIOMA: (Laughter).
SIMON: You know, I tried to like Chinonso. And he suffers deeply from being hurt. But he pays back that hurt to innocent people, doesn't he?
OBIOMA: I think so. One of the things I wanted to explore in the book is whether or not revenge is justice. So he becomes, as the chi testifies, a man who is changed by, quote, "the spiritual politics to which he was not aware of" or something like that. And so, you know, the things that happen to him shape him and even deform him. And, you know, that transformation was very interesting to me as I set out to write the novel.
SIMON: You had a hospital stay as a youngster, which wound up changing your life.
OBIOMA: Yes. It wasn't a continuous - one continuous stay. It was, you know, frequent at some point in my childhood. And my dad would tell me stories. And then when I grew up a little bit and I was no longer as sickly as I used to be, I discovered one day that these stories that he was telling me was gotten from books. And, you know, that kind of turned on something in me. And I became this voracious reader. And the more I read, I think I came to write in true envy. I would always, you know, say to myself and my, you know, family, oh, I wish I could write like this guy. I wish I could write like this woman. And I was envious of these writers. And, you know, before you knew it, I started producing my own writing.
SIMON: You must have read deeply into classical mythology.
OBIOMA: Yes. And also, of course, Shakespeare and Greek myth. And, you know, unconsciously, I think my aesthetics were shaped by those early exposure to those books.
SIMON: The "Odyssey" figures into this novel a lot, doesn't it?
OBIOMA: Yes. I have seen that equivalents have been made between Chinonso's journey towards Ndali and the "Odyssey." But I wasn't setting out to rewrite, you know, a new version of the "Odyssey" as some critics, I think, have said. But, you know, if they see it that way, then that's probably a credit to the book.
SIMON: (Laughter) How do you write from the perspective of a chi? I mean, it's hard enough to write from the perspective of a character.
OBIOMA: I've always wanted to write something, you know, that will at least show the world that prior to the coming of the British to Nigeria we had some kind of complex systems. I feel like, you know, there hasn't been an African version of say, you know, Milton's "Paradise Lost," which actually explored the very foundational principle of Western civilization, which will be the free will or even Dante Alighieri's, you know, "The Inferno." And so I wanted to write something cosmological. And the chi has been very fascinating to me. It was very difficult. It entailed a lot of research, even, you know, down to actually going to shrines and interviewing, you know, the last adherents of Odinani, the Igbo religion, now that most Africans are converts of either Christianity or Islam.
SIMON: I mean, a novelist kind of has to believe in free will. Doesn't he or she?
OBIOMA: (Laughter).
SIMON: Otherwise...
OBIOMA: Yes.
SIMON: ...There's no plot - yeah.
OBIOMA: You know, the novel is very Western. So a character without agency is no character. But I wanted to explore, can one write a novel that is not within the Western tradition? Can one write a novel where the character is probably half the time able to have agency while half the time, you know, like, principalities and metaphysical forces are dwelling to negotiate the character's life? So in some way, it's probably an uncharted territory, I'll say.
SIMON: Chigozie Obioma - his new novel, "An Orchestra Of Minorities" - thanks so much for being with us.
OBIOMA: Thank you very much, Scott. I enjoyed it.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Mesha Maren's novel "Sugar Run" opens as Jodi McCarty is getting turned out of prison on parole after serving 18 years for manslaughter. She shot her girlfriend when she was 17, so Jodi has lived most of her life in prison and must now make a new life in the real world outside she doesn't really know. Soon, she'll meet someone. And they'll try to make a life together in a small West Virginia town, where they're outsiders in every way.
"Sugar Run" is the first novel from Mesha Maren, whose short stories and essays have appeared in the Oxford American. She's a visiting writer at the University of North Carolina and a writing fellow at the Beckley Federal Correctional Institution in West Virginia. She joins us from West Virginia Public Radio. Thanks so much for being with us.
MESHA MAREN: Thank you so much for having me.
SIMON: You kind of grew up going to prisons, didn't you?
MAREN: I did, yes. My dad worked for a nonprofit. And part of the work that he did is he volunteered to visit women in the federal prison camp in Alderson, W.Va. - women who hadn't received a visit from family or friends in more than a year. And I would often go along with my dad. So as a very young child, I think it was exciting to me because I got to eat candy out of the vending machines. But those experiences stuck with me.
SIMON: Well, and they come up here?
MAREN: They do. So I think, you know, when I started writing "Sugar Run" and started realizing that my character Jodi had spent a significant amount of her life in prison, those impressions that I formed when I was young came back to me. I specifically remember overhearing my dad speaking with women at the Alderson prison who were soon-to-be released. And later as an adult, I realized just how strong their joy was, you know, to be released, but also their fear of what it meant to make a life on the outside.
SIMON: Did I hear you say, once I realized my character Jodi had spent all these years in prison?
MAREN: Yeah. I mean, Jodi came to me very strongly. Before I even realized that I was writing a book, I was hanging out with Jodi. And she kind of took up residence in my mind. And I became a little infatuated with her. I started thinking about her all the time. And then the plot and the rest of the story sort of fell into place. I really, actually, kind of felt like I was getting to know her. And so it was a process of realizing what she had been through.
SIMON: Well, Jodi - without giving too much away - gets out of prison. She meets an interesting woman, Miranda, who has three children, a failing marriage to a has-been country singer and an addiction. What draws them to each other?
MAREN: She's just gotten out of prison. And she knows, in many ways, that taking up with Miranda is a bad decision. I mean, she kind of looks at her the first night that they're hanging out and tells herself, don't do this. But at the same time, she's drawn to her. I mean, she's physically attracted to her.
But she's also, I think, attracted to the fact that Miranda is bound and determined to enjoy life despite everything that's going wrong. So it's this sort of love of life and determination to make something joyful out of life.
SIMON: Certainly, one of the things that compelled us to pick up the book is that we don't hear a lot in literature about West Virginia. What do we misunderstand sometimes about West Virginia?
MAREN: So I get asked a lot, like, you know, why not just leave West Virginia, you know? Or why would a character like Jodi go back to West Virginia? And I think that for those of us who love places that are sometimes difficult to love, we love them with this extra fierceness - this fierce tenderness for this place that isn't always easy to love. But there's so much that's so interesting and beautiful, both in the people and the landscape.
SIMON: You do take on the fact that fracking is, in all ways, truly changing the landscape.
MAREN: One of the things that's difficult about West Virginia is that it is a place where a lot is extracted from here - right? - coal, lumber, now fracking for natural gas. And it's devastating on the land here. But I also think that that's part of where we get the conversation of, why don't you just leave, is that people kind of envision West Virginia as a place to take things out of.
SIMON: Yeah. And addictions - you do have to make that a part of your telling - storytelling, too, don't you?
MAREN: Absolutely. So, you know, the characters in my book - they use a lot of different substances. And, of course, that happens anywhere. That is not specific to West Virginia. But I do think that, you know, in some rural areas, it can be easy to fall into a trap of using substances as a crutch to make it through a life that's difficult.
For Jodi, you know, she's trying to find a job after prison, and living in a rural area doesn't make that any easier for her. And I think that, you know, sometimes she goes to substances to alleviate that.
SIMON: We noted that you're a writing fellow at the Beckley Federal Correctional Institution. Is there a great story in every prisoner?
MAREN: I think there's a great story in every human being. And that - so that - the same is true. There's a great story in every prisoner.
But the thing that I love about teaching there is just how - obviously, how much it means. The guys who are in my class - being able to sit down once a week for two hours and focus on their writing. And they've told me just to be in a quiet room, too, where, you know, I'll give them a writing assignment, and then we're quiet - they've told me that that, in many ways, is one of the things that is most valuable to them.
SIMON: Without giving away the end of the novel, does Jodi go on with you in your life now?
MAREN: She does to less of a degree. I mean, I think when I found the end of the book, I was able to let her go in some ways. I definitely still think about her.
SIMON: When you found the end of the book. Now, people who don't write for a living will think, what do you mean you found it? You created it.
MAREN: True. But the thing is, I think that, at least for me, the way that I write is I have this sort of foggy idea of the ending. I need to have something that I'm working towards, right? But I don't want it to be too sharp, actually, in my mind because then I might write towards it at all costs, and I might miss something along the way.
And, actually, this book ended slightly before I had planned. So I had this kind of idea. And then when I reached the place where the book does end now, I thought, you know, I think that's the end.
SIMON: Mesha Maren, her debut novel "Sugar Run." Thanks so much for being with us.
MAREN: Thank you so much.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
I don't think Louis C.K. is funny. That's the worst that can be said about a comedian, not that they're offensive or outrageous. Great comics can offend and outrage people. But a comic who dares to be offensive but isn't funny is just a lout. Louis C.K., who's been on NPR many times and often extolled as edgy and unafraid, apologized in late 2017 for sexual misconduct with women. There's nothing about this that I forgive myself for, he said then. I will now step back and take a long time to listen.
But he's back performing occasional sets. And this week, audio from a comedy club on Long Island leaked out. Louis C.K. made graphic, disparaging remarks about Asians, ridiculed young people who consider themselves neutral in gender and made a sexually explicit joke about 9-year-old girls. And he was just warming up. What got most attention was when Louis C.K. talked about the students who lived through last year's high school shooting in Parkland, Fla., and have become political activists. They testify in front of Congress these kids, he says in the audio. You're young. You should be crazy. You should be unhinged, not in a suit. You're not interesting. You didn't get shot. You pushed some fat kid in the way. And now I got to listen to you talking? I don't know why this would make anyone laugh. But you hear laughter on the audio recording. The club's owner says Louis C.K. sold out all six of his shows to standing ovations.
I don't believe Louis C.K. should be censored or publicly shamed into perpetual unemployment. People can choose to see him or not. But in these times when comedy can be idealized as edgy, audacious and truth-telling, we can forget it begins with a calling - to be funny. Otherwise, a comic is no more interesting than any other muttering blowhard who craves attention.
Louis C.K. might have noted that Parkland's students had become activists by saying something more like this. They testify in front of Congress, these kids? They're young. They should be doing crazy things, like swallowing Tide Pods. Instead, some 19-year-old with a troubled history gets hold of an AR-15 as easily as he'd buy a stick of beef jerky, killed 17 people. And these kids can no longer just be kids. They've seen their friends and teachers shot right in front of them. They're just kids. But now they have to tell grownups, get off of Facebook and do something.
(SOUNDBITE OF SHOOGLENIFTY'S "PIPE TUNES")
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The number of women working behind the camera in Hollywood today remains small. And that makes the career of Lois Weber all the more remarkable. She directed at least 138 movies, either shorts or feature length, in the silent film era. Most are lost, but two of her most important films have been restored. KUNC's Howie Movshovitz reports.
HOWIE MOVSHOVITZ, BYLINE: Lois Weber became the first American woman to direct a feature-length dramatic film with "The Merchant Of Venice" in 1914.
SHELLEY STAMP: In her day, she was considered one of the three great minds of the early film industry, alongside D.W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille.
MOVSHOVITZ: Shelley Stamp, who wrote the notes for the Weber DVDs, says the filmmaker often took a different tack from her contemporaries.
STAMP: She was a very vocal advocate for cinema's ability to portray complex social issues in a popular narrative form. She considered cinema what she called a voiceless language. And by that, I think she meant cinema had an ability to convey ideas to anybody, regardless of their educational level, regardless of their command of English - right? - at a period when there were many immigrants to the U.S. who did not speak English as a first language.
MOVSHOVITZ: She was born in 1879 outside Pittsburgh to a religious middle-class family. She was a child prodigy pianist who spent two years playing organ and evangelizing around the city. Dennis Doros and his wife Amy Heller co-founded and run Milestone Films, which is releasing the restored versions of Weber's movies.
DENNIS DOROS: She started preaching on shop corners. And when she went to New York, she started working at these Salvation Army-type places to help people. She was never really a preacher. But she was always an activist for the poor.
AMY HELLER: This is what she said. She said, in moving pictures, I have found my life's work. I find at once an outlet for my emotions and my ideals.
MOVSHOVITZ: Before she became a filmmaker, Weber left evangelizing to tour the country as a concert pianist, until one night a key broke and shattered her nerve. She then left the concert stage for the theater stage and eventually, in 1911, directed her first short film. Historian Shelley Stamp says that early on, Weber advocated for complex roles for women and for serious engagement with social issues.
STAMP: She made films about the fight to abolish capital punishment, about drug addiction, about urban poverty, about the campaign to legalize contraception.
MOVSHOVITZ: Weber took up the cause of young women going to work in her 1916 film "Shoes," which has been released by Milestone with a new score.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SHOES")
STAMP: She takes on an issue which many social reformers of the day were interested in. That is, the plight of young women who had entered the paid labor force were working in the retail sphere - either in department stores or five-and-dime stores - and were woefully underpaid. Many of them were supporting themselves or the primary wage earners in their family as the heroine of "Shoes" is.
MOVSHOVITZ: Forced to support her family by a layabout father, the heroine, Eva, prostitutes herself so she can replace her only pair of shoes, which are literally falling apart.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SHOES")
MOVSHOVITZ: The same year that Weber wrote and directed "Shoes," she was entrusted with Universal Pictures' anchor film, "The Dumb Girl Of Portici" - dumb as in mute. It stars internationally famous Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova in a sweeping historical epic. But Milestones' Dennis Doros says it was not easy to restore the antiquated scraps of surviving film stock.
DOROS: Universal had a major nitrate fire in the 1940s, so most of their master material went up in flames. About five years ago, the Library of Congress decided that they would do it. And they got the 16 millimeter from the New York Public Library, the 35 millimeter nitrate material at the British Film Institute, as well as 35 millimeter material they had. And these were various different versions from different eras. And it took them two years to edit together what is most likely the version that showed in 1916.
MOVSHOVITZ: The fact that most of Lois Weber's films are lost is just one reason she's been written out of film history. Shelley Stamp says that the men who controlled Hollywood financing did not respect the notion of women filmmakers. And both the film industry and its audiences turned to entertainment over social commentary. Lois Weber died penniless in 1939. Friends paid for her funeral.
STAMP: History failed her. She has been forgotten in a way that does not do service to really an extraordinary pioneer of American filmmaking. Had we remembered her career early on, we would have had decades and decades of female filmmakers' work to look at. We don't, and that's the consequence of forgetting her.
MOVSHOVITZ: The films of Lois Weber are not simply museum pieces. She actually did what many young women filmmakers now say they want to do - bring a woman's perspective to American studio filmmaking. For NPR News, I'm Howie Movshovitz.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
A new year, a new Congress. With the U.S. government still partially shut down after two weeks, President Trump met with Democratic leaders on Friday and said if they don't give him every cent of the $5.6 billion he demands to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico - which he'd said so many times on the campaign trail would be paid for by Mexico - he's willing to keep the government shut down for months or years. NPR's Ron Elving joins us. Ron, thanks so much for being with us.
RON ELVING, BYLINE: Glad you're open for business, Scott.
SIMON: (Laughter) Yes, we're still here. Haven't we learned over the last couple of years when the president says something, a lot of people insist, oh, that's just hyperbole? He actually means it.
ELVING: The president is given to hyperbole. That's an understatement, or perhaps it's a euphemism. But, no, this shutdown cannot last for months or years because that would disrupt far, far more than we've seen so far - not only national parks or federal paychecks but food stamps, which 38 million Americans depend on, and the IRS. Think tax advice at this time of year and tax refunds, Scott. Tens of millions of Americans count on that tax refund check, and they will not want to wait for it for months or years.
SIMON: What do you see that might be utterly distinct about this particular shutdown, given it's almost become a way of life in the Capitol?
ELVING: There's some of the usual posturing to be sure. But it's also unlike previous shutdowns in that both sides seem to be content with the politics of a stalemate. Usually, at least one side seems highly eager to get on with the courtship. But here, we have both playing hard to get. So the longest shutdown was three weeks back in the mid-1990s during the Clinton administration, the speakership of Newt Gingrich. By next weekend, we may have broken that record.
SIMON: Let's talk about the new Congress. Nancy Pelosi - once again speaker. But the difference in appearance between the two sides in that chamber is dramatic.
ELVING: As different as blue and red. If you watched the ceremony on Thursday, on the Republican side, it looked like a chamber of commerce meeting with nearly 90 percent of them white males, all suits and ties. On the other side, it looked, by contrast, more like the United Nations General Assembly with record numbers of women, people of color, clothing of color, Muslims, Native Americans and LGBTQ members, as well.
SIMON: Nancy Pelosi has demonstrated in the last few weeks especially that she is an able political opponent for President Trump. Does she also have to contend with some rival opinions in her own party?
ELVING: Oh, indeed she does - the young and the restless, the newly elected Democrats. There are more of them than at any time in more than four decades. And they have a far more confrontational style, many of them - and a greater fondness for socialist or left-wing economics and rough-edged rhetoric, as we've seen. So Pelosi, on the other hand, has ridden this wave so far with remarkable cool and calm and balance. And she shows every sign of dealing with it in the months ahead.
SIMON: New senator from Utah, a guy named Mitt Romney. And he began by writing a scathing piece for The Washington Post, saying, quote, "the president has not risen to the mantle of the office." Do you see any indication Mitt Romney will try to provide an alternative leadership for Republicans?
ELVING: Yes. It's hard to believe Mitt Romney got back into politics just to be a freshman senator from Utah. He sees himself as a national figure, obviously, an alternative standard bearer, perhaps even an antidote to the president, not that he will necessarily run against him for the nomination in 2020. But, surely, he would be a candidate if Trump is not. And the Senate has lost a lot of its leading critics of Trump on the Republican side. John McCain died. Bob Corker and Jeff Flake retired. Lindsey Graham has switched sides so many times, no one knows whether he's a supporter or a critic. So Romney sees a lane to run in, and he's already running in it and running hard.
SIMON: And let's note blockbuster jobs report yesterday.
ELVING: Absolutely blew the doors off. And it was great news for the economy, great news for the president, great news for his party. And we will see in the months ahead - with this 300,000-job surge, we will see whether or not tariffs and changes in interest rates and other changes should actually damper this enthusiasm or whether this long bull run still has some distance to run.
SIMON: Ron Elving, thanks so much for being with us.
ELVING: Thank you, Scott.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Are we booming or about to bust? This week, Apple cautioned investors not to expect strong sales because the Trump administration's trade war with China. And the Institute for Supply Management said that its measure of U.S. manufacturing took the steepest dive it's had in a decade. But then, yesterday's upbeat employment report said that U.S. employers added 319,000 jobs in December; analysts were expecting 180,000. So what's the panic? We're joined now by Megan Greene. She's the chief global economist at Manulife Asset Management. Thanks so much for being with us.
MEGAN GREENE: Thanks for having me.
SIMON: Do you think the U.S. economy is basically healthy?
GREENE: So the U.S. economy is in pretty good shape. The economic fundamentals look decent, even though we've had a couple of bad news headlines recently. So the ISM survey data came in much weaker than expected but still reflected an expansion in terms of manufacturing and manufacturers' expectations for output, employment and new orders - so still in growth territory. We grew well above potential growth last year, and potential growth is around 2 percent. So I do think we can expect a slowdown this year. But, again, it's a slowdown from really high levels, so I think we'll still have growth of somewhere between 2 and 2 1/2 percent for 2019. That's hardly bad news for a developed economy.
The confidence in the U.S. continues to hit postcrisis highs every month. So when you ask consumers and businesses how they're feeling about things, they say they're feeling great about the economy. When you look at how they're actually spending their money, though, the data is not quite as ebullient. So it's not quite as boomy. So if you look at retail sales to measure the health of the consumer, for example, consumers are saying they feel great, but they're not actually spending that much. It's still in growth territory, but it's not what you would expect based on how they're reporting they're feeling. You might have seen a lot of pessimism in the markets recently. And I don't think that that's an economic story for the U.S. at all. I don't think that it's justified based on the U.S.' macroeconomic fundamentals.
SIMON: Well, why the pessimism then?
GREENE: One thing that I do think is really driving the markets is what's happening in China as well. So Chinese data has come out and has been unequivocally awful, I would say. So retail sales growth has been really weak in China. Their survey data suggests that demand in China and abroad has been much weaker. You know, it's justifiable for the markets to worry a bit about that. If China were to slow down, that doesn't mean that the U.S. is going to go into recession, though, unless China had a really surprise hard landing now. And until very recently, the markets have been worried about the Fed killing off this recovery. And I think that's a fair concern generally. They say that, you know, recoveries don't die of old age, they're murdered, and usually the Fed is the key suspect. But recently, the Fed has revised its path for normalizing rates downward so that it's more dovish, more gradual. I don't think that we'll end up seeing the Fed kill off this recovery, but the markets have been really worried about it recently.
SIMON: What features of the economy do you look at?
GREENE: So if you're looking for forward-looking data - because most economic data is actually backwards-looking, particularly labor market data - if you look at the survey data, it will give you an indication of new orders, both domestic and foreign. And that's a great indicator of the strength of manufacturing and services. And the two ways to fundamentally boost your potential growth or productivity growth and your labor supply - and in terms of productivity growth, the way to boost it is with more investment, more capital expenditure. And this has really been an investment less recovery. But if we saw a boom in investment, that would certainly change most people's views on things. So I would keep an eye on that. And the labor supply is effected a lot by immigration policies, so I would keep an eye on that as well.
SIMON: Megan Greene with Manulife Asset Management, thanks so much for being with us.
GREENE: Thanks for having me.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Firefighting is dangerous - raging flames, choking smoke, hot, floating ash - but what about the long-term health effects that persist after the fire's been doused and firefighters have gone home? The Chicago Tribune investigated links between fighting fires and deadly cancers that can catch up to those first responders long after they leave a scene. Karen Ann Cullotta reported the story, and she told us she started looking into it after two firefighters in the Chicago area died.
KAREN ANN CULLOTTA: I wrote obituaries for both of them, and I was kind of taken aback that they were both young, and these were what was being called line-of-duty deaths cancer deaths. So I started asking around different fire departments and saying, you know, is this something you're seeing? Is this something that's being talked about? And without exception, every department I spoke with said this is pretty much all we're talking about.
SIMON: Is it the toxic smoke? What is it?
CULLOTTA: Yeah. So there's just - there's a lot of questions - unanswered questions. And while there's been research into this for years, it's still unfolding. They've always known that, of course, inhaling smoke is dangerous. But now, these studies are looking at these toxins that are in the smoke and that settle on the skin. So it's not just inhalation. It's actually getting into the skin and into the blood stream from exposed areas.
SIMON: Are there actually higher rates of cancer among firefighters?
CULLOTTA: The study that really has looked at this long and hard was through the CDC through NIOSH - National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. They studied about 30,000 firefighters, and what they found was that there was higher rates of certain types of cancer than the general U.S. population. That was primarily digestive, oral, respiratory, urinary system cancers. There was also twice as many malignant mesothelioma cancers than you'd find in the typical population. But they can't say whether it's more or less than in decades past. There just wasn't the data, the central database, and that's something that this cancer registry that Congress passed this past summer - they're hoping they're going to have this data now.
SIMON: An anecdotal impression, of course, is that there are just more electronics and plastics in homes and apartments nowadays. Does that contribute to it?
CULLOTTA: Yes, you're spot on. So the example they gave me, some of the researchers, is if you look at an old couch that was made of wood and horsehair and cotton, I mean, then you look at polyurethane and those are the modern synthetics - there is - you can actually find it online on the Underwriters Laboratories' website. They set a candle to two different living rooms, and the room with the old furnishings takes about 30 minutes to turn over where it's fully engulfed in flames. If you look at the modern synthetics, it's about three minutes.
SIMON: Are there things that fire departments can do to try and minimize this hazard?
CULLOTTA: Absolutely. And, you know, one of the things that I was most astounded by was that 70 percent of firefighters are volunteers. And so it becomes really problematic in terms of parity in these preventive practices. However, the good news is without exception all the researchers I spoke with said that you can, with just soap and water, detox on the scene - washing off your gear, using these kind of baby wipes on the scene trying to get that soot off and so forth. But, of course, the bigger issue is uniforms, having an extra set of gear. And something like that is about $3,000 per firefighter. So when you're talking about not just volunteer fire service but also from impoverished communities - that the money is just not there right now.
SIMON: I have been fortunate to do a number of stories over the years with firefighters in Chicago, as a matter of fact. And they don't like to be told you ought to do the job more safely.
CULLOTTA: You bring up a huge issue, kind of that image of the soot-covered firefighter as a badge of honor, they're really working hard to dispel that. And any time you see that soot, to look at it as this is not something that we should be excited or proud about. It's something that's dangerous. That soot is just - it's toxic.
SIMON: Karen Ann Cullotta of the Chicago Tribune, thanks so much for being with us.
CULLOTTA: Thanks so much, Scott.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Three million people granted access to clean water, 4 million children given food. When charities publicize their work, they tend to focus on successes. But today, a story about a charity that's proud to announce that it's failing. NPR's Nurith Aizenman explains.
NURITH AIZENMAN, BYLINE: In business, if you're trying to sell a product that people don't have use for, they won't buy it.
KAREN LEVY: You run out of money (laughter) OK, right? I mean, you shut down.
AIZENMAN: That's Karen Levy. For the last 20 years, she's worked in the business of aid, trying to help the world's poor where, she says, that rule does not apply.
LEVY: Historically, what got funded was good proposals, not necessarily good, impactful programs.
AIZENMAN: Levy, who trained in social policy and planning at the London School of Economics, says the trouble is the people being served by aid programs are not the ones paying. The bill goes to donors, foundations, governments that for years have largely had to base their decisions on whether a program sounded good.
LEVY: You can keep an ineffective program funded for years if you're good at fundraising.
AIZENMAN: But over the last decade, there's been a major push by economists to do rigorous research on poverty - basically run experiments to figure out which solutions actually work. Levy works for a charity called Evidence Action whose mission is to look for the most promising experiments, then scale them up massively.
LEVY: Reach the lives of millions or tens of millions of people.
AIZENMAN: And at every stage, it runs tests to see if its programs are still working.
LEVY: If we find that they're not having impact, then we'll shut it down.
AIZENMAN: Now that commitment is being put to the test with one of Evidence Action's most prominent ventures - a program to help rural farmhands in Bangladesh during what's called the lean season, a three-month period every winter when the fields lie empty and there's no work. Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak is a development economist at Yale.
AHMED MUSHFIQ MOBARAK: You see that up to 40, 45 percent of people report that they regularly miss meals.
AIZENMAN: Instead of three meals, they'll cut down to two. It's particularly hard on children.
MOBARAK: It can lead to stunting.
AIZENMAN: Which leads to cognitive problems. Traditional aid - food distribution, food-for-work programs - is too expensive to reach all of these farmhands, so Mobarak had an idea. Instead of trying to bring jobs to where people in rural areas are...
MOBARAK: Encourage people to move, go to various towns or cities so that they could go find work for themselves.
AIZENMAN: Offer them a tiny loan, around $20, to buy a bus ticket to the closest urban area where, for the duration of the lean season, they can get a job, like pulling a rickshaw. Mobarak's early tests were so successful, Evidence Action decided to take it up. Their first round of loans in 2014 targeted 3,500 households. Here's Levy again.
LEVY: I happened to be in the D.C. office when the results came in, and we were, you know, a bunch of geeks jumping up and down in the conference room looking at the tables.
AIZENMAN: The loan roughly doubled the number of people who decided to try their luck in the city, and those who went earned enough to give their families an additional meal each day. In the aid world, results like that...
LEVY: Yeah, that certainly doesn't come along every day.
AIZENMAN: Soon, Evidence Action was going big, raising $11 million to scale up to 160,000 households in 2017. Then this past fall, the results from that 2017 round came in.
LEVY: It was very sad. I mean, I was very disappointed.
AIZENMAN: The loan offer had not induced anyone who wasn't already planning to go to the city to make the trip. Evidence Action is doing one final round of loans to see if they can figure out what went wrong. But they've also announced that if they can't solve the problem, they will not seek new funding.
CATHERINE HOLLANDER: This is quite unusual.
AIZENMAN: Catherine Hollander is with GiveWell, an organization that researches charities to come up with an annual recommended short list for donors. In the fall of 2017, Evidence Action's program made the list. For 2018, the charity said, don't consider us. Hollander says this was a smart move.
HOLLANDER: It makes us trust them more. You know, the response that we've gotten from folks in our network who use our research has been positive.
AIZENMAN: Evidence Action's Levy says she hopes their example will inspire other charities to own up to failure.
LEVY: It's sad when something that you thought might actually solve a problem turns out not to, but it's much sadder to waste resources.
AIZENMAN: Nurith Aizenman, NPR News.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Practicality and conformity - that's the point of military uniforms, not the latest styles or trends. But there are some definite gaps in the clothes and accessories available to service members, especially for women. And now an entrepreneur in Anchorage is trying to meet that market demand. Alaska Public Media's Zachariah Hughes reports.
(SOUNDBITE OF ZIPPER)
ZACHARIAH HUGHES, BYLINE: Amy Slinker shows off a simple, black cloth sack.
AMY SLINKER: This is a gym bag.
HUGHES: A pretty common item. But for those in the military, finding a gym bag that meets Army regulations is harder than you'd think.
SLINKER: You cannot have an obvious logo. So finding a gym bag or a purse that doesn't have that obvious logo can be challenging.
HUGHES: Slinker recently launched a business in Anchorage catering to service members. It's called Wilco Supply.
SLINKER: Wilco stands for will comply.
HUGHES: Wilco isn't a manufacturing business. Instead, Slinker sources bags, brands and accessories from companies and vets them to make sure they meet uniform guidelines.
SLINKER: We're here to supply the force with bags and accessories that meet regulations.
HUGHES: Primarily, the female force, and particularly those working in professional occupations and offices. Outside of her day job, Slinker's an officer in the Alaska Army National Guard. When she first joined the military more than 20 years ago, the way to find compliant clothes and accessories was basically wandering through department stores. And while there are generally standard-issue options for most of these accessories, they aren't always flattering.
SLINKER: I wouldn't say it's a vanity thing, but more of just having something that fits the environment they're in.
HUGHES: Like every branch of the military, guard members have to follow a voluminous set of uniform regulations. In this case, it's the Army's - the AR 670-1. It's 73 pages long, covering everything from hairstyles to insignia to backpacks. Abigail Meyer is a veteran who left the Army as a sergeant.
ABIGAIL MEYER: Every now and then, when you really start to think about, well, why can't I have an umbrella, or why can't I have just whatever gym bag I happened to grab at the store?
HUGHES: Now Meyer works for the Defense Department training women who are new to the military.
MEYER: You feel like there's a little bit of a lack of common sense sometimes with this.
HUGHES: Many articles and accessories are uniquely hard for women in the service to find - high-heeled shoes and purses, for example. Or, Slinker says, toiletry bags that meet the practical needs of female soldiers, like the one she's holding up, which has several internal pockets.
SLINKER: One thing that a lot of women in the military have is a lot of bobby pins and hair ties because we have to keep our hair in a bun. So this is just one of our favorite items.
HUGHES: There's clearly a market. Katie Vail is a captain in the Army Reserve, a West Point graduate and a blogger who writes about, among other things, fashion for military women. She says the conflicts overseas for nearly two decades made for a high operational tempo across the military.
KATIE VAIL: A lot of the basic things, like shining your shoes and having uniform inspections - things like that - they kind of went out the window because we were more concerned with, you know, preparing for war.
HUGHES: But in recent years, Vail says there have been renewed calls for getting back to basics, including closer adherence to uniform standards. And Slinker is ready with her catalog of compliant accessories aimed at professional-minded service members.
SLINKER: It's kind of like the little black dress. Everyone needs a little black bag.
HUGHES: Slinker has a small physical store in downtown Anchorage, but she doesn't think brick-and-mortar sales will be Wilco's mainstay. Instead, she wants to be a one-stop online retail shop for America's far-flung military. For NPR News, I'm Zachariah Hughes in Anchorage.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
An airline food cookbook sounds just about as promising as an album of great moments from public radio fundraisers. But United's publishing a cookbook of recipes inspired by some of the meals served in United's Polaris international business class. It's a joint project between United and The Trotter Project, a nonprofit group.
But if you want to provide a truly authentic airline dining experience at home, make your guests stand in separate boarding lines in the hallway for half an hour before they can sit down. Make them sit in small, confining seats with their knees up to their chin and tell them, well, if they want more room, they'll just have to pay for it. Put their seats next to the bathroom and have a line of other guests open and close the accordion door all night. Bon appetit.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
This summer, NPR launched a series on songs we know that have become American anthems.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAR HONKING)
SIMON: Think now of summer, a big city, scalding sidewalks. I think of Chicago and being a kid in the 1960s, walking down North Broadway in the days when parents let their children stroll in big cities. Big things happened all around us - people rising and marching for change, powerful people pushing back and all the excitement, unrest and eloquence spilling into the streets, the steamy streets of America's great cities. People sat in open windows. And out of sweltering apartments and bursting out of radios, a new American anthem.
(SOUNDBITE OF MARTHA AND THE VANDELLAS SONG, "DANCING IN THE STREET")
SIMON: People walked the streets and stepped and bopped along in time.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DANCING IN THE STREET")
MARTHA AND THE VANDELLAS: (Singing) Calling out around the world, are you ready for a brand-new beat? Summer's here, and the time is right for dancing in the street. They're dancing in Chicago - dancing in the street - down in New Orleans - dancing in the street - in New York City - dancing in the street...
MARTHA REEVES: The song is about love and feeling free enough to dance in the street. You don't have to worry about cars hitting you. You don't have to worry about policemen coming and telling you you can't dance in the street.
SIMON: Martha Reeves was 23, singing in clubs and working as a secretary at Motown in Detroit when she saw the company's biggest star, Marvin Gaye, in a studio, working out a song he'd written with Mickey Stevenson and Ivy Jo Hunter.
REEVES: So he was singing this song. (Singing) Calling out around the world. Are you ready for a brand-new beat, baby?
You know, so I'm saying, wow. And he looked over and saw me in awe of him and said, hey, man - and these are his exact words - hey, man, let's try this song on Martha.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DANCING IN THE STREET")
MARTHA AND THE VANDELLAS: (Singing) Dancing in the street - all we need is music, sweet music. There'll be music everywhere. There'll be swinging and swaying and records playing, dancing in the street.
SIMON: The song recorded by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas on June 19, 1964, is now one of just 50 sound recordings in the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry. It was her second take. Martha Reeves believes her first was even better.
REEVES: But the machine wasn't on. I didn't have the tape rolling. And then, they said, well, Martha, can you do it again? And I really - I didn't get angry, but I was so disappointed because I thought I had nailed it.
SIMON: The record became a top seller in the U.S. and U.K., competing with the rise of the Beatles to the top of the pop charts around the world. That summer of 1964 was also when the Civil Rights Act was signed into law, but racism and oppression persisted. Mark Kurlansky has written about the history of dancing in the street.
MARK KURLANSKY: It really was the year that the black liberation movement was under a shift from the civil rights movement to the Black Power movement. 1964 was the year when Malcolm X famously said we will get our rights by any means necessary.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MALCOLM X: That's our motto - we want freedom by any means necessary.
(APPLAUSE)
MALCOLM X: We want justice by any means necessary. We want equality by any means necessary.
KURLANSKY: The people in the Black Power movement used this song for rallies, and they used it because, you know, it got people worked up. It got them going.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DANCING IN THE STREET")
MARTHA AND THE VANDELLAS: (Singing) Calling out around the world, are you ready for a brand-new beat?
KURLANSKY: I mean, calling out around the world, are you ready for a brand-new beat? And then, listing - every city they listed where they were dancing was a city with a militant black neighborhood and a city where, eventually, riots broke out.
(SOUNDBITE OF POLICE SIRENS)
SIMON: Chicago, New Orleans, New York, LA...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DANCING IN THE STREET")
MARTHA AND THE VANDELLAS: (Singing) Philadelphia, Pa. - dancing in the street - Baltimore and D.C. now - dancing in the street - can't forget the Motor City - dancing in the street...
SIMON: What do you make of the fact that the Black Power movement kind of adopted the song and other groups adopted the song, and people began to read things into the lyrics?
REEVES: I had nothing to do with that. I just sang the song. And, in my heart, I was visualizing people actually dancing in the street.
SIMON: Martha Reeves says she's never heard the song she made so famous as a call for civil unrest.
REEVES: I wasn't singing, you know, doom and gloom, you know, when the sun goes down, let's kill everybody and go steal their property and break in the stores and carry refrigerators home on your back. I was singing bright. I was singing happy, and my soul and spirit is in that recording. And I don't think anybody could think evil of it.
SIMON: But even Martha Reeves says the song reminds her of the trials she faced as a young black teen in Detroit before the dawn of the civil rights movement.
REEVES: We couldn't stand on street corners and sing because there was a police unit called the Big Four. It was, usually, four big white men, and they had clubs and guns. And if they caught a group of black people standing on the corner singing doo-wop as we had a tendency to do, they would jump out of the car and attack you, arrest you or run your home - run you to your house because they didn't want blacks gathering. So "Dancing In The Street" is all of that to me.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DANCING IN THE STREET")
MARTHA AND THE VANDELLAS: (Singing) All we need is music, sweet music. There'll be music everywhere. There'll be swinging and swaying and records playing, dancing in the street.
SIMON: Mark Kurlansky says "Dancing In The Street" has grown into an anthem over six decades because its irresistible beat and engaging images - people swinging, swaying and dancing - let people hear their own story in the song.
KURLANSKY: Mickey Stevenson, one of the authors of the song, said that he saw it as a song about integration, about how young black people and young white people could go out on the street and be together. So, you know, a lot of people saw it in different ways.
KENNETH ATKINS: If you listen to the lyrics of the song, it's telling you that when things are rough, you dance in the streets. You have to celebrate victory sometimes.
SIMON: WDET, our station in Detroit, found Kenneth Atkins of Houston at the Motown Museum, home of Hitsville USA, where "Dancing In The Street" was recorded.
ATKINS: And it makes you feel good. I don't know if you ever hear - ever you dance. It gives you a positive energy.
SIMON: Vincent Thames is from Connecticut.
VINCENT THAMES: Music is one thing that brings everyone together. It was saying shed your fears, forget about the political thing and just enjoy life.
SIMON: The Mamas & The Papas and the Grateful Dead have also recorded "Dancing In The Street" over the years. Mick Jagger and David Bowie recorded a duet to benefit Live Aid in 1985, which they began by calling out Tokyo, South America, Australia, France, Germany, U.K....
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DANCING IN THE STREET")
MICK JAGGER: Africa.
SIMON: And their version was a hit.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DANCING IN THE STREET")
JAGGER: (Singing) Calling out around the world...
SIMON: Part of what's made the original, sung by Martha Reeves, into an anthem is the ring of authenticity for Motown's original studios in Detroit, a cry from the heart of summer in a big city, boiling with energy, turmoil and hope.
REEVES: And I will admit that it's one of the greatest songs recorded at Motown. And I consider it the anthem of the Motown sound because it makes everybody dance. Whenever you hear it, whenever I hear it, I have to almost get up and move.
SIMON: Why don't we all do that now?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DANCING IN THE STREET")
MARTHA AND THE VANDELLAS: (Singing) Every guy, grab a girl, everywhere around the world...
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Negotiations continue over the partial shutdown of the U.S. government. It's been two weeks now, no sign of things opening back up. The impact is especially sharp in rural America. The Department of Agriculture operates farm support programs, like subsidized home loans, loans that are not being processed. Iowa Public Radio's Amy Mayer reports.
AMY MAYER, BYLINE: Darecia Porter and her husband live in rural Tennessee. They have good credit and good jobs, but what they don't have is $30,000 sitting in the bank for a down payment on a house. USDA offers mortgages aimed at people like them. They got approved, picked out a house and had their offer accepted. A local USDA employee was working with them to finalize the loan details. Then in late December, Porter learned of the possible shutdown.
DARECIA PORTER: I messaged her. And I was just like, hypothetically speaking - and I was like, hey, if the shutdown happens, are you all affected by it? And she messaged me back and said, yeah, oh, yes, we are most definitely affected by it.
MAYER: Porter received the final loan paperwork she needed to sign on December 19. That was the last she's heard from anyone at USDA. The contract deadline on her house came and went. Meanwhile, farmers are facing a range of hiccups because farm service agency offices are closed. Northwest Iowa farmer Bruce Rohwer grows soybeans and corn and raises hogs. He's eligible for tariff relief payments but didn't get all his data submitted until the very end of December.
BRUCE ROHWER: I'm running a little behind. I'm not quite sure when that payment will actually come.
MAYER: But that's not his biggest concern. USDA puts out a supply and demand estimate in January that Rohwer says is critical for farm planning.
ROHWER: The cash flow situation in agriculture is really quite dire. The ability to try to find ways in which to increase the cash that you are going to receive for your crop becomes ever more important.
MAYER: The report was scheduled for next week. But it's among the many services now blocked by the shutdown. Rohwer says without it, farmers won't have the details they rely on when deciding exactly how many acres of which crops to plant. And that could mean the difference between profit and loss. Brent Renner farms a couple of hours east of Rohwer. His tariff relief money was direct deposited after the shutdown began. Still, he says, USDA has so many different programs, it's likely some farmers are already suffering.
BRENT RENNER: There's probably somewhere in the nation that has a different program that is critical at this time of year that is affecting somebody directly. But I would say for most of us in Iowa, we're not freaking out yet.
MAYER: That may change if the shutdown stretches on and on. For NPR News, I'm Amy Mayer.
SIMON: That story comes to us from Harvest Public Media, a reporting project in the Midwest and Plains.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has been a key to shutdown negotiations and remains so with a new, old title - speaker of the House. She took up the job this week for the second time. She's third in the line of presidential succession, also a grandmother, mother of five and a fan of Tony Bennett and the Grateful Dead. NPR's congressional teammates Susan Davis and Kelsey Snell have covered her rise and fall and rise again and join us now. Thanks so much for being with us.
KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Hey, Scott.
SUSAN DAVIS, BYLINE: Hey there.
SIMON: Sue, let me begin with you. Nancy Pelosi was born into politics, wasn't she?
DAVIS: She was born into politics. And, you know, she's often been characterized as this San Francisco liberal, but she's really a daughter of Baltimore. Her father was a former member of Congress - Thomas D'Alesandro. He was elected mayor of Baltimore where he served for more than a decade. And she grew up in this family business. Her brother later became mayor of Baltimore. She did not leave the area until she married after college, and she moved to San Francisco. Her husband, Paul, was a real estate investor. And they moved to San Francisco and built a rather nice life there, and she had and raised five children. And throughout this time, politics remained in her life, but it was more of a hobby. And she volunteered for the local parties, the state parties. But it wasn't until she was in her late 40s - she was about 47 years old - when the local San Francisco seat opened up, and she ran and entered Congress. And it is safe to say that politics has really been her second career, not really the driving force of her life.
SIMON: And, Kelsey, when Nancy Pelosi came to Congress, there were not a lot of women serving in Congress. What helped her to succeed so quickly?
SNELL: Well, it was 1987 when she was elected. And in the class of '88, there were 26 women in Congress. That is a stark difference from where things are right now. And at the time, she kind of decided she wanted to grow in the ranks the really traditional way. She got assigned to some fairly powerful committees, including the Appropriations Committee, which is kind of the Washington code for being really good at cutting deals. She spent her time there learning about bipartisanship and learning how Congress spends money. She found that to be really a pivotal part of her time because it taught her a lot about how you rise through ranks. She also developed her style of being kind of proper and disciplined and really patient. That has been paired well with her fundraising ability. She is one of the best fundraisers in all of Washington, something she started back in San Francisco before she joined...
SIMON: Which gives her added political clout.
SNELL: Oh, she is - that has been one of the things that she is able to hold over people as she is kind of moving up the ranks is that she brings money to the table.
SIMON: Sue, when Democrats lost the House in 2010, a lot of people expected that Nancy Pelosi would step down as minority leader because she'd become a target nationally. This year, at the age of 78, there were a lot of people who said it's time for new leadership. She shouldn't run. How significant is it that she was re-elected this week?
DAVIS: You know, modern speakerships don't allow speakers to end on their own terms. So often they end in disgrace, as it did for former Speaker Newt Gingrich. They're forced out, as was former Speaker John Boehner. Or you lose the majority, as Nancy Pelosi did the first time around. She is the first speaker since Sam Rayburn in 1955 to be speaker, lose it and come back again. Sam Rayburn is one of the historic figures of Capitol Hill and of the speakership office. There's a building named after him on Capitol Hill. It is a testament to Pelosi, her staying power and her political prowess that she is back. And I think it is fair to say that her time here and her experience has made her one of the most consequential figures of the modern era in politics, that who she is and what she represents has already earned herself a place in history. What she now has, which very few politicians get, a chance to do is rewrite this last chapter. And she doesn't have long. She has agreed in principle to term limit. In order to get the votes she needed for speaker, she cut a deal with a younger group of Democrats who are hungry for some new blood in the leadership that says essentially she won't serve more than four years at most in the office.
SIMON: And, Kelsey, help us understand what she confronts now - Republican president, Republican Senate.
SNELL: She has the very difficult task of restraining an engaged and excited group of new members, both on the left and the right of her party, who want to prove to their voters that they were elected for a good reason. And that is really hard to do when you don't have the president of your own party. It's hard to get laws passed. She also has a very difficult challenge of raising up a new class of people to inherit her legacy. And that's something that she has been criticized for in the past is that she often has held onto power to the detriment of grooming a new group of people. Though, this time around, we're hearing a lot about new women in the House who could succeed Pelosi. We're talking about Cheri Bustos of Illinois or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. There is a whole new group of people hungry to move up the ranks in much the same way that Pelosi herself did.
SIMON: NPR's Congress team, Susan Davis, Kelsey Snell, thanks so much for being with us.
SNELL: Thank you.
DAVIS: You're welcome.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
A controversial government-contracted shelter for child migrants in the West Texas desert will shut down this month. It's a result of changes to the rules that govern the custody of migrant children. Nationally, those numbers have stopped growing and begun to fall. NPR's John Burnett reports.
JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: In the last two weeks, some 2,200 immigrant children, mostly teenage boys from Central America, have been released from custody around the country and allowed to join family already in the U.S. At the biggest shelter of them all, the tent city in Tornillo, Texas, they're driving more than a hundred kids a day to the El Paso airport to go be with adult sponsors. The population at Tornillo is down from nearly 3,000 last month to about 1,500 today, Health and Human Services confirms. This is the agency responsible for the care of migrant kids who arrive at the border without a parent or legal guardian. We all feel a sense of relief, said a senior official at the camp who asked not to be named because he wasn't authorized to speak to reporters. The official said he expects all of the children will be discharged by January 15, and the San Antonio nonprofit that runs the sprawling camp plans to vacate the bleak acreage by the end of the month when its contract runs out. They've already begun to demobilize.
JOSHUA RUBIN: I noticed one of the large tents being taken down, and, as of yesterday, another large tent is being taken down.
BURNETT: Joshua Rubin, a Brooklyn software developer turned immigrant activist, has been staying in an RV just outside the Tornillo gate. On his Facebook page, Witness: Tornillo, Rubin has posted photos of the shrinking tent city.
RUBIN: I've noticed that they've rolled out dozens of mobile offices, and I see vans full of kids heading out. These are all really hopeful signs.
BURNETT: Last month, the number of kids in custody nationwide was nearing a record 15,000. The shelter network had surpassed 90 percent capacity, and the contractor at Tornillo was saying they could not keep expanding. More and more protesters were denouncing the adolescent encampment. Child welfare advocates say holding youngsters in these refuges for weeks and months at a time, however well-meaning the care, is deleterious to their physical and mental health. So HHS made an abrupt rule change. They dropped the requirement that everyone in a sponsor's household had to be fingerprinted. That extra vetting slowed down the process. Now only the adult sponsors will get criminal background checks.
At the time, a senior HHS official told NPR the government makes lousy parents. Migrant advocates are cautiously hopeful, but there are still more than 12,000 children in the shelter system. Why haven't more been released, they ask. And why is the government expanding another unlicensed emergency shelter like Tornillo in South Florida? Amy Cohen is a child psychologist in Los Angeles who works with migrant children.
AMY COHEN: If in fact the government is interested in releasing children to sponsors in a more timely manner, there should be no reason for them to be expanding the beds at Homestead.
BURNETT: Health and Human Services confirms that a temporary influx facility located in a vacant Job Corps center in Homestead, Fla., is being expanded by a thousand beds. That's to handle the daily arrivals of unaccompanied migrant children who continue coming to the southern border. John Burnett, NPR News.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
And the new president of Brazil is finishing his first week on the job - Jair Bolsonaro, a retired army captain, member of his country's far-right. NPR's Philip Reeves has been following the first few days of his administration and joins us now from Rio. Phil, thanks so much for being with us.
PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: You're welcome.
SIMON: What are among the first notable moves Bolsonaro has made his first few days in power?
REEVES: Well, you know, he arrived in office, Scott, saying that he wanted to rid Brazil's government of socialist ideological bias. That's a reference, of course, to past leftist governments. Yet he and his ministers are very quickly imposing their own ideological stamp. Some of the evidence of this is wrapped up in the fine print. If you look at the way they're structuring new government departments, they appear to be downgrading the importance attached, for example, to climate change and to the promotion of gay rights and other issues, also. They've been kicking out large numbers of civil servants who are deemed to be leftists. And Bolsonaro's placed a government minister - a retired general - in charge of monitoring and supervising nongovernmental and international organizations, and that's causing some concern, too.
SIMON: What about his policies on Indigenous Brazilians?
REEVES: Well, this country has hundreds of thousands of Indigenous people who - under, you know, historical land rights, they own roughly 14 percent of the national territory. Like President Trump, Bolsonaro likes to tweet, and he's tweeted about how he wants them to integrate into the rest of Brazil. And he's making moves to make that happen. It's, again, fine-print stuff. There used to be a government agency in charge of demarcating Indigenous lands. Bolsonaro's transferred that task to the agricultural ministry. That's a ministry widely seen as under the sway of the powerful agribusiness lobby, which is, of course, hungry for land and for farming and mining and stuff.
SIMON: Same-sex marriage has been legal in Brazil since 2013. But there is a lot of concern among LGBT Brazilians about this government, isn't there?
REEVES: Yes, there is. There's a ministry here for women, family and human rights. And it turns out that LGBTQ Brazilians are not on the list of groups covered by that ministry's remit. That may not sound like that big a deal. But the minister in charge has said some stuff that's really setting alarm bells ringing here. She's a devout evangelical Christian and one of only two women, by the way, in the cabinet. And she has caused a stir by declaring that, henceforth in Brazil, boys wear blue, girls wear pink. That remark's aimed at the gay rights movement, obviously, which the Bolsonaro government sees as aligned to the left and accuses of undermining family values. People are having a lot of fun with this, by the way, on social media. And I imagine that, when Carnival comes, we'll see some entertainingly satirical costumes.
SIMON: Yeah. Any changes foreseen in foreign policy?
REEVES: Yeah, very much so. I mean, Bolsonaro is a big fan of Donald Trump. And in his first interview since being sworn in, Bolsonaro said he's open to hosting a U.S. base - a military base in Brazil, which, if that ever happened, would be the first time since World War II. That's obviously a big change, geopolitically, in a region that historically has regarded Washington, you know, with suspicion. He's also strongly pro-Israel and plans to move Brazil's embassy to Jerusalem.
SIMON: He was elected overwhelmingly. Remind us why so many Brazilians love him.
REEVES: Their expectations are very high. There are tens of thousands of homicides here, Scott, every year. Crime's rampant, and so is corruption. People are desperate for a leader who will fix that. And they think his plans to widen public access greatly to firearms and to give the cops more scope for the use of lethal force - you know, think it's good. The other area where this government's already winning plaudits concerns the economy. There are some sweeping privatization programs and plans to streamline taxes and lower them. And that's making the markets very happy.
SIMON: Philip Reeves in Rio. Thanks so much for being with us.
REEVES: You're welcome.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Your body has around 37 trillion cells - no, really, we've counted, all bodies do, including BJ Leiderman, who writes our theme music - heart cells, liver cells, bone cells. NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce reports scientists are now using a powerful technology to discover the kinds of cells that weren't previously recognized, and their goal is to build an atlas of every cell in the human body.
NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE, BYLINE: At the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Boston, I watch a researcher named Julia Waldman consider some bits of what looks like orange Styrofoam. It's skin - frozen, human skin. She selects one of them.
JULIA WALDMAN: I'll put the rest back so we can freeze them and save them for later.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: I don't think I've ever seen frozen skin before. I bet you've...
WALDMAN: (Laughter) Most people haven't.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: I bet you've seen a lot of frozen things.
WALDMAN: I have. I have seen many frozen tissues.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: And fresh tissue samples, too, from human brains, lungs, kidneys, prostates, livers, the gut, fat. They were sent here by clinicians and other researchers because this lab is part of an international effort to look at all these tissues in a radical new way. Waldman kind of crushes the skin in a test tube filled with a chemical solution.
WALDMAN: You can see it's getting cloudy, so the tissue is starting to break up.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: After some more processing to strip away the cell membranes, she's left with nothing but cell nuclei, the control center of each cell. She counts them under a microscope.
WALDMAN: So we have roughly 500,000 nuclei per milliliter, which is great.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: She puts thousands of them into a special device. It encases each cell nucleus in a separate droplet of oil along with a tiny bead of gel that has a unique barcode. When these droplets get run through a machine, the contents of each individual cell nucleus can be analyzed separately, thousands of them all at once.
AVIV REGEV: Whereas before, you know, with very hard work, one person could process a handful.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Aviv Regev runs this lab. She says, this kind of technology to probe individual cells has only been available in the last few years. She says, every cell in the body basically has the same DNA, the same set of genetic instructions.
REGEV: But every cell reads only a portion of these instructions. And that's why the cells in our liver are different from the cells in our brain and are different from the cells in our skin and so on.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Now scientists can easily find out what genetic instructions each cell is following, and they can do this on a massive scale. Already, millions of individual cells have been analyzed, and new types of cells have been found in, for example, the lining of the windpipe. Regev and some of her colleagues plan to catalogue every single cell type in the human body. They call it the Human Cell Atlas.
REGEV: We don't need to analyze every individual cell out of 37 trillion because the cells kind of repeat themselves. All we need to do is sample enough of them from enough region in order to get comprehensive coverage.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: The effort started a couple years ago, and it will take years to complete. But the payoff could be huge with new insights into all kinds of diseases. Sarah Teichmann is head of cellular genetics at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, England. She's one of the leaders of the Human Cell Atlas, and she and her colleagues recently took a close look at kidney cancer. They analyzed 72,000 cells from healthy and cancerous human kidneys.
SARAH TEICHMANN: And so that was really exciting, both in terms of the basic understanding of the kidney cells but also for the cancer community in terms of understanding where these tumor cells come from.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: A child who had kidney cancer, for example, seemed to come from aberrant fetal cells while some adult cancers came from a different, little-studied subset of cells.
TEICHMANN: I mean, the methods are just so powerful. It really is mind-boggling, incredibly exciting and, you know, I need to pinch myself sometimes.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: She says the human body contains more than 50 different tissues. Some get a lot of attention, like the brain. Others are kind of ignored.
TEICHMANN: There are some that you probably haven't even heard of, you know, funny stuff like omentum.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: That's a sheet of fatty tissue that wraps around the intestines. The Human Cell Atlas wants to get everything from that to the inner ear. The whole plan staggers folks who study cells and tissues in more traditional ways, like with microscopes and stained slides. Rosy Jurjus is an associate professor of anatomy and cell biology at George Washington University. She recently attended a workshop for folks who are mapping the human body at the cellular level.
ROSY JURJUS: And I remember actually being very excited all through the workshop because it's groundbreaking. It's new, and it's the future.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Meanwhile, researchers have been building complete cell atlases of creatures that are commonly studied in the lab to give insights on human biology. They've already finished one for a famous laboratory worm, C. elegans. Unlike humans, it has hundreds rather than trillions of cells. Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Now, time for sports.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SIMON: Da (ph) Bears, da Eagles, da playoffs. And where the stars at night are big and bright - Baylor's Lady Bears hand the UConn Huskies their first regular season loss since - I don't know - 1874. Tom Goldman joins us. How are you, Tom?
TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: I'm good. How are you?
SIMON: I'm fine. Thanks. How am I? The Bears are in the playoffs. The wildcard team...
GOLDMAN: (Laughter).
SIMON: They played last year's Super Bowl champions, the Eagles, on Sunday. The Eagles are the reigning champions. They're great. The Bears have a smothering defense with Khalil Mack at linebacker - probably the reigning defensive player in the league. I loved what he said yesterday - you live for these games. Now, isn't defense considered even more important in the postseason?
GOLDMAN: You do live for these games, Scott.
SIMON: (Laughter).
GOLDMAN: Defense wins championships, right?
SIMON: Yes.
GOLDMAN: I mean, Bear Bryant said so.
SIMON: Yeah.
GOLDMAN: But, Scott, are you ready for some football science?
SIMON: Sure. Sure.
GOLDMAN: OK. Researchers at Cal State Northridge...
SIMON: Yeah.
GOLDMAN: ...Set out to uncover whether the old adage...
SIMON: Whenever you say researchers, I know you're going to spoil my good time. But go ahead. Yeah.
GOLDMAN: I thought you'd fall asleep. Yeah. The old adage, defense wins championships, they wanted to find out, is that true? And their statistical analysis found it is true. The fewer regular season yards a team gives up, that leads to more playoff wins. But they also discovered the more yards gained by an offense, the more playoff wins. So apparently, great defense and great offense wins championships, which, of course, means the Bears will need contributions from young Mitchell Trubisky in his first NFL playoff appearance and the rest of the offense.
SIMON: I just have to mention Tarik Cohen - 5-foot-6. If he were, in fact, going to be bar mitzvahed, he couldn't reach the podium at 5-foot-6.
GOLDMAN: (Laughter).
SIMON: Just about the most fun runner to watch in the league - New York Times did a nice profile of him this week.
GOLDMAN: It's always mind-boggling to think about looking down on NFL players. He is fantastic. Let's not forget the Eagles also have a 5-foot-6 water bug, Scott. Darren Sproles has been dazzling and darting for 14 NFL seasons. His return from injury late in the season really helped the Eagles, along with backup quarterback Nick Foles. And they've got the Eagles fans thinking this team can beat those scary Bears in Chicago and make another run at the Super Bowl.
SIMON: I don't even know why even they call Nick Foles a backup quarterback anymore.
GOLDMAN: I know.
SIMON: He's always there when it counts.
GOLDMAN: I know.
SIMON: A 23-year-old starting quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs is kind of the obvious MVP pick this year, isn't it?
GOLDMAN: He kind of is. Patrick Mahomes - he has taken full advantage of a league that does everything it can to make life easy for quarterbacks. This season - only his second in the NFL - he threw 50 touchdown passes. And he passed for over 5,000 yards. The only other QBs to throw at least 50 touchdown passes - guys named Tom Brady and Peyton Manning. And his style is just so much fun to watch. You know, he plays sandlot football, really. He's thrown a pass left-handed. He's thrown a no-look pass. The big question, of course, with his carefree style - can that succeed in the pressure cooker of the playoffs? I'll bet it does.
SIMON: So is Tom Brady just kind of taking a nap, waiting for the playoffs to begin and show us what he's made of all over again?
GOLDMAN: You know, outside the Boston area, it feels a little bit like he's under the radar, out of the spotlight. You know, the Patriots had a workman-like season for them this year. And then when they lost a couple of games in a row in early December, that prompted the latest round of talks that the dynasty is over. But they have rallied. They won a key game last week. And Tom Brady looked like super Tom Brady. He threw four TD passes. They look like a team and a quarterback ready to go. I'll bet teams still don't want to play them in the postseason.
SIMON: And, as we mentioned, Baylor defeated UConn. Actually, I said 1812 or something like that - wasn't it 2014 - first regular season loss UConn's had. How did Baylor do it?
GOLDMAN: With size and great defense. UConn's shooting percentage in that game was 29.4 percent. That's reportedly the lowest in 20 seasons. The Huskies did the bulk of their scoring from long distance because going inside was an exercise in futility against Kalani Brown, 6'7", Lauren Cox, 6'4". Those two simply owned the territory around the basket. And now UConn has to start another streak that will last for a decade.
SIMON: NPR sports correspondent Tom Goldman, thanks so much for being with us, my friend.
GOLDMAN: You're welcome.
(SOUNDBITE OF STEVE WINWOOD'S "PHOENIX RISING")
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Protests erupted in southern India this week...
(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Chanting in foreign language).
SIMON: ...Over the fact that three women set foot in a Hindu temple, the Sabarimala temple. It's a famous pilgrimage site that attracts thousands of devotees each year. And for centuries, the temple did not admit women between the ages of 10 and 50. But this week, three women who are in their 40s managed to enter the shrine. NPR's Lauren Frayer reported on the story for us last month. And now she joins us from her base in Mumbai, India. Lauren, thanks so much for being with us.
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: You're welcome, Scott.
SIMON: And what sparked these protests?
FRAYER: Well, the Sabarimala temple is dedicated to a celibate deity - Lord Ayyappa. And some faithful believe that women of childbearing age could be a distraction to him. Some also believe that women who menstruate - who are old enough to menstruate - are impure. And in fact, after these women visited the temple this week, Hindu priests did purification rituals at the shrine.
We should remember that temples, churches, mosques around the world have similar restrictions. I mean, some have separate areas for women and men to pray in. Other religions do have rules about what women who are menstruating can and cannot do.
But this ancient temple and its rules really hit a nerve in modern India. It became the target of a right to pray campaign by Indian feminists. So this is a religious issue, but it's also becoming political. In fact, the Indian Supreme Court ruled - back in September - that the temple's ban on women aged 10 to 50 amounts to gender discrimination.
SIMON: And how are Indian politicians handling this in a country whose politics is sometimes so divided along these lines?
FRAYER: That's right. India's prime minister is a Hindu nationalist - so is his ruling party. So this issue plays very well with his base.
But the state where the temple is located, Kerala, is ruled by communists. And they have lined up behind the women. They say they'll uphold the Supreme Court order and ensure women of all ages can pray there. They've even ordered police to escort women to the temple.
But that may cost them votes. Protesters have burned effigies of Kerala's chief minister. And even the main opposition party in India, Congress, the party of Mahatma Gandhi, is backing these Hindu nationalist protesters rather than the women. And that may be because elections are coming. And polls show a majority of Indians think this temple has a right to set age restrictions on women. In fact, the Supreme Court now says it will review its ruling later this month. It may change its mind amid such a backlash.
SIMON: Well, how do we read what's happened?
FRAYER: Small step towards gender equality or infringing on religious freedom - you know, that depends on who you ask. To some, the fact that these three women got into this shrine, yes, is a victory. Before they did, there was a feminist protest, a human chain encouraging women to enter the temple. But the three who did are now under police protection - in hiding for their own safety.
I mean, I can tell you, I went to the temple late last year - or rather, I tried to get close to it. I couldn't get a taxi driver to take me within 20 miles. I had to have a police escort. Hindu men are stopping cars, checking for women who are under age 50. My hotel receptionist warned me to stay away.
And so many devotees I talked to, though, said they didn't want to discriminate against women. That's not their aim. They just want to practice their religion as they see fit. And their freedom of religion, to them, means keeping women who could be menstruating away from a certain god, a celibate god.
SIMON: NPR's Lauren Frayer in Mumbai, thanks so much for being with us.
FRAYER: You're welcome.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
There are still refugees fleeing from the last pockets of ISIS-controlled areas in the country. Many say they held out for years but had to leave their homes recently because of the U.S.-led offensive to defeat the militants. There's been little word on what life has been like amid the fighting in the desert region. NPR's Ruth Sherlock was in Syria and talked to the refugees.
RUTH SHERLOCK, BYLINE: The al-Hol refugee camp is overwhelmed with new arrivals. Hundreds of women all dressed in black wait for tents and blankets in a long line in the bitterly cold wind. Seeing us arrive, they crowd around and beg for help.
(CROSSTALK)
SHERLOCK: These refugees have just fled towns where the U.S.-led coalition fights ISIS.
AHMED: (Speaking Arabic).
SHERLOCK: Fifteen-year-old Ahmed tells us he and his family worked for days to get out. Like most of the people we speak to in this camp, he's been through such an ordeal that he's scared even to give his full name.
AHMED: (Through interpreter) We couldn't leave by car. We escaped on foot.
SHERLOCK: ISIS charged $1,500 for cars to get through their checkpoints, money most couldn't afford. And in any case, people were afraid that their vehicles would be targeted by coalition planes.
AHMED: (Through interpreter) We walked. We came with just the clothes on our backs. We slept in the desert in the rain.
SHERLOCK: He says the freezing winter temperatures claimed victims on the journey.
AHMED: (Through interpreter) We escaped with other families. And on the way, a young girl and two men died on the road. They froze to death. Somebody in the group had shovels. So we buried their bodies.
SHERLOCK: In a concrete shelter in the middle of the camp, women cook on gas stoves on the floor. They held out living under ISIS for years. And 28-year-old Fatema Ahmed (ph) tells us it was the coalition airstrikes that ultimately forced them from their homes.
FATEMA AHMED: (Through interpreter) So many people have died who didn't deserve it. Even if you were just waiting in line outside for food, you could get hit. And there are no hospitals left for people to get treated. There's no medication because there was a siege. There's nothing left.
SHERLOCK: The subject of airstrikes is a controversy here. Shadi, a skinny man in his 20s, interrupts.
SHADI: (Speaking Arabic).
SHERLOCK: He's spent two years on the frontlines as a member of the U.S.'s locally allied militia, the SDF. He says he believes the coalition airstrikes are precise.
SHADI: (Speaking Arabic).
ABDULLAH BADRY: (Speaking Arabic).
SHERLOCK: But he's interrupted by Abdullah Badry, who lost his 4-year-old daughter in a strike.
BADRY: (Through interpreter) Precision? There's no precision. We were there while you were on the side of the frontline. So many of the people being bombed are civilians. The bombing is random. I swear for every ISIS person you kill, you hit 20 civilians. I lived this in real time.
SHERLOCK: Both men forget our interview and argue with each other.
BADRY: (Speaking in Arabic).
SHERLOCK: President Trump has decided to pull U.S. troops out of Syria. But, for now, they remain fighting ISIS, a group that the U.S. says threatens countries beyond these borders. I ask the refugees if they think this war is necessary.
AHMED: (Speaking Arabic).
SHERLOCK: No, they exclaim, talking over one another. Fatema says no one here really believes that ISIS is this great international threat.
AHMED: (Through interpreter) The only thing ISIS got involved with is telling us how to dress. We should cover ourselves and keep our voices low. Other than that, everybody is living their own life.
SHERLOCK: Even Shadi, the man who fights ISIS alongside the U.S., says most of the people he knows who joined ISIS aren't terrorists. They're motivated by local reasons, like to fight other militias in the Syrian civil war. And he subscribes to the common conspiracy theory that the claim the ISIS is a global threat is a cover story.
SHADI: (Through interpreter) This is for the media. There are things that are said on TV. And then there are things that happen under the table.
SHERLOCK: The real reason the U.S. is in Syria, he thinks, is for the control of land and oil. U.S. officials have repeatedly denied claims like these. In a statement to NPR, a spokesperson said the U.S. mission in Syria is to achieve the enduring defeat of ISIS. And the U.S. says it tries to avoid civilian deaths but is fighting a ruthless enemy that hides among civilians. But Syrians in this camp don't believe that reasoning.
BADRY: (Speaking Arabic).
SHERLOCK: And the man who lost his 4-year-old girl, Abdullah Badry, says this matters because if locals don't support the war, it's just going to create more extremism.
BADRY: (Through interpreter) Our children used to fear the word death. Now it's normal for children to see dead bodies. Now they stand over dead bodies, picking up the limbs with us - young children picking up limbs. This drives people to extremism because this strips people of their fear.
SHERLOCK: And he says, someday, the fear will be replaced by anger. Ruth Sherlock, NPR News, northeast Syria.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
What does a woman in Hollywood do when she's not feeling the two-dimensional mom role she's being offered?
ANDREA SAVAGE: The harried mom role or the awful mom role who hates her kids - why does a funny female have to be relegated to this very two-dimensional role after she, you know, pops a kid out?
FADEL: Well, if you're comedian and writer Andrea Savage, you create your own show. "I'm Sorry" on TruTV is going into its second season. Savage plays an edgy, often inappropriate comedy writer, who's also a loving mom and wife.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "I'M SORRY")
SAVAGE: (As Andrea) Obviously, I don't want to divorce you. I love you. Blah, blah, blah. But, you know, I mean, you got to admit. If you were, like, free from me for, like, three weeks, you could date, just, like, do whatever you want.
TOM EVERETT SCOTT: (As Mike) I'm all on board with that. But...
SAVAGE: (As Andrea) Right?
SCOTT: (As Mike) Would you be able to get all that you want done in three weeks?
SAVAGE: (As Andrea) Yeah, good call, actually. You know what? Let's jam it up to a year.
SCOTT: (As Mike) Wow - a year.
SAVAGE: (As Andrea) Yeah.
FADEL: Andrea Savage joins us now from NPR West.
Thanks so much for joining us.
SAVAGE: Thank you for having me.
FADEL: So you're a mom, a comedy writer. Is this character you?
SAVAGE: (Laughter) I mean, sometimes, the lines get very blurred.
FADEL: Right.
SAVAGE: It's definitely an exaggerated version of me.
FADEL: I, actually, felt like in the show, there was a lot about your home life - actually, more than your work life. Was that a conscious decision?
SAVAGE: It was. You know, I think there's a lot of shows that show behind the scenes of Hollywood. And that - and I really was like - the part of what I'm trying to show is the different roles a human plays in their life...
FADEL: Right.
SAVAGE: ...As, you know, a wife or a mom or a friend or a daughter or a mother or, you know, part of a school environment or part of a work environment and how those sort of - you become slightly different people when you're around different people. Being in comedy...
FADEL: Right.
SAVAGE: ...But then also being, you know, a mom where I have to be in a lot of, you know, school situations where you can't act like a maniac...
FADEL: (Laughter).
SAVAGE: There's a lot of like, you know, sort of things where I go, oh, my God. This morning I was, you know, like, in a strip club shooting a scene of whatever. And now I'm talking to the administrator...
FADEL: Right.
SAVAGE: ...About homework. You know what I mean?
FADEL: But there's also all these, like, really inappropriate conversations going on on the sidelines of, like, school pickup.
SAVAGE: But that's what happens. And, like, in the pilot of Season 1, there was a very prolific porn star that we found out...
FADEL: (Laughter).
SAVAGE: ...Was in our preschool class. And I mean, I actually knew about it for a year. I didn't tell anyone. But I was obsessed with her butt.
FADEL: (Laughter).
SAVAGE: And just, how was she? You know what I mean?
FADEL: Yeah.
SAVAGE: But I feel like that's what - if your kids are going to school and you find out something about someone there, people are talking. And they're talking in a real way.
FADEL: Right. You know, around here, a lot of people are talking about their - I'm not a parent. But a lot of people are talking about their sort of "I'm Sorry" moments with their kids because there's really...
SAVAGE: Aw. That makes me happy.
FADEL: ...Not any topic that you don't touch, right? Like, you go...
SAVAGE: No.
FADEL: You're like, oh, race - no problem. I'll tackle that - sex, all these types of things. Can you talk about sort of how you come about with it? Is it all from your storylines? Are there, like, social issues? - you're like, OK. Let's tackle this today.
SAVAGE: We definitely don't go, like, let's tackle an issue. It really comes from, what real stories do I have? - and then more so this season, what my other writers have as well, who are also, you know, people with families. And we sort of go, what are our best stories? And do those stories have anything to do with what issues people go through in their 30s and 40s? Like, is there - we never wanted to do something just for the sake of it, really. So we deal with, you know, death. And we deal with divorce or - last season, we dealt with racism. And it's just because I had good stories about it. I find that when you use something from real life, it really grounds it and, also, makes it surprising. So you kind of don't know exactly where it's going.
FADEL: So I died laughing over the racism episode...
SAVAGE: (Laughter).
FADEL: ...Where you think your daughter is possibly a racist. So I'm going to - we're just going to play a quick clip from that.
SAVAGE: (Laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "I'M SORRY")
SAVAGE: (As Andrea) I have a fear that she's going to grow up to be this amazing person - right? - in all ways. Like, she helps the homeless. I mean, she's curing cancer. But 25 years from now, she's going to be at a dinner party, hold out her arm and say, this is the color skin I like.
SCOTT: (As Mike) And she did the underside or her arm...
SAVAGE: (As Andrea) Yeah.
SCOTT: (As Mike) ...Not even the darker part.
SAVAGE: (As Andrea) No, the side has never seen the light of day.
(Laughter).
FADEL: I just find that so funny. But I also feel like you're tackling a pretty difficult topic - a lot of things parents probably don't want to admit publicly that their kid said at home. And then it also kind of looks at, like, white guilt, white privilege. Were you worried about the episode at all and whether it hit the right tone?
SAVAGE: I was on some level. But when I was doing the first season, I really just was like, I'm not going to worry about what people think of any of this. I'm going to focus and make the show in the spirit of what I want it to be. And I know what my intentions are. And I hope that then that translates. And basically, when this happened in real life, no one had ever said anything to me. I'd never heard anyone talk about this. And I spoke about it with a close - couple of my close friends. And everyone was like, oh, my God. This happened to us.
FADEL: Oh.
SAVAGE: Oh, my God, this is us. And I'm talking about, like, African-American friends, Asian friends. Everyone was, you know - would be like, oh, yeah. That happened to us. And it was like, why is no one talking about this?
FADEL: Right. So it kind of gives parents, like, permission. Like, it's OK. You're not the only one (laughter).
SAVAGE: And also, it's innocent. But it also does kick you into gear. It does hit you in a white, liberal guilt place - and go, oh, my God. What have we not done? What are we not talking about? But also, kids notice things. And skin color is different. And so it's good to have the conversations start coming...
FADEL: Right.
SAVAGE: ...Early.
FADEL: So do parents now just walk up to you all the time to tell...
SAVAGE: (Laughter).
FADEL: ...You every embarrassing story that happened with their child?
SAVAGE: They do - or like, I also take my pants off when no one's home.
FADEL: (Laughter).
SAVAGE: Stuff like that - like, I'm sort of their, like, dirty secret...
FADEL: Right.
SAVAGE: ...Confessional a little bit.
FADEL: (Laughter). That's Andrea Savage, creator and star of the comedy "I'm Sorry." Thank you so much for being with us.
SAVAGE: Thank you so much.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
We've been hearing a lot about overflowing trash bins and unsafe conditions at national parks due to the partial government shutdown. But other critical works on public lands has also stopped. NPR's Kirk Siegler reports.
KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE: Here's the view of the shutdown from the doorstep of the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains and the town of Mammoth Lakes, Calif.
JOHN WENTWORTH: It's an eerie silence.
SIEGLER: John Wentworth is on the town council.
WENTWORTH: The folks that are responsible for, you know, stewarding, maintaining and watching out for the - one of the great legacies of the United States, our federal public lands, are absent. They're gone.
SIEGLER: Mammoth is completely surrounded and largely dependent on federal public lands, including its ski resort, which operates on a forest service lease. Wentworth says the abrupt shutdown coincided with the busy holidays. Suddenly, there was no one staffing visitor centers or popular national forest trailheads in the area for snowshoeing or snowmobiling and no one to enforce the rules or just manage the land - millions of acres of it across the West.
WENTWORTH: It's kind of scary. We don't know what to tell our visitors. We don't know what to tell our guests. We don't know how to be good hosts and stewards of these federal public lands because the federal presence is not there.
SIEGLER: This is a familiar anxiety in communities that promote themselves as gateways to massive amounts of U.S. public land, land that's open to everyone and everything from outdoor recreation to natural resource extraction. When your landlord is suddenly unreachable, almost everything is thrown into limbo - about half of California's U.S. public land. Next door in Nevada, it's more like 80 percent.
JAINA MOAN: When they're not there and the longer it goes on, you know, I just start to worry that our lands aren't getting taken care of the way they should be.
SIEGLER: Jaina Moan is with the Nevada chapter of The Nature Conservancy.
MOAN: Sure, there's a lot of citizens out there that will pick up trash. But the larger, landscape scale planning issues, they're not getting addressed.
SIEGLER: In Nevada, this means private-public landscape programs to improve range land for ranchers, and across the West, partnerships on large wildfire mitigation and timber projects. All of these are on hold. Moan's group can still do some work, but they can't access certain closed lands or the expertise of federal scientists who work on them. And big, collaborative meetings are postponed.
MOAN: Like most of America, we hope that Congress and the president can resolve this soon because we need those government partnerships to work.
SIEGLER: These partnerships have become critical as funding for federal land agencies has dropped steadily. In Mammoth Lakes, John Wentworth says local governments have been trying to plan around this new reality.
WENTWORTH: So that if these spasms that come out of Washington due to unprecedented, existential, partisan craziness, we will have partnerships and working relationships in place to be able to mitigate these effects.
SIEGLER: This coming summer, his town hopes to help the Forest Service remove trash from trailheads and better staff them. But this shutdown happened so quick, Wentworth says there was no time for even short-term contingency plans. Kirk Siegler, NPR News.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
In Yemen, tens of thousands of children have starved to death in a Saudi-led war that will soon enter its fourth year. Another 14 million, half the country's population, are at risk of starvation. Thousands of civilians have been killed. But in the backdrop of this bloodshed and destruction is another tragedy - the looting of the country's history, its precious antiquities plundered by criminals and violent extremists. Joining us now to talk about this is Deborah Lehr, the founder and chair of the Antiquities Coalition. She co-wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post with Yemen's ambassador to the United States. Deborah, thanks so much for joining us.
DEBORAH LEHR: Great - my pleasure - thank you for having me.
FADEL: Can you give us a sense of the scale of what's being lost in Yemen right now, what's already been lost?
LEHR: It's very hard to quantify because we don't even have legitimate numbers on the legal trade. But what we can say is that Yemen was a very rich historic country. It was one of the centers of the spice and incense trade and, in fact, developed one of the - the Manhattan of the desert as a major trading center with the first skyscrapers in the 16th century and one of the first major dams in the eighth century B.C. All of these have been targeted for destruction. And we're losing significant amounts of what, really, was very rich history to these thieves. And then with the illicit digging going on, who knows what treasures have been lost?
FADEL: Right - and it's so sad because you can't get this stuff back. You can't bring history back.
LEHR: Right - and you've lost the context. So we may have lost information that could lead, for example - could lead to the proof of the Queen of Sheba and her existence.
FADEL: So who's selling these antiquities? And how much are they benefiting from it? What are they getting out of this?
LEHR: With the illicit trade, what we have tracked is their exit points. In Yemen, through Djibouti is one of the main points. In Egypt, for example, it went through Israel. Iraq and Syria was going through Turkey. They meet with sophisticated middlemen. And they're being bought by collectors and others in major Western markets. Some of it is even showing up in the United States. And these monies are going back and being used by the Houthis and other terrorist organizations in the region to sponsors...
FADEL: So Houthis, al-Qaida...
LEHR: Al-Qaida - yes. We have evidence of al-Qaida raids on some of the museums in Yemen. And we have evidence of, in Europe, even in Brussels, dealers who have been selling al-Qaida-sponsored antiquities.
FADEL: Is there any evidence of ISIS benefiting from...
LEHR: There's definite evidence of ISIS benefiting. In fact, in a special-forces raid of one of the complexes of, essentially, the person who is the chief financial officer of ISIS, we found receipts of about $5 million worth of antiquities over the course of a year that they had sold. And they had a very sophisticated pattern and, actually, a ministry of antiquities just to deal in this illicit trade.
FADEL: So what are you and the ambassador proposing - and what you proposed in the op-ed - to try to stop the path to stop the market for it?
LEHR: There are international rules that govern how we can actually stop the U.S. from being a target market. But it requires that countries are signatories to a UNESCO Convention, a 1970s convention for antiquities. Unfortunately, Yemen is not. So we have to be creative in the measures that we take. And we also need immediate action because of this crisis going on. So what we have proposed is that Treasury extend the emergency powers that they have under the emergency act and other legal means that they have to stop, say, in a case of emergencies. Already with Yemen, they can stop the import of oil - that they expand that to include antiquities because these items are being used to sponsor terrorism.
FADEL: So, you know, some people might say, well, you know, people are starving to death in Yemen. People are dying. And there's no end in sight, really, to this war. So why should we care about these material things, this history, when right now there's really a humanitarian crisis, as you said?
LEHR: There's no question that there's a humanitarian crisis. And it's very tragic, the loss of life and displacement that has taken place. But these items, these symbols really represent their rich history, their religion and, quite honestly, their economic future, where Yemen is a source of tourism. And all of these are being taken away. You know, the robbing of the past is really robbing them of their future.
FADEL: Deborah Lehr is the founder and chair of the Antiquities Coalition. Thank you so much for talking with us.
LEHR: Great. Thank you for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF YASMIN WILLIAMS' "GUITKA")
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
And it's time to play the first Puzzle of the year.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
FADEL: Joining us is Will Shortz. He's puzzle editor at The New York Times and WEEKEND EDITION's puzzlemaster. Good morning, Will.
WILL SHORTZ, BYLINE: Good morning, Leila.
FADEL: So as we've noted, your day job is as puzzle editor of The New York Times. And before we get started today, we need to acknowledge a controversy spurred by The New York Times Crossword this past week. One of the answers was a word that is most commonly used as a racial slur. We're not going to repeat it here. The Times has issued an apology saying, quote, "Tuesday's crossword puzzle included an entry that was offensive and hurtful. It is simply not acceptable in The New York Times crossword. And we apologize for including it."
SHORTZ: That's right. It was a mistake to include that answer. It is, indeed, offensive. And I personally apologize.
FADEL: Well, I expect our listeners will appreciate the apology, Will. And now can you please remind us of last week's challenge?
SHORTZ: Yeah. It was straightforward. I said what world capital becomes the informal name for a farm animal if you change its third letter? And the answer is Moscow. Change the S to an O, and you get moo cow.
FADEL: We received over 1,500 responses. And our winner this week is Deborah Kritzer of Coral Springs, Fla. Congratulations. And welcome to the program.
DEBORAH KRITZER: Oh, thank you. Hi, Will.
SHORTZ: Hey there.
FADEL: So how did you solve it?
KRITZER: So Tuesday night, I said, OK. I'm going to try just, you know, the - this little sleep thing where you go to sleep. You tell the problem. And you say, I need the answer. And after I did that, within seconds, it came to me.
FADEL: Oh.
SHORTZ: Wow.
FADEL: I'm going to try that for all my problems.
SHORTZ: (Laughter).
FADEL: OK. Well, are you ready to play The Puzzle?
KRITZER: Yes.
FADEL: All right. Take it away, Will.
SHORTZ: All right, Deborah. I'm going to give you some six-letter words. Insert two letters in the exact center of each one to complete a common, uncapitalized eight-letter word. For example, if I said accent, A-C-C-E-N-T, you would say accident, which puts I-D right in the middle. So here's number one. Number one is barque, spelled B-A-R-Q-U-E.
KRITZER: OK. So would that be barbecue?
SHORTZ: Barbecue is right. Good. Callus, C-A-L-L-U-S.
KRITZER: OK. Callus. OK. This one's not really - OK.
FADEL: A class you take in high school.
SHORTZ: There you go. That was going to be my clue.
KRITZER: Oh, calculus.
SHORTZ: Calculus is right. Corral, C-O-R-R-A-L.
KRITZER: Corporal?
SHORTZ: Corporal, yes. Evince, E-V-I-N-C-E.
KRITZER: Evidence?
SHORTZ: That's right. Homage, H-O-M-A-G-E.
KRITZER: OK. Homage.
SHORTZ: It's actually a compound word.
KRITZER: OK.
FADEL: When you're online, you go to NPR's...
KRITZER: Homepage.
SHORTZ: Homepage is it. Good clue. Innate, I-N-N-A-T-E.
KRITZER: Innovate?
SHORTZ: Nice. Intact, I-N-T-A-C-T.
KRITZER: Interact?
SHORTZ: Nice. Oblate, O-B-L-A-T-E.
KRITZER: Obliterate?
SHORTZ: Not quite. That has too many letters.
KRITZER: OK. Too many letters. OK. OK. Obligate?
SHORTZ: Obligate is it. Panama, P-A-N-A-M-A.
KRITZER: Panorama?
SHORTZ: Good. Rosary, R-O-S-A-R-Y.
KRITZER: Rotisserie? No.
SHORTZ: Not quite. Something you might have in your kitchen.
KRITZER: Oh. Rosemary.
SHORTZ: Rosemary is it. Stover, S-T-O-V-E-R. And if you're on a trip...
KRITZER: OK.
SHORTZ: ...This might be something along the way.
KRITZER: A stop over?
SHORTZ: A stop over is it. And your last one is vanish, V-A-N-I-S-H.
KRITZER: OK. How about vanquish?
SHORTZ: How about vanquish. Good job.
FADEL: Good job.
KRITZER: Glad that's over (laughter).
FADEL: Yeah. You did well.
KRITZER: Thank you. You're being - you're so kind.
FADEL: For playing our puzzle today, you'll get a WEEKEND EDITION lapel pin, as well as puzzle books and games. You can read all about it at npr.org/puzzle. Deborah, which member station do you listen to?
KRITZER: WLRN. And we are a member in West Palm Beach.
FADEL: Great. Well, thank you so much, Deborah.
KRITZER: OK. And thank you so much. I enjoyed it.
FADEL: All right, Will, tell us next week's challenge.
SHORTZ: Yes. It comes from Joel Fagliano, who's the digital puzzles editor of The New York Times. Name a major U.S. city in ten letters. If you have the right one, you can rearrange its letters to get two five-letter words that are synonyms. What are they? So again, a major U.S. city in ten letters. Rearrange its letters to get two five-letter words that are synonyms. What words are these?
FADEL: When you have the answer, go to our website npr.org/puzzle and click on the Submit Your Answer link. Remember, just one entry, please. Our deadline for entries is Thursday, January 10 at 3 p.m. Eastern. Include a phone number where we can reach you at about that time. If you're the winner, we'll give you a call. And you'll get to play on the air with the puzzle editor of The New York Times and WEEKEND EDITION's puzzlemaster, Will Shortz. Thank you so much, Will.
SHORTZ: Thank you, Leila.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Politicians are no closer to a solution to the partial government shutdown that is entering its third week. Talks between congressional aides and the White House, led by Vice President Mike Pence yesterday, did not get us closer to an agreement. Those talks are expected to continue later today. So what does this mean for the country? Joining us to discuss is national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Good morning, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Good morning, Leila.
FADEL: So the shutdown talks don't seem to be making any progress. President Trump tweeted yesterday, not much headway made. So where do we go from here?
LIASSON: That's unclear. The president is standing firm. The vice president had this meeting with congressional staffers yesterday, which is very unusual. Usually, vice presidents negotiate directly with members of Congress. But the president is still insisting on $5.7 billion for the wall. And meanwhile, the Christmas season is over. We're now in the real world of a government shutdown.
FADEL: Right.
LIASSON: Garbage is piling up at national parks. TSA agents aren't showing up at airports. And people are starting to feel the consequences of the shutdown.
FADEL: So the president held a press conference on this. He's been tweeting about it a lot. But his message, aside from, I want a wall, has been pretty confusing.
LIASSON: Pretty confusing. The one clear thing is that Trump's presidency is now all about a wall. Other than that, his message has been very contradictory. He campaigned on building a wall that Mexico will pay for. Now he says the wall is already being built. He said Mexico is paying for the wall through a trade deal that hasn't been approved by Congress yet. He's even gone so far as to say he doesn't need Congress. He can build it himself...
FADEL: Right.
LIASSON: ...By declaring a national emergency. He - we talked about this two weeks ago - the idea that the president would try to do an end run around Congress, have the military build the wall. And then even if he lost that fight in court, he would show his base that he'd fought as hard as he could for the wall. But he is sticking to his guns on this even though the idea of shutting down the government to get wall funding is less and less popular with the majority of voters. Other than his hardcore base, he's not convincing a majority of American voters to agree with him that shutting down the government for wall funding is the right thing to do. And unless he does that, Democrats won't feel any political pressure to accommodate him.
FADEL: So what about Republicans in Congress - will they feel political pressure?
LIASSON: Some of them already are. Susan Collins of Maine, Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado - two Republicans who are up for re-election in 2020. They have been speaking out, saying this is not the right approach. A handful of Republicans in the House voted with the Democrats to open up the government. But so far in the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is holding the line for the president. He says he will not bring up a bill, even if it's the same bill Republicans passed unanimously before the shutdown, unless President Trump says he'll sign it. So McConnell says it's all up to the Democrats and the president to make a deal.
FADEL: So Speaker Pelosi says the House will start passing these individual spending bills to reopen government this week, starting with the Treasury and the IRS. But seems like the Democrats last week got knocked off the shutdown message after Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib used profanity when talking about President Trump and impeachment.
LIASSON: That's right. Impeach the expletive deleted sounds like the Democratic version of lock her up. This is not a majority opinion among Democrats. It is a majority opinion among the Democrats' liberal base. But it did throw a monkey wrench into the plans of the Democratic leadership. They want to show voters that they can be responsible legislators and deliberate investigators. And the majority of Democrats and the leadership in Congress want due process and the rule of law. They say they want to follow the facts and evidence. They want to wait for the Mueller report before they decide whether or not to impeach the president. And remember, impeachment is not the same thing as removal because that takes...
FADEL: Right.
LIASSON: ...Two-thirds of the Senate. I don't know if this will be a lasting controversy. But Congresswoman Tlaib's comments certainly played right into Republicans' hands.
FADEL: National political correspondent Mara Liasson, thank you.
LIASSON: Thank you.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren is kicking off her presidential run this weekend with a swing through the early voting state of Iowa. Warren is the first major candidate to visit the state this political season. But she's just one of some two dozen Democrats expected to run for president in 2020. NPR's Asma Khalid is in Iowa and has been talking to Democratic voters about what they're looking for in a candidate in these early stages of the 2020 primary campaign.
ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: Elizabeth Warren has one central message for voters. The middle class is getting hollowed out. And this weekend, she took that message across Iowa with pit stops in a couple of pretty Republican counties.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ELIZABETH WARREN: It's a dangerous time for our country. And I very much appreciate the effort that folks here in Iowa put into helping us determine the direction our country will take from here.
KHALID: When you ask Democrats in Iowa what's important to them, a lot of them mention the same few issues - health care, college affordability, the climate and the economy. In the huge field of potential presidential Democratic candidates, there's a degree of nuance on these issues. But voters do not necessarily see major policy differences - at least not yet. And so what it comes down to for a lot of folks, like Richard Malloy from Sioux City, is just somebody who can beat Donald Trump.
RICHARD MALLOY: Oh, right now it's very strong we get another Democrat back in, and we get Trump out. It's my main objective right there.
KHALID: You cannot overstate how frequently Democrats bring this up. They want someone electable. But that word, electability, means different things to different people. Some voters want a candidate who'll bring a more aspirational message. Others, like Geri Frederiksen, want a politician who will punch back against Donald Trump.
GERI FREDERIKSEN: Whoever it is has to be able to stand up to him. I don't think you have to stoop to his level. But you have to be firm.
KHALID: This is Iowa. And so Democrats here, like Jean McGinnis, feel their party needs a candidate who can talk to voters in red states. McGinnis was in line to get her picture taken with Warren.
JEAN MCGINNIS: I'm looking for somebody with broad appeal so that we can pull in some of the independents and the Republicans.
KHALID: And for McGinnis, Warren could be that person. But another voter in the crowd, Leif Erickson, is not so sure she is.
LEIF ERICKSON: She stood up to Trump. And I don't know. Maybe it backfired on her a little bit.
KHALID: The thing is, even though Iowans make their choice first, they're not necessarily representative of what Democrats across the country want. Some Democrats in other states say the party ought to forget about winning Trump voters back and, instead, focus on boosting turnout among minorities. But here in Iowa, the consensus is the party needs someone who can go into rural neighborhoods and try to win them over. Warren's economic message resonates with voters at her rallies. And some say they're impressed with how she's taken on the banking industry. But they also say they've got a year to make up their minds. They want to see more candidates.
MARILYNN LEGGIO: I want somebody to get Trump out of there big time.
KHALID: That's Marilynn Leggio. She brought her teenage granddaughter with her to a Warren rally. She says she has no doubt the Massachusetts senator would do a good job. But she's not sure, after what happened with Hillary Clinton, whether a woman can win.
LEGGIO: I think there's a lot of men out there that would never vote for a woman. I hate to say that. But I think that, especially a woman that's strong, you know, very opinionated - I think a lot of men think she's pushy.
KHALID: But even if voters, including Leggio, cannot agree on exactly what this idea of electability means, they point to a common trait - authenticity, someone who just feels real, whether or not that alienates people. Asma Khalid, NPR News, Des Moines.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
President Trump has threatened to keep the government shut down for months or even years, according to Senator Chuck Schumer, unless Congress approves money for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. For reaction from the border, we turn now to Jim Darling. He's the mayor of McAllen, Texas. Hello.
JIM DARLING: Hello.
FADEL: So why don't you just first tell me your reaction to the government shutdown over the funding for the president's proposed border wall?
DARLING: It's kind of typical of what we've seen for the last four years where, you know, Democrats would come down and look at the detention facilities. And Republicans would take a ride on riverboat and then have a press conference and go back to Washington and not talk to each other. So we're kind of used to that. I mean, this has resulted in a shutdown, which is a little more serious. But we've had more congressional people and senators in the last five years than probably in the last 50 years that have come down here. So - and we see it firsthand, absolutely.
FADEL: So has that attention helped the border?
DARLING: You know, we were kind of ignored. I don't think we've seen the kind of money. You know, we all have bridges down here. Most of the cities own a bridge or two across the river. And we'd really like to see some attention paid to that, especially with a new, renegotiated NAFTA. But we haven't really seen that kind of aid come down as opposed to, you know, National Guard, Army, Department of Public Safety. So they're spending a lot of money but not anything on infrastructure that we really think we need and would be beneficial to the border.
FADEL: The president threatened to shut down the southern border. What would that mean for those bridges and that sort of cross-economic trade and things that are going on between the cities on those borders?
DARLING: We own two bridges. One of the bridges, a main pedestrian bridge, has over 10,000 people - pedestrians cross a day and probably an equal number in motor vehicles. The bridge right next to - in the city next to us is the largest import bridge in the country for produce, which means you won't buy tomatoes in about a week any place in the country. And you have maquila manufacturers. You have parts manufacturers on this side. So, I mean, you will shut down factories on both sides of the river. Millions of people will be put out of work. And - so how do you plan next week, for instance, if you're a factory manager? So...
FADEL: Right.
DARLING: ...It's - it has serious consequences - not only, you know, the fact that if it did happen but just the rhetoric. And I think we've seen the impact of rhetoric in our area - has probably been pretty significant for us.
FADEL: What does that - when you say we've seen the impact of rhetoric, what does that look like?
DARLING: It's kind of interesting. You know, before we had the caravan, the President AMLO from Mexico said he was going to shut down the southern border. We had about 300 to 400 people a day, a caravan a week. That didn't generate any news.
FADEL: Wow.
DARLING: But that was really caused by rhetoric out of Mexico. And so, you know, the - if the politicians realize what they're saying really causes reaction. It all started in, you know, I guess in '14 when Obama said he's going to actually do immigration reform. That caused a real surge of people wanting to get here before it happened. And President Trump - when he talked about building a wall and the Mexican pay for it, I mean, we had that impact on us. We're kind of the No. 1 shopping spot for northern Mexico. And so that hurt us financially.
FADEL: So is the border wall the answer, in your opinion, for added security?
DARLING: In certain locations, a wall or a fence or some deterrent makes sense but certainly not one across the great swath of the border in places where, ecologically, the damage would be much greater than a security benefit. So it's really a political football, I think. And just saying we're going to build this great wall across the whole border makes no sense at all. And I think it - what it does is take away from some of the security issues that are there. You know, the crisis on the border since 2014 really dealt with asylum-seekers. So when they come across a river, they're coming across looking for Border Patrol to turn themselves in. And I always said the Border Patrol really needed more social workers to process those people.
FADEL: So what do you want to see from Washington, D.C.? You have the president saying, I want the money for this wall. You have the Democrats saying, we won't give you any of this money. What do you want from them?
DARLING: The answer is, you know, sitting down, do immigration reform and coming up with a reasonable budget for border security that's just not a fence and then, you know, dealing with Mexico and their drug problems. It wouldn't be as difficult to restore criminal justice in those countries if the cartels didn't have more money than the government. And so, you know, I mean, really taking a look at it, I thought if local governments couldn't handle a problem like that, we'd be - I wouldn't be mayor and rightfully so. But yet we keep re-electing people that won't come up with a strategy because of - it's polarized the country so much.
FADEL: Mayor Jim Darling of McAllen, Texas, thank you so much.
DARLING: You're welcome.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
There are some 5,000 American troops in Iraq. For the most part, the Iraqi public never sees them. But this past week, for the first time in years, an American general went walking around downtown Baghdad. NPR's Jane Arraf has this exclusive look at how that went over.
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD TALKING)
JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: It's the start of the Iraqi weekend. Downtown, the streets have been closed to traffic. And people have set up sidewalk stalls, selling everything from discount clothing to exotic birds. There are religious pilgrims and a man wearing a monkey mask, selling balloons. And then there's U.S. Gen. Austin Renforth.
AUSTIN RENFORTH: It's incredible - pretty eclectic group of people, wouldn't you say?
ARRAF: Renforth is a Marine brigadier general. He's deputy commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. He works closely with Iraqi Lieutenant General Jalil Jabbar al-Rubaie, who's in charge of Baghdad security. It's been more than three years - before ISIS - since a U.S. commander has stepped foot in downtown Baghdad. Al-Rubaie suggested the tour to show him around.
JALIL JABBAR AL-RUBAIE: I hope one day, you'll bring your family here in Baghdad.
RENFORTH: I would love to bring my family here.
ARRAF: There are armed security people with body armor on the outskirts of the group. But the generals and their staff aren't wearing any. The two men sit on plastic chairs in a little, traffic island, surrounded by thousands of Iraqis just going about their day. Renforth has been deployed here four times before - in the bad times, including the battle for Fallujah in 2004. But this vibrancy is a side of Iraq he's never seen.
RENFORTH: If they see this, you know, maybe the economy gets better. Maybe some outside companies come in. Maybe other things happen. I think this is the future. I mean, we have to really focus on the future of Iraq.
ARRAF: ISIS isn't completely in the past yet. Three years of very tough fighting pushed the group out of the cities. But Renforth and Rubaie agree that ISIS is still a potential threat. Rubaie says politicians can say what they want. But the military, he says, deals in facts. He says, the fact is Iraq still needs U.S. forces here. There are quite a lot of reasons why some Iraqis would be angry to see U.S. troops - the legacy of the 2003 invasion and occupation, the rise of Iranian-backed armed groups. But the Iraqis in the streets generally either ignore Renforth or want to take selfies with him, even if they're not quite sure who he is. General Rubaie is treated as a hero.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Speaking Arabic).
ARRAF: This 9-year-old girl reads a poem praising the Iraqi military. We make our way through the book market to the historic Shabander (ph) Teahouse. And there, something remarkable happens.
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Speaking Arabic).
ARRAF: Haj Mohammad Khashali is the owner. He lost four sons and a grandson in a car bombing of this street in 2007. For years, he blamed the United States for the lack of security. And he wouldn't let Americans into the cafe. I wait to see what happens. But Khashali sits down on a bench next to the Marine general, and he offers him lemon tea.
HAJ MOHAMMAD KHASHALI: (Speaking Arabic).
ARRAF: When I ask Khashali about it, he says he still holds the U.S. responsible for Iraq's descent into violence. But he says that was a different era. Out in the crowded square, an Iraqi musician comes up to Renforth and plays him a song.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICIAN: (Singing in Arabic).
ARRAF: It's inspired by Mesopotamian civilization, which sprang up 3,000 years ago in what is now Iraq. The musician's welcome to the U.S. general is inspired by Iraqi hospitality. Sixteen years later, U.S. forces aren't occupiers anymore. They're invited, if still controversial, guests. Jane Arraf, NPR News, Baghdad.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
It's the beginning of a new year. And for many people, that means it's time to set their intentions. So we have Jessica Dore, a psychotherapist and a tarot card reader, here to help us with that. She joins us via Skype.
Thanks for talking with us.
[POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: In this story, Jessica Dore incorrectly refers to herself as a psychotherapist. She practices psychotherapy as part of her master's program in social work but is not licensed.]
JESSICA DORE: Thank you so much for having me.
FADEL: So Jessica, tell us about what you do exactly.
DORE: I'm a psychotherapist. And my interest has been using tarot cards in more of a therapeutic way as opposed to for divination or fortunetelling, which is kind of more traditionally how they've been used.
FADEL: So why tarot cards?
DORE: Well, metaphor is something that is used a lot in psychotherapy. And tarot cards are kind of rich with symbolism and, you know, lots of metaphors that can, I think, help people understand the relationship between thoughts and feelings and behavior, which is, really, what we're trying to do in therapy as well - helping people make those connections.
FADEL: So you chose a card that you felt would be the best to describe 2019. And I have that card in front of me, too. Can you tell us what we're looking at?
DORE: So I chose the six of swords, which is - in the image of the card, you see a person in a boat. And they're moving across a body of water.
FADEL: Right.
DORE: And in the boat, they have six swords that are sort of surrounding them. And in tarot, the swords represent kind of psychological life - so mental events, so, like, thoughts and feelings.
FADEL: Oh.
DORE: And so those swords are sort of representing, you know, some of those more challenging mental events, like anxiety and fear and guilt.
FADEL: Right.
DORE: And this person is moving across this body of water. They're moving toward change, moving toward a new life in a way. And they're bringing those feelings of fear, anxiety or guilt or grief along with them. And so it's this idea that in order to have change, we have to be willing to feel some things that we might not rather - we might rather not feel.
FADEL: You know, there's been a lot of uncertainty and fear and anxiety in the year that we just came out of. And we're starting 2019, at least as a nation, with a lot of uncertainty as well if you look in D.C. And I'm sure that's happening also on the individual level. What do you tell people when they're looking at this sort of sea of uncertainty ahead?
DORE: Yeah. Well, I mean, definitely starting with clarifying values is a huge one. I think a lot of times, people are not super clear on what's important to them. And they don't take the time to sit down and clarify those things, and then it does become more challenging. I also think that social support is super important. And I mean, on one hand, we have a sense of being connected constantly through social media. And that can sometimes be sort of illusory. But on the other hand, social media allows us to connect with people who are going through similar things as we are.
So for instance, you know, if you are having to have difficult conversations with family members or something like that, like there's, surely, a community online, some other social media forum that can kind of help you and give you some tips for that. I think social support is incredibly important. And knowing that there are other people sharing the experience that you're sharing and offering tips for kind of how to get through it and sharing ideas, I think that's - could be very helpful.
FADEL: Jessica Dore is a psychotherapist and tarot card reader. Thanks for speaking with us.
DORE: Thank you so much for having me.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
It's that time of the year where we find out what fashion trends to watch and what to ditch in 2019. So say goodbye to your millennial pink sweaters, and say hello to neon. Elizabeth Holmes is a style reporter who's been published in The New York Times, Elle magazine and more. She joins us via Skype. Welcome to the program.
ELIZABETH HOLMES: Hi, Leila.
FADEL: So, Elizabeth, it's 2019 - new year, new start. So you have to help me. What do I need to throw out of my closet?
HOLMES: (Laughter) Well, first, let's understand that trends are like a pendulum, right? They swing back and forth. And what clothing makers and fashion houses want to do is they want to come up with something that we don't already have in our closets. They want to give us a reason to shop. And they've done that for 2019. I would start by saying it's a new pant silhouette, which is a big deal (laughter) in the fashion world because pants actually have sort of a ripple effect. They dictate sort of what tops we buy and even what shoes we wear. And so I'm sure you've heard that skinny jeans are on their way out.
FADEL: No.
HOLMES: They're being replaced by the boot cut. The boot cut is back.
FADEL: I'm not sure I'm OK with this.
HOLMES: I'm not sure I am, either. And the good news is that pant trends take a long time to sort of reach a mass adoption. But it's definitely starting. And we're on our way to a wider-leg jean.
FADEL: So millennial pink - gone?
HOLMES: Well, millennial pink did a great thing. It gave women a reason to wear a statement color. And I think that has opened up a whole lot of possibilities here. Millennial pink is on its way out. But any sort of bright, saturated statement hue is really in at the moment. So neon is for, perhaps, the braver among us. You could also try lavender as a nice alternative to millennial pink. I think lavender is an easier shade for people to pull off. The best way to do it is to not limit it to just one piece in your outfit. So wear pants and a top, perhaps, in lavender. It's a real statement moment. But I've found that when I've done that, even just with head-to-toe red, it's really empowering. So give it a try.
FADEL: What about style trends for men?
HOLMES: Let's see - sneakers - dad sneakers have had a real moment for both men and women, those chunky sneakers that we saw a lot on the runways and with some street style stars. Those, I think, never really caught on. I mean, I think some of these trends can be really hard for regular people to pull off. So, thankfully, I think they're on their way out.
FADEL: So in this moment, who actually defines the trends? Is it still the glossy fashion magazines, the runways? You know, how does this stuff end up popular?
HOLMES: It's a much more fragmented landscape. And I think that's actually a good thing. You know, it used to be that fashion magazines would dissect the runways. And they'd say, you know, here are the five things everybody must wear. But now, thanks to Instagram, you can find your own sort of style and inspiration and, you know, take it from there and make it your own. You know, if Kim Kardashian West is your girl, you might really like solids and, you know, bodycon silhouettes and think you can wear bike shorts with just about anything. You know, if you're more of a Kate Middleton follower, you might want to wear a bow in your hair these days. I think it's actually a really wonderful thing that people are seeking out sort of what they find to be fashionable and the people that they find to be particularly stylish and going after them.
FADEL: That was style reporter Elizabeth Holmes. Thank you so much for talking with us.
HOLMES: Thank you for having me, Leila.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
There is a battle over a wall in Washington, D.C.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The southern border is a dangerous, horrible disaster. We've done a great job. But you can't really do the kind of job we have to do unless you have a major, powerful barrier.
FADEL: The president is digging in his heels, and so are the Democrats. Here's Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NANCY PELOSI: A wall is an immorality. It's not who we are as a nation. And this is not a wall between Mexico and the United States that the president is creating here. It's a wall between reality and his constituents.
FADEL: In the backdrop of this political battle are people caught up in this dispute over immigration. Across the country, congregations of many faiths are providing sanctuary to immigrants with deportation orders. Advocates say it's in response to the Trump administration's crackdown on the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. One of those sanctuaries is in Bethesda, Md. Outside Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church, there are rainbow flags, a Black Lives Matter sign and a banner that says, prayer is not enough.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOORS SHUTTING)
FADEL: Inside is Rosa Gutierrez Lopez (ph).
ABHI JANAMANCHI: Hola, Rosa.
ROSA GUTIERREZ LOPEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
JANAMANCHI: Did you sleep well?
FADEL: We meet Lopez in the chapel. We sit in a pew. She's been living in this church for nearly a month. Federal immigration officials ordered her to leave the country by December 10 because she's been living in the country illegally. She even bought a ticket. But at the last minute, she found this church and sought refuge instead.
LOPEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
FADEL: Lopez says she decided to stay here because of her U.S.-born children. She has three - 11, 9 and 6 years old. The youngest has Down syndrome and a lot of health needs. She's their primary caregiver.
LOPEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
FADEL: In El Salvador, there are no specialists for her youngest son. It's a country she fled 13 years ago, she says, because of threats against her and her family.
LOPEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
FADEL: And it's only gotten worse since. Over the last three years, nearly 20,000 people have been killed in El Salvador in gang violence. Tens of thousands have fled north, searching for safety.
LOPEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
FADEL: Lopez says she fears for her life because since she's been in the United States, three family members have been killed...
LOPEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
FADEL: An uncle, a nephew, a brother-in-law. Her lawyer, Hector Perez-Casillas, says Lopez has a good case for asylum. He just needs the time to make it. He's filed a motion to reopen the case and to stay Lopez's deportation order.
HECTOR PEREZ-CASILLAS: The gangs who have targeted her family, when they target someone, it's not just one particular person that they target. They target an entire family. So as you can imagine, this mother of three should present a very easy target for the gangs.
FADEL: When Lopez first came to the United States in 2005, she presented herself to immigration officials at the border and was given a court date. But she couldn't read English, and she got confused.
LOPEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
FADEL: Lopez didn't show up to her hearing, and so the court gave her a removal order in absentia in 2006.
LOPEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
FADEL: Perez-Casillas, the lawyer, says this happens all the time. A person crosses the border looking for asylum, is given papers with a court date - but can't read it.
PEREZ-CASILLAS: Unfortunately, it is very common that people will just, months later, ask a friend that speaks English - or maybe speak to an attorney and find out, no. No, that was your court date on this date. And now, technically, you have a removal order.
FADEL: And that's what happened. In 2014, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, found Lopez. She applied for deferred action, and it was granted. That means she had a legal work permit. Then in 2017, she tried to renew. She was rejected. When she reported to ICE again, they put an electronic ankle monitoring bracelet on her.
LOPEZ: (Crying).
FADEL: She lifts her leg. The bracelet bulges underneath her winter tights.
LOPEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
FADEL: She says it makes her feel terrible, like a criminal. Before she sought sanctuary in the church, Lopez was working as a cook at an Italian restaurant in Fredericksburg, Va. Now she can't work to provide for her children. Inside the walls of the church, she's safe. ICE's policies discourage agents from conducting deportation actions in so-called sensitive places like schools, hospitals and places of worship. But in recent years, agents have made arrests just outside these sensitive locations in a widening crackdown on unauthorized immigration. And that crackdown is why many congregations have begun offering sanctuary.
JANAMANCHI: This is something that we feel called to be and do, both as an act of faith as well as an act of faithful resistance.
FADEL: Reverend Abhi Janamanchi is the senior minister at Cedar Lane. He says Lopez's case is indicative of a broken immigration system.
JANAMANCHI: And how we are seeking to target people and separate families using draconian measures and policies that in no way serve nor attempt to provide for the safety and security of our nation, let alone our borders.
FADEL: At church, someone stays with Lopez 24 hours a day to keep her company and to make sure she's safe. Neighbors and local officials have been supportive. But there have been critics online and in social media, saying the church is harboring a fugitive. Reverend Janamanchi dismisses the criticism and says the church is committed to providing physical sanctuary and financial and emotional support for the long haul.
JANAMANCHI: Our first and foremost priority and commitment is to Rosa, to be able to provide her with safe space and the time that she needs in order for due process to unfold.
FADEL: Until then, Lopez cannot go home to her children.
LOPEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
FADEL: Her kids are OK, she says. But they're sad she's not with them. During the week, her two oldest kids live with pastors from her home church, so they can keep going to school. Her youngest son, the one with Down syndrome, is staying with his dad. On the weekends, the children come to stay with Lopez. But the only place she can take them to play is the park in the church courtyard. She says her two younger kids don't understand what's happening...
LOPEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
FADEL: ...But her 11-year-old daughter does.
LOPEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
FADEL: She cries and asks Lopez when she's going to be able to come home.
LOPEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
FADEL: She tells her daughter, God willing, they'll find a way to be together soon.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
FADEL: Rosa Gutierrez Lopez's case is pending in immigration court but can't move forward until after the government shutdown. We reached out to ICE about Lopez's case and received this automatic reply. All of ICE's public affairs officers are out of the office for the duration of the government shutdown. We are unable to respond to media queries during this period because we are prohibited by law from working.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The shutdown is having unintended consequences in big and small ways. For Indigenous communities, it's been particularly crippling. Many rely heavily on federal government payouts owed to tribes based on treaties. The funds go towards basic services, from plowing roads to health care to stocking food pantries. Representative Sharice Davids of Kansas knows firsthand how a shutdown can impact Native Americans. Her state is home to a number of different American Indian tribes. She's also a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation and one of two Native American women sworn in to the U.S. House of Representatives in the past week. She joins us on the line. Welcome.
SHARICE DAVIDS: Thank you. I'm happy to be here.
FADEL: So decades ago, tribes negotiated treaties with the government guaranteeing funds for services in exchange for the land that was taken from them. How is this shutdown affecting Indian country?
DAVIDS: Well, the shutdown directly impacts tribes in a number of different ways. You actually already mentioned a couple of them. I spoke with one tribal leader who said that they actually lost a tribal member because they were unable to plow the roads so that an emergency service vehicle could get...
FADEL: Oh, no.
DAVIDS: ...Could get to him in time. Literally, lives are at stake because the federal government is not up and running in the way that it's supposed to be.
FADEL: So you've said you'll support a temporary budget bill that doesn't increase funding to build a wall. But considering the impact this is having on tribes, tribes in your state, is there room for compromise?
DAVIDS: Well, you know, we actually did just vote to use federal funding levels that have been approved on the Senate side in a bipartisan way. And in my view, the House Democrats coming in and passing a bill that has had Republican support previously is exactly the kind of bipartisan thing we need to be doing. And, you know, my hope is that the president recognizes what's at stake and will sign a bill to get the federal government back open.
FADEL: Do you think this can be resolved relatively quickly so you can do the things that you were elected to do?
DAVIDS: I wouldn't have run for office if I wasn't an optimistic person. I'm a realistic optimistic person, though. So my hope is that we don't have to see a lot of people suffering the effects - the negative impacts of a government shutdown before folks are willing to acknowledge and recognize that the vast majority of people are not interested or don't deem a wall to be a good use of our taxpayer resources and that, you know, we can come together to get the federal government back up and running so that everyone who is sitting in Congress can come forward with the things that they know their constituents want them to be working on.
FADEL: Ms. Davids, you're one of two Native American women who was sworn into Congress this week. There have never been Native American women in Congress before. What's it feel like to be one of the first?
DAVIDS: As soon as we got sworn in, just in that one moment to see and feel how significant this has been, how hard not just each of us worked but so many people around us and then previous generations of people who have been laying the foundation. I think in the long term, it will be so essential for us increasing the level of participation we see by a variety of groups not just Native people but also many other groups who just have not been seen or heard in our political process in the...
FADEL: Yeah.
DAVIDS: ...Way that they deserve to be. So, I mean, I feel very fortunate and honored to be part of it.
FADEL: Representative Sharice Davids of Kansas, thank you for joining us.
DAVIDS: Thank you so much.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE SEA AND CAKE SONG, "WEEKEND")
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Last week, the 116th Congress was sworn in. And it's the most diverse in American history. It includes the first Muslim women, the first Native American women and the youngest woman ever to serve in Congress. And during their swearing in, some new members chose to celebrate their heritage with traditional garments.
Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib, one of two Muslim women sworn into Congress, wore a thobe to honor her Palestinian background. The thobe is a gown with elaborate, cross-stitched embroidery. On social media, her supporters did the same. They tweeted themselves using the hashtag #TweetYourThobe to congratulate the new congresswoman and to share their own stories.
Susan Muaddi Darraj is the founder of that campaign. She's a writer and professor at Harford Community College in Maryland. She joins us now from member station WYPR in Baltimore. Welcome.
SUSAN MUADDI DARRAJ: Thank you for having me.
FADEL: Well, I guess, for those who don't know, can you talk about what a Palestinian thobe is for women?
DARRAJ: Sure. Well, a thobe is - it simply means a dress in Arabic. And they are very special dresses. And they're worn at special occasions - like baptisms, weddings, graduations.
FADEL: Right.
DARRAJ: They're gorgeous. And every region has its own color patterns and particular preferred fabrics. They're made by hand. And they're often passed down from mother to daughter. I thought it was wonderful that the congresswoman decided to wear hers at her swearing-in.
FADEL: So she's really wearing her history on her body, basically.
DARRAJ: Yes, and I believe her dress was, actually, handmade by her mother for her. So that makes it even more special.
FADEL: You came up with this hashtag #TweetYourThobe. How did this all start?
DARRAJ: So I was really excited when I heard that she was going to wear her dress at her swearing-in. And then the backlash on Twitter was immediate and fierce. People were calling it un-American, nasty comments about promoting Sharia law and Palestinian heritage and these sorts of unbelievable things.
FADEL: Because she's Muslim and because she's Arab.
DARRAJ: Because she's Muslim, right. And so what can I say? I mean, for example, there's so much diversity among Palestinians. I'm a Palestinian Christian, so I decided that I wanted to try to promote awareness of what this dress means and a little bit about Palestinian culture. So I had this movement to sort of educate people and also celebrate her achievement. There were people who participated in our campaign who were Jewish, who were Muslim, who were Christian, Buddhists, who were atheists.
FADEL: What were your favorites? Or what were the things that you were seeing?
DARRAJ: I saw several women who posted pictures of their thobes that had been made by their great-grandmothers. One woman posted a thobe that was 100 years old. People asking questions about what the dresses mean. Actually, the other day, we just posted a map of Palestinian areas that somebody made. And on the map is superimposed the pieces of fabric, so you can look at a dress and see where the person is from based on the map.
FADEL: Oh, wow. And what did you tweet?
DARRAJ: I tweeted a picture of myself wearing a beautiful thobe that I just received last year from my aunt. And she had a thobe made for me in the West Bank. And I was thrilled to wear that.
FADEL: So it wasn't just Congresswoman Tlaib who wore cultural garments. Representative Deb Haaland, who's one of the first Native American women in Congress along with Sharice Davids - she wore a traditional Pueblo dress. Representative Ilhan Omar - she's the first woman Somali-American Muslim to wear hijab - the religious head covering - in Congress. So it's a record year for women, women of color. You're a woman of color. What was it like to see that?
DARRAJ: I love seeing these women bring their heritage with them to the government. You know, we need to recognize that there are differences among us, but those differences don't have to be obstacles between us. They can be moments for celebration.
FADEL: That was Susan Muaddi Darraj, founder of the social media campaign #TweetYourThobe.
Thanks for talking with us.
DARRAJ: Thank you for having me.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
It's been more than two weeks, and protesters continue to fill the streets in Sudan. They were spurred by the government's announcement that it was ending food subsidies. Prices for things like bread and fuel skyrocketed. Now demonstrators who've been met with live bullets and tear gas say they want President Omar al-Bashir's nearly 30-year reign to end. He says he's not going anywhere. Isma'il Kushkush is a Sudanese-American journalist based in D.C. He joins us now.
Thank you so much for being here.
ISMA'IL KUSHKUSH: Thank you.
FADEL: So why don't you just break down for us what these protests are about and why they're happening?
KUSHKUSH: So these protests started on December 19 in the northern city of Atbara, mostly by high school students who went to school, found that the price of bread had tripled for their breakfast and just started to protest. And the same thing happened in other towns outside of Khartoum and then moved to Khartoum. It was ignited, basically, by the high prices of bread. But there's been political discontent in the country for a long time. So a number of issues altogether have just piled up, and people are protesting both economic and political issues - issues of freedoms, issues of conflict in civil parts of the country, dissatisfaction with the idea that supporters of the president might amend the constitution to allow him to run again in 2020. I think all of these issues have contributed to a great deal of frustration and anger in the Sudanese streets.
FADEL: And what's been the president's reaction so far to these demonstrations?
KUSHKUSH: Like protests before in 2011, 2012 and 2013, the reaction has been quite violent. The government also acknowledges - says that it does realize that the cost of living has become very high for most Sudanese. And it says that it will try to increase - will increase the minimum wage and take measures to improve the economic situation.
FADEL: What does that mean? - that they're doing those things, making those...
KUSHKUSH: Well, it's - you know, it's a kind of a carrot and stick approach. The government officially says that it is not against peaceful protests.
FADEL: OK.
KUSHKUSH: But it alleges that there are elements of military and militant rebel groups that have caused destruction and that it is using force against that. That's what the government says.
FADEL: Is that true?
KUSHKUSH: Not from what we know - not from activists that we've spoken to.
FADEL: How much of the country is with these protesters? So I'm seeing a lot of reporting on the actual demonstrations. But is this - do they have the support of most of the country?
KUSHKUSH: Well, that's a good question. And it's hard to assess. I think it's relevant that it started outside of Khartoum, outside of the capital, and especially in a town like Atbara that is in a state but it - which is considered a stronghold for the ruling party. Sudanese professionals have started organizing, as well as political parties who have withdrawn from the official coalition government and have supported the protesters. So it does seem that there is widespread support throughout the country among activists and politicians.
FADEL: So what's different than 2012 and 2013? What makes these protests different in 2018, 2019?
KUSHKUSH: 2018 was especially a very difficult year for many Sudanese. Many had hoped that the lifting of U.S. sanctions in October 2017 would bring in foreign investment, would make the economy better. It did not for a number of reasons. When I was in Sudan - I left Sudan in 2015 - one dollar was equal to about 10 Sudanese pounds in the black market. Mid-December 2018, the Sudanese pound was 80 pounds to a dollar.
FADEL: Oh, wow.
KUSHKUSH: So the price of goods have just skyrocketed. It was just a very difficult year. So again, it's just this deep sense of frustration that people have reached rock bottom.
FADEL: Journalist Isma'il Kushkush, thank you for being with us.
KUSHKUSH: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
In the last fiscal year, the Army fell short of its recruiting goal by 6,500 people. In part, it's driven by the 50-year lows in unemployment numbers. Often, young recruits join when they don't have a job prospect or money for college. And so the Army is getting creative about selling itself, shifting its focus from places that traditionally fill its ranks - conservative parts of the country from Virginia through the South and into Texas - to 22 left-leaning cities across the country, like Boston, Seattle and San Francisco. Joining us now to discuss this new strategy is Gen. Frank Muth, the head of the Army Recruiting Command. Gen. Muth, thanks so much for being with us.
FRANK MUTH: Thank you so much for taking the time to have a discussion about this great topic.
FADEL: So why don't you start by telling me - what's the thinking behind this strategy? It's a pretty big pivot.
MUTH: It's a huge pivot. So with us not making mission last year, we wanted to truly look at some of the issues that were going on to try to accomplish the mission for this year. And we started with how we were recruiting. Calling the Z Generation on the phone doesn't work anymore.
FADEL: Right.
MUTH: They want to meet us online first, find out, one, if - are we a bot that's just probing them for information? Or are we a real person? And once that dialogue starts online, then it leads to a discussion on the phone. And then that leads to an interview. And it all starts with providing information about, you know, the Army's got 150 different jobs. There's the GI Bill when they get out to pay for college - all the different benefits for serving the military. But it has to start with reaching the Z Generation on the digital plane.
FADEL: So when you're shifting to these urban areas, is there anything you're doing specifically to talk to urban minorities about this, especially at a time where the military's being leaned on at the border and that get sometimes seen as part of a politicized, racially motivated fight between the administration and his opponents?
MUTH: Yeah, no. You know, the recruiters talk about the opportunities that exist in the Army, all the different specialties, all the different training, the qualifications that you get while you're in the Army and what you leave with.
FADEL: In urban spaces, among women, among minority communities who must ask questions about issues of racism and sexism in the military, what do your recruiters say to those questions?
MUTH: You know, I'm sure they tell stories that are very positive. I mean, because, you know, we don't hear about it. So they tell their Army story, essentially.
FADEL: But there are stories where certain communities are treated differently at times. And I'm just wondering how they allay those fears and how they say you are also welcome.
MUTH: You know, I'm not going to put words in their mouths. But I would suspect that they say...
FADEL: How would you do it?
MUTH: How would I do it?
FADEL: Mmm hmm.
MUTH: There is a very, very low percentage of those incidents or events that occur. But know this - that it's one team. And if any of that occurs, it is immediately addressed by the chain of command because, one, we want to create a safe and secure environment and dignity and respect for everybody in the United States Army. So that is pervasive throughout the commands.
FADEL: The other thing is, you know, the military's been mired in wars for a lot of this generation's lives - right? - Iraq, Afghanistan, the longest-running war. Is it a difficult sell because - if there is real danger for young people that will be going out there to possibly die for their country?
MUTH: You're right. That's out there. It's a very small percentage that are, one, participating and, two, that participate in direct combat operations alone.
FADEL: Right.
MUTH: There is risk in anything. But it's a low risk in terms of being part of the direct combat fight.
FADEL: So what's the number you need to reach this year?
MUTH: We're still working on that. It won't be 76,500, which was our mission last year. I think it's going to be a lower number.
FADEL: Gen. Frank Muth of the Army Recruiting Command, thank you so much.
MUTH: It has been my honor and pleasure. And thank you for the time.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
In a futuristic world where men are literally toxic to women, three sisters are raised in isolation with Mother and King, the only man they've ever known. They live in a mansion on an island, where other women come to heal from violent pasts and share their stories. Sophie Mackintosh's debut novel "The Water Cure" is one of several feminist dystopian novels that have come out in the past few years. It's a genre that explores uncomfortable and pervasive topics from violence and misogyny to what happens when women don't have reproductive rights. Sophie Mackintosh joins us now from the BBC in London.
Hello.
SOPHIE MACKINTOSH: Hi.
FADEL: So why don't we start with where the idea for this book came from?
MACKINTOSH: So I was working on a book about a family in an isolated environment. And, actually, in my original draft, the family lived on an oil rig, and the world was completely flooded. I realized as I was writing that I didn't actually need to invent a flooded world or any kind of tragedy because it felt like there was a disaster happening anyway. And that disaster, to me, I managed to kind of distill into this idea of, what if masculinity was literally toxic and would affect women physically? And from there, everything kind of slotted into place.
FADEL: That's a pretty in-your-face choice to make it a physical thing - that it actually makes women sick. Why did you make that choice?
MACKINTOSH: I think the year I wrote the book was 2016. And it felt like the world was changing really rapidly. It felt like there were a lot of views that had kind of gained legitimacy in terms of how we spoke about women's bodies and how it was acceptable to act towards women. And so while it did feel kind of in your face, it also felt very real. Often, I would check social media or the news and see stories. And I would feel, actually, sick. And I knew that other people I knew would feel sick, too. So it was my kind of way of turning those angry, sick feelings into positive action.
FADEL: So in order to protect themselves from the outside world, these toxins, the sisters - Grace, Lia and Sky - have to perform these therapies that can be violent. They're called water cures. What are they?
MACKINTOSH: So the water cures comprise things such as almost drowning themselves, submerging themselves in cold water, going into saunas until they, actually, physically pass out. They are quite violent. And they are all kind of based around water, generally, and the salt. And I picked these water-based therapies based off Victorian water cures and historical water cures, all these kind of archaic methods that had been used to treat hysterical women in the past.
FADEL: Wow.
MACKINTOSH: I thought it would be interesting to think about how they could be used in a modern-day setting. And there is something very kind of primal and feminine, too, about water, I think. It's very life-giving. But it is, you know, a dangerous element, too.
FADEL: Everything changes for the sisters when their father, King, disappears - or their father figure. And then men appear. Two adults, a child arrive on this shore with this isolated home. So what happens?
MACKINTOSH: So each sister has a different response, really. The eldest sister, Grace, she's very cold. And she's very much an older sibling. She's very tough. She has a totally different reaction to the middle sister, Lia, who's a lot more needy and emotionally vulnerable. And Lia ends up having a relationship with one of the men. And this is a catalyst for the events to follow.
FADEL: What struck me, too, is just how there's a softness, a beauty to the writing here, even when describing some really dark moments, violent moments - a femininity to the writing in many ways. Can you talk about the writing process?
MACKINTOSH: I used to be a poet. So for me, having the language be beautiful is always a priority for me. And I wanted the rhythm of the language to kind of reflect the water, to reflect that timeless, kind of dreamy atmosphere. You know, it is set in the future. But it could be set 50 years ago. It does have a timeless quality to it.
FADEL: Right.
MACKINTOSH: And that was a conscious decision on my part, I think because it's a book with a lot of ugliness. It was important for me as well to have those moments of beauty.
FADEL: Right.
MACKINTOSH: And I'm also a Welsh speaker. So for me...
FADEL: Yeah.
MACKINTOSH: ...Having the language that I grew up with reflected in the rhythms and stuff was also really important.
FADEL: What were your influences growing up? - authors that you read. You've talked about your grandfather giving you Stephen King and "Jane Eyre" books growing up.
MACKINTOSH: Oh, yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
MACKINTOSH: He always used to give me a deeply age-inappropriate book.
FADEL: Aw (laughter).
MACKINTOSH: I guess "Jane Eyre" - not so much. But yeah, Stephen King when you're, like, 7 years old is not terrific (laughter).
FADEL: Oh, wow. Did you have nightmares?
MACKINTOSH: Oh, yeah. I really had nightmares. I was a very nightmarish, nervous child. Perhaps that makes sense.
FADEL: Did that influence your writing? - because there is an element of horror in this book.
MACKINTOSH: I think I've always been drawn to the kind of macabre and the scary and the dark. It's always held a fascination for me. I can be quite a frightened person. I can be quite anxious. So kind of taking control and naming those anxieties and exploring those dark parts is really helpful for me and really interesting to me.
FADEL: You know, your book is being linked to this genre of dystopian feminist literature in the vein of Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale." And more recently, we've seen books like Leni Zumas' "Red Clocks," Idra Novey's "Those Who Knew" and Naomi Alderman's "The Power." They're all getting a lot of attention. How do you see your novel fitting into this larger genre?
MACKINTOSH: I see my novel as being more of a quieter dystopia, more of a microcosm than the books that concentrate on the wider world. I do think there's a place for it within these books. I really love these books. And I'm really excited that they're getting more love and awareness, this kind of - this feminist dystopian genre. I think there's room for all kinds of stories. And just because it kind of focuses on one family instead of what's happening outside doesn't mean it's kind of less relevant or necessary, I think.
FADEL: Sophie Mackintosh - her debut novel is "The Water Cure." Thank you so much for speaking with us.
MACKINTOSH: Thank you so much.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Trying to get a salad in New York City in the new year is proving to be a difficult task. The New York Post reports that lines at salad chains like Sweetgreen and Chopt are wrapping around the block as people clamor for kale in an effort to live out their healthy resolutions.
But when you're hungry and end up in a hundred-person line, waiting for roughage, it can get, well, rough. There's been bickering and expletives. One person described it to The Post as a psycho line. It's kind of the January version of Black Friday mayhem. But instead of a new TV, people want abs.
Some restaurants are trying to capitalize on the health zeal. Chipotle debuted its lifestyle bowls for all you keto, paleo, Whole30 dieters. But if you're already thinking about breaking the I'm gonna be healthy this year promise, 2019 has brought indulgences, too, like the new Caramel Chocolate Chip Girl Scout Cookies. As for fast food restaurants in New York, well, let's just say business is slower until people give up on greens and head back to fries and then promise to be better next year.
(SOUNDBITE OF MAC DEMARCO'S "YOUNG COCONUT")
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Now the story of what may be this country's most divisive song. "Dixie" was the rallying cry of the Confederacy during the Civil War. For our series American Anthem, NPR's Bilal Qureshi crisscrossed the Mason-Dixon Line to explore how "Dixie" became and endures as an anthem. And a warning, this story contains a racial slur.
BILAL QURESHI, BYLINE: When my Pakistani immigrant parents chose Richmond, Va., as our American hometown, they didn't realize the city had a preexisting condition - nostalgia for the lost cause of the Confederacy.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE NEW AMERICAN BRASS BAND'S "DIXIE/BONNIE BLUE FLAG")
QURESHI: Growing up, the ghosts of the Old South were everywhere - rebel flags waving from pickup trucks and Confederate monuments along the city's main avenue. For four years, Richmond was the capital of the Confederate States of America. And if that country had an anthem, it was "Dixie." But the song was born in the north, says historian Ed Ayers, who lives in Richmond.
ED AYERS: "Dixie" actually was only created in 1859 as a minstrel show in Ohio, which people tend to forget that minstrelsy was the most popular art form in the United States. White men in blackface, very often from the north, imagining happy enslaved people.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DIXIE")
HARLAN AND STANLEY: (Singing) I wish I was in the land of cotton. Old times there are not forgotten. Look away. Look away. Look away. Dixie Land.
AYERS: And parodying them at the same time that they are pretending to be them. So it's a very weird thing for people to have adopted as a national anthem of the Confederacy.
QURESHI: The Confederacy was a pop-up nation. And its soldiers needed a song, says musician Bryant Henderson.
BRYANT HENDERSON: There weren't a whole lot of songs. There weren't anthems as such and particularly about the South. And "Dixie" was a hot, popular hit.
QURESHI: Henderson is at Gettysburg with the 2nd South Carolina String Band for the re-enactment of the war's defining battle.
(SOUNDBITE OF CANNONS AND MUSKETS FIRING)
QURESHI: After a long day of fighting, soldiers gather by candlelight under the big tent close the night with "Dixie."
(CHEERING)
TONY HORWITZ: The tune is tremendously catchy. Whenever I hear it, I find myself humming it all day. It's really a wonderful song if you ignore all the racial and political overtones.
QURESHI: Journalist Tony Horwitz is the author of "Confederates In The Attic," a book in which he traced the enduring legacy of the lost cause. Horwitz says while "Dixie" can work inside the parameters of a re-enactment, in real America, the song is tangled up with the history of racism and segregation.
HORWITZ: "Dixie" was part of the score of "Birth of a Nation" - the movie that helped revive the Ku Klux Klan. It was embraced by the segregationist Dixiecrats in the 1940s. And in the 1950s, it was sung by white women protesting the integration of schools.
QURESHI: By the 1970s, it was on prime time, says historian Ed Ayers.
AYERS: Think of "Dukes Of Hazzard." Their horn plays the first notes of "Dixie."
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "DUKES OF HAZZARD")
QURESHI: But Dixie's biggest platform was the Southern football stadium and nowhere more prominently than the University of Mississippi and its Pride of the South marching band.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE PRIDE OF THE SOUTH MARCHING BAND'S "DIXIE")
CHRIS PRESLEY: My name is Chris Presley. And I was the drum major for the Pride of the South marching band at Ole Miss. My first two years, I was playing "Dixie" with the marching band. And then my last few years, I was conducting the song.
QURESHI: Chris Presley is African-American. And he says despite the song's divisive history, during games, "Dixie" could become a unifying anthem.
PRESLEY: Even though the song divided many people, I still saw everyone holding up their pompoms, especially when we were winning during the song of "Dixie."
QURESHI: How many times would it be played in the course of a game?
PRESLEY: Oh, goodness. It really just depends on the football team during that game. You know, if we were winning, maybe 20 times.
QURESHI: The band continued playing "Dixie" until two years ago, when the school finally stopped using it.
RENE MARIE: I have always loved the song "Dixie."
QURESHI: That's jazz singer Rene Marie.
MARIE: As a black person, I knew that it was like, no. You cannot sing this song because it's "Dixie," Rene. But I thought, this song is just about somebody who wishes they were back in their hometown in the South. I can identify with that.
QURESHI: And so she sang it for the first time in Richmond.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DIXIE")
MARIE: (Singing) In Dixie land, I'll take my stand to live and die in Dixie.
QURESHI: Marie says people were shocked as if she'd used the most offensive racial slur.
MARIE: Oh. They sat back, you know, and folded their arms and crossed their legs like, what is this? Because honestly, Bilal, there are certain emblems of this society that are just taboo, you know. Confederate flag is anathema to African-Americans and for good reason. The word nigger is anathema. And the song "Dixie." It's like the trifecta, you know.
QURESHI: But in her arrangement, Rene Marie merges "Dixie" with a song that Billie Holiday made famous about lynching
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DIXIE/STRANGE FRUIT")
MARIE: (Singing) Southern trees bare a strange fruit - blood on the leaves and blood at the root.
That's the juxtaposition, isn't it? And both songs are representative of what it's like living in the South.
QURESHI: But that Old South is fading. And I asked Rene Marie if it would be better if one of its symbols, "Dixie," was best forgotten.
MARIE: No. Do not try to erase it. I would say look at it, find out what's going on with your country and stop thinking that it's post anything. It's not post anything. It's all still right here in your face, I mean (laughter) - to use the vernacular. But yes. It's right here. Don't be misled into thinking that everything is fine.
(SOUNDBITE OF CANNONS FIRING)
QURESHI: Back in Gettysburg, as the re-enactors take a moment to step out of the sepia-toned past to reflect on the present cycle, there are nods of agreement from one of them - Joe Whitney.
JOE WHITNEY: What's happening today is very similar to what happened back then. You know, you had the breakdown in civil behavior, the breakdown in people hearing the other side and understanding. And, in a way, we want people to learn about this because history may not repeat itself. But it definitely rhymes, as they say.
QURESHI: All of this history is a heavy burden to bear for a song that was intended to be nothing more than a jaunty pop tune. But Civil War historian Ed Ayers says "Dixie" could never be just a song.
AYERS: Once you live in the south - I've chosen to live here, you look around. You see the ghosts of the past everywhere around us. So I can never hear "Dixie" as anything other than a song that has accrued all these meaning over so many generations.
QURESHI: Ayers says even if "Dixie" was expunged, it will always be an anthem in some American hearts - confined but never forgotten, alive and electric as only anthems can be. Bilal Qureshi, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DIXIE/STRANGE FRUIT")
MARIE: (Singing) Away, away down south in Dixie.
NOEL KING, HOST:
It's become pretty common to order drugs through the mail, and Amazon has jumped into the game, so that market could get even bigger. But there are still some big questions about safety. Alex Smith is with member station KCUR.
ALEX SMITH, BYLINE: The weather in Park Hills in eastern Missouri can be all over the map, according to resident Loretta Boesing.
LORETTA BOESING: We experience temperatures like they would feel in Arizona. You know, sometimes we experience the temperatures like they feel up north.
SMITH: Boesing thinks those extreme temperatures played a part in a health scare involving her son Wesley. In 2012, when Wesley was 2, he got so sick from the flu that he needed a liver transplant. The surgery went well, but just a few months later, lab tests showed Wesley's body appeared to be rejecting the organ. Boesing felt devastated and guilty.
BOESING: I feel the extra duty of not just protecting his life, but the life that lives on inside him.
SMITH: In the end, Wesley rallied and kept his new liver. But Loretta kept wondering what might have gone wrong. Then she remembered that when his transplant medications were last delivered, they had been left outside by the garage, where they sat for hours. Temperatures that day were in the hundreds, far higher than the safe range listed on the drug's guidelines. At the time, she hadn't worried about it.
BOESING: Even though I see plainly on the bottle, you know, that it says store at room temperature, I still thought, ah, someone's making sure it was safe.
SMITH: But after Wesley's setback, Boesing swore off mail order altogether. And this year, she started a Facebook group for patients who are worried about mail-order drugs. She thinks all insurers should give their customers easy access to retail pharmacies unless mail-order companies can prove that drugs are getting to patients at the right temperatures. There are three big mail-order companies - Express Scripts, CVS Caremark and OptumRx. All three insist they've got the shipping down to a science.
At a warehouse in Kansas City, OptumRx workers pack specialty medications with ice packs and insulated containers. Lead pharmacist Alysia Heller explains that this warehouse ships up to 100,000 prescriptions a day, and it includes a system to account for weather.
ALYSIA HELLER: If there's an extreme heat situation, the system will tell the technician to add an extra ice pack because we've monitored the zip code and the weather in that area.
SMITH: But at OptumRx and across the industry, room-temperature medications, like most blood pressure or cholesterol drugs, are just dropped in bubble mailers. Stephen Eckel, a pharmacy professor at the University of North Carolina, thinks that this can lead to some drugs being damaged.
STEPHEN ECKEL: A lot of people enjoy the convenience of mail order, but there are some risks, as we've discussed, that they have to understand.
SMITH: Eckel says it's possible that medications in oral suspension, like Wesley was taking, could be affected by extreme heat or cold. Eckel thinks it's just a matter of time before mail-order pharmacies start using temperature-controlled packaging for nonspecialty drugs as well and include a temperature monitor in each package so customers know their drugs never got too hot or too cold during shipping. But pharmacy consultant Adam Fein says that approach would just drive up costs. And he points out that many states already guarantee customers the right to use retail pharmacies if they prefer. He thinks the temperature concerns are overblown.
ADAM FEIN: We have literally billions and billions of prescriptions that have been dispensed by mail over many, many years without evidence of widespread harm.
SMITH: Some room-temperature drugs are OK to spend up to 24 hours in temperatures as low as the upper 50s to as high as 104. But scientists just don't know what happens to many medications in more extreme temperatures. In fact, a few studies suggest that some inhalers or drugs like antibiotics can lose potency.
Boesing has gotten a waiver that lets her get Wesley's medication at a specialty pharmacy in St. Louis, but she's continued to advocate on the issue.
BOESING: I don't want my son to receive special treatment. I want everyone to have access to safe medications.
SMITH: In Missouri, the Board of Pharmacy will review its mail-order prescription policies and has invited Boesing to testify later this week. For NPR News, I'm Alex Smith in Park Hills, Mo.
(SOUNDBITE OF DARREN KORB'S "FORECAST")
KING: And that story is part of a partnership with NPR, KCUR and Kaiser Health News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
It's that time of year. You wake up with a sore throat, stuffy nose, fever. Maybe you lose your voice - happened to me just last week. And you wonder, is this the flu or just a cold? You can actually find out. NPR's Patti Neighmond reports.
PATTI NEIGHMOND, BYLINE: The symptoms can be similar, but the difference is how quickly they develop and how bad they are. Dr. Yul Ejnes with the American College of Physicians...
YUL EJNES: The flu usually starts abruptly. You could pretty much tell the doctor when it started. You know, I was fine, and then I wasn't.
NEIGHMOND: A cold, on the other hand, takes a couple of days to build up - a sore throat one day, runny nose the next, eventually, maybe a low-grade fever. But symptoms are relatively minor compared to the high fever over a hundred and one or more, body aches and chills of the flu.
EJNES: Feeling like a truck ran you over or you can't even move a muscle.
NEIGHMOND: Coughing and headaches are also a lot more intense with the flu. If you have these symptoms, Ejnes says it's a good idea to check in with your doctor. Over the phone should be fine if you're an otherwise healthy adult. There's no cure for the flu, but your doctor may prescribe an antiviral medication to help fight it. Dr. Matt Zahn is spokesperson for the Infectious Disease Society of America.
MATT ZAHN: In general, you can get better maybe about one day earlier than you regularly would.
NEIGHMOND: And symptoms may be more mild, which is especially important for people at high risk of complications from the flu. This includes children under 5, whose immune systems are still developing, adults 65 and older, whose immune systems are waning, and people with underlying medical conditions like asthma or lung or heart disease.
ZAHN: It makes you less likely to end up in the hospital. It can make you less likely to be severely ill from that influenza infection.
NEIGHMOND: Of course, the best protection, says Zahn, is the flu vaccine, which significantly decreases complications from flu along with hospitalization and even death. As for a cold, it's a different story. Internist Ejnes...
EJNES: The reality is that there's nothing available that affects the virus, that shortens the duration of the head cold.
NEIGHMOND: The best you can do, he says - over-the-counter remedies that can make you feel a little better - decongestants to relieve cough, nasal sprays to reduce stuffiness, lozenges to help a sore throat.
EJNES: Hot, steamy fluids - you know, bringing in the ever-popular chicken soup also can help you feel better. But basically, you're doing whatever you can do to bare it until it runs its course.
NEIGHMOND: Some colds linger for a few weeks, but most clear up within a week. Patti Neighmond, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Let's examine the power of a phrase.
NOEL KING, HOST:
Yes. The phrase is national emergency, and President Trump is talking about declaring one. He can invoke emergency powers, and he says he might do that to order construction of a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border. Here's the president describing the situation at the border on Sunday.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And we have an absolute crisis - and - of criminals and gang members coming through. It is national security. It's a national emergency.
KING: So do emergency powers let him order the construction of a wall?
INSKEEP: Here to help us answer that question is NPR White House correspondent Scott Horsley. Hi there, Scott.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: Let's work through this. What are the president's emergency powers?
HORSLEY: The president does have some power under the National Emergencies Act to shift money around, for example, from one Defense Department budget line to another.
INSKEEP: OK. So he can take existing money and move it into a different location. But then the question is, does the president alone get to decide when there is an emergency? Because you can look at 20 years of border crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border and find many, many years where crossings were much higher than they are now.
HORSLEY: That's certainly going to be a question if the president were to try to invoke emergency powers in this instance - just what is the nature of the emergency? Under this act, the president still has to consult with Congress. The idea is to give the power - give the president flexibility to act in the case of an actual emergency. It's not to cut Congress out of the budgeting process.
INSKEEP: Oh, because this is not just shifting troops to a location or ordering some agency to do something unusual. This is actually spending money, which is Congress's prerogative.
HORSLEY: That's right. And certainly, if the president were to try to use this power in this instance, he would face legal challenges. The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee has already suggested it would be an abuse of power. One question is, what military projects would the president stop funding in order to bankroll his border wall? And then, as I say, what, exactly, is the nature of the emergency? In that cut you heard from the weekend, the president was talking about crime and gang members. On Friday, in his Rose Garden news conference, he actually raised the specter of terrorists.
But the administration has really stretched its own credibility here. On Fox News, over the weekend, Chris Wallace called out White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders over terrorism claims that just have no basis in fact. What we do have at the border is a surge in families from Central America presenting themselves - in most cases, turning themselves in to Border Patrol agents. And because of U.S. law and court cases, it is difficult to deport those families or to detain them for an extended period of time. But that's a challenge that a wall would not really address.
INSKEEP: OK. So we have this challenge. We have the president's talk, at least, of a state of emergency. And it sounds like, if he were to invoke that, it would have to be challenged in Congress, be challenged in court and find out how that played out. This is all, however, sort of backdrop to negotiations to get funding for a border wall directly. That's what the president wants, anyway, as part of negotiations with members of Congress to end a partial government shutdown. There were talks over the weekend. Are the two sides making any progress?
HORSLEY: Not really. Even before Sunday's session led by the vice president, the president told reporters he didn't expect anything to come of it. So this really seemed more about giving the appearance of action rather than the reality of any effort to resolve things.
INSKEEP: Scott, I ran into a federal worker over the holidays who said, well, I'm furloughed. There must be lots of people who are in that situation, other people who are working without pay. How will people beyond the federal government continue to feel the effects of this shutdown if it continues a while?
HORSLEY: You know, Steve, this Friday is supposed to be payday for the federal government. That would be the first paycheck that those workers miss if it comes to that. If this goes on, we may begin to see tax refund checks delayed. Food stamps are OK this month but not into February.
INSKEEP: Scott, thanks for the update.
HORSLEY: You're welcome.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Scott Horsley.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
INSKEEP: All right. The president is holding onto his border wall demand, but his administration is changing its approach to Syria.
KING: That's right. President Trump says U.S. troops won't leave Syria until ISIS is, quote, "gone." That is a change. Just before Christmas, the president said the mission against ISIS was over.
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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.
KING: OK. National security adviser John Bolton has added some conditions to that. He says around 2,000 U.S. troops will not come home until they are met. First, ISIS has to be gone. And second, Kurdish fighters - U.S. allies - have to be protected.
INSKEEP: Karoun Demirjian is a national - covers national security for The Washington Post. And she's in our studios. Good morning.
KAROUN DEMIRJIAN: Good morning.
INSKEEP: Is this really the policy now?
DEMIRJIAN: Well, this is the shifting policy, as we've seen - as we're seeing it play out in real time. John Bolton is - given the clearest assessment yet of what we will be doing to pull out of Syria, which will not be immediate. The president suggested, when he made this statement last month, that it would be happening right away. Now we know that it's getting scaled back. This is a sign that his advisers are having more influence over trying to pull him back from this policy, which really shocked everybody around him, allies and critics alike.
INSKEEP: But this is why I want to be really clear about this. John Bolton is among the officials who stated a completely different policy shortly before President Trump announced his policy in December. Are we sure that what Bolton says this time is really what the president wants and will stick with?
DEMIRJIAN: It seems like what they're trying to do is not completely change what the president said he wanted to do but explain it away and then pirouette around what the president said - we're getting out of Syria. If you talk to any of Trump's surrogates at this point and his allies, they won't say, oh, we're not getting out of Syria. The president was wrong. They'll say, well, he never said exactly how we were going to get out of Syria. So what we're doing is we're having a methodical conversation about how we'll do it. We're setting these conditions. The most clear contradiction is, of course, that the - one of the conditions, that we'll wait until ISIS has been eradicated from the country, is exactly what President Trump said had happened when he announced this policy. So it's clearly that his advisers are kind of pulling him back from the brink on this one. And the president does not seem to be outwardly refuting them at this point. So it's a sign of - maybe there's some shifting going on, but it's definitely a contradiction.
INSKEEP: Is it your sense - granting that things can change again, is it your sense that the policy has changed all the way back? Because now the United States is in Syria for some considerable amount of time until some difficult objectives are met.
DEMIRJIAN: It's unclear, right? At this point, we've seen reports that the period of time is lengthening. First we were talking about a 30-day pullout. Then it was four months. Now there's no timeline associated with it at all. If that continues, then, sure, we're talking about a reversal. But at this point, we don't know, right? Because the national security adviser has set out these conditions. This gives them some cover, so to speak, I suppose, for what happens going forward. But we don't actually know the details of what this plan is going to be or what types of agreements or - you know, it was eradicating ISIS and making sure the Kurds were protected. It's not clear to the extent to which they need guarantees on that from others to say, OK, we're there. Good. And that's been part of the problem.
INSKEEP: Very briefly, how is the president's national security team changing and his advice changing? Because Jim Mattis, the defense secretary, Brett McGurk, special envoy to combat ISIS, and another top official have all resigned over this policy chain.
DEMIRJIAN: Right. And there are concerns, especially around Capitol Hill, that the president will put a bunch of yes men in their place. But as of right now, you've got Shanahan still taking over for Mattis.
INSKEEP: Patrick Shanahan, right.
DEMIRJIAN: Exactly - who was his deputy. And everybody kind of on hold because anybody who comes in that the president appoints will have to go through a confirmation process. But there's concern from Democrats that the adults have left the room, and right now the people around the president are trying to prove, well, that's not true.
INSKEEP: Karoun Demirjian, thanks very much for coming by.
DEMIRJIAN: Thank you.
INSKEEP: She's with The Washington Post.
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INSKEEP: Now the case of a Saudi teenager and her Twitter account that is capturing international attention.
KING: That's right. This morning, there are tens of thousands of posts with the hashtag #SaveRahaf. They're talking about 18-year-old Rahaf Mohammed Alqunun, who has spent the last day barricaded in a hotel room in Bangkok. She says her family is abusive, and if she goes back to them, she's afraid she's going to be killed.
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RAHAF MOHAMMED ALQUNUN: I'm not leaving my room until I see UNHCR. I want asylum.
KING: That is from a video that she posted to Twitter yesterday. Now, this morning, authorities in Thailand are saying they won't deport her against her will, but activists are still watching this very closely.
INSKEEP: Human Rights Watch now tells NPR that activists have filed an injunction to stop the Thai government from deporting her. Reporter Michael Sullivan is in Bangkok. He's following this story. He joins us by Skype. Hi there, Michael.
MICHAEL SULLIVAN, BYLINE: Hi, Steve.
INSKEEP: How did she get away from her family in the first place?
SULLIVAN: Well, from what she told Human Rights Watch and a few others who spoke with her, she saw an opportunity and she took it, maybe even planned it in advance. But she was on a trip with her family to Kuwait, and Kuwait doesn't have the same rule about a woman traveling by herself, which is why she could get on a plane by herself, and she did. And that Bangkok was just a transit point, that her real destination was Australia and asylum there. But she didn't get the chance to because when she got off the plane here in Bangkok, she was met by a guy - it's unclear whether Saudi or Kuwaiti - who took her passport and later came back with Thai authorities, who then told her she'd be sent back to Kuwait this morning. She was supposed to leave on an 11 a.m. flight, but it took off without her after she barricaded herself in her room in the transit hotel at the airport, tweeting up a storm, asking for help.
INSKEEP: You're pointing out that if she had tried to leave from a Saudi Arabian airport, somebody might have said, wait a minute. You're a woman traveling alone. We don't - we frown on that. There might have been a problem. But in this case, she was outside the country. Now she's in Thailand. What kind of pressure is on Thailand to keep her from being sent back?
SULLIVAN: I don't think there's a lot of pressure on the Saudi government because of - I mean, there wasn't a lot after Jamal Khashoggi's murder, right? But on the Thai side, maybe a little different story. I think they're a little more sensitive to pressure. And several European governments have expressed their concern already. On the other hand, this kind of thing, Steve, happens often enough here in Thailand that human rights groups are really frustrated by it. In the past couple of years, Thailand has sent back Uighurs and other dissidents to China when Beijing has asked. And just a few months ago, the Thais arrested a soccer player from Bahrain who had been critical of a powerful government official. He'd already been granted asylum in Australia and had come here on his honeymoon, but he was arrested anyway. Here's Phil Robertson, the deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch.
PHIL ROBERTSON: I'm hoping that Thailand will recognize that if they proceed on the course that Saudi Arabia wants them to take, they will burn a very dark mark on their international reputation.
INSKEEP: OK, Michael, what is Thailand saying, and what are the Saudis saying about this?
SULLIVAN: Basically, they both blame her. The Saudi Embassy says they had nothing to do with it, that she was detained by the Thais because she didn't have a return ticket. That's a little confusing since she told Human Rights Watch she was just transiting in Bangkok. But it also seems that she may have told some news outlets that the guy who took her passport tricked her, telling her he could help her get a visa here. And she'd been planning on spending a couple of days here until she went on to Australia. Either way, the Thais were going along with the Saudi version of things until late this afternoon. Now they're saying she won't be returned against her will. Let's see.
INSKEEP: Michael, thanks very much for the update.
SULLIVAN: You're welcome, Steve.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Michael Sullivan in Bangkok.
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NOEL KING, HOST:
We're following a developing story out of Thailand today. A young Saudi Arabian woman who says she fled her family in hear of her life is now under the U.N. refugee agency's protection. Rahaf Mohammed Alqunun is 18 years old. She flew to Thailand, then planned to fly onward to Australia and seek asylum. Thai authorities had her detained at an airport hotel. She's since tweeted that she's heard her father has arrived in Thailand and that it, quote, "worried and scared her." Phil Robertson has spoken to this young woman. He's deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch. Good morning.
PHIL ROBERTSON: Good morning.
KING: So this young woman was supposed to be put on a flight to Kuwait, where her family is vacationing. That did not happen this morning. So where do things stand for her right now?
ROBERTSON: She is saying that she wants to apply for political asylum. She is deathly afraid of going back to Saudi Arabia. She believes that if she does that - she said multiple times that she will be killed. And she has a long list of abuses that she's suffered previously to point to, to back that contention up.
KING: You've been talking to her. What specifically is she saying about the abuse within her family?
ROBERTSON: It was both psychological and physical abuse. The abuse included beatings, included things like, you know, confining her for cutting her hair or for demanding certain things that she wanted to do. She's also said very clearly that she is not enamored of Islam, does not want to wear the hijab and does not want to go to pray. And so, of course, that puts her in a very dangerous situation in Saudi Arabia potentially with the government, in addition to her family.
KING: Hence, probably, the application for political asylum, which is less to do with family stuff and more to do with, is this person in danger in their country? - what kind of spirits is she in?
ROBERTSON: She's determined. She's frankly quite courageous. But she's tired.
KING: Yeah.
ROBERTSON: And she's hungry. She's locked herself in this room since about 8:30 in the morning Bangkok time. And so it is - it's been an all-day ordeal. And it's been highs and lows. There's been people at her door. There's been people trying to trick her, saying open the door. It's Human Rights Watch. Open the door. It's UNHCR. You know, there's all sorts of games being played.
KING: Which brings us to a big question - what is the government there in Bangkok saying? And what is the Saudi government saying at this point?
ROBERTSON: Well, the Saudi government is trying to claim that they have nothing to do with this and that this is all somebody else's doing. But the reality is it was their official who met the plane, you know, as she got off the plane and seized her passport. You know, why that official was allowed to walk around in a closed area of the Bangkok airport is beyond me. But that's happened. For the Thais, they're sort of changing their story now as the pressure comes on. The latest is that the immigration commissioner says he's not going to send her back. But, previously, he was saying yes. It's the family member. Why's she so scared? She should go back now.
KING: So you'll be keeping a close eye on this one, I imagine. Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, thank you so much.
ROBERTSON: Thank you.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The U.S. trade war with China did not happen overnight. It reflects long-term concerns, and it developed over a number of months. But in farming terms, U.S. tariffs and Chinese retaliation has come quite abruptly. China has targeted U.S. soybean exports. And the nature of the farm economy makes it harder for American farmers to adjust. They are preparing to plant more soybeans even though there are now too many of them. Harvest Public Media's Madelyn Beck explains.
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MADELYN BECK, BYLINE: I'm in central Illinois in a 200-foot-long machine shed. On the far end, you can hear a combine running as a mechanic tries to figure out what's wrong with it. On this end, farmer Grant Strom is describing his 80-foot-long planter.
GRANT STROM: Then the seed actually drops right behind here. This is - so the seed tube comes down here, and this is called a shoe.
BECK: Strom farms about 5,000 acres with his family in Knox County, Ill. His two planters will need several weeks of maintenance over the winter to be ready to put seeds in the ground. And like it or not, he's already had to order his seeds. Even while across the country, piles of harvested soybeans sit in storage awaiting buyers, Grant Strom plans to grow more soybeans this year.
STROM: I think a lot of farms are like ours, where - far as planning, like, a crop rotation - are we're going to plant corn, soybeans? - I mean, I'd say 90 percent of our acres are pretty well fixed what we're going to do year in, year out.
BECK: A good crop rotation can help boost yields. And he buys his seeds at early bird discounts. For Strom, his mixture of corn and soybean seed cost at an average $80 to $90 an acre. Multiply that by 5,000 acres, and you're quickly approaching a half-million-dollar seed bill. A lot of Midwest farmers are in the same difficult position. If tariffs with China worsen, they can't make a big shift and just trade out soybeans for other crops. China did start buying some soybeans in December, but it was less than 5 percent what it bought from the U.S. the year before. Most farmers are risking to stick with what worked for them last year. Agronomist Stephanie Porter works with Golden Harvest and helps farmers plan for their next crop.
STEPHANIE PORTER: I think a lot of farmers are keeping - that I've talked to so far - are keeping to what they know. This isn't the first time they've struggled.
BECK: Porter stresses that while every situation is different, all farmers depend on buyers for commodities. And that's where the trade war really hurts. This isn't lost on banks. Mike Shane is an agriculture banker and lender with F&M Bank in Galesburg, Ill. He keeps an eye on trade and crop costs but also monitors the situation of each farm he lends to. He says he won't cut them off just because they had a bad year due to trade policy or crop costs, but...
MIKE SHANE: You know, if a guy shows multiple years of losing money, we want to say, what's going on? We need to stop this, or we're probably going to have to stop lending money.
BECK: Some farmers have been helped by higher crop yields and Washington bailouts. The Trump administration announced in August that it would be spending billions to help farmers suffering from China's tariffs on ag products - namely, soybean farmers.
SHANE: I think that payment was the difference between people making money and not making money this year.
BECK: More bailout money was announced in December. In total, it's about $9.6 billion going to ag producers that suffered from China's retaliatory tariffs. More than $7 billion of that is slated for soybean farmers. But for farmers who need help filling out application forms for federal aid before the January 15 deadline, they may run into this.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
COMPUTER-GENERATED VOICE: Sorry. Nobody is available at this time.
BECK: That's the sound of the government shutdown, which has left many federal offices empty and which is stalling aid payments. There's also no guarantee of bailout money next season if the trade war continues. For NPR News, I'm Madelyn Beck in Galesburg, Ill.
(SOUNDBITE OF POLAROIT'S "LEAVING ALASKA")
INSKEEP: That story comes to us from Harvest Public Media, a reporting collaboration in the Midwest and Plains states.
(SOUNDBITE OF POLAROIT'S "LEAVING ALASKA")
NOEL KING, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Noel King. A few years ago, U.S. diplomats in Cuba complained of hearing a high-pitched tone and then getting headaches and nausea. The U.S. worried it was a sonic attack. Some diplomats recorded the sound and circulated it. Now two scientists who analyzed the recording say they know what it is. It's crickets. They add, it's not proof that the diplomats weren't targeted by something else, but that particular sound, they think - just bugs. It's MORNING EDITION.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
A group of midlevel U.S. trade officials has begun talks today in Beijing. They're working toward a trade agreement. The United States wants concessions in Chinese business practices. And, in exchange, the U.S. would eliminate tariffs recently imposed on Chinese goods. NPR's Rob Schmitz joins us from Shanghai.
Hi there, Rob.
ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: I guess we should bear in mind, they're talking about getting rid of these tariffs, but tariffs could also go up, right?
SCHMITZ: That's right. President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping agreed a month ago at a dinner meeting at the G-20 in Argentina that they'd hash out their differences over a 90-day period in the hopes that they'd reach a deal in that time. That 90-day period ends on March 2. And if the two sides don't come to a new trade agreement by then, the Trump administration plans to increase tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports from 10 to 25 percent. Both countries have had tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of each other's goods since last summer.
INSKEEP: Would you just remind us, for people who are coming back to the news after the holidays, what are the sticking points here?
SCHMITZ: Well, the Trump administration has a list of demands. It wants Beijing to end its practice of forcing American companies to hand over key technology in return for doing business in China. It also wants China to buy more products from the U.S. in order to reduce the trade deficit, and it wants a fairer playing field for U.S. companies inside of China. Now, Beijing's prepared to buy more American products. That's easy enough to meet the demands of hundreds of millions of consumers here. But what's going to be difficult for the Chinese side is to level the playing field for U.S. companies inside of China. And to do that properly would require significant changes in how China manages its economy, changes that would put the Chinese government and its state-owned enterprises in a vulnerable position.
INSKEEP: Well...
SCHMITZ: So that is the big sticking point from Beijing's perspective.
INSKEEP: Well, let's think that through. You have to assume that China would only do that if they faced enormous pressure, if they faced enormous pain. The United States is attempting to impose this pain through 10 percent tariffs and threaten more pain with 25 percent tariffs, should it go through with that. So that then raises a question. Is it possible to tell, Rob, if the tariffs are having that much of an effect - a negative effect on China right now?
SCHMITZ: Well, there has been a lot of chatter among Chinese economists about this in recent months. And the consensus is that, yes, China's economic growth is slowing more than anticipated since the tariffs were imposed. You know, and this is backed up by lower-than-expected consumption numbers in China and also from announcements like Apple CEO Tim Cook's not too long ago that his company's numbers would be worse than expected due to China's downward economic trend. So, yes, there is some data here and evidence that China's economy is hurting because of this.
INSKEEP: And that's - is an interesting point. U.S. tariffs, in a way, hurt American consumers because they raise prices of goods here. I suppose Chinese retaliation raises prices of goods in China, right? And so that might affect Chinese consumers in a way.
SCHMITZ: Absolutely. If those tariffs remain, imports into China from the U.S. are, you know, of course, tariffed. And, of course, you know, China's consumer group - the consumers of China really rely on a lot of increasingly imported goods, and a lot of those imported goods are from the United States.
INSKEEP: OK. Rob, thanks for the update, really appreciate it.
SCHMITZ: Thank you.
INSKEEP: NPR's Rob Schmitz is in Shanghai.
(SOUNDBITE OF TESK'S "GREEN STAMPS")
NOEL KING, HOST:
California Governor Jerry Brown finishes his term today. He's always liked reeling off Latin quotes and obscure literary and historical references. Ben Adler of Capital Public Radio has a reporter's notebook of some of Brown's more memorable quips during his final go-round as governor.
BEN ADLER, BYLINE: You might expect a drop in entertainment value when a movie star leaves the governor's office. But Jerry Brown took California politics from Arnold Schwarzenegger's...
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ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER: I'll be back.
ADLER: To Latin.
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JERRY BROWN: I've often used the phrase from Thomas Hobbes, bellum omnes contra omnes - or rather, bellum omni contra omnes.
ADLER: That was Brown quoting a 17th century English philosopher during a state budget update in May 2011, back when California faced a $27 billion deficit. He was urging Republicans to strike a deal that would let voters decide whether to extend expiring tax increases. Otherwise, he translated...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BROWN: ...War of all against all. It will be - everyone will return to their corner and devise strategies on what California does.
ADLER: There was no deal. So later that year, after signing a budget with automatic cuts if state revenues came in below projections, Brown again turned to Latin.
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BROWN: There's a very simple - I wanted to invoke a Latin phrase here - nemo dat non habet. It means, no man gives what he does not have. The state cannot give what it does not have.
ADLER: Brown would also sprinkle in little quips when speaking off the cuff. For example, in September of 2011, as he was slogging through hundreds of bills on his desk...
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BROWN: Not every human problem needs a law.
ADLER: ...A statement he sometimes echoed in his veto messages, which themselves were often quite entertaining. And last month, at the Sacramento Press Club, he put forth perhaps the most Jerry Brown quote ever.
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BROWN: I'm not here to make news. I'm here to enlighten you.
(LAUGHTER)
ADLER: As for literary and historical references, you'd be hard-pressed to top the 20 that Brown weaved into his 2013 State of the State address. For example...
(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)
BROWN: Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Genesis.
Then the lean cows ate up the fat cows.
Quiz-bits (ph).
William Butler Yeats.
The principle of subsidiarity.
"The Little Engine That Could."
ADLER: And in his 2017 State of the State...
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BROWN: Let me end in the immortal words of Woody Guthrie...
ADLER: Brown quoted Guthrie's progressive folk anthem, "This Land Is Your Land," as he urged a state still reeling from President Trump's election to respond with courage and perseverance.
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BROWN: Nobody living can ever make me turn back. This land was made for you and me.
California's not turning back - not now, not ever. His truth is marching on.
(APPLAUSE)
ADLER: That last line, an ad-lib inserted in the moment, from another famed American anthem, "The Battle Hymn Of The Republic." For NPR News, I'm Ben Adler in Sacramento.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Hollywood began the awards season last night with some surprises at the Golden Globes. Many people expected "A Star Is Born" to sweep the awards. Instead, the top honors went to "Green Book" and "Bohemian Rhapsody." Here's NPR's Mandalit del Barco.
MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: The biopic "Bohemian Rhapsody" was the champion of the drama category, winning best motion picture. Rami Malek earned a best actor trophy for his portrayal of the late singer Freddie Mercury from the British rock band Queen.
(SOUNDBITE OF 76TH GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS)
RAMI MALEK: Thank you to Freddie Mercury for giving me the joy of a lifetime. I love you, you beautiful man. This is for and because of you, gorgeous.
(APPLAUSE)
DEL BARCO: The biggest winner of the night was a film celebrating the friendship of an African-American classical and jazz pianist and his Italian-American driver and bodyguard in the Deep South in the 1960s. "Green Book" earned three Golden Globes - best motion picture musical or comedy, best screenplay and best supporting actor Mahershala Ali. Peter Farrelly, who wrote, directed and produced "Green Book," said he wanted to share a real-life story of hope.
(SOUNDBITE OF 76TH GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS)
PETER FARRELLY: Because we're still living in divided times, maybe more so than ever. And that's who this movie's for. It's for everybody. If Don Shirley and Tony Vallelonga can find common ground, we all can.
DEL BARCO: Finding common ground was what Alfonso Cuaron says he wanted to do with "Roma." He based the movie he wrote and directed on his childhood memories of growing up in Mexico City. "Roma" earned two Golden Globes - best foreign language film and best director. Onstage and backstage, Cuaron talked about cinema building bridges, not walls, between cultures. Cuaron thanked his home country, his lead actresses and the woman they portrayed on screen - his mother, and the woman who helped raise him, Liboria Rodriguez.
(SOUNDBITE OF 76TH GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS)
ALFONSO CUARON: (Speaking Spanish).
DEL BARCO: In the television categories, one of the big winners of the night was "The Assassination Of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story." In his acceptance speech, executive producer Brad Simpson said the forces of hate and fear that led to Versace's murder 20 years ago remain.
(SOUNDBITE OF 76TH GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS)
BRAD SIMPSON: As artists, we must fight back by representing those who are not represented, and...
(APPLAUSE)
SIMPSON: ...By providing a space for people who are new voices to tell stories that haven't been told. As human beings, we should resist in the streets, resist at the ballot box, and practice love and empathy in our everyday lives.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SHALLOW")
LADY GAGA: (Singing) Ain't it hard keepin' it so hardcore?
DEL BARCO: "A Star Is Born" earned a Golden Globe for best original song, but the film's star, Lady Gaga, graciously lost out in the best actress category to an astonished Glenn Close.
(SOUNDBITE OF 76TH GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS)
GLENN CLOSE: Oh, my gosh. How - I'm just...
(APPLAUSE)
DEL BARCO: Close got a standing ovation for talking about women like her character in "The Wife" and her own mother, both of whom she said sublimated themselves to their husbands.
(SOUNDBITE OF 76TH GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS)
CLOSE: You know, women, we're nurturers. That's what's expected of us. We have our children. We have our husbands, if we're lucky enough, and our partners - whoever. But we have to find personal fulfillment. We have to fill our - you know, follow our dreams. We have to say, I can do that, and I should be allowed to do that.
DEL BARCO: Patricia Clarkson got a best supporting actress trophy for the limited series "Sharp Objects." She thanked her director, Jean-Marc Vallee.
(SOUNDBITE OF 76TH GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS)
PATRICIA CLARKSON: You demanded everything of me except sex, which is exactly how it should be in our industry.
(APPLAUSE)
DEL BARCO: And Regina King, who got an award for her role in the film, "If Beale Street Could Talk," vowed to make sure that everything she produces in the next two years is made 50 percent by women. One woman captured the full range of the evening's emotions, TV legend Carol Burnett. She was honored for her long career with the inaugural Carol Burnett TV Achievement Award. She recalled her variety show of the '60s and '70s.
(SOUNDBITE OF 76TH GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS)
CAROL BURNETT: I'm just happy that our show happened when it did and that I can look back and say once more, I am so glad we had this time together. Thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
DEL BARCO: As she's done on TV for decades, Carol Burnett tugged her ear and signed off.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I'M SO GLAD WE HAD THIS TIME TOGETHER")
BURNETT: (Singing) Guess it's time for me to say so long.
(APPLAUSE)
DEL BARCO: Mandalit del Barco, NPR News.
NOEL KING, HOST:
It is Day 17 of a partial government shutdown. Today talks are going to continue between congressional leaders and White House officials, but President Trump is sticking to his demand for border wall funding. He did, however, signal a possible change when he talked to reporters after getting off Marine One at the White House.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The barrier or the wall could be of steel instead of concrete, if that helps people. It may be better.
KING: Steel or concrete, our next guest says it's naive to reduce this fight to a border wall, that it's become instead a fight about symbols. Conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg is with us now. He's the senior editor of the National Review. Jonah, thanks for coming in this morning.
JONAH GOLDBERG: It's always great to be here.
KING: So sometimes a wall is just a wall, or a wall is not just a wall. What are you arguing?
GOLDBERG: Well, part of my argument is just simply that for both sides it's become a zero-sum thing. If Trump wins, Democrats feel like they've lost, and vice versa, which is sort of emblematic of our politics generally these days. But it's very difficult to compromise on something symbolic, right? You know, we'll just make the Confederate flag a little smaller is not something that the other side is going to buy into. And for Donald Trump and his biggest supporters, the wall is symbolic of his presidency. It's symbolic of the reason why he was elected. And if he backs down on that, it's basically a major cave of the whole sort of MAGA agenda. And we heard Nancy Pelosi saying the wall is an immorality. Right?
KING: Yeah.
GOLDBERG: Right. So her position - which is understandable, given where the Democratic base is - is not 1 inch, not $1 for this. And so when I say it's symbolic, I'm not trying to minimize it. It's that people are now investing elements of this sort of identity and their worldview into this fight. I also think one of the things that's driving this dynamic is that Donald Trump is more in a re-election mode right now than he is in an actual negotiating mode. He needs to show his base that he fought for this wall really, really hard, even if he eventually caves. I don't - I still can't quite get my head around this, you know, this compromise about making the wall out of steel. (Laughter).
KING: I'm not sure anyone can at this point.
GOLDBERG: I mean, I haven't found the constituency was the demanding that we change the building material as the solution to any of this. But I think this will probably go on for quite a while yet.
KING: You've written that you know some conservative border security advocates who would really like other policies - better verification of visas, for example - instead of, you know, a physical wall. Why haven't visas become one of these big symbols?
GOLDBERG: Well, again, that's sort of the dilemma. There are plenty people on the left who would gladly take a docket deal, right? You know, legalize the DREAMers, bring them all in, in exchange for $5 billion of wall funding. There are plenty people on the right who would love to get E-Verify and all these kinds of things. There are public policy compromises to be done here. The problem is, is that we are now on the role of sort of metaphysics and symbolism that says - you know, I've mentioned this on the show before. You know, my favorite New Yorker cartoon has one dog drinking martinis with another dog, and he says, you know, it's not good enough that dogs succeed. Cats must also fail. And...
KING: That's where we're at, you think?
GOLDBERG: That is where we're at on this issue. Nancy Pelosi trying very, very hard to not have the Democrats go in guns a-blazing for impeachment. And if the base is there demanding blood and if she caves on the wall, that probably heightens the contradictions, or it makes it more difficult for her to hold the base at bay. And on the Republican side, Mitch McConnell is running for re-election in 2020. Donald Trump is popular in his state, and he doesn't want to play this game where he negotiates knowing that Trump is eventually going to do whatever he's going to do. So I just think it's going to drag on for quite a while.
KING: The president has gone on Twitter a lot lately to try to drum up support for the wall. CNBC looked into this, and they found that his tweets concerning the border skyrocketed in the month of December. And a lot of people seemed to like them. On December 30, one of his tweets got nearly a quarter of a million likes. Do you think that response, that popular response, is making him more comfortable with - in sticking with this decision, even as hundreds of thousands of federal workers say, you know, hey, man, I can't pay my rent, maybe, next month.
GOLDBERG: Yeah. I mean, it was the most likes on Twitter since James Madison, I think.
KING: (Laughter).
GOLDBERG: Absolutely. Look, he's also in a bit of an echo chamber on the right. One of the reasons why he backed out of the budget deal in the first place was because Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity and various figures on the right said, you cannot buckle on this wall issue. And he lives in that bubble. Those are the people he talks to. One of the things that concerns me greatly as a conservative is, he's talking to people, and you hear - I was listening to people on "Fox And Friends" this morning talking - where I'm a contributor at Fox - talking about how he should just go ahead and declare a state of emergency and build this thing with this military eminent domain stuff.
As a limited government conservative, depending on how he did that, that strikes me as an impeachable act. Harry Truman couldn't get away - shouldn't have gotten away with nationalizing the steel industry during war. The idea that presidents can now start unilaterally preempting Congress entirely would be an outrage under any other president for conservatives, and it should be one under him, as well.
KING: Sounds like it's worth talking to some lawyers. Jonah Goldberg is a conservative commentator and senior editor at the National Review. Jonah, thanks so much.
GOLDBERG: Great to be here. Thank you.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Several kinds of people are directly affected by the partial government shutdown. There are federal workers who are furloughed, not being paid. There are federal workers who must work and are also not being paid. They may get back pay eventually once a deal is reached, but then there are contract workers who have little chance to collect back pay for the work they're missing. NPR's David Welna has the story.
DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: Sixty-two-year-old Greg Seymour is an archaeologist who works in the Great Basin National Park that spreads across the Nevada-Utah border. He's employed by a company that's a contractor with the National Park Service, but he's not working.
GREG SEYMOUR: It's been a couple of weeks now. I actually feel stabbed in the back. It's kind of depressing, actually.
WELNA: And because he's not billing any hours, Seymour does not expect to get any back pay whenever the shutdown ends.
SEYMOUR: I was going to buy a truck - a brand new truck. That is on, possibly, permanent hold now because I don't feel like I can trust the economy - my economy, especially. So I'm just going to live with what I have.
WELNA: Seymour did not apply for unemployment insurance when he was first furloughed. He considered it a pittance, but he intends to do so today.
SEYMOUR: And I'm not really sure it's worthwhile. I've never done that before, so that would be a new experience for me. And frankly, I really don't want to collect unemployment. But if I have to, I will.
WELNA: And so, too, are many other federal contract employees. New York University's Paul Light is a leading expert on the federal workforce. He says there's been scant public awareness of the contract workers' plight during shutdowns. That's because unlike federal employees, there is no systematic tracking of those contract workers. What is known is there is a lot of them.
PAUL LIGHT: I estimate that we have about 4.1 million contract employees - full-time equivalent. So we've got a very large federal workforce with a majority of employees who are not on Uncle Sam's direct payroll. They are part of the indirect workforce.
WELNA: And yet, they've been directly affected.
JOE PINNETTI: I did not think the national politics would be affecting my role as an IT specialist at United States Fish and Wildlife.
WELNA: That's 33-year-old Joe Pinnetti. Normally, he gets $22 an hour working for a company in Western Massachusetts that contracts with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. But he has not worked at all since the shutdown began and does not expect to recover his lost income.
PINNETTI: When you're a contractor, it's understand that there's a certain amount of risk taken with your job. So I don't think that the federal government will see it as something that they need to compensate us for.
WELNA: Pinnetti lives alone, and he's already begun collecting unemployment insurance. Hopes of finishing a college degree have been put on hold by the shutdown.
PINNETTI: It's going to be rough. I'm digging deep into my savings right now. I would remain solvent for about two more months. The problem is I'm already having to sacrifice things to do so. I mean, this showdown has costs. So I might have to take a semester off from school to rebuild my savings.
WELNA: Pinnetti expects to still have a job whenever the shutdown ends, but NYU's Light says it's a different matter for those employed by smaller contractors.
LIGHT: And that's where you would expect to see some pretty significant impacts of even a two-week shutdown - even a week shutdown because the smaller the business, the more likely it is to lay off workers at the first sign that there might be a delay in payment.
WELNA: Take, for example, Celeste Voigt.
CELESTE VOIGT: I have four people who, besides myself, are out of work.
WELNA: Voigt, who's legally blind, has a vending concession to sell hot meals at two federal workplaces in South Dakota. She and all four of her employees have been idled by the shutdown. And she fears they'll be forced to find work elsewhere. Congress, she says, should do something about that.
VOIGT: I think they should reimburse me as a business so that I can pay my employees because I cannot buy insurance, like anybody else, if - this is not a natural disaster. It isn't because I am not responsible enough to run a business or I've done something wrong. It's like I'm getting punished because I'm working, trying to help provide for the government workers that are in the building.
WELNA: According to President Trump, people like Celeste Voigt, who've been idled by the shutdown, may be getting something else - a wall along the Mexican border.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Many of those workers have said to me and communicated stay out until you get the funding for the wall. These federal workers want the wall.
VOIGT: I don't know who he's talking to (laughter). So what am I going to say about that?
WELNA: Again, small federal contractor Celeste Voigt.
VOIGT: Apparently he doesn't understand anytime there's a government shutdown, whatever the reason, it's not appropriate. I guess we're holding ourselves hostage. That's how I feel (laughter).
WELNA: By we, Voigt says she means the entire nation. But she and the thousands of other furloughed federal contractors may be paying the greatest price as this shutdown continues. David Welna, NPR News, Washington.
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NOEL KING, HOST:
2018 was a turbulent year, both here in the U.S. and across the world. So what's in store for 2019? The forecast for the coming year released today by the political risk consultancy the Eurasia Group says the geopolitical environment is the most dangerous it has been in decades. Our co-host Rachel Martin asked its president Ian Bremmer, what is so frightening about this particular moment?
IAN BREMMER: What's scary is that just about everything that could be trending badly in the world of geopolitics is. And that's true both if you look internally at the increasing lack of legitimacy of political institutions and leaders across pretty much all of the world's advanced industrial democracies and, at the same time, the geopolitics - the relationships. Whether it's U.S.-Russia, U.S.-China, within the Middle East - those relations are all trending worse, too. So your resilience - your ability to respond to shocks when they occur is absolutely at the lowest level since we started the firm 21 years ago. And yet, and yet...
RACHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: And yet - yes, give me the and yet (laughter).
BREMMER: And yet, the global economy is doing pretty well. And the likelihood of anything actually blowing up this year is still comparatively low. If you're just taking a 12-month perspective, 2019 is probably going to feel pretty good. But for you and I living in the world or raising kids, we're thinking about the future. This actually feels pretty scary.
MARTIN: So that explains why a lot of these sections, when talking about the rise of populism or the instability in America's political system - that you begin those sections with the words not urgent. So these are things that could get real bad, but we're not there yet.
BREMMER: Exactly. Think about all of the major challenges that exist out there today. Whether it's the U.S.-China relationship or the sustainability of Europe, the rise of populism and nationalism, none of these things are urgent. It feels like talking about climate change 30 or 40 years ago, you know, where we knew - the science was there. But it wasn't urgent so there was no need to respond to it that way. That's kind of the way the whole geopolitical order feels today.
MARTIN: We're already in a trade war with China. How do you see that threat evolving in 2019? Even if you don't see it as necessarily urgent, how's it going to change in the next 12 months?
BREMMER: I think that the likelihood of a trade war exploding is very low. President Trump clearly sees China and Xi Jinping the way he sees North Korea and Kim Jong Un - a tough nut to crack, but one that he's on top of. And he wants to get to a deal. So his willingness to accept something that is considerably less than his cabinet would accept, for example, I think is quite high. But there are so many areas where the world's two largest economies are going to be going at each other. And that's a real problem. It's a problem for the global economy over time. And it's a problem for all of those countries that aren't the U.S. and China and have to decide, how the hell do you balance these things? How do you choose?
MARTIN: Russia - where do you rank Russia in the list of global threats?
BREMMER: Well, Russia plays out in a few of these. The big one is on the cyber side, especially because the Trump White House is now much more significantly talking about using offensive capabilities to more actively deter. And it's not going to work. And especially with the investigations coming out where the Russians are going to have a lot of their relations with the United States in ways that Putin doesn't like made public, the potential that the Russians then use cyber to really come after the U.S. in a way that is damaging and dangerous is going up. So I do think that Russia is one of the higher-risk factors generally in the world this year.
MARTIN: How do you perceive the political instability here in the U.S.? I mean, we've touched on it. But when you've got a president under multiple federal investigations - we're expecting the special counsel Robert Mueller's report out this year - how does this fit into a global analysis of risk?
BREMMER: You know, after two years of President Trump, the single biggest takeaway that we should have is how strong American institutions are - how little he's been able to actually break, how constrained he is, how much he's kind of like a guy. I mean, he's the president, but the president's a guy. And he's not God. He's not Putin. He's not Xi Jinping. He's not even Erdogan. But I do think that it's very clear, when the investigations are coming down - and they're getting closer to Trump personally, to Trump's family and to Trump's wealth, Trump's organization - that Trump's modus operandi is to hit back, is to escalate. And his willingness to use the powers of the presidency, both legal and perhaps less so, perhaps more questionably - I think that is going to play out in 2019 to a degree. And the potential for that to end up in the courts and even become a constitutional crisis where an independent judiciary has to rule to constrain the president's asserted powers - I believe that, if that does indeed happen, that the president is very likely to be constrained. And the judiciary will indeed stand as a far stronger institution than an individual president.
MARTIN: I was surprised to see where Saudi Arabia ranks in the list of threats. And considering the destabilizing effect of the war in Yemen - the Saudi-led and U.S.-supported war in Yemen and the rise of Mohammed bin Salman with autocratic tendencies in the Saudi regime, I was surprised it didn't fall higher on your list of threats. It was kind of a smaller addendum.
BREMMER: Yeah. It's a red herring. It's indeed where we put those things that people talk about as risks that we truly believe will not play out. And I think two reasons for that. One is because Mohammed bin Salman is going nowhere. The recent cabinet shuffle has definitely, you know, put more oversight around him. But they're also all loyalists. They're close to the family. There's not a question that Mohammed bin Salman is suddenly going to be out. Also, we are seeing progress. There's a cease-fire in the port of Hudaydah in Yemen right now, which reduces the danger for the world's worst humanitarian crisis. That deal was structured by Mohammed bin Salman.
MARTIN: Ian Bremmer is the president of the Eurasia Group. We've been talking about their 2019 report on global risk. Ian, thanks so much.
BREMMER: My pleasure.
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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
What's a smart way for Democrats to play their hand? Democrats, of course, control the House now. They'd like to pass some bills. They would also like to check President Trump and pave the way for the 2020 election. One bold new voice belongs to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The freshman lawmaker took a turn on "60 Minutes" last night. And in a conversation with Anderson Cooper, she flatly called the president a racist.
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ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: I think he's a symptom of a problem.
ANDERSON COOPER: What do you mean?
OCASIO-CORTEZ: The president certainly didn't invent racism, but he's certainly given a voice to it and expanded it and created a platform for those things.
COOPER: Do you believe President Trump is a racist?
OCASIO-CORTEZ: Yeah, yeah. No question.
INSKEEP: She also talked of a top tax rate of up to 70 percent to pay for a Green New Deal. Another lawmaker used profanity while talking of impeachment. And then there's the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who's been much more measured, saying, for example, that if impeachment ever came, it would have to be bipartisan. Margie Omero is watching all this. She is a Democratic strategist, hosts a podcast called The Pollsters, is a regular guest here. Good morning.
MARGIE OMERO: Good morning.
INSKEEP: Thanks for coming by.
OMERO: No problem.
INSKEEP: How are Democrats doing at seizing the conversation?
OMERO: Well, look, I think the swearing-in ceremony, the incredible diversity and excitement people felt about the candidates in the newly elected Congress was an incredibly powerful moment that really made Democrats feel very excited and energized. And look at the things that have happened, what the new Democratic majority has been trying to do - HR 1, which is a broad bill that would reform the way elections work, would try to take corporate special interest money out of politics, would make voting and elections more fair. They're trying to reopen the government. You've been talking about that this morning.
INSKEEP: Sure.
OMERO: And that's obviously an important priority. So I think the things that Democrats are talking about are the things that voters say they want to see done.
INSKEEP: Well, are there voters on the left side of this spectrum who are clamoring for an impeachment?
OMERO: You know, look, I think there are a lot of tensions and excitement from some folks on the left. I think what voters want to see - they feel that government is broken and Washington is broken. We have a new poll that's come out this morning. Eighty percent of Americans feel that Washington and government is broken. And...
INSKEEP: Oh, is it only 80 percent? OK.
OMERO: (Laughter) Right. I mean, you have a majority who feel the president lies more than other presidents. You have a majority who feel that - the Democrat feels that that Trump feels that he is above the law - that he thinks he's above the law. So there are a lot of people, a majority of Americans, who are really concerned and exhausted and feel anxious about what's happening right now.
INSKEEP: Now, let's note that in the election just passed, a lot of Democrats did not talk about the president that much. They kind of took a pass on direct shots at the president and tried to talk about their substantive ideas - what they wanted to favor. Some people noticed that Elizabeth Warren over the weekend, when she went to Iowa - she's doing some preliminary presidential campaigning - she was perceived as generally avoiding saying the president's name unless someone prompted her with a question in a town hall meeting kind of format. Is it smarter for Democrats to simply play their game, pass their bills even if they're not going to become law and let the president sink or swim on his own?
OMERO: Well, you have a lot of Republicans who don't want to talk about the president, either.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
OMERO: I mean, you have Senator Cory Gardner out of Colorado, even though he votes with the president almost, you know, most of the time, trying to distance himself in a couple ways. So this is something that both parties have been doing. And I think, you know, voters voted for Democrats because they were interested in protecting health care. I mean, I did dozens and dozens of focus groups throughout 2018, and people were talking about the issues. They're - voters are much more nuanced and complex in how they are approaching this than, I think, the - a lot of times we give them credit for.
INSKEEP: Let me ask about another thing. We have elsewhere in the program today Jonah Goldberg, the conservative commentator for National Review, who observed that the wall - this battle over the wall that has led to the government shutdown - it's a symbol. It's a symbolic debate. And in Jonah's view, it's hard to compromise a symbol because how do you give up on symbolism? You can't just cut the difference on the money that the president is asking for a wall. That's a problem for the president. Is it also a problem for Democrats? They can't just say, OK, take 1 billion instead of 5 billion or whatever because it has become symbolically difficult to agree to something that the speaker of the House calls an immorality?
OMERO: I think that, you know, the president certainly doesn't have a lot of credibility on issues like immigration with a lot of folks on the left and even with a lot of independents who have strongly, strongly opposed his position on things like family separation and taking children away from their parents at the border. So I think that's where a lot of this is coming from. But on immigration specifically - this is also true on other issues - there are a lot of voters who can see there is a path where we can come together and have reasonable discussions and come up with policy solutions. And I think that that's what voters want to see happen with the next Congress.
INSKEEP: Very briefly, are Democrats comfortable just letting this shutdown go on for weeks?
OMERO: I think it's harmful for voters. It's harmful for everybody. People don't want to see Washington broken. I think everybody wants to see Washington get back to work.
INSKEEP: Margie Omero, thanks so much.
OMERO: Thank you.
NOEL KING, HOST:
In October of the year 2000, there was a terror attack on the USS Cole. Seventeen sailors were killed, and dozens more were injured. Al-Qaida claimed responsibility, and then President Bill Clinton vowed to go after them.
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BILL CLINTON: If, as it now appears, this was an act of terrorism, it was a despicable and cowardly act. We will find out who was responsible and hold them accountable.
KING: Now more than 18 years later, U.S. Central Command confirms that on New Year's Day, Jamal al-Badawi was killed in a precision strike in Central Yemen. He was one of the alleged planners. NPR's Quil Lawrence has the story.
QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: Badawi was killed in Marib province, east of the Yemeni capital Sanaa. The alleged al-Qaida operative had been indicted by a U.S. grand jury 15 years ago but eluded U.S. custody even as he was twice imprisoned in Yemen and twice escaped. He was believed to be around 55 years old. Similar assassinations have been carried out by armed CIA drones, but CENTCOM officials offered no further details of the Badawi strike. The U.S. government had a $5 million bounty on his head. The attack on the USS Cole, coming a year before 9/11, would later be seen as an unheeded warning that al-Qaida's network of extremists was capable of inflicting serious damage on the U.S. military using asymmetrical tactics. Two suicide bombers in a small boat motored alongside the U.S. destroyer as it refueled in the Yemeni harbor of Aden. They detonated a thousand-pound bomb that ripped open the hull, killing and wounding dozens. At the time, Yemen was a relatively stable American ally. Today the country is riven by civil war and famine, with the U.S. supporting Saudi Arabia's deadly air campaign against Iranian-backed rebels. Badawi organized the logistics of the attack from Yemen. But the alleged mastermind of the Cole bombing, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, is in American custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He faces charges before a military tribunal, which carry the death penalty. President Trump tweeted praise of the military and said, quote, "our work against al-Qaida continues. We will never stop in our fight against radical Islamic terrorism." But Washington has delivered a mixed message about whether it will continue fighting the Islamic State group in Syria after President Trump had signaled his intent to pull out U.S. troops. Quil Lawrence, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. A Pennsylvania man was given a platform to speak and made use of it. Dale Sourbeck is accused of breaking into a music store in Pittston. Police say surveillance video shows him stealing two guitars. WNAP reports a TV camera caught the arrested man escorted to a police car. And when he was asked for comment, he replied, go Eagles. He was cheering on the Philadelphia pro football team that's trying to return to the Super Bowl in the playoffs on Sunday. It's MORNING EDITION.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Two undefeated teams play for the college football championship tonight. Number one-ranked Alabama plays number two Clemson. They are meeting in the playoff for the fourth straight year. And if that feels monotonous to you, NPR's Tom Goldman reports the fans of the two teams don't really care.
TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: The key word here is again. And how you say it reveals which side you're on. If it's Alabama and Clemson are playing again, Cheryll Woods-Flowers has no time for you. The 63-year-old real estate agent is a diehard Clemson fan sitting in her South Carolina home wearing Clemson colors, an orange Fitbit, purple glasses with purple rhinestones. Woods-Flowers reads her recent tweet to the complainers.
CHERYLL WOODS-FLOWERS: I said, listening to some sports talk on the radio while taking care of some paperwork and only had one thing to say. If you people are sick of Clemson, Alabama, then your team just needs to beat them. If no one can do that, then you just need to shut up, period (laughter).
GOLDMAN: In Alabama, the message is the same. Don't like tonight's matchup? Then beat us, says Birmingham resident Bobby Wesson.
BOBBY WESSON: But you can't just beat them on the field. You're going to have to beat Alabama in recruiting. You're going to have to beat Alabama in the weight room. You're going to have to beat Alabama in practice. You're going to have to beat...
GOLDMAN: OK, OK. And judging by Alabama's and Clemson's easy wins in the playoff semifinals, no one can beat them, especially 'Bama. The Crimson Tide are trying to win a sixth national title in 10 years. And this team may be the best. For all that dominance, Alabama hasn't had a dazzling, game-changing quarterback until now.
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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Tagovailoa steps up, fires to the end zone. Got it - Irv Smith for the touchdown.
GOLDMAN: Sophomore lefthander Tua Tagovailoa has turned Alabama into an exciting offensive team. Even the haters have to admit, 47 points a game - the Crimson Tide's season average - makes you sit forward and want to watch. But there is a seeming alchemy to the on-field success - Alabama's attention to detail in everything from recruiting athletes to analytics to what players eat.
And not surprisingly, Clemson has adopted much of the Alabama template for success, right down to turning the offense over to a freshman quarterback, Trevor Lawrence, the way Alabama head coach, Nick Saban, did with then-freshman Tagovailoa in last season's title game. Despite this football greatness, there is 'Bama-Clemson fatigue and nosediving championship ticket prices in recent days, although that may be as much about location. The game is in Santa Clara, Calif.
ANN KILLION: The Bay Area's just not a hotbed for college football.
GOLDMAN: San Francisco Chronicle sports columnist Ann Killion was skeptical when Santa Clara was awarded the game so far from college football's power center in the South.
KILLION: So it becomes a very difficult trip, very expensive for the hardcore fans of these schools that were likely to be the schools getting there.
GOLDMAN: College football playoff executive director Bill Hancock defends the choice. He told the San Jose Mercury News, we love the vibe we get from this area. The dedicated fans from earlier in the story will be sending their vibes from home, but not being there won't lessen their excitement.
For all the playoff familiarity, Clemson and Alabama have put on great shows. Two of the previous games were decided by five points or less. Alabama is favored - when is it not? - and while Crimson Tide fan Bobby Wesson may sound cocky, he really is just stating fact.
WESSON: When your team beats Alabama, it's a momentous occasion. It's a storied event. But understand when Alabama beats you, it's just Saturday.
GOLDMAN: Or Monday. Again, Tom Goldman. NPR News.
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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The president of CBS News is stepping down. David Rhodes gives way to Susan Zirinsky, the first woman to lead that news division. In the TV world, she is well-known as a CBS producer and documentary maker. NPR's David Folkenflik reports.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: Last night, Rhodes announced, quote, "The world we cover is changing. How we cover it is changing. And it's the right time for me to make a change, too." He had emphasized hard news, launched the digital news service CBSN and helped reinvent CBS's morning news show, winning new viewers and critical acclaim. Then there were the scandals.
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NORAH O'DONNELL: CBS News has suspended our co-host Charlie Rose over allegations of sexual misconduct.
FOLKENFLIK: Rhodes fired Rose in Fall 2017. Ratings sagged in the morning without Rose and in the evening under new anchor Jeff Glor. CBS's corporate Chairman Les Moonves stepped down last year after accusations of sexual assault that he denies. Days later, Rhodes fired former "60 Minutes" executive producer Jeff Fager over his threat to a CBS News journalist reporting on allegations against him. Some "60 Minutes" staffers angrily defended Fager. Zirinsky has worked throughout CBS News for more than four decades but represents a new start.
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SUSAN ZIRINKSY: It was uneventful until 8:46 on September 11.
FOLKENFLIK: In 2006, Zirinsky based a documentary on footage that filmmakers captured by chance.
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ZIRINSKY: These were amazing guys that found themselves at the gates of hell. But they had the wherewithal to not stop shooting.
FOLKENFLIK: Zirinsky says she'll champion hard news and compelling storytelling. Fun fact - she inspired a character on the movie "Broadcast News."
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HOLLY HUNTER: (As Jane Craig) What? We only have 10 minutes left. How can you talk to me about parking problems? No - not you'll try. You'll do it.
FOLKENFLIK: Holly Hunter played a hard-driving executive producer.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) I had no idea she was this good.
FOLKENFLIK: That punchline delivered by her fictional news chief - in March, Zirinsky becomes the first female president of CBS News for real. David Folkenflik, NPR News, New York.
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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Let's examine the power of a phrase. The phrase is national emergency. President Trump has talked about one. He says he might invoke emergency powers to order construction of a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border. The fact is that the total number of people believed to cross each year is far down from historic highs. That is true despite an increase recently, but here's how the president described the border situation over the weekend.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And we have an absolute crisis and of criminals and gang members coming through. It is national security. It's a national emergency.
INSKEEP: So do emergency powers let him order a wall? Here to help answer that question is NPR White House correspondent Scott Horsley. Scott, good morning.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: So what are the president's emergency powers?
HORSLEY: The president does have some power under the National Emergencies Act to shift money from, say, one account, the Defense Department, to another. This is designed to give him flexibility to deal with an urgent situation. It's not designed to cut Congress out of the budgeting process.
INSKEEP: OK. So does the president alone get to decide when there is an emergency that would allow him to do this?
HORSLEY: He is allowed to do that, but he is expected to inform Congress. And if he were to try to use his emergency powers in this situation, it would almost certainly invite a legal challenge.
INSKEEP: Oh, OK. So there is some question there as to whether he has that kind of authority, but he can at least start the process. So is it clear that these powers would then allow him to shift that money from one budget pot to another, as you say, in order to order construction of a wall?
HORSLEY: Lots of questions would come up. For example, which military project would he leave unfunded in order to move that money over to wall construction, and how would a wall actually address the real situation we're confronting at the border? Which is a surge of asylum-seekers in family groups coming from Central America, most of whom turn themselves in to Border Patrol agents.
INSKEEP: Oh, then this is an interesting point that you're making here, Scott. There are multiple problems, multiple complications at the border. And this wall doesn't necessarily address the one that has made news recently, you're saying.
HORSLEY: That's right.
INSKEEP: So this is all a backdrop, in a sense, to a discussion over these negotiations to reopen the government. The president has said he will not sign routine spending bills that would open parts of the government that have been closed for a number of weeks now unless he gets some kind of funding for this border wall. There were talks over the weekend. Did the two sides make any progress?
HORSLEY: No, not really. And in fact, the president said on Sunday before those talks even began that he didn't really expect them to. This was more political theater than actual negotiation. One thing we did see, though, was the White House put into writing its budget ask. That's something the Democrats had been seeking. They want $5.7 billion for Trump's wall, which the president now says can be made from steel - not concrete.
INSKEEP: OK.
HORSLEY: That would be enough to build 234 miles of barrier. That works out to about $24 million a mile. In addition, the administration is asking for hundreds of millions of additional dollars to build more detention beds, to hire more Border Patrol agents and immigration judges, to install new drug detection technology at the ports of entry and to deal with what it says is a humanitarian crisis at the border.
INSKEEP: You know, it's really interesting, Scott Horsley. It sounds like some of the items on that list are things that a lot of Democrats would sign onto, like more immigration judges just to give one example. It's the wall - the symbolism of the wall that is the sticking point here.
HORSLEY: The symbolism and the $5.7 billion.
INSKEEP: And when will more members of the public begin to feel the effects of this shutdown, which federal workers are already feeling?
HORSLEY: You know, it is mounting day by day. There's some talk now that tax refund checks could be delayed if this stretches on much longer. We are starting to hear anecdotal reports of sickouts by TSA agents. And that's causing longer lines at airports. This Friday is supposed to be payday for the federal workers. So if it's not solved by then, that would be the first time those 800,000 federal employees would actually miss a paycheck.
INSKEEP: Wow. People who are working, as well as furloughed, not being paid.
HORSLEY: Right.
INSKEEP: Scott, thanks for the update.
HORSLEY: You're welcome.
INSKEEP: That's NPR White House correspondent Scott Horsley.
NOEL KING, HOST:
All right. As Scott Horsley said there, one area that is being hit hard by this shutdown is airports. You may have seen footage of those long lines. You may have experienced them. The Air Line Pilots Association has written President Trump a critical letter. In it, the group urged the president to take steps to immediately end the shutdown that is, quote, "adversely affecting the safety of our national airspace system." And the National Air Traffic Controllers Association is also calling for an end to what it calls an unacceptable shutdown. Trish Gilbert is the executive vice president of that group. She's with me now in studio. Thanks for coming in.
TRISH GILBERT: Thank you, Noel.
KING: So how are air traffic controllers being affected by the partial government shutdown?
GILBERT: The profession is - requires a workforce that is highly skilled and highly trained - needs to be focused 100 percent of the time. And this uncertainty around - and this threat to their livelihood is making it very, very difficult for them to continue forward if this indeed will become months, if not years, as was previously reported. They're people just like you and me. They have obligations to meet, and that's concerning when they don't know when they're going to receive their next paycheck. In addition to that, their support structure is not there. They're all furloughed. So just like you wouldn't send a surgeon in without his support or her support team, you shouldn't expect air traffic controllers to continue to do their job without the support structure in place to support what is very important for this United States economy, which is the movement of aircraft from point A to point B and doing it safely. So those redundancies are being peeled away with the shutdown occurring day after day after day. And that is going to cause harm to the system. And even when we do eventually come out of this shutdown, there will be a lot of things that have to be done and effects that will be felt for many, many months afterwards.
KING: Should travelers be worried about their safety? I mean, air traffic control - as you mentioned, this is a very serious job. You don't want distracted people. You don't want people calling out sick. I mean, is this something that your average person flying needs to worry about right now?
GILBERT: Well, I don't think there's a safety concern at the moment. We are concerned about the redundancies being peeled away and not being in place. And when you peel those away, eventually, something's going to give. So we have concern there. We also have...
KING: When you say the redundancies being peeled away, what do you mean there? Are some - there's some level of security in each step that an air traffic controller takes and...
GILBERT: So what I mean with redundancies - I mean, our inspections aren't occurring. Training's...
KING: OK.
GILBERT: ...Not occurring. The quality assurance teams aren't on-site to make sure that all of those things that are normally in place in this very complex system that we run - those are the redundancies I'm talking about. In addition to that, we are at a 30-year low in staffing of fully certified controllers. So we're already working overtime in most of our facilities, especially in our very high, complex and heavy traffic facilities. So now when you shut down the pipeline, meaning hiring is stopped and training is stopped for the most part, you don't have that new pipeline coming in to relieve this this very short-staffed workforce. In addition to that, we have about 2,000 eligible to retire right now out of a very small workforce - 10,500, which I mentioned was a 30-year low. If they were to decide to retire immediately following the shutdown - because many of them aren't able to do that right now because there aren't people in place to process their paperwork - then we feel the effects of being short-staffed. The effects for the flying public on that when we are so critically staffed is capacity. They'll start to see delays when we're not able to staff our radar rooms in our towers across the country. They'll put less planes in the air. They'll keep them further and further apart, so the passengers will then start to see delays.
KING: So some potentially very negative consequences if this keeps going. Your association has been very vocal about believing that this shutdown is a bad thing. Have you heard from the White House? Have you heard from Congress? Has anyone gotten in touch with you and said, we hear your concerns?
GILBERT: We've heard from Congress that they hear our concerns. And we've heard from both sides of the aisle, both the House and the Senate as well. They - we believe they are trying to figure this out. Unfortunately, time is critical. And we need them to do what they can to negotiate a resolution in this shutdown now. Our employees and the members that we represent, because our employees at NATCA are also affected without support as well - that they need to not be held hostage to this shutdown. They need to be able to do their job. And then they need to be able to be compensated for the job they are doing.
KING: Will they get back pay? Just quickly.
GILBERT: Those that are working definitely will, at some point, get their back pay. Those that are furloughed - we don't know that yet.
KING: Trish Gilbert is executive VP of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. Thanks.
GILBERT: Thank you.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
This next story takes us to the west coast of Norway, which is divided by dozens of inlets called fjords. Driving from one end to the other takes 21 hours and requires seven ferry crossings. This scenic drive is in the news because Norway wants to cut the travel time in half. It is supporting a nearly $40 billion project, which would include a floating bridge and maybe even a floating underwater traffic tunnel. NPR's Frank Langfitt took some of the drive as it is now.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: This is a ferry on a huge fjord on the west coast of Norway. We're surrounded by snowcapped mountains. It's really windy. I'm getting hit by bow spray. And you can see small - it's a rural area. You can see a lot of small, wooden Norwegian houses here. And we're just about to come into dock.
(SOUNDBITE OF SEA GULLS CRYING)
LANGFITT: Kare Martin Kleppe greets me at the water's edge. He's the mayor of Tysnes, a collection of islands, and he can't wait for a floating bridge.
KARE MARTIN KLEPPE: The ferry is a beautiful trip, but it's more an obstacle than a good connection.
LANGFITT: A floating bridge would replace the ferry, cutting travel time across the fjord from 40 minutes to five, making it easier to attract investment here, where the population has fallen by about half over the past century to 2,800, and making it easier for the region's fishing industry to get its salmon to market.
KLEPPE: It's a saying that there's nothing in the world that is in a bigger rush than a dead fish. We need to keep it fresh.
ARIANNA MINORETTI: My name is Arianna Minoretti, and I worked for the Norwegian Public Road Administration.
LANGFITT: Minoretti's an Italian engineer. She came from Milan just to work on this project because it was so challenging. Minoretti says in parts of Norway's west coast, conventional cable-stayed bridges and tunnels won't work.
MINORETTI: Because some of these fjords are really, really deep. We have some fjords that drive 1 kilometer deep. That is too much.
LANGFITT: One potential solution, build something no one ever has, a submerged, floating traffic tunnel. Minoretti says it could be made of concrete to provide ballast and float a hundred feet or so below the surface. It could be fastened to floating pontoons or tethered to the sea bed.
MINORETTI: When I started working with this type of structure, I felt really excited, like, wow, this is something that you can be an engineer and live your life without having this chance. So it's really unique.
LANGFITT: Of course, there are dangers. Norwegian submarines train in the fjord so there's the risk of collision. A terrorist bomb could rip open the tunnel, sending water pouring in. Which is why the Norwegian government is working carefully on designs. Today Vegard Aune is simulating the effects of a bomb blast using compressed air inside a steel tube. Aune is an associate professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in the city of Trondheim.
VEGARD AUNE: The pressure we generate today is similar to a vehicle-borne improvised device of 800 kilos of improvised explosives at the distance of 30 meters.
(SOUNDBITE OF SIMULATOR HISSING AND POPPING)
LANGFITT: The purpose of this bold transportation project is to replace the ferries and slash travel time...
(SOUNDBITE OF WAVES LAPPING)
LANGFITT: ...But many people who ride the ferries love them, like Vanke Setrha, who's enjoying the enforced rest as she watches the mountains pass by.
VANKE SETRHA: If you're driving a long distance, it's good to have the ferry. You need a break to relax, take a cup of coffee and get new energy.
LANGFITT: Another passenger, Kjell Mevic, who works in the Merchant Marine, enjoys the scenic crossings, too, but worries about the potential alternative.
KJELL MEVIC: Keep the ferries. Skip the tunnels.
LANGFITT: Really? Why?
MEVIC: Because an explosion in the tunnel will be like a bottle of champagne. Kaboom. Nothing left.
LANGFITT: So you've heard about the idea of doing the underwater tunnels?
MEVIC: Yeah.
LANGFITT: You don't think they're safe?
MEVIC: Well, they're probably safe, but there's a good target for terrorists.
LANGFITT: Many along Norway's west coast are skeptical of the project because of the huge cost, and they aren't convinced it will ever be completed. But Svein Bgerne Aase, a bus driver, looks forward to it.
UNIDENTIFIED CHOIR: (Singing in foreign language).
LANGFITT: I met him one Sunday as he was rushing out of church to catch a ferry.
SVEIN BGERNE AASE: It will be much easier for everybody who's traveling. So I think that is our future, to get a bridge or tunnel under the sea.
(SOUNDBITE OF VEHICLE ENGINE RUNNING)
LANGFITT: And with that, Svein drove off to make an early afternoon ferry, which for now, is the only way he can complete his bus routes. Frank Langfitt, NPR News, Tysnes, Norway.
(SOUNDBITE OF BOREALISM'S "FORGED BY THE WATER")
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The voice of Nina Simone - singer, songwriter, classically trained pianist and activist. It's in that last role that she comes to our attention today because Nina Simone composed an American anthem. Noel King has the latest in our series.
NOEL KING, BYLINE: Today for our American Anthem series, a song that uplifts and inspires. First, some history - we're going to start in 1963 with the murder of Medgar Evers. Evers was killed by a Klansman, shot in the back in his own driveway in Mississippi. Then three months later in Birmingham, Ala., four little girls were killed in a church bombing. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. gave their eulogy.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR: They died between the sacred walls of the church of God. And they were discussing the eternal meaning of love.
KING: In response to the grief and outrage, Simone wrote a powerful song with unsparing lyrics and a provocative title - "Mississippi Goddam."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MISSISSIPPI GODDAMN")
NINA SIMONE: (Singing) Alabama's gotten me so upset. Tennessee made me lose my rest. And everybody knows about Mississippi goddam.
KING: Fast forward to 1968, and you've got the scene for today's American anthem. The Black Power movement was rising. Pride in being black and beautiful was expressed by afros and fists raised in the air. Nina Simone captures this moment of joy in black identity.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TO BE YOUNG, GIFTED AND BLACK")
SIMONE: (Singing) Young, gifted and black. Oh, what a lovely, precious dream to be young, gifted and black.
KING: Simone wrote the song for children. But it became an anthem for adults, too. "To Be Young, Gifted And Black" was a dedication to Nina Simone's friend, the playwright Lorraine Hansberry, who wrote "A Raisin In The Sun." Hansberry was the first black woman to have a play performed on Broadway. She and Simone bonded over civil rights and radical politics. And then in January 1965, Hansberry died of cancer at the age of 34. A few months before she died, Hansberry had told a group of student essay winners, you are young, gifted and black. Those words stuck in Nina Simone's head. Here she is.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SIMONE: This will sound very strange but not to people who are really hip. She kept trying to tell me something. And I remember getting a feeling in my body. And I said that's it - to be young, gifted and black. That's all - and sat down at the piano at that moment and made up a tune.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TO BE YOUNG, GIFTED AND BLACK")
SIMONE: (Singing) Oh, but my joy of today is that we can all be proud to say to be young, gifted and black is where it's at.
KING: Simone wrote the music. The words came from her bandleader, Weldon Irvine. Simone told him, make it simple to, quote, "make black children all over the world feel good about themselves forever." "Young, Gifted And Black" caught on. And other artists quickly recorded it, including soul singer Donny Hathaway in 1970.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TO BE YOUNG, GIFTED AND BLACK")
DONNY HATHAWAY: (Singing) We're young, gifted - gifted and black.
KING: Aretha Franklin released her version in 1972.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TO BE YOUNG, GIFTED AND BLACK")
ARETHA FRANKLIN: (Singing) You're young, gifted and black.
KING: We invited two contemporary artists, African-American women from very different backgrounds, to share their thoughts on this American anthem.
MESHELL NDEGEOCELLO: My name's Meshell Ndegeocello. And I'm a musician and a parent.
KING: Meshell Ndegeocello is a 10-time Grammy nominee. She released the album "A Dedication To Nina Simone" in 2012. She says when she was growing up, there was a real need for this song.
NDEGEOCELLO: It's the first time I heard those words said about young, black people. You know, being of color, you did not feel that you were gifted - and especially if you were black.
KING: The first person to play the song for her was a white woman - her middle school teacher.
NDEGEOCELLO: In D.C., music wasn't so segregated. I mean, I love Burt Bacharach. And I grew up listening to The Carpenters. But she also played me, like, Bob Marley, Salif Keita. It was the beginning of my awareness of Africa. And it was somewhere in one of those classes or Black History Month where she was like, we're going to try to perform this song in a choir setting.
KING: As time passed, though, it became less popular.
SOMI: My name is Somi, and I'm a vocalist and a writer.
KING: Last year, Nina Simone's profile was raised again when she was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Somi honored her in her own way in 2018. She performed Simone's songs at Lincoln Center in New York City. Somi was born in Illinois. Her parents were immigrants from Rwanda and Uganda. They encouraged her to take pride in her African heritage. She didn't really need a song for that, which made me wonder if she thinks this song is still necessary.
SOMI: I think it is important just to have these messages that tell young, black people that they are of value. When you look at the March Of Our Lives that recently happened in Washington and Naomi Wadler coming up there and feeling as though she had to speak...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NAOMI WADLER: I am here today to acknowledge and represent the African-American girls whose stories don't make the front page of every national newspaper.
SOMI: You know, that speaks to the need for black youth, you know, to be seen, to be heard.
NDEGEOCELLO: It's an inner anthem, I think. It's existing on a subconscious level.
KING: In 2012, Meshell Ndegeocello, who has two sons, invited the singer Cody Chesnutt to perform "Young, Gifted And Black" on her album "A Dedication To Nina Simone."
NDEGEOCELLO: This was during the time of the whole Trayvon Martin incident. And I was affected as a mother. And so it just really - for some reason, I felt should be voiced with a strong, male presence. And that's why I chose Cody Chesnutt.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TO BE YOUNG, GIFTED AND BLACK")
CODY CHESNUTT: (Singing) When you're young, gifted and black, your soul's intact.
NDEGEOCELLO: I hope it only makes you ask the question, why did that song have to be written?
KING: Nina Simone said she wanted this song to inspire black children to feel good about themselves forever. Maybe that's a lot to ask for one song. But that message is as important as it was when "To Be Young, Gifted And Black" first became an American anthem.
(SOUNDBITE OF NINA SIMONE'S "TO BE YOUNG, GIFTED AND BLACK")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Senator Kamala Harris' new book, "The Truths We Hold," is out today. It is the type of book that usually precedes a presidential run.
Have you made up your mind as to whether or not you're going to run for president?
KAMALA HARRIS: I have not made up my mind, but I will. I will. And I'll do that soon.
MARTIN: Do you know the criteria that you still need to put together before you do that?
HARRIS: Well, there's a collection of factors to consider, but I will keep you posted. But I am not prepared to make any announcement at this moment. (Laughter).
MARTIN: Let me know if you change your mind by the end of the conversation.
HARRIS: (Laughter) I will. (Laughter).
MARTIN: Her book reads part policy prescription, part memoir. And early in our conversation, I asked her why she decided to become a prosecutor.
HARRIS: My family and extended family thought, at best, it was a curious (laughter) decision. And with some of them, I honestly had to defend the decision like one would a thesis.
MARTIN: What did they tell you? Why did they not...
HARRIS: They said...
MARTIN: ...Accept that from you?
HARRIS: Well, because they said, why would you go and be a part of an institution that is not always fair and does not always pursue justice? And my point then - and certainly my point today, after a career as a prosecutor and a career in law enforcement - is that if we want to change or improve or reform systems, yes, there's no question there is a role and a responsibility and an impact to be had from being on the outside. But there is also a power that one can have by being inside and at the table where the decisions are being made.
MARTIN: You have been criticized by some on the left side of your party over the death penalty, for defending the death penalty after opposing it as district attorney for San Francisco then as attorney general defending it. How do you explain your position? How do you defend it to progressives who say it's immoral, it's ineffective?
HARRIS: So to be clear, I am personally opposed to the death penalty. I have always been, and I remain opposed to the death penalty. I believe, for a number of reasons, that it is a flawed system both in terms of the way that it has been applied historically, which is disproportionately against people of color and poor people, I know that it is a system for which the defenders would say it creates some deterrent. But in my experience, when somebody is about to pull the trigger of that gun, they're not sitting there thinking about whether it's going to be life without possibility of parole or the death penalty.
MARTIN: But you still think there's a place for it?
HARRIS: No. I don't. But as attorney general of the state of California, I had a constitutional responsibility to represent my clients. And one of my clients happened to be the California Department of Corrections and the District Attorneys of California.
MARTIN: I'm going to ask a big-picture question that I don't know if everyone has heard you articulate an answer to. Why do you think Donald Trump won?
HARRIS: I'll give you a crude analysis. Over the last 10 years in our country, at least, we've seen an incredible amount of change. People are reading about the browning of America, and the immigrants are coming. And we had Barack Obama as president, and then we had a woman running for president. And gay people can marry, and - oh, my God. Oh, my God.
So there's an incredible amount of change that has happened in a relatively short period of time. And it has, understandably, left a lot of people feeling displaced, wondering and asking a question about where do they fit in. And he read it. He read it accurately.
MARTIN: You give him credit for that?
HARRIS: He read it accurately. And then he took it to the lowest common denominator.
MARTIN: Hillary Clinton characterized Trump supporters as a basket of deplorables. How would you characterize people who supported Donald Trump?
HARRIS: I think that there are a lot of different people who supported Donald Trump, and I am not going to put them in any one category because it's as diverse a group as we are Americans.
MARTIN: The front page of The New York Times on Sunday had an article titled as follows. "Democrats Puzzle Over Whether A Woman Will Beat Trump." Have you heard this kind of question? Do people actually say this out loud in the Democratic Party? Do they whisper it?
HARRIS: (Laughter). Well, I will tell you, in my career, people whisper it. They murmur it. They speak it. Sometimes they shout it. (Laughter). I've heard it for every office I've run for. When I ran to be district attorney in San Francisco, challenging an incumbent - you know, people have notions about what and who San Francisco is. They think it's this progressive town of, you know, forward-thinking people. Well, yeah. Yeah, there are a lot, but there had never been a woman to be district attorney of San Francisco when I ran. And many told me, there's never been anyone like you, and people aren't probably ready for you.
MARTIN: So this idea that America is not ready, look what happened to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. You know, he's got all these white male voters who are really...
HARRIS: I heard it again...
MARTIN: ...In his base.
HARRIS: ...When I ran for attorney general of California. You can best believe people said they're not ready for you to be the top cop of this state. But I won. I won because I didn't listen.
MARTIN: Do you think that makes you more appealing to voters in swing states or states that went explicitly for Donald Trump?
HARRIS: If I run, we'll see. (Laughter).
MARTIN: You mention in your book about your relationship with the former attorney general of Delaware, Beau Biden...
HARRIS: Yeah.
MARTIN: ...Who passed away a few years ago of cancer. The two of you would talk sometimes several times a day, you write, during the mortgage crisis that you were both dealing with. You call him an incredible friend. Do you think his father, Joe Biden, would make a good president?
HARRIS: I think there are many people who would make a good president. And I got to know Joe, as a person, through Beau. They had an incredibly special relationship. You're not going to hear me criticize Joe Biden. I think he's a great guy.
MARTIN: He has said recently that he just doesn't see people out there in the Democratic field as early as it is who could actually beat Donald Trump, and until he sees that, he's still considering running. What do you make of that?
HARRIS: I think that everyone who wants to run should run.
MARTIN: Let me ask about this current moment. There are - some of your Democratic colleagues in the House are talking quite openly about impeachment. Have you at this point seen anything that would rise to the level of impeachment?
HARRIS: Well, I'm on Senate Intelligence Committee, and so there is nothing that I can talk with you about that relates to what happens there and what we've heard. But I will say this. I feel very strongly that we have to do everything we possibly can to protect Bob Mueller and his ability to see his investigation through. And that needs to be the first and highest priority, as far as I'm concerned.
MARTIN: Senator Kamala Harris of California, thank you so much for your time.
HARRIS: Thank you. Thank you.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
This is a big day in Florida. Under a measure passed by voters in November, as many as 1.4 million people convicted of felonies in the past are regaining the right to vote. This measure applies only to people who have completed their sentences, including parole and probation. Elections supervisors say they will begin registering former felons today. But some critics, including Florida's new governor, say wait a minute; slow down. NPR's Greg Allen reports.
GREG ALLEN, BYLINE: The referendum passed by voters in November overturned a 150-year-old law that permanently disenfranchised those with felony convictions. Those who served their time could apply for clemency to a board headed by the governor. But the cumbersome process and a multiyear backlog meant that only a small percentage applied. As a result, more than 10 percent of Florida's adult population was not eligible to vote. Desmond Meade, who helped organize the referendum campaign, says that changed November 6.
DESMOND MEADE: On that night, we had over 5.1 million voters that voted yes on Amendment 4. Not one of those votes was based on hate. Not one of those votes was based on fear but rather votes of love.
ALLEN: The amendment automatically restores the right to vote to people with felony convictions after they complete all terms of their sentences, including parole and probation. It doesn't apply to those convicted of murder or a felony sex offense. Under Florida's constitution, it goes into effect today. Neil Volz, another person who helped organize the campaign with the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, says for him and other former felons who worked for it, it's a day of celebration.
NEIL VOLZ: And at the same time, it's business as usual for the supervisors of elections who are going to have people come in and register to vote.
ALLEN: Election supervisors in Florida's 67 counties say they will register to vote former felons who affirm they fulfilled the terms of their sentences. But some officials see trouble ahead.
PAUL LUX: Clearly there are things we do not know and things that we cannot know until someone provides us better definitions.
ALLEN: Paul Lux is a supervisor of elections in Okaloosa County and president of the State Association of Election Supervisors. He says there are questions about outstanding court costs and restitution judgments. Must those be paid first, and what agency is responsible for checking? Lux says there are also questions about what types of violent crimes and sex offenses are excluded under the law. Eventually, he says, someone will have to provide election supervisors with answers.
LUX: Whether it gets done by legislation, whether it gets done by administrative rule or whether it gets done by the court - at some point, someone is going to have to clarify the process.
ALLEN: When asked about it in December, Florida's new governor, Republican Ron DeSantis, said he believed legislators would need to pass implementing language in a bill that he would sign. That wouldn't be until at least March when the legislature goes back into session. Neil Volz says the amendment voters passed was written clearly and in a way that needs no additional legislation or rulemaking.
VOLZ: We don't think there's any role for politicians in this process. In fact, that was part of the goal of Amendment 4 - was to get elected officials out of the business of picking their own voters.
ALLEN: But even among some longtime activists, there's uncertainty about whether to register to vote today or to wait until the governor and legislators weigh in. Some are worried that signing a voter registration form before the rules are clear could potentially be a criminal offense. Yraida Guanipa is a former felon who's worked for years on this issue, fighting to regain the right to vote. Even she is nervous.
YRAIDA GUANIPA: I talked to my husband. He said you better wait until March; you better wait until what the governor say. But my heart and my pain and my work and my love for democracy is telling me do it (laughter).
ALLEN: Guanipa planned to be outside the elections office in Miami when it opened today - one of the first in line to register to vote. Greg Allen, NPR News, Miami.
(SOUNDBITE OF ATTLAS' "FURTHER")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Any politician can give a speech. A few can be seen live on TV. But only the president can address the nation from the Oval Office as President Trump will do tonight.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The tradition goes back to 1947, when most Americans did not yet have TVs. Harry Truman did it then about a food crisis in Europe. Richard Nixon, in turbulent times, spoke repeatedly from the Oval Office, including his resignation in 1974. Reagan spoke from his Oval Office desk. George W. Bush addressed the nation on 9/11. And tonight, the subject of President Trump's address is his demand that Congress budget money for a border wall. His demand triggered a partial government shutdown.
MARTIN: NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith joins us this morning.
Hey, Tam.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: So does giving an address from the Oval Office tonight mean President Trump has more or less leverage right now in these shutdown negotiations?
KEITH: Well, President Trump has a problem, which is that some share of the American public - a large share of the American public - wanted him, even before the shutdown began, to make a compromise on the wall. And if he is going to get his wall funding, which seems like a mighty big if at this point, he has to convince the American public that there is a crisis along the southern border and that that crisis can be solved by a wall. And thus far, the administration has had some difficulty connecting those dots and making that case. And so that is the case that President Trump has asked for seven or eight minutes of prime-time TV to make.
MARTIN: I want to get to the facts of that in just a second. But first off, Democrats are agitating to have their say, though, right? If the president is going to speak from the Oval Office, Democrats want to be able to respond to his argument. Are they're going to get that time?
KEITH: It's not clear yet, but they are certainly asking for it. Here's a quote from a joint statement. "Now that the television networks have decided to air the president's address - which, if his past statements are any indication, will be full of malice and misinformation - Democrats must immediately be given equal time." That was from Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. If they were to get that time, I think we have a pretty good idea of what they might say. This is Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer from over the weekend.
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CHUCK SCHUMER: Democrats and some Republicans are asking President Trump not to hold hostage millions of innocent Americans.
MARTIN: And let's return, Tam, to the facts on the ground because this is really what is complicating this whole issue. The president and his administration insist there is a crisis. You talk to lawmakers, sheriffs, mayors along the border, you get a very different picture. And even the numbers are in dispute. The administration keeps banding about this number, insisting thousands of known or suspected terrorists have come across the southern border. That's just not true. There's no evidence to that effect. The vast majority of those people are coming through airports, not across the border. Right?
KEITH: Yeah, that's right. And most of them are getting stopped in airports, some not even before they get to the United States, in fact. So we - in this briefing that was held yesterday with the vice president and the Homeland Security secretary, reporters were asking, what's up with your numbers? You're giving numbers of thousands of people, potential terrorists. And they don't seem to wash with reality.
And the Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said - well, you know, in terms of who's actually arrested at the border, that is classified information. We can't tell you that number. And it would come from the Department of Justice anyway. So they are not giving that number. But NBC News is reporting that it's only six in the last year.
MARTIN: Very different than a number of 4,000, as Sarah Sanders has repeatedly said. Meanwhile, the president says he wants to declare a state of emergency. If Congress doesn't give him the money, he's going to do that. Are we going to hear him talk about that tonight?
KEITH: We don't know for sure. But we know that the White House is considering it, that lawyers are looking into it and the president is seriously considering declaring a state of emergency. Whether that happens tonight or some other time isn't clear. The White House says they want that to be sort of a last resort and they'd rather have negotiations bear fruit.
MARTIN: NPR's Tamara Keith. Thanks so much, Tam.
KEITH: You're welcome.
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MARTIN: National Security Adviser John Bolton is on a trip. He is in Turkey trying to clarify when and how the U.S. will pull its troops out of Syria.
INSKEEP: Bolton has said American troops will stay in Syria until ISIS is eradicated and until Turkey promises not to attack Kurdish fighters who have been U.S. allies. That comes weeks after President Trump promised to pull out from northern Syria very quickly, reportedly in as little as 30 days.
MARTIN: NPR's Ruth Sherlock was recently in northeastern Syria, where U.S. troops are. And she's tracked how U.S. allies there are watching all this unfold.
Good morning, Ruth.
RUTH SHERLOCK, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: So Steve just alluded to the kind of back-and-forth with all the statements on this. Can you walk us through what has transpired, what we've been hearing on this thus far?
SHERLOCK: Yeah. So President Trump said, on December 19, that ISIS was defeated. And then, to quote him, that the U.S. troops are "all coming back, and they're coming back now." But now military officials seem to have talked the president out of pulling out too quickly. They never agreed with his decision.
And as you said, speaking in Israel, John Bolton, Trump's national security adviser, said, well, we are going to pull out but only once ISIS is defeated and not until the interests of our local allies - that's the Kurdish-led groups that have been fighting ISIS alongside the U.S. - are protected. The president himself seems to have walked this back slightly. After initially declaring ISIS defeated, he now says some U.S. troops will remain at least until ISIS is gone. So this could take months or longer.
INSKEEP: I suppose we should note, just to be complete, that both the president and John Bolton insist their position has not changed at all, although it would appear that it certainly has.
SHERLOCK: Right. You know, you could say this seems to be some kind of a face-saving measure, whereby they're trying to stick with the idea that U.S. troops will withdraw. But now the timeline of that is much less clear. And they're insisting that they need to protect these Kurdish allies.
MARTIN: So how do they do that, though, Ruth? I mean, how do they protect the Kurds if they're going to leave?
SHERLOCK: Well, that is the question. A lot of this depends on Turkey. Turkey considers these Kurdish militias that now rule this part of Syria as connected to militants in Turkey that it thinks are terrorists. And after President Trump's original announcement, they threatened to attack this part of Syria. John Bolton is in Turkey today to discuss all this and says that, you know, the U.S. won't leave until these Kurdish allies are protected.
President Erdogan of Turkey is gunning to be able to take over these parts of Syria. He presented that in an op-ed in The New York Times yesterday, saying, you know, they could run the area through local allies on the ground. But you know, it's very - you know - but that's something that, in a further plot twist, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says might actually be on the cards because President Trump and President Erdogan have talked about this. But this is, of course, something that the Kurds may never go for.
MARTIN: Right. I mean, I imagine the Kurds would take issue with that.
SHERLOCK: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, they see Turkey as a bigger threat than ISIS. And they've even been talking about potentially striking a deal with the Syrian regime if they have to strike a deal with somebody to be able to keep having some control of this area. And certainly, from speaking with Kurdish officials, it seems they would be much more interested in talking to the regime about this than Turkey.
MARTIN: NPR's Ruth Sherlock, reporting this morning from Beirut.
Hey, Ruth, thanks as always. Appreciate it.
SHERLOCK: Thank you.
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MARTIN: OK. We're going to focus in on Florida now because there's a big change taking place in that state today. As many as 1.4 million convicted felons are set to regain the right to vote. The measure comes from an amendment that was passed by 65 percent of Florida voters in November.
INSKEEP: Election supervisors say that today they begin registering people who, under the old law, were barred from voting at all. Critics of this measure, including the Governor-elect Rick (ph) DeSantis, say the state legislature must pass a bill that defines the terms of the amendment, which would delay implementation for a few months. So what happens next?
MARTIN: All right. Let's ask NPR's Greg Allen, who has been following this story, joining us now from Florida.
Hey, Greg.
GREG ALLEN, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: So what is happening today? I mean, how many people are actually going to get registered to vote? Do we know?
ALLEN: Well, we'll see how many people show up. There's a lot of interest in this. This campaign has been going on for quite some time, and it definitely goes into effect today. Supervisors of election in Florida's 67 counties said they'll begin registering voters who are former felons who've served their time. If you have a felony conviction, you must have completed the sentence plus any probation and parole, and this doesn't apply to anyone who is convicted of murder or a felony sexual offense.
But there are still lots of questions, though, about whether court costs and restitution judgments have been paid and who checks on that, also, exactly which felony convictions still disqualify a person from voting. And these are all some of the reasons that the new governor, Ron DeSantis, says he believes the legislature will have to pass a measure to lay out some guidelines for all this. But that wouldn't be until March, at the earliest, when the legislature's back. But in the meantime, people will be registering to vote today.
MARTIN: I understand you've gotten to talk with some people who are going to get their right to vote again. What have they been telling you?
ALLEN: Well, you know, I think this is such an important day for folks who worked - this is a law that's been on the books for 150 years. And people have fought for years to overturn it. They finally were successful. You know, as you say, 65 percent of the voters approved it. That's more people that voted for any candidate in the last election.
MARTIN: Wow.
ALLEN: So a very - passed by a large margin. That's people in every community in Florida. And one of the people affected is Yraida Guanipa, who's a former felon who worked for years on this issue. I spoke to her yesterday, and she said even she's nervous about it.
YRAIDA GUANIPA: I talked to my husband. He says, you better wait until March. You better wait until what the governor says.
MARTIN: So there's still a lot of questions, huh?
ALLEN: Well, yeah. I mean, the state election officials say they no longer are checking new voters against a felony database so no one's unfairly disqualified. But when you fill out a form, you must affirm that you're eligible. So some are worried that signing a voter registration form mistakenly before the rules are clear could potentially be a criminal offense. Election supervisors say it's unlikely anyone would be prosecuted in such a case, though.
MARTIN: I mean, Florida is a key swing state in the presidential election, where it seems it's never too early to talk about Florida and elections. Could this have any kind of impact in 2020 as you look forward?
ALLEN: Well, you know, adding hundreds of thousands of potentially new voters to the rolls is certainly likely to have an impact. Some of the organizers believe that it will spur interest in a lot of new policies, maybe criminal justice reform, something that's kind of largely stalled in Florida up till now.
MARTIN: NPR's Greg Allen for us this morning.
Greg, thanks. We appreciate it.
ALLEN: You're welcome.
(SOUNDBITE OF ATTLAS' "FURTHER")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Actor Kevin Spacey appeared in court yesterday in Massachusetts. The court issued a plea of not guilty on his behalf. Spacey is charged with indecent assault and battery of an 18-year-old man. From member station WBUR, Fred Thys reports.
FRED THYS, BYLINE: Waiting for Spacey in court were about 40 people, most of them members of the press, but also some curious Nantucket residents and even some from Cape Cod, who'd taken the ferry over. When the judge mentioned the press, Spacey turned around and took a good look. He gave a faint smile. Spacey was in court for something that allegedly happened in the summer of 2016. That's when an off-duty busboy at a local restaurant says Spacey groped him without his consent.
This is the only criminal charge against the two-time Oscar winner, but he faced several accusations of sexual assault two years ago, when the #MeToo movement swept Hollywood and the country. Netflix eliminated his character on "House Of Cards," a series he'd starred in. A plea of not guilty was entered on Spacey's behalf. He was not asked to make a verbal plea. The Cape and Island's district attorney's office asked for only one condition for Spacey's release on his own personal recognizance, relayed by Judge Thomas Barrett.
(SOUNDBITE OF COURTROOM HEARING)
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, Alan Jackson, 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.
(SOUNDBITE OF COURTROOM HEARING)
ALAN JACKSON: This is data that we believe is not only potentially exculpatory but likely exculpatory for Mr. Spacey. I simply don't want to see any of that data deleted, destroyed - even inadvertently. Or in other words, in any other way manipulated.
THYS: Spacey does not have to be present in March for the next pretrial hearing, but the judge asked that he be available on the phone. For NPR News, I'm Fred Thys in Nantucket.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
President Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, was in Turkey today. He met his Turkish counterpart, but left without seeing Turkey's president, who is criticizing U.S. adjustments to the plan to get out of neighboring Syria. President Trump said last month the U.S. would quickly withdraw troops. Bolton has announced some conditions that need to be met first, which the Turkish president does not like at all.
NPR's Ruth Sherlock was recently in northeastern Syria. She's been covering this story a long time, and she's on the line. Hi, Ruth.
RUTH SHERLOCK, BYLINE: Hello.
INSKEEP: How has the U.S. position evolved?
SHERLOCK: Well, so essentially what's happened in the last few days is that John Bolton has come out and said, well, actually, we're not going to withdraw as quickly as the president might have - well, he didn't directly contradict the president. But he said we are going to withdraw, but imposed conditions saying, well, actually, we need to protect our Kurdish allies with whom we've been fighting ISIS in northeast Syria. And we need to remain until ISIS is completely defeated. Of course, that's different to what President Trump said initially, which was that ISIS has been defeated and that U.S. troops would be withdrawn very quickly.
INSKEEP: And we can see here where Recep Tayyip Erdogan would be upset - the Turkish president - because Turkey wants to go after Syrian Kurds. They see the Kurds as enemies, as rivals, and yet they are allies of the United States. And the U.S. wants to protect them before the U.S. would withdraw.
SHERLOCK: Well, that's exactly right. That's what Bolton has said in the last few days, that they need to create some kind of an agreement that would protect the Kurdish forces. But then now, Turkey seems to have hit back today, as you said, by - with this apparent snub in his refusal to meet with Bolton even though he did meet with a counterpart. He says that this new suggestion of protecting these allies actually differs from what was promised to him in a phone call with President Trump on December 14.
He said that Turkey had pledged to take on the fight against ISIS and actually take control of this area, and that this was something that was - that he was - that he talked about with President Trump. But he said that - Erdogan said that despite the fact that we reached a clear agreement with Mr. Trump, different voices have raised - have been raised from within different echelons of the U.S. administration. So he's implying a split within the administration on what should happen next.
INSKEEP: Ruth, help us understand what Syrians are thinking about this, specifically these Syrian Kurds who fought alongside the United States, fought against ISIS, control a portion of Syria, are trying to hold off ISIS - the remnants of ISIS and also hold off Bashar al-Assad, who controls much of the rest of the country. Is it clear to them what the U.S. position is, given that the president has said different things and the president's advisers have said different things?
SHERLOCK: Certainly not when we met with them. And in recent conversations, they seem to be trying to kind of understand what was happening in Washington. They were so confused, at one point, officials actually asked me as a member of a U.S. media organization what I thought about what the president was saying.
Certainly, today, they've come out with a much clearer statement, saying - we would not - you know, they would be ready for any Turkish advance. They would not accept a kind of Turkish-controlled move by Turkey to control the parts of Syria they have won over from ISIS. They've lost a lot of blood in that fight. And they say that Turkey is a bigger threat to them than ISIS. And if they have to, they would rather strike a deal with the Syrian government to take over this area than with Turkey.
INSKEEP: Thanks very much. That's NPR's Ruth Sherlock.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
It is Day 18 of the partial federal government shutdown, making it one of the longest in history. Back in the 1990s, it took President Bill Clinton and the Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich a record 21 days to settle an impasse. NPR's Don Gonyea looks back at how past shutdowns have been resolved and why it may prove harder this time.
DON GONYEA, BYLINE: Say it's 1984, October. You're wondering about job openings in the federal government. You dial a number.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: The Federal Job Information Center is now closed until further notice due to lack of appropriated funds.
GONYEA: That tape aired on NPR more than 34 years ago, and that part of this story hasn't changed all that much. A partial government shutdown - services deemed non-essential stop. And something else holds true. Blame the other party. Here's then-President Ronald Reagan.
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RONALD REAGAN: This has been typical of what has happened ever since we've been here. And you can lay this right on the majority party in the House of Representatives.
(APPLAUSE)
GONYEA: But there are some big differences between those early government shutdowns and what we see today.
DAVID ROHDE: They tended to revolve around bargaining over, basically, routine governmental activities.
GONYEA: That's David Rohde, a political scientist at Duke University. He says, back then, if Congress missed the deadline, then there'd be a short shutdown but with the understanding and expectation that a compromise could be readily found. But then came the fall and winter of 1995 and '96. Bill Clinton was president.
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BILL CLINTON: The government is partially shutting down.
GONYEA: Republicans had control of the House for the first time in 40 years. Newt Gingrich was the speaker and wanted deep budget cuts. President Clinton said he was committed to a balanced budget but not using the Republicans' numbers.
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CLINTON: Congress has failed to pass the straightforward legislation necessary to keep the government running without imposing sharp hikes in Medicare premiums and deep cuts in education and the environment.
GONYEA: Gingrich responded...
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NEWT GINGRICH: And we think all the president has to do is commit to a seven-year balanced budget with honest numbers and an honest scoring system.
ROHDE: That pair of shutdowns was for a different reason and had a different pattern than the ones that happened before.
GONYEA: David Rohde of Duke says the clash was about ideology, the role of government. And there was no easy solution. The government partially closed for seven days. That was followed by a second 21-day shutdown, the longest to date, that ran into the new year. Eventually, it became clear that the public was not behind Gingrich. Senate leader Bob Dole, a fellow Republican, signaled the end in this floor speech on New Year's Eve.
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BOB DOLE: We ought to end this. I mean, it's gotten to the point where it's a little ridiculous as far as this senator is concerned.
GONYEA: The GOP paid a political price, and that shutdown was a cautionary tale for years. In fact, after that, there wasn't another shutdown until 2013, when Republicans used budget negotiations to try to defund the Affordable Care Act - Obamacare. It didn't work. Democrats, meanwhile, drove a very brief shutdown early last year over DACA legislation. They backed down quickly, which brings us to today. David Rohde says it's a lot like 1995 with one difference. Back then, he says, everyone was seeking the support of moderate and centrist voters.
ROHDE: But Trump's calculation, politically, is not about the center of the electorate. That's the difference.
GONYEA: The president seems to be playing solely to his hard core base supporters. That makes negotiations even more difficult.
Don Gonyea, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRHYME SONG, "DAT SOUND GOOD (FEAT. AB-SOUL AND MAC MILLER)")
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Good morning, I'm Steve Inskeep. A German woman rides a commuter train each day. This gives her time for knitting, so she's been knitting a scarf with different bands of color depending on how much the train is delayed. Dark grey means it's only up to five minutes late, pink for up to 30 minutes and red for the many days the train is delayed by more than half an hour. One section of the scarf is just solid red where the train was late daily for weeks. It's MORNING EDITION.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
OK, so you have just hopped out of an Uber or a Lyft, for example. Let's say the ride has not really gone that well. You pop open the ride-sharing app to give a rating to the driver. You can choose anything from one to five stars. What you do next turns out to be subject to the laws of psychology.
New social science research reveals a bias among many raters that produces pernicious effects. To explain, we are joined by NPR's social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam. Hey, Shankar - pernicious effects.
SHANKAR VEDANTAM, BYLINE: (Laughter) Indeed, Rachel.
MARTIN: OK, so explain. What's the bias here?
VEDANTAM: Many people are hesitant to give drivers a bad rating. So the driver might have been rude. The car might have been dirty. You might have nearly gotten into a crash. Objectively, the ride might deserve a rating of one star out of five.
MARTIN: Right.
VEDANTAM: But I was talking with John Horton. He's a business school professor at New York University. He told me what goes through many riders' minds as they decide what rating to give.
JOHN HORTON: There's quite a bit of evidence that people don't rate people harshly in these systems, even if they maybe had a bad experience or a not great experience just because they don't want to harm the other person. And you can kind of think, if you have a bad Uber ride, you know, you may be unhappy as a passenger. But you don't want to ruin a person's livelihood.
MARTIN: That's so interesting because we've just had, like, a personal experience with an Uber or Lyft driver, and because of that, we're less likely to give them a bad rating.
VEDANTAM: Exactly. So people understand that drivers who get poor ratings might get kicked off the platform. And you don't want one bad ride to lead to that. So instead of one or two stars, maybe you give three or four. Maybe you even give five. Any platform where you are rating people - from your professors, to someone on eBay, to Airbnb - potentially has this problem.
Horton and his colleagues, Joe Golden and Apostolos Filippas, asked the question, what are the consequences of this kind of biased grading? They analyzed data from a large online platform with over a billion dollars in transactions. They find that when the platform tells users that the feedback is going to be private and that it won't be used to punish providers, users start to provide much more critical feedback. As Horton crunched the data, he realized that he is tempted to do the very same thing himself with his students, give them higher grades than they deserve.
HORTON: I have to give grades as a professor. And, you know, no one in the history of teaching I think has ever come in to complain about an A. When you give low grades, that's when it sort of becomes personally costly to you, where people want to meet and talk. And so kind of giving the high grades is in some ways the easier thing to do in most cases.
MARTIN: Fascinating. So it's just more of a burden, so they go the easier route. But Shankar, getting back to that example of the Uber or Lyft driver, what does it mean about me if I'm the person who's like, yeah, you almost killed me. You get two stars if not zero stars. I'm just a bad person? I'm not being empathetic.
VEDANTAM: Well, here's the thing. I think many people believe they are being empathetic when they give the driver a very good rating for bad service. But Horton and his colleagues would actually argue, Rachel, that you are the kind of person who is the altruist. When you give five stars...
MARTIN: Do tell. Do tell.
VEDANTAM: ...When you give five stars to a bad driver who nearly gets you into a crash, you're exposing the next rider to a certain elevated risk. When you look at it this way, the people who give accurate ratings deal with the immediate backlash of the discomfort of giving a low rating to a bad driver. But they provide better information to the next rider or the next professor. It's easier to pass the bad apple along. You, Rachel, are the altruist.
MARTIN: That's the bottom line I wanted to get to. Shankar Vedantam is NPR's social science correspondent. He's also the host of a podcast exploring the unseen patterns in human behavior called Hidden Brain. Shankar, thanks so much.
VEDANTAM: Thank you, Rachel.
MARTIN: I'll give you five stars, by the way, five stars.
VEDANTAM: Oh, thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF WALTER WANDERLY'S "CALL ME")
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
President Trump is campaigning to keep part of a campaign promise. He said while running for office that he would build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and that Mexico would pay for it. Hoping that Congress will pay for it, the president provoked a partial government shutdown and addresses the nation from the Oval Office tonight. He then heads to the southern border later this week. NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith is here to talk us through this. Hi, Tam.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Hi, Steve.
INSKEEP: How does this work exactly? - because the president is addressing the whole country on a priority that, according to surveys, is strongly supported by only a minority.
KEITH: This is a PR offensive. This is the president of the United States trying to convince not just his base but the rest of the country that there is a crisis. We're going to hear that word a lot. Vice President Mike Pence yesterday, briefing reporters, said it again and again. He says there is a crisis along the southern border - a humanitarian crisis and a security crisis. The challenge that the administration has is that they have to somehow convince the American public both that there is a crisis - and that is not certain - and also that the president's wall is the way to solve it.
INSKEEP: We should note that immigration levels or migration levels have gone up recently but are still well below historic levels. And I guess the other question is how a wall solves a humanitarian crisis, if that's what it is.
KEITH: Right. And the administration is talking about other things that they want from Congress in these negotiations, including more money for immigration judges, more money for addressing the medical needs - the very severe medical needs of some of these migrants. But those things are not a wall.
INSKEEP: Is it certain that the president is on his way to declaring a state of emergency, which is something that the administration has talked about as a way to free up the funding without getting the approval of Congress?
KEITH: It's not certain. But the president has said that they're very seriously considering it. The vice president told us yesterday that the White House counsel's office is looking at it - they're considering it - but that they would much rather work out something with Congress. What we do know, though, is that if the president wants to declare a state of emergency, he can. The power of the president is pretty unlimited when it comes to that. But folks I've talked to say that if he does and he uses the military to build the wall, that it would, potentially, be considered an abuse of power. And also, there are very serious questions about policy there.
INSKEEP: Well, Republicans were deeply upset when President Obama acted unilaterally on immigration. Are they ready to support the president if he acts unilaterally on immigration?
KEITH: You know, it's really not clear whether they would be. Republicans have long been divided over the - whether the wall is really the best idea or even a good idea. And declaring an emergency, going around Congress to take money from the military to use it for the wall - there are, certainly, some people who would have concerns about that, including some people with Rs next to their name.
INSKEEP: Is the administration preparing for a longer shutdown?
KEITH: Yes. Well - or at least they are saying that they want to make it as painless as possible for the American people. It won't be painless. But one thing that they are doing is making sure that the IRS will continue to send out tax refunds.
INSKEEP: Tamara, thanks for the update, really appreciate it.
KEITH: You're welcome.
INSKEEP: NPR's Tamara Keith.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Throughout the course of the partial government shutdown, we've been taking a look at the impact on different communities and different industries. This morning, we focus in on Native Americans in this country and their ability to get medical care. I'm joined now by Kerry Hawk Lessard. She is the executive director of Native American Lifelines. It's a nonprofit contracted by the Indian Health Service, and it's based in Baltimore and Boston.
Thanks so much for being with us this morning.
KERRY HAWK LESSARD: (Speaking Lakota) Hihanni waste.
MARTIN: Can you start off by explaining how this shutdown is taking a toll, frankly, on Native Americans and their health care?
LESSARD: Sure. So as a contract site with the Indian Health Service, we operate on a cost-reimbursement basis, which means that we spend the money and send a voucher into the IHS, and then we get paid back. Before the shutdown, IHS owed us two months worth of vouchers. So when the shutdown occurred, any payments to us stopped, which means that we had to make some quick decisions about what we were going to do. And unfortunately after a meeting, our board of directors, in concert with our fiscal people, decided that we would have money to operate just to the end of this week. So at the end of this week, we are looking at laying off our employees and suspending medical services and mental health services to our clients in both Baltimore and Boston.
MARTIN: Can you give us a sense of how that affects the people who you serve? What's the scope of your work, and what's - how's this going to take effect in people's lives?
LESSARD: Sure. So we're considered an outreach and referral program, which means we don't provide direct medical services. But we do connect Native people to those services in our areas. But we do provide direct dental care, direct behavioral health care. And we pay for folks to get care at other places. Now keep in mind. In the Baltimore area, we are home to - in the state of Maryland, the Indian Health Service Headquarters. And we're also near Washington, D.C. So we're serving a lot of tribal citizens who've come from their homelands to serve in the federal government. So just a snapshot of what will happen in Baltimore - over the last two weeks, we've experienced four opioid overdoses, two of which have been fatalities. So for me, the thought that we won't be there to support grieving families or to connect people who have survived overdoses or who currently have substance abuse problems with treatment is really scary.
You know, in addition to the fact that 90 percent of my staff members are Native - and for us, you know, these are our relatives. So to, you know, think of telling your grandma, well, I'm sorry; I can't pay for your insulin this month because there's the federal government shutdown, and I don't know when I can pay for it again, it's really scary. Our people are already really burdened by high health care problems, behavioral health problems. So to know that there is no safety net for them is really scary. I can't tell any of my clients or vendors or even the people - you know, my car payment in real life. Well, I'm going to pay you in border wall. That's not an accepted currency right now.
MARTIN: So I imagine it is frustrating to have to think about layoffs, think about the repercussions of not giving these people access to healthcare as a casualty of this particular political debate about immigration.
LESSARD: It's really difficult for a lot of reasons. But I think primarily because all the services to Indian people are predicated on treaty rights and trust responsibilities. We paid well in advance in our lands and with our bodies. One of my ancestors is a survivor of boarding schools. So the fact that these things aren't available to us now because the government can't get along is just mind-boggling to me.
MARTIN: Kerry Hawk-Lessard is executive director of Native American Lifelines. Thanks so much for your time this morning.
LESSARD: Thank you.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Iran's economy is struggling. U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil, banking and other sectors have tightened. NPR's Peter Kenyon reports that Iranians blame the Trump administration but also their government and even themselves.
PETER KENYON, BYLINE: Thirty-year-old Elnaz moved to Tehran to work for an online recruitment agency, matching job seekers with companies looking for help. She agreed to an interview via Skype if her family name isn't used so she can speak freely. The first thing she noticed was a sharp drop in demand from the employer's side. Suddenly, it seemed hardly anyone was hiring.
ELNAZ: (Through interpreter) And on the applicant side, the demand kept going up - every day, more and more people with strong qualifications looking for jobs.
KENYON: Then one day, the agency closed her department. And Elnaz joined those unemployed people she'd been trying to help. She was forced to move back in with her parents and felt lucky to find another job with lower pay but, she hopes, more job security. The sanctions are back because President Trump pulled out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and re-imposed them in a bid to get Tehran to negotiate a tougher agreement. Elnaz says the sanctions are a big part of the problem. But her own government is also partly responsible. At the end of the day, Elnaz says, it's no use blaming officials.
ELNAZ: (Through interpreter) Beyond all governments, I consider the Iranian people responsible. We don't strongly demand our rights. If we held our politicians more accountable, we'd have better conditions now.
KENYON: Another Iranian reached via Skype, Nima, had a job that included inspecting imported goods - household appliances, automotive parts or machinery. He thinks back to an earlier round of sanctions several years ago and says at that time, he doesn't remember imports being hit so hard.
NIMA: (Through interpreter) Whereas now the imports have decreased drastically to the extent that in the past nine months, I've barely had the same amount of work that I used to get in one month. So I would say there's been a 90 percent decline in the import of these products.
KENYON: Nima says food, clothing and housing all cost more. And of course, there are shortages. The government promised economic improvements. But Nima says there's no relief being felt on the street. Ali Ansari, professor of Iranian history at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, says as the sanctions bite, efforts by the European Union to maintain the terms of the nuclear deal and keep trade going have bogged down. In part, that's due to issues on the European side. But Ansari says it's also because Tehran is wary of complying with Western standards on things like money laundering and cutting off funding for militant groups. He says a good example would be how the West views the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.
ALI ANSARI: Hezbollah, you know, is defined as a terrorist organization. And the Americans, you know, will clearly oppose any money that's being transferred to various groups in Palestine or Hezbollah in Lebanon and so on and so forth. So the Iranians are very, very opposed to it. Funding all these shady groups in the Middle East, you know, will then come to light if they actually adhere to these deregulatory restrictions.
KENYON: Meanwhile, public protests that began in late 2017 continue. Nima, the customs expert, says he hasn't joined the street protests. And he knows anti-Iran hawks in the West would love to see the demonstrations grow. But when asked how long he can continue in these conditions, he sounds resigned.
NIMA: (Through interpreter) I already shut down my business. I closed in August. How long can I stand it? Like everyone else, it depends on how much money is in my bank account. When that's finished, I'll join the ones protesting in the street.
KENYON: Peter Kenyon, NPR News, Istanbul.
(SOUNDBITE OF AUDIO DOPE'S "CLOUDS")
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
One think tank that is broadly in accord with President Trump's immigration priorities is the Center for Immigration Studies. It advocates lower levels of legal immigration. Yet Mark Krikorian of that center has raised concerns about the president's narrow focus on a border wall which he will discuss in an address to the nation tonight. He's in our studios.
Mr. Krikorian, welcome back.
MARK KRIKORIAN: Thank you.
INSKEEP: What could possibly go wrong?
KRIKORIAN: Well, the point to the wall was multifaceted. It was a shorthand that the president used during the campaign.
INSKEEP: It's a symbol.
KRIKORIAN: And, in fact - well, it's not just a symbol. I mean, we actually do need some more border barriers in various places. We have some. We need more. But it was a shorthand. It was a way to tell people - look; I'm not the usual lying politician. I'm actually serious about this. And it was effective as that. The problem is that now that, you know, the administration's been around for a couple of years, you have to follow through to some degree. And the Democrats have determined - accurately, I think - that the president's focus on the wall was a vulnerability, was an opportunity for the Democrats to deny him that in an attempt, basically, to show his impotence.
INSKEEP: And now he is desperate. Or you fear he will be desperate to give up anything to get the wall?
KRIKORIAN: Yeah. I've always kind of worried about that, that he was going to give the Democrats far more than really was warranted in exchange for the wall. Because more border barriers, like I said, they're important. But there are other things that are more important, things like plugging loopholes in our asylum laws, E-Verify and what have you.
It's kind of interesting. The president, on the one hand, really is, I think, desperate to have a success here. But the other side is that the Democrats really do seem to be obsessed in denying him a win on this. And the question is, is that obsession almost Captain Ahab-like, from "Moby Dick," to get the orange whale? Is that going to be a bigger problem for them, or is the president's desperation to get the wall going to be the bigger issue?
INSKEEP: Mr. Krikorian, since you're a critic of high levels of legal immigration, I want to ask you about something that we're hearing elsewhere on the program today. Kamala Harris, the Democratic senator, possible presidential candidate, is on the program. And she spoke about one kind of anxiety in the country right now. She said, quote, "people are reading about the browning of America. Barack Obama was president. Oh, my God." That's a quote from Kamala Harris. Is that you?
KRIKORIAN: No, certainly not. I mean, the issue here is not the individual characteristics of immigrants, whether it's their color, their religion or whatever. It's the effect that immigration has on a modern society. And we don't have time to go into it here. But I wrote a whole book on this, that there's a conflict between high levels of immigration and the goals and characteristics of a modern society in a way that wasn't necessarily true, say, a hundred or 200 years ago.
INSKEEP: Do you see high levels of immigration as a threat to the identity or the culture of America?
KRIKORIAN: It could potentially be. It depends how high they are. And it also depends on our own ability to successfully Americanize newcomers. We have a strong assimilationist tradition and strong assimilationist trends in our society. But it's weaker than it used to be for reasons that aren't really related to the immigrants themselves - are more related to changes in our own society.
INSKEEP: Are you ever uncomfortable with some of the people who agree with you? Because a lot of racists end up in the same position you're in.
KRIKORIAN: Yeah. I mean, every side has people who are, you know, sort of objectionable. I mean, there are triumphalist, sort of anti-white triumphalists on the pro-immigration side. And then there are people who are pro-white racists on the low-immigration side. You just sort of have to deal with that and address the people of goodwill on both sides of this debate.
INSKEEP: Mark Krikorian, thanks so much. Really appreciate it.
KRIKORIAN: Thank you, Steve.
INSKEEP: He's with the Center for Immigration Studies.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Here's a question. What if your car could talk to other cars on the street? As you're driving along, and your car could tell another car perhaps to move in order to avoid a crash. Ford wants to install technology like this in all its cars in three years. Tracy Samilton of Michigan Radio has the story, which begins with a video demonstration.
TRACY SAMILTON, BYLINE: Jarrett Wendt is sitting in the passenger side of a car to demonstrate what vehicle-to-vehicle technology can do. In the video, Wendt and his driver showcase one example, preventing the often deadly T-bone crash.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO)
JARRETT WENDT: Somebody is blowing through a red light, which happens all the time.
SAMILTON: As Wendt's car speeds up, it receives a warning that it's about to run into another car speeding through the intersection.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO)
WENDT: Elevated warning. Driver pumps the brakes. We avoid an accident altogether in the middle of an intersection.
SAMILTON: Ford Motor Company's Don Butler says this system lets vehicles talk to each other, with traffic signals, even with roads and pedestrians with smartphones.
DON BUTLER: Cellular vehicle-to-everything technology is kind of that common language.
SAMILTON: Except it's not. It's a different language than the one Toyota and GM have already begun putting into some of their cars. Butler says Ford didn't make this decision lightly. He argues that this cellular-to-everything technology is just better. It can send signals over a greater distance, for example. And it will be able to piggyback on the future, faster speed of 5G.
BUTLER: We have the ability to not only get a more efficient, cost-effective way of deploying the technology. We have a way of riding a technology wave that's only going to grow as we go forward.
SAMILTON: Now, this is certainly not the first time similar technologies have fought to the death in the marketplace. Those of a certain age probably remember VHS versus Beta. Sam Abuelsamid is an analyst with Navigant Research.
SAM ABUELSAMID: More recently, we had Blu-ray and HD DVD, you know, two competing technologies doing essentially the same thing that came out around the same time. And Blu-ray won out.
SAMILTON: But this battle is for much higher stakes. Jim Sayer is with the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute. His group oversaw a big pilot project in southeast Michigan using Wi-Fi V2V - not the system Ford is using. That one could be implemented industrywide today. In fact, it was ready to go two years ago.
JIM SAYER: There's been hundreds of millions of dollars invested by the industry, the federal government, local governments and, quite frankly, just taxpayers like you and I.
SAMILTON: Sayer says now it's going to take more time, money and research to prove that this other system is just as good or better. That delay translates to potential lives lost. Analyst Sam Abuelsamid says eventually, there will likely be a single system.
ABUELSAMID: Because everybody realizes that, for this to be of benefit, you need to have every vehicle be able to talk to every vehicle and to every roadside unit. You know, if they're talking different languages, then it doesn't help anybody.
SAMILTON: Abuelsamid suspects GM and Toyota will blink and switch to the system Ford is using. Or if not, a company will find a low-cost way to make the two systems compatible. Whatever the case, it's likely this pushes back implementation for a critical life-saving technology. For NPR News, I'm Tracy Samilton.
(SOUNDBITE OF KAYTRANADA'S "BUS RIDE")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Rachel Martin with sad news from the world of biology. The last of a particular kind of Hawaiian land snail has died. His name was George, and he was the result of a breeding effort in Hawaii to save his species.
George lived out his last days at a lab. He apparently kept to himself. Biologist David Sischo told NPR, for a snail, he was a bit of a hermit. I rarely saw him outside his shell. It's MORNING EDITION.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
No trash collection, no toilet cleaning, no functioning visitors center - that is the situation at many a national park during the partial government shutdown. The National Park Service says it will resume providing services at some sites at some point. Until it does, some cities and states are stepping in. NPR's Rebecca Ellis reports.
REBECCA ELLIS, BYLINE: For the past two weeks, D.C.'s trash collectors have been picking up extra shifts. Nevelion Williams is supervising nine crewmembers and three trucks at the National Mall.
NEVELION WILIAMS: You're going to - down Constitution Avenue to 15th Street, everything on your right...
ELLIS: Normally, this route is done by the National Park Service, but this is Williams' third shutdown. He knows the drill.
WILLIAMS: That's where we're going to meet you at, over in front of the monument.
ELLIS: This is new terrain for drivers like Antonio Robinson. This is his first shutdown, and he's not quite sure where he's going.
ANTONIO ROBINSON: So I'm just going off their hand signals and cues for him to tell me where to go.
ELLIS: When the government shut down, employees from the Park Service were furloughed. Over 600 trash cans in D.C. were left untended, at risk of overflowing. Mayor Muriel Bowser directed her Department of Public Works to step in.
MURIEL BOWSER: We, of course, want the federal government to do its job. But when they don't, we will.
ELLIS: The day before the shutdown, the Park Service handed the city's Department of Public Works a map, showing their favored routes and trash can locations. Bowser says D.C. is now spending almost $55,000 a week picking up the federal government's trash. She's keeping a tab.
BOWSER: We are maintaining a tally of what it's costing us because we will seek reimbursement from the federal government.
ELLIS: In an unprecedented move, the National Park Service now says it will use entrance fees to staff the nation's most popular parks. But so far, the agency has given out very few details on which parks will be impacted.
Vicki Varela hopes the move will help Utah. She's with the state's tourism office, which oversees iconic sites like Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park. Since the shutdown, the office has been writing checks to keep these sites well maintained. But unlike D.C., Varela says the state has no intention of getting reimbursed.
VICKI VARELA: In fact, in the agreement, we stipulated that we would not ask for our money back.
ELLIS: While D.C. is using its own employees to pick up the trash, Utah is paying the salaries of some of the National Park Service workers to keep them on the job.
VARELA: It's basically underwriting federal government costs under a shutdown. I don't know (laughter). It's all new precedent.
ELLIS: She says on the eve of the shutdown, a superintendent for the National Park Service high-tailed it to the home of an employee for Utah's Office of Tourism, who, in the nick of time, wrote him three checks.
VARELA: It was surreal. It was absolutely surreal.
ELLIS: In New York, the governor's office is spending $65,000 a day to keep the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island operating. For places like these, spending money to keep the lights on makes financial sense. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has said the state would lose a million dollars each day in tourism revenue if the landmarks were shut. But Varela says keeping the nation's parks pristine is about more than just money.
VARELA: These natural resources will be here long after the elected officials in D.C.
ELLIS: And as long as they're in the state's care, she says she plans to keep them in good shape.
Rebecca Ellis, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF JONAS KNUTSSON'S "YTTERVIK")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
President Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, has reportedly left Turkey without meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Today Turkey's leader slammed the Trump administration's most recent decision to keep U.S. troops in Syria until certain conditions can be met. Erdogan called this a, quote, "serious mistake." This is what John Bolton said while in Jerusalem Sunday.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
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.
MARTIN: Independent Senator Angus King represents the state of Maine, and he serves on the armed services committee. And he is in our studios this morning.
Senator, nice to see you.
ANGUS KING: Good morning, Rachel. How are you?
MARTIN: I am well.
Are you clear on the Trump administration's Syria policy?
KING: No, are you (laughter)? I'm not. It's changed rather dramatically in the last several weeks. And it's, in fact, changed in the last few hours. Remember all this appeared to start back in December with a call between the president and Erdogan of Turkey. And that's when the president said, OK, we're getting out. One of the major concerns was that we were walking away from the allies of the Kurds, who have basically been our best allies against ISIS - they've literally taken bullets for us - and that we were leaving them to the tender mercy of the Turks, who feel that they're at war with them. So all of a sudden, we have this new Bolton doctrine of - we're not really leaving all that soon, and we've got to be sure the Kurds are protected. The fact that Erdogan didn't meet with him and that Erdogan has blasted this approach tells you what Erdogan really has on his mind, which is to wipe out the Kurds in northeast Syria.
MARTIN: So that means you are pleased, then, with the administration's current position - not to pull out, to protect the Kurds and try to defeat ISIS until leaving.
KING: Yes. I think that was the reasonable position. The president's position at the beginning was just based upon no strategy and, as near as anyone can tell, no consultation with anyone in the administration. In fact, I think most people believe that it was the breaking point for Jim Mattis, secretary of defense, who said, you know, this is such a bad policy, I can't continue. And now we have sort of the worst of both worlds. We have Mattis gone. Bolton's trying to repair it. Erdogan is blasting it. And the president, yesterday, was saying there's really been no change, which is hard to square with sort of where we are. So it's a very fluid situation but a very dangerous one.
MARTIN: I mean - so there are two conditions now, protecting the Kurds, as we just talked about, and defeating ISIS. These are the conditions Bolton has laid out before U.S. troops leave. On the ISIS question, President Trump, on December 19, tweeted as follows, quote, "we have defeated ISIS in Syria - my only reason for being there." So clearly, that tweet was not accurate. How close, though, is the U.S. to defeating ISIS in Syria?
KING: Well, that's hard to determine because ISIS, as opposed to several years ago, doesn't hold territory. But that doesn't mean they're not there. There are estimates - I've seen estimates ranging from 15,000 to 30,000 fighters in the region. Now, it's a pretty fluid border between Iraq and Syria in that area. So you can't really say they're in Syria or they're in Iraq. But there are a lot of people there with allegiance to ISIS with malevolent intent. So how many are there? It's hard to say exactly. But it's still...
MARTIN: But does that mean the timeline is going to be far longer than the 30 days that the president first articulated?
KING: Very, very likely. And the president's first timeline was now. You know, I don't how you define now, but it's not in months or years. Now we are talking about a longer timeline. And remember, Rachel, we're really only talking about 2,000 American troops - not a large deployment but an important one in the sense of being a barrier, or a buffer, if you will, between the Turks and the Kurds, a stabilizer of that region - very important to sort of moderating the influence of Iran and Russia. The original decision was a gift to Iran and Russia, basically. And I think, at some point, the president actually said something like, well, now it's up to you. And of course, Iran is one of our rivals, adversaries in that region. So leaving the field to them in terms of Syria, I think, was a strategic mistake.
MARTIN: I want to ask you about another issue concerning U.S. military deployments, this to the U.S. southern border. NPR has learned that additional American troops are expected to be deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border to construct or upgrade at least 160 miles of fencing. Do you support that idea?
KING: No. (Clearing throat) - excuse me - I think that's clearly a precursor to the president trying to end-run Congress and the political process and try to build a wall using the military. We have a process, and you go through appropriations. And it has to be approved. And to do that and to call this, require the use of the military, you have to ask - where else or what other duties would these military people be having that suddenly they can say - oh, we're just going to send them to the southern border? That's just - it's just not the way the process works.
Everyone's speculating on what the president is going to say tonight. He may well declare a national emergency under 10 U.S. Code 2808, which then allows him - or authorizes the use of military construction funds, to take them away from other authorized projects and apply them, in this case, to the wall. I think that's really a stretch. That provision requires the use of the - protection of the armed services. The courts will ultimately decide that, but that may be where he's headed.
MARTIN: Where is the opening to end the shutdown? Where's the compromise? You, as an independent senator - when you look to both sides, where is it going to give?
KING: Well, I think the first opening is he may declare a national emergency tonight and say, we're going to do this through the military, and therefore, we don't need the congressional appropriations. Therefore, we can sign these laws and put the government back to work. That could be the exit ramp that would enable him to say, I'm still a hundred percent in favor of the wall. We're going to build it, but we're just going to use a different method. Therefore, I don't need Congress. Therefore, we don't need the shutdown. That's one possibility.
Where else you compromise on this is very difficult. The problem isn't the money, Rachel; it's not the wall itself. It's the fact that there's no plan for this. There's no analysis. And we have a system where the president doesn't have the unilateral authority to just do things. This guy is not CEO of America, and it's not a family-owned company.
MARTIN: Independent Senator Angus King of the state of Maine.
Thanks for your time this morning, sir.
KING: Thank you, Rachel.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
The third season of the sitcom "Kim's Convenience" debuted last night on the CBC in Canada. The first two seasons are available in the U.S. on Netflix. Now, the show focuses on the Kims, a Korean immigrant family that owns a convenience store in downtown Toronto. It is Canada's first-ever show with an all-Asian lead cast. NPR's Ashley Westerman has more on this one-of-a-kind sitcom.
ASHLEY WESTERMAN, BYLINE: "Kim's Convenience" is not your typical show about Asian immigrants.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "KIM'S CONVENIENCE")
KEVIN VIDAL: (As Roger) Mr. Kim, are you homophobic?
PAOLO SANTALUCIA: (As Kevin) Roger.
PAUL SUN-HYUNG LEE: (As Appa) What word you using?
WESTERMAN: In the first episode, Mr. Kim, played by Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, has been accused by a customer of being homophobic for refusing to put up a gay pride parade poster in his store. But Mr. Kim honestly just thinks the poster is ugly and that parades are annoying and to prove it, he comes up with a clever ploy on the fly.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "KIM'S CONVENIENCE")
LEE: (As Appa) Yeah, yeah, yeah, look, look, look, I am not homopebek (ph). Look, if I am a homopebek, then why - why do I give a gay discount?
WESTERMAN: The episode takes off from there into a humorous look at stereotyping. The first two seasons of "Kim's Convenience" take on everything, from running a convenience store to class issues in Korean church to generational differences between immigrant parents and their children. At the start of Season 3, daughter Janet, an aspiring photographer played by Andrea Bang, wants to change her name.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "KIM'S CONVENIENCE")
LEE: (As Appa) This website - it belong to (speaking Korean).
ANDREA BANG: (As Janet) Yeah, me.
LEE: (As Appa) You Kim Janet.
BANG: (As Janet) That's my English name. This is my new, unique Korean name. It means Justice Treasure.
LEE: (As Appa) Who give to you this name?
BANG: (As Janet) I did. I need it to stand out because my parents gave me a super boring English name.
INS CHOI: I came in with an idea - write what you know.
WESTERMAN: That's Ins Choi, who adapted his play, "Kim's Convenience," into the show.
CHOI: My father is a pastor. He used to be a pastor of an immigrant church in downtown Toronto. All my friends growing up in the '80s, '90s, their parents owned convenience stores, and I wanted it to be funny. My family's funny.
WESTERMAN: Paul Sun-Hyung Lee has played Mr. Kim, or Appa, meaning father in Korean, both onstage and on TV. And no, he doesn't really have a Korean accent.
LEE: I read the first two scenes, and my heart - it exploded because that was my appa. And I'd never heard him represented that way before. And it was like a key turning in my head, and his voice just started coming out.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "KIM'S CONVENIENCE")
LEE: (As Appa) Korea used to be spelled C-O-R-E-A. Then Japan tell England Korea spelled with a K so that Korea come after Japan in the English dictionary.
BANG: (As Janet) That's your most messed up conspiracy theory yet.
LEE: (As Appa) I'm not conspiracy theory - conspiracy truth.
WESTERMAN: In Canada, like the U.S., Asians are the fastest growing minority group. Lee says this is why it's important for viewers to see well-written and well-rounded roles for Asians.
LEE: They're three-dimensional characters with wants, with hopes, with needs, with fears, and that's what's so exciting about playing them as, you know, an actor of color because we've been so cut off from playing real people.
WESTERMAN: Nancy Wang Yuen is a media critic and author of the book "Reel Inequality." She says "Kim's Convenience" is refreshing.
NANCY WANG YUEN: Compared to the U.S. family sitcoms with the Asian-American families, they tend to resolve everything kind of in one episode. And the humor, even when it takes on social issues, they're more I guess light. And I think that "Kim's Convenience" takes on a little bit more complex layers.
WESTERMAN: Yuen says she came to "Kim's Convenience" binge-watching it on a plane. You can binge-watch the first two seasons on Netflix, but then you'll have to wait for Season 3, unless, of course, you're in Canada.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "KIM'S CONVENIENCE")
LEE: (As Appa) OK, see you.
WESTERMAN: Ashley Westerman, NPR News.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
We're taking some time this morning to dive into President Trump's first primetime address from the Oval Office. He spoke last night for about 9 1/2 minutes, making his case for a multibillion-dollar border wall with Mexico.
(SOUNDBITE OF OVAL OFFICE ADDRESS)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I am speaking to you because there is a growing humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border.
GREENE: The president spoke about drugs coming across that border.
(SOUNDBITE OF OVAL OFFICE ADDRESS)
TRUMP: Our southern border is a pipeline for vast quantities of illegal drugs, including meth, heroin, cocaine and fentanyl.
GREENE: And Trump repeatedly said criminals have been crossing that border.
(SOUNDBITE OF OVAL OFFICE ADDRESS)
TRUMP: In the last two years, ICE officers made 266,000 arrests of aliens with criminal records, including those charged or convicted of 100,000 assaults, 30,000 sex crimes and 4,000 violent killings.
GREENE: OK, let's spend some time doing some fact-checking here with NPR's Joel Rose, who covers immigration. Joel, good morning.
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: Hey, David.
GREENE: All right, so let's start with that last bit we heard from the president, 266,000 immigrants with criminal records over the past few years.
ROSE: That number is basically right, but it does not tell you the whole story.
GREENE: OK.
ROSE: Many of those immigrants were convicted of nonviolent offenses - things like traffic violations, immigration offenses, including illegal entry. And also, keep in mind those are immigrants who were targeted for arrest by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The folks who are showing up at the border are actually much less likely to have criminal records. And in general, immigrants are less likely than native-born people to commit crimes.
I mean, the president likes to point out individual anecdotes with sympathetic victims, which is something he did again last night. But by focusing on these gruesome examples, his critics say he's exaggerating the overall threat of immigrants and is really playing to fears about immigration that are just not warranted by the facts.
GREENE: OK, let's move on to what the president said about drugs flowing across the southern border. Interesting, I found, that he talked a lot about drugs but didn't return to an argument that he's been making recently, which is that terrorists have been crossing into the U.S. from Mexico. So what did you make of all that?
ROSE: Right. You know, there are drugs passing through the southern border - right? - a lot of them. But the majority of them come through in cars and trucks that pass through legal ports of entry. And it's not clear that a border wall would do a lot to slow or stop them.
GREENE: You're not going to put a border wall on a legal checkpoint, where cars are coming through.
ROSE: Exactly. And you're also right that Trump did not mention terror or terrorists last night. His press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, was challenged in an interview with Fox News over the weekend when she implied that the administration has caught thousands of terrorists trying to sneak over the southern border. In fact, Homeland Security has intercepted thousands of suspected terrorists. But nearly all of them were trying to get into the country through airports, not - not across the border.
GREENE: Well, give us a sense of who is crossing the southern border into the U.S.
ROSE: Well, overall illegal immigration is way down from decades ago. What has changed, really, is the makeup of the migrant flow. We've seen record numbers of families coming from Central America, kids and parents showing up at the border together - also large numbers of unaccompanied children, who often turn themselves in - all of these people - and ask for asylum.
Customs and Border Protection says its facilities are just largely unprepared to deal with families and kids. And we saw two deaths of young migrant children in CBP custody last month for the first time in 10 years.
GREENE: Yeah, something we've been reporting on and exploring a lot. So after the president spoke, we heard from Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi giving the Democrats' response. What did you make of that after seeing it?
ROSE: Well, you know, they accused the president of misleading the country and playing on people's fears to try to make a case for the wall. Here's a clip from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NANCY PELOSI: The fact is the women and children at the border are not a security threat. They are a humanitarian challenge, a challenge that President Trump's own cruel and counterproductive policies have only deepened.
ROSE: And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that Democrats also want stronger borders. They just disagree with the president about how to do it. However, as the president pointed out last night, Schumer and other Democrats have supported border barriers at other moments in the past.
GREENE: Oh, so that's a valid point that Trump made about Democrats supporting...
ROSE: Exactly.
GREENE: ...Border barriers at times in the past.
ROSE: Exactly.
GREENE: All right, NPR's Joel Rose covers immigration for NPR, helping us doing some fact-checking after the speeches from the president and also from Democrats last night. Joel, thanks.
ROSE: Hey, you're welcome.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
OK. On the other side of the border, California law limits how much local law enforcement can cooperate with federal officials enforcing federal immigration laws. And California is providing free legal assistance to migrants. Here's David Wagner from our member station, KPCC.
DAVID WAGNER, BYLINE: When Rosa began her journey to Los Angeles, fleeing gang violence in El Salvador, she had a picture of the city in mind.
ROSA: (Speaking Spanish).
WAGNER: "Luxurious, beautiful." Some areas are like that, she's found, but not her heavily Latino neighborhood near downtown LA. She lives in a studio apartment with her two kids and her mother-in-law, and the neighborhood feels familiar.
ROSA: (Speaking Spanish).
WAGNER: She says she sometimes feels like she's in the capital of El Salvador. We're only using Rosa's first name because her asylum case is ongoing. She's one of over 70,000 immigrants in LA waiting for their cases to be heard. She's been surprised by how expensive housing is here. Asylum-seekers can't get a work permit until at least six months into their case. Many work under the table in order to pay their rent. But Rosa says California has what she needs - safety and the chance of a better life for her kids.
ROSA: (Speaking Spanish).
WAGNER: "There is opportunity here," she says. "You can realize your dreams" - often with the help of a pro bono asylum lawyer.
INGRID EAGLY: Finding a lawyer, we find throughout, is powerfully associated with positive outcomes in these cases.
WAGNER: UCLA law professor Ingrid Eagly did a study that found families released from detention only won asylum 7 percent of the time when they didn't have a lawyer. Those who had a lawyer increased their odds of winning to 49 percent. Eagly's data only goes up to 2016. Since President Trump took office, denials have been on the rise. Still, legal aid can make a big difference for asylum-seekers.
EAGLY: They're more likely to be able to gather evidence, to work collaboratively with their lawyer and to otherwise prepare and find witnesses who can testify in their case.
WAGNER: But immigration lawyers tend to concentrate in expensive cities. Jenna Gilbert is a pro bono asylum attorney at Human Rights First in LA. She says it's heartbreaking to get calls from clients who say they can't afford to stay in California.
JENNA GILBERT: If you move to a small town in Texas, housing is going to be much cheaper, but you probably won't have the legal resources and you also will be in a circuit that is much less favorable to asylum-seekers.
WAGNER: Unlike California's more immigrant friendly 9th Circuit. But wherever you are, the asylum process can take a long time. One of Gilbert's clients, Lizeth, has been pursuing asylum for more than two years. Even on a day off from her job in a fast-food kitchen, she's cooking, stirring a big pot of beef soup.
LIZETH: (Speaking Spanish).
WAGNER: Lizeth is originally from Honduras. She now lives in a studio apartment with her husband and two of her kids. There's not much privacy, she says, but they no longer have to share cramped quarters with other families. They've settled into a routine, growing more comfortable in California every day. They've put a down payment on a car. Their kids are picking up English in school. Lizeth says what they have here is better than anything she imagined.
LIZETH: (Speaking Spanish).
WAGNER: It's a thousand percent better, she says. Lizeth and her family have already been waiting a long time. But her attorney, Jenna Gilbert, says at this point she hopes cases like hers slow down even more, until perhaps there's a new administration in the White House. For NPR News, I'm David Wagner in Los Angeles.
INSKEEP: And this story comes from the statewide California Dream collaboration.
(SOUNDBITE OF DAYZERO'S "CENTRAL AIRPORT")
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
What, if anything, changed after President Trump and Democrats made their case on a border wall?
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Well, we might find out today. Congressional leaders are going to be meeting with the president. Last night, the president asked the American people to reach out to them.
(SOUNDBITE OF OVAL OFFICE ADDRESS)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: To every citizen, call Congress and tell them to, finally, after all of these decades, secure our border.
GREENE: The president blocked routine government spending measures unless they include money for a border wall. He raised the specter of drugs and crime. Afterwards, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer responded.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NANCY PELOSI: Much of what we heard from President Trump throughout this senseless shutdown has been full of misinformation and even malice. The president has chosen fear.
INSKEEP: NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson was listening to the speeches and joins us this morning.
Hi there, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Hi, there.
INSKEEP: So the president used the bully pulpit, as they say. Did you feel any sign of movement or change last night?
LIASSON: I didn't hear any sign of movement. There was nothing in the speech that offered a new compromise, no kind of legalize the DREAMers in exchange for wall funding - that's a compromise that both sides flirted with a while ago. So I think unless congressional leaders and the president come up with something we didn't hear last night today, I don't think we'll make progress in these meetings because neither side is hurting enough politically yet.
INSKEEP: Well, you said hurting enough. This is a war of attrition, isn't it? Each side is seeing who can suffer more. Were there any arguments the president laid out that would seem damaging to Democrats over the long term?
LIASSON: Well, I think the president had three goals last night. One is he needed to convince people outside of his hard core base that shutting down the government to get funding for the wall is a good idea. And Democrats are pretty confident that that won't work. They say this was litigated in 2018. The president's message in the election was all about an invading caravan, and it didn't work. So they're pretty dug in.
The second goal, of course, was to keep Republicans from abandoning ship and starting to vote with Democrats to reopen the government, something a small handful of Republicans have already done in the House and about three Senate Republicans who are up in 2020 have been calling for. And the third goal, I think, was to show his base that he's fighting and to lay the groundwork for what might be the endgame of this whole debate, which is declaring a national emergency on the border - doing it himself, doing an end run around Congress.
INSKEEP: Mara, is there some vulnerability for Democrats? Because there are a number of Democrats in Congress who, in past years, in other situations, have voted for funding for various kinds of fences and border barriers.
LIASSON: I think that's probably the strongest argument the president made. In the last continuing resolution - government funding resolution he signed, the Democrats said, you can spend this money explicitly. The language in the bill was, you can spend this money on steel fencing, but you can't build a concrete wall. And he's saying now, fine; I'll build a steel fence. So you know, he's saying, you approved this money for this kind of barrier in the past. Why don't you do it again?
INSKEEP: OK. Thanks very much. That's NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Now let's check some of the facts in the president's speech.
GREENE: Yeah. And it's worth noting, there was one notable omission in the speech. The president never said the word terror last night. This week, the White House has backed off claims about the number of terrorists crossing the border.
INSKEEP: Yeah. There were questions about some numbers the White House was throwing around. NPR's Joel Rose covers immigration, listened to what was there.
Good morning, Joel.
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: And let's start with the president's dramatic language about people who are in the United States illegally, committing crimes.
(SOUNDBITE OF OVAL OFFICE ADDRESS)
TRUMP: How much more American blood must we shed before Congress does its job?
INSKEEP: OK. There are dramatic cases. The president alluded to some of them. But are immigrants, statistically, more dangerous than anybody else, Joel?
ROSE: No. Immigrants are actually less likely than native-born people to commit crimes. But this is a technique that the president has used a lot, going back to his campaign, to point to individual anecdotes with sympathetic crime victims. For example, last night, he talked about an incident - a police officer in California who was allegedly killed by an undocumented immigrant in December. The president also brought up MS-13, the violent street gang, which he does with some regularity. But by focusing on these gruesome examples, his critics say he is exaggerating the overall threat from immigrants and playing on fear. By the way, the police officer who was killed in California that the president called an American hero - also an immigrant, from Fiji.
INSKEEP: Well, the president also repeated a claim that he has made on Twitter. Let's listen to that.
(SOUNDBITE OF OVAL OFFICE ADDRESS)
TRUMP: Our southern border is a pipeline for vast quantities of illegal drugs, including meth, heroin, cocaine and fentanyl.
INSKEEP: OK. This does seem basically true. Right? A lot of drugs do come north from Latin America.
ROSE: Absolutely. But most of those drugs come through in cars and trucks that pass through legal ports of entry. So it's not actually clear that a border wall would do anything to slow them down or stop them.
INSKEEP: Oh, oh - so this is a version of the concern about people who come to the United States illegally, also through legal ports of entry. They come with a visa and overstay the visa. The law wouldn't affect them, either.
ROSE: And they are the largest share of people who are becoming undocumented immigrants. That's right.
INSKEEP: OK. Well, there's one other claim the president made that we want to check. Let's give a listen to this.
(SOUNDBITE OF OVAL OFFICE ADDRESS)
TRUMP: The wall will also be paid for, indirectly, by the great new trade deal we have made with Mexico.
INSKEEP: OK. This is vital, Joel Rose, because the president and his campaign didn't say - we're going to build a wall, and Congress and American taxpayers will pay for it. He said - we're going to build a wall, and Mexico will pay for it. Now he's saying this is how Mexico is going to pay for it, through this trade agreement. Is there some provision in the new North American Free Trade deal to pay for wall construction?
ROSE: Not directly, no. I mean, the president is talking about the United States-Mexico-Canada agreement, which was signed by the leaders of the three countries in November. Trump has repeatedly claimed that that new pact would usher in huge economic benefits for the U.S., essentially making up for the cost of the border wall. But there are two big problems with this argument. First, the agreement has yet to be approved by Congress, and that is not a sure thing. So any conclusions about how much money it's going to bring in are premature. And second, many economists say the new agreement is just a modest reworking of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement that it is supposed to replace. They are skeptical that it's going to do much to really boost economic growth in the U.S.
INSKEEP: And very briefly, the Democrats didn't speak very long. Were there any factual concerns in their short statements?
ROSE: Well, one thing to note that I think you kind of hit on already with Mara - but the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, has said that Democrats and the president both want stronger security; however, they disagree about the most effective way to do it. However, as the president did point out last night, congressional Democrats, including Schumer, have sometimes supported border barriers in the past.
INSKEEP: Joel, thanks very much.
ROSE: You're welcome.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Joel Rose.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
INSKEEP: All right. What are the consequences for R. Kelly after a documentary series focused on sexual abuse allegations?
GREENE: Yeah. Lifetime says more than 2 million viewers have watched the "Surviving R. Kelly" series. It tells the stories of women who say the multiplatinum R&B artist abused them, isolated them, also had sex with them - some when they were underage. Accusers say Kelly ran a sex cult in Georgia and in Chicago. Kim Foxx, the state's attorney in Cook County, Ill., is now inviting other possible victims to tell their stories.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KIM FOXX: Please come forward. There is nothing that can be done to investigate these allegations without the cooperation of both victims and witnesses.
GREENE: And we should say, there has been a debate over why there wasn't more outcry and more investigation sooner. That debate is growing louder and louder on social media.
INSKEEP: And NPR TV critic Eric Deggans has been listening.
Hi there, Eric
ERIC DEGGANS, BYLINE: Hi.
INSKEEP: What kinds of conversations are you seeing and hearing?
DEGGANS: Well, there's a lot of conversation and a lot of attention being paid to this series. As you noted, 2 million people watched the debut. But over the course of this six-part series, Lifetime is saying something like 18.8 million people have watched it and that it's also their most talked-about series on social media in the network's history, which gives you the sense that people are talking about it on social media. And the conversation we're seeing is this idea of, can you separate the artist from his music?
There are fans out there who want to still enjoy sentimental hits, like "I Believe I Can Fly" and "Step In The Name Of Love" from R. Kelly. They're important in their personal history. But people are also pointing out and the docu-series makes the argument that he's used the wealth that he's amassed from these hits to build a strategy for grooming young women, for imprisoning young women, for abusing young women. And so people are arguing that you can't really separate those two things. And it's forcing a conversation about pedophilia, sexual abuse and even believing black women when they speak out about abuse within black communities across the country, which seems to be the most impressive result.
INSKEEP: Eric, is this case a little like Bill Cosby's case in that the allegations were sort of known for quite some time but, finally, we've hit a moment where people are really paying attention?
DEGGANS: I think that that dynamic is definitely happening. I interviewed Dream Hampton, one of the executive producers on the series, and she told me that, for some people, ideas like this don't really become concrete until they really see it on television. And there was something very striking about watching this docu-series and seeing woman after woman come forward. All of the women featured in the docu-series have made their allegations public before, but this is the first docu-series to bring them all together in one very potent story that covers from the beginning of R. Kelly's career in Chicago all the way up until the present day.
And we're in this moment where we're seeing people look at the work of Louis C.K. and Kevin Spacey and Bill Cosby and go back and sort of say - you know, there were things that we heard about these guys that maybe we shrugged off or maybe we didn't pay enough attention to. And again, this idea of believing women when they step forward to tell stories of abuse - and I think in this #MeToo moment that we're experiencing now, there's an effort to do that more. And so it's causing us to go back and relook at these incidents. And R. Kelly is the focus of this now.
INSKEEP: What did you mean earlier, Eric, when you suggested that women of color might be treated differently as accusers than white women?
DEGGANS: Well, Chance the Rapper, this famous musician, just did a video interview where he talked about that, where he talked about - saying that working with R. Kelly was a mistake. And one of the reasons why he may have paid short shrift to some of the allegations about R. Kelly is because he didn't fully believe black women when they stepped forward. And I think a lot of people are having that conversation now, thanks to this docu-series.
INSKEEP: Wow.
Eric, thanks so much. Really appreciate it.
DEGGANS: Thank you.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Eric Deggans.
(SOUNDBITE OF AFLUEN SONG, "1412")
INSPECTAH DECK: (Rapping) I move through the Third World. My third eye's the guiding light.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The arrest of American Paul Whelan on espionage charges in Russia has raised a question - how to get him out. Sometimes an accused spy there is traded for an accused spy in the United States. Possibly the most famous such exchange between those two countries is described in this old movie newsreel.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: In 1957, convicted Russian spy Rudolf Abel was sentenced to 30 years, escaping the death penalty after his attorney argued that the United States might want to swap Abel for an American at some future time. Now, Abel has been exchanged for U-2 pilot Gary Powers.
INSKEEP: That swap, dramatized in the more recent movie "Bridge Of Spies," was one of many in history. We've put your questions about this practice to commentator Cokie Roberts, who joins us every week to answer your questions about how politics and the government work. Hi there, Cokie.
COKIE ROBERTS, BYLINE: Hi, Steve.
INSKEEP: Now, let's hear our first question.
CHRIS MOORE: This is Chris Moore in Lake Worth, Fla. Is there usually some degree of parity in the value of the spies being swapped? Or have the swaps more typically been asymmetrical? And if they have been, which country has more often been on the short end of the stick?
INSKEEP: Wow, it's, like, a chess metaphor. Do you trade a rook for a bishop, a knight for a queen?
ROBERTS: (Laughter) Well, that's right. And you can get a lot of arguments going on here about that. The answer is often, of course, viewed through a political lens, as in conservatives will accuse Democratic administrations of getting the short end of a swap. That happened in 2010 under Obama when the U.S. traded 10 Russians accused of spying in the U.S. for four jailed Russian double agents. The U.S. intelligence said that the four held in Russian prisons were far more valuable than the 10 we sent back. They were the so-called illegals living as everyday Americans. They got no classified information. They were apparently trying to infiltrate government and academia in hopes of influencing future policymakers. Their story, Steve, you can recognize. They became the basis of the popular TV show "The Americans." One reason the U.S. was eager to send them home rather than try them here was that a trial could reveal surveillance methods that the FBI was eager to keep secret.
INSKEEP: Let's hear from our next listener.
DAN SMITH: Hello, this is Dan Smith in Seattle, Wash. Have we ever traded a spy out of the country that can incriminate the highest levels of one of our political parties with their testimony and cooperation?
ROBERTS: Well, most of what a spy who's been held in jail knows was likely already revealed to his or her government before the arrest. What intelligence agencies tend to be much more wary about are alleged defectors; most notorious case there was that of Yuri Nosenko who defected from the KGB in 1964. He revealed that Lee Harvey Oswald was not a Soviet agent. The CIA was totally distrustful of Nosenko and held him in harsh detention for several years until he finally convinced them he was for real. Then they gave him a new name, sent him someplace South. Neither his name nor his place of residence was revealed in his 2008 obituary.
INSKEEP: Wow. We have another question here about the regularity of these kinds of events.
MIKE KOEPPEN: Mike Koeppen - Arlington Heights, Ill. Do spy swaps happen all that often?
ROBERTS: In the Cold War, the swaps happened much more often than they have in recent years. Before that 2010 one that we talked about earlier, the last major one was in 1986, and it was on the so-called Bridge of Spies, the bridge in Berlin where spies were exchanged in very dangerous and precarious ways through the Cold War - very, very dramatic.
INSKEEP: That's Cokie Roberts. We contemplated swapping her for Nina Totenberg for this segment, but the exchange did not work out. Cokie, thanks so much.
ROBERTS: Good to talk to you.
INSKEEP: You can ask Cokie your questions about how politics and the government work by tweeting us with the hashtag #AskCokie.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Hundreds of people came together at a church in Houston for the funeral of a 7-year-old girl who was killed in a drive-by shooting last week. Florian Martin with Houston Public Media has more.
FLORIAN MARTIN, BYLINE: Jazmine Barnes was hit in the head by a bullet while she was riding in the car with her mom and three sisters the morning of December 30. The killing made waves across the nation, in part perhaps because the family initially described the shooter as a white man in a pickup truck. That led many to assume it was a hate crime because the victim is black. Prominent African-Americans across the country pledged their support - some offering large rewards for tips, others paying for Jazmine's funeral.
A week after an intense hunt for the perpetrator, two black men were arrested and charged with capital murder. Prosecutors say it seemed to have been a case of mistaken identity. But the race of those who prematurely ended Jazmine's life did not matter for those attending her funeral service at The Community of Faith, a large African-American church on Houston's north side. The little girl's mother, LaPorsha Washington, was full of gratitude for the large turnout by people from across the city.
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LAPORSHA WASHINGTON: I didn't think it was going be this big, but it is big, and it is a celebration. And I just want to thank everybody.
(APPLAUSE)
MARTIN: Jazmine's father, Christopher Cevilla, echoed that feeling.
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CHRISTOPHER CEVILLA: And she wasn't only my daughter and my baby and my angel, she's all of our daughter - everybody.
(APPLAUSE)
MARTIN: In the service that lasted nearly 2 1/2 hours, besides her parents and clergy, speakers included some local officials. In between, a sometimes solemn, sometimes cheerful gospel choir sang.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED CHOIR: (Singing) He'll welcome his children home one day. I'm living this life...
MARTIN: The superintendent of the school district Jazmine attended, King Davis, says he was moved to hear she had wanted to become a teacher one day.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KING DAVIS: That said so much about Jazmine and her character. She's truly a caring child and wanted to give back as a servant-leader in the role as a teacher.
MARTIN: The man who oversaw the investigation into her death also spoke. Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez says Jazmine's spirit and the smile she has in many of her pictures touched everyone who worked on the investigation. The sheriff's office announced the capital murder charge of the second suspect while the funeral was happening.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ED GONZALEZ: I spoke recently about the arrest of one individual responsible for Jazmine's death. I said then that while we have made great progress, we would stay the course and complete our complete and follow-up investigation. This is our promise to Jazmine.
MARTIN: At the end of the service, Bishop James Dixon made what he called a compassionate call to action. He says mass shootings and homicides are at epidemic levels, adding to a culture of violence today that can be remedied by instilling values in young people.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JAMES DIXON: Yes, there ought to be an alarm on the inside of every one of us. And we've got to put that alarm in our children before they leave the house.
MARTIN: After the service, pallbearers put Jazmine's white casket into a white hearse, then purple balloons were released into the blue sky. Purple was Jazmine's favorite color.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED CHOIR: (Singing) Perfect peace.
MARTIN: For NPR News, I'm Florian Martin in Houston.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
It's been about two years since he took office, and last night, President Trump gave his first prime-time address from the Oval Office. He wanted to explain why he wants a wall on the border with Mexico.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: This barrier is absolutely critical to border security. It's also what our professionals at the border want and need. This is just common sense.
GREENE: The president said there is a humanitarian and security crisis. He spoke about drugs coming over the border, also Americans killed by people in the country illegally. And we are fact-checking the address on the program this morning, but we're going to turn right now to the other side of the border to see how the president's message was received. NPR's Carrie Kahn is in Reynosa, Mexico. And Carrie, what is that - right across the Rio Grande from Texas, right?
CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: Yes, right across the border.
GREENE: So where did you watch this presidential address, and who were you watching with?
KAHN: I was at a migrant shelter, and it's right on the banks of the Rio Grande. You could actually see the lights of McAllen, Texas, right from the shelter. There's people from all over Central America there, and there were many deported Mexicans, too, there. The director asked the women - the men and women if they wanted to watch President Trump's speech, and about 20 dragged folding chairs into a small office and lined them up in front of a big-screen TV. They don't have cable at the shelter, but they were able to get a broadcast signal from across the river and watch the speech with Spanish interpretation dubbed over on the U.S. network, Univision.
GREENE: Interesting to watch this from that side of the border. So how were people reacting?
KAHN: You know, they were pretty stone-faced during President Trump's speech. Many shook their heads disapprovingly, you know, when the president said more of his disparaging comments about immigrants, especially when he talked about illegal aliens bringing drugs and committing murder and violent crimes in the U.S. But when the Democrats spoke, there were more audible responses. And then at the end, they - when they finished, they - everyone broke into applause.
One woman, a 51-year-old woman from Honduras, Maria Alfaro, she was really struck by the president's comments about violence women experience during the trek north, especially in Mexico. She said she was a crime victim in southern Mexico, and if the president understands what she's gone through to get to the U.S., why doesn't he have compassion for her and allow her into the country? She said she's fleeing violence back home and death threats and will come into the U.S. legally.
MARIA ALFARO: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: She said she has proof of her asylum claim, and she'll go through the port of entry here at McAllen, Texas.
GREENE: You mentioned that Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer giving the Democratic response and also accusing the president of keeping the government in the United States shut down over this, which has been so much part of the theme in the conversation here in the U.S. Has that come up in Mexico, or is this whole issue seen in a different way?
KAHN: I think some people understand the politics going on across the border, but, you know, they're just looking at it through their personal experience, right here, right now, after this long trek they've made to the border. Many just expressed dismay. They kept saying why is the president so against Hispanics, as they put it. They don't understand all of his rhetoric. They say they're just coming to work and not cause harm.
I spoke with several Mexicans who've been deported for various reasons and want to get back to jobs and families they've had in the U.S. You know, this one man was deported after 20 years living in Tennessee. He says he himself was a crime victim and just wants to get back to a good construction job he had there.
GREENE: Any other moments stand out to you in the president's address?
KAHN: I guess, you know, the repeated claims of crime and drug smuggling by immigrants stands out, especially since, historically, the number of illegal immigrants coming across the southwest border is at an all-time low if you compare it to, like, a decade ago. Yes, the number of families with kids from Central America is on the rise, but, historically, the numbers, you know, just don't show this huge crisis here. And like you said, our own fact-checkers at npr.org are breaking down those numbers and those claims, also the ones about crime.
GREENE: NPR's Carrie Kahn in Reynosa, Mexico. Thanks, Carrie.
KAHN: You're welcome.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
In Pakistan, Islamic seminaries, better known as madrassas, are widely seen as places where students are indoctrinated with extreme interpretations of Islam. Well, now Pakistan's prime minister wants to change them. Here's NPR's Diaa Hadid.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: (Chanting in Arabic).
DIAA HADID, BYLINE: Boys sway as they chant the Quran in a shiny madrassa in the village of Mir Muhammad.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Chanting in Arabic).
HADID: They fall silent, and a star student chants alone.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Chanting in Arabic).
HADID: Girls study in a separate building. It's crumbling and dirty. There's about 32,000 madrassas across Pakistan, attended by more than 2 1/2 million students. Here, they're expected to memorize the Quran and master Islamic law and not much else.
Most madrassas fall outside of government control. And for decades, there's been concern that they're producing unskilled graduates steeped in intolerant versions of Islam. Many fear they've become recruiting grounds for extremists. But Muhammad Saleem Asif, the madrassa's principal, says Pakistan needs Islamic seminaries.
MUHAMMAD SALEEM ASIF: (Through interpreter) The seminaries are so important. They deal with the man's spiritual issues. They bless the communities around them.
HADID: Others worry about their influence in those communities. Abida Akram is the headmistress of a girls public high school. She says many of the young women in the village now wear long robes and face veils. It's a style of dress imported from Saudi Arabia. Private donors there fund many of these seminaries and promote Saudi Arabia's harsh interpretation of Islam, called Wahhabism.
ABIDA AKRAM: (Through interpreter) This is a matter of concern for our entire society. I try to keep my students and my kids away from the madrassas. They contaminate the students' minds. And if they remain unchecked, it will lead to disaster.
HADID: To Abida Akram's point, madrassa students angrily lashed out against the supreme court in October after the court acquitted a woman accused of insulting Islam. They led chants calling for the woman to be hanged and decapitated.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Chanting in Urdu).
HADID: Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan, who took power just months ago, initially vowed change.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRIME MINISTER IMRAN KHAN: (Speaking in Urdu).
HADID: Khan has called for madrassas to add basic subjects to their curriculum, like science and English. His party wants the madrassas to disclose their funding sources. All this implies some government control. But he won't be the first to try and change the politically powerful madrassas.
Decades of governments have tried and failed. A madrassa leader say they'll push back against Khan as well. Shaikh Tanveer Alavi is a senior teacher at Jamia Muhammadia. It's a madrassa in the Pakistani capital.
SHAIKH TANVEER ALAVI: (Through interpreter) There's lack of trust between madrassas and the government, so the seminaries oppose reforms. They think the government is trying to roll back or ruin this system.
HADID: Some madrassas, including Alavi's, already offer some non-religious subjects, like math.
UNIDENTIFIED TEACHER: Two minus two...
HADID: And there's already signs that the prime minister might be caving. Months after he called for change, one of his senior allies promised madrassa leaders they'd be left alone. And many experts say the government is missing the point.
MOSHARRAF ZAIDI: The public education system vastly, vastly underserves Pakistani kids. There are 22 million kids out of school.
HADID: Mosharraf Zaidi is an analyst and education advocate. He says improve the public schools, and fewer parents will send their kids to madrassas. Headmistress Akram agrees. She shows us around her school.
There's 40 girls crammed into a class. They're short of teachers, and she wants the government to supply more. But here, she says, students will get an education, not indoctrination. Diaa Hadid, NPR News, Mir Muhammad.
(SOUNDBITE OF .SINH'S "BRIDGES")
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Good morning. I'm David Greene. A woman in Oklahoma was using the dating app Bumble bragging about killing a deer. It was an illegal kill, which might not have mattered much except the guy chatting with her is a game warden. According to the Oklahoma Game Wardens Facebook page, they went to the woman's house to catch her. The wardens flashed a little sense of humor, using the hashtag #DateNight. The woman paid fines and might not be going on any hunting dates anytime soon. You're listening to MORNING EDITION.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Thirteen-year-old Divyne Apollon II plays hockey. He plays defense for a Maryland team called the Metro Maple Leafs. In a recent tournament, he was suspended after a fight broke out. Divyne says he was punched. He was punched first, and he fought back.
DIVYNE II: The game was sort of tied. And at one point, they were beating us by a point. But then we were also beating them. And the other team was saying stuff to the entire team in general, like we were bad. But then as they got closer to the middle of the game and further on, then they started saying racist things, like making the monkey noises and that sort of stuff. I wasn't really worried about it because my dad, he's told me not to pay attention to things like that and just keep on playing.
INSKEEP: Divyne is black and says he was called the N word and received chants of get off the ice, go play basketball. His teammates didn't stand for it. They yelled back, and the brawl broke out. Divyne II's father, Divyne Apollon, told Noel King, this is nothing new.
DIVYNE APOLLON: We've had this situation before. He's been playing hockey now for the past five years, and about two years ago is when it first started. And, you know, I explained to him, listen, your job is to play hockey. You don't deal with the refs. You don't deal with the coaches. That's my department. You, I transfer that also into, you know, police, teachers, adults. That's not your realm to deal with. That's for me to deal with.
I had the same conversation with my daughters, unfortunately, who play tennis, because that's a predominately nonblack sport. So I knew when he fell in love with hockey that this would just be part of the experience, unfortunately. So for the most part, we took it, we handled it and kept moving, you know? And I always told him, you know, your performance on the ice is the single most important thing you need deal with.
NOEL KING, BYLINE: The day that this all happened, did you know it was happening?
APOLLON: No.
KING: You didn't...
APOLLON: No. We could see the kids were very aggressively speaking to everybody. His coach is also black, and they were yelling at the coach, yelling at benches, yelling at the refs. And apparently, what we found out later on is, I guess they have a reputation of doing this on a regular basis. Not in terms of the racial piece because obviously, they - not only black kids, but I guess they were well-known for mouthing off back at the refs. And in our opinion, the refs let too much of it go on for too long.
KING: So Divyne, your dad gets choked up talking about this. You seem like you're handling it with some amount of distance. You were the one on the ice when people were taunting you. You managed to ignore it in the moment. Can I ask you, how do you pull that off?
DIVYNE II: So I get penalized often because I'm big, and kids end up getting hurt when I hit them.
KING: (Laughter) OK.
DIVYNE II: So I realize if I was to retaliate or hit the kid or something, I'd end up getting penalized again. So I just brush it off.
KING: Have your teammates had to defend you against racism before, or was this the first time?
DIVYNE II: I think it was the first time.
KING: Wow. How did that make you feel?
DIVYNE II: Made me feel appreciated, like I actually was supposed to be there and that somebody that wasn't just my dad or my family members actually cared.
KING: Dad, you're nodding your head.
APOLLON: (Laughter) That's the first time I heard that. So yeah.
KING: Let me ask you - you said you were surprised that Divyne's teammates were as outraged as they were. Why were you surprised?
APOLLON: Because it's so commonplace, unfortunately. I've been dealing with it for so long. You're upset sometimes, but then you say, you know, at the end of the day, there's not much that can be done. The racism piece, like I said, I've been dealing with that since - you know, I've been black my whole life. So, (laughter), you know? My mother's Haitian. We're a Haitian family. So we've dealt with that a long time. So you kind of get a tougher skin about it because reacting to it, obviously, is going to cause more problems than it's going to solve.
KING: Divyne, how did you feel when your teammates' parents were really surprised that this had happened to you and they were really surprised that this is something you've dealt with before? How does it make you feel that there are grown-ups in the United States who, frankly, couldn't imagine something like this happening?
DIVYNE II: I just thought it was funny because...
KING: Funny? Why?
DIVYNE II: ...They didn't know it was something that happens, even though it happens to me pretty often.
KING: When you hear your son say, I just find it funny, what do you think? I mean, that's a pretty - that's a remarkable statement. You know? Because he's 13, and you think of adults as being older and wiser, and your son is saying, no, I don't expect them to be. What about you?
APOLLON: Unfortunately, after a while, you kind of get accustomed to things like that happening. And it being the society we live in, we're looked on differently. I don't want to paint a broad picture of everyone, but when we go to certain places, it's noticed that we quote-unquote, "don't belong." We, quote-unquote, "aren't supposed to be here." You know, I've had people ignore me at other rinks who work there. They'll brush me off. And you kind of know the telltale signs that, OK, we're not wanted here. And you kind of keep moving on and finding - we find other ways to deal with things so it doesn't get to a point where I become the, quote-unquote, "angry black guy."
KING: Divyne, has any of this, at any point, made you want to quit hockey?
DIVYNE II: No.
KING: No? Why not? It's a lot to deal with.
DIVYNE II: Because I enjoy it too much, and I put too much time and effort into it to just give up on it.
KING: And Dad, let me ask you a question. I'm curious about your son bottling up his feelings and feeling like he cannot have a reaction to this because if he does it's going to hurt him in the sport, and it's going to hurt him in the eyes of his teammates and it's going to hurt him in the eyes of the opposition. Telling a young person, just let it roll off you, it's often the only advice. That doesn't always make it good advice. You know? Do you worry about that?
APOLLON: You know, I guess I never thought about it like that. But at the end of the day, playing a team sport, you have to kind of understand it's a team sport. You know, I tell him a lot of times that when he gets penalized, when he's ejected from the games, your teammates are relying on you to be there. But that also transfers into life. You know, he's 13 now. In three, four years, he'll be driving. You know, if you get pulled over by the police, do you immediately start yelling at the police officer 'cause you think he's wrong for pulling you over? No. You listen. You see what's going on. And you deal with that accordingly.
KING: Divyne, let me ask you a question. If you had the chance to say whatever is on your mind or in your heart to the players who were abusing you out on the ice, what would you want to say to those boys who made racist comments at you?
DIVYNE II: I would ask them why.
KING: Yeah.
DIVYNE II: Like, why were they doing it? For what reason? Even though we were already beating them.
KING: Dad, if you had an opportunity to talk to the coach of the other team about what his players were saying to your son, what would you say to this man?
APOLLON: I mean, as a coach, you're controlling young minds who are going to run the world at some point. When you feed into an environment of bigotry or racism, you're teaching them that's OK. Especially in the environment we're living in now where, unfortunately, it seems like things have gone backwards in terms of race relations, the last thing you want to do is encourage children to perpetuate that going forward over the next 20, 30, 50 years. As a leader, as a coach, you have control some of the greatest minds our future's going to hold. You need to utilize that a little better than you are currently.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
INSKEEP: Noel spoke with Divyne Apollon II and his father, Divyne Apollon. We want to make note, we reached out to the team accused of racism - you do want to hear from everybody - haven't heard back.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
One thing the president did not mention last night was a national emergency. The White House has said he is thinking of declaring one. He could then divert money from other programs to wall construction. To do that, the president would invoke the National Emergencies Act, which was passed by Congress in the 1970s.
That same law is supposed to give Congress a way to take back emergency powers when a president claims them. But Congress never has. NPR's David Welna reports.
DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: It might seem counter-intuitive that Congress would give a president free rein to use emergency powers. Not really, says Elizabeth Goitein.
ELIZABETH GOITEIN: The idea behind emergency powers is a pretty simple one.
WELNA: Goitein, who co-directs the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Program, says Congress recognizes that sometimes speed is of the essence, while enacting new laws can be anything but speedy.
GOITEIN: The concern is that in an emergency - in a true emergency, which is unforeseen and unforeseeable - the laws that are on the books might not be sufficient to deal with the emergency. It's this idea that extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: And you can see the two towers - a huge explosion now raining debris on all of us. We'd better get out of the way.
WELNA: When hijacked airliners crashed into the World Trade Center, Goitein says, then-President George W. Bush declared a national emergency, which is still in effect.
GOITEIN: That was partly because no one really knew what was coming next. It was unfolding very quickly. There was a sense that the president might have to move extremely quickly, without getting Congress' authorization.
WELNA: Bush suddenly had powers that Goitein says would otherwise be illegal. All that is thanks to the National Emergencies Act. Stephen Vladeck is an expert on national security law at the University of Texas.
STEPHEN VLADECK: When the National Emergencies Act was enacted in 1976, the way that Congress set it up was that Congress could basically terminate any national emergency the president declared through a concurrent resolution, simply through majority votes of both houses, without the president's approval.
WELNA: But a few years later, the Supreme Court said the president should be able to veto such a resolution, which would require a two-thirds majority in both chambers to override. But so far, that's moot. Again, Elizabeth Goitein.
GOITEIN: Congress has never voted once, in the last 40 years since the National Emergencies Act has been in effect, to terminate a state of emergency.
WELNA: In part, says law professor Vladeck, that's because Congress has trusted that presidents won't abuse those powers.
VLADECK: The assumption behind all of these regimes is that presidents are going to be relatively responsible in using those authorities and resources and are not going to just create some kind of pretext to allow them to go through a back door when Congress is denying them the front door.
WELNA: There are 31 national emergency decrees currently in effect. Nearly all have been used to freeze foreign assets. The longest has been standing for 40 years - a freeze on Iranian assets imposed by President Jimmy Carter. NYU's Goitein says Trump would break new ground for an American president if he were to invoke a national emergency to build a wall.
GOITEIN: It would be an enormous abuse of his powers under the National Emergencies Act. Emergency powers are not supposed to be used just to implement policy preferences.
WELNA: If Congress does nothing to block a national emergency decree, the University of Texas' Vladeck says it's not clear whether the courts would either.
VLADECK: Congress didn't define what is and what is not a national emergency. And so it's hard to imagine what criteria a federal court could use in trying to decide whether a national emergency was properly declared or not.
WELNA: Should Trump invoke the National Emergencies Act, he'd have to specify which statutes he'd use to build a border wall. Todd Harrison is a military budget expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He says Trump is likely to tap powers to re-program available funds for military construction. That, he adds, could be a problem.
TODD HARRISON: Border security is the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security, not the Department of Defense. So I think it is not clear at all that the declaration of a national emergency here would actually allow the administration to use military funding for a non-military purpose.
WELNA: Ultimately, Harrison says, it may be the landowners and local officials affected by the wall's construction who would sue to stop it. David Welna, NPR News.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
In Beijing, there are reports that three days of negotiations between a U.S. trade delegation and their Chinese counterparts have wrapped up. As NPR's Rob Schmitz reports, there were signs of progress.
ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: The group of U.S. trade officials was only expected to stay in Beijing for two days. So when a third day was added to their itinerary, economists were hopeful.
ANDY XIE: Without some progress already made, there will not be an extension to the negotiations.
SCHMITZ: Shanghai economist Andy Xie sees the extension as a good sign, so did President Trump. At the end of his team's second day in Beijing, he tweeted, talks with China are going very well. Asian markets responded, climbing to nearly one month highs on speculation that a deal between the world's two largest economies was being hammered out. Xie says it's clear to the Chinese negotiators that Trump, a president concerned about a stock market crash and a deal fall-through, is ready to end the trade war.
XIE: If it breaks down, the stock market has a lot of downside. I wouldn't be surprised if the U.S. stock market goes down another 30 percent.
SCHMITZ: Xie says President Trump's obsession with the performance of the U.S. stock market has weakened his team's negotiating position with the Chinese. And that's why he says the likely outcome will be China agreeing to buy more American goods in order to draw down the trade deficit, a big concern of President Trump's. But he says, it'll be unlikely the U.S. will be able to persuade China to make the necessary changes to how it manages its economy that would make it easier for U.S. companies to succeed in the Chinese marketplace. For years, China's government has controlled its own markets to the benefit of its own companies.
Should this week's talks succeed, China's expected to send a more senior-level trade delegation to Washington within the next few weeks. Rob Schmitz, NPR News, Shanghai.
(SOUNDBITE OF SAD TOI'S "JEUX D'EAU")
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The partial government shutdown affects one branch of the United States military. It's the Coast Guard, which normally operates under the Department of Homeland Security. Forty-two thousand members of the Coast Guard are considered essential personnel so they must work.
They got a pay check December 31, but it's not clear when they can be paid again. They once answered to Admiral Thad Allen, who is a former commandant of the Coast Guard. He directed the response to Hurricane Katrina years ago, and he's in our studios. Admiral, welcome to the program.
THAD ALLEN: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: I should note, you left the Coast Guard in 2010, but there must still be people serving today who served under you. What do you think of their situation?
ALLEN: I think it's pretty, pretty bad. I think when you have people who are providing emergency services to this country without pay, I think we ought to take a serious look at how we're governed.
INSKEEP: You mean you don't agree with this shutdown?
ALLEN: Well, I agree that we need to accomplish the ends of the country. I don't think this is the right way to do it. We shouldn't hold any agency political hostage to negotiations.
INSKEEP: The president has said that he's hearing from federal workers, go on, keep going - because they want the wall. Are you hearing from Coast Guard members, people that you know who are still in the service, that they agree with this?
ALLEN: Coast Guard men and women aren't getting involved in political discussions about the wall. They're trying to do their jobs - save lives and protect the American public. That's what they're focused on. And they would like to be able to do their jobs and get compensated.
INSKEEP: Is the Coast Guard a particularly well-paid service?
ALLEN: Well, we're paid on par with the other military services. We are just in the Department of Homeland Security, rather than the Department of Defense. And the lack of an appropriation is the cause of the problem right now.
INSKEEP: Is it true that some members of the Coast Guard, when they are paid, are being paid below the poverty level? These are not high-paying jobs at all?
ALLEN: Well, this applies to all service. If you have your petty officer with a family with, say, two or three kids, their base pay is below the poverty level established by HHS. Now, they do get allowances for housing that does raise that. But their base pay is below the poverty level.
INSKEEP: So do you think it is realistic for someone who's in the Coast Guard, in one of those lower-paid jobs, to miss a few paychecks and not have to worry about it too much?
ALLEN: No. It's an outrage.
INSKEEP: What do they do?
ALLEN: They're doing their job. And they're dependent on the American public and the people that run this government to make sure they're paid on time.
INSKEEP: Would you describe what duties they are fulfilling without pay right now? What are the ordinary daily operations of the Coast Guard?
ALLEN: Well, the Coast Guard is essentially the emergency services in the maritime environment for the country. There are people standing search-and-rescue watch over every inch of coastline in the United States right now. They are cutters patrolling off shore. There's drug interdiction operations going on. We have an icebreaker en route to Antarctica to break up McMurdo so they can resupply the South Pole. All that's continuing.
INSKEEP: McMurdo. That's one of the scientific research stations down there?
ALLEN: That's the base station that resupplies the South Pole. Yes.
INSKEEP: OK. And so they're actually, like, trying to cut through there. That actually, like, a life-or-death situation. That has to happen, or not.
ALLEN: They break the ice every year to allow the base to be resupplied, which is the base point resupplying the South Pole station.
INSKEEP: Now, you also said drug interdiction. This is really interesting because President Trump, last night in his speech advocating a border wall, talked about the flow of drugs from Latin America. We have learned in our fact-checking segment that not a lot of those drugs go over land illegally. They go through legal ports of entry. There's also some that go by sea, right?
ALLEN: The United States Coast Guard has probably seized more drugs than any agency in the history of this country. When you get a boatload of cocaine off Central America, you're taking tons out of the traffic, rather than ounces and pounds.
INSKEEP: And they would go into an ordinary port if they're undetected, and they would unload that cocaine and it would get into the United States. That's the way it...
ALLEN: Well, a lot of the drug flow comes from South America into Mexico and crosses the border. The Coast Guard's strategy is to attack that threat as far away from our shores as we can. So off Colombia, off the coast of Central America and the Caribbean, we have cutters forward deployed trying to stop those drugs before they ever get to Mexico.
INSKEEP: So let me understand this. If you're concerned about the flow of illegal drugs from Latin America into the United States, what you want to worry about is the Coast Guard?
ALLEN: It's quizzical, isn't it?
INSKEEP: (Laughter). What do you mean by quizzical?
ALLEN: It doesn't make sense.
INSKEEP: That they would not be paid in this situation?
ALLEN: Well, there are other government agencies. We have the Department of Agriculture, the Forest Service, National Park Service. Everybody's in the same condition right now, and we ought to be concerned about it.
INSKEEP: What does this say about our politics right now?
ALLEN: That we're having a hard time governing this country. I think we're involved in probably what is the greatest civics lesson of our lifetime right now.
INSKEEP: What is the lesson?
ALLEN: The lesson is that all branches of government have to work together to produce the outcomes the American people should expect under the preamble of the Constitution.
INSKEEP: What advice would you give to members of the Coast Guard if they reached out to you and just said, what should I do in this situation? What do you want me to do?
ALLEN: Well, I think everybody should continue to do their duty. They will inevitably get back pay. The question is cash flow. Families are living paycheck to paycheck. This doesn't help them with babysitting costs, putting food on the table, transportation and so forth.
INSKEEP: Or paying rent or anything else.
ALLEN: Exactly.
INSKEEP: Admiral, thanks very much for taking the time. I really appreciate it.
ALLEN: My pleasure.
INSKEEP: Admiral Thad Allen was 23rd commandant of the United States Coast Guard.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
And next we have news about the rescue of a book shop. Drama Book Shop in New York sells books about theater and film. It sells theater scripts, and even has a small experimental theater.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
And recently, store owner Allen Hubby was preparing to close the shop after more than 100 years.
ALLEN HUBBY: Rents have gone crazy and property value's gone crazy. And I finally just sort of gave up.
GREENE: Soaring rents doomed the store, until - until news of its closing hit the Internet.
HUBBY: You know, Lin-Manuel. He's kind of - he's on the Internet a lot.
INSKEEP: Lin-Manuel Miranda, the composer, playwright and actor behind the Broadway musical "Hamilton." He saw the news and joined some "Hamilton" collaborators to buy the shop.
HUBBY: You know, it's the sort of thing you dream of happening but you'd never ask for.
GREENE: With help from the city, the shop will now be relocated.
HUBBY: The next location is still to be determined. I think, considering the people who are involved, you could expect something truly spectacular. That's what I'm counting on.
GREENE: Lin-Manuel Miranda writes on Twitter that he went to the book shop as a teenager. It gave him a place to go when he was waiting for his shot.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MY SHOT")
MIRANDA, DIGGS, RAMOS, ODOM JR, ONAODOWAN: (Singing) And I am not throwing away my shot. I'm am not throwing away my shot. I'm just like my country. I'm young, scrappy and hungry. And I'm not throwing my shot. We're going to rise up. Rise up, rise up. It's time to take a shot. Rise up. Rise up. Time to take a shot. Time to take a shot. And I am not throwing away my shot.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
President Trump painted his drive for a border wall last night in stark terms.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: How much more American blood must we shed before Congress does its job?
INSKEEP: In an Oval Office address, the president talked of crime and drugs. As we've noted elsewhere today, most illegal drugs arrive in the U.S. through legal ports of entry. But that was a central argument for barriers between those entry points last night. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer responded.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NANCY PELOSI: Much of what we heard from President Trump throughout this senseless shutdown has been full of misinformation and even malice. The president has chosen fear.
INSKEEP: NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson was listening to the speeches. Hi there, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Hi, Steve.
INSKEEP: Did you hear anything new?
LIASSON: I really didn't. If this was a TV show, it would have been a rerun. Both sides repeated the arguments we've heard before. There was nothing in the president's speech that offered a new path to a compromise, a kind of legalize the DREAMers in exchange for wall funding. That's something both sides have flirted with in the past. And I think that the president needed to convince people that Democrats were intransigents because he initiated this shutdown. And he didn't do that last night. You could argue that the White House is feeling more heat from the shutdown than Democrats. Otherwise, why would they be scrambling to mitigate the damage with IRS checks, food stamps...
INSKEEP: Trying to get...
LIASSON: ...If they were so confident that Democrats would be blamed?
INSKEEP: Yeah. Trying to get parts of the government to be functioning again, even though the spending measures have not been passed. Well, let's say that they had gone for an original episode, rather than a rerun, as you said. What was the opportunity the president had last night when speaking to the nation?
LIASSON: I think the president had a couple of goals. He needed to convince voters outside of his hardcore base that shutting down the government for a wall was the right thing to do. He also needed to keep Republicans in Congress in line. He wants to stop Republicans from abandoning ship and starting to vote with Democrats to reopen the government. That's already started in the House, and there are about four or five Senate Republicans who are making noises in the same direction. And the third thing, and perhaps the most important opportunity for him is, he needed to show his base he was fighting and he needed to lay the groundwork for what might become the endgame of this whole controversy - declaring a national emergency, doing an end run around Congress and building the wall with unobligated military money.
INSKEEP: Is there still actually a compromise in sight here, Mara? Because we're talking about money. It's a few-billion dollars, which is a lot of money, but in terms of federal budgeting, not all that much money. It's money for a barrier, which is something that a lot of Democrats have voted for before. Is it actually fairly simple to compromise this, if both sides were willing?
LIASSON: I think Congress, if left to its own devices, could probably come up with something. Remember, they had come up with something that the White House said the president would sign. And then when conservative talk show hosts raised a ruckus, the president changed his mind. But yes, you're right. The Democrats have voted for steel fencing in the past, not a concrete wall. The president now says all he wants is steel fencing or a steel wall. But his insistence on the wall above every other priority has made the Democrats dig in even deeper because they have a base, too. And the wall symbolizes for them everything they hate about Donald Trump.
INSKEEP: Mara, thanks very much for the update. Really appreciate it.
LIASSON: Thank you.
INSKEEP: That's NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. Australia's prime minister was caught in a cover-up of his shoes. Scott Morrison's office posted a picture on his website. It's a lovely family photo with his wife and two daughters. They're outside on a lawn, and the prime minister is wearing two left shoes. The white shoes were Photoshopped on, replacing the ratty sneakers he'd worn to the photo shoot. After being called out on social media, his office restored the original shoes. It's MORNING EDITION.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
"Surviving R. Kelly" is a Lifetime docuseries focusing on sexual abuse allegations against the R&B artist. Accusers say Kelly ran a sex cult in Georgia. And in Chicago, Kim Foxx, the state's attorney in Cook County, Ill., is encouraging other people to come forward and tell their stories.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KIM FOXX: Please come forward. There is nothing that can be done to investigate these allegations without the cooperation of both victims and witnesses.
GREENE: Now, Lifetime has said that this docuseries has reached nearly 19 million total viewers on two different cable channels. And it is stirring a debate on social media over why there wasn't more outcry and more investigations sooner. We're joined by NPR TV critic Eric Deggans. Good morning, Eric.
ERIC DEGGANS, BYLINE: Good morning.
GREENE: So this is a lot of viewers. And it sounds like there are a lot of people across the country who are talking about this and tweeting about it and having conversations about it. I mean, what are you paying attention to?
DEGGANS: Yeah, there's definitely been a lot of conversation. First, we should point out that R. Kelly in the past has denied allegations like this. His representatives have pushed back. And so we want to make that...
GREENE: Sure.
DEGGANS: ...Plain. There's been a tremendous amount of talk about this on social media, especially. Lifetime is saying that this docuseries is one of its most talked-about series on social media in the network's history. And a lot of the conversation centers on this idea of can you separate the artist from his music? There are fans out there who have very emotional, sentimental connections to R. Kelly hits, like "I Believe I Can Fly" or "Step In The Name Of Love." And they're trying to hold on to that in the face of these horrific allegations.
But there are - the docuseries makes a very potent case that R. Kelly has used the wealth from these hits to fuel this system that he's created in his life where he has cut off women from their families. He has groomed young women for sexual interactions and that he's also, you know, denied them food and things like that. So this is a really sort of emotional and turbulent conversation that's playing out in social media, and it's been fascinating to see it.
GREENE: I mean, these accusations have been out there, right? But it was television that has really caused a lot of, I mean, the investigating, the outcry. Why?
DEGGANS: Well, dream hampton, the executive producer of the series, talked to me. I interviewed her, and she talked about how, for some people, seeing it on television makes a much bigger difference. Journalists have covered these allegations for many, many years. There's been a lot of disclosures about this. And the women featured in the documentary - all of them have made their allegations in public before. But this docuseries brings together all of their stories in one potent six-part series. And you just see story after story after story, and it really makes a difference seeing them all together.
We're also in this cultural moment, thanks to the #MeToo movement, where we're looking back at past allegations made against people like Kevin Spacey, Louis C.K., Bill Cosby, Kevin Hart and re-evaluating them in the light of how we feel about believing women when they step forward and talk about being abused. And I think R. Kelly is in the center of that kind of attitude now.
GREENE: And there really is a racial dynamic to many of these conversations, it sounds like.
DEGGANS: Yeah. I mean, this is about black women being believed. And Chance the Rapper did a very - did an interview where he talked about how one reason why he may have not considered these allegations and worked with R. Kelly. He regretted working with him, and he feels like he may have ignored the allegations of black women. And he's challenging himself to do better and his fans to do better.
GREENE: NPR's Eric Deggans. Thanks, Eric.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
President Trump made a case last night that he is not against immigrants. He says he is against those who break the law.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: America proudly welcomes millions of lawful immigrants who enrich our society and contribute to our nation. But all Americans are hurt by uncontrolled illegal migration. It strains public resources and drives down jobs and wages. Among those hardest hit are African-Americans and Hispanic Americans.
INSKEEP: The president made that case from behind his desk in the Oval Office. It was a pose, before the cameras, that predecessors since Harry Truman have assumed. In this case, the president was demanding a border wall as his price for reopening parts of the government. Those listening to the speech included our next guest. He is Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi. He is the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, which means he is the newly empowered chairman.
Mr. Chairman, good morning.
BENNIE THOMPSON: Good morning.
INSKEEP: Do you accept the President's contention there that illegal immigration is a drag on the country?
THOMPSON: Well, I think, first of all, you have to say that the president didn't give us anything new. We have a problem with immigration, but we can fix it. What we're dealing with now, though, is a manufactured problem created by some policies implemented by this administration that has actually put a greater strain on our system of immigration.
INSKEEP: Let me make sure I understand there. You say there's a real problem and a manufactured problem. Define the real problem, please.
THOMPSON: Well, the problem is we have about 13 million people in this country who are here, in one form or another, illegally - visa overstays or what have you. But this notion that those individuals are terrorists, those individuals are murderers, robbers - very few of them. Our experience and information lead us to believe that many of them are just hardworking people who are just trying to make a better life for themselves. Our system of immigration in this country needs fixing. And so what we're trying to say to the president is, you don't have to fan the flames of hysteria to fix an immigration system. You just need to do it. A wall won't fix an immigration system. Common sense, listening to the professionals who say technology and some other things is the way to go is how you begin the process of fixing an immigration system. So...
INSKEEP: Now, the president is correct, though, that there are people who cross the border illegally or who arrive seeking asylum. And as you know, there has been an increase recently in the number of unaccompanied minors and families coming to the border. And in his speech last night, the president argued that a border wall is not just better for citizens, in his view, it's also better for migrants if they're deterred from coming. Let's listen to some of that.
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TRUMP: This is a humanitarian crisis, a crisis of the heart and a crisis of the soul. Last month, 20,000 migrant children were illegally brought into the United States - a dramatic increase. These children are used as human pawns by vicious coyotes and ruthless gangs.
INSKEEP: Now, Mr. Chairman, this is something the Obama administration could have said. And in fact, they did say this is a very dangerous journey, it's hazardous for people, it would be better for many if they didn't come. Is the president right?
THOMPSON: Well, there's no question it's a hazardous journey. We wish people wouldn't do it, but they are doing it. So what we have to do is address that situation in a humanitarian way. Teargassing people who try to come, trying to direct them to areas hundreds of miles away from where they are - the right to seek asylum is guaranteed anyone who gets to our borders. So what we're trying to get the president understand is, sure, we have a broken system, but your zero-tolerance policy that was implemented without any policies and procedures has exacerbated the problem. So again, let me be very clear. Democrats want to work on a sound border security policy, but we absolutely resist the notion that all this is predicated on building a wall.
INSKEEP: Is homeland security at risk because of the shutdown? There are Coast Guard and other homeland security personnel who are not being paid even though they are working.
THOMPSON: Well, there's no real correlation between border security and this shutdown. The president has tried to manufacture and up the ante by this shutdown. We have some 800,000 employees. We have 450 airports in this country manned by TSA workers who may or may not get paid this Friday. That's not how you run an effective system of national security for those who travel. Our Coast Guard individuals, as you know, recently got paid because of a unique formula for handling the money. I'm not certain that they will be able to do it next time. Those men and women of TSA and the Coast Guard do a wonderful job.
INSKEEP: So is homeland security at greater risk because of that situation?
THOMPSON: Well, there's no question they're at risk because the morale of people working at airports - and they are some of the lowest-paid people in the system. And so now we are doing this to them. My comment is - Mr. President, put the people back to work so we can keep America safe.
INSKEEP: Mr. Chairman, thanks very much for the time. Really appreciated talking to you.
THOMPSON: Thank you for having me.
INSKEEP: Bennie Thompson of Mississippi chairs the House Homeland Security Committee.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Air travelers are used to flight delays and cancellations because of the weather or maybe mechanical problems. Well, it soon might be the partial government shutdown that is disrupting travel. New planes are not being certified to fly. Security screeners and air traffic controllers are working unpaid. Here's more from NPR's David Schaper in Chicago.
DAVID SCHAPER, BYLINE: I'm here at Chicago's O'Hare Airport standing next to one of the large CT-80 scanners. It's essentially a CT scanner for your checked luggage. And the TSA officers who operate this machine, they're here at work lifting the heavy and sometimes odd shaped and overstuffed bags onto the conveyor belt to go through the machine even though come this Friday, if the shutdown continues, they won't get paid. And that presents a severe financial hardship for many of these officers.
CHRISTINE VITEL: I've been here 16 years plus. I am a single mom.
SCHAPER: Christine Vitel is a security screener at O'Hare with a son in college, and she's trying to figure out how she'll pay his tuition. And...
VITEL: I just bought a house. I'm not going to be able to pay my mortgage.
JANIS CASEY: A lot of the officers, they live paycheck to paycheck.
SCHAPER: Janis Casey is president of the Union Local representing TSA employees in Chicago. And she notes that they are among the lowest paid federal employees. Some average $36,000 to $43,000 a year, but start only in the mid-20s. And for some TSA workers and their families, the situation could get dire rather quickly.
JACINDA: If there's no check on the 26, I have no idea what we're going to do.
SCHAPER: Thirty-six-year-old Jacinda's husband is a TSA officer in Portland. We're not using her last name because she fears he could be fired. They have two kids, a 6-month-old girl and a boy turning 4 at the end of this month. Jacinda says they were planning to buy a few presents and decorations to celebrate, but now they can't.
JACINDA: Our rent is due. The electric bill is due. Our cellphones are now past due.
SCHAPER: Jacinda says her husband's hiring by the TSA three years ago helped lift the family out of poverty. Now she fears the shutdown will set them back.
JACINDA: I'm scared. And I'm trying to be OK because I can't be sad every day for my kids and I can't be stressed out because it effects how I parent. You know, my husband's stressed out too, and he has to go to work and deal with it at work. And, you know, he knows he's working for free, which is ridiculous.
SCHAPER: Even more ridiculous, Jacinda says, is that he came home the other day with instructions on how to file for unemployment while he's still working 40 hours a week. And the situation is not much better for higher paid essential government workers like air traffic controllers.
MICK DEVINE: It's a very high-stress job, and you need to be on your game at all times.
SCHAPER: Mick Devine is with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association in Boston. And he says the shutdown is forcing controllers to make tough financial decisions, and it weighs on them heavily.
DEVINE: There is a concern that as this goes on that the human factors aspect of this shutdown will take a toll on the psyche and the concentration level of our members. And they do the best job that they can each and every day.
SCHAPER: Nearly 20 percent of the FAA's 10,000 air traffic controllers are eligible to retire, and union leaders say some might do that rather than continue to work during the shutdown. There are also concerns that many of the nation's 51,000 TSA employees will quit and find work elsewhere rather than continue to work without pay. Already, a greater number than usual have been calling in sick, and only some FAA safety inspectors are working right now.
DENNIS TAJER: We're starting to see the beginning tremors of a situation that will only get worse over time.
SCHAPER: Captain Dennis Tajer is a pilot for American Airlines and a spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association. He says many planes are not being inspected, and pilot training is not being certified.
TAJER: We are able to maintain a margin of safety and security, but every day, another player is pulled off the field. And there comes some point where the game cannot be played properly.
SCHAPER: Back at O'Hare, air travelers are expressing concerns, too. Here's Ericka Westgard (ph) of Indialantic, Fla.
ERICKA WESTGARD: If TSA is affected and lines do get longer, work could get sloppier. They might not be checking things as well, and that's always a concern for safety.
SCHAPER: But Ray Ortiz, who just arrived on a business trip from New York, says he hasn't seen any ill effects from the shutdown yet.
RAY ORTIZ: I flew out of JFK today. Like, I actually showed up early because I thought the wait times might be very long, but it was actually really short today.
SCHAPER: Nonetheless, Ortiz and other air travelers and industry insiders worry that as the shutdown continues, there could be a tipping point where safety and security could be compromised or operations could slow in a commercial aviation system already plagued by delays. David Schaper, NPR News, Chicago.
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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Baghdad today. He is touring the Middle East to reassure allies amid shifting U.S. declarations of its plans for Syria. NPR's Jane Arraf joins us from Baghdad. Hi there, Jane.
JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: Hi, Steve.
INSKEEP: I guess we should note that President Trump, over the holidays, just visited U.S. troops in Iraq. Who did Pompeo see?
ARRAF: So Pompeo saw pretty much everyone because when President Trump came here and he bypassed Baghdad and the Iraqi prime minister, that kind of ruffled feathers because that's not the way it's normally done. So here, he saw the prime minister. He saw the Iraqi president, who has a ceremonial role. He saw the foreign minister. He saw the speaker of parliament. And he also met Kurdish leaders because, of course, Iraqi Kurdistan plays a big role in a lot of issues of U.S. interest here - so pretty much everyone in this short visit.
INSKEEP: And let's just remember; there is a war against ISIS. ISIS was active in both Iraq and Syria, was largely driven out of Iraq, is still present in parts of Syria. And President Trump has been talking about getting U.S. troops out of Syria, although they've recently added some conditions they want to meet first. Do Iraqi officials seem to understand and support the U.S. approach to ISIS?
ARRAF: Well, there's a question. I guess they don't really understand what the U.S. position is completely towards ISIS. Everyone agrees that they want ISIS defeated. But I think officials here have been puzzled by statements that U.S. troops would pull out of Syria. ISIS, of course, is an Iraqi preoccupation. At one point, it held one-third of Iraqi territory. It has, as you mentioned, been pushed out of the cities. But Iraqis with U.S. air support are busy fighting ISIS along the borders as we speak - along that border with Syria that runs for hundreds of miles. So part of what they were talking about today was how they can continue that fight against ISIS, no matter what happens.
INSKEEP: Should we assume that Iran came up?
ARRAF: Yeah. We should assume that Iran came up. Now, Iran, whether you know it's spoken about or not, it's always in the backdrop of everything. Iran is Iraq's ally and Iraq's neighbor. So Iran, of course, is also one of Pompeo's preoccupations, perhaps the preoccupation, countering Iranian influence in the region. But here's the thing. Iranian forces helped push back ISIS four years ago. And Iran has been one of Iraq's biggest trading partners. So one of the things that Pompeo discussed was how to wean Iraq away from Iranian electricity because Iraq has been sending millions of dollars - many millions of dollars - to Iran for that electricity. Pompeo mentioned he was glad that Iraq was finding alternate sources.
INSKEEP: And Iraqis are open to that.
ARRAF: So Iraqis are really divided about Iran, you know? But everybody wants good relations with all their neighbors. That's kind of a given. But at the same time, they also don't want to get drawn into another regional conflict of Iran against other regional allies. So one of the big issues here is whether U.S. forces will stay. And, of course, Iran and Iranian-backed groups would also like to see them leave. But they did emphasize during this visit that there's an appreciation for those troops here.
INSKEEP: Truly awkward. Iran, friend of Iraq, which is a friend of the United States, which is an enemy of Iran. Jane, thanks so much, really appreciate it.
ARRAF: Thank you.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Jane Arraf in Baghdad, which Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited today.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
President Trump tried to enlist the public last night in his drive to win funding for a border wall.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: To every citizen, call Congress and tell them to finally, after all of these decades, secure our border.
INSKEEP: The president delivered a speech to the nation. He issued warnings against the costs of illegal immigration and the costs of crime. The many people listening included Sanaa Abrar. She is advocacy director for United We Dream, an immigrant youth-led organization. Welcome to the program.
SANAA ABRAR: Hi, glad to be here.
INSKEEP: What struck you here last night?
ABRAR: Well, I think, for me, there were no surprises in this address. We have seen Trump playing from the same anti-immigrant playbook for not only the two years of this administration but also throughout his 2016 campaign. I think the biggest thing that jumped out at me was that as much as this has been about a wall, he has been demanding money not only for a barrier, a wall, whatever you want to call it at the southern border, but more money for agencies that have been created to come after communities like mine, immigrants who are crossing the border.
TRUMP: Can I just mention - you said anti-immigrant playbook. The president did explicitly say last night that he welcomed legal immigration to the country, that it helps to enrich the country, which is something that people do not always say. Do you not think he was sincere?
ABRAR: Unfortunately, we have the receipts. This past Sunday, the president sent out his communications in the form of a letter to members of Congress, essentially laying out his demands in this so-called negotiation that he's undergoing, right? We saw not only the $5.7 billion dollars for the wall but also explicit demands to make changes to certain laws that have been in place in this country to protect, for example, children in detention. He called for changes to existing asylum law in order to deport unaccompanied children without due process, as well as a whole slew of demands for millions more for ICE and CBP agents, as well as money to build even more detention camps that would hold immigrants in terrible and abusive ways.
INSKEEP: Oh. And you see this is not just anti-illegal immigration but anti-immigrant because some people who are in those detention centers are asylum-seekers who may well have a legal claim to be in the United States.
ABRAR: Of course, yes. And this whole playbook has been designed not only by the likes of Donald Trump but, unfortunately, anti-immigrant players, like Stephen Miller. We saw a good-faith move to push for the DREAM Act last year, unfortunately, turn over because of demand to change existing immigration law not only on the ends of asylum but to change things like the diversity visa program to...
INSKEEP: Or the number of legal immigrants to the United States in the course of a year. Sure.
ABRAR: Exactly.
INSKEEP: That effort to bring back protections for DACA recipients - there was an effort to connect that to border wall funding last year, an effort to trade border wall funding for DACA protections. Is that a compromise that you would welcome now if somebody were to bring it back onto the table?
ABRAR: Now, at this point, what we're very clear on is that Trump has a whole list of demands that go beyond just the billions of dollars more for the wall. What we're clear on is that we are not going to go into negotiations with a man who is responsible for ending DACA in the first place, for overturning good-faith negotiations to move the DREAM Act forward. What Democrats must do right now is not give in to more of the abuses that have been putting people at the border and throughout our country in danger. Right now it's about rejecting any more money of any kind that will go into his anti-immigrant deportation agenda.
INSKEEP: Sanaa Abrar of the DREAMer advocacy group United We Dream, thanks so much.
ABRAR: Thank you.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is having a pop culture moment - more than a moment, really. For the past couple of years, she has transcended her role on the court to become a liberal icon. There's a CNN documentary, a podcast, various biographies. She wrote her own memoir in 2016. There's even a Ruth Bader Ginsburg coloring book.
Ginsburg's story is told yet again, this time in a new film starring Felicity Jones. In it, we see a young Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her husband, Marty, plowing through Harvard Law School. But Ruth is one of only nine other women in her class. Despite a stellar academic career, after graduating, she can't find a job. So instead of starting her career in the courtroom, she goes to the classroom, teaching at Rutgers University and focusing on sex discrimination in the law.
The film is directed by Mimi Leder. I talked with her and Felicity Jones about bringing Ginsburg's story to the screen. Here's Felicity Jones.
FELICITY JONES: Well, initially, I was very, very intimidated. And it's nerve-wracking paying such a beloved woman. And I, myself, am a huge, huge fan of her. But I had to put the fandom away. And I had to play the truth of this woman's experience and really get into the mind of who this woman was when she was younger, when she was, you know, much more, in many respects, open to the world and show, how does someone get to that position?
MARTIN: I'm going to ask you to do the hard work for me and explain the tax law case that is at the center of this particular story, Charles Moritz v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue. This is the case that Marty actually brings to Ruth. He sees something in there. He sees potential in this case. Mimi, can I put you on the spot to try to explain that?
MIMI LEDER: I'll try. You know, he brings her this case. And first of all, you know, she didn't teach tax cases. She never even read them.
MARTIN: He's the tax lawyer, yeah.
LEDER: He was the tax lawyer and became one of the pre-eminent tax attorneys in our country. So it's a case about a man who is a caregiver who files for a tax deduction for $196 and is denied the tax deduction because he is a never-married man. And in those days, the law read that only a woman is in the home, and only a widower can receive this tax deduction.
So they used this man, Charles Moritz, to argue gender discrimination. And they won this tax case. And what it did was it overturned 178 different laws that discriminated on the basis of sex and were found unconstitutional.
MARTIN: But it was interesting. You talk about how it brought down all of these different laws that had gender discrimination baked into them. But, Felicity, even her allies are not so keen on making it so big, right? I'm thinking in particular about Mel Wulf, the head of the ACLU at the time, who, you know, is her champion, and the ACLU has signed onto this suit. But he's always kind of trying to circumscribe the suit and trying to lower Ruth's expectations, isn't he?
JONES: Yeah, absolutely. I think he's very much a creature of his time. He's very representative of the sexism of those constant - and as Ruth said, you know, they can be small - those sort of patronizing comments, those dismissive remarks, the put-downs, the low expectations. But they build up.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ON THE BASIS OF SEX")
JONES: (As Ruth Bader Ginsburg) First, you took half the argument away from me.
JUSTIN THEROUX: (As Mel Wulf) Nobody took anything away from you, Ruth. You weren't robbed in the middle of the night, all right? I was giving you this opportunity for the good of the cause.
JONES: (As Ruth Bader Ginsburg) You think you gave this to me?
THEROUX: (As Mel Wulf) In fact, I did. And get your emotions in check.
JONES: (As Ruth Bader Ginsburg) You first.
Mel Wulf is not immune to that, and it just shows that Ruth was fighting on so many fronts.
MARTIN: And can I ask you about the relationship with her daughter? This is, in part, about this intergenerational definition of what it means to be a feminist. And Ruth Bader Ginsburg has one idea, and she's fighting these really big fights. And, Felicity, can you talk about how her daughter Jane sees the fights, just, like, on the street level on a day-to-day?
JONES: Yeah. I mean, absolutely. Ruth was very much at the mercy of the time in many ways, and you see that sort of 1950s patriarchy at play. And she's having to conform to that on so many levels, and she's having to be so sophisticated in how she pushes against it because, to her, the most important thing is that she wins.
And then what you see with Jane is Jane doesn't have to do that - is that the times have shifted enough that Jane can get angry, and she can be more outspoken. And you see that moment in the street when they're in New York, and she shouts at those guys in a way that Ruth would never have thought of doing that.
MARTIN: The guys were, like, catcalling at her, yeah.
JONES: Yeah. Catcalling.
MARTIN: Her mom brushes it off, and Jane's, like, no.
JONES: Yeah.
MARTIN: You can't do that.
JONES: Yeah. She says, no, you got to confront it. You got to fight back, you know, instantly. And you can see that the legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's work - that actually what she's doing is she's providing this freedom where you can be more vocal and you can be more outspoken. And it's wonderful in those scenes Jane provokes her mother. She says, don't sit back. You got to keep fighting. She's a catalyst as much as Marty is.
MARTIN: Right. Marty was exceptional for the time, wasn't he?
LEDER: He was. He was a Renaissance man. He was very progressive. He did the cooking, and Mommy did the thinking.
(LAUGHTER)
LEDER: A quote from Jane Ginsburg.
MARTIN: (Laughter) Oh, really? Did she say that?
LEDER: Yeah.
MARTIN: I do want to catch myself on language, though. Calling Marty Ginsburg exceptional - I mean, he was exceptional for the time. But it is amazing how we give men a lot of kudos just for doing half the work.
JONES: Yeah, I know. And it's also interesting this sort of amazement as well. I think even now...
MARTIN: Right.
JONES: ...It's sort of like, isn't this the norm?
MARTIN: Right.
JONES: Is this how it is? You know, it's 50-50, isn't it?
LEDER: But then we've heard comments, you know, wasn't Marty emasculated, you know, doing this?
MARTIN: Really? Have you heard that?
LEDER: Yeah. We have heard that - those questions.
JONES: Well, I think there's a lot of taboo around those roles, you know, and that's what Ruth was arguing against - these gender stereotypes. You know, that for men to be looking after the children, to be in a domestic sphere - I think even now, there's a lot of fear of men acting in that way.
MARTIN: And that was really what that case was about. What is the natural order of things? And her critics said it is the natural order of things for women to be the nurturers, for women to be the caretakers always. And as demonstrated, it wasn't that.
JONES: And it shows - yeah - how important it is to argue against that because when you dismantle those stereotypes, it's a much healthier society for everyone.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MARTIN: That was actress Felicity Jones and director Mimi Leder talking about their new film. It is called "On The Basis Of Sex." The film releases widely tomorrow.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
There's a video that went viral on Twitter recently. It has a mom sneaking up on her 6-year-old son as he's doing his math homework. And she catches him asking Alexa, Amazon's smart speaker, for help.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: Alexa, what's five minus three?
GREENE: What's five minus three? Well, Alexa gives him the answer. And his mom, who's listening in the background, chastises him. This is all pretty cute. But it gets at a deeper question, right? As kids have more access to virtual assistance, does that interfere with the learning process? Here's NPR's Jasmine Garsd.
JASMINE GARSD, BYLINE: Clint Hill is an English teacher at Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, Va. He says in his classroom, this often happens.
CLINT HILL: Kids quietly talking into their phones and asking Google or other services, hey. How do you spell - some complicated word that they don't know.
GARSD: Hill, who co-hosts the education podcast Schooled Ya!, says he actually doesn't mind.
HILL: I struggle with spelling. And spell check on my word processing has been a lifesaver for me. And I think being able to use those technological aids is not hurting anybody. I think it is just improving our ability to use our brains for other things.
GARSD: This is one of the big debates in education today. On the one hand, why deprive kids of technology most adults use every day? But some experts say it's not just about learning basic math or spelling.
DIANE LEVIN: One of the best gifts we can give our children is doing that kind of problem-solving together...
GARSD: Diane Levin is a professor of applied human development at Boston University and the founder of the nonprofit TRUCE, or Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children's Entertainment.
LEVIN: ...Because they will use those skills that they're learning for all kinds of things that come along, where, if they're a good problem-solver, they'll do better than kids who just try to go to a screen to get the answer.
GARSD: Levin believes not allowing a child to even struggle a little for the answers leads to what she calls Problem Solving Deficit Disorder. Dimitri Christakis is the director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle's Children's Research Institute.
DIMITRI CHRISTAKIS: There is reason to be concerned but not panicked. And there's also reason to be optimistic and hopeful. It's really about how we deploy these technologies.
GARSD: Christakis says every wave of technology elicits a panic about its effect on children and nostalgia over a more wholesome past. Consider this old clip of Kermit the Frog stuck on an elevator with "Sesame Street's" Count von Count, who is maniacally counting the floors.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As Count von Count) Eighth floor, ninth floor...
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As Kermit the Frog) Wait a second, Count. I wanted to get off on the seventh floor.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As Count von Count) Ten - that's 10...
GARSD: It's sweet and educational. But Christakis points out that a child watching television - it's a completely passive experience. And he says, for children, the interactive aspect of new technology...
CHRISTAKIS: It helps them understand how the world works. And whereas watching television, of course, doesn't allow that to happen because you play no role in the content, interacting with touchscreens and, for that matter, interacting with these voice-activated technologies, allows that to happen in spades.
GARSD: Still, he agrees that this debate is about much more than knowing what five minus three is. It's about developing the patience to solve problems.
CHRISTAKIS: That ability to stay focused, particularly when something is not interesting, is one of the most important developmental skills that children acquire.
GARSD: In other words, it's not just about having the answers. It's about the work you put in to get them. Jasmine Garsd, NPR News, New York.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
This week, 7-year-old Jazmine Barnes was buried in Harris County, Texas. The second-grader was shot and killed as she sat in a car on the morning of December 30, during a drive-by shooting. After initial reports that the shooter was a white man, there was local and national outcry that this shooting was a racially motivated attack. Then this week, deputies in Harris County charged two men in relation to the shooting, and both of them are black. Gene Demby is with NPR's Code Switch team, and he's here to talk about this case and what it might tell us about how Americans think about race and violence right now. Hi there, Gene.
GENE DEMBY, BYLINE: Good morning, David.
GREENE: OK. So can you start by just walking us through the timeline here?
DEMBY: Sure. It's a really sad story. So...
GREENE: Yeah.
DEMBY: Jazmine Barnes was in a car with her mother near a Walmart - it was early in the morning - when shots rang out. Her mother was shot in the arm but she survived. Jazmine, who was 7, was shot in the head and died at the scene. The other passengers in the car, her sisters, said that during the shooting, they heard shots coming from a red pickup truck driven by a white male. And there was a police sketch after this of a white man in a hoodie that was widely circulated on social media. And so there was real fear that this was a racially motivated attack.
GREENE: OK. But now we know that the suspected shooter was black.
DEMBY: That's right. This week, the police have charged two suspects in the case, Larry Woodruffe, the alleged shooter, and Eric Black Jr., the alleged driver. The police say they think the shooting was a case of mistaken identity, that these two guys were trying to retaliate against someone they got into an argument with earlier and they misidentified that person's car as the car that Jazmine Barnes was in. They've both been charged with capital murder. The police say they actually believe that this red pickup and this white male actually exists, but they think that in the confusion of the shooting, the eyewitnesses in the car thought that that person was the shooter who was driving away.
GREENE: OK. So given all of this, help me understand the role that race is playing in this whole national conversation right now.
DEMBY: So really quickly after the shooting, between the shooting and the actual arrest, Shaun King, an activist who is very prominent social media, offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the suspect's arrest. He helped publicize this police sketch of this presumed white suspect. During the same period, Sheila Jackson Lee, who's a congressman from Harris County, which is the county that includes Houston, where this happened, she called this killing a hate crime. So it became framed in the context of a racial attack.
And the context here is important. So remember, it was only two decades ago that a black man named James Byrd Jr. was lynched by white supremacists about two hours away from Harris County in Texas. That killing helped fuel our federal hate crime legislation. More recently, there was the mass shooting by a white supremacist at a historic black church in 2015 in South Carolina. There was the fatal car attack by a white nationalist in Charlottesville in 2016. The FBI said in a report last year that hate crimes were up 17 percent in 2017. That's the third straight year. So the suspicions that this was a racially motivated attack, even though they were wrong, are based in this very real trend line around racially motivated violence.
GREENE: But you're suggesting that if this suspect had been identified as black from the very beginning, I mean, this story would have been really different.
DEMBY: Yeah. I mean, crime with both black victims and black perpetrators tend not to make national news, right? Just two weeks before Jazmine Barnes was shot, there was another 7-year-old in Harris County who was, unfortunately, seriously injured in a drive-by shooting. That child is OK. But when these crimes do bubble up to this level, that when they make national news, it's usually being invoked to wave away sort of concerns about structural racism, right? So when people talk about police violence, they say, well, what about the violence in black communities - this sort of concern-trolling about black-on-black crime. But there are, sadly, a lot of Jazmine Barnes out there.
GREENE: That's Gene Demby from NPR's Code Switch team. Gene, thanks.
DEMBY: Thank you so much, David. [POST BROADCAST CORRECTION: In the audio of this interview, as well as in a previous Web version, we mistakenly say the Charlottesville car attack occurred in 2016. The attack took place during a 2017 rally.]
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Today, President Trump is heading to McAllen, Texas. This is a city right along the border with Mexico.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Right. It is one of dozens of towns on the nearly 2,000-mile stretch where the president hopes to build a wall or a barrier. The border wall is the reason the partial government shutdown is stretching into Day 20. And it's why negotiations broke down again yesterday between the White House and congressional Democrats. Vice President Mike Pence blamed Democrats.
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VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: Today, in this brief meeting, we heard once again that Democratic leaders are unwilling to even negotiate.
MARTIN: Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said it's the president who won't budge and the president who ended the meeting yesterday rather abruptly.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
CHUCK SCHUMER: Well, unfortunately, the president just got up and walked out.
GREENE: OK, well, let's bring in NPR White House correspondent Scott Horsley to talk about this moment. Good morning, Scott.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Good morning, David.
GREENE: OK, so no one is budging. This partial government shutdown, if it's not resolved by tomorrow, and there's no sign it will be, I mean, you're going to have hundreds of thousands of government workers missing their first paycheck. I mean, are you seeing any sides of the Democrats or Republicans cracking here?
HORSLEY: Not at the top, David. Democrats, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, are not about to reward the president for shutting down parts of the government. They feel like that would just encourage him to resort to extortion whenever he doesn't get what he wants. And the president is reluctant to end the border shutdown without a wall because he feels like this is his, really, only point of leverage.
There have been some small cracks among rank-and-file Senate Republicans, especially a few who are up for re-election in two years, who have said they would like to see the shutdown ended while negotiations continue. But that only matters if the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is willing to go along. And so far, he's not.
GREENE: And Senate Republicans are critical - right? - because, I mean, the House, led by Democrats now, last night passed a bill to reopen parts of the government, but probably not going to go anywhere if you don't have leadership in the Senate actually saying, like, maybe we'll think about this.
HORSLEY: Nowhere except as a talking point and a way for Democrats to underscore their message that this shutdown is the responsibility of the president. Polls already suggest that most Americans blame President Trump for this shutdown. Not surprising since he's been pretty transparent about using it as a bargaining chip.
And, as you say, tomorrow is when this becomes very real in a financial way for those 800,000 federal workers who are supposed to get a paycheck and will miss one for the first time since this all began back before Christmas.
GREENE: OK, so President Trump - he walks out of a meeting with congressional leaders yesterday. That's the scene in Washington. Now he's shifting the backdrop. He's going to the border. I mean, beyond a scene change, what is the president hoping to accomplish here?
HORSLEY: This is sort of the field trip version of the speech he gave from the Oval Office on Tuesday night. It's an opportunity for him to try to paint this border situation as both a humanitarian and a national security crisis. He's going to visit a border patrol station. He's going to visit the Rio Grande river itself.
But, you know, the mayor of McAllen has been holding his own photo-ops and media interviews. On the one hand, he welcomes the president's visit. He welcomes some extra federal resources. But he's not thrilled about having his city, which he thinks is one of the safest in America, portrayed as some kind of desolate border badland of crime and drugs. So that's going to kind of undercut the president's message a little bit.
GREENE: All right. Scott Horsley, NPR's White House correspondent. Scott, thanks.
HORSLEY: Great to be with you, David.
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GREENE: We're going to turn now to Cairo, where Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is getting ready to give a big speech today.
MARTIN: Right. It was a decade ago that President Barack Obama went to Cairo to deliver a speech about his administration's foreign policy. Today, Mike Pompeo will give the Trump administration's version, and perhaps some clarity, after weeks of shifting positions, on Syria and other regional issues.
GREENE: And NPR's Michele Kelemen has been traveling with the secretary of state and joins us now from Cairo. And, Michele, you've been traveling a lot, right? Give us a sense of the ground Pompeo's covered.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: Well, we're only just begun on this. We started in Jordan, a country that borders Syria and one of the many in this region that's nervous about the U.S. troop withdrawal from Syria. Pompeo then took a daytrip to Iraq, both Baghdad and up to Erbil in the mainly Kurdish north of the country.
And his message has been basically this - that the U.S. troop pullout is a tactical shift, not a change in the U.S. goals in the region. He says the U.S. is committed to defeating ISIS and pushing back on Iran. And he's trying to downplay all these mixed messages coming from the administration on the conditions and the pace of that Syria troop pullout and what it'll mean to Kurdish fighters who helped the U.S. in the fight against ISIS.
GREENE: OK, so now you're in Cairo, and it sounds like there are lots of people there with you covering this visit. I mean, what exactly is going to happen there?
KELEMEN: Yeah. We're busy here at the Foreign Ministry building. He's already met with the country's president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who's been a big supporter of President Trump. Sisi has come under a lot of criticism from human rights groups for jailing thousands of activists. And while the State Department has raised some human rights concerns, it's also praising Sisi for his efforts to support Christians in Iraq. And that's something that Pompeo clearly appreciates. He's really put a priority on promoting religious freedom.
GREENE: And, Michele, this really is a moment to sort of take stock of U.S. policy in this region - right? - because, as Rachel said, I mean, it was a decade ago when President Obama gave this big speech there laying out his vision. I suppose this is really a chance for the Trump administration to use the same setting to lay out a vision that sounds like might be very different.
KELEMEN: Yeah. Well, you know, when Obama gave that speech in 2009, he was calling for a new beginning for U.S. relations with the Muslim world. He spoke at a very old university here. Pompeo is speaking at a different university, the American University of Cairo, and his message is likely to be far different. He's complained a lot, especially about Obama's approach to Iran, focusing on the nuclear deal and, as Pompeo says, ignoring all the rest of Iran's bad behavior in the region. The Trump administration has been trying to keep focused on that - on Iran and putting pressure on Iran.
GREENE: And then after the speech, where do you all go from Egypt?
KELEMEN: Oh, we have a big trip ahead. It's still Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman. Again, building up this coalition against Iran. He'll have to deal with the Saudi-Qatar split, which is ongoing - a diplomatic dispute that they've had, and his envoy on that quit this week.
GREENE: All right. Well, safe travels.
KELEMEN: Thank you.
GREENE: That's NPR's Michele Kelemen, who is traveling with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Egypt this morning.
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GREENE: All right. About 10 to 20 percent of known pregnancies end in a miscarriage. That is as many as one in five.
MARTIN: So a miscarriage is, obviously, an incredibly emotional experience. It's also a physically painful experience. And a woman often requires additional medical treatment to help her body clear the pregnancy.
There is a new treatment that can make that process easier, but getting access to it is not so easy. It involves a combination of drugs - one that's been used for miscarriages, and the other is known as the abortion pill. And regulations around abortions in the U.S. can make that second pill difficult, or even impossible, for some women to get.
GREENE: And we're joined in our studio this morning by Sarah McCammon, NPR correspondent. She's been reporting on this story. And she's been speaking to women in Canada, where the drugs are more available, and also in the United States, where they are less available. Sarah, thanks for being here.
SARAH MCCAMMON, BYLINE: Sure thing.
GREENE: So start with telling us how this treatment works exactly.
MCCAMMON: Well, it is important to understand that sometimes, a miscarriage happens on its own, completes naturally, but not always. Sometimes, to expel the fetal remains, a woman needs surgery. Sometimes she needs drugs to finish the process. And there are a couple of different drugs involved here, as we said. Doctors say the most effective protocol, they believe now, involves a drug called mifepristone, also known as the abortion pill.
So this is a little complicated. Stay with me. I'm going to explain the difference of these two drugs. There are actually two in the protocol. The first is called misoprostol, which has been used in abortions, but also for accelerating miscarriages for years. What's newer is using mifepristone with it. It was approved by the FDA in 2000 for use in medication abortions. But there's growing evidence that it's helpful for miscarriages, too. A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine found that that combination of the drugs was faster and more effective than the old way, which was just misoprostol alone.
GREENE: OK, so mifepristone - this is the drug that is harder for women in the United States to access.
MCCAMMON: Exactly.
GREENE: Explain why that's the case.
MCCAMMON: Well, since it was approved for abortions, it's been heavily regulated. And unlike in Canada, where one woman I spoke to lives, it can't be stocked in pharmacies here in the U.S., and clinics that carry it have to apply for a special designation from the federal government. So some American doctors have said they've had trouble prescribing mifepristone for patients experiencing a miscarriage.
Here's Kristyn Brandi. She's an OB-GYN at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, and she's had some difficulty prescribing this drug.
KRISTYN BRANDI: And it's been really frustrating to know that there's a medication out there that I can give to my patients that I don't physically have to give to them.
MCCAMMON: And I also talked to a woman in Canada. Her name was Kirstin Herbst. And she said, you know, she'd recently gone through a miscarriage, and the chance to take the pills and go through this process that was very difficult for her in the privacy of her own home was really invaluable.
GREENE: OK. So, Sarah, where is the opposition to this coming from?
MCCAMMON: Well, there's long been political debate around mifepristone in particular. Some anti-abortion groups say they have no problem using it just for miscarriage, but some have expressed safety concerns. One doctor I talked to who opposes abortion rights says she's mostly worried about safety, but she also worries that if regulations on mifepristone were relaxed, there would be more abortions.
It's worth noting that multiple medical groups, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, or ACOG, are recommending this protocol and say it's safe and effective.
GREENE: Well, if that's the case, I mean, is there movement to make this drug easier to get here in the U.S.?
MCCAMMON: Well, there's at least one lawsuit not directly linked to miscarriage, but it's about easing restrictions about using the drug, in general, for abortion. And several medical groups, including ACOG and the American Medical Association, are asking the FDA to relax the regulations for use in miscarriage. The FDA has told NPR it believes the restrictions are necessary for patient safety.
GREENE: OK. That's NPR correspondent Sarah McCammon, who's in our studios in Washington this morning. Sarah, thanks.
MCCAMMON: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Eleven Saudi men are on trial for the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who disappeared after walking into a Saudi consulate in Istanbul. A man close to the Saudi government is trying to explain the government's conduct. Ali Shihabi is founder of the Arabia Foundation, a Washington, D.C., think tank that aims to provide a better picture of the Saudi monarchy. And he spoke to Steve Inskeep.
STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: After Jamal Khashoggi was killed, Shihabi, on social media, was one of the few public defenders of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The de facto Saudi leader is blamed by U.S. intelligence agencies for the killing but has not been accused by his own government. Shihabi answered a long-standing invitation to come by our studios. He has short hair and black-rimmed glasses and wears a blazer. He says he knew Khashoggi, both in Saudi Arabia and later when both lived in Washington. And he did not agree with the journalist's criticisms of the Saudi government.
ALI SHIHABI: It was a little bit playing to what he thought the American audience in Washington wanted to hear. I think he understood the nuances of what were happening in Saudi Arabia much more than he let on in his columns.
INSKEEP: You don't believe he was honest in his criticism of the government?
SHIHABI: Well, no, I think he was honest in his criticism of the government, but I think that he underplayed some of the complexities that he was part of. You remember, you have to remember that Jamal was an editor of a Saudi government paper, effectively, owned by the royal family. So he was, if you want, an apparatchik in the system. But I think he underplayed the challenges that the crown prince had to overcome.
INSKEEP: Are we learning here why he would have so irritated someone in Saudi Arabia because he would be seen as an insider, someone who had been part of the system then criticizing the system?
SHIHABI: He didn't really irritate people that much. He was not a threat. I think as this thing is being investigated, what happens sometimes is elements in the security service or people who are responsible for internal security tend to magnify issues. And there was an overreaction to it, and obviously, it was a criminal overreaction 'cause ultimately...
INSKEEP: If you'll forgive me - there are overreactions, and there overreactions.
SHIHABI: Well, it's a criminal overreaction.
INSKEEP: This case, according to a Turkish newspaper, 15 Saudi officials, 15 Saudi government functionaries, gathered to assassinate a man and cut him apart with a bone saw. I mean, this is not, like - it's hard to believe that he wasn't considered a severe problem by someone.
SHIHABI: No. He was considered a severe problem by someone. And I said it was a criminal overreaction. And I think what's happening in Saudi Arabia now is there is a serious investigation going on, and the Turks have not been helpful because the Saudi prosecutor has been asking, for example, for the recordings. The Turks have been releasing leaks right, left and center.
They've given the Saudi prosecutors the transcripts, but they have not given them the recordings. And the Saudi government is trying to make an effort to pursue a proper legal process. People don't seem to take that with a lot of credibility, if they're trying.
INSKEEP: Well, why should people consider that credible when it is a private process? It's not a transparent process in any way. We're told that some people are being put on trial. We don't even know the names of the people put on trial.
SHIHABI: Well, because under Saudi law, again - you know, you want people to respect the rule of law, but you don't bother to find out what that country's law is. Under Saudi law, unless you are convicted, your name does not get published. Now, having said that, foreign ambassadors were invited to the courtroom to watch the beginning of the trial. So...
INSKEEP: The beginning.
SHIHABI: ...The Saudi government is making an effort to pursue a credible legal process, to document it correctly, to get the correct evidence under Saudi law.
INSKEEP: You've said that the Saudi prosecutor's not been supplied with the tapes. But, of course, Americans have heard the tapes. The CIA has heard the tapes. The CIA has briefed the United States Senate. The Senate voted unanimously, if I'm not mistaken, to condemn Saudi Arabia. And senators have identified the Saudi crown prince as responsible. Can you give us any reasonable doubt that Mohammed bin Salman would have been involved in such a large and sophisticated operation?
SHIHABI: Yes, I can. Because first of all, the CIA gave a medium-to-high assessment that they thought the crown prince was involved. And as I've said before, with all due respect to the CIA, maybe their understanding of what happens in the inner, inner sanctums of the royal palace is isn't perfect.
Yes, I think they were authorized to go and interrogate him and maybe to bring him back or to try and bring him back. But it was an operation that was carried, in a way, off the grid. In other words, it was not carried out by the professional elements within Saudi intelligence. It was a team put together from different parts of the security services...
INSKEEP: Including some people close to the crown prince, if I'm not mistaken.
SHIHABI: People who have been pictured physically close to the crown prince because they're part of the security services. It's like taking a picture of a Secret Service officer next to President Trump and saying President Trump was involved because this gentleman happens to be close to the president.
INSKEEP: Even before Khashoggi was killed...
SHIHABI: Yes.
INSKEEP: ...He felt, in order to speak as he wished and be safe, he needed to be outside of Saudi Arabia.
SHIHABI: Yes.
INSKEEP: Is it right that it should be so?
SHIHABI: No. But the kingdom is going through a wrenching process of cultural, social and religious reform.
INSKEEP: Is it moving toward freedom of speech?
SHIHABI: Well, it has - freedom of speech has actually been contracting for the last two years because during this process, which is very contentious, and particularly when you are taking on a reactionary conservative class and religious establishment, a lot of the things that the crown prince has done - not just allowing women to drive, but integrating women into the labor force - so much has happened to quote-unquote "liberalize" society that has been fought extremely aggressively by the religious class. And we have seen what happened to other people who have tried to address the conservative class in the Middle East and have been overthrown.
INSKEEP: You're trying to explain to me why political activists have been arrested even in this period of supposed reform?
SHIHABI: Yes, because it's not political reform. It is social. It's cultural. It's economic. And it's an interpretation of religion. For example, everybody's complained about exporting Wahhabism. Right? That Saudi Arabia exports Wahhabism. He has taken a baseball bat to that process in the last two years.
INSKEEP: But there are also been more liberal activists within the country who've been arrested, right?
SHIHABI: Yes, there have. There have. And I think, you know, one of the big mistakes that I think the government did was arresting many of these women. And I anticipate that over the next number of months, a number of these - particularly, women - dissidents will be let out of jail.
INSKEEP: Ali Shihabi, thanks for coming by.
SHIHABI: Thank you, Steve, for inviting me.
INSKEEP: Ali Shihabi heads the Arabia Foundation, which is linked with the Saudi government and based in Washington.
[POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: In this story, we say the Arabia Foundation is linked with the Saudi government. A more accurate characterization is that the two are connected.]
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
President Trump leaves behind the stalemate in Washington over border security and heads to the border himself. Just like his address from the Oval Office the other night, though, it's unclear how much his border visit will actually change anyone's mind. A meeting between the president and Democratic congressional leaders yesterday ended with the president walking out. Here's how Vice President Mike Pence explained it.
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VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: He asked Speaker Pelosi that if he opened things up quickly, if he reopened the government quickly, would she be willing to agree to funding for a wall or a barrier on the Southern border. And when she said no, the president said, goodbye.
MARTIN: Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had a different take.
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CHUCK SCHUMER: And then a few minutes later, 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.
MARTIN: However it went down, it seems talks are in shambles on this day, Day 20 of the partial government shutdown. We are joined now by NPR White House correspondent Scott Horsley. Good morning, Scott.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Good morning, Rachel.
MARTIN: The president called the meeting yesterday a, quote, "total waste of time." Is it fair to say that negotiations are at a new low this morning?
HORSLEY: Well, I don't know if we're at a new low, but if the session yesterday didn't move us backwards, it certainly didn't move anybody forward. You know, the president is unwilling to give up what he sees as his one bit of leverage in this wall battle, which is the partial government shutdown, and Democrats are unwilling to give in to what they see as extortion by the president.
MARTIN: I mentioned the primetime address he gave earlier this week from the Oval Office. Now he's heading to the border. But there are these reports suggesting that the president himself isn't necessarily keen on the messaging campaign around this whole thing, right?
HORSLEY: Right. The president had an off-the-record meeting with some network people before his speech on Tuesday. And - surprise, surprise - details of that off-the-record session have now leaked out, and the president's expressed skepticism that either that speech or this photo-op along the border today was really going to move the needle. And in fact, there is no evidence that his speech on Tuesday night turned any heads when it comes to the border wall.
MARTIN: The White House has talked about the president possibly declaring a national emergency to just bypass Congress altogether and start building the wall with Mexico. Is that still in the president's back pocket?
HORSLEY: Yes. The president has said that is still on the table, although he seems really reluctant to pull the trigger. It would almost certainly invite a legal challenge if he were to declare a national emergency and unilaterally, say, move money from some military account to fund the border wall.
And even some of the president's congressional allies are wary about this step, either because they don't want to see military money used for another purpose or because they don't want to see the president short-circuiting the congressional authority to control the purse strings. However, there are some observers who see this who have reluctantly embraced the presidential emergency strategy as one way out of this logjam.
MARTIN: But I mean, Scott, you have covered your fair share of government shutdowns over the years. As you look at how this is unfolding or just the intransigence of the whole thing, what strikes you? I mean, where is the opening here?
HORSLEY: You know, I have seen a lot of tense negotiations in the White House, and I've certainly seen some grim staring contests across the table in the Roosevelt Room there. What I think is unusual about this situation is how transparent the president has been about his own bargaining tactics. He has frankly acknowledged that he is willing to hold parts of the government hostage in order to get his way on the border wall that he has not been able to get through any other means.
MARTIN: Right - keep saying these people giving up their paychecks are patriots. But we'll see how long that lasts. NPR White House correspondent Scott Horsley. Thanks, Scott.
HORSLEY: You're welcome.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
In Democratic Republic of Congo, the provisional result of a long-awaited presidential election had hardly been announced and the outcome was contested. The election commission declared one opposition frontrunner, Felix Tshisekedi, the winner of a vote on December 30. Another opposition contender says those results were rigged. NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton reports from Kinshasa that this vote was supposed to herald Congo's first democratic and peaceful transfer of power.
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CORNEILLE NANGAA: (Speaking French).
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Cheering).
OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: After a long night of waiting, Congo's embattled election chief Corneille Nangaa eventually declared the provisional winner of the highly anticipated presidential vote.
NANGAA: Monsieur Tshisekedi (unintelligible)...
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Cheering).
QUIST-ARCTON: Felix Tshisekedi is the son of Congo's historic, late opposition leader, Etienne Tshisekedi, who died in 2017 after being an implacable critic of first former president Mobutu Sese Seko, then Laurent-Desire Kabila and his son, outgoing President Joseph Kabila. But Tshisekedi Junior appears to have succeeded where his father failed by winning that elusive presidency.
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PRESIDENT-ELECT FELIX TSHISEKEDI: (Speaking French).
QUIST-ARCTON: Addressing his supporters in Kinshasa, Tshisekedi said the voters had spoken and promised to govern for all Congolese. Fifty-five-year-old Felix Tshisekedi spent much of his life in Belgium, the former colonial power in Congo, and is considered a political novice by his detractors, despite holding high office in his father's opposition party and being propelled into the leadership after Etienne Tshisekedi's death. The son now looks set to take over from outgoing President Kabila with whom observers say Felix Tshisekedi has negotiated a backdoor deal.
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MARTIN FAYULU: (Speaking French).
QUIST-ARCTON: That's the view of fellow opposition presidential frontrunner Martin Fayulu, who came in second after Tshisekedi. Fayulu says the outcome was fixed and Tshisekedi has been co-opted to cook up an acceptable replacement that suits Kabila, whose preferred candidate trailed in third place.
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FAYULU: (Speaking French).
QUIST-ARCTON: A furious Fayulu has denounced what he describes as a scandalous, electoral coup - rigged, fabricated and invented, he says, which fails to reflect the truth of the ballots. Fayulu says voters have been robbed of victory and democracy. He looks poised to formally challenge the results.
Meanwhile, Fayulu is calling on election monitors, including Congo's influential Catholic bishops conference, which fielded thousands of observers, to publish what he says are the real results. The bishops announced last week that their observations indicated a clear winner and warned the election commission to ensure its results reflected the will of the Congolese people.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
QUIST-ARCTON: While many Congolese are celebrating the presumed victory of Felix Tshisekedi, many others question whether he can be his own man and steer vast, mineral-rich Congo away from its reputation for corruption, kleptocracy and rampant cronyism. Others, though, are holding their breath and praying that whatever happens, peace will prevail. Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, NPR News, Kinshasa.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Rachel Martin, here to tell you that you only have a few more weeks to eat in a posh, Parisian restaurant while in the nude. O’Naturel opened in Paris about a year ago. Diners take their clothes off in a dressing room and lock away their phones for privacy reasons, then they take a seat in the dining room for a fabulous meal in the buff. The owners reassure patrons that not everyone is looking at them. But easy for them to say - the wait staff is all clothed. O'Naturel closes February 16.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
President Trump is taking his argument for a border wall to the border today with a visit to Texas. The president, we should say, has staked a lot on this wall. He's allowed a partial government shutdown to continue, impacting scores of federal employees. He walked out of a meeting with Democratic leaders yesterday, calling the meeting a total waste of time. And, of course, he made the wall the subject of his first prime-time address from the Oval Office.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: This barrier is absolutely critical to border security. It's also what our professionals at the border want and need.
GREENE: What professionals at the border want and need. Well, since the president's speech Tuesday, some of those border professionals have been talking to NPR's John Burnett, who has been out in the field with them. And John joins us from San Diego. Good morning, John.
JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: Morning, David.
GREENE: So you rode along with some Border Patrol agents along the fence line in the mountains south of San Diego yesterday. This is the area where President Trump is talking about the need for a wall. What are you...
BURNETT: Right.
GREENE: ...Seeing and hearing?
BURNETT: Well, I rode with two Border Patrol public affairs officers for seven hours. And a lot of what we saw and talked about relates exactly to what the president's asking for in border security. The San Diego sector out here is small, only 60 miles of land border, but it's just across from a major Mexican city, Tijuana. And the area used to be the nation's illegal crossing hot spot back in the '80s.
Today, this western-most border's a sort of poster child for bigger, taller, longer fences. And you can see the construction of a new, formidable 18-foot-tall barrier made of steel bollards with rebar and cement inside of them, a big steel anti-climb plate welded on top. And this replaces the flimsy, old sheet metal fence.
It's safe to say what they showed me was a sales job for the construction of the Great Wall of Trump. And the chief patrol agent says where they have two layers of fence, he gets 90 percent operational control of the border.
GREENE: OK. So the Great Wall of Trump, as you're calling it. But there already is some fencing there. So what - if President Trump, you know, gets what he wants, what would this mean in the San Diego sector? How much new fencing would actually be there?
BURNETT: Right. So if you check with Homeland Security, they'll tell you they want 5 additional miles of new fencing. They already have 46 miles of fencing. It would be five more. And where would it go? The existing fence stretches all the way from the Pacific Ocean to Otay Mountain. And at one point yesterday, we were standing at the eastern end of the border fence, where it currently ends. You can see the international border rising steeply up the slope of Otay Mountain.
And I was here three years ago on an earlier ride-along, and I remember the agent at the time telling me that that mountain is our deterrent - that they have agents on ATVs, in jeeps, who catch illegal crossers out in those rugged ravines. And yesterday, I asked Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Michael Scappechio, why do you now need a new fence to continue all the way up the mountain?
MICHAEL SCAPPECHIO: And it all comes down to resources. If the resources are available, it'll help us do our job better. If they're not available, we have to utilize terrain, such as Otay Mountain, as a deterrent, and we have to shift our resources, like our surveillance, like our manpower. If we can put a border barrier, we can utilize our manpower elsewhere.
BURNETT: So what they're saying now is different from what they told me three years ago. They're saying a fence built across this mountain means they don't need to put agents out there to chase illegal crossers through the gullies. And remember that Border Patrol is chronically understaffed.
GREENE: I'm just thinking to that comment still. This sounds like a different argument than what you hear from President Trump - that there's a crisis at the border. You need a big wall. He's saying, yeah, if we have the money, a wall here, instead of a mountain, would allow us to shift manpower elsewhere. It's so interesting. I mean, it's - both arguments for a wall, but subtly different.
So I guess I wonder what are these officials actually there saying about the president's comments that, you know, officials like them are clamoring for this?
BURNETT: Right. Well, I talked to Chief Patrol Agent Rodney Scott, and I asked him. So the fence is so expensive. You know, you already attained all this operational control between Tijuana and San Diego. Why do you need more fence out here in the outback where illegal traffic is less? And here's what he said.
RODNEY SCOTT: Customs and Border Protection has had this systematic plan that we've been acting on for years, building on infrastructure where we believe we need it. And all of a sudden, it got unbelievably political overnight, as opposed to what we're saying that we need.
BURNETT: So I talked to line agents in South Texas, but they'll say there's too much emphasis on the wall these days, and it's just as important to have cameras and sensors and lights and manpower in the mix.
GREENE: And what does it feel like right now in Tijuana, John? It's a place that we've been paying so much attention to with a lot of migrants trying to come across.
BURNETT: Right. Well, what surprised me is nobody is being sent back. Remember, right before Christmas, there was this - they called it a historic measure that would force asylum-seekers to go back to Mexico and wait there while their cases are being resolved in U.S. immigration courts.
And a senior administration official who's close to border security told me, this week, the Remain in Mexico rule has been suspended for now. He said the administration's working out diplomatic complexities with Mexico. And now Mexico's balking at having to handle so many poor immigrants waiting around their border cities for months.
GREENE: NPR's John Burnett in San Diego this morning. John, thanks.
BURNETT: You bet, David.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We're going to focus now on a very personal trauma that so many women go through, even though it's not often publicly discussed. We're talking about miscarriage. When a woman learns her pregnancy is no longer viable, she often faces a decision about what to do next. There is now a new treatment method available to help patients get through the process a little faster. But as NPR's Sarah McCammon reports, access to that medication is being complicated by the larger debate around abortion.
SARAH MCCAMMON, BYLINE: Kirstin Herbst and her fiance are ready for a family. They started trying for a baby recently, and Herbst says things happened fast.
KIRSTIN HERBST: It was pretty quick into it. We were pretty lucky that way. So nothing wrong with getting pregnant, thankfully.
MCCAMMON: Herbst is 30 and lives in Toronto, Canada, where she works as an illustrator. She says she wasn't too worried when she went to her doctor early in the pregnancy to check on her progress.
HERBST: I was thinking it was any other normal appointment, to be honest. People had come out just before us, and they were. Coming out with pictures.
MCCAMMON: But something didn't look right on her ultrasound. The fetus was measuring too small, and Herbst's doctor said she'd had a miscarriage. Herbst was given a few choices - wait for her body to expel the pregnancy naturally, which could take days or weeks, have surgery or take a medication called misoprostol to help her body complete the miscarriage more quickly. Herbst chose the medication.
HERBST: There's definitely a comfort level in having the ability to get this whole process finished or do most of it at home, I guess, compared to going out into a very public space, a lot of things you don't know and doctors doing all sorts of things to you, as opposed to you understanding the process and doing it yourself.
MCCAMMON: Herbst had to take a few rounds of misoprostol before all was said and done. So several months later, when she was diagnosed with her second miscarriage, her doctor offered her another drug, mifepristone, along with the misoprostol. Herbst says that miscarriage was similar, but she got through it faster. That's true for many women, according to a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Courtney Schreiber is an OB-GYN and lead author of the article, which recommends using a combination of mifepristone and misoprostol to treat patients who discover in their first trimester that a pregnancy is not viable.
COURTNEY SCHREIBER: There is such a sense of a need to improve care for women who have a miscarriage. And the fact that this new regimen can help with the rapid completion of the miscarriage, allow women to return back to their lives more quickly, has been received with tremendous enthusiasm.
MCCAMMON: The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is among groups recommending the new protocol and urging the Food and Drug Administration to ease restrictions on mifepristone in the U.S. Mifepristone is better-known as the abortion pill. It's been heavily regulated since it was approved for medication abortions in 2000. It can't be stocked at commercial pharmacies in the U.S., and clinics that carry it have to apply for a special designation. And that makes mifepristone harder to access for women who need it for miscarriages. Allison Wray is 30 and lives in Vancouver, Wash. When she miscarried in November, she was first prescribed misoprostol alone.
ALLISON WRAY: And unfortunately, I got nothing. I got no side effects, but no, like - nothing really happened at all.
MCCAMMON: Wray took another dose and waited. Still nothing. She really wanted to avoid surgery. Her doctor suggested mifepristone, which the office had just begun stocking that week. That finally worked, much to Wray's relief.
WRAY: Just knowing that it's kind of done and that we can move on and move forward, and my body can heal and get back to normal so that we can start trying again.
MCCAMMON: Some abortion rights opponents argue the restrictions on mifepristone are appropriate. The drug causes a woman to have what's essentially a very heavy period, and there is a small risk of excessive bleeding. Dr. Christina Francis of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists says her main concern is patient safety. She also believes that loosening regulations on mifepristone could mean more abortions.
CHRISTINA FRANCIS: That's not why I'm questioning this article as far as changing my practice. But I do think, as a side issue, more women are probably going to be able to obtain medical abortions.
MCCAMMON: The FDA and many medical groups say mifepristone is safe and effective, though the FDA said in a statement to NPR that the regulations are necessary to ensure patient safety. But for many physicians, those regulations are a barrier to prescribing the drug to women experiencing miscarriages. Dr. Kristyn Brandi is an OB-GYN at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.
KRISTYN BRANDI: Women have a lot of reactions. Sometimes they're tearful. Sometimes they're in shock. And so I want to help them get through this process as best as I can. And part of that is often trying to help them go through the process as fast as possible.
MCCAMMON: Because of the red tape, Brandi says she can't prescribe the drug right now.
BRANDI: And it's been really frustrating to know that there's a medication out there that I can give to my patients that I don't physically have to give to them.
MCCAMMON: Kirsten Herbst in Toronto says she's thankful to live in Canada, where easier access to the drug made her second miscarriage go a little more smoothly.
HERBST: It's such a terrible, terrible experience in every way, that to make it harder is just cruel.
MCCAMMON: Herbst says her two pregnancy losses have been extremely difficult.
HERBST: But I've grown a lot in the fact that I understand grief, and I can understand other people's grief a lot better now.
MCCAMMON: Despite the grief of her miscarriages, Herbst says she and her fiance are still hoping for a baby soon. Sarah McCammon, NPR News, Toronto.
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MARTIN: This piece was produced with the help of Dr. Mara Gordon, this year's NPR health and media fellow from Georgetown University Hospital.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Astronomers have a new tool they hope will help them crack an intergalactic mystery. The mystery is what's causing occasional brief but massive bursts of energy to erupt from galaxies far beyond our Milky Way. The tool is a new radio telescope in Canada called CHIME. NPR's Joe Palca reports.
JOE PALCA, BYLINE: In 2007, scientists reported the first of these peculiar bursts of energy called Fast Radio Bursts. Physicist Victoria Kaspi of McGill University remembers exactly how she and her colleagues felt when they read that first report.
VICTORIA KASPI: We were all shocked. I mean, I had to scrape my jaw off the floor. And we were a little skeptical, too, initially. But we're - now we're definitely believers.
PALCA: The shock came because scientists couldn't explain what would make such a huge amount of energy in such a short space of time - and skeptical because for many years, nobody else could find another one of these bursts. Now as more groups have joined the search, several dozen have been reported. But Kaspi says they're still quite mysterious.
KASPI: When you have something that's only on for a millisecond and you can't predict where or when, it's hard to study it.
PALCA: That's where the new telescope comes in. CHIME is a radio telescope in British Columbia. It's unusual-looking. Instead of a big, steerable dish, it consists of four hundred-yard-long pipes - or actually half-pipes - lying side by side in a North-South orientation. CHIME has one very important property.
INGRID STAIRS: It has a very, very wide field of view. It looks at a large part of the sky all the time.
PALCA: That's Ingrid Stairs. She's a professor of astronomy at the University of British Columbia. Most radio telescopes only see a tiny patch of sky at a time, so the chance of catching one of these Fast Radio Bursts is very small. Stairs says CHIME should spot lots. Indeed, even as they were setting up the telescope last summer, they found 13.
STAIRS: We were taking the machines up and down and changing software and things like that. And we were hoping we might find something, but we were quite happy that we got such a large number of Fast Radio Bursts just like that.
PALCA: One of the Fast Radio Bursts they found seems to be going off repeatedly. Cherry Ng of the University of Toronto says that makes it easier to study.
CHERRY NG: If there's something that repeats and if it's still there the next day, we might - we'll see it again.
PALCA: Seeing it over and over should help explain what's generating it. Ng says there are dozens of theories, and she doesn't have a favorite.
NG: I'm an instrumentalist, so I don't know. I just find them and let the theorists think about it.
PALCA: Most of the theories suggests the Fast Radio Bursts are being generated by something we already know about - spinning neutron stars or a rotating black hole or some interaction of the two. But McGill University's Victoria Kaspi says it could be something scientists have never dreamed of.
KASPI: It absolutely could be something totally new, and we just don't know.
PALCA: So do you find it exciting or frustrating to have these things that you don't really understand?
KASPI: Oh, it's exciting. It's always wonderful to have a new puzzle to work on. It's an absolute joy.
PALCA: Kaspi and her colleagues presented their results from the CHIME telescope at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society and in the latest edition of the journal Nature. Joe Palca, NPR News.
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RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in the Middle East this week trying to reassure allies that the U.S. remains committed to the region. Speaking at the American University in Cairo, he criticized the Obama administration's policies in the region.
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MIKE POMPEO: 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.
MARTIN: He's referring there to President Obama's own Cairo speech from 2009 which was meant to reach out to the Muslim world in the wake of the U.S. response to 9/11. NPR's Jane Arraf is on the line from Baghdad, where she's been monitoring all of this. Jane, what were the big takeaways from Secretary Pompeo's speech?
JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: Oh, gosh, where to start? A lot of it was about Iran - a lot of tough words on Iran. Calling them a cancerous influence in the region was, you know, one of the mildest things he said. He basically focused on what the U.S. was doing about Iran essentially, as he put it, to fix what the previous administration had not done to create what he calls this mess.
There's the Middle East peace process. The U.S. of course - the administration has promised a peace agreement somewhere down the line. Ten years ago, (inaudible) Palestinians and their legitimate aspirations and said their situation was intolerable. Pompeo celebrated the (inaudible) - Israeli national anthem played at a judo championship as an example of things - how things were becoming normalized. And a lot of it really was just to draw a difference between the previous administrations and how they see the region and the Muslim world.
MARTIN: Right. I mean, it's not a coincidence that he chose to deliver this speech from Cairo because Republicans - ever since Obama gave that speech, Republicans have been criticizing Barack Obama, calling it an apologist tour when he was trying to reach out to the Muslim world.
ARRAF: Yeah, and Pompeo went even further. He talked about what he called fundamental misunderstandings 10 years ago as adversely affecting the lives of hundreds of millions of people in Egypt and across the region. That's a pretty sweeping accusation. He lays a lot of the blame to openness to Islam and a misunderstanding, he says, of the history. And essentially he blamed the Obama administration for a lot of the things that the U.S. was facing now. But while he says that there is a way forward, he was very short on specifics on that.
MARTIN: Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi is likely to be happy with Pompeo's remarks. What about other leaders in the region?
ARRAF: Yes, Sissi is likely to be quite thrilled at Pompeo praising his courage. Sissi is fighting a very opaque war against ISIS in his own country. Other people in the region - you know, this is a new era, and part of that new era is a belief that the United States is more than willing to look the other way to repression and human rights abuses in countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia if there are security or economic benefits.
But also, Pompeo was playing to his own base. He mentioned straight off he was an - sorry - evangelical Christian, and he talked about abandoning Christians under previous administrations. So there was a lot in that speech but a lot of it also aimed at his base.
MARTIN: NPR's Jane Arraf from Baghdad, thanks so much. We appreciate it.
ARRAF: Thank you.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
President Trump is heading to McAllen, Texas, today - again trying to convince the American public that a border wall is needed and that the government shutdown is worth it. The way President Trump has described this wall over time has changed quite a bit. NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith has more.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Back in 2014, when the businessman Donald Trump was toying with the idea of running for president, he said he would build a border fence. That summer, a couple of his advisers, including Sam Nunberg, came up with the idea of calling it a wall as a way of signaling Trump would be an immigration hard-liner.
SAM NUNBERG: And what better way than to have his brand incorporated by Donald Trump saying, yeah, I'm going to build a wall. Nobody builds like Trump.
KEITH: Nunberg wants to be clear. Trump rejected plenty of their ideas, but he went all-in on the wall.
NUNBERG: It was fun. It was cool. It was novel.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I would build a great wall. And nobody builds walls better than me, believe me. And I'll build them very inexpensively.
KEITH: Trump officially launched his campaign in June 2015 with the wall as a centerpiece.
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TRUMP: (Chanting) Build that wall. Build that wall. Build that wall.
KEITH: That December, at a rally in Virginia, a little boy asked Trump for the specs on his wall.
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UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: What are the walls going to be made out of?
(CHEERING)
TRUMP: That might be the best question I get today. I'll tell you what it's going to be made of. It's going to be made of hardened concrete. And it's going to be made out of rebar and steel.
KEITH: When he described his wall, he talked about concrete. He mocked those who said it would be hard or impractical, but it's worth noting that even very early on, he never said it would extend unbroken from sea to shining sea.
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TRUMP: Well, we have 2,000 miles. We actually need 1,000 - even less than that because we have a lot of natural barriers, right? Big, strong, wonderful natural barriers.
KEITH: After Trump became president, though, his description of the wall started to change. This was Trump on Fox News in November 2017.
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TRUMP: One of the things that's come up pretty strongly is we want to have vision through the wall because you want to see what's on the other side of the wall. You know, you think we're going to build a nice, simple concrete wall, but it's not that simple.
KEITH: That was a dose of reality meeting the president's concrete wall. For safety reasons, border agents want to be able to see what's on the other side, so the wall would actually be made of tall steel bollards, or posts, which, strictly speaking, is more like a fence than a wall. Still, Trump kept calling it a wall, kept leading chants at his rallies all through last year.
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UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Chanting) Build that wall. Build that wall. Build that wall.
KEITH: But now, with Democrats refusing to fund the president's wall, he's emphasizing the shift in building materials.
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TRUMP: You can never have border security unless you have a steel barrier, a concrete wall. You can call it whatever you want.
KEITH: Steel slats, steel barrier - it's not a concrete wall. But does that matter to the people who elected Trump to build a wall? Sam Nunberg, the early campaign adviser, says, no.
NUNBERG: What matters is that there's something built that has not been like anything that's built before, that is bigger, grander.
KEITH: Now, Nunberg doesn't claim to speak for all Trump voters, but he's looked at recent polling and focus groups.
NUNBERG: Trump supporters define success on the border as building the wall, and he has to build a wall or get a wall started.
KEITH: Trump's political future may well depend on it. Tamara Keith, NPR News.
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DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Good morning. I'm David Greene. An arts expert in Britain bought a portrait that was done by one of his favorite artists. The Telegraph reports he paid around $6,000 for it. He was restoring the portrait because there were a couple of little tears on it, which seems like a total waste now since his cat Padme decided to launch herself at the painting and rip a huge hole in it with her claw. The guy says at least the massive hole is not on the subject's face. Still, it's catastrophic.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
So what scares you? The things that scare us sometimes reveal more about our character than we'd probably like to share. Member station WNYC recently asked people for a list of their biggest fears. And over the next few weeks, we're going to share them. Here is former White House director of communications - for all of 10 days - Anthony Scaramucci.
ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI: Divorce attorneys - my divorce attorney was fantastic, by the way. I mean, he's literally become a very close friend. A lack of communication with my own children - when you go through a divorce and you get a little bit of he said, she said, there could be some alienation. And in fairness to the kids, if the situation is very stressful, they could want to pull away or check out on their own for their own self-preservation. So, you know, that would really be a rough one for me.
Returning to Washington - I was laughing at the president the other night, where he was saying that he thought the real estate people in New York were animals until he got to Washington, D.C. And he realizes these people are a bunch of babies. I mean, they're just the worst people I've ever met in my life. I mean, these people do not serve the public interest. There's a very good reason why the American people voted out levels of the establishment and brought in President Trump.
Losing the ability to be useful to my family or the society - I got raised to be fairly independent. I had a paper route when I was a very young kid. I was hustling for dough while I was in college. I was hustling for dough while I was in law school. I've been working in one way, shape or form since I was 12, 13 years old. And so I'm never retiring, OK? I like the game. You know what I mean? I don't know if you want to call Dr. Kekirkian (ph) or whatever his name is that, you know, was killing people. But I sort of don't want to be here if I'm not really functioning and capable of helping others.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: So what would be your dream? Do you die at your desk or something? Like, how would...
SCARAMUCCI: Well, I want to die like Nelson Rockefeller.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: How's that?
SCARAMUCCI: You don't know how he died.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: No, I don't.
SCARAMUCCI: He died in bed in flagrante delicto.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Got it.
SCARAMUCCI: Got it.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Yeah.
SCARAMUCCI: And they had to haul him out of there. And so that's how I want to die. Is that bad?
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GREENE: Anthony Scaramucci is the former director of communications at the White House. And that was an excerpt from the new podcast "10 Things That Scare Me." You can hear the rest of Scaramucci's fears in other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts. "10 Things That Scare Me" comes to us from WNYC Studios.
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RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
You know what that music means - sharks - but now so does this.
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PINKFONG: (Singing) Baby shark, doo doo doo doo doo doo, baby shark, doo doo doo doo doo doo, baby...
MARTIN: That's right. "Baby Shark," the viral kids' song, is making its debut on the Billboard Top 40.
MARTIN: Sorry, all you parents with little ones. You cannot escape this song.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
No, you cannot. "Baby Shark" has been around for years as a children's song that you would hear at camp or other places. And then in 2016, Pinkfong, a South Korea-based educational brand, recorded a version of it. And it went viral.
MARTIN: It's gotten 2.1 billion views globally on YouTube and inspired a legion of imitators in other genres, like R&B.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BABY SHARK")
DESMOND DENNIS: (Singing) Baby shark, doo doo doo doo doo. Baby shark...
GREENE: And techno...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BABY SHARK")
PINKFONG: (Singing) Baby shark, doo doo doo doo doo doo, baby shark, doo doo doo doo doo doo, baby...
MARTIN: And a little something for the headbangers.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BABY SHARK (TECHNO)")
PINKFONG: (Screaming) Baby shark, doo doo doo doo doo doo, baby shark, doo doo doo...
GREENE: Well, now that that is stuck in everyone's head, I think we've done our job here.
SLAY DUGGEE: (Singing) It's the end, doo doo doo doo doo doo.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
President Trump is visiting McAllen, Texas, today making the case for a border wall right along the border. Mariam Cepeda lives in the area. She supports Trump and has been a surrogate for his campaign. And she wants the wall.
MARIAM CEPEDA: My whole stance is, listen to the Border Patrol agents. They want a physical barrier. This is something that's been proposed. It's been proposed before. And why not give them what they want?
GREENE: Now, Democrats have said they'll negotiate on how best to beef up security at the border. But Trump, they say, is holding federal workers hostage to get his way. A partial government shutdown that began over this debate has now entered its 20th day. Congressman Will Hurd, a Texas Republican, represents a district with more miles of border than any other congressional district, and he's with us this morning.
Congressman, good morning.
WILL HURD: Good morning. It's always a pleasure to be on with y'all.
GREENE: Well, we always like having you on.
I want to ask you - the president's making this argument that border agents want a border barrier. And we actually heard from one on our show this morning, saying having more border barrier does help them focus resources elsewhere. So are border agents telling you the same thing?
HURD: Well, I've had border agents say that - I ask this question to everyone. I have four sectors of the border in my district, 820 miles. And I always ask the question - what do you need? The first comment I always get is some type of telecommunications because their cellphones and their push-to-talk radios don't always work in certain areas. And they do say there are some physical barriers that's needed, but I've never had anybody tell me that building a wall from sea to shining sea is something that they actually need.
I do believe we should be listening to Border Patrol. And if you go back to about 2014, there was a bipartisan border security plan that had a - it was very prescriptive, and it almost went mile by mile. And the input was received from all the folks on the ground. The thing that I've been hearing is they need technology, they need additional manpower in order to continue to do their job.
GREENE: But does more barrier make the border safer?
HURD: Well, what a barrier does is it helps increase a Border Patrol agent's response time to something at the border. So that's why where there is urban-to-urban contact, some type of physical barrier makes sense because Border Patrol's response time is measured in seconds to minutes. But in other parts of the border where the response time is measured in hours to days, a wall or a fence is actually not a physical barrier; it's just a complete waste of money. That's why we need technology in those places in order to track people so that we can efficiently deploy the men and women of Border Patrol.
And this is - and I like to call it the smart wall. And the only way that we secure our border is to think about all 2,000 miles and be able to look at all 2,000 miles of border at the same time. The best way to do that is with technology and increased manpower.
GREENE: So technology, increased manpower and perhaps some sort of border barrier. I mean, there is some compromise that has been talked about in Washington for some time. Do you see evidence that a compromise could come together here that Democrats, who are now leading the House, and the president could could get around?
HURD: I think there is. The problem we're dealing with is the folks that are actually negotiating this deal lack trust amongst each other. And they lack a granular understanding of the details of what is needed and what's a fair trade. And so I think the way out of this is some of us that understand this well needs to come up with an alternative plan and pitch that to the negotiators. I think, also, neither of the negotiators want to propose something that makes them look weak. And so everybody's digging in into their positions.
I think some type of deal - it's going to be something like complete the rest of the Secure Fence Act - we all know, in 2006, 2008, pretty much everybody voted for that - have the smart wall, double down on technology in our ports of entry and do something addressing immigration because what is causing the folks coming here is people are looking for jobs. And at 3.9 percent unemployment, every industry in the United States of America needs employees.
So let's put people to work and then address the root causes in the Northern Triangle of Central America - that's El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala - to address those root causes, which is violence and lack of economic opportunities. I...
GREENE: There's been talk on the Senate side - sorry to interrupt - there's been talk on the Senate side among some more moderate Republicans of some kind of deal that might - it sounds like maybe the sort of thing you're talking about, maybe some border wall funding but giving Democrats some of what they have been wanting in the larger immigration debate.
I mean, Democrats now just started running the House. They might want to dig in as you say some in Washington want to do right now. Could you see House members coming around some kind of compromise as being talked about in the Senate?
HURD: I actually think most people want to see this resolved. Nobody wants to see anybody lose a paycheck or not get a paycheck. We know this is all going to go down on January 11. That's when the next paycheck is supposed to be due. We know that almost 70 percent of Americans have less than $400 in their savings account. And so you have something like this where you're going to have to pay your bills and go into savings.
This creates a crisis in individual homes and in individual families. I think we want to resolve that. I believe the best solution is the most narrow solution possible, and those are those principles that I just outlined. But I'm sure we're going to be willing to work with our Senate to try to get something that everybody can agree on.
GREENE: Congressman Will Hurd, Texas Republican, joining us this morning.
Thanks so much, Congressman.
HURD: Always a pleasure.
GREENE: I want to turn to NPR White House correspondent Scott Horsley, who's with us. Scott, are you sensing movement towards a compromise that might end this shutdown?
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Well, not really. Congressman Hurd is one of a small number of Republicans in the House who has voted to reopen the government while these negotiations continue. And there are a handful of Republican senators who've taken that tack. But the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has said he won't consider that unless the president's willing to go along. And the kind of, you know, resource allocation you and the congressman have been talking about, whether it's walls or communications equipment...
GREENE: Right.
HORSLEY: ...Or extra border agents, that's the kind of sort of routine trade-off that is ordinarily hashed out by a congressional appropriations committee. And what we have now is the president trying to raise this to a sort of existential crisis that warrants temporarily shuttering 25 percent of the federal government.
GREENE: NPR White House correspondent Scott Horsley joining us this morning.
Scott, we appreciate it.
HORSLEY: Good to be with you, David.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
In less than three months, the United Kingdom could walk away from the European Union, one of the world's largest trading blocs, with no future agreement on trade. That has U.K. exporters and freight companies around the Port of Dover worried about how thousands of trucks will make the journey across the English Channel each day. NPR's Frank Langfitt reports from Dover.
(SOUNDBITE OF VEHICLE ENGINE REVVING)
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: For decades, transporting goods across the channel has been easy. The United Kingdom's membership in the European Union means there are no customs checks to hold trucks up. Julian Keet is director of Laser Transport International, a global freight logistics company.
JULIAN KEET: It's totally seamless. Relating to your American audience - if you were going to drive from New York down to Miami, you just drive - simple as that. And there's no documentation.
LANGFITT: But if the U.K. leaves the EU on March 29 without some kind of deal - what everyone here calls a no-deal Brexit - Keet says moving goods across the channel could become a lot more cumbersome. He worries new customs checks could cause big backups.
KEET: You could end up with vehicles losing half a day, a day, even longer while you end up waiting to get documentation processed.
LANGFITT: Rod McKenzie of the Road Haulage Association, which represents half the trucks in the country, paints an even gloomier picture.
ROD MCKENZIE: Well, the potential is pretty scary. We could see 20 or 30 miles of lorry traffic queuing towards Dover, which is the No. 1 port with the continent.
LORENZO ZACCHEO: That's why we bought a helicopter, you see?
LANGFITT: That's Lorenzo Zaccheo. He's managing director of Alcaline Group, a supply chain specialist. Zaccheo plans to use his new helicopter to leapfrog any lines at the channel. Among other things, his company delivers auto parts. Delays in filling just-in-time inventory can cause factory lines to halt at a huge cost. So if there are backups, Zaccheo plans to fly small parts across the channel to keep assembly lines rolling.
ZACCHEO: We're talking hubcaps. We're talk very small items. And that's when you have to employ the helicopter because, basically, there's a large number of cars standing on the assembly line that needs all these parts.
LANGFITT: The U.K. government has tried to make contingency plans for traffic jams at Dover. The government has hired companies to run ferries from other ports, but the sole English firm involved doesn't actually have any ships. On Monday, officials tested an alternate truck route to the port using an abandoned airport as a staging area. But Zaccheo said the first run involved just a tiny fraction of vehicles compared to the daily traffic flow.
ZACCHEO: We all believe that that was a complete waste of time and money as well because it doesn't reflect reality because they went there for about a hundred vehicles, and we're talking about 10,000 a day.
LANGFITT: Zaccheo worries about the impact of a no-deal Brexit on business. But interestingly, he still supports leaving the EU. Zaccheo grew up in Italy. He came here more than three decades ago and considers himself British. He says the United Kingdom needs more control over immigration.
ZACCHEO: I think we're diluting our own identity, I think in a way, as a nation.
LANGFITT: Not everyone is worried about long lines to cross the channel. The head of the French port of Calais insists everything will run smoothly on the 29, even if the U.K. and the EU are separate economies. That seems good enough for Charlie Elphicke, member of the British Parliament in the Conservative Party, who represents Dover.
CHARLIE ELPHICKE: The authorities in charge of Calais say they have no intention of any delays, go-slows or holdups.
LANGFITT: Elphicke is pro-Brexit. He says the U.K. government has just whipped up concern over Dover for political reasons. Elphicke says it wants to win support for Prime Minister Theresa May's unpopular Brexit withdrawal agreement, which could keep Britain closely aligned with the EU for years.
ELPHICKE: It's a case of what we call Project Fear. The people who don't want to leave the European Union or are afraid to leave the European Union are trying to say we can't manage outside Europe and that, therefore, we need to stay close or, indeed, remain in it.
LANGFITT: The U.K. government, though, is cautious about how the Port of Calais might operate in a no-deal Brexit, pointing out that food items, such as British beef and lamb, could suddenly face comprehensive health inspections at the border.
Frank Langfitt, NPR News, Dover.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
President Trump had this to say before leaving for the border today.
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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.
MARTIN: It's unclear how much his border visit will actually change anyone's mind. A meeting between the president and Democratic congressional leaders yesterday ended with the president walking out. Here's how Vice President Mike Pence explained it.
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VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: He asked Speaker Pelosi that if he opened things up quickly - if he reopened the government quickly, would she be willing to agree to funding for a wall or a barrier on the southern border? And when she said no, the president said goodbye.
MARTIN: Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had a slightly different version of events.
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CHUCK SCHUMER: And then, a few minutes later, 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.
MARTIN: So it is now Day 20 of the partial federal government shutdown, and both sides are still stuck into their respective positions. Mercedes Schlapp is White House director of strategic communications, and she joins us now to talk about the view from the White House on all this.
Good morning, Mercedes.
MERCEDES SCHLAPP: Good morning. Thank you for having me.
MARTIN: Thanks for being here.
So the president's going to the border today in Texas to make his case again for a border wall. Moments ago, we spoke with Republican Congressman Will Hurd, who represents the district containing more than 200 miles of border with Mexico. And this is what he told us about his conversations with border agents.
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WILL HURD: They do say there are some physical barriers that's needed, but I've never had anybody tell me that building a wall from sea to shining sea is something that they actually need.
MARTIN: How is President Trump getting such different information about the efficacy of a border wall than the congressman who represents the biggest border district in the country?
SCHLAPP: Actually, he's not because if you hear clearly what Congressman Will Hurd mentioned, he said that they don't want to build a wall from sea to shining sea. The president has not said he's going to build a wall from - or a physical barrier from sea to shining sea. Our goal has been to listen to the needs of the Border Patrol agents. That is why we have identified the 5.6 billion which would ensure operational control of the southern border. That means that it would be about 238 miles that would be with physical barrier that would be built and as well that this takes into account the 10 top priorities that the Custom Border Patrol (ph) agents have identified as a real need where we know we can place physical barrier there and as we know the numbers show that the walls work. And so I think that's the key here - is the fact that no one is saying we're going to build it from sea to shining sea. But as Congressman Hurd said, the wall - these physical barriers do work in...
MARTIN: He actually didn't go on to say whether or not physical barriers are as effective as a combination of technology, better communications, more manpower on the border. And that's what - Democrats also make that case, that it needs to be everything and that to seize so specifically on a border wall doesn't make sense - definitely not for $5.7 billion.
SCHLAPP: Well, interestingly enough, Rachel, we had Senator Schumer who has said recently that the walls are ineffective. However, you look back at videos and comments that he has made where he has said that physical barriers - that we should secure our border with physical barriers. So I feel that there is a sense of almost a two-sidedness of where the Democrats are on this issue. Look. We have come with a good-faith offer. The president and the negotiations, which are being led by Vice President Pence, have put together a proposal that contains Democrat requests.
MARTIN: But the...
SCHLAPP: And so we're trying to find that compromise. And sadly, they just simply refuse to negotiate and refuse to counteroffer.
MARTIN: So as you know, Democrats' position is that it's the White House that's refusing to negotiate - not willing to budge on the $5.7 billion number - and insisting that the government not reopen. House Democrats passed a bill yesterday to reopen parts of the government, including Treasury and the IRS that have to deal with Tax Day coming up. Eight Republicans, including Congressman Hurd, voted with Democrats on that bill. How do you convince the American people that the shutdown is worth it when not even all Republican lawmakers think that?
SCHLAPP: Look. Unfortunately, we have our federal workers who are stuck in the middle of this. We need the Democrats to come to the table and come with a counteroffer. They have not offered us anything. The only thing they can...
MARTIN: They want to reopen government and continue to...
SCHLAPP: No, they...
MARTIN: ...Negotiate.
SCHLAPP: See, what Nancy Pelosi said yesterday at that meeting - and I was at that meeting - the president said, OK, Nancy, if we reopen the government, can we get something for border security in 30 days? And Nancy Pelosi said no.
MARTIN: So the president is explicitly...
SCHLAPP: So we literally...
MARTIN: ...Using the shutdown as leverage.
SCHLAPP: We literally are - the Democrats have been exposed. They have no desire to negotiate. Nancy Pelosi made that very clear that she is not going to fund border security despite the fact that our proposal contains elements that the Democrats care about and want. It includes...
MARTIN: Although you know she has said she wants to fund border security. She doesn't want a wall. She doesn't want...
SCHLAPP: Well, we've asked her...
MARTIN: ...A physical barrier.
SCHLAPP: We've asked her several times to ask her what her definition of border security is. And unfortunately, she has not been able to tell us. And so what we have done...
MARTIN: Which is why they argue that the debate should continue. Meanwhile, hundreds...
SCHLAPP: But let me...
MARTIN: ...Of thousands of federal employees aren't going to get a paycheck tomorrow.
SCHLAPP: Let me ask you, Rachel. I mean, do you think that there's a crisis on the border?
MARTIN: Not my job to answer that question.
SCHLAPP: Right.
MARTIN: And I think what - your point is that Democrats do agree that there is a situation that needs to be addressed, that border security needs to be enhanced. So that seems like a point of negotiation. Yet...
SCHLAPP: Absolutely. Absolutely. So let's negotiate. So let's get there. We have been - for weeks - before Christmas, saying, let's negotiate. Let's get to the table, come to a solution. The Democrats refuse to do that.
MARTIN: But people point out it doesn't seem fair to hold the government hostage while tens of thousands of federal workers don't get a paycheck.
SCHLAPP: Look. It is very unfortunate that we have the federal workers caught in the middle of this. And that is why the Democrats need to work with Republicans and the president to reopen this government.
MARTIN: White House director of strategic communications Mercedes Schlapp.
Thanks for your time this morning. We appreciate it.
SCHLAPP: Thank you so much.
MARTIN: White House correspondent Scott Horsley had been listening in to that conversation and joins me now.
Scott, anything in there strike you, any context you want to provide to what we just heard?
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: What's interesting here, Rachel, is just how transparent the White House has been and how the president himself has been about using this partial shutdown of the federal government as leverage to get border wall funding that he campaigned on but which was not included in the White House budget, was not included in the Senate's own appropriation bill, which is something that the president has, you know, repeatedly said Mexico was going to pay for.
MARTIN: So as you just pointed out - I mean, Mercedes Schlapp also seems fairly transparent that the government shutdown is the leverage that they are holding over Democrats. But what incentive do Democrats have to blink here - because the president himself said he owned this?
HORSLEY: Very little.
MARTIN: NPR White House correspondent Scott Horsley for us this morning. Scott, thanks so much. We appreciate it.
HORSLEY: Good to be with you, Rachel.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
StoryCorps this Friday morning, we bring you a conversation between a mother and her 15-year-old daughter. Two decades ago, Maria Rivas immigrated from El Salvador to the United States, where she received temporary protected status allowing her to stay and work legally. But later this year, TPS is set to expire for nearly 200,000 immigrants from El Salvador, and that includes Rivas. If forced to leave the United States, she is not going to risk taking her U.S.-born daughter along with her. At StoryCorps, she sat down with her daughter Emily, a high school freshman, to talk about their uncertain future.
EMILY: What was it like for you to come here to the U.S.?
MARIA RIVAS: I didn't know besides good morning and what's your name when I came here. And when you were a baby, I used to read to you the Dr. Seuss books, like "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish." And that's how I learned English, reading to you.
EMILY: You know, I never really put in much thought that you were an immigrant. I just thought, you know, you're my mom. And I never thought that you would have to leave. I was at school when my phone buzzed. And I just saw the notification that TPS was going to terminate. And I remember I started crying.
RIVAS: When you called me, I tried to calm you down. I am like, OK. This is happening. It's really happening. So I put myself together because I knew that I have to be strong for you. And I didn't promise something that I cannot keep. So I didn't promise you that everything will be OK. But I promise I'm going to make sure that you are OK.
EMILY: What are you most afraid of?
RIVAS: I'm terrified of missing you growing up. It's terrifying. I think that I'm more afraid of that than to go back to my country. Yeah.
EMILY: I'm scared that I'm going to have to do everything by myself.
RIVAS: You're not going to be alone. I promised you that. And I'm very hard to get rid of.
EMILY: (Laughter).
RIVAS: So I'm going to be on the phone all the time.
EMILY: What are your hopes for the future?
RIVAS: That I'm going to die of an - old age and be the pain on your neck all the time...
(LAUGHTER)
RIVAS: ...And make sure that you find strength even in a bad moment.
GREENE: Maria Rivas and her daughter Emily at StoryCorps. This interview will be archived along with hundreds of thousands of others at the Library of Congress. And we should say the fate of nearly 200,000 Salvadoran immigrants with temporary protected status will likely be decided by the end of the year.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
So there is one remaining open seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. It was left empty because of an ongoing investigation into potential election fraud in North Carolina's 9th District. Republican Mark Harris is leading that race. And NPR's Miles Parks has this profile of a boisterous pastor who's been trying to break into North Carolina politics for the past half-decade.
MILES PARKS, BYLINE: Before Mark Harris was the center of an election that just won't end, he stood on a stage three years ago in Charleston, S.C.
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MARK HARRIS: "This Little Light Of Mine." Go ahead and get your lights up. Come on. Come on. Let's sing it together. (Singing) This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine. This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine.
PARKS: He was there encouraging Christian leaders to run for higher office. At that point, Harris had just run and lost in the 2014 primary race for a U.S. Senate seat. He'd been pastor at First Baptist Church in Charlotte for the previous decade, often blending the spiritual with the political.
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HARRIS: (Singing) Hide it under a bushel.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (In unison) No.
HARRIS: Oh, that was pathetic.
(LAUGHTER)
HARRIS: No wonder the liberals are kicking our tails. Come on. Let's try it again. (Singing) Hide it under a bushel.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (In unison) No.
HARRIS: (Singing) I'm gonna let it shine.
PARKS: Harris made a name for himself in politics in 2012, pushing for a ballot amendment that defined marriage as between a man and a woman. Chad Connelly is the former director of faith engagement for the Republican National Committee. He says that Harris connects with voters the same way that President Trump did leading up to 2016.
CHAD CONNELLY: This really just authenticity - and I think a large reason that the Hillarys of the world lose is they come off as inauthentic. And I think Mark Harris is the real deal.
PARKS: That doesn't mean winning elections came easy for him. After losing that Senate race in 2014, Harris ran for a House seat in 2016 but lost narrowly in the primary. One politician told The New York Times that Harris had been through the meat grinder in terms of close elections. But that didn't stop his political aspirations. Here he is at that same event in Charleston, talking about what drove him to run for office.
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HARRIS: I had recognized the emergency. I was relying on God's hand to guide us. And I was willing to do whatever it took to be the man that God would use and sacrifice whatever needed to be sacrificed.
PARKS: Now North Carolina authorities are investigating what the Harris campaign was willing to do to win last year. Harris leads Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes in the unofficial tally for North Carolina's 9th District. But the state's Board of Election is investigating potential election fraud there. McCready accuses Harris of conspiring to cheat in the election. Here's a video he posted to supporters last week.
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DAN MCCREADY: Hey, folks, Happy New Year. As I'm sure you've heard by now, my opponent, Mark Harris, hired a known criminal, who then stole people's votes to try to win here in North Carolina's 9th District.
PARKS: The investigation centers on McCrae Dowless, a local political operative hired by the Harris campaign. Dowless is accused of illegally handling vote-by-mail ballots. Harris says he was in frequent contact with Dowless throughout his primary and general election campaigns. That raises the question of whether Harris knew the techniques that Dowless was using to get out the vote.
The absentee ballot numbers in Bladen County, the county where Dowless was based, were so far in Harris' favor that he would have had to win the vote of every single registered Republican and independent who'd turned in a vote-by-mail ballot, as well as some Democrats. Harris' attorney did not respond to an interview request from NPR. But Harris told member station WFAE that he knew of no illegal activity.
HARRIS: You know, I guess you could even say I almost took on a pastorally role to McCrae Dowless. I mean, I found him to be a very enjoyable individual that I chatted with. Everybody that I had talked to seemed to respect him and seemed to love him. And I had, you know, no reason to think otherwise.
PARKS: Election officials in North Carolina have been monitoring Dowless for many years, however. All of this has state Republicans and Harris allies in a tough spot. They say that if fraud was taking place, Harris was unaware. Tami Fitzgerald, the executive director of the lobbying organization North Carolina Values, also said there aren't enough ballots in question to affect the outcome.
TAMI FITZGERALD: Mark Harris had no idea if there was anything illegal going on. And I say if because it hasn't been proven yet.
PARKS: She describes Harris as a man of integrity who would have reported anything illegal himself. North Carolina is expected to determine next month whether a new election is needed in the 9th District or whether Harris, after years of trying, is finally going to Washington. Miles Parks, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF BOOKA SHADE'S "SACRED")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
It's Day 21 of the partial federal government shutdown, and it's causing big financial concerns for hundreds of thousands of people who aren't getting paychecks today. Here's one example. Some furloughed workers can't refinance their mortgages or buy homes because lenders can't verify their income right now. And as NPR's Yuki Noguchi reports, even those who aren't federal employees are getting stuck in limbo.
YUKI NOGUCHI, BYLINE: Libby Anderson's (ph) divorce finalized this week. She'd hoped her ex-husband would finally move out of their Des Moines home, where they'd been living separate lives under one roof.
LIBBY ANDERSON: It was going to be, you know, as soon as today. I mean, we were really going to take care of it today, the day after it was final. And then he would be out.
NOGUCHI: But, no. Her ex is a furloughed air traffic controller. The shutdown means he can't split his assets with her, including his government retirement account. She needs those funds to refinance the house under her name. Also, he can't qualify for his own mortgage because he hasn't been paid for three weeks. The government stalemate also means they haven't explained the pending change to their young son.
ANDERSON: In a 4-year-old's head, you can't say, you know, Mom and Dad are going to be living in different places, and then you say, well, when, where? And we don't have those answers yet.
NOGUCHI: As the shutdown drags on, more people will find themselves facing similar roadblocks. Refinance applications are booming as mortgage rates fell nearly half a percentage point in recent weeks. But furloughed workers can't lock those rates in. Anyone looking to buy or refinance may have a harder time getting through to federal agencies to verify income taxes or get some loan information from the Federal Housing Administration, which remains closed. Rural home loans guaranteed through the Department of Agriculture are on hold, too. Margie Hofberg is president of the Residential Mortgage Center. She says her Rockville, Md., business will likely see a ripple effect.
MARGIE HOFBERG: This is going to be a house of cards because if I can't close and buy your house then guess what? You can't buy the house that you were buying, even though you don't work for the federal government.
NOGUCHI: Two deals nearly fell through this week, but Hofberg persuaded the lenders to waive certain paperwork. She says banks' strict requirements of borrowers create many potential snags.
HOFBERG: My hope would be that the lenders start becoming a little bit more flexible because it's not in their best interest to not do loans, either.
NOGUCHI: There's some precedent for these problems. During the 2013 shutdown, 2 percent of home loans never closed, according to the National Association of Realtors. But that one lasted only 16 days.
LAWRENCE YUN: The headache, really, is related to delays.
NOGUCHI: Lawrence Yun is the group's chief economist. He says 17 percent of home loans closed late due to backlogs. Most deals get done, but Yun says he worries more about possible impact on homebuyer psychology.
YUN: Along with a shutdown, it causes greater uncertainty about the economic direction, which means that even the private sector employees may be less willing to purchase homes over time.
NOGUCHI: Gregg Busch agrees.
GREGG BUSCH: What furloughed employees are going to go out and buy a house right now when there's no definitive date of a compromise?
NOGUCHI: Busch is vice president of First Savings Mortgage, a big player in the Washington, D.C., area. He notes the impact on contractors, who make up the largest segment of the federal workforce.
BUSCH: There's a lot of contractors here that aren't getting paid. People who own those companies, they're not going to buy, be able to refinance, and they're going to start laying people off. And those people, I think, will be most affected.
NOGUCHI: For Libby Anderson, the new divorcee, the shutdown cannot end soon enough. While her breakup with her ex has been amicable, sharing space is taxing.
ANDERSON: It just feels like you're at the finish line, and the finish line keeps getting moved. But you're exhausted. There's not much you can do about it. You can't move the finish line closer 'cause it's totally out of our control.
NOGUCHI: The latest he expected to move out was April 1. But now Anderson worries the shutdown could outlast that.
ANDERSON: Obviously, I wouldn't kick him out into the street. But we really both need to move on and have some physical distance from each other.
NOGUCHI: Until then they will continue to retreat to separate corners of their house. Yuki Noguchi, NPR News, Washington.
MARTIN: And we're following a developing story this morning. Authorities say they have located 13-year-old Jayme Closs. She's been missing since October, when police discovered her parents dead in their home in Barron, Wis. Investigators got thousands of tips. There were massive search parties to try to follow up on those tips. Last night the Barron County Sheriff's Department announced that Closs has been found alive about an hour north of Barron. CBS affiliate WCCO spoke with Closs's aunt, Sue Nyberg Allard (ph), last night.
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SUE NYBERG ALLARD: There was rumors earlier today. And I prayed and prayed they were true, and they've come to not be true. And I just shut myself totally down 'cause I thought today was going to be the day. Then to find out two hours later that she was found - I just cannot believe this.
MARTIN: The sheriff's department says shortly after Closs was located, a suspect was taken into custody. The department didn't provide any further information but plans to hold a press conference later this morning. We'll continue to monitor this story and bring you any developments.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
It's supposed to be payday for some 800,000 federal workers. But the partial government shutdown means that is not going to happen today.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Yeah, Lisa Honan is one of those federal workers, and that missing paycheck for her means that she has to find other ways to pay her bills.
LISA HONAN: We're going to probably withdraw on our 5-29 account for - I hate to say it. It's our - the, you know, funds for college that you put away for your kids.
GREENE: Could be a lot of tough choices for federal workers like that. It has now been 21 days since the shutdown began, which means it's tied for the longest shutdown in history. And with budget negotiations stalled on funding a border wall, President Trump looks like he may be getting closer to declaring a national emergency to pay for the wall.
That means he could sidestep Congress, and they could pass a budget without funding the wall. So what is next if the president goes ahead and does that?
MARTIN: NPR's congressional correspondent Susan Davis is in the studio this morning. Good morning, Sue.
SUSAN DAVIS, BYLINE: Good morning, Rachel.
MARTIN: Where are we at right now?
DAVIS: The stalemate continues. There has been no progress. They are no closer to a deal. And some lawmakers that have been trying to get a deal, people like Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, have essentially said he does not see a pathway for a deal and that the only way out is for President Trump to use presidential emergency powers, declare a state of emergency on the border and redirect funds on his own to build the wall.
MARTIN: Can he legally do that? I mean, is that within the president's authorities to do?
DAVIS: It's unclear. It is - what is clear is that Democrats in Congress would likely challenge him in the courts and question the constitutionality of that. These emergency powers certainly give the president very broad leeway to make decisions. Although, I believe that Democrats would argue these powers were intended for things like after 9/11 or after Hurricane Katrina, states of emergency in which there is no doubt and no dispute of what the emergency is.
There's obviously a big dispute on what the emergency is. However, if he were to do that, it could also give a pathway to reopen the government.
MARTIN: I mean, what does it say about where we're at as a country when the only way to get out of a government shutdown is to declare a national state of emergency?
DAVIS: You know, the congressional budget process has been broken for some time. I think we've seen fits and starts of these shutdowns. But it's a snowballing of effect of a government that's just simply not working very well.
MARTIN: Even if this happens, if the president does choose to use this card, the - declaring a national emergency, when would it actually go into place? Do we know about timeline?
DAVIS: It's unclear. But one thing that is important to remember when we talk about the wall, too, and this $5.7 billion, even if the president gets the money or directs it to the wall, it doesn't happen very fast. The money that was sent to DHS last year for last year's spending bills is still going out the door to fund border walls - border wall and structures along the barrier - along the border.
So this new influx of cash doesn't happen fast. And it doesn't happen quick. Contracts still have to go out. It takes a very long time to get these structures. So it could still be a very long process.
MARTIN: Before we let you go, I want to shift gears to some other congressional news. Michael Cohen, President Trump's former lawyer, who has pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations and other federal crimes - Cohen announced yesterday that he's going to go to Capitol Hill and testify before Congress. Who made this request?
DAVIS: The House Oversight Committee is led by Elijah Cummings. He's a Democrat from Maryland. They announced yesterday he would testify on February 7. Cohen is expected to be the first of what could be many high-profile hearings on Capitol Hill this year, as House Democrats and their new majority intend to have fairly aggressive oversight and investigations into questions of how this administration has conducted itself.
And it is important to note that Cohen is coming up voluntarily but that also Democrats have said they are willing to use their subpoena power to force as many people as possible to have pretty high-profile hearings that will be televised.
MARTIN: So even though Cohen has given extensive interviews to Robert Mueller and his team, Congress - Elijah Cummings - just want him on the record in a public venue.
DAVIS: Exactly.
MARTIN: NPR's Susan Davis for us this morning. Thanks, Sue. We appreciate it.
DAVIS: You're welcome.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MARTIN: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is headed to the Gulf as he continues his grand Middle East tour.
GREENE: Yeah, this comes after he stopped in Cairo yesterday. And that's where he outlined the Trump administration's vision for America's role in the Middle East. And in giving that speech, he took some direct hits at President Obama and his overtures to the Muslim world in his own speech that also took place in Cairo a decade ago.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
MIKE POMPEO: The results of these misjudgments have been dire.
MARTIN: Here to tell us more about the impact of Pompeo's speech is NPR's Jackie Northam. Good morning, Jackie.
JACKIE NORTHAM, BYLINE: Good morning, Rachel.
MARTIN: What's the fallout been from this speech by Secretary of State Pompeo?
NORTHAM: Well, you know, a number of Obama supporters came out and said that essentially it was just distasteful and that it was wrong to be criticizing a former president while on a high-profile trip like this. One of - a former official within the Obama administration said he felt that Pompeo was living in a parallel world. You know, it was an attack, really, on the - on the Obama administration. Pompeo doesn't actually ever say his name.
MARTIN: Right.
NORTHAM: But there was no question he was talking about President Obama. And he criticized Obama for the nuclear deal with Iran and accused him of blaming the U.S. for the problems of the Middle East right now when instead, he should have been providing strong American leadership.
And Pompeo said - and I'm quoting here - "the U.S. is a force for good in the Middle East." But, you know, Rachel, one of the main reasons for this trip is to clear up confusion caused by conflicting statements within the Trump administration about the U.S. withdrawing troops from Syria.
MARTIN: Right. But Pompeo also said in that same speech, when the U.S. - and I'm paraphrasing here. When the U.S. withdraws from the world, chaos ensues. So it's hard to make sense of that with - with the confusion over the Syria troop withdraw.
NORTHAM: Sure, and that's - you know, that's harsh rhetoric, you know, coming from a secretary of state about a former president's administration.
MARTIN: So now Secretary Pompeo, I understand he's already arrived in Bahrain. And then he's going to Saudi Arabia this weekend, right?
NORTHAM: He is, indeed. And he's expected to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, just one of the many meetings he's got.
MARTIN: And of course, we know that name because he's been implicated by U.S. intelligence agencies in the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Any idea as to whether or not Mike Pompeo, Secretary Pompeo, is going to bring that up?
NORTHAM: Yeah, no, that's - that's definitely one of the things. I mean, this issue is not going away, the whole killing of Jamal Khashoggi. Now, this is the second time he's meeting with the crown prince. The first time he went a couple weeks after the killing of Khashoggi.
And there was pictures of the two men shaking hands and smiling broadly in that. And Pompeo said the crown prince categorically denied any involvement in Khashoggi's death. But since then, Rachel, the U.S. intelligence has assessed that the crown prince was involved.
MARTIN: So the Trump administration continues to take the crown prince's word over the word of its own intelligence agencies?
NORTHAM: Right. President Trump says the crown prince denies involvement and that the U.S. has strong ties, particularly financial ties, to the kingdom. So, you know, there's doubts that Pompeo will push the crown prince hard for any answers.
MARTIN: NPR's Jackie Northam for us this morning. Jackie, thanks. We appreciate it.
NORTHAM: Yeah, thanks very much, Rachel.
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MARTIN: It has been a week of dramatic testimony in the trial of the notorious drug lord Joaquin El Chapo Guzman.
GREENE: Yeah, Guzman's already convicted of trafficking crimes in Mexico. His current trial, taking place in a Brooklyn federal court, centers on a 17-count indictment. The charges span decades. They include accusations of money laundering, also shipping tons of cocaine and other drugs into the U.S., also ordering hundreds of murders, kidnappings and other acts of violence. And this week, really interesting stuff, we've gotten more insight into how the FBI ended up tracking his movements in real time.
MARTIN: Keegan Hamilton has been tracking all this. He is U.S. editor for Vice News and the host of a podcast called Chapo: Kingpin On Trial. He joins us now. Hey, Keegan, thanks for being here.
KEEGAN HAMILTON: Good morning. Thanks for having me.
MARTIN: Let's talk about what you saw unfold in the courtroom this week and, in particular, this key witness who worked for El Chapo. What can you tell us about him?
HAMILTON: The star witness this week was named Christian Rodriguez. He is a Colombian systems engineer who was hired by the cartel to devise a secure communications system, which was sort of encrypted phone calls that he set up for the cartel in the mountains of Sinaloa, where Chapo was hiding out.
MARTIN: What did he say?
HAMILTON: He said that he was approached by the FBI and recruited to become sort of an undercover informant who was giving them access to the cartel's communications in real time. That gave U.S. authorities sort of a live window into how Chapo was running his organization.
MARTIN: I mean, in our newsroom, we've just been kind of speculating about how dangerous it must be for people like him to come forward.
HAMILTON: That was pretty incredible. And some of the testimony this week highlighted, you know, how keenly aware he was of that. He had not one but two nervous breakdowns during his time working as an informant, had to seek mental health treatment for that. And the defense used that - tried to use that against him, saying that some of the treatments he used affected his memory and recollection of the events.
MARTIN: So El Chapo has pleaded not guilty. How's he been reacting to all this testimony in court?
HAMILTON: You know, normally he's actually kind of cheerful in the courtroom, looking over at his wife, who's in the audience. In this case, the gravity of the testimony - it was very clear that this was another nail in his coffin, perhaps the most - the final nail in his coffin. And he just sort of sat there looking stoically, almost grimacing, saying, like, oh, this is it. This is - I don't know if I can come back from this.
MARTIN: I mean, so obviously, El Chapo's responsible for a lot of the drug trade here in the U.S. Is this trial teaching us anything about how the U.S. government deals with the quote, unquote, "war on drugs?"
HAMILTON: I think if anything, it's showing us the futility of the war on drugs. I mean, we've heard over and over again that Chapo is the one supplying these drugs. But while he's being - while he's doing this, they're arresting his operatives, seizing tons of drugs. It's made no dent. He's been gone. Drugs are still available in the United States.
MARTIN: Where does the trial go now? I mean, how long is this expected to last?
HAMILTON: We're hoping that this could wrap up potentially as soon as the end of this month, likely in early February.
MARTIN: All right, Keegan Hamilton of Vice. He's also the host of the podcast Chapo: Kingpin On Trial. We appreciate you sharing your insights into this trial. We appreciate it. Thanks, Keegan.
HAMILTON: My pleasure.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
In Niger, divorce court takes place on public sidewalks out in the open. Dionne Searcey is the West Africa bureau chief for The New York Times, and she has seen one in action.
DIONNE SEARCEY: The judge's bench was a double sheepskin rug. And cars were driving by. It was hard to hear sometimes. And there was a giant crowd of people around, and they were all men. And the women would part the crowd, and they just looked so small compared to all these men standing there.
MARTIN: Today, more women in Muslim-majority Niger are showing up at these courts, having triggered their own divorce. Searcey joined me earlier this week, and she said that this is part of a larger movement in West Africa, women taking control of their marriages and their relationships.
SEARCEY: I went to Niger to explore a story about forced marriages and child marriages. And Niger is one of those countries that has all the bad superlatives - one of the highest illiteracy rates for girls, one of the poorest countries in the world. This is a place where genital cutting still happens. And I stumbled upon an Islamic court judge, and he started telling me that he's seen a lot of divorce cases. And not just regular divorce cases, but cases that are initiated by women.
MARTIN: When you have spoken to these women, why are they making this kind of change in their life? What is convincing them that it's safe to do so?
SEARCEY: Well, I spoke with a teenager, named Zalika (ph), for instance, who had met a man at a wedding. She wasn't really thinking about getting married. She told me she didn't find him particularly attractive, but he was nice to her mom. And she thought they could have a nice life together. And as, you know, many relationships start to sort of fade as time goes on, he didn't want her to work, and she wanted to work. So every day, she sat inside her house and just stewed. Then she got pregnant, and when she was in labor, he didn't even come to the hospital. And that was enough for her. But what's happening in Niger is a change. Women and girls have more access to media, to TV shows, to radio shows...
MARTIN: That show women living more independent lives.
SEARCEY: Yeah. And another huge factor is more people are moving to cities, and that's affecting the way people are thinking in huge ways, and this is just one of them.
MARTIN: Divorce is legal there, right? And women have always officially had the right to file for divorce. So why didn't they use it?
SEARCEY: Well, I think before, it was really a woman's place to stay in a marriage. And, you know, divorce, for sure, has happened across West Africa and across Niger. But, you know, in talking to a lot of these girls' mothers, the mothers all had told me, listen, I got married to a stranger when I was 14, and I stuck it out for 50 years and they should stick it out, too.
MARTIN: Interesting.
SEARCEY: It's just a generational difference.
MARTIN: How are men reacting to this shift?
SEARCEY: You know, I think the men that I talked to, none of them were particularly happy. I mean, the women - you know, divorce isn't a pleasant thing. You know, it's going to be hard for these women. But they all had told me they wanted to remarry, and I expect the men would remarry, too. But the thing that I thought was a bright spot in all this is everybody seemed to want to have a relationship based on love, and that's very different. I mean, this is a place where a lot of parents trade off their young girls to be married to get the dowry.
MARTIN: We've talked about the young woman you profiled in your piece, Zalika. Did that young woman, Zalika, ever get her divorce?
SEARCEY: She did. She got her divorce. One day, her husband stormed out of the area where the court was being held. Went over and talked to him, and he had all these excuses. You know, he blamed her mother-in-law. He blamed the economy. He said, I'm tired of coming here - fine. I'll give her the divorce. And the next day, they said they're absolutely unable to work it out, and the judge gave them their divorce.
MARTIN: Dionne Searcey is West Africa bureau chief for The New York Times. We spoke with her on Skype. Thanks so much for talking with us.
SEARCEY: Thank you.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
For many people, of course, Friday means pay day. But not for the hundreds of thousands of federal workers who are impacted by this partial government shutdown.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Right. So this will be the first paycheck they miss since the shutdown went into effect. We wanted to understand the impact of all of this on these workers, so we called them up. And here are a few of their voices.
GREENE: Yeah. Let's start with Robert. And we're only identifying him by his first name because he works in the security industry.
ROBERT: I'm currently working because I'm essential personnel, but not getting paid. Since I work every day - you know, mandatory that I have to come to work every day - I can't seek other employment or other ways of making any money. And so I've already deferred my car loans. I've contacted my landlord. They let me slide till next month to pay rent. My cellphone that I'm talking on, they said I didn't have to pay until next month. And so it's just - just to be blunt, it's very stressful. But I still go to work every day.
LISA HONAN: My name is Lisa Honan (ph). At first, honestly, you don't really feel it until that first paycheck doesn't come through, and we know that we're not going to be getting paid tomorrow. And we have some friends and family offer to help out. But we're going to probably withdraw on our 529 account for - I hate to say it. It's our, you know, funds for college that you put away for your kids. We were talking about maybe making a withdrawal on that.
MARTIN: And here's air traffic controller Melissa Hempson. She's a single mom working in the Washington, D.C., region.
MELISSA HEMPSON: My ex-husband passed away a year ago, and it's just me trying to make ends meet. So I don't - you know, I have family to rely on a bit. But it's stressful. And it's not something I need right now. Handling the busiest airspace in the world, you know? I'm - it makes people feel resentful to have to - I'm working Air Force One. I'm not getting paid. I know his Secret Service isn't getting paid. I know he's flying down the border. The TSA isn't getting paid. I know that the people on that airplane are getting paid. You know? That makes you think, like, what's the problem? Why is my paycheck being withheld?
GREENE: The voices of some of the federal workers who are struggling through this partial shutdown, which has now tied for the longest government shutdown ever.
MARTIN: And we don't know how long these government workers are going to have to live with all this uncertainty. Talks between Congress and the White House are at a standstill.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
It has been a week of dramatic testimony in the trial of the notorious drug pin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. Guzman's already convicted of trafficking crimes in Mexico. His current federal trial in Brooklyn deals with a 17-count indictment. These charges span decades. They include accusations of money laundering, also trafficking cocaine and other drugs and ordering murders, kidnappings and other acts of violence. And this week, we've gotten some more insight into how exactly the FBI ended up tracking his movements in real time. Keegan Hamilton is the U.S. editor at Vice News. He also hosts a podcast called "Chapo: Kingpin On Trial." And he joins us from New York. Hi, Keegan.
KEEGAN HAMILTON: Good morning.
GREENE: So it sounds like some almost made-for-movie moments this week. We're really learning about this witness who worked for El Chapo and, it sounds like, might've really been vital to the FBI.
HAMILTON: Yes. The star witness this week was Christian Rodriguez, who was an FBI informant, who basically designed a secure communications system for the cartel - an encrypted phone network - and then gave the FBI, you know, the keys to the kingdom and gave them a real-time window into how El Chapo was running his business.
GREENE: Wow. It's - you couldn't ask for a better informant if you're the FBI, potentially, given what he was doing.
HAMILTON: They'd spent months and months and months trying to crack the encryption on the system and couldn't do it. So they had to approach him, flip him and then get them to essentially design a special server that recorded all of these encrypted calls. It was pretty remarkable.
GREENE: So even if you're in a Brooklyn court room in the United States - I mean, is it terrifying to be a witness?
HAMILTON: He looked pretty uncomfortable on the stand and was doing his best to avoid Chapo's gaze who was looking over from the defense table. And yeah, the threats against him, we've been told, are real. The courtroom sketch artists who were there were blocked from the judge from drawing his face because of concerns that, you know, the cartel could potentially use that image to see what he looks like today and track him down.
GREENE: So what exactly has he been able to offer in terms of new information about how El Chapo did business?
HAMILTON: So for a couple - not quite two years, he was getting these - allowing the FBI to record these encrypted phone conversations which gave them sort of a real-time look at how the cartel was operating. And that was Chapo micromanaging many aspects of his business, you know, talking to employ - his employees constantly about who they're bribing, you know, who they're fighting this week and also setting up Chapo's mistresses and wife with spyware on their phones so he could track their movements, see who they've been calling and even listen in on the microphone on their phones without them knowing.
GREENE: He's pleaded not guilty to all of this, right? I mean, so how is he reacting as he's been watching this?
HAMILTON: You know, most of the time, he's actually seemed to be in a pretty good mood. This beats being in solitary confinement where he's been held. But when this testimony happened this week, you could see sort of the grimace come over his face where he knew that this was going to be a problem - that the jury's hearing this and seeing and hearing his own voice giving orders to do criminal acts. You could tell that it was - he knew it was a problem.
GREENE: Are we are learning anything about the larger drug war as this trial plays out?
HAMILTON: I think, if anything, we've learned the futility of the drug war. We've heard testimony through the course of this trial so far about tons of drugs that have been seized, El Chapo's top lieutenants being arrested and extradited to the United States. Meanwhile, there's been no problem for drug users to acquire drugs that the cartel is providing. And even now, with Chapo in U.S. custody, there's no shortage of drugs in the United States.
GREENE: Keegan Hamilton is U.S. editor at Vice News and hosts the podcast "Chapo: Kingpin On Trial." Keegan, thanks.
HAMILTON: Thank you.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
President Trump took his fight for a border wall to the border itself, making a visit to McAllen, Texas, yesterday.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And it's not about an argument. And it's not about politics for me. It's about doing the right thing. I mean, I could do a lot easier things. I could just forget this like everyone else did.
MARTIN: We have heard a lot about how the president's visit did or did not, rather, change minds in Washington, D.C. NPR's Wade Goodwyn brings us the view on the ground from McAllen.
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WADE GOODWYN, BYLINE: At 120,000 people, McAllen, Texas, is no longer a little town on the border but one of the fastest-growing cities in the state. Standing out on Military Highway next to his car, 40-year-old Andres Diego has brought his 2-year-old son. And they wait for President Trump to pass by.
ANDRES DIEGO: I live here in San Benito, Texas. I traveled an hour just to come and see his barricade.
GOODWYN: Diego very much likes the idea of building a wall along the border. He holds his toddler in his arms.
DIEGO: You see my son right here? This is your future ICE agent, little Andy Diego. And that's what we believe. We believe that what you want to abolish, we're going to support more.
GOODWYN: Diego agrees with the president's assessment that illegal immigration is an American crisis.
DIEGO: The reason it's a crisis, sir - it's because now it's families. And what happens? My schools get flooded with those illegal immigrants that don't know English, so it's a barrier for our kids. It's a barrier for our communities.
GOODWYN: One driveway away, Thelma Molano stands in front of her ranch house. And she couldn't disagree more with Andres Diego.
THELMA MOLANO: Yes, we have our occasional illegals that pass through Granjeno. But a crisis the way it's made out to seem in the media? No.
GOODWYN: Molano's home is on Military Highway. It's ironic, but the same road President Trump's motorcade traveled down is the road illegal immigrants walk up to surrender to the Border Patrol. There's a Border Patrol station about a mile down. Molano's sympathies lie with the women and children who pass by, walking exhaustedly hand in hand. The idea of a wall to keep them out disgusts her.
MOLANO: I think that the wall is just a campaign promise he made. And I take it like it's an insult to us. I mean, he basically doesn't want brown people here.
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Chanting) No more wall. No more wall.
GOODWYN: Down the highway, pro- and anti-wall protesters are gathered right next to one another. The two groups merge seamlessly together. And in true border fashion, they don't angrily protest at one another. They demonstrate outward, enthusiastically to the world. Lucy Torres holds a big poster of the Statue of Liberty with dozens of people standing underneath the statue.
LUCY TORRES: There's immigrants from every country, every part of the world.
GOODWYN: A few steps away stands 20-year-old Brisa Garcia, holding one end of a long Trump sign and wearing a red Make America Great Again baseball cap. Her shirt has a drawing of a huge hand, its index finger pointing straight out. It says you are - big finger pointing right at me - fake news. She has a big smile on her face. As I approach with my microphone pointed right back at her, she starts to laugh. Wade Goodwyn, NPR News, McAllen, Texas.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Good morning. I'm David Greene. BuzzFeed is reporting on a freaky moment at a tech conference. A representative from Qualcomm was saying that smart speakers can recommend hotels and restaurants.
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ALEXA: No, that's not true.
(LAUGHTER)
GREENE: It is not clear why Alexa chimed in there. And is this really funny? I mean, I've been scared of technology since HAL's voice in "2001: A Space Odyssey." Let's just end this segment.
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DOUGLAS RAIN: (As HAL) I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
GREENE: Oh, God.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Three of the most important economists in this country sat down for a panel at an economic conference in Atlanta last week. Former Fed chairs Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen, along with the current Fed chair, Jay Powell, were talking shop and also talking about the latest jobs report. But as Cardiff Garcia and Stacey Vanek Smith from our Planet Money podcast, the Indicator, tell us, a stellar jobs report is not always a good thing.
CARDIFF GARCIA, BYLINE: It was a pretty stellar report - 312,000 jobs added in December, strong wage growth and, of course, unemployment is still below 4 percent. And then here's Jay Powell's response.
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JAY POWELL: That's quite welcome and also, for me at this time, does not raise concerns about too high inflation.
STACEY VANEK SMITH, BYLINE: Does not raise concerns about too high inflation. That seems like a weird comment to make, right? We added all these jobs, but that doesn't mean I'm worried about inflation.
GARCIA: Yeah, but economists discuss the relationship between unemployment and inflation all the time. That relationship is sometimes referred to as the Phillips curve. And that's this idea that if enough people are working, it will cause inflation. The prices of the things that we buy will start going up. And according to the Phillips curve, the reverse is also true. So if unemployment goes up, then inflation should come down because then companies don't have to raise wages to compete for workers. There's more workers out there who need a job.
And we got kind of a test of this back in the late '70s and early '80s. Inflation seemed to be getting out of control. Prices were rising up and up and up. And to get inflation under control, Paul Volcker - he was the head of the Federal Reserve at the time - raised interest rates all the way to 20 percent. By comparison, by the way, short-term interest rates right now are at 2 percent. But what Volcker did led to a weaker economy, and unemployment went up.
VANEK SMITH: All the way up to 10 percent. Inflation, though, did come down.
GARCIA: And so everybody's wondering, is Chair Powell going to worry about inflation, and is he then going to keep raising interest rates to prevent inflation from spiking higher?
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POWELL: For me, at this time, does not raise concerns about too high inflation.
GARCIA: Chair Powell is saying that even though unemployment is low and wage growth is rising, it doesn't necessarily mean that higher inflation will follow. So this relationship between inflation and jobs - even though the Phillips curve predicts it, Powell's not really seeing it.
VANEK SMITH: Yeah, it's less curvy. So...
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Dr. Bernanke, is the Phillips curve dead?
BEN BERNANKE: To use a slang - economic jargon, this is an endogenous phenomenon (laughter).
VANEK SMITH: Endogenous phenomenon. That's exactly what - I was just thinking that. Basically, what Bernanke's saying is that the relationship between unemployment and inflation has changed.
GARCIA: People saw that the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates really high if it needed to to bring inflation back down. And ever since then, inflation has stayed low.
VANEK SMITH: And here's the key. People and companies act accordingly because if they worried that inflation was going to be much higher in the future, they would spend more money now. And companies would raise prices to try to get ahead of the trend, and that would contribute to inflation going higher right now.
GARCIA: But that's not happening. And what Ben Bernanke is saying is that it's precisely because of what the Fed did in the past that the link between low unemployment and high inflation is weaker than it used to be.
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BERNANKE: And that's the, quote, "endogenous" reason why the Phillips curve is so flat.
VANEK SMITH: So economists still strongly debate whether the Phillips curve is really dead or just resting. But if it is, then it was possibly killed by the people in this room - people with this job, Fed chair.
GARCIA: In other words, it's endogenous.
(LAUGHTER)
VANEK SMITH: Stacey Vanek Smith.
GARCIA: Cardiff Garcia, NPR News.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
So here's the case. Two young kids disappear in small town Arkansas in the heart of the Ozarks. The lead detective is a man named Wayne Hays, played by Mahershala Ali - a man haunted by the evil he uncovers.
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MAHERSHALA ALI: (As Wayne) I never stop coming up with theories about that case.
CARMEN EJOGO: (As Amelia) Whatever you think you did or didn't do, you don't deserve to suffer.
ALI: (As Wayne) This case is all I can think of. I want to know the whole story.
MARTIN: HBO's "True Detective" is back with a dark and sinister investigation set in 1980. And in this season, uncovering the truth behind the kidnapping involves a woman - a schoolteacher named Amelia Reardon, played by Carmen Ejogo.
EJOGO: She becomes embroiled in the case because the children that go missing are children that she taught. And so often, the teacher is perhaps the person that they are closest to, even more so than their parents. And that's very much the scenario with our story.
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ALI: (As Wayne) Anything you can tell me about Will?
EJOGO: (As Amelia) He has a sensitivity. You always worry a bit about the sensitive ones. I don't think he got noticed much.
MARTIN: The investigation draws Detective Hays to Amelia. Carmen Ejogo says the two are bound together by the case.
EJOGO: In many ways, they should never have come together. They have nothing in common. But fate brings us together. And they're also very other, being part of this community that, really, doesn't quite know what to do with them. You know, Wayne is a detective. He's a trailblazer. He's the first detective, the first cop in the force to reach that position.
MARTIN: The first black cop.
EJOGO: That's right. And I am a sort of biracial sort of worldly teacher who has ambitions that are above my station if you ask certain people, you know, within the community. So despite all of their inequities, all the things that don't really match up or make sense on paper, there is something that is inevitable about the relationship.
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ALI: (As Wayne) You from this area?
EJOGO: (As Amelia) Fayetteville.
ALI: (As Wayne) How is it here?
EJOGO: (As Amelia) It's good, really, for what it is. I hear something now and then.
ALI: (As Wayne) What you hear now and then?
EJOGO: (As Amelia) You know, a word in the hallway or something. They're careful around me.
MARTIN: Tell me about your experience in Fayetteville. This is the setting for this story. You actually filmed it there, right?
EJOGO: We did, yeah. I'd never been there before, and I - so I had no idea what to expect. And as I found myself in Fayetteville, I realized that it was a college town. On the surface, it felt very liberal and progressive in many ways. But it was interesting because as I spent more and more time there, I could feel that there's clearly a racial history to that place that is not necessarily blatantly (laughter) on display. It almost felt quite British at times, where, you know, it felt very pleasant but that I could just feel under the surface that there is some other kind of relationship between black and white in that town that might be a lot more complicated.
MARTIN: I want to play a clip, which kind of gets to what you're talking about in terms of how the story deals with race. And this is of Detective Wayne Hays questioning a white woman about the man they suspect may be behind the kidnapping, so let's listen.
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ALI: (As Wayne) You know who he was?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Didn't recognize him - negro man like yourself. Oh, he had a dead eye.
ALI: (As Wayne) Nothing about his face besides the eye? - handsome or ugly?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Like I say, he was black.
EJOGO: (Laughter) I knew you were going to stop right there (laughter).
MARTIN: Such an amazing clip.
EJOGO: Yeah.
MARTIN: It says so much.
EJOGO: Yeah. She's completely oblivious to the irony of the fact that she's talking like this to a black man, you know? And that's the sort of stuff that, I think, is most interesting to explore because it really is the subtleties of racism that creep up on these characters.
MARTIN: Mahershala Ali has talked openly about the fact that he was originally considered for the secondary detective character. He was not considered for the lead. It was supposed to go to a white actor. In fact, he told us as much in an interview last year that he had to advocate for himself. He had to suggest to them that he play the lead. Asking you, I suppose, to engage in some revisionist history, but if Mahershala Ali hadn't been cast as Wayne Hays, where would that have left you?
EJOGO: It probably would have left me out of a job, frankly (laughter), which is, you know, very often the case with these sorts of storylines is the most interesting female role is going to play opposite the male lead. And that's usually white, you know? But thankfully, things have really taken a turn over the past several years. And you have a sort of wonderful convergence now of actors continually advocating for their value as leads and that - the convergence with an industry that now recognizes that there is value in that too is kind of the sweet spot that we seem to have arrived at, which is why, I think, Mahershala - you know, aside from his awesome, clear talent, I think that's probably why he won his case.
MARTIN: You have played the role of a wife a few times now, most famously as Coretta Scott King in two different films. And these are, obviously, very different roles. But whether it's the wife of a civil rights icon or the wife of a high-profile detective, I wonder if you have learned something about the power that these women have, what that particular role as spouse, as wife, carries with it.
EJOGO: Yeah. I mean, it's funny. I almost didn't do this job for that very reason.
MARTIN: Really?
EJOGO: Yeah, because that always suggests that it's going to be you're just supporting the man in the show.
MARTIN: Right.
EJOGO: I was only shown the first few episodes. And I really didn't fully appreciate or wasn't able to fully appreciate just how important and pivotal this role really is. Thank goodness I made the decision to come on board because I really had the opportunity and the space to play somebody who is affecting a man and being self-affecting in a way that, I think, an audience can really see that growth and what that can look like in a woman. And it also explores what it looks like in the man in the relationship.
He becomes quite threatened by her growth. And the fact, though, that they then, perhaps, find their way through that is what made it worth playing another wife (laughter). And as a result, I think I might be one of the most complex characters in the show, so I'm really glad I went for it in the end.
MARTIN: Carmen Ejogo plays Amelia Reardon in the new season of HBO's "True Detective." Carmen, thanks so much for talking with me.
EJOGO: Thank you. It's been a pleasure.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DEATH LETTER")
CASSANDRA WILSON: (Singing) I got a letter this morning.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
We have been following Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's tour of U.S. allies in the Middle East this week. He is telling these allies that President Trump's decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria does not mean that the United States is giving up on this region. Yesterday in a speech in Cairo, Pompeo blamed many of the region's problems, in particular the rise of ISIS, on a lack of leadership from former President Barack Obama.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MIKE POMPEO: What did we learn from all of this? 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.
GREENE: OK. As we wrap up this week to talk about this, we have two journalists who have spent a long number of years following developments in this region, NPR's international affairs correspondent Jackie Northam, and NPR national security correspondent Greg Myre. Thank you both for being here.
GREG MYRE, BYLINE: Good morning, David.
JACKIE NORTHAM, BYLINE: Good morning, David.
GREENE: Jackie, a pretty tough speech from Pompeo. I mean, it was cast as articulating, you know, the vision for the Trump administration, but a lot of it seemed to focus on the previous administration.
NORTHAM: It sure did. You know, he took - Pompeo took direct aim at President Obama and his policy on the Middle East. You know, Pompeo never actually mentions Obama by name, but there was no question about who he was talking about. He said it was an American who also gave a speech in Cairo. And, of course, Obama gave this landmark speech in 2009 which was viewed as an outreach to the Muslim world.
GREENE: Yeah.
NORTHAM: David, Pompeo criticized Obama's nuclear deal with Iran. He accused Obama of blaming the U.S. for the problems of the Middle East, instead of when, Pompeo said, Obama should have been providing strong American leadership. Pompeo said - and I'm quoting here, David - "the U.S. is a force for good in the Middle East." But, you know, one of the main reasons for this trip was really to clear up confusion, you know, caused by conflicting statements from the Trump administration about the U.S. withdrawing troops from Syria.
GREENE: Yeah. And I definitely want to get into that confusion. But let me just ask you - the criticisms of Obama, how fair are they?
NORTHAM: Well, certainly, Obama, you know, had policy failures. And many people think the biggest was underestimating the ferocity, the strength of ISIS in Iraq and Syria and then having to send troops into both of those countries and that Obama did not respond after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used sarin gas on his own people. There's also criticism that Obama had a hands-off approach to, you know, foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East. Much of Obama's policy was a reaction to the Iraq War, which, you know, began under George W. Bush administration and which, by the way, Pompeo never mentioned in his speech.
GREENE: Well, Greg, let me turn to you. I mean, what about what Pompeo said about the vision for the Trump administration, and how are they dealing with what does sound like a contradiction - saying that if you retreat, there is chaos, but a lot of people see removing troops from Syria as retreating?
MYRE: Yeah. And more even, hearing this morning, David, that the U.S. is beginning the first initial stages of a withdrawal. We don't have a timeline, and this is a process that's supposed to take a while - you know, quite likely, weeks or even months. But we are getting these initial reports about that. And Pompeo seems clear about what, you know, the Trump administration wants, but not really on how to achieve it. Let's listen to a bit of his speech from yesterday.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
POMPEO: In Syria, the United States will use diplomacy and work with our partners to expel every last Iranian boot and work through the U.N.-led process to bring peace and stability to the long-suffering Syrian people.
MYRE: So that phrase, expel every last Iranian boot, a very ambitious idea. This Iranian-Syrian partnership goes back decades. So on the one hand, you have Pompeo announcing this ambitious goal, but at the same time, the U.S. is preparing to pull back. And it just seems a real contradiction there.
GREENE: One that the Trump administration's going to have to keep dealing with. I mean, even though we're talking about a small number of troops in Syria, to actually be removing all of them, as you say, that you're going to have an influence over the future of this country, I mean, that's going to cause a lot of questions to be asked.
MYRE: Absolutely. And, you know, what we're seeing here is sort of this, you know, recurring theme where - you know, of Trump's aides going to clean up confusion that he's made. We saw this when he questioned the relevance of NATO. Officials would rush to Europe and do that. In Korea and Japan, when he mused about the cost of troops there. And now we're seeing this in the Middle East. And what we - you know, this began back with Trump's tweet about a month ago, when he said the U.S. was going to leave Syria. And then there's been a scramble ever since. Not only among U.S. allies, but also rivals in the region. What does this mean? Turkey, Iran, Russia, Syria - everybody trying to figure out what it means. And so there is this great confusion about the Syria policy right now.
GREENE: Well, Jackie, as Pompeo takes on that confusion, where does he go from here?
NORTHAM: Well, he's actually arrived in the Gulf region today. One of his stops, David, this weekend, will be Saudi Arabia. And he's due to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman while he's there. And, of course, the issue of the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi is definitely expected to come up. You know, U.S. officials briefed reporters before he left in saying that the Saudi government needs to have, quote, "credible narrative" over Khashoggi's killing. But the Trump administration has backed the crown prince. There's strong ties between the two countries, financial. And so there are doubts whether Pompeo will push the crown prince hard for answers about what happened to Khashoggi.
GREENE: All right. That's NPR's Jackie Northam along with NPR's Greg Myre. Thank you both for talking this morning. We appreciate it.
MYRE: Thanks, David.
NORTHAM: Thanks a lot, David.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
For the second time in less than two years, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is investigating a death at the West Hollywood apartment of a prominent political donor named Ed Buck. You may not know the name, but Buck is active in the Democratic Party and has raised a lot of money for various Democratic candidates and issues. Buck is white. Both of the men found dead in his apartment are black. Now civil rights activists say Buck's status as a wealthy white man could be shielding him from prosecution. We're joined now by reporter Benjamin Gottlieb. He's been covering this story for member station KCRW in Los Angeles. Ben, thanks for being here.
BENJAMIN GOTTLIEB, BYLINE: You're welcome.
MARTIN: What can you tell us about how these men died?
GOTTLIEB: Well, we know a lot more about the first death. Back in 2017, Gemmel Moore, a 26-year-old black man, died of a crystal meth overdose. He was found lying unresponsive with drug paraphernalia all around him at Buck's apartment in West Hollywood. And Mr. Buck was there at the time when first responders arrived. The second man is 55-year-old Timothy Dean of West Hollywood. He died earlier this week. Now, there's no confirmation yet as to what caused his death. But investigators are also looking into whether or not drugs played a role.
MARTIN: And do we know if Buck was there when the second man died?
GOTTLIEB: He was there. Yes.
MARTIN: He was. So civil rights leaders are now getting involved. What's their message? What are they arguing?
GOTTLIEB: Well, they want to see him in handcuffs. And this really stems from the first case. There were reports that Moore blamed his addiction - this is the first gentleman - blamed his addiction to drugs on Buck and that Buck introduced him to meth. Now, it's important to point out that the LA County Sheriff's Department did investigate this last year. But the county DA - the DA's office decided that there was not enough evidence to charge Buck. However, civil rights activists believed Buck should have been held responsible for the first death. And the second death has amplified those calls. There was a rally outside of Buck's home this week. Another is planned for later this evening. Here's Jasmyne Cannick. She's one of the organizers.
JASMYNE CANNICK: In order for there to be justice, you know, Ed Buck would need to be arrested and prosecuted and convicted.
GOTTLIEB: And Cannick has also implied that Buck has not faced charges - and many feel this way in the community - has not faced charges because of his race and his wealth. And I should mention Buck is a known entity here in Los Angeles, especially in the LGBTQ community.
MARTIN: So he's got a really high profile. Has Buck himself or his attorneys - have they made any public statements at this point?
GOTTLIEB: Well, Buck's attorney is a man named Seymour Amster. And he described Moore's death as a tragedy but said that Buck had nothing to do with it. As for the death of Timothy Dean this week, Amster told reporters that his client is innocent.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SEYMOUR AMSTER: This is not a situation where Mr. Buck has caused a death. This is a situation where Mr. Buck has had longtime friends who unfortunately do not handle their life well.
GOTTLIEB: And that's really the key question here. Are these deaths accidental, or did Buck have some role in them?
MARTIN: So setting aside any criminal wrongdoing, which is still to be decided, these cases have really focused attention on the drug problem in West Hollywood, right?
GOTTLIEB: Absolutely. It's a major problem in West Hollywood. We at KCRW spoke at length with the mayor this week. And he confirmed it's a big problem and that there's a very large community in recovery in West Hollywood. So when you add all those factors together, it makes things a lot less clear.
MARTIN: Benjamin Gottlieb, reporter with our member station KCRW who's been following this case. Ben, thanks so much. We appreciate it.
GOTTLIEB: Anytime.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Today the partial government shutdown has hit a record. It is now tied for the longest shutdown in U.S. history. And it's almost certain to set a new record as the longest ever, with chances of a breakthrough in talks seeming more remote than ever. In fact, President Trump appears ready to declare a national emergency in order to sidestep Congress and build a border wall.
(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. This is a crisis.
GREENE: All right. We have NPR congressional correspondent Susan Davis in the studio with us. Good morning, Sue.
SUSAN DAVIS, BYLINE: Good morning.
GREENE: OK, so it seems like a stalemate - not much action. But there's been some action on Capitol Hill to try and reopen the government, right? So what is happening, and why are there - the hope's pretty dim that it'll mean anything?
DAVIS: There had been a flurry of activity this week, particularly in the Senate, among senators who thought they might be able to come up with a compromise to put forward to the president and to Democrats. They've kind of abandoned ship on that. One of the senators involved in that effort is Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina. And he essentially came out publicly yesterday and said, I do not see any path forward for a deal; the only way out of this is for President Trump to declare a national emergency - and essentially encouraged him to do so.
GREENE: OK, so this national emergency - I mean, I have so much to ask you here. I mean, there are questions about whether the president has legal authority to do this. But this may actually be an opening to get government workers back to work, right?
DAVIS: It could in theory. If the president declares an emergency and says he's going to marshal resources to build the wall and sidestep Congress, it could allow them to reopen government because it would take the wall issue out of the budget debate. It does create, however, an entirely separate legal question of, would it be challenged in the courts? Would it be held up in the courts? You know, would it - would they have to pause until the court would weigh in on this? And also this question of executive overreach, which has been, for most Republicans on Capitol Hill, a really big concern in recent years. Particularly, it's something that they accused President Obama of doing - of essentially sidestepping the legislative branch to enact policy that Congress simply hasn't approved.
GREENE: Oh, interesting. So Republicans could be in a weird spot where Democrats would be saying you complained about this with Obama for eight years; look at what your president is doing.
DAVIS: And they would likely stand behind President Trump on this as they have on most issues even when they feel uncomfortable about it.
GREENE: But so if he goes ahead and declares this emergency, you're saying this could become, like, a prolonged legal battle. And it's not clear if an actual emergency could go into place until the courts actually addressed it.
DAVIS: That's right. And it's weird because I don't think there is a dispute that the president has broad powers when he declares a national emergency. They gave - he has this power for reasons. But often when the president has invoked these powers, it has been after 9/11 or after Hurricane Katrina - moments when, I think, the country as a whole recognized we were in a state of emergency, and there was no dispute to invoking those powers.
GREENE: We've been talking about our current state of politics - the tribalism...
DAVIS: Yeah.
GREENE: ...The anger, the partisanship, the gridlock. I mean, this feels like it's a new moment - to sort of take stock of that - if the only way out of a debate over how to open the government is to have a president declaring an emergency.
DAVIS: I also think it goes to the symbolism of the wall. There's so much about this debate that isn't really a policy fight. It's really a political fight. And it's a political knife fight, increasingly. And the White House and his advisers see the wall - if he gives up on the wall, if he walks away from that, it will so dispirit his base that it could cripple his presidency. Senator Lindsey Graham has said as much.
On the other end, Democrats just won a big election in which the president weaponized immigration and the border in the closing weeks of the campaign. And Democrats won big, and they took control of the House. And they see the public on their side. And they see no reason to compromise with the president, knowing what it could mean for him if he loses on the wall.
GREENE: And one other thing to note in news out of Congress - we have the president's former lawyer Michael Cohen who's going to be testifying on Capitol Hill next month it's sounding like now. That could be interesting.
DAVIS: It will be the first in what is expected to be a year of high-profile intense hearings from Capitol Hill now that Democrats are in control. They have oversight authority. They have subpoena power. They intend to use it. We know much of what Michael Cohen has said, but most of it - it has been read. He was into the courts, and it was not on television. He will have a chance to testify publicly. And he issued a statement, noting yesterday, he is coming up voluntarily. And he is looking eager to talk to Congress.
GREENE: NPR's Susan Davis. Sue, thanks.
DAVIS: You're welcome.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The partial government shutdown is taking its toll on national parks. There have been reports of overflowing trash cans and vandalism. So the Interior Department announced it's taking what it calls the extraordinary step of dipping into money from park entrance fees to pay for cleanup. In the midst of the shutdown, the Trump administration is making sure some Interior employees continue work on one of its most controversial priorities - opening up more Arctic lands to oil drilling. From Alaska Public Media in Anchorage, Elizabeth Harball reports.
ELIZABETH HARBALL, BYLINE: Suzanne Little had been planning to fly hundreds of miles north from Anchorage to two Arctic communities last week to go to scheduled public meetings run by the Interior Department. But with the shutdown, she wasn't sure if the meetings were still happening. Little, who's with the Pew Charitable Trusts, is on an advisory council under Interior. So she asked the agency about the meetings. She called, emailed, texted - no response.
SUZANNE LITTLE: So I waited as long as I could. And the day before - Thursday - I canceled my ticket.
HARBALL: Hours later, Interior sent an email saying they were going forward after all.
LITTLE: It was very frustrating that there was nobody to answer phones in the office, yet the meetings were going to continue.
HARBALL: The meetings that happened despite the shutdown were about Interior's effort to open up more land to oil development in the 22-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. Another meeting about those plans went ahead this week. And that's not the only work to expand oil drilling in the Arctic Interior has pressed ahead with. Emails obtained by Alaska Public Media show that on January 3, two weeks into the shutdown, an Interior employee was contacting Alaska community leaders, trying to schedule public meetings about oil lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Congress legalized drilling in the refuge about a year ago after decades of opposition from conservation groups. But following public outcry and a letter from a Democratic congressman after Alaska Public Media's report, Interior announced this week it was postponing the Arctic Refuge-related meetings. The letter came from the new chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, Raul Grijalva, a fierce opponent of oil development in the refuge.
RAUL GRIJALVA: Trump is trying to have his wall and eat it too (laughter).
HARBALL: Grijalva thinks holding meetings to advance oil development during a shutdown with limited public communication raises questions about transparency. Moreover, Grijalva is demanding details on how Interior is paying for the work. Interior has said it was using money from the previous fiscal year. But he thinks the agency may be violating a federal law that limits government spending before Congress appropriates funding.
GRIJALVA: The work for gas and oil continues despite the shutdown, despite the fact that people are not being paid.
HARBALL: Interior officials declined to be interviewed for this story. But the agency defended its work in a response sent Thursday to Grijalva, saying after consulting with its solicitor's office, it determined the work was legally funded. It concluded, quote, "the planning process for both of these efforts are critical to the state of Alaska and the nation," unquote. As for Little, she was able to reschedule her flight and made the meetings. But she says she's still concerned about how public a public environmental review process can be during a government shutdown. For NPR News, I'm Elizabeth Harball in Anchorage.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Rachel Martin. Anything could happen in 20 years - robots walking around, a cure for cancer. Maybe the Patriots will start losing. And now, thanks to Costco, in 20 years, you can still be eating from the same massive container of mac and cheese. The wholesale store is selling a bucket of pasta and cheddar cheese sauce, wrapped in separate pouches, that weighs 27 pounds and has a shelf life of 20 years. God help me if 20 years from now, it's still the only thing my kids will eat.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Our modern memory of World War I is in black and white. The only moving images we have are these scratchy, silent, black-and-white newsreels. One hundred years after the armistice, a new documentary is now giving those images a new dimension and a voice.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD")
UNIDENTIFIED VETERAN #1: I was 16 years old. And my father allowed me to go.
UNIDENTIFIED VETERAN #2: I was - just turned 17 at the time.
UNIDENTIFIED VETERAN #3: I was 16.
UNIDENTIFIED VETERAN #4: And I was 15 years.
UNIDENTIFIED VETERAN #5: I gave every part of my youth to do a job.
MARTIN: "They Shall Not Grow Old" tells the story of the young men who fought in World War I in color and with sound. I talked with LA Times film critic Kenneth Turan about this remarkable project.
KENNETH TURAN: Well, this film is really amazing. It's an overused word, but it's really true. It's taken this old footage, brought these people back to life. It's almost kind of like reincarnation.
MARTIN: It's fascinating because when my producer was telling me about this, he's, like, check out this trailer. They've put footage - they've made it color. And I thought to myself, big deal. That doesn't sound very interesting.
TURAN: (Laughter).
MARTIN: And when you watch it, it is amazing how just that change - just changing into color - it really does give life to this experience in a totally new way.
TURAN: Well, it's much more than the color. The key thing that was done was the frames per second. Sound film is 24 frames per second. The reason silent film seems jerky is that it's hand cranked, sometimes 14, 15 frames per second. They used a computer to recreate missing frames, duplicate frames. And so it now plays at 24 frames a second. It plays the way we're used to seeing film play. So these people, instead of being kind of herky-jerky, they are actually walking and talking just like us.
MARTIN: The talking, too, is crazy. How did they remaster the audio?
TURAN: They did two things. In the silent footage, people talk to the camera. They used lip readers to figure out what they were saying. And they hired local actors to have exactly the same accent as the people in the film. But more than that, the BBC has 600 hours of interviews with World War I veterans. And they brought that audio up to speed. And so everything sounds contemporary. Everything sounds completely real.
MARTIN: And this is like a revelation. We should note big names are attached to this - in particular, Academy Award winner Peter Jackson produced and directed this.
TURAN: Yes. Peter Jackson, who is known for "The Lord Of The Rings" films and "The Hobbit" films - he turns out to be an enormous World War I buff. His grandfather was a World War I veteran. And the Imperial War Museum, knowing this, approached him to do a film for the hundredth anniversary of the armistice. And he leapt at the chance. And, you know, he knows all about this kind of stuff. He knows about special effects. He's really used the same technology that kind of brings superhero films to life to make this stuff come to life.
MARTIN: Why do you think this film works in 2019? I mean, do audiences want to think about World War I?
TURAN: Well, you know, what I have found - audiences - we are in wars now. We have just come out of wars. We have a lot of veterans in our population, people who care about war, who experienced war. They connect to this film. They see the men. Even though it's 100 years ago, they say, that's someone like me. And that's really a powerful thing.
MARTIN: Kenneth Turan reviews movies here at MORNING EDITION and for the Los Angeles Times. We were talking about the new documentary "They Shall Not Grow Old." Kenny, thanks so much.
TURAN: Oh, thank you, Rachel.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
It is Day 21 of the partial federal government shutdown. And there is no compromise in sight. President Trump still wants $5.7 billion for a border wall. Democrats refuse to fund it at all. Caught in the middle, hundreds of thousands of federal workers who are not getting a paycheck today because Congress and the president can't find a way to reopen the government.
So far, most Republicans in Congress are sticking by the president, including our next guest, Congressman Gary Palmer of Alabama. He chairs the policy committee for House Republicans. Congressman, thanks so much for joining us this morning.
GARY PALMER: Thanks for having me on, Rachel.
MARTIN: Both sides have to give in any kind of compromise deal. You're a Republican, so I'm going to ask you about your party and where you see that give. Where should the Republicans and the president be willing to compromise to end the shutdown?
PALMER: Well, I think you might - could compromise on the amount of money that's needed. Although, I think the $5.7 billion is - at least that much is needed. And it's not just - I think there's some misunderstanding out there about what we're trying to do. It's not just a - it's not about a wall. It's about border security. Part of it includes fencing, however - whatever the form that might be.
But almost a billion of it is for humanitarian aid. It's to provide more beds. It's to provide more medical care and relief for those folks who are trying to get across the border that need our help. And I don't think that message gets out very well. And that's on us, I think, that we're not communicating as well about what all we're trying to do with the funding.
MARTIN: The president has said that if he can't get Congress and Democrats to give him that $5.7 billion, that he will declare a national emergency to end what is really a political battle. Do you think that's a good idea?
PALMER: Well, I think what's going on at the border is an emergency. And we've been talking about this - Democrats have talked about it, that it was a humanitarian disaster. I mean, just a - this has been ongoing for - really, ever since I've been in Congress, when all those children started showing up. That was happening during the Obama administration. I do think it is - it has devolved into a political battle.
And - and, you know, I realize I'm a Republican. It's going to sound partisan. But when you sit down in a room to try to talk through things and try to resolve a problem, you have to have both sides willing to engage in that discussion. And that's not happening with the other side of the aisle. And I can tell you, Rachel, that there are people on the other side of the aisle that want to see this resolved because they realize that people are suffering.
MARTIN: I mean, it's been - Democrats and Republicans have agreed that something needs to be done at the border. I think where the problem lies is in the fact that people aren't dealing with the same facts, right?
You hear Sarah Sanders talk about thousands of people who are connected to terrorism coming across that southern border. And that's just not true. I mean, data from Customs and Border Protection proves otherwise, that it's - the number is closer to between six and 12.
PALMER: Well, it doesn't matter what the number is in the sense - and what they've - what we know is that there were at least 3,000 people whose travel patterns warranted special attention. And those were all at the southern border. But when you talk about it's only six or 12 that came across the southern border, it was only 19 that took down the World Trade Towers. I mean, I don't think we ought to get caught up in how many. If only one carried out an attack that killed hundreds or thousands of people, that's one too many.
And it's - you get lost in those things. I think what we've got to talk about is go back and look what we did in 2006 with the Secure Fence Act. We - we authorized funding for 700 - a little over 700 miles. We've built about 600-and-something miles of that, particularly in Yuma and Tucson. Border crossings, illegal crossings, are down 95 percent in Yuma. It works. But going back to...
MARTIN: But that's...
PALMER: ...But...
MARTIN: Go ahead.
PALMER: If I may, going back to what I'm saying, it's not just about fencing. It's also about the humanitarian aid. It's about more Border Patrol agents. It's about more technology being used and particularly for interdicting drugs.
MARTIN: Right. But even the Department of Homeland Security says just over 400,000 people illegally entered the U.S. in 2018. That is down from 1.6 million in the year 2000. So you talk about being a crisis.
PALMER: But it's up...
MARTIN: ...But it's down.
PALMER: It's up from - it's up from four of the last five years. So, you know, again, when you get into numbers, your baseline is 2,000. But when you say that border - illegal border crossings are up, they are up from four of the last five years.
MARTIN: Let me ask you kind of about a different aspect of this. We recently interviewed Mark Krikorian on this show. He's the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which is a conservative group that wants stricter immigration caps.
And he said President Trump's focus on the wall - because he has focused on this idea of a wall, rhetorically - that it comes at the expense of other policy changes that he wants to see. Let's listen to this clip.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
MARK KRIKORIAN: More border barriers, like I said, they're important. But there are other things that are more important, things like plugging loopholes in our asylum laws, E-Verify and what have you.
MARTIN: What do you make of that?
PALMER: Well, I haven't read his studies. And I don't know the gentleman, so I really can't comment on it.
MARTIN: But do you think the president's focus on the wall is jeopardizing larger, more conservative efforts to curb immigration?
PALMER: Well, the president has repeatedly shown a willingness to compromise, and even in the context of whether it's a wall or a fence or whatever you want to call it. And again, the funding for this is not just about fencing.
And we realized we're not going to build a fence or a wall or a barrier along the entire southern border. What we're trying to do is secure the border. And that's a combination of more Border Patrol agents, technology and fencing.
MARTIN: Congressman Gary Palmer, a Republican of Alabama, we appreciate your time this morning, Sir. Thanks for coming in.
PALMER: Thanks, Rachel.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Here's a question that still plagues humanity. How do you keep one group of people from slaughtering another? The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is trying to find an answer. They are leading an effort called the Early Warning Project to try to identify where mass killings may be likely to occur. NPR's Jason Beaubien reports.
JASON BEAUBIEN, BYLINE: History, unfortunately, does repeat itself. Two thousand years ago, the Romans laid siege to Carthage, killing more than half of the city's residents and enslaving the rest. Hitler attempted to annihilate the Jews in Europe. In 1994, the Hutus turned on the Tutsis in Rwanda. The Khmer Rouge killed a quarter of Cambodia's population. After the breakup of Yugoslavia, the Serbs slaughtered thousands of Bosnians at Srebrenica in July of 1995. In 2017, when Buddhists attacked Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, many people were shocked to hear that mass killings still occur in the 21st century. But there's growing evidence that these events follow familiar patterns.
JILL SAVITT: Genocides are not spontaneous.
BEAUBIEN: That's Jill Savitt. She's the acting director of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
SAVITT: In the lead-up to these types of crimes, we do see consistent set of things happening.
BEAUBIEN: The Holocaust Museum, along with scholars from Dartmouth, has mapped the conditions that precede a genocide. They built a database of every mass killing since World War II. Then, they went back and looked at the conditions in those countries just prior to the attacks. And now they use that computer model to analyze which nations currently are at greatest risk.
SAVITT: This is not - we're not forecasting with precision. That's not the intention of the tool. What we're doing is trying to alert policymakers that here's a situation that is ripe for horrors to happen.
BEAUBIEN: In the three years prior to the attacks on the Rohingya, Myanmar ranked as the country most likely to have a mass killing for two of those years and ranked No. 3 in the other. The museum's computer model analyzes statistics that you might think have nothing to do with genocide - fluctuations in per capita gross domestic product, infant mortality rates, overall population size. They also plug in data about recent coup attempts, levels of authoritarianism, civil rights, political killings and ethnic polarization. Lawrence Woocher, who works on the Early Warning Project, says the form of government is one of the key data points. The most dangerous appears to be a government that's not a full dictatorship nor a full democracy.
LAWRENCE WOOCHER: The, I think, prevailing view about why mass atrocities occur is that they tend to be decisions by political elites when they feel under threat and in a condition of instability. And there's lots of analysis that suggests that these middle-regime types are less stable than full democracies or full autocracies.
BEAUBIEN: The project ranks 162 countries by their potential for a new mass killing to erupt in the coming year. The Democratic Republic of Congo is currently the most at risk, followed by Afghanistan. Egypt is No. 3 on the list. And at No. 4, war-torn South Sudan is expected to get even worse. Greg Stanton is a professor at George Mason University and the president of Genocide Watch. He has his own model for predicting mass killings. Stanton criticizes the Holocaust Museum's model for being overly dependent on national data that's often only released once a year.
GREG STANTON: They tend to notice that there's risk of genocide too late.
BEAUBIEN: Stanton argues that rather than looking at statistics to try to predict mass killings, you should look at events.
STANTON: It's not enough to know that you have an authoritarian regime, which is one of their characteristics. And we accept that, in fact, consider it important. But it is very important to know what that authoritarian regime is doing.
BEAUBIEN: Stanton has come up with a prediction model based on 10 stages of genocide. Interesting fact - the U.S. currently ticks off many of the early stages of a country headed for a bloodbath. There's polarization, discrimination, dehumanization. But strong legal and government institutions in the U.S. are likely to block such a disaster from happening.
The information that Genocide Watch and the Holocaust Museum are sifting through has been available to national security agencies for decades. The big question is what do you do with this information? At the time of the Rwandan genocide in 1994, Stanton was working in the State Department, and he says top government officials knew that the violence was about to begin.
STANTON: When our - President Clinton said after the Rwandan genocide, we really didn't know - I'll be direct. He was lying. He did know because I've read the cables. I've read the confidential cables that came in from Rwanda, from our ambassador there, months before that genocide. And they knew it was coming.
BEAUBIEN: Stanton's 10 stages of genocide and the Holocaust Museum's Early Warning Project are both attempts to spread information more widely about the rumblings of a genocide and get that information out as early as possible.
Jason Beaubien, NPR News.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
This weekend, the thrilling and mysterious "Turangalila-Symphonie" by Olivier Messiaen is being performed by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. The masterpiece is rarely heard. It calls for over a hundred musicians and an unusual electronic instrument. We'll have more about that later. The music director of the Baltimore Symphony, Marin Alsop, joins us. Maestro, thanks so much for being with us again.
MARIN ALSOP: Great to be here, Scott. Happy New Year to everyone.
SIMON: And Happy New Year to you, of course. We're listening to a recording of the Bergen Philharmonic. Help us understand the composer and the importance of this work.
ALSOP: Well, this is a massive piece. I mean, everything that Messiaen wrote was a journey piece. Music for him was more of a life philosophy than, you know, an actual composition. And in this piece, he's bringing together all of his spiritual beliefs, his interest in Indian music, his interest in music from the Far East, his love of birds, believe it or not - birdsong - and his incredibly devout religious fervor.
SIMON: May I ask how many times you've performed it?
ALSOP: You may ask. But the reality is that I've never even heard this piece live. So this is not only the first time I will conduct it. It's also the first time I will hear the piece live. And it's been on the Baltimore Symphony musicians' wish list for at least 20 years. So this is the first time they'll play it.
SIMON: Oh, mercy. The piece is filled, I gather, with duets between instruments. What's that to achieve?
ALSOP: You know, this idea of love, whether it's spiritual love or the love between human beings. This was a big part of Messiaen's philosophy and his life. And I think these duets that come through, they're often unexpected duets, you know, between unexpected instruments. So you'll hear one between the clarinet and this very weird electronic instrument that's also in the piece, called an ondes Martenot.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANGELA HEWITT'S PERFORMANCE OF OLIVIER MESSIAEN'S "TURANGALILA-SYMPHONIE")
SIMON: Oh, mercy. The clarinet I recognize.
ALSOP: Right.
SIMON: Tell us about the ondes Martenot.
ALSOP: Well, this was an instrument that, as you can probably deduce, it grew out of the idea of the theremin - you know that ooh.
SIMON: Yeah.
ALSOP: That kind of spooky sound. The theremin was invented earlier. And then this gentleman named Martenot, who was a cellist, but also, he was a radio operator during the war. And he wanted to try to bring those two loves together - you know, these radio waves and also the sound of the cello. And he created this just bizarre instrument. It's got a keyboard. But it also has a long cable with a ring on it that the operator - I don't know if should say the player - has to maneuver and create the pitches. And you can also add vibrato to it. So it's extremely fascinating instrument.
(SOUNDBITE OF PLAYING ONDES MARTENOT)
SIMON: Oh, my word.
ALSOP: I thought Ned was starting his car.
SIMON: (Laughter). Sorry, our producer Ned Wharton. Needless to say, if your son or daughter comes to you and says, I'd like to play the ondes Martenot, it's not going to be easy, right? There can't be these many instruments in the world.
ALSOP: Well, you know - but I think it would be a good career choice because there are not many ondes Martenot players around. It would probably require an education in Paris, though, because that is really where the school for ondes Martenot players exists. And I was just speaking to Nathalie Forget, who's playing ondes Martenot with us this weekend. She's fabulous. And she was telling me that she always travels with two instruments, you know. And they're quite complex because often customs will open one and, you know, try to tear it apart to see what's inside. So she always travels with two instruments. And she has to know how to repair them. So I don't know. It's an interesting career choice - not only a musician. You have to, you know, be a good repair person and mechanic and all kinds of things.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANGELA HEWITT's PERFORMANCE OF OLIVIER MESSIAEN'S "TURANGALILA-SYMPHONIE")
SIMON: And why do you think Messiaen was so attracted to the instrument?
ALSOP: You know, I think it's so outside of what we're expecting. And the sound world is so ethereal and otherworldly that it really - I think it goes beautifully hand in hand with his spiritual approach to living. And he was a man who existed almost in his own time, in his own space. And according to Jean-Yves Thibaudet, who's our marvelous soloist. And he worked on the piece with Messiaen. He said, you know, you knew he was there. But you always felt that he was also somewhere else.
SIMON: The "Turangalila-Symphonie" is also filled with what sounds like very demanding - devilishly demanding, if I may, piano passages. Let's listen to one.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANGELA HEWITT'S PERFORMANCE OF OLIVIER MESSIAEN'S "TURANGALILA-SYMPHONIE")
SIMON: What came first - the piano composition or the pianist that composer had in mind?
ALSOP: Oh. I think the pianist probably came first because he fell in love with her. She was a student of his at the conservatory - Yvonne Loriod. And he ended up writing many, many pieces for her to play. And she was a phenomenal virtuoso. And I guess she fell in love with him right away, too, as the story goes.
SIMON: The symphony is filled with these asides, drama, invention. It can be loud. It can be thorny. But it ends with such ecstasy.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANGELA HEWITT'S PERFORMANCE OF OLIVIER MESSIAEN'S "TURANGALILA-SYMPHONIE")
SIMON: When you get to that section, what do you think the composer's evoking? What do you try and bring out?
ALSOP: Well, you know, Messiaen's spirituality was about joy. And he was a man who felt that every human being had the potential to experience rapturous joy. And, you know, for a person who lived - he was a prisoner of war. And, you know, he maintained this sense of celebration and the belief, I think, in the human spirit and the human spirit as a spiritual entity. And that's how it feels. You know, it's almost like a drug-induced fervor at the end, you know, because it just keeps going, going, going, going. And then suddenly, a subito piano - quiet. And it just grows, explodes to the end. And it's a spectacular ending.
SIMON: Marin Alsop. She will lead the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra this weekend in its performance of Olivier Messiaen's "Turangalila-Symphonie." Thanks so much, maestro. We'll look forward to it.
ALSOP: Thanks so much, Scott. Great to talk to you.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANGELA HEWITT'S PERFORMANCE OF OLIVIER MESSIAEN'S "TURANGALILA-SYMPHONIE")
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The Navajo Nation president says that Congress should exempt the tribe from the partial federal government shutdown. Historically, treaties have guaranteed the Navajo and many other tribes federal financial assistance for health, education and economic development. So the shutdown is having an outsized impact. From member station KJZZ, Laurel Morales reports from Flagstaff.
LAUREL MORALES, BYLINE: On the Navajo Nation, half of the tribe is unemployed. But at least 5,000 tribal members rely on paychecks from the federal government. Missing one, which happened for the first time on Friday, can have painful ripple effects. Community leader Angela Cody says one paycheck often has to feed the immediate family as well as the extended family.
ANGELA CODY: People are worried about their next mortgage payment, their car payments. At the family level, you know, there's a lot of stress - finance stress. As a whole, we are dependent on these employees and federal monies every day in some way.
MORALES: Even if they aren't getting paid, many have to work. And so they rely on the federally funded preschool program Head Start to care for their young kids.
(SOUNDBITE OF CROSSTALK)
MORALES: Head Start teacher Maxine Jensen sits on a tiny plastic blue chair working on a number puzzle with a group of 4-year-olds on the western edge of the Navajo Nation.
MAXINE JENSEN: Four, five, six, seven...
MORALES: The tribe's Head Start program is already shrinking. They lost 10 centers last year because there were no buses available to shuttle kids from across the rural reservation to classes. Now the program doesn't have the enrollment numbers it needs to stay open.
JENSEN: I have 12 now. We're supposed to have 15. We can't seem to get enough children because of the distance.
MORALES: Many federal offices across the Navajo Nation are closed because of the shutdown. The federal money they rely on to run the program has been slow to arrive.
JENSEN: We don't have enough cleaning supplies. It's a long process to get those kinds of things. And so a lot of times, we're buying our own supplies to get the kids' hands clean and all that.
MORALES: To make matters worse, unplowed roads made it near impossible for parents to drive their kids to Head Start since the shutdown began. Only half of the Bureau of Indian Affairs crews who helped the tribe maintain the roads showed up to clear snow during the last two snowstorms. And those who are working aren't getting paid. There are 1,600 miles of paved roads and almost 6,000 miles of dirt roads. Head Start teacher Shanelle Yazzie says she could barely get to work.
SHANELLE YAZZIE: The only roads being plowed over the last two weeks were the - like, the main interstate. We don't really travel on that. So the only way you can get by is probably with four-by-four, and not many people have that out here.
MORALES: If a dirt road isn't maintained during a snowstorm, a couple of things can happen. The snow can melt and make the road impassable or the snow piles up. Either way, you're stuck. Navajo President Russell Begaye says, many Navajo live without running water and electricity, so they have to haul water to drink and wood to stay warm. And they have to eat.
RUSSELL BEGAYE: Getting out to buy groceries or maybe there's an emergency where they have to transport a family member to a hospital maybe to refill their medication or to refill their oxygen tank - so it's a life-or-death situation in many instances.
MORALES: Begaye says, if the shutdown continues, it's only going to get worse, as the National Weather Service predicts more snow next week.
For NPR News, I'm Laurel Morales in Flagstaff.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The newest novel by celebrated Chinese novelist Yan Lianke is a poetic nightmare that's being compared with James Joyce's "Ulysses." "The Day The Sun Died" is set in the course of a single perpetual summer day and night in which the inhabitants of a small village in China rise from their slumber and sleepwalk through town. They continue to work. Thieves roam and rob. Murders romp. People fall into ditches and meet with excruciating farm accidents. Some take their own lives. But the government has declared a ban on burials. The man who owned the local crematorium has also cornered the market on corpse soil. Is this village of sleepwalking people any kind of metaphor for citizens of the world's largest country living in a society ruled by unblinkered coercion and corruption?
"The Day The Son Died" has been translated into English by Carlos Rojas. And Yan Lianke, the author of more than a dozen novels and scores of short stories, winner of the Franz Kafka Prize and two-time finalist for the Man Booker International Prize, joins us from Beijing. Thanks so much for being with us.
YAN LIANKE: (Through interpreter) I'm very grateful.
SIMON: Our interpreter, by the way, is Eileen Chow.
The narrator of the story's a 14-year-old boy whose parents are in the funeral business. And he says, at one point, he feels like a speck of dust lost in a pile of sesame seeds. Does he see things that adults can miss?
LIANKE: (Through interpreter) Yes. Even though he's 14, he's really the center, the heart of the novel. And he understands not only what he feels but what others feel. Precisely, because of his naivete and his purity, he sees the world in a way that grownups have already forgotten to see.
SIMON: You make yourself a character in this book, too. Or is it just a writer with your name?
LIANKE: (Through interpreter) Of course, the moment he's in the novel, Yan Lianke is already a fictional character. But, certainly, he shares autobiographical aspects with me.
SIMON: The little boy says that he doesn't like his novels. Was that a fun sentence for you to write?
LIANKE: (Through interpreter) So I had a lot of fun with the character. I really enjoyed making him make mistakes. I enjoyed that he mentioned all the names of my novels in real life but made mistake with each one of them, which actually is not uncommon to the way in which all literary works are often misread by readers in China.
SIMON: Are we right to read this story as an extended metaphor of people in China sleepwalking through their daily lives under a heavily regimented government?
LIANKE: (Through interpreter) Yes. It is a bit of a metaphor. It's a bit of an allegory. But I have to explain that, in Chinese, both the word prediction, predictive, (speaking Chinese), is the same sound as allegory (speaking Chinese). And so I really think my novel is a predictive allegory, (speaking Chinese). And, certainly, it's a very sharp critique of contemporary society.
SIMON: Because President Xi refers to what he calls the Chinese dream of prosperity - do we see the dark side of that dream in this book?
LIANKE: (Through interpreter) Certainly, when I was writing the novel, I wasn't explicitly thinking about Chinese dreams. But, yes, the novel is about a series of dreams or more rather, like, nightmares. And this is not limited to this present moment with Xi. China, since 1949, has really been a series of nightmares one after another, waking nightmare. And so - and all the problems inherent in society are things that create that nightmare from then till now.
SIMON: Did you once write for the Chinese government?
LIANKE: (Through interpreter) So yes, I did. When I was a young man in the military, I wrote speeches and propaganda leaflets for my superiors. And I did that day after day. Of course, during the day, I sat in the office and wrote these documents. But at night, I started writing my own novels, novels that would not necessarily be as popular or welcome. This is a very special experience that I had.
SIMON: What did you learn by writing propaganda?
LIANKE: (Through interpreter) I learned to be a very good, very competent cog within the system.
SIMON: I have to ask, with respect, do you ever feel in danger now?
LIANKE: (Through interpreter) So yes. I certainly feel a great deal of anxiety and unease and maybe perhaps even the sense of danger. I feel it day after day. But I wouldn't say it's based on any specific incident or set of reasons. And in that, I'm not alone. I think people in China all feel this way. Intellectuals feel this way. But everyday life is a sense of constant anxiety, constant unease. You don't know where the danger is coming from. The danger could be the curbing of free speech. But the danger could also be in poisoned or contaminated vegetables. It could be in a financial crisis. But all in all, we spend every single day in a state of anxiety. And I'm not exempt from it.
SIMON: Do you have to write science fiction, horror stories or allegories because that's the only way people in China will get to read what you say?
LIANKE: (Through interpreter) I think that rather than thinking in terms of genre, I realize that basically, in China's reality today, the real is unreal. All of us who are living in China today basically exist in a kind of fantasy already, in a kind of elusive reality. Our everyday life is already filled with both a kind of fantasy of the future, a kind of denial of the present. We really don't have a full grasp on what might be happening or what might not be happening to us in everyday life. So when I write my seemingly fantastical novels like "Explosion Chronicles" or "The Day The Son Died," I'm really trying to write a kind of reality that people are not facing and people are not seeing but, in fact, exists.
SIMON: When it gets time for the Nobel Prize for literature to be announced, do you look at your phone, think it might ring?
LIANKE: (Through interpreter) You can see that even I don't know a single word of English, and I need a small army to do this interview. So looking at my cellphone doesn't do anything.
SIMON: (Laughter). Yan Lianke in Beijing - his book "The Day The Sun Died" translated by Carlos Rojas. Our interpreter has been Eileen Chow - great honor to speak with you, sir.
LIANKE: (Through interpreter) I'm very grateful. This has been a very interesting experience.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Next week, the NBA is putting on its big London game. The New York Knicks take on the Washington Wizards. But Enes Kanter of the Knicks won't be there. Mr. Kanter is Turkish and an outspoken critic of Turkish President Erdogan. He was playing basketball for the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2017 when he was detained at a Romanian airport when Turkey revoked his passport. Enes Kanter joins us now from New York. Thanks so much for being with us.
ENES KANTER: Thank you, guys, for inviting me.
SIMON: And why did you decide not to go to London?
KANTER: I really didn't feel safe because the Turkish government is very famous for hunting down those who oppose Erdogan. So, I mean, I just didn't want to really risk my life by going to Europe. But, you know, I talked to my team. I told them all, like, how many times I want to come because I want to be with you guys there, and I want to get a win with you guys. And then, later on, they came back with the news and said, you know what? I think the best decision is if you don't come. Let's just not risk it for one game.
SIMON: Do you feel safe in New York and elsewhere in the U.S.?
KANTER: I have been getting last two, three days hundreds death threats, but I think I feel safe in America. But anywhere else in the world, I wouldn't really feel safe.
SIMON: Did you say you've gotten hundreds of death threats?
KANTER: Yes, I have been getting them since 2016. But, especially last two, three days, I have been getting lots of death threats.
SIMON: And we'll note that your father, Mehmet Kanter...
KANTER: Yes.
SIMON: ...Has been indicted in Turkey. He's accused of belonging to a terrorist organization. He is a follower of a cleric, who is in the United States and accused of plotting a coup against the Erdogan government. Does your father say he's innocent?
KANTER: Well, I'll tell you this first. I have no contact with my family right now, and I just don't want them to get in trouble. And if they would see any little text - say, hi, Mom. How you guys doing? Hi, Dad. And they will be all in jail. They actually took my dad in jail for seven days. And we put so much pressure from here in America to Turkey, and they had to let him go.
SIMON: As I don't have to tell you, a former NBA star, also from Turkey, Hedo Turkoglu, is now chief and adviser to President Erdogan. And he's been critical of you.
KANTER: Yes.
SIMON: Do you have anything to say about that?
KANTER: I was really good friends with him. I actually play in same team 2011. We were teammates in the Turkish national team. And then, after that, I think till 2013, '14, we played against each other because he was playing the NBA. And then, after that, he retired. And then, he started working with the Turkish government. And it's just very sad because he's actually a very good guy. But he picked a side, and he's in a tough situation.
SIMON: I have to ask, Mr. Kanter, have you received any pressure or advice from someone - I don't know - a sports agent, commercial agent, who says to you don't talk about politics? You're not going to be able to sell basketball shoes in Turkey. This makes you controversial. Just be quiet about what your feelings are.
KANTER: I understand. When you talk about this kind of issues, you are not going to get big contracts. But you know what? I look at it - in the end, it's worth it because I'm an NBA player, and I have a big platform. So I'm trying to use this platform to be voice of all those innocent people who don't have a voice. And people know my story because I play in the NBA. But there are thousands and thousands stories out there waiting to be heard way worse than mine. So I was like, you know what? I understand, you know? It's tough. My family's still back in there, and they're getting lots of threats, too. But I have to do this for all those innocent people.
SIMON: Enes Kanter of the New York Knicks, thanks very much. Good luck to you both on the court and off, sir.
KANTER: Thank you, guys, appreciate it.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
President Trump says trade talks between the United States and China have been going very well. United States put $250 billion worth of tariffs on Chinese goods last year to counter what it considers unfair trade practices and theft of U.S. technology. But there are no indications the United States, the United Nations or any government is prepared to use any economic or diplomatic leverage to oppose China locking up between 800,000 and 2 million Uighurs, Kazakhs and other Chinese Muslims into internment camps in the western Xinjiang region. The camps are in remote locations closed to the world and ringed with barbed wire. But they've been photographed by satellite. The Chinese government calls them re-education centers - a phrase that carries a sinister history from the murderous purges of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution.
The people in the camps are forced to denounce their faith and pledge loyalty to the Communist Party. According to multiple reports, a number of people in the camps have also been tortured. As Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, told The Independent, if any other government in the world was locking up a million Muslims, I think we can reasonably expect to have seen demands for a debate at the U.N. Security Council or an international investigation. That's generally unlikely to happen with China.
There were calls in the U.S. Congress last fall for the Trump administration to consider sanctions against China for what Secretary of State Mike Pompeo denounced as awful abuses. But China is America's largest creditor. It holds more than a trillion dollars in U.S. Treasury securities. Look down at whatever you're wearing, carrying, writing and/or working on right now. American businesses get rich relying on Chinese workers, who earn low wages, to produce our clothing, mobile phones, building materials and dazzling new tech devices.
The Trump administration imposed tariffs on China over unfair trade practices, but it has offered no more than a few rhetorical flourishes over human rights crimes - neither did the Obama administration or the European Union. And Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia and Iran, have been similarly conspicuously silent. China invests heavily and strategically in their nations, too. Sometimes the price of human rights just cannot compete.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
There's new focus on R. Kelly and accusations that he committed sexual abuse now that "Surviving R. Kelly," the Lifetime docuseries, has aired. Pop artists, including Lady Gaga and the band Phoenix, have apologized for their collaborations with Kelly and expressed support for his accusers.
But Robert Kelly still has defenders and fans, including leaders in the gospel music industry. Candice Benbow wrote about that allegiance on her website in a piece called "Supporting R. Kelly: When Gospel And Black Church Get It Wrong." She joins us now from member station WUOT in Knoxville, Tenn. Thanks so much for being with us.
CANDICE BENBOW: Thank you for having me.
SIMON: R. Kelly has a deep relationship with gospel music and the black church, doesn't he?
BENBOW: He does. So from "I Need An Angel," with "I Believe I Can Fly," writing for Whitney Houston with "I Look To You" - these are songs that are sung in our churches - recently working with Marvin Sapp. So he has a record and a history of creating songs that speak to black Christians in particular. And that reach has been one that has been both long-standing and has allowed him a certain kind of insulation from critique.
SIMON: Well, help us understand that insulation. Is it as simple as a lot of people are indebted to him for extraordinary work? Do they like him personally?
BENBOW: It's a both-and, right? So on one level, because you've written these monster hits for people, there's a way in which that power insulates you from critique, right? But in a larger sense, we have to look at the structure of our churches and the structure of our theologies.
There was a point when the only place that black men could find power and respect and refuge was in our black churches, right? So during the height of the civil rights movement, during Reconstruction, if you could not be in larger society where you were respected, you definitely could come to the church and be a leader in our communities and our congregations. And so that leadership became protected over and above caring for and protecting black women and girls.
And so even when - before we saw "Surviving R. Kelly," there were a number of allegations that, again, nobody touched in this particular community because it was easier for us to say, I'm going to pray for him, rather than say, I'm going to attack this head-on because if we attacked it head-on, we will have to talk about other issues that are similar that are happening in churches every day.
SIMON: You mentioned Marvin Sapp. And that 2017 album "Close" has a track that he worked on with R. Kelly. Marvin Sapp is a bishop - isn't he? - not just a recording artist.
BENBOW: He is. So - and that makes it even more dangerous, right? Because when people critiqued Marvin Sapp for not only doing the record but intentionally keeping the record on his album, he said, you know, I would rather pray for him rather than condemn him and then went on to make a broader statement that God has used flawed men in the Bible, citing Noah and Moses, to do great things and great work. And while that's true, there's a difference between Noah and Moses and a pedophile, right?
SIMON: Yeah.
BENBOW: So we have to be very clear that when we decide to cloak a lack of accountability in Godspeak, what does that signal for our broader congregations every single day?
SIMON: Can you listen to R. Kelly's music?
BENBOW: I would be hypocritical if I said that I wasn't listening to "I Believe I Can Fly" because I was, right? But I think that there comes a point, particularly as I grew as a feminist and had experienced friends telling me their own experiences, coming into honesty around my own experiences around sexual trauma and assault - it became important for me to reckon with the fact that if I am going to support R. Kelly by listening to him, then I am saying that these experiences do not matter. And I'm saying that black girls' and black women's voices don't matter. And I can't say that because then that means that my voice doesn't matter.
And so I think that we are in a moment where we have to draw the line in the sand. There are so many black girls and black women who have experienced violation who look to gospel music and who look to pastors to help them navigate these experiences. And if they can't hear their favorite gospel artists or their pastor say, this is wrong, and we have to address it, then we really have to think about, what is the true message of the church? And what is the true message of gospel music?
SIMON: Candice Benbow. Her piece appears on her website, candicebenbow.com. Thank you so much for being with us.
BENBOW: Thank you for having me.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The partial shutdown of the U.S. government is now the longest in history - 22 days. President Trump still insists on $5.7 billion to build a wall across the U.S.-Mexico border. Democrats say no, and the president says he won't declare a national emergency at the border yet.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: 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.
SIMON: Friday was payday for federal workers but not for almost a million who've been furloughed. We spoke with Jo Ann Goodlow, a mother of three from Phoenix who works for the Bureau of Land Management there and says that prolonged shutdown is hard on her family.
JO ANN GOODLOW: I've just kind of done without paying certain bills because I have to put money aside for the things that are more important. Utilities are more important than paying a credit card bill.
SIMON: Yeah.
GOODLOW: And my 17-year-old, he know - I know he needs lunch money for school. But some days, he doesn't get lunch money, unfortunately. And I know that's not good because he has to eat. He's on the basketball team. I mean, I try to support him - whatever sport that he does. But I make the decisions not to go to the games. I'm not going to waste gas money and follow him. And you just got to pick and choose on what you can and can't do.
SIMON: This must hurt you to not be able to afford lunch for one of your children.
GOODLOW: It does. And he understands. I know he understands. And I know - and it's going to get better. It's going to get better. But as - you know, I - you have to just make a decision on what you can and can't do. You know, I pick up my 6-year-old from school. And he's like, Mom, can we stop and get a snack? Not today. We're not going to do that today. Let's do that some other time. We have to pick and choose now. And, you know, the - my 6 and 4-year-old, they're two that I adopted. And now I feel like I'm not giving them the life they need because here I am without a paycheck. And I brought them from a - their home where they weren't getting what they needed. And now I can't give them what they need.
SIMON: Now, Ms. Goodlow, you sound like a great mother to me.
GOODLOW: Right now, I don't feel like a great mother.
SIMON: I gather you've had to turn to crowdsourcing to try and make ends meet.
GOODLOW: Yes. And that was a last resort because I'm so independent. That is something that I never would have ever done because I always feel that there is someone out there that needs it more than me. And when I set it up, I didn't even go live with it on anything. I was like, I don't want to put it on Facebook. I don't want to do anything with it. I'm like if someone sees it, then OK. That's fine. And I sat in my room that night. And I think I had been up for, like, five hours. And I finally said I'm just going to hit Twitter because nobody really knows me on Twitter. And it just so happened that my son's high school - the basketball account, they saw it. That's when it blew up. And I just - I cried because I didn't think that it would be that much support because I just - I was afraid of what people would think.
SIMON: Yeah.
GOODLOW: But this is reality that, you know, I don't know how I'm going to pay my mortgage, you know, without a paycheck, how I'm going to pay my car payment, my utilities, you know. I don't know. And I just feel so blessed that there's people out there that really care.
SIMON: Jo Ann Goodlow is a mother of three in Phoenix, and she works for the Bureau of Land Management when there's not a shutdown. Thank you for what you do for the American people. Good luck.
GOODLOW: Thank you.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
And let's move from personal effects of that shutdown to some of the political ones. Ron Elving, NPR senior editor-correspondent - Ron, thanks so much for being with us.
RON ELVING, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Scott.
SIMON: Does the president have an exit plan for the shutdown?
ELVING: At this moment, no such plan is apparent. The president says that if the Democrats don't give him his wall, he can declare a national emergency. And then he says he can assert the power to build a wall using military construction funds already appropriated for other jobs, perhaps including disaster relief funds for rebuilding areas that have been hit by hurricanes. Now, on Friday, the president explicitly said he was not ready to do this yet, but he hasn't ruled it out. It is, of course, controversial. Conservatives have not liked this in the past. Some of the people in the Senate who would certainly fit in that category, supporters of the president, have urged him not to do it. But some of his allies in the Capitol and back in the conservative media are saying the emergency looks like the only way out.
SIMON: Just a few weeks ago - and, of course, this is all on audio and video - the president in the Oval Office told Senator Schumer he'll take the blame for any shutdown. Since then, of course, he's tried to shift it over to Speaker Pelosi and Senator Schumer, but who will wind up owning this politically?
ELVING: A shutdown covers no one with glory, Scott, and surely some Americans will accept the shift of blame, as you described it. But let's review the actual action from this past week. The Democratic-led House is passing bills that would reopen the government, the departments that are not open now, one at a time. And they've even had some help on those votes from some of the House Republicans - just a handful basically. But those bills are frozen in the Republican Senate because, there, the party leaders refuse to vote on them at all until they get a green light from the president. So there we are. And if the president's changed his mind here, it could have something to do with the polls that show that only about 25 percent of Americans think the wall is worth a shutdown.
SIMON: I don't want the weekend to go by without asking about something the president said about that wall that he wants. I'm going to quote. He was talking to White House reporters. He said, quote, "during the campaign, I would say Mexico is going to pay for it. Obviously, I never said this and never said they were going to write out a check." I don't know how to follow this syntactically or otherwise. But what do you think it says about the president's leadership and, if I may, his fitness for office?
ELVING: You don't have to watch a whole lot of cable news to see the replays of candidate Trump telling his rallies that Mexico would pay for the wall in no uncertain terms. His own campaign documents - this in print - discussed a $5 billion to $10 billion payment direct from the Mexican government as one of its goals. And, of course, that was never going to happen. And now the president says he was talking about a new trade deal that would be more favorable to the U.S. and that that would somehow pay for the wall and that that had been what he had in mind all along. And, Scott, if you can believe that, then maybe next week he could tell you that he never promised to build a wall at all.
SIMON: Meanwhile, Robert Mueller's work on the Russia investigation goes on. Next week - confirmation hearings for William Barr to be attorney general. He'll be asked if he'll protect that investigation from interference, won't he?
ELVING: Yes, he will. And the Mueller investigation has gone forward because the Justice Department has been led by people who believed it was legitimate and necessary. Mr. Barr has indicated he does not share all of their enthusiasm for the project to put it mildly. He has indicated he thinks parts of the report may need to be withheld from the public. And this week, the president has said much the same. So these hearings are going to be important, not just because Barr will be in - the question of whether or not he gets Senate confirmation but because he can be asked to pledge he will protect the investigation and release its report to the nation.
SIMON: In February, Michael Cohen, the president's former lawyer and fixer, testifies in front of Congress. Do we know what he has to tell?
ELVING: Some of it, yes, with respect to the hush money paid to Stormy Daniels and others. But there is a great deal more that this committee will want to know about work that Michael Cohen did for Donald Trump over a number of years, including contacts - possible contact - with Russians or their intermediaries.
SIMON: NPR's Ron Elving, thanks so much.
ELVING: Thank you, Scott.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
People who own land along President Trump's proposed border wall risk losing their land if the wall is ever actually built. Some residents have received letters from the federal government in the last couple of months advising them of that possibility. There is some history here. T. Christian Miller, a senior reporter for ProPublica, dug into all of this in a series co-published with The Texas Tribune called "The Taking." Mr. Miller, thanks so much for being with us.
T CHRISTIAN MILLER: Thanks for having me on.
SIMON: And take us back to this time - I guess it was called the border fence under the Bush administration. What was the plan at that point?
MILLER: So this was back in 2006, and it was called the Secure Fence Act, and both Republicans and Democrats joined together to vote for the construction of a border fence as it was called at the time. It was 18 feet high, so it wasn't quite as large as what President Trump has discussed building down there, but it was a major construction effort. And it put up fence all along the Rio Grande in different parts. But in order to do that, the federal government had to seize land from a bunch of private property owners, and that's what our story looked at - how the government, in our reporting showed, had abused that process to take land and resulted in unfair payments to different people.
SIMON: Well, we certainly want to talk about that, but let's note first some big-name Democrats signed onto this plan, too, didn't they?
MILLER: Oh, sure. Back then, it was a bipartisan effort. So Senator Pete King from - a Republican from New York introduced the act. It was approved by both then-Senators Hillary Clinton and then-Senator Barack Obama. Both voted to approve the construction of the secure fence.
SIMON: What happened when they actually began?
MILLER: So the first step in Texas is kind of an unusual situation. Much of the land along the U.S. border is in public hands already owned by the federal government. But for a variety of reasons in Texas, most of the border is still owned by private property owners. And this includes very wealthy individuals who own big ranches and farms along the river and a lot of small, mostly Latino owners who have had claim to the land in some cases dating back to when Spain owned that part of Texas. So it's an unusual situation, and it required the government to come in and exercise what's called eminent domain. And you might have heard of that before. It's when the government takes land to build things like national parks or military bases.
The interesting thing about the federal government is that in the 1930s when the U.S. was in the middle of the Depression, there was a big movement to stimulate the economy with large public works projects. So because of that need, Congress passed a very special law called the Declaration of Taking Act. And what that essentially did is it gave the government, unlike any other government agency, it gave the federal government the power to quickly seize land. And when I say quickly, I mean the government sends you a letter, and the next day, they can take title to your land. And that's called a declaration of taking. And that's what they used - that's what the Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Justice used to take land along the Texas border to build the fence. And what they do is to compensate you is they write you a check, and they say here's the check, we own the land, now let's argue about how much money this check is for. But there's really no argument you make about whether or not they get to take your land. The federal government almost uniquely has the power to take land first and then pay you later.
SIMON: The land we're talking about, the action in 2006, is there a beautiful wall there today?
MILLER: I don't want to opine on whether or not it's beautiful or not. But yes, there is a wall that stretches along about...
SIMON: A fence I guess we should say, right? Yes.
MILLER: It's a fence. It's a question of sort of terminology. There are places where it's a big - there's a concrete supporting barrier there. And there are places where there is a metal fence that looks - to most people, it would look like a giant rusted picket fence.
SIMON: Did everyone get paid, reimbursed?
MILLER: No. Even 10 years later now, there are still lawsuits open where people still haven't been paid for their land. In other words, they were still negotiating how much to accept for the land, and there's no reason to suspect that won't occur if there's any new wall construction.
SIMON: T. Christian Miller, senior reporter for ProPublica, thanks so much for being with us.
MILLER: Thanks, Scott. I appreciate it.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The massive Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas wrapped up yesterday. Tech companies showcased their latest gadgets and predicted trends. But something you didn't hear, according to our next guest, was a frank conversation about privacy. Tech writer Pete Pachal wrote about this from Mashable. He just got back from CES and joins us from New York. Thanks so much for being with us.
PETE PACHAL: Hey, my pleasure.
SIMON: So many scandals over the past year involving platforms violating privacy, data harvesting, data breaches. What were people talking about, if not that?
PACHAL: Well, they were talking about a lot of hype for the new technologies just around the corner. I mean, CES is very much a kind of a tech bubble in some ways. So it's nonstop hype about new technologies like 5G, like smart devices and, that I found, not really a ton of talk about what has become a very prevalent conversation in tech, which is, how are companies using the data that they kind of need to offer a lot of these services?
SIMON: Haven't a lot of Americans become aware of the fact that we are the product?
PACHAL: I think that's a - sometimes an oversimplification. But, you know, there's a bit of a creep factor now, to put it in the plainest terms. You click agree and maybe, you know, ads follow you around the net or - that's sort of the mildest form of these things. But in the sort of worst-case scenario, as you said, you know, your data might be sold in sort of an unethical way. We're all a little bit more wary, at least over here, about that kind of thing.
SIMON: Over here in contrast to where?
PACHAL: Well, in contrast to other parts of the world. I would say what I saw at CES, which tends to favor big companies like Samsung, like LG, Sony - you know, obviously, are based mostly in Asia - the conversation around privacy there - it hasn't quite penetrated in the same way, at least by my reckoning from what I saw at CES because - I'll give you one example.
LG - they talked very highly about its smart home sort of platform, that all these devices have a connection to the Internet and they're using their sensors to kind of learn your preferences and better tailor what they can do for you. That all sounds good until you kind of realize, well, by definition, what they're doing is profiling you.
SIMON: Yeah.
PACHAL: Now, that sounds benevolent. And I certainly realize these technologies generally can't work without doing that. But what protections do they have on that data? All of that is still very opaque.
SIMON: Are there are companies that are trying, in a sense, to take advantage of growing suspicion among some consumers by offering more privacy?
PACHAL: Yeah. There are some. There's what I would describe as kind of a cottage industry of sort of these privacy products that - it's usually routers and sort of Internet of things devices. You know, apart from the one billboard put up by Apple, there really wasn't a lot of discussion about privacy at CES this year.
SIMON: Well, tell us about that billboard because I understand that Apple wasn't there as a company, but they did have an impact.
PACHAL: That's correct. Apple decided to put on the side of a hotel - and this is very common at CES, so it's these big ads that are all over town - that what happens in your iPhone stays on your iPhone, and pointing users to their website on privacy. So it was a very pointed point they were making. And I would've loved to see the companies there sort of run with it and make some reassurances, at least, about privacy and how much they want to secure your data and make sure you have control over it. But that was very absent.
In Apple's case, it was probably more of a tap on the shoulder to Google, one of their rivals. And Google made a huge splash at the show. There was Google advertising all over Vegas, certainly at the show. And, you know, Google certainly had its share of privacy and data scandals.
SIMON: Tech writer Pete Pachal in New York, thanks so much for being with us.
PACHAL: You're welcome. Thanks for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
One of the most celebrated photos of the American civil rights movement shows African-American sanitation workers in Memphis, March 28, 1968, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, holding aloft signs that say, I am a man. It makes that moment an emblem of the struggle for equal rights.
The photo was taken by Ernest Withers, a local photographer of worldwide reputation. It captured a new addition to what was already a six-week-old strike - the sticks to which marchers had attached their signs. Those sticks were turned into weapons that day.
Preston Lauterbach's new book reveals details about how Ernest Withers may have figured into events that day. It's called "Bluff City." And Preston Lauterbach joins us from the studios of WVTF in Charlottesville, Va. Thanks so much for being with us.
PRESTON LAUTERBACH: Thank you for having me.
SIMON: We look at that photo today. What else should we know?
LAUTERBACH: The story that's hidden in that iconic image is that of the man behind the camera. And that is Ernest Withers, as you mentioned, who was not only the intrepid photographer of the civil rights movement down South but also an undercover operative for the FBI.
In an interview that he did with a German sociologist who'd come to Memphis studying the strike in the year 1981, Withers remarked, if anybody started that riot, I started that riot because it was me who went and rented the skill saw and sawed up the lumber and distributed those - the sticks to the marchers that day.
SIMON: So to try and encapsulate it, the sticks that were used as baseball bats that fomented the violence that brought Dr. King back to Memphis in chagrin a week later, where he was assassinated - those sticks were bought by Ernest Withers, a photographer who was an FBI informant.
LAUTERBACH: That is true. But you also have to keep in mind that he was involved with the Community on the Move for Equality organization. That was a nonviolent organization that was behind the strike. It was the No. 1 strike support organization.
And so, look; I mean, this is the crux of this mystery of, who was this man, and what was he doing? Where were his loyalties? And the truth is it's still a mystery.
SIMON: How did he become an FBI informant?
LAUTERBACH: Compared to law enforcement officers like Bull Connor down South, the feds were the only game in town in terms of getting any government support for the civil rights movement. And so Withers - he adopted the more conservative strategy - NAACP strategy of challenging segregation. And any time he saw individuals, organizations who were ultimately pro-civil rights but with whose tactics he didn't agree, he would discuss that with the FBI. He - I'm...
SIMON: But you do suggest in the book that the FBI had a stated interest in this march in Memphis devolving into violence. It was that violence that brought Dr. King back to Memphis, where he was ultimately assassinated.
LAUTERBACH: The problem that the FBI and the feds would've had with King at that particular moment in the spring of 1968 was his proposed Poor People's Campaign. That would be another mass march on Washington. Everybody in Congress on up to the president was very concerned about this. And, look; people are going to wonder about the FBI. And people have always wondered about the FBI and King's assassination. And...
SIMON: I wasn't suggesting that the FBI was somehow behind James Earl Ray. I was suggesting, as I believe you do in the book, that the FBI had an interest in discrediting Dr. King's leadership, and a march that devolved into violence would help do that.
LAUTERBACH: It was perfect. It was exactly what the FBI needed at that particular time. There was a FBI strategy that was circulated, that's very much on the record in the spring of '68, designed to discredit King as a leader - as a nonviolent leader. And what could be a better way of discrediting this man as a nonviolent leader than to show an episode of mass violence that he was at the center of.
SIMON: And you spent some time with Ernest Withers' daughter. She's both proud of her father and loved him. But these revelations have been hard for her, I gather.
LAUTERBACH: No question about it. She didn't know about any of this. And for it to come out after his death was quite a shock to her. But she also knew him. And she knew who he really was. And so her faith is always going to be with him. This was who Withers was. This is a man who risked his life, who endured beatings and arrests covering the movement down South as a photographer.
SIMON: Should any of these revelations change the way we reckon Ernest Withers in history? Should we regard him as part of the civil rights movement?
LAUTERBACH: You can't - I'll tell you this. His credo was the pictures tell the story. And so if you look at the pictures of Emmett Till's uncle, you know, standing up in a courtroom in Mississippi to point out his nephew's abductors and murderers, if you look at the photograph of Dr. King riding at the front of the first integrated bus in Montgomery, Ala., if you look at the photographs of people celebrating their newly won right to vote, if you look at the photograph of Myrlie Evers - the touching image of her at her husband Medgar Evers' funeral mourning his loss - I mean, it is one of the most touching images of the movement. Ernest Withers made these contributions. You can't take that away from him.
And I guess I don't - being around Memphis, as I was, and being around some of the characters that I've been around, Withers is a Memphis man. You know, the people on Beale Street, going back to the South's first black millionaire who built his fortune there - you know, they deal on both sides of the street. Corruption and good works go hand in hand down Beale Street.
SIMON: Preston Lauterbach - his new book, "Bluff City: The Secret Life Of Photographer Ernest Withers." Thanks so much for being with us.
LAUTERBACH: Thank you for having me.
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SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The longest federal government shutdown in this nation's history continues into its 22nd day. President Trump and the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives remain deadlocked over his demand for border wall funding in order to reopen the government. A new NPR/Ipsos poll shows that Americans are mostly fed up with the stalemate and pessimistic about the direction of their country. NPR's Debbie Elliott reports.
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DEBBIE ELLIOT, BYLINE: Federal workers rallied at the Capitol this week to send a message to Congress and the White House.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Chanting) Open the government.
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Chanting) Today.
ELLIOT: An estimated 800,000 federal workers are affected by the partial government shutdown, including LeRoy McCray who works, currently without pay, at Reagan National Airport.
LEROY MCCRAY: I'm showing up to work every day. I'm doing my job. I'm doing a service for this country, and I'm not getting paid. To me, that is un-American.
ELLIOT: He says the standoff is changing his outlook on the direction of the country.
MCCRAY: It's becoming harder and harder to remain optimistic.
ELLIOT: The NPR/Ipsos poll shows a majority of Americans are similarly frustrated with the shutdown and the state of politics in general.
LISA WEST: I think it's very embarrassing.
ELLIOT: Survey respondent Lisa West is a 58-year-old independent from San Luis Obispo, Calif.
WEST: I think it makes us look stupid. And I think it makes us look like we're children and unable to behave like adults and make compromises.
ELLIOT: West's views are in line with three-quarters of Americans according to the NPR/Ipsos poll. The online survey of about 1,000 people was conducted January 9 and 10.
Research director Mallory Newall of the Ipsos polling company says the sentiment was clear.
MALLORY NEWALL: No one in Washington really is coming out of this with a stronger standing among the American public.
ELLIOT: Newall says two-thirds of those surveyed said they were not personally affected by the shutdown. Nonetheless...
NEWALL: They see it as a black mark on the country. It's embarrassing. And that sentiment of embarrassment and frustration works across party lines. So you have even over half of Republicans, for example, saying that the shutdown is embarrassing for the country and that it's going to hurt our country.
KAREN MURPHY: My name is Karen Murphy, and I live and work in Huntsville, Ala.
ELLIOT: Murphy is a NASA contractor, and the work she's doing is funded into February, but she's not been able to talk to government employees who've been furloughed in the shutdown.
MURPHY: It's holding people hostage who just want to do their jobs.
ELLIOT: Murphy, who identifies as a political independent, puts the blame on both Congress and the president.
MURPHY: Neither side comes out of this blameless.
ELLIOT: The poll found that a majority of Americans are optimistic about their personal finances but more pessimistic about the direction of the country, although those results were split along party lines. Republicans are more optimistic, with Democrats and independents, like Karen Murphy, more pessimistic.
MURPHY: I think right now the country doesn't have much of a direction. I have never seen this much confusion. You know, that's - it's kind of scary because I keep looking at this, and I don't necessarily see a good way out.
ELLIOT: But a third of Americans do see a way out - funding a border wall.
JAMES NICHOLS: I think it's a good idea.
ELLIOT: James Nichols ducks between buildings to escape the bitter cold in Lincoln, N.H. He works for a company that manufactures aluminum parts and is concerned about people coming into the country illegally.
NICHOLS: A lot of the immigrants that are coming over here that don't have the card, the legal documents to be in the United States.
ELLIOT: Nichols says he thinks it's worth shutting down the government until the border is secure. That's a sentiment according to the NPR/Ipsos poll shared by nearly 1 in 3 Americans.
Debbie Elliott, NPR News.
SIMON: And, of course, that's the sentiment of President Trump, who has ramped up efforts to try to secure funding for a border wall.
[POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: In this report, we say James Nichols is trying to escape the bitter cold in Lincoln, N.H. He was actually in Franklin, N.H.]
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
While he has made the argument for stronger border security, hundreds of people wait on the other side to apply for asylum. A policy called metering puts a cap on the number of migrants who are allowed to apply each day. Cristian Sanchez is an attorney with the organization RAICES. He joins us from Tijuana, where he's been helping a group of migrants try to navigate the asylum process. Mr. Sanchez, thanks so much for being with us.
CRISTIAN SANCHEZ: Thank you for having me.
SIMON: Who are some of your clients?
SANCHEZ: My clients are a group of LGBTQ migrants who have self-formed kind of a group to protect themselves from the wider discrimination from, you know, people during their trip and from the wider caravan.
SIMON: And they would like to apply for asylum in the United States.
SANCHEZ: That is correct.
SIMON: What do they have to do now?
SANCHEZ: They got a number from something called the asylum metering system where you get a number from an asylum book and your name is written down and you have to wait for that number to come up again. And when that happens, you can finally present yourself to American authority.
SIMON: How do you know when the number comes up?
SANCHEZ: That's the thing. You don't really know when it's going to happen, which causes a lot of confusion, and it creates a lot of difficulty.
SIMON: Obviously, a lot of coverage this week on the U.S. side of the border. Are you in a position to tell us in Tijuana and elsewhere on the Mexican side of the border what some of the reaction of people there has been like?
SANCHEZ: Yeah. I think the - it's not just a reaction. It's affecting how these asylum numbers get called. So it's more of a roller coaster in the last few weeks where one day, 40 numbers will get called, and Monday, nine numbers got called. Saturday, 20 numbers got called. And that's because people aren't showing up for their number, and we weren't seeing that before. But we're seeing that now because people are having to wait a really long time and either they become victims of crime or they try to cross illegally or something else happens to them, and they're not able to show up for those numbers.
SIMON: Mr. Sanchez, I - everyone is certainly entitled to an opinion like this. But you see these events close up. What do you think the effect of a wall would be?
SANCHEZ: I mean, a wall for this group wouldn't change too much since we work with and advise everyone who is trying to apply for asylum legally. But the wall is part of this greater sentiment and policy that acts as a deterrent for people who are applying for legitimate asylum claims. And the people I've talked to that are LGBTQ have suffered some of the worst things that I've heard in my career. And so they want to do this legally, but having to wait for weeks because of this metering system causes so much anxiety.
SIMON: Cristian Sanchez is an attorney with the organization RAICES in Tijuana. Thanks so much for being with us.
SANCHEZ: Thank you.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The Trump administration is pulling U.S. forces out of Syria, but Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insists the U.S. is not in retreat. He's meeting with Gulf allies this weekend to try to keep the region focused on fighting terrorism and countering Iran.
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MIKE POMPEO: We have a message to them, which is the - similar to the message that I delivered when I was stopped in Cairo in my remarks, which is the United States is, in fact, a force for good. We want to be their partners. We want to work alongside them to achieve ends that are in their country's best interest as well as the interest of the United States.
SIMON: The secretary of state was speaking to a group of reporters in Abu Dhabi. NPR's Michele Kelemen joins us from there. Michele, thanks for being with us.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: Sure thing, Scott.
SIMON: What more did the secretary of state have to say about this approach to the region?
KELEMEN: So he's argued that the previous administration misdiagnosed the problems in the Middle East. Their diagnosis was all honked up. Those were the words that he used today. He said that by focusing so much on the nuclear deal with Iran, the U.S. allowed Iran to spread its influence. And that hurt America's traditional Arab allies in the region, like the Saudis or Emiratis here in Abu Dhabi. So he's here rebuilding ties with Gulf partners, visiting all of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. And he's - says he's planning a big meeting in Poland next month to focus on Iran and on Middle East stability.
SIMON: He's going to Saudi Arabia tomorrow, I gather. Will the secretary of state raise concerns about the death of Jamal Khashoggi?
KELEMEN: He'll raise them. I'm not sure how hard he'll press it. You know, it's the second time actually that he'll be there since Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. And while Pompeo calls it a heinous crime, he also talks about how vital it is to have this relationship with the Saudis.
SIMON: Does that case, though, complicate his mission - on the - calling it a heinous atrocity, on the one hand, even as he talks about the partnership?
KELEMEN: Yeah, I think it does. You know, I mean, the secretary in that speech that he was making in Cairo this week, he laid out a pretty black-and-white view of the Middle East as the U.S. is the force for good. And, you know, its partners want stability. But Iran is the main source of instability in the region. But when you have a partner like the Saudis that's involved in the killing of a journalist in a consulate, it's hard to look at them as a real source of stability. And plus, Scott, there's the war in Yemen. Pompeo blames Iranian-backed rebels for starting the conflict, but the Saudis, the Emiratis and others with America's help have waged a really disastrous war against Houthi rebels. Millions are on the brink of famine. So this is a complex region and a lot of complex issues for the secretary to discuss on his swing through all these Gulf countries.
SIMON: And of course, Michele, the trip comes during a partial U.S. government shutdown. Any impact that you see on this mission?
KELEMEN: Well, there are a lot of State Department employees staffing his trip who aren't getting their paychecks. Pompeo is also moving ahead with plans to bring all the ambassadors around the globe back to Washington next week for a planned meeting despite the shutdown. He says that morale is good. They understand that there are squabbles in Washington but that they understand their mission. I also asked him about his wife, who's on this trip. Staffers are staffing her visit without pay. But he said she is a force multiplier, that she's been touring diplomatic housing, medical facilities and seeing the living conditions of diplomats overseas and that, you know, she has that important role to play despite the shutdown.
SIMON: NPR's diplomatic correspondent Michele Kelemen in Abu Dhabi traveling with Secretary of State Pompeo. Thanks so much for being with us.
KELEMEN: Thank you.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce wants the partial shutdown of the U.S. government to end. Thomas Donohue, president and CEO of the chamber, issued a number of blunt, stern warnings to Congress and to President Trump. He's led the Chamber of Commerce for 22 years and joins us now. Mr. Donohue, thanks so much for being with us.
THOMAS DONOHUE: I'm very glad to be here.
SIMON: You have had especially strong words on what you see as the need for a comprehensive immigration agreement.
DONOHUE: Well, Scott, that's true, and the reason is we're out of people. We're going to begin to look like Japan. Trucking companies can't find truck drivers. Nursing homes, assisted-living homes and hospitals can find caregivers - a very important thing that most people don't look at. Farmers can't find workers. And when you don't have the workers, Scott, what you do is send the work to where the workers are.
SIMON: We should note the chamber criticized Donald Trump when he was running for president, mostly about trade policies. What do you think of - now that Donald Trump has won the presidency and has been in power for two years, what do you think of his policies on trade and economics generally?
DONOHUE: I very much support and we helped on the issue of the deregulation activities. And, you know, for a lot of your listeners, you know, they're liable to say, oh, see, those folks want to get rid of all regulation - not true at all. We want to keep good regulation. But what we've done in this country in the last 50 or 60 years, we'd have a regulation and we wanted to change it or get a new one, and we'd put it on top of it. And often, the former regulation stays or the conflicting regulation doesn't get eliminated. So here's what we are arguing about. First, on the NAFTA arrangement, which, in my opinion, is the most important and the most significant trade agreement that we have - and to talk about getting rid of it is just ridiculous. And my view - and I spoke about it in the one last thing - to force changes is very important, and you've got to find a way to get people to wake up. And that's what we did with the tariffs. But now - and you know what tariffs are. Tariffs are taxes. But you know who pays them, Scott? Not the Chinese. We pay them.
SIMON: Customers, yes. Mr. Donohue, let me - before we go, I have to ask you, I was especially struck - and I think a lot of people were - in your statement that you're concerned about the climate and freedom of speech in this country.
DONOHUE: I believe that the United States has to always take stock of how they're doing. You know, our history is of free expression. And to start it - if you ever go all the way back and read the things that our forefathers wrote about each other, it was real free speech. And we continue that, although we're challenged because a lot of people now that represent different views, they believe that if you disagree with their position that you shouldn't be able to speak about it. My solution to all that - this country needs more and more speech, more and more people speaking out about issues of high significance to them. And by the way, it really helps if you listen to what other people are saying about issues of significance to them and not try and stop their right to speak about those things. I don't think the problems here in the United States are as near as bad as 10 places you and I could list. But I think we always have to be alert that we're not overshadowing or closing down those fundamental beliefs and behaviors that made this a great country and a great economy.
SIMON: Thomas Donohue, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, thanks so much for being with us sir.
DONOHUE: Well, thank you, Scott, look forward to doing it again.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
News organizations in Nicaragua who have questioned the rule of President Daniel Ortega have been under continued attack this past year. Journalists have been detained. Many offices have been ransacked, equipment confiscated. The Committee to Protect Journalists has expressed deep concern over deteriorating press freedom there. Just last month, Nicaraguan police raided the offices of two news outlets in Managua, including Confidencial. Carlos Chamorro is the editor, and he joins us now. Thanks so much for being with us.
CARLOS CHAMORRO: Thanks to you.
SIMON: Mr. Chamorro, what happened when you were raided?
CHAMORRO: Well, police came at night. Nobody from our newsroom was working there. But they basically used force to take over the building. And they stay there from midnight until 3:30 in the morning. We came to the office early morning. And we saw that they had robbed everything. I'm talking about computer, television, production equipment but also personnel documentation, accounting books. So we accuse from the very first day President Ortega for organizing this assault. So at this moment, our newsroom is still occupied by armed police.
SIMON: But I gather you're continuing to put out content on your website, right? Can you tell us how?
CHAMORRO: Well, I cannot tell you any detail about how are we working. We are working in a decentralized way, remote coordination. We have made a priority the personal security of our team. We don't want to go to prison like our colleagues Miguel Mora and Lucia Pineda. But we're working. We're reporting. We're editing. We're putting our website on the air. It's very, very difficult to work under these conditions of persecution. But we have the commitment to do it until the last moment in which we're able to do it.
SIMON: Tell us what you know, please, about the reporters who are in prison.
CHAMORRO: There are two colleagues detained in prison and in isolation. Nobody has seen them except from one official picture that was taken to Miguel Mora in the moment in - he was taken to trial. They are being accused of fabricated crimes, like conspiracy, hate incitation or terrorism, with absolutely no proof. They did nothing else than doing journalism - reporting, criticizing the government, exercising our freedom of expression, constitutional rights. But Ortega's dictatorship - it's making to be a journalist - it's making it a criminal act.
SIMON: Mr. Chamorro, doesn't the Ortega family own, I guess it's - what? - Channel 4, 8, 9, 13, Radio Sandino, Radio Nicaragua - so many media outlets there in Nicaragua?
CHAMORRO: Yes. Ortega has all these media outlets that you have mentioned. They have probably very little credibility and not a large audience, although they have a lot of equipment and money. But the audience is deciding to follow the independent press. Ortega is only producing propaganda.
SIMON: You must worry about being detained, thrown into prison yourself.
CHAMORRO: Yes. We are under threat. I don't have any kind of protection. In the past, when I was under threat, I used to go to the National Commission of Human Rights, an NGO run by Dr. Vilma Nunez. And now Vilma Nunez's NGO has been - also is under persecution. I used to go to the church. Now the church is under persecution. And the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, the U.N. and the international group of experts on human rights have - they have all been expelled from the country. There is no rule of the law. The only protection that we have is how we can measure (ph) our fear - how we can measure the risk that we are taking in order to do our job.
SIMON: Do you ever think of trying to do your job outside of Nicaragua?
CHAMORRO: Well, yes. There are more than 50 Nicaraguan journalists abroad working from different places. And this is obviously one of the possibilities that we are contemplating. We definitely are much more useful for the Nicaraguan society free than in prison. And we are trying to continue reporting and doing our job as journalist.
SIMON: Carlos Chamorro, who's editor of Confidencial, thank you so much for being with us. Good luck, sir.
CHAMORRO: Thanks to you.
(SOUNDBITE OF JON HASSELL'S "DREAMWORLD")
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
I'm glad to know it's time for sports.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SIMON: Are the Warriors finally a little weary three months into the NBA season? Golden State isn't even in first place - whatever that means - when it comes to the playoffs. Howard Bryant of ESPN The Magazine and espn.com joins us. Howard, thanks so much for being with us.
HOWARD BRYANT, BYLINE: Good morning, Scott.
SIMON: Howard, 14 out of the 15 teams in the Western Conference have a real chance to make the postseason. So does B.J. Leiderman, who writes our theme music...
BRYANT: (Laughter).
SIMON: I wouldn't rule him out. Any event, the Denver Nuggets are on top. They have 28 wins. Is this what they call parity?
BRYANT: It is. This is one of the most even seasons that I've seen in a very long time. Obviously, since 2015, the NBA season has broken down to one question, which is, can anybody beat the Golden State Warriors four times? We saw it happen once. Lebron James did it, and that was it. Everything else...
SIMON: Yeah.
BRYANT: ...Has been Golden State, Golden State and especially - and the fact that the Warriors lost that championship the year they won 73 games. So even that year, they controlled everything. This year, it's totally different. This year, the Kawhi Leonard-led Toronto Raptors have 32 wins, the most wins in basketball. The Warriors have 14 losses, which is - now I think it's the fourth-best record in the league. So, at the end of the day, do I still think when we get down to April that the Warriors are going to find a way to turn it on? I still think they're the best team, but this is really interesting stuff. This is not - if it goes the way it's going so far, I don't think you can start the playoffs and just expect anyone to win.
SIMON: Let's talk about parity at the top of the East. You mentioned Toronto. I will drag in Milwaukee. Fear...
BRYANT: Milwaukee, exactly...
SIMON: Fear the deer...
BRYANT: Milwaukee may be the best team. They may be the best team. And they've got Giannis Antetokounmpo, and he may be the best player in the NBA. He's been - could win the MVP the way things are going this year. And don't be...
SIMON: And Indy, Boston, Philly.
BRYANT: And exactly right, exactly right. And the Celtics were supposed to run away with the thing, and they're in fifth place. So, once again, there's nobody out there. And San Antonio was playing great in the West. And so...
SIMON: Yeah.
BRYANT: ...This is what it's supposed to be. We say we want this. We say we want - we don't want there to be this one team that goes out and crushes everybody. And what I really enjoy about the NBA this year is that it's not forced. It's not fake. You've got really good teams out there that are playing great basketball.
SIMON: Yeah. I want to ask you about the Cleveland Cavaliers.
BRYANT: Why? Why do you want to ask me about the Cleveland Cavaliers?
SIMON: Well, they've won eight games, darn it - eight games. They've lost 35. It's a rebuilding year along...
BRYANT: (Laughter).
SIMON: ...You know, along Lake Erie. So I've got an idea I want to try on you, OK?
BRYANT: Sure.
SIMON: Why not let the NBA - why not have the NBA let the Cavs have seven players on court just...
BRYANT: When everybody else has five.
SIMON: Yeah. Exactly. What do you think?
BRYANT: I think the reason why they wouldn't do that is because they know deep down in their heart of hearts it wouldn't make any difference.
SIMON: You have a pick for...
BRYANT: (Laughter).
SIMON: You know, you're sadly right. Anyone to watch for MVP in particular?
BRYANT: Well, I think Giannis is the MVP, but James Harden is having, once again, another great statistical year. I think that Kawhi Leonard is the leader of the Toronto Raptors. It would not surprise me at all. If they go anywhere deep into the playoffs, I think he's going to be the MVP. Or I think there are a lot of good players. I'm a Kawhi Leonard guy, but Giannis is probably the guy.
SIMON: OK. Howard Bryant of ESPN The Magazine and espn.com, thanks so much for being with us.
BRYANT: Thank you.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The FBI is reported to have formally investigated whether President Trump, quote, "had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests." That's according to The New York Times. Clint Watts is a former FBI agent, now senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and joins us. Mr. Watts, thanks for being with us.
CLINT WATTS: Thanks for having me.
SIMON: The Times says that this came after President Trump fired James Comey, then director of the FBI, and after a long suspicion. The White House, we will note, calls it absurd. President Trump says on Twitter today that it was an investigation, quote, "for no reason and with no proof." What distinguishes the FBI's concerns from lots of different reports or cable news heads talking about this?
WATTS: Yeah. It's not that surprising, I don't think, to hear this, especially after we've seen several different things. If you remember back to the summer of 2016, it sounds like the FBI was already investigating several members of the Trump campaign. And there was suddenly a Ukraine policy change on the Republican platform, which was odd. If you look at the General Flynn call, it was allegedly about sanctions, that he had, you know, been found by the FBI to be talking about sanctions or sanctions relief or some sort of exchange. And that was what prompted that investigation. And then to see the president fire the FBI director and on several occasions mention that the Russia investigation was on his mind when he made that decision, this would seem to provide at least a basis for opening up an inquiry. That's not a full investigation. That's essentially to move forward and try and see, is there evidence of a covert plan to influence U.S. policy?
SIMON: So - and let's remind ourselves, this was Paul Manafort, who was then campaign manager for then-candidate Donald Trump, who was influential in trying to make those changes in the Republican platform, right? And I think...
WATTS: That's absolutely right.
SIMON: ...We know more now about, obviously, his ties to Russia-backed Ukraine. I have to ask, Mr. Watts, as we always do in a case like this, is there any reason to think that this move was motivated by hard feelings on behalf of some bureau employee or some kind of embarrassing firing of the agency's leader?
WATTS: I would be shocked if that were the case. These decisions are usually made by collectives probably numbering in 10 to a dozen different people. There would have to be widespread agreement sort of to move forward on this. And I thought it was important the article noted that the reason they moved forward was some people in the FBI were nervous about it, but the ones that were close to the investigation said they weren't privy to all the information. And I think that really points to what we need to take as a grain of salt, with both this article and everything, is we just don't know what the special counsel Mueller probe knows. And I think that it's important for America and everybody as a whole to get to the bottom of this so we can move forward as a country. So it sounds like the special counsel investigation has taken over this function or whatever it was in terms of an inquiry. And I think it's important for, you know, all of the facts to sort of bear themselves out over the next few months.
SIMON: Thirty seconds we have left - do you have any concern, as apparently some people at the FBI did, that this investigation being leaked could somehow undermine Mr. Mueller's investigation?
WATTS: I don't think at this point it would. I think if this had happened early on in 2017, you know, after Comey's firing, I think it would have had that, you know, effect. But at this point, the investigation has already been going on for well over a year, you know, going on a year and a half. And I think whatever is needed to be discovered is really down to the very end of the investigation at this point. It'd be hard to derail it or really taint it at this point.
SIMON: Former FBI agent Clint Watts now at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, thanks so much for being with us.
WATTS: Thanks for having me.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
Sometimes, people have a profound impact on our lives, shifting its trajectory. This story in our ongoing Missed Connections series begins at Southridge High School in Beaverton, Ore.
GREG MCKELVEY: So when I was in high school, the police officer that was stationed in my school would oftentimes sort of call me and a lot of my friends out of class into his office.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Greg McKelvey was a junior. Andrew Halbert was the school resource officer, the police department's representative to Southridge High.
ANDREW HALBERT: At the school, there was a rather rampant theft issue - anything that was easily picked up - so, like, a graphing calculator, iPod, iPhone, any sort of small electronic that was easy to take. It was a group of probably four to five people that were consistently being implicated in thefts.
MCKELVEY: They thought that it was this group of friends that I had. It was a predominantly white school.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Greg McKelvey is black. He says the few black students at Southridge hung out together.
MCKELVEY: And so in that group, they thought that we were responsible for the calculators that were going missing. And they viewed me as sort of the leader of that group. And so I think that led them to want to find out if I knew where the calculator was - or multiple calculators.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Andrew Helbert followed his leads in addition to his other duties.
HALBERT: Selfishly, I would rather be doing outreach in education than taking theft reports. But I was also getting pressure from the school and parents who were the victims of these thefts to actually start doing something about this. So I started a broader investigation and just started collecting information.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: An investigation that Halbert says included interviews, digital forensics and culminated in a search warrant for Greg McKelvey's home.
MCKELVEY: Next thing I know, they're barging through the door in riot gear. And my grandma comes to the door. And from there, they just go through my entire room looking for my laptop so that they could try and get information about calculators.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: This all happened in 2010. Greg McKelvey went on to law school and became active in the Black Lives Matter movement. He first told his story on Twitter as part of a local government debate about having police officers in schools. He wanted to illustrate how they're not always a reassuring presence, particularly to students of color.
MCKELVEY: I knew I wasn't a criminal. But that's all I knew. And so it was really scary and sort of - it changes the whole way that you go through high school when you're afraid that you might get pulled out of class at any given time because of a police officer. And it changes the attitude of the students around you when they know that you're constantly being talked to by the police officers. It makes it hard to do homework when you think that police officers might come into your home. So it really impacts, I think, every part of your high school life in a way that, I think, most people - including, probably, the officers - don't really think about.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Andrew Halbert is no longer a police officer. Shortly after this incident, he also went on to law school. The men agreed to meet on air, where they still see what happened at the end of that school year almost a decade ago in very different ways. Halbert says Greg McKelvey's tweets caught him off guard.
HALBERT: I was surprised because I've been out of law enforcement for some time. My opinion - and you have to understand that this is now a decade removed. I always think that the conversation should be ongoing. And it needs to be a conversation. The analogy that I've used is we used to have the DARE program. And that was found to be largely ineffective. And so it's important to look and evaluate at what is being done.
I still think that the value of a school resource officer is incredibly important. I think in many cases, it's an opportunity to bridge the gap between the, quote, unquote, "scary police officer" that you see driving around and try and find ways for conversations to be had about, what are the realities of police work? And conversely, what are the realities that these students experience with law enforcement in their own communities?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So, Greg, speaking with Andrew, he detailed to us a very thorough investigation. Is there something, perhaps, in your perceptions that you think may be different had you known the circumstances around what happened?
MCKELVEY: No, I don't think that changes it. I think that when you have black students being afraid that, you know, multiple officers are going to come through their door, they're going to be pulled out of class or arrested at track practice, and you have white students that are afraid that maybe they might get detention, I think that that discrepancy is worth talking about.
And then just on the note of having officers in schools so that they can bridge the gap in the community - I mean, no other profession is awarded that. I don't see why officers are there to do that. If officers were in the community not doing the scary police officer things, then there would be no reason to have to bridge that gap.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Andrew, watching the news and seeing how cops are more likely to view black boys as a threat and the statistics that show that they are treated differently, was that something apparent to you when you worked as a school resource officer? Was that something that they had trained you for?
HALBERT: I mean, there wasn't any specific training for that. In the - our department as a whole, they put a tremendous value on treating all people equally. They took a lot of steps and made efforts to track statistics for the race classification that we had contact with to help make sure that officers are not making decisions based off race because that is, clearly, something that should not happen.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So I'm curious to know from you, Andrew, looking back, would you have done something differently, maybe, knowing what you know? I know you've left law enforcement. But would you have done something differently?
HALBERT: I feel comfortable in my decision-making. But again, I would always hope that the formal adjudication or formal criminal path is not the No. 1 option to use. And so my hope would have been that an earlier intervention could have had a more positive outcome.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Greg, you're now an activist. Was this an experience that was formative for you?
MCKELVEY: I mean, never once did I think that Officer Halbert was just some racist, white cop, you know, that was just out to get black kids. But when we're having this conversation about equity and treating everybody equal, I think that we're not talking about the inherent biases that all of us hold. It's not necessarily, why would you do this investigation? But what were better ways to do it? Like, could it be better if the black kids were getting detention or, you know, a talking to by the vice principal the same way as white kids in these white-majority schools are?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And your perspectives on this event are still different. Would you say that, Andrew?
HALBERT: Yes, I would say that's correct.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Greg?
MCKELVEY: I think that there's context that both of us are missing on either side. But I don't think that there's any disagreement on the impact that this would have on me or on students that experience similar things throughout the country.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Greg McKelvey says he was never charged with stealing calculators. Andrew Halbert says he passed the case to his successor and doesn't know how or even if it was resolved. Both men have agreed to keep up the conversation off air.
Do you have something you'd like to revisit and talk through with someone from your past - some unfinished business? Let us know. Call us and leave a message with your name and number and a brief summary of your story at 202-216-9217. That number again - 202-216-9217 - or write us at weekend@npr.org.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
It's time to play the Puzzle.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Joining us, as always, is Will Shortz. He's puzzle editor of The New York Times and WEEKEND EDITION's puzzlemaster. Good morning, Will.
WILL SHORTZ, BYLINE: Good morning, Lulu. Welcome back.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Thank you. What was last week's challenge?
SHORTZ: Yes, it came from Joel Fagliano. I said, name a major U.S. city in 10 letters. If you have the right one, you can rearrange its letters to get two five-letter words that are synonyms. What are they? In the capital of Sacramento, you can rearrange those 10 letters to get aroma and scent.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: We received 502 responses. And our winner this week is Tova Tenenbaum of Philadelphia.
Congratulations.
TOVA TENENBAUM: Thank you so much. Hi, Lulu. Hi, Will.
SHORTZ: Hey, there.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Hi. What do you do for a living, Tova?
TENENBAUM: I'm a social worker. I work for the VA, the Department of Veterans Affairs. And I work with homeless veterans.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So are you working during this shutdown?
TENENBAUM: Fortunately, yes, I am working. And I'm also being paid. I'm very fortunate.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And are the vets getting the help they need?
TENENBAUM: They are, yeah. We have a great program for permanent subsidized housing for them.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Great. That sounds like it's a lot of hard work. What do you do for fun?
TENENBAUM: Well, besides playing the weekly Puzzle, I do the crossword every night before bed. I play Quizzo every week, which is what they call pub trivia here in Philadelphia. And I have a therapy dog who comes with me to work, and he comes on hikes with me and just all over the Philadelphia area.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I bet you those vets like that therapy dog.
TENENBAUM: They love him, yes.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yes (laughter).
TENENBAUM: He loves it, too.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: What's his name?
TENENBAUM: His name is Ernie.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Ernie.
All right, are you ready to play the Puzzle, Tova?
TENENBAUM: I am.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Take it away, Will.
SHORTZ: Well, every answer today is the name of a U.S. state capital.
Which state capital rhymes with noisy?
TENENBAUM: Boise.
SHORTZ: Good. Contains the letters of combs, C-O-M-B-S, in left-to-right order.
TENENBAUM: Columbus.
SHORTZ: Good. Which state capital consists of the chemical symbols for gold and sulfur followed by the full name of a third chemical element?
TENENBAUM: So gold is Au.
SHORTZ: Right.
TENENBAUM: So I'm going to go with Augusta.
SHORTZ: No.
TENENBAUM: No?
SHORTZ: But that does start - and the second, the symbol for sulfur.
TENENBAUM: Austin.
SHORTZ: Austin is right, ending in tin - Austin, Texas. Which state capital contains a silent O as its third letter? And here's your hint - this is a capital in the Southwest.
TENENBAUM: Phoenix.
SHORTZ: Phoenix - good one. Which state capital ends in an O sound but does not contain the letter O?
TENENBAUM: Juneau.
SHORTZ: Nice. Consists of a candidate for president in 1988 plus a president in the 1970s.
TENENBAUM: Gosh, a candidate for president in '88 - so I know...
SHORTZ: Right. He wasn't nominated. He failed in his run for the nomination.
TENENBAUM: It's a little before my time.
SHORTZ: OK. And how about a president of the 1970s?
TENENBAUM: That would be Ford. No.
SHORTZ: Ford is good. Ford is correct.
TENENBAUM: OK.
SHORTZ: What state capital ends in F-O-R-D?
TENENBAUM: Frankfort - no.
SHORTZ: That's not quite. Oh (laughter). That's F-O-R-T. You need F-O-R-D.
TENENBAUM: Oh, you're right.
SHORTZ: And think in the Northeast.
TENENBAUM: Let me see here.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: The Nutmeg State.
SHORTZ: There you go.
TENENBAUM: The Nutmeg State?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I know (laughter) - the insurance capital.
SHORTZ: There you go.
TENENBAUM: Oh - the insurance capital?
SHORTZ: All right. We'll just tell you, the capital of Connecticut...
TENENBAUM: Oh.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Which is a lovely state...
TENENBAUM: Hartford...
GARCIA-NAVARRO: ...And both nutmeg and insurance, I don't think, do it justice.
TENENBAUM: I had no idea either of those things are related to Connecticut.
SHORTZ: (Laughter) Hartford is right, as in Gary Hart. And your last one - which state capital ends with the first name of this program's host?
TENENBAUM: Ends with Lulu?
SHORTZ: Yes.
TENENBAUM: Oh - Honolulu.
SHORTZ: Honolulu, Hawaii - good job.
(LAUGHTER)
TENENBAUM: Good one.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: There you go. Finally, I made it into the Puzzle - my goodness. My ship has finally come in.
How do you feel? You did great.
TENENBAUM: Thank you. I feel relieved, and that was really fun.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I feel like all of that sixth grade stuff came up - bubbled up to the surface.
TENENBAUM: Definitely.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And you were able to tap that knowledge.
TENENBAUM: Definitely.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: For playing our Puzzle today, you'll get a WEEKEND EDITION lapel pin as well as puzzle books and games. You can read all about it at npr.org/puzzle. What member station do you listen to?
TENENBAUM: I am a proud member of WHYY in Philadelphia.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Tova Tenenbaum, thank you for playing the Puzzle.
TENENBAUM: Thank you so much.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: All right, Will, what's next week's challenge?
SHORTZ: Yes, it comes from listener James Matthews of Little Rock, Ark. And the challenge is to make a nine-letter word meaning left using only a B and one D. Can you do it? So again, make a nine-letter word meaning left using only a B and one D. Can you do it?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: When you have the answer, go to our website npr.org/puzzle and click on the Submit Your Answer link. Remember just one entry per person, please. Our deadline for entries is this Thursday, January 17 at 3 p.m. Eastern. Include a phone number where we can reach you at about that time. And if you're the winner, we'll give you a call, and you'll get to play on the air with the puzzle editor of The New York Times and WEEKEND EDITION's puzzlemaster Will Shortz.
Thanks so much, Will.
SHORTZ: Thank you, Lulu.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
Federal workers have missed paychecks for the first time since the partial government shutdown started over three weeks ago. Now thousands are doing what once seemed unthinkable - applying for unemployment benefits. WAMU's Patrick Madden reports.
PATRICK MADDEN, BYLINE: Inside an auditorium in a Maryland suburb of D.C., federal workers and their supporters gathered a few days ago to protest the shutdown, now the longest in U.S. history. Labor activists stood on stage to belt out a Woody Guthrie tune, as many in the audience sang along.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Singing) This land is your land.
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Singing) This land is my land. From...
MADDEN: But in the back of the room, it was hard not to notice a group of women wiping tears from their eyes. Michelle, a federal employee of more than 30 years, is getting tips on how to apply for unemployment.
MICHELLE: I show up to work. I do a good job. I'm doing everything a responsible adult is supposed to do. And all of a sudden, it's all blowing up, and I don't know what else to do.
MADDEN: Michelle, who doesn't want to give her full name for fear of retribution, says she can't believe she's found herself in this position.
MICHELLE: This is the first time in my working life I am going to have to go to my creditors and say, I don't know how to pay you. And it's embarrassing.
MADDEN: Since the shutdown began, thousands of federal workers and contractors have applied for unemployment. Officials expect that number to increase as people feel the pain of missing paychecks. And it's already starting to show at an unemployment office in Washington, D.C. One by one, government employees walked in. They signed their names and waited to get their claims processed.
STEVE: It's depressing a bit to - you know, to be unemployed.
MADDEN: Steve, who also doesn't want to use his full name for fear of retribution, says he left a better-paying job in the private sector to work for the federal government.
STEVE: The reason that I chose a public sector job was the stability of the whole thing.
MADDEN: Steve says another big selling point was the sense of mission.
STEVE: You know, trying to make the world a safer place. And it's like - I don't know - might as well just go make some money somewhere else, I guess.
MADDEN: The federal government says this shutdown will cost at least $50 million a day in lost wages and productivity. And that's not just D.C. Eighty-five percent of federal workers live outside the Washington region. But there are hidden costs, too, that go beyond money, says Randy Erwin, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees.
RANDY ERWIN: Who in the world's going to want to work for the federal government when people are not able to fill prescriptions, are bouncing checks, ruining their credit?
MADDEN: And their eventual unemployment checks will likely be far less than what they were making. And these claims take time to process, and bills can add up. And for federal employees who do receive unemployment, they'll have to reimburse the money when Congress gives them back pay. But federal contractors don't get back pay from the government. Some of them are janitors or cafeteria workers, like John Woodson. He spent 30 years working low-wage jobs at federal buildings. He arrived at the D.C. unemployment office unsure of what was next.
JOHN WOODSON: Might have to wash some cars or go back to detailing, whatever it takes - wash some windows - whatever it takes to, you know, put food on my table, you know?
MADDEN: You're here today to hopefully start receiving some unemployment benefits.
WOODSON: Hopefully. You know, who knows? He might got a way of putting the freeze on that, too.
MADDEN: The he, of course, is President Donald Trump, who has said, without money for the border wall, the government will not be reopened, leaving these workers feeling like there's no end in sight. For NPR News in Washington, I'm Patrick Madden.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
It was marketed as the party of a lifetime. The Fyre music festival - a two-weekend extravaganza in 2017. Hear top musical acts, party with supermodels, stay in luxe accommodations on a private island in the Bahamas once owned by Pablo Escobar. What could possibly go wrong? Well, instead, the people who paid more than $1,000 or more encountered complete chaos.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "FYRE")
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: We see this sea of white, little tents.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: There was a disbelief on the bus. A lot of people thought that, oh, you know, maybe we're passing through this area. You know, our villas are just on the other side.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: And it was the bus driver who said, oh, no. That's where you're staying. It was like, oh, my God.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Look at the bed.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: The new Netflix documentary "Fyre" goes behind the scenes with people directly involved to find out what happened and how it all fell apart. And it is quite a tale. Director Chris Smith joins us now from NPR West.
Welcome.
CHRIS SMITH: Hey. Hello.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I don't know where to begin.
SMITH: (Laughter).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So much there - this documentary peels back the many layers of how an epic fail like this happened. So let's start at the beginning about how this was marketed. A bunch of A-lister models go to an island. And they sell something that doesn't exist.
SMITH: In that sense, it was a huge success - the marketing and the launch of the festival. I believe it was reported that it hit around 500 million people in 24 hours.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Wow.
SMITH: And, you know, that part they did very well. It was just the actual execution of the festival that they started to run into problems.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah. So many people bought into the dream that that video showed - right? - these models frolicking, having a great time, this kind of fantasy.
SMITH: One of the things Billy McFarland, who was the co-founder of Fyre - one of the things that he was great at was selling the dream. And he did that very, very well.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: You had a lot of video because these guys taped everything for promotional purposes. I want to quote founder Billy McFarland, who said in your documentary, "we're selling a pipe dream to your average loser, your average guy in middle America." Do you think that's the way they saw things?
SMITH: You know, it's hard to say. I think that they really did want to deliver.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "FYRE")
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: We're expecting millions of people to come visit our site to see the video, showing people that for three or four days, you can escape reality and come experience Pablo Escobar's island.
SMITH: I don't think that they set out to try to scam people and that, like - just have them fly to an island and have it be a disaster. I think the idea was to try to deliver something that lived up to the marketing. It was just the reality of that proved to be incredibly impossible.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: May I ask how you came to this? What interested you in the Fyre Festival - other than the fact that it just was a huge scandal. But why did you want to make this documentary?
SMITH: You know, I had seen the news story when it broke and just the implosion of the festival and how it was being reported. And it always felt very one-dimensional. And it was very - people focused on this idea of "Lord Of The Flies" with Instagram influencers and sort of rich kids that got stuck on an island. And to me, I was interested to see if there was a human story behind it. And hearing their stories, I realized that there was this incredibly smart, talented, thoughtful, compassionate group of people that all, you know, were trying to help make this dream a reality.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: In the end, the people who bought tickets had a few bad days, right? But most of the Bahamians who worked on this for months - and the Bahamian government - never got paid. And this isn't a rich country.
SMITH: Yeah. To me, that was probably the biggest tragedy of it was the fallout that a few individuals are still dealing with. There was a woman that had a restaurant in the Bahamas that ended up putting a lot of her own money up.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "FYRE")
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: Personally, I don't even like to talk about the Fyre Festival. Just take it away. And just let me start a new beginning because they really, really, really hurt me.
SMITH: The perception of this was that it couldn't fail, you know, that there was an endless amount of money. This was well capitalized and all these, like, celebrities and all this talent was coming down. And the government was supporting it. So I think that there was this belief that, you know, everyone was just too busy to deal with the logistics, like - and they were truly overwhelmed. But, you know, the tragedy was that she ended up putting up a lot of her own money and sort of also had to pay everyone that she had employed because she was stuck there. And she had to look at these people every day.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Billy was recently sentenced to six years in prison for wire fraud charges related to the Fyre Festival. Did you try and reach out to him?
SMITH: We did. We had set up, I think, twice to film Billy. And then he would cancel at the last minute. And in the end, you know, it turned out that Billy wanted to get paid. We didn't feel comfortable that he would benefit when so many other people had suffered.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: This is a cautionary tale, right? What is the caution, though, for you? I mean, I've got my thoughts - a lot of them. But why do you think people found this story so compelling? And what should we take away?
SMITH: It's a reflection of this idea of just perception and reality. And I think, you know, we're looking at a world, you know, that's relatively new in terms of social media and the way that people depict their lives.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "FYRE")
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: We live in this influencer society. You know, everybody wants to have this online clout. You know, people want to have access. And they want exclusivity. Fyre was, basically, like Instagram come to life.
SMITH: And here you had something that was presented as the ultimate sort of festival experience. And the reality of it was so different. And I think that, you know, it feels like a - very much a reflection of the times that we're in right now.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Chris Smith - his new documentary "Fyre" is out this week on Netflix. Thank you so much for coming on to the program.
SMITH: All right. Thanks.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
We begin this hour in a hotter part of the world. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in the middle of a diplomatic tour of the Middle East, including later today Saudi Arabia, where he will meet with the Saudi crown prince. That meeting will be getting a lot of scrutiny after the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, which prompted a Senate resolution condemning Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. NPR's diplomatic correspondent, Michele Kelemen, is traveling with Secretary Pompeo, and she joins us now from Doha, Qatar. Good morning.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: Good morning.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So what does Pompeo have planned for the Saudi portion of this trip?
KELEMEN: Well, I mean, so far we know that he's really continuing this message that he's giving to the region. He wants countries to be working together. He's kind of promoting this idea of an Arab NATO. He wants people focused on the fight against ISIS, promoting energy security and, most of all, countering Iran.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Before we get to Iran, has Pompeo said how he'll address the killing of Khashoggi with the crown prince? The Trump administration has been eager to move on from that.
KELEMEN: Yes, they have. I mean, he said that he's going to talk to the crown prince and make sure there's a full and complete accounting of what he called an unacceptable murder. You know, I'm not sure how much Secretary Pompeo is really going to push that in his meetings, though. You know, we didn't hear much from him when I was with him in Saudi Arabia in October, soon after Khashoggi was killed. He was quite tight-lipped. And the first news we had of his meeting with Mohammed bin Salman was when President Trump wrote on Twitter that he had just spoke to the crown prince, who was - totally denied that he had any knowledge of what took place in their Turkish Consulate. And he pointed out that Mohammed bin Salman was with Pompeo when Trump was talking to him on the phone.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: One of the things that Pompeo, as you mentioned, has been trying to do is drum up support for further action against Iran. But at this moment, Saudi Arabia looks like the more problematic actor in the region with Khashoggi and the war in Yemen. So what is Pompeo's ask in Riyadh? What is he trying to accomplish?
KELEMEN: Well, you know, he doesn't see things that way. I mean, he definitely - he gave this speech in Cairo where he kind of laid out this very different view of the Middle East where he sees, you know, countries like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, which - he's visited all of them this week - as these sources of stability. And he sees Iran as the main source of instability in the region. Here in Qatar, he's been trying to resolve the Qatar-Saudi split. And just this week, the U.S. envoy that was dealing with that issue quit.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That's NPR's diplomatic correspondent, Michele Kelemen. Michele, thank you so much.
KELEMEN: Thank you.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
Earlier on his trip, Mike Pompeo was in Cairo, where he said in a speech that the U.S. is committed to defeating ISIS. The very next day, the Pentagon announced it was beginning a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, troops that had been fighting ISIS. This is just the latest in a string of mixed messages coming from this administration on foreign policy, from Syria to North Korea to Afghanistan to Iran.
We wanted to get a diplomat's perspective on how to handle inconsistencies from a superpower. And so we've turned to Nabil Fahmy. He is a former Egyptian foreign minister and was ambassador to the United States from 1999 to 2008. Ambassador Fahmy joins us now from Cairo. Welcome to the program.
NABIL FAHMY: Thank you very much. I'm always happy to be on the show.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Ambassador, let me ask you first - you were in the audience for Secretary Pompeo's speech - your reaction.
FAHMY: Well, we were all there keenly interested to understand what would happen next. I think Secretary Pompeo was clear in the U.S. strong position on dealing with violent extremism. He was clear rhetorically, although it wasn't actually clear how much support would actually provided literally because in the same speech he also said, we're going to withdraw from Syria, and we wanted more countries in the region to carry a larger part of responsibility. So a little bit more detail would have been useful. I was also, frankly - and I'm going to be very honest with you - as much as I found his talk about extremism strong, I found his almost lack of any reference to the Arab-Israeli peace process quite disappointing, frankly.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: One of the criticisms has been that no one seems to know who actually speaks for the president and that there are these competing foreign policy priorities. What have you been hearing in the region about how they are tackling that? Because on the one hand, policy seems to be enacted by the president through a tweet. And on the other hand, his emissaries seem to be giving a different kind of message.
FAHMY: There's always competition between the heavyweights in any administration on policy issues. What's different now is it's not whether it's the NSC or the State Department or the Defense Department or the Congress. It's actually - you're not actually sure what to do because you're watching each one of these units occasionally trying to pull back the president from positions he has announced. It's beyond competition, and it goes all the way up to the top. To be fair to President Trump, he was elected as a nontraditional president, and he seems to insist on acting that way.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Sure. But when we're dealing with sensitive issues in the Middle East - as you know, it's a region with a lot of difficulties, a lot of conflicts - do you think it's helpful? I mean, some people have described his foreign policy in the Middle East at the moment as extremely chaotic.
FAHMY: Well, I was about to add that while he's a nontraditional president, when you're dealing with the responsibilities of president, there are complicated, sensitive issues and implications to anything you say or anything you do. And it is very important for foreign parties to be able to assess what your position will be before you speak and after you speak. So the lack of a clear direction is a bit difficult to handle.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: You obviously have discussions with people around the region who engage with the United States and the American administration. What would you say the general sense is at this moment if you had to characterize it in a few words?
FAHMY: Well, depending on the issue. On the issue of extremism, people feel, OK, there's a stronger voice. On the issue of will that voice translate into actual concrete measures? - the turnover in Washington, the different voices in Washington raise questions about the sensibility and the credibility of those statements. Some people are alarmed but not worried because they think it's talk rather than content. And others are happy to hear the talk but are not yet sure that the talk will be translated into concrete action.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Nabil Fahmy is the dean of the School of Global Affairs at The American University in Cairo. And he is a former ambassador of Egypt to the United States. Thank you so much.
FAHMY: Thank you.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
To justify the need for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, Trump has repeatedly described the situation at the border as a crisis. But what is it like for the doctors, aid workers, judges, mayors and border patrol agents who live and work along the border every day? We talked to people from every single border state - California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas - and asked them, what are they experiencing? While the people we spoke with agree there is a crisis, they differ over the kind of crisis and how to solve it. Here's what they said.
NORMA PIMENTEL: I am Sister Norma Pimentel. And I'm director for Catholic Charities here in the Rio Grande Valley, overseeing the humanitarian response that we have here in our border. I believe that people that are not from here don't have quite a complete picture of what life is here at the border.
And unfortunately, when we hear all these narrative of the importance of wall and sending out criminals and protecting us from crime and all these ugly people that are coming, I realize that they're failing to see a part of the immigration reality that we see on a daily basis - people who are just like us, who are suffering and hurting and in need of great help. I believe what our Holy Father speaks to us about - the importance of building bridges and not walls.
DOUGLAS NICHOLLS: I'm Douglas Nicholls. I'm the mayor of City of Yuma. We have had a long history dealing with immigration. And we're in a better position now that we have a barrier that was constructed in 2006. I believe it's - would be effective in most places, although I'm not completely convinced it's for every installation. A physical barrier is a very kind of first-step deterrent. Immigration reform would be the primary (laughter) wish list item and then just more facilities, family shelters.
There - we have no ICE family shelter here in Arizona, so those individuals need to be moved to Texas. So we need those kind of facilities here. And then immigration judges are on my wish list. If we had immigration judges that were available at the border, processing could happen quicker. And we could relieve some of the flow that's coming through.
ASHLEY TABADDOR: My name is Ashley Tabaddor. And I'm the president of the National Association of Immigration Judges. The crisis we see is that we have an immigration court that is structured within the Justice Department, so the court has been repeatedly used throughout the years as an extension of law enforcement policies. And we believe that that's where the crisis lies.
As long as we continue to have the immigration court within the Justice Department, we continue to have the problems that we have seen plague the court - the backlog, the compromise to the integrity of the court through the quotas that have been placed on the judges, the lack of adequate funding for interpreters or support staff, hiring a hundred judges and not having enough courtrooms or support staff for it. So we think it's really important to focus on fixing the court.
THERON FRANCISCO: My name is Theron Francisco. I am a Border Patrol agent here in San Diego. In San Diego, we're seeing a pretty big increase in the amount of family units we're apprehending and the amount of unaccompanied children. We are averaging about 154 arrests per day just in San Diego. We agree with needing a wall.
San Diego has been a prime example of how walls work. In the late to mid-80s to early '90s when there was no infrastructure at all, we had hundreds of thousands of apprehensions. Assaults were at all-time highs on agents. And through the addition of new infrastructure, updated, new technology coming in in addition to more agents, we were able to bring our numbers down. It can't be just one. It's the combination. It's that whole system that really is effective.
DEE MARGO: Dee Margo, the mayor of El Paso, Texas - the only large U.S. city on the Mexican border. We need to control our borders. No, I do not believe that a fence will suffice when it comes to protection and homeland security issues. Our fence that runs - was done during the Bush administration. And it runs through part of downtown and on the west side of our city - hasn't been so much a stop for illegal immigration as it's been for, basically, criminal activity, where we used to have folks from Mexico coming over and stealing vehicles.
But the rhetoric related to being unsafe or things like that or all this drug trade coming over, we don't have issues that - we don't have - I asked my police detail about MS-13 gang members the other day. And they thought they maybe could identify one here in El Paso. Right now we're just dealing with - primarily, the biggest challenge we have is this migrant community coming north, seeking asylum.
And the bottom line is that's not going to change until they change our immigration policies in Washington. And that's the responsibility of both sides of the aisle. And they haven't had the fortitude to deal with it for over 30 years.
LUCY HORTON: My name is Lucy Horton. I'm an infectious disease fellow at UC San Diego. I've been working in Tijuana at different shelters and camps that are currently housing the migrants. They're not able to process the asylum seekers and immigrants as quickly as they were before the shutdown, which means that they, potentially, could be facing prolonged times in the detention facilities.
The conditions are pretty squalid - people living in extreme crowding. Sanitation is terrible. Sometimes, there's no access to clean drinking water. The prolonged detention in these crowded conditions is really concerning for a spread of communicable diseases. It doesn't seem like it's as much of a security threat as a humanitarian crisis.
ESEQUIEL SALAS: I'm Mayor Esequiel Salas for the village of Columbus, N.M. There are many crises. But I don't see it as a crisis as it has been described. The crisis is further south in Honduras, Guatemala because of their economy, because of countries interfering with their country, upsetting their political systems in order to benefit from them. It causes chaos. It causes gang wars. And some of these people are fleeing - of course, all that violence. And they're coming up here. And we're just getting the waves of the whole thing. And it won't be resolved by putting up a wall. I'll tell you that.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That was Sister Norma Pimentel, Yuma, Ariz., Mayor Douglas Nicholls, Judge Ashley Tabaddor, Border Patrol agent Theron Francisco, El Paso, Texas, Mayor Dee Margo, Dr. Lucy Horton and Columbus, N.M., Mayor Esequiel Salas.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That segment was edited by Caitlyn Kim and produced by Samantha Balaban.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
The New York Times and The Washington Post are reporting startling new details about President Trump and Russia this weekend. The Times revealed Friday that the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into whether or not the president was working on behalf of Russia against American interests. And last night, The Post said that the president has hidden details of his meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the last two years. Greg Miller is reporting that for The Washington Post. And he joins me now. Good morning.
GREG MILLER: Hey. Good morning.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So, Greg, let's begin with what you highlight as the extraordinary behavior after a meeting between Putin and Trump in Hamburg, Germany. Trump took possession of the interpreter's notes. Why does that stand out? And how did U.S. officials come to know about this?
MILLER: So the officials learned about it because there were officials in his own White House and administration who met with or tried to meet with the interpreter back at the hotel. They wanted more detail about what had happened in Trump's meeting with Putin. This was his first real sit down with the Russian leader. And so they were trying to get as much detail as possible. And the interpreter tells them, the president told me I'm not allowed to talk about what happened in there and also took my notes.
And, you know, this is just an extraordinary thing because, I mean, what Trump - this is consistent with a pattern for Trump of concealing details of his conversations with Putin since coming off - since coming into office.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: It's fair to note, though, that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was in that meeting with Trump.
MILLER: Yes. Yes, that's true - in that initial meeting, although he was excluded from subsequent meetings. And I mean, this is just at odds with how presidents have conducted diplomacy for decades and decades in the United States. I mean, every president in our lifetime has relied on aides to take comprehensive notes of any meeting with the Russian leader because they're such high-stakes meetings, because they want a record of what happened. They don't want there to be any doubt about what transpires in these meetings.
But Trump has just gone in a completely different direction. And it's remarkable also because, of course, Trump came into office in a very different way than other presidents with this cloud over him - this Russia cloud, as he calls it himself - because of Russia's interference in the 2016 election.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Was it worrying to the people around him? I mean, did they find that this was behavior that they considered unusual?
MILLER: Yeah, really alarming, really concerning - I mean, there were objections to him meeting with Putin to begin with from many people on his staff. They didn't understand why it was necessary to have these meetings let alone to have a closed - these closed-door meetings that go on for hours with no meaningful record of them.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Now, remember. This is a president who has had embarrassing details of conversations with world leaders leaked right out of the gate. I'm thinking of his call with the Australian prime minister, for example. So might it not make sense that he'd react by being especially sensitive to secrecy?
MILLER: And that's something White House officials said - right? - is that he was really concerned about leaks, embarrassing leaks, early in his administration of his conversations with foreign leaders. But I mean, he's the president of the United States. And I mean, what - I mean, aside from sort of classified or very sensitive conversations, I mean, he's taking steps that suggest that there are things that are being discussed here he doesn't even want his own staff to hear about or to understand.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Greg, last night, the president called into Judge Jeanine Pirro's TV show. The two are friends. And she asked him directly whether or not he was working for Russia, which is pretty extraordinary to have to ask that question of a sitting U.S. president. What struck you about his answer?
MILLER: That he doesn't say no (laughter). I mean, he says it's an insulting question. It seems like it's just another instance in his presidency in which there's, like, a huge opening for him to try to change how he is perceived. And he doesn't do it. We saw this in Helsinki as well, where he was challenged sort of point-blank by reporters. Can you turn to the Russian president standing next to you and condemn what Russia did in 2016 and say that that's not going to ever happen again in the United States? And he couldn't do it. Time and again, Trump just can't take on these sort of challenges that would really alter the way we see him as president.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: What do you think the reaction will be? I mean, we are hearing from the Democrats that they might want to get more information about these meetings now.
MILLER: Yeah. I mean, I think it's just fanning interest in the Russian story again and the Russian investigation as I - I interviewed the incoming chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. They plan to open an investigative subcommittee that's going to look at - specifically, at Trump's communications with Vladimir Putin.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Greg Miller of The Washington Post. Thank you so very much.
MILLER: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
Let's face it. Email can be exhausting - the notification, the replies, the dreaded reply-alls and so much spam. Here's how a couple of people around NPR deal with their inboxes.
UNIDENTIFIED NPR EMPLOYEE #1: I manage my inbox by filing and deleting emails religiously. If I have more than 5 unreads, I get major anxiety about it.
UNIDENTIFIED NPR EMPLOYEE #2: I follow the Marie Kondo method of it either sparks joy or it gets thrown out. So that's how I treat my email.
UNIDENTIFIED NPR EMPLOYEE #3: I wouldn't say that I always get to Inbox Zero. But every once in a while, I get to Inbox Zero.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Oh, that dreaded Inbox Zero. But this week, we heard about a new, intriguing approach to try in 2019 - inbox infinity. In a recent piece in The Atlantic, tech writer Taylor Lorenz argues, in 2019, you should lose the zero and embrace the Zen. Let all those emails flooding your inbox wash over you. Respond to what you can, and ignore the rest. Key to inbox infinity - telling close contacts and family that your email replies might be slow in coming - if at all - as well as alternative ways to reach you. It's that easy. Or maybe not, depending on how email-dependent your boss, your colleagues and your best friend, your mom and your husband are. As for me, I've apparently been embracing inbox infinity for years without knowing it. And let me tell you, it feels great. Don't expect a reply anytime soon.
(SOUNDBITE OF ZONY MASH'S "MEET THE ZONY MASH")
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
Forty-six-year-old Keith Ivey of Jacksonville, Fla., will be doing something this year he's never done before - vote. Ivey is a felon. He committed property crimes and served 8 1/2 years in prison. Florida had permanently banned people convicted of a felony from voting - until this past week when Amendment 4, passed in November, went into effect. Now almost 1 1/2 million Floridians, including Ivey, can register to vote. Ivey joins us now from his family's car dealership in Jacksonville.
Welcome.
KEITH IVEY: Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Did you ever think this day would come?
IVEY: I really had given up on it. It's been over 20 years. So to actually get to that date, it's been a long time coming.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: You're married, and you've got kids. Have you been talking about this with them?
IVEY: Not in detail. My daughter is 19, so she definitely knows what I've been through. So this year, she was able to vote. And she was very proud to tell me that she voted for Amendment 4.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That must have been amazing. She voted for the amendment that would allow you to vote.
IVEY: Yes, she did.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Why are you so passionate about the right to vote?
IVEY: Personally, I feel like it's a redemption. It's a chance to be a part of society and have a voice. It's almost like we are having taxation without representation. Our debt has been paid to society. We just want to get back on track with life and want the general public to know that we're just like every other person. We've made mistakes like any other person. But that does not define us. That does not define me.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I understand that you have registered to vote. But you still haven't gotten your card in your hands. And there's been a lot of back and forth, since this amendment was passed in November, about how these restored voting rights will be rolled out. Are you worried that perhaps this won't yet come to pass?
IVEY: There is a little bit of worry there. I just have to ask God to direct me, to lead my path. And I'm still waiting. When I get my voter registration card in the mail, then I will actually have a shout of joy. I've been happy but still reserved because I know that there's a waiting period. But we do know that there's an election coming up in March, and we definitely want to be there to vote. We're just hoping and waiting that they will send the card out faster than normal.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And right now you are at your place of business. Right? You've been paying taxes. You've been working. You've been a member of society, and this is kind of the last piece of the puzzle.
IVEY: Yes, ma'am. We've been paying taxes and doing everything that every other member of society does and, you know, trying to live an upstanding life, trying to be a mentor to people that have gone through what I've gone through. There's no blueprint for life after a conviction, so you're just trying to figure it out as you go. And there are so many disappointments, so many opportunities lost - housing, employment - just so much that comes with life after a conviction. And no one ever speaks about it. And you wonder why recidivism is so high. It's - the opportunity to get back on track isn't there, and the system is broken.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Do you have any celebration planned when you do finally get that card in the mail?
IVEY: (Laughter) Hopefully, I'll be by myself 'cause I'm probably going to scream a loud shout of joy. I'm going to give God his praise.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: (Laughter).
IVEY: I probably will do a kick in the air and clap my feet together once I see my voter registration card in the mail.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Keith Ivey of Jacksonville, Fla., thank you so much.
IVEY: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF TAKUYA KURODA'S "RISING SON")
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
At a church in Austin, Texas, yesterday, friends and family gathered to lay a World War II veteran to rest. Richard Overton was America's oldest military veteran when he died last month at the age of 112. From member station KUT, Nadia Hamdan reports.
NADIA HAMDAN, BYLINE: Roughly 2,000 people are inside the Shoreline Church in North Austin. They are all here to remember Richard Overton, who's believed to have been America's oldest man. Overton, the grandson of a Tennessee slave, was born just east of Austin in May 1906. He volunteered for the Army in his mid-30s and served in the Pacific Theater as part of an all-black engineer aviation battalion. During the three years he served, Overton went to Pearl Harbor, Okinawa and Iwo Jima. When asked about the experience in 2015, Overton told NPR that he was just happy to have made it home.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
RICHARD OVERTON: I didn't get like some of the others - some got their arms off. Some got their leg off. Some lost their body. Some lost their soul.
HAMDAN: When Overton returned in 1945, he built a home in East Austin and had lived there up until the day he died. Overton was known for his love of whiskey and cigars, two things he often credited for his long life. In fact, he was even buried with a bottle of Maker's Mark gently tucked under his arm and a pack of cigars in his suit pocket. But that's not all he was known for. His cousin Volma Overton Jr. made that clear at the funeral.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
VOLMA OVERTON JR.: Richard had a special gift of sharing his unconditional love with everyone. And that gift of love came back to him tenfold. He was truly loved by so many.
HAMDAN: Texas Governor Greg Abbott was also in attendance and had plenty of praise left for the World War II vet.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GREG ABBOTT: Richard Overton is a Texas legend.
HAMDAN: Abbott remembered a moment during Overton's 109th birthday that he says represents the man's joyous spirit.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ABBOTT: He challenged me to a wheelchair race.
(LAUGHTER)
HAMDAN: Austin Mayor Steve Adler and U.S. Army Gen. John Murray also paid their respects to the veteran. Gen. Murray used his time to remind everyone that Overton's story was not just one of an average soldier.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JOHN MURRAY: But it's also the story of an African-American soldier in what was unfortunately, at that time, segregated units of the not-so-distant past, overcoming discrimination through professionalism and demonstrated excellence to ultimately right injustices both in uniform and in our society.
HAMDAN: Richard Overton was buried with full military honors in the Texas State Cemetery.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
OVERTON: I may give out, but I never give up.
HAMDAN: For NPR News, I'm Nadia Hamdan in Austin.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
Pictures go viral. Memes go viral. Videos go viral. But a little over a year ago, a short story published in The New Yorker caused an internet explosion. Everyone had feelings, especially women, about Kristen Roupenian's short story "Cat Person," which told the story of Margot, a college student, and Robert, a man in his mid-30s.
After a few weeks of flirty texting back and forth, the two go on one date during which Margot grows more and more uncomfortable but proceeds to have sex with him anyway. Afterwards, she feels disgust for him and ends things over text. And when she runs into Robert again, he sends a series of progressively angry texts to her. The story ends with his last text, the word whore.
Roupenian's new collection of short stories is filled with depictions of women and men who misjudge each other and treat each other with cruelty and discomfort, a weird and awkward anatomy of life in the age of digital life and #MeToo. The book is called "You Know You Want This." And Kristen Roupenian joins us now from Michigan Public Radio. Welcome.
KRISTEN ROUPENIAN: Hi. Thanks so much for having me.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So let's start, of course, with "Cat Person." How did you come up with the idea for that? It felt both personal and universal. Was it for you?
ROUPENIAN: I guess a few different things led up to sitting down and writing it. I had been on a bad date, nothing like what actually takes place in the story. But also, I was just - I don't know. I was just sort of at this moment of self-reflection and then also feeling just disoriented kind of by the whole world. And I hope that that vulnerability maybe made it into the story in a way that let people connect to that kind of core of, like, confusion and kind of loneliness that I think powers a lot of the story.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah. And one of the reasons I think it had such resonance - right? - is that it shaped the conversation at a moment when women were grappling with #MeToo. And what seemed to give it the thrum of, I think truth is the word, was that it wasn't about an overt act of sexual assault or sexual harassment but rather the experience that many women have with men where all of a sudden, right? - someone safe becomes someone who might feel entitled to us.
ROUPENIAN: Right. That is one of those things where I feel like it was probably true for me my whole life that I had experience with men - where my attention and my understanding of them was split. Where I'm like, I think that this is fine, but I'm not 100 percent sure that it's fine, so I'm going to be sort of subconsciously or, like, with some part of my attention being like, how will I get out of this? What will I do if he gets angry? How will I manage to defuse this situation?
I mean, I can't speak for anyone else, but I do feel like it does seem, in the wake of the story, a experience that many women had had but also that they hadn't quite been conscious of having. And that to me, like, does power writing that is meaningful to me - where it's not about, like, you seeing what other people are doing, but it gives you a moment to, like, look at yourself in a sort of estranged and, like, new way. And you'll be like, oh, yeah, I was doing that, and I never would have thought that that was behavior I was engaging in until it was called to my attention.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Many, if not most, of these stories seem to be about these awful men and their relationships with women and to sex - the submissive who kills his ex-girlfriend, for example. What were you trying to excavate?
ROUPENIAN: Yeah, I mean, I guess I would say, for better or worse, there are many terrible women in the stories, too.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: It's true. The women are truly terrible, too.
ROUPENIAN: Yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
ROUPENIAN: They're also given the opportunity to be disgusting. I mean, I - excavate is actually a great word. And often when I start a story, I am trying to excavate a feeling rather than an idea or a thought. There will be something that's making me uncomfortable.
And the stories are sometimes a way for me to look at the sides of myself that don't fit perfectly into that story that I'm often telling myself about how I am a good person, about how empathetic and thoughtful I am. I think I am like that. Like, I think if you met me you'd be like, Kristen, she's a decent human being.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I am absolutely sure.
ROUPENIAN: Yeah.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: You seem delightful.
ROUPENIAN: (Laughter) Thank you. But I do think it's, like, that fiction for me has always been a space to escape that and to imagine different ways of being in the world and also to look at myself and the urges and the, like, desires and the fury, to put it, like, mildly, that I can't and don't want to let free in my daily life. And I think - I mean, I am one of, you know, thousands of people who have been talking about how in the past few years anger of women and the kind of ugliness of anger in them is something that has taken them by surprise. And I would say that I am one of those people.
These books - stories were written over the course of about, like, five years. And one thing that happened to me over the course of that time is that I realized that the emotion that I had been calling anxiety, which was obsessive thinking and sort of, like, being unable to stop thinking about something that someone had done to me or, like, something that might happen in the future - like, I was like, oh, I'm so anxious.
And then I had this moment where I was like, you're not anxious, you're angry. Like, just because you're not saying anything, and you're not - you know, you're smiling - like, I am a person who will smile, like, while their hair is on fire because it just seems safer. And so there are a lot of stories where the point-of-view character has a moment where they're doing something terrible, and they'll look up, and they'll be like, who am I? What am I doing? Like, how did I get to this place? And that is a space that I return to again and again as a writer.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: It's been a while since your story was published in The New Yorker, and there's really not been more clarity on these issues around consent and relationships. So I wonder where you feel like we are as a culture, since your story was so resonant.
ROUPENIAN: Yeah. I mean, I - it's hard, right? Like, it was just so wonderful and so awful to have this collective moment of, like, recognition and frustration and disgust. I felt like what it seemed like - as though all these women who'd had a shared experience were looking at each other and kind of being like, OK, I'm not alone, but also, oh my, God, like, this is so pervasive, this is so ugly and uncomfortable.
And I think I am a person who thinks that any - the more specifically you can name something, the more power you have over it, the more you understand yourself. And so I hope that in a very kind of, like, perhaps slow-moving and, like, maybe even subtle way, like, if women saw themselves in the story, and they didn't like seeing that, what that means is that they have something that they didn't have before - a level of clarity, a level of understanding.
That's not a solution to misogyny. It's not a solution to power dynamics. It's not a solution to how difficult it is to be a person, but specifically a woman, in the world. But I do think it's a little bit better than what was before. And I see that with everything, right? Like, I mean, that was, in a much broader sense, true of the #MeToo movement, which was like, all #MeToo is saying is, like, this happened to me. In and of itself, it's not an answer, but it's better than before when you thought it was just you.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Kristen Roupenian is the author of the new book of short stories called "You Know You Want This." Thank you so much.
ROUPENIAN: Thank you.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
We begin this hour with President Trump's border wall - not the politics but the path. The government is already moving to make the wall real. In Texas, landowners have been getting notices in the mail informing them their land is at risk of being taken. Father Roy Snipes has received such a letter. It concerns La Lomita Chapel near the town of Mission.
Father, welcome to the program.
ROY SNIPES: Thank you. Thanks for calling.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So first off, can you describe La Lomita Chapel for us? What does it mean to you...
SNIPES: Oh.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: ...And your community?
SNIPES: If I was a poet, I couldn't describe it well enough. It's just a serene, beautiful place. The old oblates used to come and say mass there on the - that was the - kind of the Mission trails. They'd come from Brownsville up to Roma and beyond. And Mission's kind of a halfway point where they would stop and, of course, minister to the people of the Ranchos, the community there. It reminds us that we come from a long line of love and faith and hope.
And we go there often to pray in all kind of ways. People just go out there. I'll often go out there to pray in the evening at sunset - just to go and pray. You would almost - would never go down there and find it just completely abandoned. There's almost always somebody down there visiting or praying or families down there having picnics - beautiful, big, old mesquite trees down there.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Sounds beautiful - tell me about this letter that you received. When did you get it? And what does it say?
SNIPES: Well, they sent it to the diocesan lawyer. Of course, this is all church property. So the legal business goes through the bishop's lawyer. And the bishop and the lawyer made the decision to refuse the right of entry. The first letter was - they wanted to come in and survey for the wall. And then the second thing is that they want to take the land for the wall.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And your - and I understand the church is in the midst of a legal battle with the federal government over the land that La Lomita sits on.
SNIPES: That would be it. They'll claim eminent domain. I went to one case at the federal court with another - with the oratory priest. The lawyer invited me just to get the lay of the land. Well, the judge was just almost adamant that he - there was no reason for you to deny right for surveys on your land. A surveyor's not going to disturb anything. So in that case, the judge insisted that they work out some kind of a compromise with the surveyors, like when you can come and how soon you have to tell us you're going to come and how long you can stay and all that. So what they tell us - the same thing might happen with us.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: You mentioned eminent domain. And that is, of course, the premise that the government has the right to expropriate private property as long as it compensates the owner.
SNIPES: Right. That would - they would build the wall on our land. There's a levee just kind of north of the chapel. And it would - the wall would go on the levee. And then they would have like a - kind of a - I call it a militarized zone. That's not what they call it - like a 150-foot-wide road that they would use for their vehicles to go up and down. And if they do that, that caliche road would probably go right up to the chapel.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: A caliche road is a rock road. What would happen to the chapel if the land it sits on gets taken? Would it be moved?
SNIPES: No. No, I don't think we'd ever think about moving it. It would be kind of a desecrated sacred place. We could probably find - they - whenever we ask them questions about it - in fact, we had a meeting with Border Patrol and Corps of Engineers about - oh, it maybe was almost a year ago in the city hall. And they're quick to reassure us, don't worry. You'll still have access. Don't worry. It'll all work out.
We had a lot of questions. We go down there with a Palm Sunday procession, maybe 1,500, 2,000 people. How's that going to work out? And then we stay till sunset. We hear confessions and have a big parish picnic. And I even asked them, well, what about - now, are you going to try to interrogate all those people when we leave? You look at me and say, well, that old guy's got white hair and blue eyes. We'll let him go. But then all these young guys who've got black hair and black eyes and dark skin, maybe we better check them out.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Are you worried that if this wall gets built - and even if it doesn't damage the chapel itself - that it will discourage worshippers, many of whom are Hispanic, from coming?
SNIPES: Yes. It'll discourage worshippers for sure. And it'll also - even for those of us who will go anyway, it'll be like the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. We'll go and cry there. But when we do go, the atmosphere will be altered. The spell will be broken. I don't know how to say it. It won't be the same at all.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: What would you like to see happen, Father?
SNIPES: What I would love to see happen is that, as one of the other oblates said - Father Mike Lemesh (ph) said, let's pray that the president's heart will be open to the graces flowing from these sacred places. We can pray for that. (Speaking Spanish) and the spirit moves. And he doesn't quit moving when things are getting crazy. That's the ideal. In fact, they figure - if we are the smartest and the richest and the most powerful and the most creative - and even sometimes, they say that we're the most compassionate in the world - well, couldn't we come up with something better than building a wall on that beautiful river?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Father Roy Snipes on the line from Mission, Texas. Thank you so much.
SNIPES: Thank you, Lulu. God bless you.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
The government shutdown over the border wall continues. Here this morning to talk about the political action or lack thereof is NPR's Mara Liasson.
Hi, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Hi, Lulu.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: OK. So, Mara, last night, the president called into Judge Jeanine Pirro's show on Fox News. And we'll talk Russia elsewhere in the show. But he said about the shutdown that he was still thinking about declaring a national emergency. Is that still a plan?
LIASSON: Well, like everything else about Trump and the shutdown, it's unclear. He's been ping-ponging around this issue. Sometimes, he says he definitely would declare a state of emergency. Other times, he's said he's not in any rush. But that endgame of declaring a national emergency has been described to me by Trump's advisers as the only plausible way out of this for him politically, a way for him to keep faith with his base, show him - show them he's fighting, even if he's stymied in the courts.
And this promise to build a wall or, really, do everything he can to build a wall has become the sun, moon and stars of his administration. It's really become the white whale. It's become the No. 1 priority. And he's gotten pretty sensitive about press coverage of how he's handling this issue. He tweeted that the fake news Washington Post said he didn't have a plan. But he says, I have a plan. But to understand the plan, you have to understand that I won the election.
The promise with that - problem with that is he did win the 2016 election. But he lost the 2018 election, and he really hasn't absorbed the changes that that's brought. He also tweeted, quote, "there's almost nobody in the White House but me." And I think that really sums it up. It's just him, almost all by himself, making it up as he goes along.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Do we know where he's landed on declaring a state of emergency? You're describing this sort of back and forth. But do we know where his head's at?
LIASSON: It seems that he's saying, I will do it if I can't get a deal. But the waffling around this is happening because some of his advisers say it's not a good idea. It's going to be tied up in the courts. The Republicans in Congress are split on this. Some Republicans say it would usurp Congress's power of the purse. Others say it's a terrible precedent because a future Democratic president could declare a state of emergency around gun safety or health care or climate change.
But other Republicans on the Hill privately would be thankful for the president to take this whole issue off their laps because if he does declare a state of emergency, he would, presumably, have to open the government.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: All right. So where do we stand on the negotiations right now?
LIASSON: Nowhere. We're nowhere. Negotiations usually have a couple things associated with them - first of all, round the clock talks, a willingness for both sides to find a deal where both sides would win or maybe a creative solution that makes the problem bigger, like exchanging a path to citizenship for the DREAMers with $25 billion for a wall. That was a deal that was tentatively made over a year ago, but Trump walked away from that.
The other reason we're not anywhere is that Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, is nowhere to be seen. He is the guy who, in the past, has gotten presidents out of a lot of tight corners. He thinks of creative solutions.
But don't forget; this whole shutdown started when McConnell passed - unanimously - a compromise bill through the Senate for - to open the government not fund the wall. Trump originally said he would sign it. Then Trump changed his mind, and the shutdown happened. And now McConnell says he's not going to put anything on the floor of the Senate if the president won't sign it.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And Nancy Pelosi, of course, is in Puerto Rico. So it's not like, you know, she's here right now talking to the president either. So I guess, you know, this leaves him taking his case to the American people. He tried to do that when he actually went and gave an address in the Oval Office. Did that move the needle?
LIASSON: It doesn't seem like he's moved the needle. He did a lot of things - Oval Office address, trip to the border, a lot of interviews. The latest polling we have is a Washington Post/ABC News poll that shows by a very wide margin - 53 to 29 percent - more Americans blame President Trump and the Republicans in Congress for the shutdown rather than Democrats.
One thing that has happened in the polling is that the border wall has gotten a little bit more popular. It's still net unpopular right now. Forty-two percent of people say they support a wall. That's up from 34 percent a year ago. But 54 percent oppose the idea, down from 63 percent a year ago.
And the other thing we see is that he hasn't been able to convince Americans that there's actually a crisis on the border. That hasn't worked mostly because the people who are coming across are applying for asylum. That's a legal process, and it wouldn't be stopped by a wall.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That's NPR's Mara Liasson. Thank you so much.
LIASSON: Thank you.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
Longer lines at airports, national parks closed and, of course, for hundreds of thousands of federal workers, missed paychecks and worry about keeping food on the table. The partial government shutdown has had some immediate impacts. The longer-term ones can be harder to see. NPR's Nathan Rott has been reporting on how the shutdown could hurt the disaster response to wildfire. And, of course, this is happening after the worst wildfire season in California history. Hey, Nate.
NATHAN ROTT, BYLINE: Hey, Lulu.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So, Nate, it's not fire season for most of the country right now.
ROTT: No.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So what is that potential long-term impact?
ROTT: Well, so the issue is that this is the time of year where forest managers and firefighters usually do a lot of the administrative duties and preparatory work they need to for the upcoming season. And because so many - so much of the federal workforce is furloughed right now, those things aren't happening. So that's hiring for seasonal positions, contracts for aircraft that aren't getting done, contracts for heavy equipment.
A number of training academies and workshops have been canceled or put off, which means firefighters might not be able to get a specific qualification in time for the next season. Perhaps more concerning than lost training, though, is lost time for projects that would reduce fire risk.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So make that real for us. What kind of projects are we talking about exactly?
ROTT: So fuel mitigation projects, thinning operations to reduce vegetation in federal forests and prescribed fires. So prescribed fires are widely viewed as the best tool forest managers have to avoid the types of big, catastrophic wildfires that have, you know, become all too common each year. But because of the shutdown, those aren't happening on federal land right now.
And the window in which to do them is closing in places like the southeast. This is prime time for prescribed fire there. I talked to Jim Karels, the director of the Florida Forest Service, and he says the feds have already missed out on three weeks of good burning conditions there.
JIM KARELS: You know, if you miss a whole month of the prime time, it's hard to catch up those acres at least for another year.
ROTT: You know, and it's important to note most fire ecologists would tell you we're already way behind in that regard.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So it could be quite dangerous. And, Nate, hasn't President Trump tweeted repeatedly that there needs to be more forest management to prevent megafires?
ROTT: Yeah.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: The shutdown clearly isn't helping that.
ROTT: Yeah. You know, and look, President Trump is not wrong there. Bad or misguided forest management, let's say, is one of the big reasons that we do have these big fires, you know, as well as climate change. The irony here though is that in a place like California, where I am now, the president keeps berating our forest management, threatening to withhold emergency funds. But more than 50 percent of California's forests are managed by the federal government. And right now, due to the shutdown, federal management isn't happening on those lands.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That's NPR's Nathan Rott. Thank you so much.
ROTT: Thank you, Lulu.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
This weekend, another Democrat jumped into the 2020 presidential campaign. Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro made his big announcement yesterday in San Antonio, Texas.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JULIAN CASTRO: I am a candidate for president of the United States of America.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Castro is just one of a whole bunch of Democrats jumping in. Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard said on Friday she's also planning to run. And many others have been making the pilgrimage to Iowa. NPR political correspondent Asma Khalid is covering the 2020 campaign and joins us now. Good morning, Asma. Are you tired yet?
ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: Good morning, Lulu.
(LAUGHTER)
KHALID: Not yet.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: (Laughter) That's good because there's a long road ahead. All right, what's Julian Castro's case for being president?
KHALID: Well, Lulu, he's been calling himself the antidote to Trump. And this is largely because he sees his personal story, a story of what immigrants have contributed positively to this country - and this just being an opposition to the way that Donald Trump has portrayed some immigrants. His grandma was born in Mexico and moved to Texas, and she worked as a maid and a cook. And then he and his brother, you know, went on to these Ivy League educations. So he feels like it's really important, given the attacks specifically on the Latino community, to be a part of that political conversation. So that's kind of the gist of it.
One thing I think that's worth remembering is that, you know, a few years ago, Castro was really seen as this rising political star. He gave the keynote speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. And there was a lot of excitement around him. But, you know, now, just given how many people are expected - how many high-profile candidates are expected this season - he's not really seen as necessarily a frontrunner in this race.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: All right. Last weekend, we saw Elizabeth Warren, who may be perceived as a frontrunner, out on her first big campaign swing. Who else are we watching out for?
KHALID: Yes, Warren has been out campaigning, as you said. She's actually - she was out in New Hampshire this weekend. But she is not the only one. California Senator Kamala Harris has been out on book tour. She's - has not officially announced, but she's been getting a lot of attention about, you know, what she's been speaking about on this book tour and how she would potentially take on Donald Trump. I want to play a clip for you from what she had to say on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Friday.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MORNING JOE")
KAMALA HARRIS: Candidly, my focus would be, if I were going to run - would not be Donald Trump. It would be the voters and the people of our country. They deserve, I believe, to hear from anyone who wants to be a leader - they deserve to hear from any one of us who puts ourselves out there how we are going to be relevant to their lives.
KHALID: And, Lulu, she's not the only one talking about, you know, how they would potentially run for president. We know that New Jersey Senator Cory Booker and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders are both expected to be in South Carolina at an NAACP event on MLK Day. And then Joe Biden, the former vice president, who's been talked a lot about as a potential candidate...
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Indeed.
KHALID: ...He will be honored at an MLK event by Al Sharpton in Washington, D.C. But we've been waiting for all of these people to officially make up their minds.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Another big Democratic name is Beto O'Rourke, the former Texas congressman who came close to defeating Senator Ted Cruz in last year's midterms. Does O'Rourke want to run?
KHALID: I think we are a little unclear about that, but he's been getting a lot of attention. He was on Instagram last week with a snapshot of himself in the chair at the dentist's office. A lot of people saw that as a somewhat unconventional way to...
GARCIA-NAVARRO: (Laughter).
KHALID: ...Campaign. But he is also going to be doing an event with Oprah in Times Square next month. And a lot of people are saying, look. You know, maybe he's trying to reach audiences in a different way.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Just briefly, a major part of the conversation among Democrats is gender. Hillary Clinton made history as the first woman to be a major party nominee. And her loss in the general election was searing for Democrats. How's that coloring the view of 2020?
KHALID: Well, I've been hearing about that, Lulu, just out in Iowa when I was there. A lot of Democrats are concerned about whether a woman can defeat Donald Trump. And I think what makes this election cycle unique is how many women candidates are expected to be in this top tier with really serious resumes. We've got people like Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and Kirsten Gillibrand that are all expected to be very viable candidates.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: An interesting time. All right. That's NPR's Asma Khalid. Thank you so much.
KHALID: You're welcome.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
Tomorrow more than 30,000 Los Angeles teachers may be absent from the classroom, the result of failed negotiations between the city's teachers union and school district. The likely teacher strike would impact about half a million students. NPR's Elissa Nadworny has been talking to teachers in LA.
ELISSA NADWORNY, BYLINE: Instead of prepping their lessons for Monday, teachers in LA's public schools are getting ready to go on strike.
JENNIFER LIEBE-ZELAZNY: Because it is supposed to, unfortunately, now rain, we all need some slickers.
NADWORNY: That's fourth-grade teacher Jennifer Liebe-Zelazny trying on the red poncho she bought for the picket line. Her classroom at Alta Loma Elementary School feels like a museum. Posters and memorabilia line the walls. But she says this colorful classroom has seen large, unmanageable class sizes. The school doesn't have a full-time nurse, so Liebe-Zelazny shells out Band-Aids on the days there isn't one. Across the district, students share desks. Textbooks are scarce. Teachers say schools are chronically under-resourced. The teachers union hopes a strike will change that.
LIEBE-ZELAZNY: If I have to strike, I only want to do it once in my career. And I want it to make major, major changes.
NADWORNY: Teachers across the city are reflecting on their jobs, on the nasty contract negotiations that have been going on for nearly two years and on their union's demands for smaller classes and nurses in schools five days a week - among other things. The school district has yet to make an offer that satisfies the union. They say they don't have the money to pay for all that. One thing the district and the union are actually close on is teacher salaries. But drama teacher Scout Wodehouse says this strike is about more than just teacher paychecks.
SCOUT WODEHOUSE: It's not about the money. It's about the conditions the kids are learning in.
NADWORNY: She and her husband, Harry, are both teachers at Orthopaedic Hospital Medical Magnet High School in downtown LA.
S. WODEHOUSE: This is our life.
HARRY WODEHOUSE: This is our life.
S. WODEHOUSE: It's our heart.
H. WODEHOUSE: And we're crazy for doing it because it's so much work.
NADWORNY: For Scout, packing up her classroom, preparing not to return come Monday - it was emotional.
S. WODEHOUSE: I kind of sat in my classroom for a while after school. And I just, like, stared at everything. And then it was weird to, like, leave and not know when I was going to see that room again.
NADWORNY: Spanish teacher Jesenia Chavez feels the weight of leaving her students.
JESENIA CHAVEZ: This is not an easy decision for us.
NADWORNY: For her, the lack of resources in her school - it's personal.
CHAVEZ: I myself am Mexican. I grew up in Southeast LA. I see myself reflected in the students. They are me, and I'm them.
NADWORNY: The students she teaches are low income. Many are immigrants.
CHAVEZ: Public education, for me, was a space of transformation, a place of opportunity. And that's why I'm striking.
NADWORNY: At Dorsey Senior High School in South Los Angeles, English teacher Sharonne Hapuarachy says she'd like to see...
SHARONNE HAPUARACHY: Full-time nurses, full-time librarians, full-time college counselors at every high school - these are not luxuries that we're asking for. These are the basic needs of our students.
NADWORNY: She's been teaching in LA for more than two decades.
HAPUARACHY: What my students would miss in a week does not compare to what they will learn from seeing their teachers and their counselors sacrificing their paychecks for them.
NADWORNY: If teachers strike, schools will be open, staffed by administrators, volunteers and newly hired substitutes. The district says learning will still take place. For Hapuarachy, the lesson for students on Monday will be happening outside the school's walls.
HAPUARACHY: I hope they will learn that they have a voice and that they have power over what happens to them and their schools.
NADWORNY: Elissa Nadworny, NPR News, Los Angeles.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
Two Reuters journalists serving seven years in prison in Myanmar learned late last week that an appeal to overturn their sentences has failed. They were convicted of holding classified government documents linked to their coverage of the massacre of 10 Rohingya men during a military crackdown. It's widely believed that their jailing was a setup, meant as a warning to journalists who attempt to report on violence against the Rohingya, which several international agencies, including the United Nations, have called a genocide. Amid it all, Nobel Prize-winner and Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi has remained silent.
Joining us now is Reuters' editor-in-chief Stephen Adler.
Welcome to the program.
STEPHEN ADLER: Thank you, Lulu.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Let's start with your colleagues, the jailed journalists. What can you tell us about them and the work that they were doing?
ADLER: Well, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were working on a story on a massacre of 10 Rohingya Muslims in the small town of Inn Din in Rakhine state in Myanmar. And they had gotten very far along. They'd gotten photographs of the 10 men, who were kneeling in front of a grave. And we had pictures of them before they ended up in the grave and pictures of the same people both hacked to death and shot to death in the grave. So they were making great progress on the story, and they were actually coming close to identifying the individuals who had perpetrated the massacre when they were set up and arrested, clearly so - to stop them from reporting on that story.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: It's worth noting that a police captain who told the court in April that the journalists' arrest had indeed been a setup was punished for his testimony with a year in prison.
ADLER: Yes. It was absolutely clear that it was a sham trial. I think no observer - and there were dozens of international observers, and not a single one thought it was a normal, due-process trial. It was absolutely clear that the goal of the trial was to convict them, essentially, for doing journalism.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Well, this latest court ruling is obviously a setback. Will there be additional appeals?
ADLER: We're going to look at every possible option. There are court options. There's of course diplomatic options. What we really hope will happen is that the government will pardon them.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: When you say the government, you are indeed talking about Aung San Suu Kyi because she is the one who many people had hoped would intervene in this particular case. She is the leader of the civilian government. She's the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. And she's rapidly losing moral standing around the world. What are the stakes for her right now? Why hasn't she addressed this given that she was once a champion of free speech?
ADLER: Well, we're hoping she'll go back to that position. I can't say why this hasn't happened yet. But I think it would be tremendously important for the standing of Myanmar in the world - for its reputation to be democratizing, for its reputation to care about human rights. And I think it's very important for that country in terms of their economy, as well. The entire world has really passed judgment in a way that I think isn't helpful for the country. And I think she can easily turn this around.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I have to also ask - these jailed journalists also had families. How are they coping?
ADLER: The families are very strong. They're coping well. Each of them has a young daughter. Wa Lone and his wife Pan Ei Mon's daughter was born while Wa Lone was in prison, and he's only seen her very few times. You know, it's very, very difficult on the family. They're lovely people. They obviously care very much about their husbands and their family, and they want them back. But they've also been very, very strong - as have our two reporters, by the way, who encouraged us to continue with our reporting and to get out the story that they had started working on.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Stephen Adler, editor-in-chief for Reuters.
Thank you so much.
ADLER: Thank you, Lulu. I really appreciate it.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
In Boston on January 15, 1919, a tank of molasses burst, releasing a thick, sugary tsunami that killed 21 people and injured 150. On its centennial, reporter Julia Press looks back at the accident's history and impact.
STEPHEN PULEO: We're in Boston's North End on Hanover Street, which is, I would say, the main street in the North End for activity, for businesses, for restaurants.
JULIA PRESS, BYLINE: Stephen Puleo is the author of "Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919." We weave through narrow streets to the top of Copp's Hill for a panoramic view of the spot where a 50-foot-tall steel tank once stood.
PULEO: So do you want to head down?
PRESS: Let's do it, yes.
Baseball fields now line Boston Harbor. But a hundred years ago, you'd find a bustling port, a municipal yard and an elevated railway.
PULEO: This was one of the busiest commercial sites in all of Boston.
PRESS: The tank was used to store molasses, which came on ships from the Caribbean, until it could be transported to a nearby distillery where it was expected to become rum in the last days before Prohibition. Though only a few years old at the time of the flood, the tank showed signs of instability.
PULEO: There were often comments made by people around the vicinity that this tank would shudder and groan every time it was full. And it leaked from Day 1. It was very customary for children of the North End to go and collect molasses with pails.
PRESS: When the tank burst, it unleashed a 30-foot-high wave of 2.3 million gallons of molasses that moved 35 mph down Commercial Street.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
HARRY HOWE: We saw this big cloud of brown dust and dirt and a slight noise.
PRESS: Harry Howe was on leave from the Navy for the weekend. He and other sailors were some of the first people on the scene, as he recalled in a 1981 interview with the Stoneham Public Library.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
HOWE: And there was an arm sticking out from underneath the wheel of a truck. So two of us got a hold of his arm. And unfortunately, we pulled his arm off.
PRESS: Shortly after the flood, 119 plaintiffs took up a civil lawsuit against U.S. Industrial Alcohol, the tank's owner. The case was historic in many ways.
PULEO: The first case in which expert witnesses were called to a great extent - engineers, metallurgists, architects, technical people.
PRESS: Stephen Puleo says it set the stage for future class-action lawsuits and completely changed the relationship between business and government.
PULEO: That architects need to show their work, that engineers need to sign and seal their plans, that building inspectors need to come out and look at projects - all of that comes about as a result of the great Boston molasses flood case.
PRESS: For a short time, the story was all anyone could talk about.
PULEO: Boston has seven daily newspapers at the time. And the molasses flood is so big that it knocks off the front page the Prohibition Amendment, which essentially passes the night of the molasses flood, and it knocks the Versailles peace talks, the talks that ended World War I, off the front page.
PRESS: Even today, the flood lives in neighborhood folklore. Just ask Nick LaBonte from Polcari’s Coffee.
NICK LABONTE: Supposedly, you can still smell the molasses when it gets hot enough.
PRESS: But today molasses is not a common sight on the Boston waterfront. It had long been a major part of the city's industry, from the key ingredient in colonial baked beans to World War I munitions. But the tank's destruction brought an end to 300 years of tradition.
For NPR News, I'm Julia Press.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
In the town of Portishead, England, a small bridal shop made a big statement with their window display.
SARAH PARKER: We didn't feel we were doing anything that was really outside of the norm. But obviously, it is.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Sarah Parker is the co-owner of a boutique called The White Collection. Earlier this month, Sarah and her sister Laura Allen rearranged the mannequins.
PARKER: One side, a model stood in quite a big, traditional wedding dress. And the other window, we have a mannequin sat down in a wheel chair.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: They didn't think it was that big a deal. That's until artist Beth Wilson, who uses a wheelchair, tweeted a photo of the display she wrote. It shouldn't be exciting, but it's the first time I've ever seen disability portrayed in a shop window. Her post got a lot of attention.
PARKER: That's created this absolute frenzy and this outpouring of messages on this debate that this shouldn't be an unusual thing to see in a shop window.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Maria Coehlo called the store to tell them how much it meant to her.
MARIA COEHLO: I thought, good grief. Someone has just normalized that wheelchair, and that normalizes my daughter.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Coehlo's daughter has juvenile arthritis and at 17 began using a wheelchair.
COEHLO: People's perception of her has changed because the mobility aid is what they perceive. They don't see the vibrant, beautiful, intelligent, incredible human being that uses the tool as a way of getting around.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Coehlo hopes that stores everywhere follow suit. In the meantime, shop owner Sarah Parker says a stream of visitors have taken pictures with the display, including at least one little girl who also uses a wheelchair.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Get in shape. I bet that was a New Year's resolution for many of you. Well, to help get you motivated, we have two stories now from NPR's Life Kit. It's a new collection of audio guides to help you get it together in all sorts of ways. We start with NPR's Maria Godoy.
MARIA GODOY, BYLINE: I used to really hate exercise. A year and a half ago, I was almost completely sedentary. I would get, like, winded just going up the stairs. And I'm not going to tell you how much I used to weigh, but it wasn't healthy. But these days, I love working out. I actually crave it. The hard part was just getting started, but then I came across this bit of research.
MICHELLE SEGAR: Basically, all movement counts, and anything is better than nothing.
GODOY: That's Michelle Segar. She's a sport and health psychologist at the University of Michigan. She studies how we sustain healthy behaviors. And she says if you want to start an exercise habit, reframe what you think of as exercise.
SEGAR: I've been astounded that even up until today, very educated people don't know, don't believe that walking actually counts as valid exercise.
GODOY: That was a big hang-up for me. I had all these preconceived notions about what kind of exercise was worth doing. If I didn't get sweaty and do it for at least a half-hour why bother? But science tells us so much counts as moderate exercise. There's actually a very geeky but cool resource called the Compendium of Physical Activities. It's used by researchers to compare apples and oranges when it comes to exercise. And it uses a value called a MET, or metabolic equivalent.
LORETTA DIPIETRO: Just sitting doing nothing is a MET value of 1, right? You're working at your resting metabolic rate.
GODOY: That's Loretta DiPietro. She's an exercise research scientist at George Washington University.
DIPIETRO: An activity that is 2 METs means it makes you work at twice your resting metabolic rate. So getting up and walking across the room is about 2 METs.
GODOY: DiPietro says the compendium lists the MET values for all kinds of activities - everything from mopping - that's about 3 1/2 METs - all the way to line dancing, which can be almost 8 METs.
DIPIETRO: Having sex - that's in there.
GODOY: It is?
DIPIETRO: Oh, yes.
GODOY: Really?
DIPIETRO: Yes. You've not looked thoroughly through the compendium.
(LAUGHTER)
GODOY: But the magic number, what qualifies as moderate activity - that's at least 3 METs. Lots of regular activities do that. Climb the stairs slowly, and it's 4 METs. Climb them quickly, and it's nearly 9 METs, which means you're burning nearly nine times as many calories as you would be just sitting. Even vacuuming counts if you do it with gusto. And researchers now know these little movements add up.
DIPIETRO: Think of it like putting pennies in a piggy bank. And, you know, if you just put three pennies in, you may think, oh, this doesn't add up to much. But at the end of the month, it does indeed.
GODOY: So if you've been sedentary, adding movements throughout your day is a good place to start an exercise habit. I started off with short walks and taking the stairs. As that got easier, I added harder workouts. These days, I even take spin class. But the point is, you've got to start somewhere. Maria Godoy, NPR News.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
There's a new translation of the Hebrew Bible, or what Christians call the Old Testament. The three-volume set runs over 3,000 pages. It was a solo project by literary scholar Robert Alter. It took him 24 years to finish it. And he admits, at times, it was a real challenge.
ROBERT ALTER: If you keep going verse by verse, looking at the commentaries and wrestling with difficult words and so forth, you can get a little batty.
MARTIN: Fortunately, he says he had other literature to occupy his mind.
ALTER: Nabokov and Stendhal and Flaubert and Dickens and so forth. And I kept doing those things. That kept me sane in a way.
MARTIN: I talked to Alter about why he decided to treat the Bible as a work of literature rather than as a religious text.
ALTER: The main reason is I'm a literary guy. And the Hebrew Bible - it has low points, like, as any writer has certain low points. But on the whole, it reflects a very high level of literary artistry. And what I found was that the existing English version simply didn't do justice to the literary beauty of the Hebrew.
MARTIN: Christians, of course, think of the Hebrew Bible as the Old Testament, as somehow valuable only in that it is the precursor to the New Testament.
ALTER: That's right.
MARTIN: Some reviewers are saying that this translation is valuable because it liberates the Hebrew Bible from the New Testament. Was that part of the intention behind it? And if so, what did you have to do to make that happen?
ALTER: In trying to be faithful to the literary art of the Hebrew Bible, I certainly edged it away from being merely a precursor to the New Testament, which is different kind of writing altogether. I would also say that in certain ways, I found myself, in the effort to be faithful to the original, cleaning up the Christological references in the existing translation. I'll give you two examples. I don't use the word soul at all. I don't think I use it a single time. And that's because the Hebrew word translated very often as soul means something like life breath. You know, it's a very physical thing. And there is no concept among the biblical writers in a split between body and soul. So I got rid of the soul.
Perhaps the piquant example, which every listener I think will be familiar with, is the 23rd Psalm - so thou anointest my head with oil in the King James. Everybody does that, including the moderns, but the Hebrew verb does not mean to anoint. The word that's actually used by the psalmist means to make luxuriant - something like that. It's a very physical word. So after wrestling with other alternatives, some of which were ill-advised - you always do that as a translator - I ended up saying you moisten my head with oil. You know, it feels good because you rub good olive oil into your head...
MARTIN: Yeah.
ALTER: ...Into your hair.
MARTIN: It's a nurturing - yeah.
ALTER: Right.
MARTIN: So did you often need to speak aloud when doing this, to hear how it felt on your tongue, in your mouth, as you were saying these words?
ALTER: I have a very peculiar way of writing. I write - this may shock some of your listeners - by longhand.
MARTIN: You translated the Hebrew Bible by longhand?
ALTER: I did.
MARTIN: Come on.
ALTER: (Laughter). So I'm very particular. I write on narrow-lined paper, and I have a Cross mechanical pencil. They should give me a few free ones because I really endorse them.
MARTIN: You think? Yeah, let's see if we can make that happen.
ALTER: (Laughter) OK.
MARTIN: Wow.
ALTER: And before I hand the scrawl to the transcriber, I make an audio recording of it. So I do read everything out loud.
MARTIN: I wonder if you could talk a little about the - I guess mechanics is the right word. Hebrew is a more compact language than English.
ALTER: Ah, yes. You touch on an essential point. Words squeeze together. That is, and he saw him, which is three or four words in English, is one word in the Hebrew because you know it's he in way the verb is conjugated. And then there's a little suffix at the end of the verb that tells you it's him.
In addition, there are not a lot of polysyllabic words in Biblical Hebrew. So one thing I do is that I avoid words with many syllables. Usually, those are the words - you probably know - that come from Greek or Latin origins. And then I simply get rid of words that seem extraneous. In Psalm 30, the speaker, who has almost died, apparently from an illness, says in the King James version, what profit is there in my blood? That doesn't quite sound like a line of poetry - actually, a half-line of poetry. And what I did was I used the same words, but I dropped the is there - so what profit in my blood, which actually has the same rhythm as the Hebrew (speaking Hebrew). So I do that again and again.
MARTIN: I suppose it is inevitable that someone else will attempt to do this down the road, probably many years from now. What guidance would you give that person? What would you hope that that person could improve upon?
ALTER: Well, I think a translator of a great work is delusional if he or she thinks there aren't places where the translation falls down. Let's hope this translator is many, many decades down the road.
MARTIN: (Laughter) Of course.
ALTER: This translator, who will be more resourceful with the English language than I am, will say, that's awkward. I can see he's trying to get the literal sense of the Hebrew, but it sounds goofy in English, and I can do better than that.
MARTIN: Robert Alter - his new translation of the Hebrew Bible is available now. Thank you so much for talking with us.
ALTER: It's been a pleasure, really.
(SOUNDBITE OF ELUVIUM SONG, "WEIRD CREATURES")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
But you don't have time, right? That's what so many people say. I'd like to exercise, but I don't have time in my schedule. I have definitely said that on more than one occasion, but NPR's Allison Aubrey isn't having that excuse. She told me she could give me a full workout in about 20 minutes. I said prove it, and she did at the NPR gym, starting on the treadmill.
ALLISON AUBREY, BYLINE: What we're going to do is start out nice and easy.
MARTIN: OK.
AUBREY: And we're going to get this entire workout in in 22 minutes.
MARTIN: Twenty-two minutes? How intense could that actually be?
AUBREY: You know, there is a ton of evidence to show that if you want to stay healthy, fend off disease, you need about 150 minutes of exercise a week. So divide 150 by seven. Boom. You got about 22 minutes.
TIM CHURCH: You can get a fantastic workout in 22 minutes.
AUBREY: That's Tim Church. He's a physician who's done a lot of research on exercise.
AUBREY: All right, how's that feeling?
MARTIN: It feels intense, yeah.
AUBREY: This workout is going to break down into 10 minutes of cardio, eight minutes of strength training and four minutes of stretching. How's the cardio going so far?
MARTIN: Well, I'm still upright. I'm still running. I guess fine.
AUBREY: All right. You're getting a little winded.
MARTIN: Yeah.
AUBREY: What I want to do now - I want to give you my top tip for shaving time off your cardio workout. So instead of going even-steven there, we're going to do some high-intensity interval training, and this means I want you to go hard for 20, and then slow down for 20.
MARTIN: For 20 seconds?
AUBREY: Twenty seconds, that's all.
MARTIN: OK. Let's pump it up.
AUBREY: Tim Church says high-intensity interval training, or HIIT as it's known, is really good for you.
CHURCH: HIIT helps you have a very efficient workout because you're stimulating more physiological pathways. You're stimulating more muscles, so you're getting more benefit.
AUBREY: Like a turbo boost.
CHURCH: Turbo boost is a great analogy.
AUBREY: All right. You are done on that treadmill.
MARTIN: Sweet.
AUBREY: Next, we're going to move on to strength training. And we begin with squats on a bench.
MARTIN: OK.
AUBREY: OK. Now I want you to stand up. Sit down.
MARTIN: Oh.
AUBREY: Stand up.
MARTIN: You're so bossy.
AUBREY: Sit down.
Then I have Rachel lift one leg off the ground. It makes it a lot tougher.
MARTIN: I can't do anymore.
AUBREY: But just because it's hard, don't skip it. Tim Church says it is so important.
CHURCH: From age 40 or 50 on, you lose 1 to 2 percent of your muscle mass a year. Maintaining muscle mass, maintaining strength is absolutely critical to quality of life. It's the ultimate use it or lose it.
AUBREY: And Rachel says she's on it.
MARTIN: This was actually really valuable.
AUBREY: Even if those squats were really tough.
You know, this is the kind of thing you can do in the studio when you've got a little downtime.
MARTIN: All right, yeah. Me and Inskeep doing the old...
AUBREY: Pistol squats in the studio (laughter).
MARTIN: ...Pistol squats.
AUBREY: You know, we laugh, but it's good to be reminded of all the ways that exercise helps our bodies and our minds.
CHURCH: Reduced anxiety, reduced depression. There just are so many benefits, and each year we learn more and more.
MARTIN: I mean, I'm a true believer.
AUBREY: You know, we don't have time to do the whole thing here, but if you listen to our new Life Kit podcast, we'll walk you through the whole shebang - the 22-minute workout.
MARTIN: Thank you, Allison. I appreciate it.
AUBREY: Thanks so much, Rachel.
MARTIN: NPR's Allison Aubrey. If you want more help navigating life, tips on diet, exercise and personal finance, check out other Life Kit audio guides at npr.org/lifekit.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
President Trump's nominee for attorney general, William Barr, has his confirmation hearing this week, and the issue of pardons is almost sure to come up. Barr was attorney general under President George H.W. Bush when he pardoned officials involved in the Iran-Contra scandal. Many Republicans at the time felt that investigation was a political witch hunt. NPR national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson has more.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: The investigation ran out of oxygen on December 24, 1992. That's when President Bush pardoned six people caught up in the scandal over trading arms for hostages.
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GEORGE H W BUSH: But the Constitution is quite clear on the powers of the president, and sometimes the president has to make a very difficult call. And that's what I've done.
JOHNSON: To the man leading the Iran-Contra investigation, the pardons of former Bush associates represented a miscarriage of justice. Here's Lawrence Walsh reacting to the news.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LAWRENCE WALSH: It demonstrates that powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office, deliberately abusing the public trust without consequences.
JOHNSON: But Bush's attorney general, William Barr, went on to tell historians that he supported the idea of pardons - clemency not only for former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who was about to go on trial, but also for other former officials he thought were treated unfairly.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
WILLIAM BARR: The big ones - obviously, the Iran-Contra ones - I certainly did not oppose any of them. I favored the broadest pardon authority. There were some people arguing just for Weinberger. I said, no - in for a penny, in for a pound.
JOHNSON: In for a penny, in for a pound, Barr told interviewers at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia. He favored the broadest possible pardon authority. Now as Barr prepares for Senate hearings to become President Trump's attorney general, that controversy from 1992 feels familiar.
MICHAEL BROMWICH: His view of the pardon power and in what circumstances it ought to be exercised is an extremely relevant issue, particularly because of the widely publicized accounts suggesting that the president has considered pardoning a number of people.
JOHNSON: Michael Bromwich once worked on the Iran-Contra prosecution team. He had left the office by 1992, but he remembers the reaction to the pardons at the time.
BROMWICH: But the office had developed evidence over the course of many years suggesting that there had been a high-level conspiracy to obstruct the investigation that in fact had been ongoing for many years, designed to protect, first, President Reagan, and then vice president and ultimately President Bush.
JOHNSON: If he's confirmed, Bill Barr would once again become the leader of the Justice Department at a time when a criminal investigation is focused on the president and his associates. Trump's onetime personal lawyer Michael Cohen has been sentenced to three years in prison. His former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, has pleaded guilty. And his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort has been convicted by a jury. The president has said pardons are not off the table. Former prosecutor Carrie Cordero has taken notice.
CARRIE CORDERO: Well, all the different statements he makes about whether somebody is a good guy or somebody is a quote-unquote, "rat" and his constant commentary on the ongoing investigation that the special counsel is conducting indicates that he certainly is considering the use of pardons in this case.
JOHNSON: Cordero, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, says the issue will be a key part of Barr's confirmation hearing.
CORDERO: The fundamental issue for the next attorney general, and for Congress to explore and for our time is whether or not the Trump administration is using executive authorities in a appropriate way or in an abusive way.
JOHNSON: Barr has generally advocated for strong executive power, but he's also told senators the Russia investigation is not a witch hunt and that he'd make sure a special counsel Robert Mueller would stay on the job. Barr's hearings kick off Tuesday morning. Carrie Johnson, NPR News, Washington.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
America's longest government shutdown is now in its 24th day. And it's putting a strain on federal workers, contractors and their families. In a suburb of Washington, D.C., this weekend, a nonprofit hosted five pop-up food banks for federal workers. And more than 2,000 people showed up. Here's NPR's Ian Stewart.
IAN STEWART, BYLINE: It was below freezing in Rockville, Md., at 9 a.m. But dozens of federal workers formed a line that stretched around the block, waiting to pick up fresh produce and canned goods - all free.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: All right, everyone. We're getting ready to get started. If you could just have your federal IDs ready.
STEWART: As the line moved forward, Capital Area Food Bank CEO Radha Muthiah was taking notes on what agencies they work for.
RADHA MUTHIAH: Department of State, Commerce, FDA, FBI, Coast Guard - we just had a woman from the White House. The list goes on.
STEWART: These aren't the food bank's usual clients, says Muthiah. They normally serve people near or below the poverty level. But...
MUTHIAH: Having that missed paycheck yesterday, they - you know, they're just worried about where to get their food. And we've had someone say, I'll pay you back after I get my paycheck, but I just need it now.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: One more bag coming, so you want to just wait here.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Oh, OK.
STEWART: For the federal workers who collected more than 30,000 pounds of produce across the region this weekend, the free food meant one less bill to worry about. And it gave them a chance to vent. Lorette Legendre, a General Services Administration contractor, called Washington's handling of the shutdown ridiculous.
LORETTE LEGENDRE: Something has got to happen very soon because 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.
STEWART: Terrence Graham was also picking up food. He works in IT at the State Department and says he lives paycheck to paycheck.
TERRENCE GRAHAM: Playing with people's lives for the sake of whatever political idea you're behind - it's not good.
STEWART: So you feel like they're playing with your life?
GRAHAM: Yeah, I do. I do. You should value the worker a little bit more than that.
STEWART: Brittany May has a job at the National Institutes of Health, which has stayed open during the shutdown. She says she used to be grateful for the stability and benefits that came with working in the public sector.
BRITTANY MAY: Coming up, it's like, oh, you've got a federal government job. You've got a good job. It's making me wonder at this point, should we go to private? - (laughter) because I don't ever see a private company saying, oh, OK. We're going to shut down for weeks on - at end. The only place we've seen that happen is the federal government.
STEWART: The food bank says it will continue to host the pop-up distributions for federal workers until the government reopens. Ian Stewart, NPR News, Rockville, Md.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
In this country, a partial government shutdown goes on. And it's affecting hundreds of thousands of federal workers and contractors across the U.S. It's also affecting some of their kids. That's because many child care centers inside federal buildings have closed. From member station WYPR in Baltimore, here's Mary Rose Madden.
MARY ROSE MADDEN, BYLINE: It's 10 o'clock in the morning, and Austin Lanham should be working at the Goddard Space Flight Center - part of NASA.
AUSTIN LANHAM: I work on the computers that make the satellite work - you know, routing communication through the satellite to where it needs to go, you know, that sort of thing.
MADDEN: But with the government shutdown, he's not working. Deadlines are slipping. He's not getting paid, and the preschool his two sons go to is shut down because it's on federal property.
LANHAM: Now I'm just a full-time, stay-at-home dad.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #1: Kylo Ren is on this book, too.
MADDEN: But while he's home with his twin 4-year-old boys not receiving a paycheck, he still had to pay the child care bill. Lanham says he loves spending time with the boys. They set up their favorite "Star Wars" figures and watch cartoons. But he and his wife know they're missing out on essential time in pre-K.
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #2: These were my daddy's "Star Wars" toys when he was a kid.
MADDEN: As federal child care centers are forced to close their doors, they still need to pay their employees, pay their rent and all the other costs incurred in running a business.
UNIDENTIFIED TEACHER: You want to pick a song you want to sing?
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #3: "Wheels On The Bus."
UNIDENTIFIED TEACHER: "The Wheels On The Bus." Yes.
MADDEN: Meanwhile, other federal child care centers are getting creative trying to accommodate families. Take the one inside the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Md. When the director there, Shanelle Patterson, was forced to shut her doors, she joined forces with the director of another center about seven miles away in Silver Spring, Md.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: (Singing) The windows on the bus go open and shut.
MADDEN: Now Patterson's showing me around her new space.
SHANELLE PATTERSON: This is the 2-year-old classroom. So we have - two of the Silver Spring teachers are in here right now. And this lady over here is actually from our College Park center.
MADDEN: The two directors wanted to stay in compliance with state regulations and make adjustments so their centers could consolidate. Now there are more than a hundred families in one facility. And the director here, Tara Phillips, says their children need to stay close to their regular routines.
TARA PHILLIPS: We have - about 25 percent of our students are special needs. So you have to be very careful with the environment, the furniture, the lighting, the people, the noise level.
MADDEN: Phillips says they also had to borrow and buy extra cots for naps. The cots at the National Archives Administration Center were property of the federal government. There was more food to cook in the kitchen, and there were more dietary restrictions to keep track of. They had to start using a public park down the street. The center's playground was too small for all the extra kids. For the most part, Phillips says, they're collaborating and cooperating, which is kind of what preschool is all about. For NPR News, I'm Mary Rose Madden.
(SOUNDBITE OF DENNIS SHEPERD'S "INFINITY (ORIGINAL MIX)"
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
So there is new reporting suggesting that the FBI was concerned about President Trump's possible ties to Russia going back to early 2016.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This latest revelation was first reported by The New York Times, and it showed that the FBI was on alert well before the Russian probe that began in 2017. In response to this reporting, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro asked the president over the weekend whether he has ever worked for Russia.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I think it's the most insulting thing I've ever been asked. I think it's the most insulting article I've ever had written.
GREENE: OK. Let's sort through all this with NPR White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe, who joins us this morning. Hi, Ayesha.
AYESHA RASCOE, BYLINE: Good morning.
GREENE: OK. So we're talking about two pretty major stories here on the FBI's inquiries into President Trump. Walk us through exactly what they're saying.
RASCOE: The New York Times revealed that the FBI's investigations had two parts. So one part, we knew about, and that was the criminal investigation into whether Trump was obstructing justice when he fired former FBI director James Comey. The other part, which hadn't been reported before, was the counterintelligence probe into whether Trump was acting on behalf of Russia after firing Comey, making it a national security issue. Then you have The Washington Post. Their story basically said that President Trump had actively worked to conceal details about his meetings with Russian president, with Putin. And so that idea - or Russian President Vladimir Putin.
GREENE: Right.
RASCOE: And that there were no in-depth records of any of Trump's in-person meetings with Putin, not even classified records. And Trump and the White House have pushed back against these stories, but not really with detailed specific denials. And Trump told Fox News in an interview that he wasn't keeping anything under wraps.
GREENE: I mean, this is all extraordinary. I mean, we should say, as you said, the White House is pushing back and President Trump has called all of this a hoax. But just the suggestion that the intelligence agencies are worried that the president of the United States is working with or for another government and hiding what happens in meetings with another foreign leader, this has to be bringing significant reaction.
RASCOE: It is. And you have Democrats who control the House are saying they are going to investigate. The House Foreign Affairs Committee is saying they're going to look into Trump's interactions with Putin. And Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, he tweeted that Democrats had tried to subpoena the interpreter who was at one of the meetings with Trump and Putin during the last Congress but Republicans blocked that. Now, that may be on the table again, and there'll be some disputes over that. But either way, these types of questions, these types of articles being written and reported about Trump and Russia are going to spur more probes by the House.
GREENE: You bring up that interpreter. I mean, that interpreter might be the only person, besides Putin and Trump, who might know exactly what happened in those meetings.
RASCOE: Yes. Exactly. And so that's why there's an interest there.
GREENE: OK. So this is all happening as we mark this Monday as the partial government shutdown entering its fourth workweek now. Any end in sight?
RASCOE: Not really. There wasn't any movement over the weekend. You do have some lawmakers who seem to be getting a bit antsy about getting the government back open. Here's South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham on Fox News Sunday.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LINDSEY GRAHAM: Before he pulls the plug on the legislative option - and I think we're almost there - I would urge him to open up the government for a short period of time, like, three weeks, before he pulls the plug. See if we can get a deal.
RASCOE: And so there, Graham is talking about after three weeks if they can't get a deal doing national - declaring a national emergency so Trump could build the wall without congress's approval. And then you have some Democrats who are saying that centrist Republicans in the Senate should put pressure on McConnell and put pressure on the president to go ahead and open up the government again and that, kind of, it's up to them to kind of force this issue. But none of these options so far are really gaining any traction or look close to becoming reality. Right now things just seem really stuck.
GREENE: All right. Still stuck entering that fourth workweek of the partial government shutdown. NPR's Ayesha Rascoe. Thanks.
RASCOE: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GREENE: All right. So British Prime Minister Theresa May is making one last push for her Brexit plan.
MARTIN: Right. So she is expected to deliver a speech to sell her plan today. And I know what you're thinking - haven't I heard this, like, a million times before?
GREENE: That's what I'm thinking.
MARTIN: Maybe not a million. But for sure, Theresa May has made speeches to try to sell the British Parliament on her Brexit plan. What is different now is that she is warning that if Parliament rejects her deal, Brexit might not happen at all. So the Parliament is going to vote tomorrow. This is being hailed as one of the biggest votes in decades.
GREENE: And NPR's Frank Langfitt is in London. Frank, is this just a broken record, or is this moment really different somehow?
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: Well, this is actually pretty interesting. What she's going to do is, prime minister's going to go to speak to factory workers in a place, an English city called Stoke-On-Trent, which voted heavily to leave the EU in 2016. And what she's basically going to say is, if Parliament doesn't back her deal, which sets out the terms for how the U.K. would leave the EU at the end of March, that members of Parliament are likely to torpedo the whole Brexit process. And she's going to, say, really defy the democratic decision of the British people back in 2016. Also expected to say the trust in politics will suffer, quote, "catastrophic harm" if the referendum result is foiled.
GREENE: So after all this - all the machinations, all the political debate, all the concerns - I mean, she is about to say that Brexit might not happen at all?
LANGFITT: Yeah. She is going to say that because I think that her concern is that if - she's very concerned about losing control of this process if her bill goes down, her withdrawal agreement goes down to a big defeat tomorrow night, and members of Parliament may push for a second referendum. And that's something that even six weeks ago didn't seem realistic, but now it's a genuine possibility.
GREENE: So as we talk about her raising the stakes, what is the prime minister trying to do here? What strategy is at play, do you think?
LANGFITT: Well, I think what you're seeing is, she is very concerned of losing this and not having it be able to go anywhere. And what she's basically going to do is say, you know, the future of democracy is at stake, and so if you don't go with this, you know, this is going to really fall apart. And really basically what she's going to say to her Brexiteer colleagues in the Conservative Party is, if you don't back me, you're going to lose what you care about most. And one of the reasons she's doing this is she's really struggled through this whole process, as we've been talking about now for many, many months. And I think this is a sign that she doesn't have many cards left to play, and this is the one that she's decided to play this morning.
GREENE: And what happens in her strategy going forward? I mean, it sounds like these could be some dramatic days.
LANGFITT: Yeah. I think what's going to - we'll have to see tomorrow night how big the vote is, how much of a loss she faces. Most people think she's going to face a loss. And then she's going to be given three days to come up with a plan B. Now, keep in mind, they've been doing these negotiations for over 1 1/2 years. So it's just three days to do that. She's expected to probably go back to Brussels, try to get some concessions on this very unpopular withdrawal agreement that most members of Parliament seem to be very much against. The opposition Labour Party, they smell blood. They say they will call for a vote of no confidence in the prime minister's government, but they haven't said exactly when. Their strategy is to try to basically win a no confidence vote, trigger a general election and try to topple the prime minister and her conservative party.
Parliament, as I mentioned earlier, David, could move to take control of this process which, up until now, the government's been driving. And that could mean trying to come up with a new deal with the EU, which, there doesn't seem to be at all the time for that. There's a possibility of trying to delay Brexit. And then there's the big possibility, as May's talking about now, the possibility of a second referendum with an option to stay inside the EU.
GREENE: Which would be extraordinary. All right. NPR's Frank Langfitt in London. Thanks a lot, Frank.
LANGFITT: Happy to do it, David.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GREENE: All right. Public schoolteachers in Los Angeles are expected to go on strike beginning this morning.
MARTIN: This is going to impact nearly half-a-million public school students. This is the country's second-largest school district. So a lot of kids will be affected. Los Angeles teachers have been working without a contract for more than a year. They've been grappling with the school district over salaries and classroom conditions.
GREENE: And one person covering this is Kyle Stokes from member station KPCC in Los Angeles. He joins us now from our studios at NPR West. Good morning, Kyle.
KYLE STOKES, BYLINE: Morning, David.
GREENE: All right. So negotiations - we're talking about talks that go back to early 2017. Just remind us, what are teachers demanding, and why has there been no breakthrough at all?
STOKES: Well, there's not been a lot of a breakthrough because there's a really fundamental issue at stake here, and that's how much money the LA Unified School District even has to spend on the demands its teachers are making. The two sides can't even agree on that. So right now, the school district has nearly $2 billion in the bank. And the president of the teachers union, United Teachers Los Angeles - his name is Alex Caputo-Pearl - says it's time to start spending that money.
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ALEX CAPUTO-PEARL: To be hoarding $2 billion in a school district that is more low-income and more of color than just about any in the nation is a practice that must be challenged based on racial justice grounds.
GREENE: I mean, Kyle, that's an extraordinary accusation, to say that the school district is hoarding money and not spending that money to help students. What is the administration's reaction to that?
STOKES: Well, the school superintendent Austin Beutner, who leads the school district, does plan to spend some of that reserve on things like teacher raises and other demands. But he also says the district just cannot afford to spend much more.
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AUSTIN BEUTNER: The notion that we are hoarding reserves, the notion that more money exists somewhere else with which to do more, is not accurate. We're spending all we have in service of our students.
STOKES: Now, the teachers union just does not buy this. The district has been making dire projections about its finances for years, all while building up this nearly $2 billion reserve. And, you know, between things like declining enrollment and things like rising pension costs, the district is still spending more money than it is taking in, and that has regulators concerned about the district's long-term solvency. So - long way of saying - that is the root cause of this dispute. If you can't decide how much money there is to spend, it's really hard to figure out what kinds of demands are reasonable.
GREENE: I mean, one question that always comes up in a teachers' strike is how much of this is about, you know, teachers wanting more money to help students, and is some of it about getting more money for teachers' higher salaries?
STOKES: Well, actually, the biggest sticking point here has actually been a plan to reduce class sizes. Now, that's a financial issue because having fewer students in classes means the need to pay more teachers. In negotiations, the district has pledged to spend about $130 million to reduce class sizes by a handful of students in certain grades. But that's not the only thing the union is asking for. For years, raising class sizes in LA has been used as an escape valve the district has used to solve its budget problems. There's language in the contract that lets the district do this. The union wants these that escape valve closed off for good. That's been a fundamental sticking point.
GREENE: KPCC's Kyle Stokes. Thanks, Kyle.
STOKES: You're welcome.
(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) UTLA, UTLA.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
And that is the sound there of thousands of public school teachers in Los Angeles protesting last month. They were calling for smaller class sizes, additional school funding to hire more nurses and counselors, a cap on charter schools and also a 6.5 percent pay raise. Well, those demands have not yet been met. After months of negotiations between the teachers union and the school district, a breakthrough never came. And this morning, a strike has begun, with thousands expected to skip work today.
Joseph Zeccola is among them. In 2018, he was named as one of the school district's teachers of the year. And he told me that one thing that has led him to the picket line is his past experience teaching in South Los Angeles. I asked him to take me into the life of a student there.
JOSEPH ZECCOLA: What you're dealing with are average kids in the United States except, you know, a gigantic percentage of them are dealing with some type of trauma in their lives. In the average classroom, half of the kids know someone who's been shot. You know, half of the kids have one level of someone connected to their family who is either in jail or has had a very difficult confrontation with a police officer, often for things that are nonsense-based.
So what you have are kids who are in a lot more need of attention and support. And they don't get it. So what happens is you've got kids in the classroom. And all of a sudden, you can't figure out why this - these kids are breaking down crying. This kid is completely silent and frozen. So you're trying to, while teaching a class, assess what's going on with that kid and figure out where to put that kid. Can you get that kid in touch with a therapist?
So, for example, I had a couple kids who were failing really miserably who didn't before. When I pulled them aside, these are two girls who were related. I had them in different classes. It turned out that one was a cousin of the other. They were living together. The mother and the father were on the outs. Father got arrested. They lost their home. They're living with the relatives. The relatives hate them. They always want them out. And I've got two girls crying at my desk, saying, I just want to go home, and I don't have a home to go to.
We don't have the psychiatric social working support for - when a school committee of 2,000 kids has hundreds who are like this, we don't have the support. And what we did at the school I was at is we fought tooth and nail to get an extra psychiatric social worker. It took us three years of pushing for it to get it. And again, when you're doing that that means, what are you not spending money on to get that? But we got it. And the minute we got it, you saw two psychiatric social workers who are trained professionals in social work with a team of interns whose schedules were 100 percent booked, which tells you they probably need three or four. And, again, this is every day you see this.
GREENE: As difficult a challenge as the one you're describing, is this not the kind of thing that public school districts and school systems around the country deal with every day? Are you making a reasonable demand that the school district could actually respond to?
ZECCOLA: Oh, absolutely. I think - I'm really glad you asked me that question. So I think you're right that what we deal with is very standard for urban school districts across the country. Where we're different is the Los Angeles Unified School District, while being part of the richest state in the union and the fifth-largest economy in the world is ranked 43rd in per-pupil funding. So you have a situation where we could do so much better. So the picketing is around trying to get our school board to make the right decisions.
GREENE: We looked up some numbers from the California Department of Education. I mean, the LA school district graduation rates have actually really been soaring over the last decade or so - I mean, from 62 percent in 2009, 2010 to 80 percent in 2016, 2017. You know, you've made the argument that this is not about teachers, per se. It's not about just getting you more money. It's about students. But do numbers like that make you vulnerable in terms of someone saying, look - the schools are actually doing well by its students - this strike may be just about getting more money for teachers?
ZECCOLA: It's a silly way to look at it because I have 38 students in an 11th grade English class. There is no way I can give them the time they deserve. And I'm one of these teachers who - I spend my vacation time meeting with students to give them writers' conferences. So what you're talking about is all of us have traditionally - and teachers across the country will tell you this - we do more with less. When they make cuts, we adjust because you don't get into this profession to get rich. You get into it because you care desperately about the kids that you're in the room with.
So we keep adjusting when those situations happen. And we have risen the graduation rate. I'm very proud of that. But the idea that their conditions are close to optimal, again, I would say is preposterous. The class size - if I have a class of 36 - just to give you an idea, David - and I want to read my students' papers - and I want to read all of them, and you can't - class size of 36 - to give every student a 15-minute read, that's nine hours, not counting going to the bathroom. And that's outside of school. And that's one class, one set of papers. And as an English teacher, I want my kids to write constantly.
So it's just - it's not sustainable under the current levels when you have class size like that. And just as a as a way to look at the difference, you know, the most prestigious private school in our city, Harvard-Westlake, has class sizes of 15. What does that tell you? I mean, there's a reason those class sizes are there. So, no, we're not going to get rich. Do we deserve a raise? Sure we do. But I'm one of the teachers - and there are countless like us who would give up the raise for the class size in a heartbeat. You know, we'd like both, but the class size is a thing that we'd fight to the death over.
GREENE: Let me just give you a chance to speak directly to parents of students in this district who, you know, could obviously be worried about what this all means for their students - and they're going to be seeing a lot of disruption - to tell them why it's worth it.
ZECCOLA: It's worth it because if you look nationwide, you see a trend of public education being defunded, being devalued. Last year, you saw some teacher strikes in some of the worst-funded states. What we're trying to do for every kid in this country but most specifically for every kid in Los Angeles is push that ball back in the other direction and to say that public education is a vital necessity. Our kids deserve the best we can give them. We want them to have the skills to negotiate the best possible lives for themselves. And the way to do that is to give them the resources and to create a teaching profession that attracts the best and brightest to come into it - not to get rich but to know that it won't be such a burden, they'll quit.
GREENE: Well, thanks so much for talking to us. And congrats on the teaching award. That's great stuff.
ZECCOLA: Thank you very much, David.
GREENE: Joseph Zeccola was named one of the Los Angeles Unified School District's teachers of the year in 2018.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
British Prime Minister Theresa May has warned that rejecting her Brexit plan would be a disaster for British democracy and that if Parliament defeats her Brexit deal tomorrow, the U.K. may not leave the EU at all.
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PRIME MINISTER 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.
MARTIN: All this comes on the eve of what will be one of the biggest votes in the British Parliament in decades. NPR's Frank Langfitt joins us now from London. Good morning, Frank.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: Hey. Good morning, Rachel.
MARTIN: What did Theresa May say in this speech today that she has not said in the many times that she has made her case for her Brexit plan?
LANGFITT: (Laughter) She has made it many times. What she suggested is if Parliament doesn't back her Brexit withdrawal agreement, which sets out the terms for how the United Kingdom would leave the European Union the end of March, that members of Parliament are likely to torpedo the Brexit process and try to stop the U.K. from leaving the EU. That, of course, would, from her perspective and many perspectives here, defy the democratic decision of the British people, which they took in 2016.
MARTIN: I mean, this is fascinating - right? - because up until now, she had been making an economic argument - that if you don't buy my Brexit plan, there will be a so-called hard Brexit, and that's going to be devastating for the economy. Now she's saying it's going to undermine Britain's entire democracy, so...
LANGFITT: Yeah, exactly.
MARTIN: ...Is she just ramping up rhetoric...
LANGFITT: She - well...
MARTIN: ...Or was she understating the threat?
LANGFITT: Well, I think she's raising the stakes because she looks - she could be heading for a very big defeat here. And so what she wants to do is impress on her Brexiteer colleagues in her own party that if they don't back her, they face the worst scenario that they've thought about, which would be actually being stuck inside the European Union. It's the last thing that they want. And she spoke about this earlier today. Here's how she described it.
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MAY: It's now my judgment that the more likely outcome is a paralysis in Parliament that risks there being no Brexit. That makes it even more important that MPs consider very carefully how they will vote tomorrow night.
MARTIN: Frank, can you walk through - if we can skip...
LANGFITT: Sure.
MARTIN: ...A couple steps here, what happens if they don't support her plan? What happens if there's another referendum?
LANGFITT: There's a whole range of possibilities. It's uncertain, and there's a lot of risk here. So if it gets voted down tomorrow night, the Parliament has given Prime Minister May 3 days to come back with a Plan B. She may go to Brussels on Wednesday, try to get more concessions on the deal. But people are skeptical that she's going to get anything that's going to win over members even of her own party.
The opposition Labour Party, they see an opportunity here. They would like to call a vote of no confidence in the prime minister's government. And what they're aiming to do is trigger a general election, where they hope their head, Jeremy Corbyn, would end up in No. 10 Downing Street, knocking off the prime minister and pushing the Conservative Party out of power.
Now, the other thing is Parliament could move to take control of the Brexit process. And that could mean everything from trying to come up with a new deal with the EU - that's unlikely - trying to delay Brexit - a little more likely. And then the thing she's most concerned about and talking about today is the idea that there could be a second referendum with an option to stay inside the European Union.
MARTIN: Do you think people's minds have changed through this? I mean, if they were to have a second referendum, would the outcome be any different?
LANGFITT: That's a great question. So I would've said six months ago no, but we've seen some drift, so I think it might be closer to a 52/48 to stay in the EU, but that may not be enough. And then at all - if you had a second referendum, you talk to people who even voted to remain in the EU who actually would agree with what the prime minister said today and said, you know something? I really want to, you know, stay in the EU but not at the cost of the integrity of British democracy. And so you could still see, even if it went to a second referendum, there's no guarantee that remain would win.
MARTIN: You've covered this since the very beginning, since that first Brexit vote in 2016. How are you watching this unfold? What are you thinking about?
LANGFITT: I think there are some really interesting lessons for democracies. One is that this is an incredibly complex issue. And to take it to, you know, the voters, basically untangling 40 years of economic integration, is asking a lot of voters. The second thing is if you're going to do something like this, you need a plan. And it's very clear the government of the United Kingdom did not have a plan for dealing with this, which is one of the reasons we find ourselves in a pretty chaotic situation here in London.
MARTIN: NPR's Frank Langfitt for us this morning from London. Thanks so much, Frank.
LANGFITT: Happy to do it, Rachel.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Rachel Martin. If you're talking with a British person and they say to you, with the greatest respect, you'd probably think, hey, this person is really hearing me out. Nope. In British sarcasm, it actually means, I think you are an idiot. According to a new poll in the U.K., most Americans just don't get the British art of passive aggression. Other examples, that's a very brave proposal actually means you are insane. And if your British buddy says, I'll bear it in mind, he has forgotten it already. It's MORNING EDITION.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
So did the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi change the U.S.-Saudi relationship? The Trump administration has been under pressure to hold the Saudi government accountable. And this morning, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Saudi Arabia's crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman This comes as Pompeo continues a weeklong swing through the Middle East, and NPR's Jackie Northam is here to catch us up. Hi, Jackie.
JACKIE NORTHAM, BYLINE: Morning, David.
GREENE: So what was this meeting like?
NORTHAM: Well, it lasted about 45 minutes, and there were several issues that came up. The two men talked about conflicts in Syria and Yemen and the need to find a way to end the war there. Iran also came up. Saudi Arabia and the U.S. are on the same page about trying to contain Iran. But yes, they also talked about the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. He was killed at the Saudi Embassy in Istanbul last October. And Pompeo spoke to reporters afterwards about their talk, and this is what he had to say.
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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 that all of those involved in the murder of Khashoggi will be held accountable.
GREENE: Well, a lot to unpack there - I mean, saying that accountability is important but also stressing the friendship between the two countries.
NORTHAM: Right.
GREENE: And this is not the first time Pompeo has had a meeting with the crown prince since this journalist's death, right?
NORTHAM: No, that's right. Pompeo met with the crown prince about two weeks after Khashoggi was killed. And, you know, David, his death just caused outrage across the world. And there were demands from all corners for accountability. Pompeo was dispatched at that time to Riyadh to hear what the crown prince had to say about it because the finger of responsibility was pointing towards the crown prince. There was pictures of the two men smiling and shaking hands. And at the time, Pompeo said the crown prince categorically denied any involvement in Khashoggi's death. But here is Pompeo back in Riyadh asking for more details.
GREENE: You say the finger of responsibility. I mean, one (laughter) - one place pointing that finger is U.S. intelligence, right? I mean, they've basically concluded that the crown prince was somehow involved in this death. So the issue is not going away at all.
NORTHAM: Right.
GREENE: And doesn't that put more pressure on Pompeo to be tougher with Saudi Arabia?
NORTHAM: Well, yes. Indeed. And in fact, before he left, State Department officials had a backgrounder for reporters. And they were saying that, you know, the Saudis have to come up with what they call a credible narrative. They have to be shown to be more proactive in trying to, you know, decide who has done this, who caused Khashoggi's killing. So Pompeo probably did speak much more harshly than he did the first time around. But we don't - we're not privy to these conversations. The two men spoke by themselves for a little while. So we'll have to see. You know, there are 11 suspects on trial in Saudi Arabia for Khashoggi's death. And five of those face the death penalty, but there's a lot of anger. There's a lot of concern, you know, that people aren't being held accountable, meaning the crown prince himself. And so, you know, the U.S. has said, look it, even if they're having those legal processes under way now and these 11 are being tried, it doesn't really hit the threshold of credibility.
GREENE: We should say this meeting in Saudi Arabia - I mean, part of a much bigger trip that Secretary of State Pompeo is making, but he's cutting it a little short. Is that right? What's happening?
NORTHAM: Yeah, that's right. He was supposed to be going to Kuwait. It was supposed to be sort of the last leg of this weeklong swing through the Middle East, but they're heading back. He's heading back to the U.S. for a family funeral. That's why he's returning early.
GREENE: Oh, I see. OK. NPR's Jackie Northam, thanks so much.
NORTHAM: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF TOR SONG, "GLASS & STONE")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
President Trump has a warning for Turkey. He said on Twitter that if Turkey attacks U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in Syria, the U.S. will, quote, "devastate Turkey economically." Last month, the president announced that the U.S. is pulling all its troops out of Syria, and defense officials confirm that process is now underway. But the U.S. exit will leave Kurdish fighters vulnerable to an attack by Turkey. U.S. forces fought alongside Kurdish forces in the battle against ISIS. Now I am joined by Robert Ford, U.S. ambassador to Syria from 2011 to 2014. Ambassador, thanks for being here.
ROBERT FORD: Good morning. How are you?
MARTIN: I am well. You support President Trump's decision to pull troops from Syria. Can you just briefly remind us why you think that's the best course of action?
FORD: The reason I think it's the best course of action is that the American soldiers there have done about as much as they can in terms of reducing ISIS's capacity to threaten the United States. To totally eradicate ISIS, that's really a job that only Syrians, not American soldiers, can do.
MARTIN: So what do you make of the president's tweet warning Turkey not to attack the Kurds? Do you think that will be enough to deter an action like that?
FORD: Well, that's going to be hard. The animosity between the Syrian Kurdish fighters, this particular group in Syria and Turkey, goes back decades. And it's going to take very agile American diplomacy to keep the two sides from starting to fight again.
MARTIN: What about this mention - the president, in that same tweet, just said the words create 20-mile safe zone. What does that mean? Can you provide - understanding you're not in the president's head, but can you give any more context to what that would look like on the ground?
FORD: The tweet raises a lot of questions. The Americans and Turkey and this Syrian Kurdish fighting group have been discussing some kind of a border zone. That's been going on for weeks. But exactly how that would be done, what it would include - would it include Syrian Kurdish towns, for example? That's less clear.
MARTIN: What does it mean when the president says he'll devastate Turkey economically? I mean, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was asked by reporters today traveling with him in the region. He said it wasn't really clear on what it did mean. Is it sanctions? What would it look like?
FORD: Well, for example, the Trump administration applied punitive sanctions against Turkish exports to the United States because of the case of the American pastor Andrew Brunson, who had been held by the Turks for years. Would those sanctions be reimposed again? It's not clear. Again, you know, diplomacy by tweet can raise as many questions as it answers.
MARTIN: Before I let you go, I want to get your reaction to a story that broke in The Washington Post over the weekend. It reveals that President Trump went to great lengths to conceal details of conversations he had with Vladimir Putin. That reportedly includes at least once taking the notes from his own interpreter and instructing that interpreter not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials. As someone with a long history in the State Department, a veteran diplomat, would that be an unusual move?
FORD: Well, I was around summits involving George Herbert Walker Bush and Barack Obama and others, and I've never heard of a president taking translator's notes like that. You know, a president's desire for keeping conversations private is certainly understandable, but usually the top aides are included in understanding what was discussed, even if they weren't in the meeting. And the Trump administration seems to be going way beyond that in terms of trying to keep information limited. And it's not helpful in teams, diplomatic teams, being able to do the follow-up.
MARTIN: Do you see this as a dangerous precedent?
FORD: No. I don't think it's a dangerous precedent because every American president can set his or her own style. Richard Nixon's antics didn't create a precedent during the 1970s, for example. And he was a guy who loved privacy, too. But what I do think is, today, it's making the task of the State Department, it's making the task of the Defense Department, it's making the task of the National Security Council more difficult.
MARTIN: Ambassador Robert Ford, now a senior fellow at both the Middle East Institute and Yale University. Thanks so much.
FORD: My pleasure. Thank you.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Our next guest knows a thing or two about government shutdowns. It is Newt Gingrich. He was House speaker in 1995. He and then-President Bill Clinton reached an impasse over the budget, and parts of the government shut down twice, actually. The first '95 shutdown was in November and lasted five days. The second was about a month later. It lasted 21 days, and that was the record until this current shutdown, which hit 21 days on Friday. And that is when we called Newt Gingrich.
NEWT GINGRICH: Today they're tying my record, and tomorrow they'll break it. So I have a deep personal interest in this.
GREENE: Are you proud of that record?
GINGRICH: Yes. It led to an agreement with Clinton that led to welfare reform, the largest capital gains tax cut in history and four straight balanced budgets for the only time in your lifetime. And we wouldn't have gotten to them without the level of intensity. I mean, I think that we couldn't have moved the system that far without having raised the heat.
GREENE: Level of intensity and raising the heat. Like, why is that productive, and why is a shutdown the only way to do that?
GINGRICH: Look. Let's assume you have a system where there are large blocs of power that don't particularly want to change, and they don't particularly want to move. And so if they can, they're going to resist whatever you're doing. And the two ways, historically, were - well, there are three ways of really changing. One is somebody runs a campaign in which they win such a clear public will that the Congress and the president get something done. Reagan, in his first two years, for example. The second way things change is you have a genuine crisis - 9/11. The world was different by the evening of 9/11, and people responded for about a year. I mean, there was a real bipartisan effort, a real wake-up call.
The third way you do it is, is you have a huge coalition, that they are engaged in a political dance. And the reason you have to raise the heat is - Reagan used to say that his job was to turn up the light for the American people so they would turn up the heat on Congress. That really was how he governed.
GREENE: But what do you tell federal workers who are out of work right now going without pay if they feel like they're being held hostage for a political dance?
GINGRICH: Well, what I'd tell them is that, unfortunately, it is part of the American system. Now, look. I would love to have the federal employee unions, who are overwhelmingly Democratic, who are upset, would call Schumer and Pelosi and say, why is this such a big deal to you?
GREENE: Well, I have to say - I mean, with respect, Mr. Speaker - I mean, we've talked to federal workers who have never brought up politics at all - not talking about whether they're Democrats or Republicans - that have just been saying they don't have enough money to, you know, to pay the bills and they're thinking about, you know, going into the savings - college savings for their kids.
GINGRICH: Right. And the Senate passed the right bill which will guarantee them that they get paid when this is over, period. So they will all get compensated. Whether they go to work or not, whether they're laid off or not, everybody will get paid. So nobody, on an annual basis, nobody will lose money.
GREENE: You once suggested to a group of reporters that you in part provoked the initial shorter shutdown in 1995 'cause you felt snubbed by Bill Clinton for not talking to you on Air Force One...
GINGRICH: Yeah. That's just baloney.
GREENE: ...On flights to and from Israel, and he made you deplane from the back of the plane. It's...
GINGRICH: That is baloney. That's not what I said. This is one of those examples where you end up with an urban legend because one particular liberal reporter totally distorted what I said, and I then got to be a really clever cover of, I think it was Newsday.
GREENE: With you as the crybaby?
GINGRICH: Yeah. But what I said to them was, that in agreeing - we all agreed to go to Israel for the prime minister, for his funeral because he'd been assassinated.
GREENE: Yitzhak Rabin, we're talking about.
GINGRICH: Right. And so Dole and I are on the plane. We're going to fly all the way to Israel. We're going to fly all the way back. And in that time period, at some point, we could have had an hour or two to try to make some progress on negotiating. And later on, one of the people who was on the plane wrote a column and said the truth is that Bill Clinton was playing Hearts - that this whole notion that he was too exhausted is baloney, that he was sitting up front playing Hearts.
GREENE: Card game.
GINGRICH: Yeah. A card game.
GREENE: You described that to reporters, and you said that, you know, he made you get off in the back of the plane and so forth. And whatever you meant to be talking about, you know, you were seen as petty, a crybaby. You know, starting a shutdown over a snub. And you did say allowing that narrative to take hold was the single most avoidable mistake you made as speaker, right?
GINGRICH: Right. And at two levels. One is, I should have gone to the floor the next day and corrected it. And the other is, it's a good reminder to politicians not to go and talk to reporters.
GREENE: (Laughter). Well, I hope you don't follow that guideline.
GINGRICH: Well, no. I obviously don't. But I'll you flatly, I felt like I had been ambushed and that I'd been lied about.
GREENE: But doesn't that speak to the political risk, if you're dealing with a shutdown? I mean that in this political dance, if you're dealing with lives and federal workers...
GINGRICH: No. It shows you the political risk of dealing with the American news media. There's a reason that various media analysts say Trump gets, like, 92 percent negative coverage. He knows whatever he does, three weeks later, virtually every major media outlet in the country will be against it.
GREENE: But, like, he used the word proud, at one point, saying he would be proud to shut down the government over his fight for a border wall. Was that a smart word to use?
GINGRICH: No. Look. I don't think it's ever smart to be happy, or proud, to use that word, about causing pain to people. But I think what he was trying to say was that if the cost of getting to control of the Southern border is a head-on collision, that he is willing to have that head-on collision.
GREENE: How long is this shutdown going to go on, do you think?
GINGRICH: Mid to late-February.
GREENE: Why do you predict that?
GINGRICH: Well, because nobody's tired enough. I mean, you know, Pelosi's feeling her oats. She's a brand-new, first re-elected speaker since Sam Rayburn in 1954. So she has no reason right now to be reasonable. Schumer, basically, is tied to her. He is the tail on the kite, and she's the kite. And Trump is genuinely determined to protect the southern border.
GREENE: Could this backfire for both sides?
GINGRICH: Well, the country will be increasingly angry at everybody.
GREENE: Is that a good thing for either side?
GINGRICH: Well, it probably creates a space for somebody like Beto O'Rourke to show up as a totally unknown person, with no record, who is cheerfully pleasant and can say, I didn't do any of it. I think this hurts all - you know, and not just the old-timers. I mean, I think this hurts the Kamala Harrises, and it hurts Booker. It hurts anybody who's in office right now because they don't have a solution, and they become part of the mess.
GREENE: Newt Gingrich, pleasure talking to you. We really appreciate the time.
GINGRICH: Take care.
GREENE: He is the former speaker of the House.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Good morning. I'm David Greene. The Kansas City Chiefs won on Saturday, but as the AP reports, offensive lineman Jeff Allen nearly missed the game. His car got stuck in the snow. Allen tweeted that a nice guy named Dave rescued him. He asked for help finding Dave so he could get him playoff tickets. Allen said he tracked him down, despite all the people around town who suddenly changed their name to Dave. I'll tell you, as people in our plight know, the world has plenty of Daves already. It's MORNING EDITION.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
President Trump travels to New Orleans today to address the 100th annual convention of the Farm Bureau Federation. The farm belt has been struggling with years of low crop prices, and the president's trade policies have not helped. But the president is still likely to get a warm welcome. Here's NPR's Scott Horsley.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: President Trump showed up at last year's Farm Bureau convention and joked about being disappointed when he learned it was the 99th annual meeting. With a marker's eye for round numbers, Trump promised he'd be back for the centennial. Farmers are a core constituency for the president who won 62 percent of the rural vote in 2016. Trump is eager to cultivate that support. He cheerfully spread some political fertilizer at the farmers' convention last year.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: You embody the values of hard work, grit, self-reliance and sheer determination we need to - did you ever hear this expression? - Make America Great Again. Has anybody ever...
(APPLAUSE)
HORSLEY: Many farmers have cheered Trump's efforts to roll back regulations, but they're not necessarily sharing in the fruits of the booming U.S. economy. Executive Vice President Dale Moore of the Farm Bureau says net farm income fell an estimated 12 percent last year and about 40 percent from its peak in 2013.
DALE MOORE: We've got to get that net farm income - we've got to get the farm economy booming again not only for the farmers and ranchers. But when our folks are prospering, that also helps our industry sector partners.
HORSLEY: The drop in farm income is partly the result of cyclical factors - overproduction and a resulting decline in the price of farmed goods. But Trump has added to the farmers' woes by picking trade fights with China, Mexico, Canada and the EU.
KRISTIN DUNCANSON: We weather the weather across the world well. It's weathering the politics that makes managing our businesses a little tougher than they have in the past.
HORSLEY: Kristin Duncanson raises hogs, corn and soybeans in Mapleton, Minn. China, which had been a major export market for American soybeans, all but stopped buying them last year in retaliation for Trump's tariffs. Duncanson says she understands the president's push to confront unfair trade practices by Beijing, but she and her fellow farmers are caught in the crossfire.
DUNCANSON: The idea is good. We need to have a better way to do business with the Chinese. The path to get there that we've taken has been very disruptive for a lot of farmers.
HORSLEY: There are early signs of a thaw in the U.S.-China trade talks, and the president's new trade agreement with Mexico and Canada is awaiting approval by Congress. Duncanson's hopeful that'll mean more buyers and perhaps better prices for U.S. exports in the coming year. But this is still a nervous time as she and other farmers try to decide which crops and how much to plant this spring.
DUNCANSON: You can't plan on just expectations. You've got to see results. So we're optimistic but yet cautious - very, very cautious.
HORSLEY: Farmers are also having to make do without crop forecasts from the USDA thanks to the partial government shutdown. And farm service agency offices, where growers would ordinarily apply for crop loans, make payments and gather tax information, have been temporarily closed.
DUNCANSON: So the shutdown has made that a little trickier to do, too. And, you know, the people we work with at those offices are our neighbors. They're a part of our operation, and you've got to feel bad for them not getting a paycheck.
HORSLEY: Some farmers are getting checks to offset part of the pain caused by the trade wars. Growers say that $12 billion compensation fund will help them pay some bills, but they'd rather have open markets. Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHRISTIAN SCOTT ATUNDE ADJUAH'S "ENCRYPTION")
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
President Trump was asked a pretty extraordinary question over the weekend. It came from Fox News host Jeanine Pirro. She asked Trump if he has ever worked for Russia. The president did not exactly say no. He did say this.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I think it's the most insulting thing I've ever been asked. I think it's the most insulting article I've ever had written.
GREENE: The article he's talking about was in The New York Times. And it said the FBI was concerned about President Trump's ties to Russia as early as his 2016 campaign and that after he fired former FBI Director James Comey, it opened a counterintelligence investigation into the president. Let's bring in NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Hi, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Hi, David.
GREENE: Wouldn't no have been an easier answer for President Trump there?
LIASSON: It certainly would've been, and all his answer did was increase the mystery about what his connections to Russia are and why he's so solicitous of Vladimir Putin and so often repeats the talking points of Russia, whether it's on Afghanistan or NATO.
GREENE: I mean, and this was just one story. I mean, a lot of questions raised over the weekend in a couple major stories that came out. Walk us through what we learned.
LIASSON: Well, as you just said, New York Times revealed that there's a criminal investigation into whether the president obstructed justice when he fired FBI Director Comey. We already knew about that. Then there was the counterintelligence inquiry about whether he was acting on behalf of Russia after the firing of Comey. The question there is, did the FBI inform the relevant members of Congress about that investigation? Then The Washington Post said that Trump was actively working to conceal details about his meetings with Putin as president, going so far as to ask an interpreter to hand over their notes to him. So now there are no in-depth records of any of Trump's in-person meetings with Putin - not even classified records. The White House is pushing back against these stories - not with any detailed denials. And Trump did say in the Fox News interview that he hasn't been keeping anything under wraps.
GREENE: Although, a lot of, I mean, seasoned diplomats saying, if nothing else, it's just unusual for a president to keep secret what happened in a meeting with another foreign leader.
LIASSON: Yes, yet another unusual thing. Right.
GREENE: Yes, yet another unusual thing. Well, let me turn, if we can, to the partial government shutdown, which is breaking records now. It's broken the record for the longest shutdown, which was back in 1995. Any sign that Republicans on Capitol Hill are going to be breaking with the president over this shutdown and over the border wall funding?
LIASSON: So far, only a handful of Republicans have either voted with Democrats in the House to reopen the government or said in the Senate that they want to do that. You do have some lawmakers who are getting antsy about the government shutdown as it goes on and on. Here's South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham - big ally of the president's - on Fox News yesterday.
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LINDSEY GRAHAM: Before he pulls the plug on the legislative option - and I think we're almost there - I would urge him to open up the government for a short period of time, like three weeks, before he pulls the plug. See if we can get a deal...
GREENE: What's he talking about there, Mara?
LIASSON: What he's talking about is whether the president should declare a national emergency and take this issue off of Congress's laps. Declare a national emergency, and then he would build the wall himself, for all intents and purposes, with unobligated Pentagon money. Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat, is arguing that moderate Republicans should pressure Mitch McConnell in the Senate to bring up the House bills that reopen the government. But none of these options are gaining any traction or looking close to becoming reality. So right now, things are really stuck. And it's a snow day in Washington.
GREENE: (Laughter) NPR's Mara Liasson. Mara, thanks a lot. I appreciate it.
LIASSON: Thank you.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
People in Wisconsin are celebrating the return of a teenager who went missing three months ago after her parents were found shot to death in their home. Residents of the town of Barron were as startled by Jayme Closs' abduction as they are now overjoyed by her return. Today, the man suspected of kidnapping Closs and killing her parents is expected to make his first appearance in court. Rich Kremer of Wisconsin Public Radio reports.
RICH KREMER, BYLINE: I'm standing outside the Closs family home on the outskirts of Barron. On October 15, local law enforcement, responding to a 911 call, found parents James and Denise murdered. Thirteen-year-old Jayme, who was inside the house at the time, was gone. For residents in this small, rural city, their sense of safety was shattered.
DAN SCHULLO: The big question was, was it professional? Was it amateur? - was, were we going to see her alive?
KREMER: That's Dan Schullo. He and his wife, Dianne, are eating breakfast at Season's Cafe in this city of 3,300. He says while he never met the Closs family, he thought about them constantly during the 88 days that local, state and federal law enforcement officials swarmed Barron in searching for the girl. On Thursday, she escaped from a home 70 miles to the north in the town of Gordon.
SCHULLO: It was like an elephant got off from our chest when we learned she got out of that house and was able to find help.
KREMER: When sheriff's deputies spoke with Closs, she described her captor's vehicle. Soon after, they pulled over 21-year-old Jake Thomas Patterson. Deputies recovered a shotgun similar to the one investigators believe was used to shoot open the Closs' door and kill Jayme's parents. The abduction and murders received national attention and drew more than 2,000 volunteers - so many that police had to turn some away. The local school district held a rally for the girl. And residents lit their porches with blue lights, Jayme's favorite color, and green lights to represent hope that she'd be found alive. At the same time, the school district and sheriff's department blanketed the area with posters and social media updates to keep her story front and center. Closs' aunt Kelly Engelhardt, who lost her brother in the October slayings, says the community support was overwhelming.
KELLY ENGELHARDT: Every single day, we had people approach us, talk to us, call us, text us, email us. Every single day, there's support for Jayme. So when you have support like that, you can't but hope for the best because you don't want to let other people down.
KREMER: That hope here was sometimes coupled with dread, though, because no suspect was named. Other than two vehicles of interest, there were no major breaks in the case until Jayme Closs freed herself. For three months, the crime seemed to permeate the town's culture. Isaak Mohamed (ph) works for the Barron Area School District and worried about children going back and forth from school.
ISAAK MOHAMED: I was, I mean, checking on the buses in the morning when the kids board. I mean, as a wider community, checking in where the kids go. Parents called me. My wife and I were so, I mean, sad. And we were, like, cautious. Everyone was cautious. Like, where's the child? Is it the bus time? We need to go out there.
KREMER: Jake Thomas Patterson is in the Barron County Jail and will make his initial court appearance this afternoon. Jayme Closs is reunited with her remaining family here in Barron, where a number of residents used the term giddy to describe their feelings about her return. For NPR News, I'm Rich Kremer in Barron, Wis.
(SOUNDBITE OF SLUSHII'S "SAPIENT DREAM")
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
I want to bring in another voice here. It's conservative writer Noah Rothman of Commentary magazine. He's in our studios in New York. Hi, Noah.
NOAH ROTHMAN: Hi.
GREENE: Let me first ask you about this shutdown. Are Republicans starting to break ranks, potentially, with the president to put more pressure on him to do something to open the government?
ROTHMAN: They are. But as Mara said, there's just a handful of them - not enough to create a critical mass for the president to abandon his strategy. And now we have voices like Lindsey Graham saying that it's time to declare a national emergency. So we are getting close to the breaking point. Democrats are waiting for the pain of the shutdown to increase pressure on Republicans, and Republicans are feeling that pressure and are going to start wanting to pull the rip cord. So we will see some movement pretty soon, I think.
GREENE: Well, let me go to another topic. There was a recent interview in The New York Times with the Republican Congressman Steve King of Iowa. He was questioning why language like white supremacy and white nationalism - why language like that is considered offensive. Is that damaging to the party to hear that from a Republican congressman?
ROTHMAN: Yeah. I think so, and you've seen figures say as much. You saw people like Karl Rove over the weekend say that this is damaging to conservatism, and he needs to be abandoned as soon as possible. The conservative outlet National Review echoed those sentiments. And I think they're perfectly accurate. When the congressman says, I want an education on why these are offensive terms, he's currently getting one. It's certainly not the first time he's said something similarly offensive, racially tinged and aggravating. But it is - the reaction has been far greater than in past statements. There's no ambiguity here. There's no plausible deniability. Republicans are now faced with an individual who is saying, I align myself essentially with white nationalism, white supremacy; and what are you going to do about it? And now we're starting to hear what they intend to do about it.
GREENE: I mean, the operative word - starting to hear. Why didn't Republicans come out and speak this forcefully against King when he has said things like this in the past?
ROTHMAN: Well, I don't think he said anything as overt as this. Those who are...
GREENE: Well, he's retweeted, I mean, tweets from people who are - identify themselves as neo-Nazis. I mean, it's certainly been offensive stuff.
ROTHMAN: Right, yeah. Absolutely. And I'm in this space, and I had to Google these people to know who they were and what they were about. If you're charitably inclined, you can say that this is an individual who is just as concerned with the preservation of culture and what have you. Again, very charitable, not to which I'm inclined, but you can say that for somebody, perhaps, to allow them plausible deniability. There's no plausible deniability here. This is extremely overt and clear. And you have, as a result, seen Republicans come out against it because white nationalism, white supremacy is so anathema to any political coalition that it cannot be supported.
GREENE: Can I ask you - I mean, we were talking about here what Bob Dole, the Republican nominee for president, had to do in 1996 in his acceptance speech. He had to talk about the Republican Party being broad and inclusive, representing many streams of opinion. But he said if there's anyone who's mistakenly attached themselves to our party in the belief that we are not open to citizens of every race and religion, let me remind you; tonight this hall belongs to the party of Lincoln. Why does the Republican Party keep facing these moments?
ROTHMAN: Well, any coalition has members in it that are disreputable and distasteful. And no political coalition with an interest in its own self-preservation will expel those members, especially if they command a constituency like...
GREENE: But you don't hear Democrats having to say these things like Dole did and like McCarthy is today, talking about going to - to have to meet King. Why is - why are Republicans facing this?
ROTHMAN: Yeah, and that's truly - and I agree. And that's truly unfortunate because they do have their own problems. Misandry is a feature of the Democratic coalition. You had two members, representatives Omar and Tlaib, with their arm around an individual, Linda Sarsour, who was profiled in The New York Times at the center of an anti-Semitism scandal not two weeks ago. But we are not talking about that, and that's truly unfortunate. We should be.
GREENE: Are you worried about the party and how it handles the question of race?
ROTHMAN: I am. I absolutely am. And I have a book coming out where I recommend that the Republican Party face square on the white nationalist members of its coalition and attack their ideas. Again, individuals are not going to be expelled from a coalition because a coalition needs individuals and people with sources of power. But ideas can be stigmatized and marginalized, and that's one that desperately needs it.
GREENE: Noah Rothman, thanks so much for being here. We always appreciate it.
ROTHMAN: Thank you.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Broadway actress Carol Channing died today. She was 97 years old. Kim Kokich has this appreciation.
KIM KOKICH, BYLINE: Carol Channing's trademark platinum-blonde hair framed a face that always seemed to be smiling. Her wide-eyed, innocent style belied a very savvy mind. And her voice was unmistakable.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "A LITTLE GIRL FROM LITTLE ROCK")
CAROL CHANNING: (Singing as Lorelei) I'm just a little girl from Little Rock. We live on the wrong side of the tracks.
CHANNING: Carol Channing's career on the stage, in film, on television and in recording spanned more than six decades. In an interview with NPR in 1995, Channing said that once she began working in theater in the early 1940s, she was rarely unemployed.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
CHANNING: First off, I think it's very fortunate I never stopped working. That's terribly important because I guess it's like an athlete's bicep. If you keep using it, it gets stronger and stronger.
KOKICH: Actress Marge Champion is credited with discovering Channing in a casting office while scouting for a show being directed by her late husband, Gower Champion.
MARGE CHAMPION: She came in with those big eyes. And then she said, do you mind if I take off my shoes? And, of course, they fell down laughing. And she took off her shoes and launched into a series of imitations because that's what she did. She was the best Carmen Miranda and Sophie Tucker. And they were laughing all the time. But I think they'd seen enough. But I kept urging her to keep on doing more.
KOKICH: Channing was born in Seattle, Wash. Her parents were Christian Scientists. In her self-admitted rambling and selective memoir "Just Lucky, I Guess," Channing writes that she was a young child delivering copies of The Christian Science Monitor to theaters when she got her first glimpse of backstage. She explains, it came over me that I was looking at the stage and backstage of a cathedral, a temple, a mosque, a mother church. I know I'm using adult words to describe a child's feelings. But I don't know how else to tell you this simple reaction of a child to a holy place. Channing's near-religious connection to her audience gave her, she said, an astounding amount of energy. And she grew irritated with those who tried to diminish the importance of theater in people's lives.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
CHANNING: Live theater is something that can't possibly die because we're working on their metabolism. Some nights, they're hyper. Some nights, they're sleepy. Some nights - but we have to find the way in to communicate with them. And slowly, the anodes and cathodes build. And it's an electric thing for the performers, as if you plugged me into the outlet in the wall.
KOKICH: Channing's first great role was also her first big break - the part of Lorelei Lee in the 1949 original Broadway production of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes." But the role with which Channing will always be identified is Dolly.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HELLO, DOLLY!")
CHANNING: (Singing as Dolly) Hello, Harry. Well, hello, Louie. It's so nice to be back home where I belong.
KOKICH: It was this role that Channing loved most because it was life affirming in every sense. She had great respect for Thornton Wilder, who created the character of Dolly Levi as a widow. And the character's gradual reawakening in this most optimistic of Broadway shows touched Channing deeply.
CHANNING: It's easy to slide downhill. But who are the ones that just won't do it? Who are the diamonds in the rough that go upstream against everything? And that's what it's all about. That's what Thornton Wilder kept writing about. And he said in "The Skin Of Our Teeth," mankind can survive the Ice Age, the Stone Age, the dinosaur age if we just forget our jealousies, forget our competitions, stay together, burn the furniture in the fireplace. But we'll make it. We'll somehow make it. And he says, Dolly Gallagher Levi, stop talking to your dead husband and rejoin the human race.
KOKICH: For NPR News, I'm Kim Kokich in Washington.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HELLO, DOLLY!")
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Hello, Dolly. Well, hello...
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Maggie Rogers was doing what most college seniors do when classes wrap up. She was packing and getting ready to head home.
MAGGIE ROGERS: But I graduated and then, I guess, very quickly had a job.
MARTIN: What was the job?
ROGERS: Pop star.
(LAUGHTER)
MARTIN: Pop star because just a few months before graduating from NYU, Maggie Rogers went to one of her classes and found none other than legendary producer Pharrell Williams sitting there. He was part of a master class there to critique student's work. She played him this.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ALASKA")
ROGERS: (Singing) Moving slowly through westward water over glacial plains, and I walked off you.
MARTIN: It's a song called "Alaska," and the classroom video of this moment shows Pharrell Williams practically in tears. Here's what he said.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PHARRELL WILLIAMS: I've never heard anyone like you before, and I've never heard anything that sounds like that. So that - that's a drug for me.
MARTIN: That video went viral. And it is a horrible cliche to say someone's life changed overnight, but in Maggie Rogers' case, it really did. Since then, she has been touring around the world, playing her songs to huge crowds. And it's all been building up to this - her first major label album. It's called "Heard It In A Past Life."
ROGERS: This record is about that moment and what's happened since then. And when that Pharrell video went viral, the reality is that I was incredibly overwhelmed and really scared. And suddenly, my very private life was very public without me really having any control or say over it.
MARTIN: And it sounds like that it's taken you kind of a while to wrap your head around...
ROGERS: Yeah.
MARTIN: ...This new life.
ROGERS: Totally, because - it's interesting. I've never had any doubts about the music, but the reality of the music industry is something I had to learn.
MARTIN: Really fast all of a sudden.
ROGERS: Yeah, and there's all these expectations that you sort of just know how to do it. They go, yeah, just, like, do the photo shoot. I'm like, no one's taken my picture ever before; like, I don't know how to do this and navigate it in a way that felt like me.
MARTIN: Right.
ROGERS: And I think that's the weird thing about my music, too, is that I'm from folk music. I grew up playing the banjo, but I also loved pop music. And I love to dance. And I think it left people a little bit confused about, like, who I would be - what kind of artist I would become.
MARTIN: So were people cool with that? Like, did you get to a point where you felt like you could play in all those spaces and everyone was fine with it?
ROGERS: I think I am now. And I think a big part of that for me was learning what to give my energy to. You know, I realistically talked about Pharrell Williams every day for about a year and a half. And so I went through different stages of that - of, like, I worked for 10 years; why can't I just talk about my work? And now it's like, I understand it. And I've just decided, like, I'm not going to let that stress me out. And I'm way happier because of it.
MARTIN: Let's get into the album.
ROGERS: I'm so excited you've heard it.
MARTIN: Yeah, man. I'm going to play "Light On."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LIGHT ON")
ROGERS: (Singing) Would you believe me now if I told you I got caught up in a wave? Almost gave it away. Would you hear me out if I told you I was terrified for days? Thought I was going to break. Oh, I couldn't stop it, tried to slow it all down. Crying in the bathroom, had to figure it out with everyone around me saying, you must be so happy now.
This song - this first song I was actually - the first time I was actually nervous to put a song out because it is so vulnerable. When all of this happened, I sort of became this, like, cocktail party version of myself, where I felt like I had to play the role of, like, happy girl because my story has this element of, like, "A Cinderella Story" to it - girl gets plucked from obscurity, becomes star, you know? But I was really struggling. But I think the chorus of "Light On" says what I really want to say, which is that, you know, "Light On" is a happy song. Like, it's a dance song. You can hear it in the chords and the textures. There's optimism and hope. And the song says, like, OK, I'm going to do this; I'm going to be here for you in the way that you've been here for me. And I'm going to keep coming back.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LIGHT ON")
ROGERS: (Singing) If you keep reaching out, then I'll keep coming back. But if you're gone for good, then I'm OK with that. If you leave the light on, then I'll leave the light on.
I wrote 30 to 40 songs for this record. And I thought this record was done a bunch of times. And this time, I really kept going back and challenging myself. I was like, do I think I can do better? And even, like, "Light On" was the last song I wrote for the record. But I was looking at the tracklist and thinking about the balance between the chemistry of all of these songs. And I realized I hadn't written a song to open the record yet.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIVE A LITTLE")
ROGERS: (Singing) If I was who I was before, then I'd be waiting at your door. But I cannot not confess I am the same. So look at me and hear me now with all my body screaming out. In my mind, I'm thinking of a place.
So I wrote "Give A Little." And it's the first song on the record because I wanted to write something that said, let's have a clean start. And the lyrics in that song are like, you don't know me; I don't know you; let's say everything's fresh; let's start from a place of empathy; like, let's just, like, reacquaint ourselves.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIVE A LITTLE")
ROGERS: (Singing) But if you give a little, give a little, maybe we could get to know each other - give a little, give a little, give a little.
Realistically, the album is the introduction to me that I never got to make.
MARTIN: By the same token, there are going to be 15-year-old girls out there listening to this conversation who are writing songs in their bedrooms at night. What do you say to those girls?
ROGERS: I think the most important thing is giving yourself permission to feel and to write and to not worry about the reception. All I can say is that I want to make music because I want to create community and bring people together. And also, I want to feel less alone.
MARTIN: Maggie Rogers, her debut album is called "Heard It In A Past Life." It comes out Friday. Maggie, thanks so much.
ROGERS: Thanks so much for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SAY IT")
ROGERS: (Singing) Standing in the open light within the swelter of the night, I found myself staring at you.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Before last November, the small city of Chico, Calif., had already been grappling with challenges that are so common in mostly rural areas - addiction, poverty, a lack of affordable housing. Well, then its neighbor, the bedroom town of Paradise, was almost entirely burned to the ground in the Camp Fire. As NPR's Kirk Siegler reports from Chico, two months on, there is a sense of a slow, simmering crisis.
KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE: The quaint leafy college town of Chico is clogged. People are living out of every hotel. RVs line neighborhood streets and the country roads that fan out into the walnut and citrus orchards. Every guesthouse and guest room is full.
BRIAN GRAHLMAN: I live in a bedroom, so to speak. Yeah, I've lost everything I had.
SIEGLER: At 70 years old, Brian Grahlman narrowly escaped the Camp Fire. Now he's living in a spare room in his daughter's house here. His home up in Paradise is gone. His wife has to stay with her daughter nearby.
GRAHLMAN: Everybody I know is living with somebody else.
SIEGLER: More than two months after the fire, it's estimated that Chico has had to take in up to 20,000 new people. There has been a 30 percent spike in traffic accidents. Crime is up. Classrooms are overflowing.
GRAHLMAN: The people who live here are just as stressed as we are who have moved here. It's very difficult. It's difficult. And there's no short-term solution.
SIEGLER: So what is the plan?
RANDALL STONE: The plan is, there is no plan. And as scary as that sounds, it's just a world that we have to get used to.
SIEGLER: Randall Stone took over as Chico mayor just a few days before the Camp Fire destroyed 14,000 homes in Paradise. But Chico already had a severe housing shortage and growing homelessness. Stone says its infrastructure just wasn't built for this.
STONE: The roads are not intended to take this level of traffic.
SIEGLER: And 20,000 refugees don't always know where they're going.
STONE: As you're driving around, it feels like everyone's constantly looking for an address. You know, we're the traffic equivalent of a clogged toilet.
SIEGLER: This rural region has had no choice but to rely heavily on state and federal disaster funds right now. So folks here reacted with shock and confusion when President Trump threatened to cut off federal disaster aid in a tweet about how federal forests are managed in California.
STONE: You know, you have the president of the United States saying that he's yanking back FEMA funding already. Now, I don't think we took that too much to heart, but you can see how volatile things get.
SIEGLER: One day it looks like things might be getting better, and then there's another setback. Now, the single-most immediate concern is what to do about the nearly 700 people who, two months on, are still living in their cars or RVs at a shelter at the Chico fairgrounds. The Red Cross is expected to pull out at the end of the month, but the shelter is seeing new arrivals. After weeks of couch surfing or paying out of pocket for a hotel, people have nowhere else to go. Ed Mayer has one of the toughest jobs in town right now. He's director over at the Butte County Housing Authority.
ED MAYER: Literally, we're playing a game of musical chairs. In order for someone to find a home in Chico, someone has to leave Chico because we are fully, fully occupied.
SIEGLER: Federal HUD staffers moved into Mayer's office recently, and he's working with them to find willing landlords across the entire western U.S. Some people have already been relocated to Idaho, Montana and Colorado. Since the fire, Mayer has been saying what a lot of other people are afraid to say: folks will have to move out of the region.
MAYER: We may have natural disasters like the Camp Fire, which was a wildfire, but we have man-made disaster, which is our inability to absorb this kind of natural disaster.
SIEGLER: The irony here is that in a region with an ongoing affordable housing crisis, if and when Paradise rebuilds, the new town will probably have tougher building codes and be more expensive. Anyway, it may not even be a new town for years.
Kirk Siegler, NPR News, Chico, Calif.
[POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: In this story, we say Randall Stone became Chico's mayor a few days before the Camp Fire ignited in November 2018. He was actually selected as mayor by the City Council on Dec. 4, 2018.]
(SOUNDBITE OF L'INDECIS' "STAYING THERE")
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Punishment in Congress has been a long time coming for Republican Steve King.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Yeah. Long before his latest troubles, the Iowa congressman had a history of remarks about immigrants and about people of color. He referred to people from Mexico as, quote, "dirt." He endorsed a political candidate linked with neo-Nazis, saying she supports, quote, "Western civilization" and, quote, "our values." He narrowly won re-election last fall amid questions about his views of Jews and others.
Now House Republicans have stripped him of his committee assignments after he questioned why white supremacy is offensive. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy announced this move following a meeting of the Republican Steering Committee.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KEVIN MCCARTHY: It was a unanimous decision from steering in light of the comments.
INSKEEP: Iowa Public Radio's Clay Masters has followed King's career for years and is on the line.
Hi there, Clay.
CLAY MASTERS, BYLINE: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: I got a question here of fact. Critics of this move have essentially said - OK, so Republicans are acting, but why would they even bother because they have looked the other way to so many remarks in the past? If you follow Steve King for years as you have - his career for years, is it true that he talks this way all the time?
MASTERS: He does. Covering Congressman King over the years, he has a history of saying offensive things. I mean, I have a running list of them. We could go over them. It'd take up quite a bit of time. But top Republicans in the state, time after time again - from the governor to the party chair and the U.S. Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst - then regularly call out these remarks and say it does not represent their values. But that's kind of where it stopped. And now it's a new Congress. And it's getting much more mainstream attention, I think largely because these comments were published in The New York Times. New Utah Republican Senator Mitt Romney, the onetime Republican presidential candidate, even called on King to step down.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MITT ROMNEY: He ought to resign and move on and let someone else, who represents American values, take his seat.
MASTERS: And a big one - Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post saying silence on this kind of rhetoric damages the party. And Scott's seen as a rising star in the GOP by many.
INSKEEP: And we should just mention Tim Scott is African-American - one of relatively few top officials on the Republican side who are African-American - so his words carry a bit of extra weight in a situation like this. Now, we mentioned that King is being stripped of his committee assignments. What does that mean exactly?
MASTERS: Well, Congressman King was on the agriculture committee and the judiciary committee - I'm sure you're aware agriculture is a big industry in Iowa and especially in the district he represents - the judiciary committee, which has jurisdiction over immigration, voting rights, impeachment, these kinds of things, and the small business committee. And then again, you know, this was a unanimous decision from the steering committee, as you mentioned.
INSKEEP: Didn't Steve King take to the floor of the House the other day and say, wait a minute, my remarks - he didn't say he was misquoted quite precisely, but he suggested there was something wrong about - he made the mistake of talking to the media and that he was misunderstood in some fashion.
MASTERS: Yeah. He says the quote was mischaracterized in The New York Times. And reports have shown him walking out of the meeting with Representative McCarthy in silence. I'm in Des Moines, not in D.C., so I saw it on Twitter and not in person. But he walked to the elevator while news media followed him asking questions, and he really didn't say a word. Again, he says the quote was mischaracterized. And he also says, in the statement that he released yesterday, he will continue to point out the truth and work with all the vigor that he has to represent the district for at least the next two years.
INSKEEP: Although when we say point out the truth, we should underline - remark after remark after remark over years from Steve King suggests his basic beliefs are that Western civilization is threatened by immigration, that it has something to do with birthrates, that people from different countries can't uphold it. These are things he's said again and again and again, right?
MASTERS: That's right.
INSKEEP: Clay, thanks so much. Really appreciate it.
MASTERS: All right. Thank you, Steve.
INSKEEP: That's Clay Masters of Iowa Public Radio.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
INSKEEP: William Barr faces questions before the Senate today. His hearing for the post of attorney general underlines the complexities of the job he is seeking because, in effect, he would have multiple masters.
GREENE: Yeah. That's a good way to put it because under the Constitution, he is appointed by the president. But he has to be confirmed by the Senate. He's answerable to Congress. And above all, he is supposed to enforce the law in this job. Now, senators want to know how Barr will handle these conflicting forces. If he's confirmed, he would oversee the special counsel's investigation of Russian involvement in U.S. politics, an investigation that is increasingly involving his boss. Now, we should say, Barr was attorney general once before, but that was a much less troubled time.
INSKEEP: NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas is covering his effort to become attorney general once again. He's in our studios.
Ryan, good morning.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: What do we need to know about the background of William Barr?
LUCAS: Well, he is very much an establishment Republican lawyer. As you said, he served as attorney general once before. That was from 1991 to 1993. So he would bring experience to the job. He also held other senior positions at the Justice Department, including the head of the Office of Legal Counsel as well as deputy attorney general. So he knows the institution. And people who worked there with him say that he does care deeply about the Justice Department. He would be taking over from acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker who stepped in on a temporary basis after then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions stepped down under a lot of pressure from the White House.
INSKEEP: That resume would make him sound like a noncontroversial choice at a controversial moment - except for some remarks that he has made about the special counsel's investigation. What has he said?
LUCAS: Well, this is really going to be the focus of these confirmation hearings for Democrats in their questions for Barr. And what he said that has really grabbed Democrats' attention is there's an unsolicited memo that Barr wrote, basically, last year to the Justice Department. And in that memo, he essentially says that Mueller would be wrong to pursue an obstruction of justice case against Trump tied to Trump's firing of then-FBI Director James Comey.
Now, we learned last night from a letter that Barr sent to the committee chairman that Barr shared that memo or discussed it with several people, including many of President Trump's lawyers as well as the man who is now the White House counsel. Now, Barr was a private citizen at the time that he wrote the memo. He says the memo was based solely on information that was in the media, that he wrote it on his own. Still, for many Democrats, some have said that they want Barr to recuse himself from overseeing the Mueller investigation. They've called, at a minimum, for him to commit to allow it to proceed unimpeded. And they want him to promise to release to Congress and the American public the final report that Mueller's expected to...
INSKEEP: OK. That's a list - recuse yourself, stay out of the investigation and release this public report or make sure the report becomes public. Is he likely to do those things?
LUCAS: Some of them perhaps - but he's very unlikely to recuse himself. That's something that Sessions came under a lot of pressure from the president for doing. In a copy of Barr's written testimony that was released yesterday, Barr stops well short of recusing himself. He does say, though, that it's vitally important that Mueller be allowed to finish this investigation. He says the country needs answers. He vowed to be independent, not to interfere in Mueller's probe. And he said the public and Congress need to be informed of Mueller's results. He said his goal was to be as transparent as he can consistent with the law. And that, of course, fell far short of what Democrats wanted to hear.
INSKEEP: Can Democrats stop him if they choose to?
LUCAS: The math is very much on the side of the GOP. They do have the numbers to get get him confirmed. And GOP support at this point has been quite solid.
INSKEEP: NPR's Ryan Lucas, we'll be listening for your reporting as the confirmation hearings go forward. Thanks.
LUCAS: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
INSKEEP: OK. The big vote on Brexit is supposed to take place, finally, in Parliament today.
GREENE: Yeah. And it is not looking good at all for Prime Minister Theresa May. The unpopular deal on the table is expected to fail in a Parliament vote. In a last push to sell her plan, May warned of dire consequences if this doesn't pass.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRIME MINISTER THERESA MAY: Fail and we face the risk of leaving without a deal or the even bigger risk of not leaving at all.
INSKEEP: NPR's Frank Langfitt is covering this drama from London. Hi there, Frank.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: Hi, Steve.
INSKEEP: OK. When last you discussed this vote with us some weeks ago, it was put off because losing would be such a total disaster for Theresa May. Did she make any progress in the last hours toward avoiding defeat this time?
LANGFITT: I don't think people think so. You know, Parliament's had a long time to think this through. And it looks like there's a lot of opposition. We just don't know exactly how much. The vote's going to be at 7 p.m. London time, 2 p.m. Washington time. And the question really is how much she does lose by and then what the implications of that. If it's 20-30, which an MP estimated to me on Friday - although that seems generous - she could try to go back to the EU and get more concessions. But that doesn't seem very likely since Brussels been saying for weeks, no more negotiations.
If it's a larger number, you know, Brexit process could go in any number of directions. The U.K. could try to delay it. They could walk away from the EU, which she was just talking about there, and pay the economic price. Or the big thing would be - you know, do you take Brexit back to the people for a second referendum?
INSKEEP: And just say - oh, gosh - nevermind. Let's...
LANGFITT: Not even nevermind, Steve, but more like - hey, you want to think this one through again?
INSKEEP: (Laughter) Is that really possible?
LANGFITT: It is possible. If you asked me six weeks ago, I would've probably said, nah, it's not going to happen. But this has been such a mess. And I think, also, it's gone so badly in terms of the political process that more and more members of Parliament - who, remember, were always kind of for remaining in the EU to begin with - are talking about this. But tonight, depending on what happens, I mean, the country could head in any number of directions.
INSKEEP: Now, that is an interesting point, Frank Langfitt. We have a bunch of lawmakers who are going to vote down a Brexit deal - at least according to the prognosticators. And a lot of them, you're pointing out, if you ask them privately...
LANGFITT: Oh, yeah.
INSKEEP: ...They don't favor Brexit at all.
LANGFITT: No, they didn't. You had a split in the country in 2016. It was 52-48 in the populace, the people who voted, to leave. But it was very well known that members of Parliament did not want to leave the European Union. And the reason for that is there have been a lot of economic benefits, of course, and also, it would take this island nation out of a gigantic trading bloc, which is an enormous economy that gives them a lot of leverage economically in terms of cutting trade deals.
INSKEEP: Has the polling support for Brexit been sustained even amid all of this revelation of how difficult it is? Is there still about half the country, give or take, that's for this?
LANGFITT: You know, that's a great question, Steve. But I think people would say there's been a split now that it's gone 52 to remain, 48 to leave. But people are so concerned about another vote and that it would be antidemocratic that even Remainers might vote to leave because they would agree with the Prime Minister that it's just not fair. You don't redo - you don't get do-overs in democracy.
INSKEEP: Wow.
Frank, thanks for the update. Really appreciate it.
LANGFITT: Happy to do it.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Frank Langfitt.
(SOUNDBITE OF L'INDECIS' "STAYING THERE")
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
It was just last year that Apple became the first American public company to be valued at $1 trillion. The new year has not started quite so well. The company's value plunged 10 percent in a single day. The catalyst was a letter from Apple CEO Tim Cook lowering earnings expectations for the company. NPR's Laura Sydell looks at what this means for Apple's future.
LAURA SYDELL, BYLINE: Think of a Hollywood blockbuster, say, "Mission Impossible." It's been super popular, so the studio releases several successful sequels. But one year, it releases a sequel, and it's a yawn. The iPhone is a bit like a movie franchise. After years of blockbuster sales, the most recent release has been kind of a so-what. As I recently discovered, some customers just weren't excited by it.
I'm standing in Union Square in San Francisco. The Apple Store is right across the way, and I'm going to ask some people here, if they still have old phones, why they're not walking in and upgrading.
MACHIK BUTORAC: The current ones do the job for me - I mean, for what I use. You know, I don't take much photos with the iPhone. I just use it for business.
ANNE MARIE BINGO: I think the only thing that would make me buy the new one is the camera because I have friends who have it, and it has taken really nice pictures. But that's not enough to make me get rid of this one that's still working fine and upgrade to the new one.
SYDELL: Many analysts say Machik Butorac (ph) and Anne Marie Bingo (ph) are typical of a lot of Apple customers right now.
JAMES MCQUIVEY: Apple's biggest problem is that it's a company that has built a sort of mystique around itself by, every two, three years, releasing a product that just boggles everyone's mind.
SYDELL: James McQuivey is an analyst with the research firm Forrester.
MCQUIVEY: It has been a number of years since Apple has really dazzled anyone with the hardware.
SYDELL: In his letter to investors, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that part of the reason he was lowering expectations was that there were fewer iPhone upgrades than expected. But his biggest problem is China. McQuivey says Chinese companies like Huawei are making products that have a lot of the same features as the iPhone.
MCQUIVEY: But this is a market that is very, very comfortable with knockoffs and very, very comfortable with substitutes because they're cheaper and they're more easily available.
SYDELL: That's a problem because it's not just about knockoffs. The Chinese customer has been one of Apple's biggest growth engines, says Loup Ventures analyst Gene Munster.
GENE MUNSTER: Two-thirds of the problem is China, and the economy there has had an acute negative impact on Apple.
SYDELL: Munster says China and Taiwan account for close to 20 percent of Apple's business. After growing four quarters in a row, Munster estimates that Apple will report that its revenue fell 36 percent in the last three months of 2018.
Apple CEO Cook believes trade tensions with the Trump administration are taking a toll on the Chinese economy. A lot of Chinese may still prefer the iPhone; they just don't have the money to buy it. At a moment when a lot of analysts are souring on Apple, Munster remains optimistic. While most of Apple's profits still come from the iPhone...
MUNSTER: The Mac, the iPod, AirPods, Apple Watch, services - all those are doing really well, better than what we'd expected.
SYDELL: According to Munster, year-over-year revenue for these products and services will be up close to 20 percent. Munster also believes, as carriers upgrade to 5G network speeds in late 2020, it will entice people to upgrade their phones.
MUNSTER: On average, 10 times faster - so downloading your movie 10 times faster or refreshing that webpage at those speed improvements - this is the difference between dial-up and broadband.
SYDELL: Meanwhile, the company isn't giving up on the franchise. Munster says he expects Apple to release new phones this year with better screens and better cameras.
Laura Sydell, NPR News, San Francisco.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
So it is the start of the 30th annual North American International Auto Show in Detroit. It is also the last time that show will be held in January. The once can't-miss event is moving to the summer next year in hopes of regaining some of its lost glory. Here's Michigan Radio's Tracy Samilton.
TRACY SAMILTON, BYLINE: The North American International Auto Show used to be a really big deal, drawing almost every automaker, big or small. But in recent years, it's often been snubbed, especially by luxury car companies choosing to display in LA or the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas instead. It's tempting to blame the weather. In Detroit in January, dark, depressing clouds often hide the sun. The cold is finger-numbing, and snowstorms can be just around the corner.
TOM KRISHER: The Monday of the auto show press days was always one of the worst days of my life.
SAMILTON: That's Tom Krisher. He's a veteran auto beat reporter for The Associated Press. He's driven to Detroit through black ice, snow drifts.
KRISHER: And then you can't find your car when you come out at night because it's covered with snow and a bunch of other cars have come in. So I'm extremely happy that it's going to be in the summertime.
SAMILTON: But it's not just the weather; it's the cost for automakers to display at Detroit.
Doug North will be chairman of the 2020 show. Today he's on the show floor watching preparations.
DOUG NORTH: What you see right now is there's probably 1,500 workers that are working, that are going to put this together. And then 1,700 semi-trailer trucks have brought equipment in.
SAMILTON: North says delays and overtime from Christmas and New Year's increase labor costs. A summer show will cost a lot less. Automakers can also expand their displays outside.
NORTH: Many of these displays out here are two stories, and they have escalators. And they have vehicles hanging on the side of walls.
SAMILTON: If car companies come back, organizers trust media will, too. Media attendance was about half its usual number this year. Auto journalist Laura Burstein was among those who decided to skip Detroit.
LAURA BURSTEIN: Because of what we consider to be kind of a dearth of news as far as new vehicles go.
SAMILTON: Burstein says the trend isn't encouraging for Detroit or any auto show for that matter. Car companies are finding cheaper, more exclusive ways to create buzz for new cars. Take BMW, which rented an airplane hangar a few years back.
BURSTEIN: So then over several days, they invited dealers, media, VIPs and even the public to come see all of its cars. So they eventually had a captive audience immersed in a single brand for as long as they wanted to stay instead of having to worry about - what's the other guy doing across the aisle?
SAMILTON: On the other hand, many consumers still like car shows and want to compare different cars side-by-side. In the long run, Detroit itself could benefit from a summer show because attendees could also check out that hip, new restaurant downtown or take in a baseball game - though I'm going to bet the old timers will still swap stories about the show being snowed in back in the day.
For NPR News, I'm Tracy Samilton.
(SOUNDBITE OF EMANCIPATOR'S "TREE HUNT")
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit plan is facing a huge vote today, and it is not looking good for her. In a last push to sell her plan, the prime minister warned of dire consequences if this does not pass.
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PRIME MINISTER THERESA MAY: Fail, and we risk - face the risk of leaving without a deal or the even bigger risk of not leaving at all.
GREENE: Let's bring in NPR's Frank Langfitt from London. Hi there, Frank.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: Hey, David.
GREENE: OK. So in the long journey that is Brexit, tell us what exactly is happening today.
LANGFITT: Yeah, sure. Parliament is expected to vote down vote the deal, as you mentioned. And the question is going to be, what's the margin of defeat? If it's 20 or 30 - and I was talking to one MP who estimated this to me on Friday; frankly, I think that's a bit generous - the prime minister could try to go back and get more concessions out of the European Union and bring this back for a second vote. But Brussels has been very clear; it's done with negotiations. It's kind of tired of this whole process.
If it's a larger margin, I think you could see the Brexit process go in any number of directions. The U.K. could try to delay. The United Kingdom could walk away from the EU without any deal at all. Of course, that would mean paying, in the short term, a pretty steep economic price or - and the most striking thing would be taking Brexit back to the people for a second referendum.
GREENE: Which would be extraordinary. I mean, a lot of these different...
LANGFITT: It would be completely extraordinary, David. It would basically be saying - I mean, the politicians, who would never put it this way, would be basically saying, we can't sort this out; we know you voted for it; let's see what you think again.
GREENE: Or try again (laughter).
LANGFITT: Yeah, try again.
GREENE: Maybe we can work it out next time.
LANGFITT: No, and, I mean, you know, that is an extraordinary thing for a democracy to do.
GREENE: There's a lot at stake here then. I mean, this is - the prime minister's not really exaggerating.
LANGFITT: Yeah, there's a ton at stake. And I think that - I think, particularly for listeners in the United States, what we're talking about here is the future of the United Kingdom. This is the biggest political decision in decades. The U.K. is going to try to unwind more than 40 years of economic integration with the EU. The EU, of course, is 20 nation - 28 nations that trade as one, an enormous economy, second only to the U.S. And then what the U.K. wants to do, ideally, is go off on its own so it can control immigration - immigration, like in the States, was a big issue in this vote - control who comes here and then build what Brexiteers claim is going to be a much more prosperous future making trade deals - the U.K. - all by itself.
GREENE: Frank - and I'm sure you hear this, too. I mean, some of our listeners will ask why we cover Brexit so extensively.
LANGFITT: Yeah.
GREENE: I mean, what do you tell listeners who wonder what it means to people in the United States?
LANGFITT: Yeah. There are a number of answers to that one. One is, this is America's closest ally. We're democracies. We share a common language and of course fought in wars together. And the political chaos that's resulted from the original Brexit vote here has diminished the U.K.'s status in the world. That's certainly not good for the U.S. interests. The Brexit vote was also - kind of on a bigger picture, it was a rejection of this pillar of the post-World War II global order that the U.K. and the U.S. helped build. Now, this is the same world - post-war order that Donald Trump has attacked in the past when he calls the E.U. a foe or that NATO members are deadbeats. So what's happening here is part of a much bigger challenge to the global system that many in America would still argue the U.S. benefits from.
GREENE: So we're sort of learning something about our politics as we watch this play out.
LANGFITT: Oh, I think we are. Yeah. No, I think we are very much. And one - a common element of this is the rise of populism, identity politics and of course economic discontent. You know, the Trump mantra was Make America Great Again. The leave campaign was take back control. And there's been kind of a desire to go back to a more nostalgic time in this country, where people felt that their communities were wealthier and also that it wasn't so diverse from their perspective. They liked it when it was more people like themselves - people who were white Britons.
GREENE: All right, covering a big moment in the journey that is Brexit. That is NPR's Frank Langfitt talking to us this morning from London. Frank, thanks so much.
LANGFITT: Happy to do it, David.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
In this country, it's never too early to prepare for hurricane season - unless the partial government shutdown gets in the way of those preparations. NPR's Greg Allen reports from Miami.
GREG ALLEN, BYLINE: Hurricane season in the Atlantic doesn't begin until June. But it's now, during the quiet off-season, that researchers say typically, a lot of work gets done to improve hurricane forecasting.
ERIC BLAKE: I can guarantee you we're not making progress right now with the government shut down.
ALLEN: Eric Blake is a hurricane specialist and union steward at the National Hurricane Center in Miami. At the National Hurricane Center, meteorologists - working without pay - are staffing only day-to-day operations, not research and development. Most of their partners at the Hurricane Research Center in Miami and the Environmental Modeling Center in Maryland are furloughed. Blake described some of the work they should be doing.
BLAKE: We're trying to get better ways to, say, incorporate reconnaissance data - airplane data or the dropsonde data.
ALLEN: Dropsondes are weather sensors, each with a small parachute, dropped by hurricane hunter aircraft into storms, gathering information on wind speed and air pressure. Blake says that information helps forecasters understand how a hurricane is forming and what it's likely to do.
BLAKE: There's also new satellite technologies, new data sources that we have to integrate into the model to continue to improve it.
ALLEN: The shutdown has put on hold a big project that's upgrading NOAA's computerized weather prediction model. The GFS, as it's called - the Global Forecast System - is one of the models used by the National Hurricane Center to forecast the intensity and tracks of developing storms. James Franklin, a hurricane researcher who worked at NOAA for 35 years, says the improved GFS was supposed to be ready in time for this year's hurricane season. Depending on how long the shutdown continues, that may not be possible.
JAMES FRANKLIN: We don't have people at the hurricane center right now who are evaluating this proposed upgrade. And we don't know how much of a delay there will be in getting this upgrade into operations.
ALLEN: In recent years, while the upgrade has been in the works, meteorologists say other global weather models have done better than the GFS in hurricane forecasts. With the shutdown, that gap may widen. The government shutdown has also had a major impact on FEMA, which works with the National Hurricane Center to train local emergency managers. The first training sessions, set for this week, have been canceled. Former FEMA administrator Craig Fugate says this has a direct impact on hurricane preparedness.
CRAIG FUGATE: All these classes that have been canceled, we're not going to be able to make them up this year. And that means those people are not getting the training they were trying to get to get better at what they're doing.
ALLEN: Last year demonstrated the challenges hurricanes pose for meteorologists and emergency managers. Hurricane Florence's storm surge and rainfall forced local governments to order the evacuation of more than a million people in the Carolinas and Virginia. Franklin says storms like that show why training courses are so important.
FRANKLIN: A emergency manager comes out of that course really understanding what the hurricane center can provide and what they can't provide. And it really helps them to make better decisions about who has to evacuate, who does not.
ALLEN: As they try to prepare for the upcoming hurricane season, government forecasters and emergency managers have another concern - filling vacant positions. Fugate says FEMA is chronically understaffed.
FUGATE: Now people are starting to think about - how long can I go without a paycheck before I need to start thinking about doing something else?
ALLEN: The shutdown hasn't just frozen hiring. Fugate says it's hurting FEMA's ability to retain staff that the nation will turn to when there's another disaster.
Greg Allen, NPR News, Miami.
(SOUNDBITE OF HAUSCHKA'S "STROMNESS")
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Good morning. I'm David Greene with a way to vent your anger. There's a company called Smash in Beijing. Reuters reports you can pay 23 bucks to enter a room and release your pent-up anger by smashing things - TVs, computers, old radios, furniture. One customer brought her wedding photos to destroy. Staff will blare whatever music you like. I think I'd go with Def Leppard. The only rule at Smash seems to be that you can't smash other people, which is a really good rule. It's MORNING EDITION.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The biggest gathering of human beings on earth begins today in India.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED HINDU MONKS: (Chanting in Sanskrit).
INSKEEP: Those are some of the human beings, Hindu monks, chanting mantras on their way to bathe in the Ganges River. Over the next seven weeks, up to 120 million people are expected to do the same. It is called the Kumbh Mela pilgrimage. It's the equivalent of taking the entire populations of California, Texas, Florida and New York and sending them all swimming in the same spot. NPR's Lauren Frayer is there in India.
Hi there, Lauren.
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: Hi, Steve.
INSKEEP: What is the purpose of this gathering?
FRAYER: This is a religious fair that happens at the confluence of three rivers, the Ganges, the Yamuna - those are two of the biggest rivers in India - and a third, the Sarasvati. And that's a mythical river. Hindus believe it's here but that it's invisible. And every 12 years, people come bathe in the confluence of these rivers. And this year is actually called a half Kumbh because it's only six years since the last one. But there's nothing half about this. This is still expected to be the biggest gathering so far - as you mentioned, 120 million pilgrims expected by the time the pilgrimage is over in early March. And these dates are determined by the alignment of the stars and the planets by astrologers.
INSKEEP: So what's it like to be in that crowd?
FRAYER: You know, it sounds cliche. This is India, but this is the most colorful creche of humanity that I've ever seen and that I could ever imagine. I mean, barefoot, bearded monks; naked people; whole families carrying their suitcases on their heads, camping along the way - they sleep in these vast tent cities - rich and poor, ascetic monks and tourists side by side. I've just ducked into a little Hindu temple on the banks of the Yamuna River - you know, stepping out of the melee to talk to you. But this morning at dawn, I met Gitanjali Verma (ph). She was on her way back from the banks of the Ganges. She's a local but making this pilgrimage for the first time.
GITANJALI VERMA: It was like - in another kind of world, you are. It was incredible.
FRAYER: You're quite emotional, I can tell.
VERMA: Yes, yes.
FRAYER: Yeah.
VERMA: I think it's just the faith. And it's the total purity of the heart and the mind.
FRAYER: They bring people here. And they all plunge into the rivers, which is actually pretty chilly this time of year. People had blue lips and were shaking as they plunged into the waters at dawn this morning. This is a ritual that's supposed to wash away your sins and break you out of the cycle of death and rebirth.
INSKEEP: Well, that sounds quite spiritual. But I have a question about practicalities, Lauren. How do they ensure safety and order for 120 million people in the same place?
FRAYER: So here are a couple stats I can give you that the organizers have given me - 122,000 toilets have been built here; 20,000 trash cans; 30,000 police and security forces. They have built 200 miles of new roads for this pilgrimage. This is my first time here. But pilgrims who have done it before tell me it's much better organized this year. And that could be because an election is coming. There are posters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi along the paths down to the river banks. These pilgrims are exactly his Hindu nationalist voter base.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Lauren Frayer. Thanks so much.
FRAYER: You're welcome, Steve.
(SOUNDBITE OF DEEPAK RAM'S "AARTI")
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Iowa Republican Congressman Steve King has been stripped of his committee assignments in the House of Representatives. King is facing backlash for comments he made to The New York Times, questioning why the terms white nationalist and white supremacist are offensive. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy announced the decision to strip all of King's committee assignments after a meeting of the House GOP Steering Committee last night. McCarthy called King's comments reckless and wrong. Let's bring in Iowa Public Radio's Clay Masters from Des Moines. He has covered Congressman King's career for a good number of years.
Hi there, Clay.
CLAY MASTERS, BYLINE: Good morning, David.
GREENE: So you've been tracking comments like this for a long time, right? This is certainly not a first for this congressman.
MASTERS: No, it's not a first. And covering the congressman over the years, he has a history of saying offensive things. And I mean, there's a running list that we could go through, all the different times where he has said something. And then top Republicans in the state, from the governor, to the state party chair, to U.S. senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, then regularly call out these remarks, say it does not represent their values. But that's kind of where it stops. But now it's a new Congress. And it's getting much more mainstream attention, I think, largely because the comments were published in The New York Times. We have Republican Senator Mitt Romney, the one-time Republican presidential candidate, even calling on King to step down.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MITT ROMNEY: He's got to resign and move on and let someone else who represents American values take his seat.
GREENE: OK. So you have someone at Romney's level actually calling for him to step down, even more action than was taken. But these committee assignments have been stripped. Is that a big deal in itself?
MASTERS: Well, Congressman King was on the Agriculture Committee, which is a big industry in Iowa. He was also on the Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over immigration, voting rights, impeachment, these kinds of things. And, you know, now he has to go back to Iowa as he will start campaigning for 2020 and make the case that people should send him back to Washington. And without committees, that could be a hard sell.
GREENE: Now, the congressman has been making the argument - right, Clay? - that this was all taken out of context. What exactly is he trying to say as he explains all this?
MASTERS: He's trying to say that the comments were mischaracterized, that it was not a full quote. And in his statement after this came out and there was all this controversy surrounding it, he said he will continue to point out what he calls the truth and work with all the vigor that he has to represent his district for at least the next two years. And I should point out, too, that he is facing - already, last week - a primary challenge in 2020 against a powerful, well-known state senator from that part of the state, Randy Feenstra. And he also has had Governor Kim Reynolds, the Republican who did better than him in his district in 2018, saying that she will remain neutral in the primary election.
GREENE: So what does this story feel like in Iowa, in his home state, Clay? What are people making of these comments and what it means for him?
MASTERS: Congressman Steve King is a very divisive person in the state. I think he's largely seen by many of his voters and those that send him back to Washington time and time again as an anti-establishment Congressman. And I think that he could spin this as, hey, the elites aren't giving me a seat at the table, which potentially could work in his favor in this district that heavily went for Donald Trump. And I should point out, too, that Congressman Steve King is now the only member of Iowa's House Congressional Delegation that is a Republican. And last year, King narrowly defeated his Democratic challenger, who was a political newcomer by the name of J.D. Scholton.
And King has also announced that he plans - at the beginning of this year, he said that he's going to hold 39 town hall meetings between now and the end of the year. So there will be plenty of time for - if he holds true to this - for people to voice their concerns. And he will just continue to be this divisive person within the state of Iowa.
GREENE: Wow. And I don't want to put you in the position of making predictions. But you're saying it's not out of the realm of possibility that the idea that he is embattled could actually help him with his base in this district.
MASTERS: Yep, that's exactly what I'm saying. I think that that could work in his favor. But there is going to be a lot of attention from different Republicans to try to get him out of this seat, I think. So like all election stories, we're just going to have to watch and see how it plays out.
GREENE: All right. We'll look forward to all your reporting as we follow him along on his journey. Clay Masters of Iowa Public Radio, thanks so much.
MASTERS: Thanks, David.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Today is payday for members of the United States Coast Guard. They will be paid nothing. Unlike other parts of the military, the Coast Guard falls under the Department of Homeland Security, which is affected by a partial government shutdown. Retired Rear Admiral Cari Thomas is CEO of Coast Guard Mutual Assistance, which is an official military relief society. Good morning.
CARI THOMAS: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: I just want to be clear on this. Tens of thousands of people are in the Coast Guard. Is everybody who's on duty today unpaid?
THOMAS: That's correct. There are 42,000 men and women on active duty that are unpaid and 8,000 civilian employees that are not being paid as well.
INSKEEP: And give me an idea of what kinds of people we're talking about. Do these tend to be people who are making lots and lots of money and probably have plenty of savings to draw on?
THOMAS: Many of the employees of the Coast Guard are below the poverty line. And this morning, I know that they're frustrated. They're sad. They're angry. They're still on duty. And then the civilians that have been furloughed, they're guilty that their shipmates are at work and covering their duties and that they're not being paid either.
INSKEEP: Oh, the uniformed service members are on duty and being paid without the assistance of civilian members of the Coast Guard who are just at home, is that right?
THOMAS: Right. There are a few civilians that are still on duty, but you've got the wide spectrum. And at this moment, no one is being paid.
INSKEEP: How is your relief agency preparing to respond to this situation?
THOMAS: So we've been around since 1924, and our mission is to help the Coast Guard in time of need. And that is truly what our mission is. And, you know, there are countries around the world who make decisions on how many people are in trouble or their gender if they're going to go save them. And I'm grateful in America that you don't have that as part of the calculus. And so our charity is doing our part to save the men and women of the Coast Guard. We're prepared to provide financial relief of up to 22,000 people. And anyone who of our junior workforce that has an immediate financial need, we're prepared to help them.
INSKEEP: Twenty-two thousand people you can provide what kind of financial relief - a check of some kind?
THOMAS: It'll be some - a check of up to $1,000 if you are married or you have children. And then if you're single, up to $750.
INSKEEP: OK. And I imagine that's a meaningful amount of money for somebody who's being paid below the poverty line and suddenly doesn't have a paycheck.
THOMAS: For some, but there are others that it's not as meaningful as we'd like it to be. You know, we wish we could do more, but we're going to do all that we can do.
INSKEEP: This still has to be a breathtaking situation, Admiral, because I would imagine that if you're talking about a Coast Guard relief agency, you're talking about a few service members at a time who might be in a crisis situation of one kind or another. Suddenly, you have the whole Coast Guard in that situation.
THOMAS: Typically - on a typical day, we have - we help about 14 people with about $12,000 worth of aid. And today, we're prepared to help up to 4,000 people with at least $3 million in aid a day.
INSKEEP: Are your people who are helping the Coast Guard themselves being paid?
THOMAS: They are not, actually. Many of the people that are providing relief are military men and women. And they love this part of their mission, helping others in time of need, and they're not being paid either.
INSKEEP: In a few seconds, is there's something you want the public to know about the Coast Guard today?
THOMAS: There's a lot that can be done. Local communities can help, businesses can help and, of course, your donations to Coast Guard Mutual Assistance. We can be reached at www.cgmahq.org.
INSKEEP: Admiral, thanks so much.
THOMAS: Thank you very much.
INSKEEP: Retired Rear Admiral Cari Thomas of the Coast Guard Mutual Assistance.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
The largest utility here in the state of California, Pacific Gas and Electric, has faced much of the blame for the recent wildfires here. State officials determined their equipment sparked 17 fires in 2017. And PG&E is under investigation in last year's deadly Camp Fire. That is the one that destroyed much of the town of Paradise. Now facing what could exceed $30 billion in liability costs, PG&E is now planning to file for bankruptcy. KQED's Marisa Lagos reports on what that could mean.
MARISA LAGOS, BYLINE: The reaction to PG&E's announcement was swift. California Governor Gavin Newsom called on the utility to keep its promises to energy suppliers and its customers. And lawmaker after lawmaker promised to protect the public. Here's Democrat Toni Atkins, president of the state Senate.
TONI ATKINS: I think uppermost is protecting ratepayers, fire victims and, certainly, the integrity and the reliability of our electric and gas service to California's consumers.
LAGOS: Whatever happens at the company, everyone agrees that the lights will stay on in California. The bigger questions are, who will pay for all those wildfire costs and for the upgrades to make sure the electrical grid isn't going to keep sparking deadly blazes? Patrick McClellen lost his home in a 2017 wildfire and has been lobbying on behalf of fire victims at the state capitol for the past year. He believes the utility is posturing to pressure lawmakers into some sort of favorable change in law.
PATRICK MCCLELLEN: Bankruptcy is not a good direction for anybody in California other than bankruptcy lawyers.
LAGOS: And it's definitely not good for victims. Their lawsuits will be put on hold while the company reorganizes. So McClellen is still holding out hope that the state can do something before month's end to prevent bankruptcy.
MCCLELLEN: Are they leveraging? Yes. Do we trust them? No. But there is a severe financial problem with that utility given everything that they're going to have to do in order to create a safe - for all of us and to reimburse victims.
LAGOS: Another key player in the discussion is PG&E's workforce, which is largely represented by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Tom Dalzell is IBEW Local 1245's business manager. He doesn't think their contract or pensions are at risk.
TOM DALZELL: In the end, whatever comes out of the bankruptcy court has to be approved by the Public Utility Commission. And I think that that's a strong backstop for us in terms of protecting the workers.
LAGOS: But clearly, someone will lose out. And if history's any indication, PG&E ratepayers will be among those hit hardest. The utility filed for bankruptcy 18 years ago during the state's electricity crisis. And customers are still paying higher rates related to that. And even if PG&E doesn't seek bankruptcy protection, rates will likely go up. In addition to those wildfire liabilities, the company is going to have to spend a lot of money to make sure its equipment doesn't keep starting fires. For NPR News, I'm Marisa Lagos in San Francisco.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
William Barr faces questions before the Senate today. His hearing for the post of attorney general underlines the complexities of the job he is seeking. In effect, he would have multiple masters if confirmed. Under the Constitution, he is appointed by the president. But he must be confirmed by the Senate. He is answerable to Congress. And above all, he's supposed to enforce the law. Senators want to know how Barr will handle those conflicting forces because the attorney general oversees an investigation of Russian involvement in U.S. politics, an investigation that has come close to the president himself. NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas has been covering this story.
Hi there, Ryan.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: What is William Barr's background?
LUCAS: Well, he's very much a Republican establishment lawyer. He served as attorney general once before. That was from 1991 to 1993 under President George H.W. Bush. He held other senior positions in the department as well. During the first Bush administration, he led the Office of Legal Counsel and then later, served as the deputy attorney general, which put him in charge of running the day-to-day affairs of the DOJ. So he would bring a lot of experience to the job. He knows the Justice Department. People who worked with him there say that he cares deeply about it. Now, he would be taking over from acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, who stepped in on a temporary basis after Jeff Sessions resigned under pressure from the White House.
INSKEEP: Given that depth of experience, what has he said or done that would make this confirmation anything less than automatic?
LUCAS: Well, Republicans certainly support his nomination. But the focus for Democrats in the confirmation hearing is going to be on things that Barr has said, criticisms that he has made about Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. Topping that list for Democrats is an unsolicited memo that Barr wrote last year to the Justice Department. And in that memo, he essentially says that Mueller would be wrong to pursue an obstruction of justice case against President Trump, tied to Trump's decision to fire FBI Director James Comey. Now...
INSKEEP: So from a Democratic perspective, he has weighed in with an opinion about something that he should be judging impartially.
LUCAS: It raises questions about whether he would be impartial overseeing that investigation, yes. Now, we learned last night from a letter that Barr sent to the committee chairman that Barr shared the memo or discussed it with several people, including many of President Trump's lawyers, as well as the man who is now White House counsel. Now, Barr was a private citizen when he wrote the memo. He says that it was - he wrote it. It was based solely on information that was publicly available. But for Democrats, that has not been enough so far. Some have said that they want Barr to recuse himself from overseeing the Mueller probe. They've called at a minimum for him to commit to allow it to proceed unimpeded. And they want him to promise to release to Congress and the public the final report that Mueller is expected to draw.
INSKEEP: I guess we should note the importance of him saying he was a private citizen at the time is that you may have any number of private opinions but still might be able to understand you have a public duty to behave in a certain way once you become an official.
LUCAS: Right.
INSKEEP: That would be Barr's explanation - Democrats, though, not accepting that. Is Barr likely to recuse himself or do anything else that Democrats are demanding?
LUCAS: It seems very unlikely that he would recuse himself. The Justice Department released a copy of Barr's written testimony yesterday. And in those prepared remarks, Barr certainly stops well short of recusing himself. Now, according to those remarks, he plans to tell lawmakers that it's vitally important that Mueller be allowed to finish his investigation and that the country needs answers and a resolution to all of these issues that kind of encircle us right now. He also plans to say that he will be an independent attorney general. He won't interfere in the probe. And he plans to say that the public and Congress need to be informed of Mueller's results. But he does stop short of saying that he will release them. He says that he will be as transparent as possible consistent with the law.
INSKEEP: Oh, leaving a little bit of space to maybe not reveal everything if he decides as attorney general that would be a better course.
Ryan, thanks for the update. Appreciate it.
LUCAS: My pleasure.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Ryan Lucas.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Thousands of teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District are on strike. This is the nation's second-biggest school district. It's a huge story here, and parents have a lot of questions. But we should note the district is over 70 percent Latino or Hispanic, serving many non-English-speaking families. KPCC's Emily Elena Dugdale looks at the difficulty of reaching these families.
(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Education is a right.
EMILY ELENA DUGDALE, BYLINE: It's 7:30 a.m. and raining at Hollenbeck Middle School in Boyle Heights, a largely Latino neighborhood on LA's East Side. Teachers wearing bright-red union shirts clasp picket signs and chant outside the school entrance. But school is still in session. And Antonio Francisco pulls up to the curb to drop off his daughter just as he always does. But today he's shocked by what he sees.
ANTONIO FRANCISCO: (Speaking Spanish).
DUGDALE: Francisco says, "I don't have words for this." He had no idea his daughter's teachers would be in the streets, but he doesn't have time to deal with it. He's got to get to work.
FRANCISCO: (Speaking Spanish).
DUGDALE: He says he thinks if teachers want to protest, they also need to let people know. But what Francisco doesn't know is that other parents have known about the strike for weeks. Francisco's reaction isn't hard for community leader Henry Perez to imagine.
HENRY PEREZ: The vast majority of non-English-speaking parents in our community - they definitely have a disconnection with what is happening.
DUGDALE: Perez is the director of InnerCity Struggle, an organization in Boyle Heights that supports local families. He says these parents often work long hours and can't spend time at their children's school. Or there's limited access to Internet, so they don't always get new information. But families who don't speak English have the most to lose from a strike.
PEREZ: They feel the impact of this challenging situation much greater than other communities.
DUGDALE: To help close this gap, Perez held meetings with parents and put together a strike guide in Spanish. But the small organization can't reach everyone. Joseph Nacorda with the school district thought his team would come pretty close. LA Unified is so big that the district is divided into several local districts. Nacorda is superintendent of one of them. Last week, the district set up a bilingual English and Spanish hotline to spread information about the strike. They've also sent automated calls in English and Spanish to homes, and some schools also sent letters. Nacorda says they're tracking how schools are engaging with non-English-speaking families.
JOSEPH NACORDA: I was able to get a good pulse from my parents, coaches, as well as my directors, with regards to any translation issues.
DUGDALE: The district also puts out notices in Spanish on a Twitter handle called SomosLAUSD. That's we are LAUSD. But the page only has about 200 followers in a district of thousands of Spanish-speaking households. Spokesperson Gloria Martinez with the teachers union said they've had success going door to door with strike flyers in some neighborhoods and rely on small networks of bilingual parent volunteers to pass the message of the strike along to non-English speakers.
GLORIA MARTINEZ: They themselves are saying, you know, we need to put our communities of color up front; we need to make sure that monolingual-speaking parents are also using their native language to communicate.
DUGDALE: She says non-English-speaking families want to be involved. It's just a matter of better meeting them where they are. For NPR News, I'm Emily Elena Dugdale in Los Angeles.
(SOUNDBITE OF DISTANT.LO'S "MELODY OF THE SOUL")
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Good morning. I'm David Greene. Ernest Hemingway once suffered a disaster for a writer. His wife lost a suitcase full of his manuscripts. This is not exactly the same, but the actor Hugh Grant lost a film script. It is hard for him to grab another because, he says, he spent weeks covering it with notes. He says it was in a bag that was stolen from his car. He is appealing for the script to be returned and also, he says, his kids' medical cards. You're listening to MORNING EDITION.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Kyler Murray can certainly play baseball. In fact, he was a top-10 draft pick by the Oakland A's back in June. But he can also play football pretty well. He just completed a season as quarterback for the Oklahoma Sooners. And he won the Heisman Trophy. So what do you do if you're in his position? Do you pursue baseball or football? Well, yesterday, Murray announced that he is filing paperwork to enter the NFL draft. And to talk about what that means for him in both of these sports, we turn to Jeff Passan, who has been following his decision-making process for ESPN. He joins us on Skype.
Good morning, Jeff.
JEFF PASSAN: Good morning, David. How are you?
GREENE: I'm good - fascinating story of this athlete. If he's - if Murray's entering the NFL draft, does that mean baseball's off the table for him?
PASSAN: Not necessarily, and that is the confusing and fascinating part of this whole story. The Oakland A's drafted Kyler Murray with the ninth pick last year and gave him a signing bonus of $4.66 million. And there was one caveat - that he could go back to Oklahoma and play football for one year. It was almost like a parting gift for him. And the A's thought that he was going to have fun at Oklahoma and maybe throw a few touchdowns and...
GREENE: (Laughter).
PASSAN: ...Be back in spring training and a full-time baseball player the next year. Well, Kyler Murray went out and had one of the statistically greatest seasons in college football history. And...
GREENE: He goes and wins the Heisman Trophy, which makes everything...
PASSAN: Yeah.
GREENE: ...Harder for him or - easier or harder.
PASSAN: And suddenly, now NFL teams are interested in him and throwing first-round grades and potentially guaranteeing him even more money than he would have been making in baseball.
GREENE: So you say baseball - not off the table. Does that mean - I mean, he could be like a Bo Jackson, a Deion Sanders, and actually play both of these sports professionally.
PASSAN: I desperately wish that were the case as a child of the '80s who grew up worshipping Bo Jackson and loving Deion Sanders.
GREENE: I'm with you.
PASSAN: But the rigors of quarterbacking in 2019 and the fact that coaches want you to be in the film room all of the time and learning playbooks, it's just not realistic to think that Kyler Murray could be a quarterback in the NFL and a center fielder in baseball. Now, that being said, could he potentially play some minor league baseball in the off-season and play football year - I want it to be true. I really do. The big question with Kyler Murray, though, it's not which does he choose. It's, can he be successful in either? He has not played baseball barely at all since going to college. And the problem and the drawback with him in football and the reason people are questioning his ability there - Kyler Murray's only five-foot-nine. We haven't seen a quarterback that short in the NFL since Doug Flutie, so he's no sure thing in football either.
GREENE: Does his story tell us anything larger about sports in this moment?
PASSAN: Yeah, that you don't have to specialize. And this is something near and dear to my heart having written a book on baseball players blowing out their arms because they throw too much as kids. And the idea that Kyler Murray did not himself say, I have to choose baseball or football early. I can continue to play at both, shows kids that, hey. Even though there's pressures going on from youth coaches, you do not have to succumb to them.
GREENE: ESPN's Jeff Passan - Jeff, thanks a lot.
PASSAN: Pleasure's mine, David. Thank you.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
William Barr has begun his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He is President Trump's nominee to be attorney general, a job that he had once before under President George H.W. Bush. One of the senators who will question Barr is Democrat Amy Klobuchar, who came into our studio shortly before that hearing began.
Senator Klobuchar, welcome back to the studios.
AMY KLOBUCHAR: Well, thanks. Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: Is William Barr qualified?
KLOBUCHAR: Well, he clearly has experience from his many years in legal practice as well as a former attorney general. But qualified also means that someone should be able to be fair and administer justice. And so my concern going into the hearing and some of the things I'm going to focus on when he is under oath is the fact that, literally just last June, he sent a memo in which he questioned the Mueller investigation that's so important to getting to the truth of what happened with Russia's influence in our last election.
INSKEEP: This was a memo that was sent to, effectively, supporters of the president - lawyers for the president, lawmakers, other people. Is that correct?
KLOBUCHAR: Exactly. Well, he said in the memo that the investigation was fatally misconceived; those were his words. And now he would be in the highest justice office that would oversee it. And the people he sent it to - and this is what's really concerning. We just found this out last night. When he - the administration sent a letter back to Lindsey Graham explaining who had gotten this memo. So as a private citizen, Mr. Barr sent this memo to the president's private lawyers in his personal capacity; sent it to, of course, the White House counsel; sent it to, it looks like, over 10 people, including prominent members of the Federalist Society and the conservative legal community. So this just gets to our theory that this was kind of a job application, an essay you'd write if you'd want to be attorney general for Donald Trump.
INSKEEP: And we will note as a matter of fact here that our correspondent Ryan Lucas has been reporting on this. And you are correct that that memo was sent and that it was sent to those people according to the administration, although William Barr's defense is - sure, I weighed in with a negative opinion about the investigation of Russian influence in U.S. politics. But I did that as a private citizen. My duties as a public servant would be different.
KLOBUCHAR: He can say that. But again, we only have the evidence before us. And that is that he sent this memo, strangely, just literally a few months before Jeff Sessions gets fired and then he gets nominated for this job. So we're going to be asking - when did you send it to those people, why did you say it, and what are you going to do about the Mueller investigation?
One bit of good news - in my meeting with him as well as in the opening statement, he did say that he would allow the Mueller investigation to be completed. And so we'll be asking questions, I will how about the scope of the investigation? The Justice Department can limit that. How about the budget? And we're really trying to get at - one, is he going to allow this investigation to be completed given that the president attacks it nearly on a daily basis? And then No. 2, are we going to be able to see a public report? And that part is interesting because he has said both to me and in his opening statement that he wants to have this information public. But yet, he sort of couches it in terms of as the law will allow. Well, he can interpret the law many ways, so we're concerned about - that the whole report get out there to the public.
INSKEEP: Although isn't that fair of him to say, I'm going to be as transparent as the law will allow because I certainly can't promise to do something illegal for you?
KLOBUCHAR: It is better than if he said he wasn't going to release the report at all. The issue is that he says - well, I got to look at the regulations. And you've got the fact that in this memo, he made many comments which would imply that he thinks the president has broad executive power, just like Justice Kavanaugh in his hearings did, and that the president shouldn't basically be brought up on obstruction of justice charges if it's in his official capacity. Yet he made some exceptions for if he asked a witness to commit perjury or if he asked someone to change their testimony. So those are the things we're going to explore. This is so important right now - when we're at the cusp of getting the findings from this investigation, when 37 people have been indicted - that we allow justice to do its course. This is about a foreign government trying to influence our election.
INSKEEP: Let's remember that the previous attorney general, Jeff Sessions, was someone who was strongly supportive of President Trump, had a lot of positions that I'm sure - maybe nearly all positions that I'm sure that you would disagree with, Senator. Yet he revealed himself to have, when it came to the Mueller investigation, a certain amount of integrity.
KLOBUCHAR: Correct.
INSKEEP: He refused to be interfered with and recused himself from that investigation when he felt it was appropriate. Do you see any sign that William Barr, even if you disagree with him about many things, has that same integrity?
KLOBUCHAR: I have a feeling, if you were asking questions, Steve, you would ask that question - will he recuse himself? And we will, too. But here's the point. He commended Jeff Sessions for recusing himself and following the rules of the career ethics lawyers. So I'm going to ask him - well, do you think Whitaker did the right thing in not recusing himself?
INSKEEP: Oh, Matthew Whitaker, the acting attorney general.
KLOBUCHAR: Yeah, 'cause he went against the ethics. And then I'm going to ask, as well, Mr. Barr if he should recuse himself because of this memo and other things he said. So you can't go commend Sessions and then not follow the rules of the ethics career advice yourself.
INSKEEP: Senator Klobuchar, are you planning any more trips to Iowa soon?
KLOBUCHAR: Stay tuned. I love going south for the winter.
INSKEEP: (Laughter) You are really going south for the winter again.
KLOBUCHAR: Iowa is right south of Minnesota. We share a lovely border, and it's south for the winter.
INSKEEP: OK. And I'll just note that people are following your travel schedule because you have said, on this program and elsewhere, you're one of many Democrats thinking of running for president.
KLOBUCHAR: Well, thank you. Appreciate that.
INSKEEP: Senator, thanks so much. Really appreciate it.
KLOBUCHAR: Thank you.
INSKEEP: Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.
NPR's Ryan Lucas, who's been covering this story, has been listening in from another studio, and he joins us once again. Ryan, what'd you hear there?
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Well, there were a couple of things. But first and foremost, if people were keeping tabs on William Barr's confirmation hearing and wondering what it would be about, I think that Senator Klobuchar made clear that this is going to focus, to an exceeding amount, on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation and concerns that the Democrats have about Barr and whether he will interfere in the investigation, whether he will release any sort of final report.
There's one important clarification that I need to make on what Senator Klobuchar said about the memo that Barr wrote about the Mueller investigation. He did not say that the investigation itself was fatally misconceived. That memo was about one aspect of the investigation, potential obstruction of justice by the president related to the firing of James Comey. That is, in particular, what Bill Barr said may be fatally misconceived. It's...
INSKEEP: A detail of the investigation, so to speak...
LUCAS: Exactly.
INSKEEP: ...Whether Comey's firing was obstruction of justice.
LUCAS: Not the entire Russia investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia - so there is an important difference there.
INSKEEP: OK. Thanks for clarifying that, Ryan. Really appreciate it.
LUCAS: My pleasure.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Ryan Lucas.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Next, we have the backstory of Sriracha. The fiery chili sauce concocted by David Tran has conquered the American market, we're told. Tran came to the United States as a refugee from Vietnam. But the original Sriracha is actually Thai not Vietnamese. Michael Sullivan reports from the Thai city of Si Racha, where residents are just now hearing about the American brand.
MICHAEL SULLIVAN, BYLINE: When David Tran was still a baby in Vietnam, 71-year-old Saowanit Trikityanukul’s grandmother was already cooking up huge pots of Sriracha sauce in her kitchen.
SAOWANIT TRIKITYANUKUL: (Through interpreter) When I was 9, my job was to mix all the ingredients together. I didn't pay much attention. I regret that now because I could've learned a lot.
SULLIVAN: Her grandmother is widely credited with being the first to make and sell the sauce. But Saowanit says it's really her great-grandfather who made it first before others in the family started selling it around town. They never patented the name, which has led to dozens of Sriracha brands being sold in Thailand and abroad, including David Tran's rooster brand, which I've brought for Saowanit to sample.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPOON SCRAPING GLASS)
TRIKITYANUKUL: (Speaking Thai) (laughter).
SULLIVAN: Wait. You're making a face. You don't like that one.
She needs a little water before she can continue.
TRIKITYANUKUL: (Speaking Thai).
SULLIVAN: She says a proper Sriracha sauce needs to be klom klom - the hot, the sour, the sweet and the garlic all blending together seamlessly, none overpowering the other. The American one, she says, just brings heat. I test her theory at a seafood restaurant a few miles away, interrupting a table of Thais eating lunch. I've got a microphone in one hand, a bottle of the rooster brand Sriracha in the other. I ask 30-year-old Tanpatha Punsawat to try it.
TANPATHA PUNSAWAT: (Speaking Thai).
SULLIVAN: A little bit spicy, but is it good or bad or...
PUNSAWAT: (Speaking Thai).
SULLIVAN: Just OK.
PUNSAWAT: (Speaking Thai) (laughter).
SULLIVAN: Twenty-nine-year-old Chuwet Kanja is next. He takes a spoonful and rolls it around in his mouth.
CHUWET KANJA: No good, no. (Speaking Thai).
SULLIVAN: Too bitter, he says, grimacing. But reactions like these haven't kept importers from bringing the American brand to Thailand. And it's showing up more and more at upmarket eateries and grocery stores in Bangkok.
ROBERT BOOTH: You know, it's not an overnight success. But that's OK.
SULLIVAN: That's Robert Booth of the Super Ting Tong Company, the Thai importer of the rooster brand. The importer's name means super crazy in Thai. And Booth does admit to encountering some local resistance.
BOOTH: You occasionally run into some people who have very strong views about the rooster brand not being the original Thai Sriracha. But given the love of spicy sauces and spicy foods in Thailand, I think there's more than enough room to incorporate a new player in the market.
SULLIVAN: This is the factory outside Bangkok, where the original Sriracha from Saowanit Trikityanukul's family is now made. The export manager is Paweena Kingpad.
SULLIVAN: So how many bottles of Sriracha sauce can you bottle per day? And how much of that is for export?
PAWEENA KINGPAD: We produce about 36,000 bottles per day - and for export and domestic, 50-50 percent.
SULLIVAN: They'd like to export more to the U.S. and tap into the American craze for all things Sriracha but admit the rooster brand has already crushed that dream. But they're not worried the American Sriracha will eat into their market share here and hope to achieve world Sriracha domination by ramping up exports to another country where they're already doing well.
KINGPAD: China.
SULLIVAN: How big?
KINGPAD: 100,000 bottle per month at least.
SULLIVAN: Are you the No. 1 Sriracha distributor in China?
KINGPAD: Yes, correct.
SULLIVAN: So you've lost the American market, but you're No. 1 in a much bigger market.
KINGPAD: Yes, yes.
SULLIVAN: For NPR News, I'm Michael Sullivan in Bangkok.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
America imprisons more people than any other nation. And for those who get released after a long sentence, re-entry can be tough, especially finding affordable, stable housing. Housing is often one of the biggest barriers to ex-inmates finding a decent job and getting their life back on track. Well, one group here in California is trying to change that with a first-of-its-kind program. You might call it Airbnb for the formerly incarcerated. Here's NPR's Eric Westervelt.
JASON JONES: I'm bored to death. So if I can work - if I can actually...
ERIC WESTERVELT, BYLINE: It's a Friday night. Jason Jones is kicking back on a couch in his Oakland apartment with roommate Tamiko Panzella. They're laughing about how Tamiko recently duped him into what he thought would be a regular gym workout.
JONES: I was like - oh, she got me into yoga. She tricked me (laughter).
WESTERVELT: What made it really jarring - this was Jason's first full day free after serving 14 years in California prisons.
JONES: You know, got me in my downward dog - you know, that's like the one position you don't want to be in in prison (laughter). Like, the first - the second day out. (Laughter) I mean. And I look over there; she's dying laughing. And I'm just like - aw, man, this is not good (laughter).
WESTERVELT: Laughing about a workout that wasn't - it's all normal, life-with-roommates kind of stuff. But all this is a new normal for the 35-year-old who grew up in and out of foster care and group homes. In America today, most of those getting out of prison after a long sentence are offered some kind of transitional housing that often involves communal living in cramped quarters with other ex-convicts. There are usually curfews, limits on visitors and other prison-like rules and restrictions. But this pilot program has none of that. Called the Homecoming Project, Tamiko and her boyfriend Joe Klein are sharing their apartment with Jason. And his rent is paid for by the nonprofit group Impact Justice. Call it the social justice sharing economy.
ALEX BUSANSKY: The Homecoming Project says you're a person, and we're gonna treat you like a person. And we're going to give you the footholds and the scaffolding you need to be able to come back home and to be a full member of society, just like anybody else.
WESTERVELT: That's Alex Busansky, Impact Justice's president. The former Justice Department lawyer looked at the landscape and saw a huge need and nothing innovative out there for former inmate housing. The group carefully screens both home host and ex-inmate to make sure it's a good housing match. There's also training and follow-up support. The experiment launched just a few months ago with six former inmates paired with local families around the Bay Area. Busansky says one of the biggest obstacles to expanding - finding enough hosts.
BUSANSKY: There's fear. There's apprehension. There's a sense of the unknown. And so it's hard to tell people - this is a great idea, and you should go to try it; bring a stranger getting out of prison into your home - not a conversation that most people are used to having.
WESTERVELT: But it's a conversation Busansky thinks America has to have, especially now as a bipartisan national movement tries to unwind decades of drug war-fueled mass incarceration.
Jason's path to prison is a familiar one - absent parents, in and out of trouble with police, in and out of foster and group homes starting at age 8.
JONES: All the households I've been in consist of some kind of abuse, either mentally, verbally, physically, whatever it was - or some kind of drug use in the household. Like, horrible experience - like...
WESTERVELT: He joined a gang at age 11. Eventually, Jason served 14 years in prison for felony charges, including assault with a deadly weapon. He was 20. Jason learned to code in prison, so he had a software job waiting for him when he got out. But he didn't have a home. So when he faced his release date, he worried the Homecoming Project was some kind of adult foster care, another dead end. But after living with Tamiko and Joe for a few months, Jason says it's really the only stable home he's ever known.
JONES: It's first time I, like, I seen healthy relationship - like, being in a household with a healthy relationship. It's the first time I've felt like I'm actually part of a family, you know what I mean? Like - so...
WESTERVELT: That's a big deal.
JONES: It is. And this is, like, a lot of things I didn't expect.
WESTERVELT: Jason reunited with his son and a daughter, but he's still trying to reconnect and get custody of another daughter who's now in foster care. It's complicated. It's hard. But Tamiko and Joe, with support from Impact Justice, have helped him navigate it all. Tamiko says she feels like Jason has helped me as much as I've helped him.
TAMIKO PANZELLA: I think we just have a really strong friendship. You know, I don't feel like I'm helping a stranger. You know, I feel like I just have a friend, roommate. Like, I feel kind of weird even saying that we're in a program because it doesn't really feel like that.
WESTERVELT: It just feels, she says, like life.
Eric Westervelt, NPR News, Oakland.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Once in a while, this happens to people in the private sector - they're employed, but the paycheck doesn't come through, or it bounces. Money's getting tight. You may have to consider looking for temporary work to pay the bills. NPR's Jeff Brady reports that is exactly what is happening for federal workers as the partial government shutdown continues.
JEFF BRADY, BYLINE: Some of those unemployed federal workers are showing up on local TV.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KIM FIELDS: A Meridian man has spent nearly two decades working for the Forest Service. For the last 12 days...
BRADY: In Boise, Idaho, TV station KTVB talked to Chris Kirk.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
CHRIS KIRK: And getting on the Internet, looking for job opportunities, looking for...
BRADY: When he's not on furlough, Kirk administers contracts for the hundreds of millions of dollars the Forest Service spends on fighting wildfires. A local store owner saw that TV story and offered Kirk a temporary job.
KIRK: What I do is basically throw freight around, load boxes, unload boxes, stock shelves and work a cash register.
BRADY: Kirk says it's quite a change from his Forest Service job. And even though he's earning less than a quarter of his federal salary, he's thankful for the work and for his new employer's flexibility.
KIRK: As soon as the government shutdown ends, I have to drop whatever I'm doing and go back to work.
BRADY: In Florida, Dorothy Dearborn also administers contracts for the government but for the space agency NASA.
DOROTHY DEARBORN: I'm a single mom of three. I live paycheck to paycheck.
BRADY: Dearborn says she's using no-interest and low-interest credit cards to get by. And her family has offered help. Finding a temporary job has been difficult. She did apply to a restaurant.
DEARBORN: The first question they asked me - they said, you work for NASA? I said yes. They said, you're in furlough? I said yes. And they said, are you planning on going back? I said yes. They said, oh, we're not interested in - it's not going to work for us right now. We are only looking for people who are going to stay.
BRADY: That's a common problem federal workers say they're encountering. Still, a few have found creative ways around this problem.
FRANK RUOPOLI: My name is Frank Ruopoli. I work at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And I live in Charleston, S.C.
BRADY: Ruopoli is a graphic designer and illustrator. He's worked at NOAA for nearly 20 years, where he takes scientific data and puts it in forms the rest of us can understand. He says a 2013 furlough, which lasted 16 days, was hard on his family. After that, he developed a plan to be prepared for the next partial government shutdown.
RUOPOLI: What I decided to do is go and get my EMT certificate.
BRADY: Ruopoli says when he's working at NOAA, he volunteers as an emergency medical technician with a local rescue squad. Now that he's on furlough, he landed a part-time EMT job.
RUOPOLI: It's a lot of a medical transport. And what I mean by that is a lot of transporting patients from hospital to hospital. They are a backup for the 911 systems.
BRADY: Ruopoli says the new job helped ease the financial burden of this shutdown. Still, he's disappointed the country is in this position.
RUOPOLI: I feel a little betrayed by our politicians. You know, they take an oath of office to serve our country. And I do the same. I got into this many years ago. And I chose to, in a way, serve my country. And I expect the same out of my politicians.
BRADY: Ruopoli and the others interviewed for this story are careful to say their views are their own, not their agencies. Most also said they were uncomfortable speaking publicly, but given that this is now the longest partial shutdown in U.S. history, they hope doing so will encourage the president and Congress to resolve their differences. Jeff Brady, NPR News.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
The Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal from veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who say the toxic smoke from burn pits made them sick. A group of vets had sued the military contracting giant KBR for damages, but the 4th Circuit of Appeals ruled that KBR was under U.S. military direction when it burned tires and medical waste next to soldiers' barracks. Monday's Supreme Court decision ends their lawsuit, but as NPR's Quil Lawrence reports, the issue of burn pits is not going anywhere.
QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: In 2007, Balad Air Base in Iraq was so big that several different bus lines carried troops from the airfields, to the chow hall, to the barracks like a small city. And it produced tons of garbage, which was burned in open pits, sometimes right next to those barracks. And many troops that slept there got sick.
ROSIE TORRES: You know, he's got the lung disease and cognitive issues - horrific headaches.
LAWRENCE: Rosie Torres is talking about her husband, Leroy, who served 23 years before medical retirement. He was at Balad in 2007. And he came home and immediately went to the hospital for a debilitating lung condition. Things have gotten worse since.
TORRES: Here, recently, he's been diagnosed with a toxic brain injury, which we didn't even know was possible.
LAWRENCE: That's what's causing his memory loss and other symptoms, she thinks. The Torres have started an organization called Burn Pits 360, and in part, due to their lobbying, the VA created a registry where more than 160,000 veterans and counting have reported symptoms that they believe came from burn pit exposure. Hundreds of them were part of a lawsuit against KBR, which had the contract to dispose of the waste.
The case has been going nearly a decade until it finally died Monday at the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court let stand a lower court's ruling that KBR was acting under military supervision and is immune from liability. So the court never took up the question about whether the burn pits caused the harm, says James Ledlie, an Army vet and lawyer for the plaintiffs.
JAMES LEDLIE: Our veterans deserve better. There's no doubt that they were exposed to burn pits run by civilian contractors. And it's unfortunate that they didn't have their day in court to have their claims truly adjudicated on the merits.
LAWRENCE: KBR has argued in similar litigation that it should be reimbursed for its legal fees, which in this case could be tens of millions of dollars. Neither KBR, nor the Pentagon, would comment on that by airtime. Vets who believe that burn pits made them ill must now rely on the VA to treat and compensate them. Which is a problem, says Paul Rieckhoff of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
PAUL RIECKHOFF: Burn pits are our generation's Agent Orange.
LAWRENCE: Rieckhoff is referring to the defoliant used in Vietnam that was found to cause cancer. Many vets died decades before the VA recognized their cancer was caused by Agent Orange. Some Navy vets exposed to it still aren't presumed to have a service-related condition. Rieckhoff says the data aren't conclusive yet about burn pits, but the fight is feeling familiar.
RIECKHOFF: The real parallel now with Agent Orange is that it seems like we're fighting the government to recognize that this exists. The Vietnam vets right now are still fighting for Agent Orange presumptions. So we don't want to be sitting in the same spot 40 years from now fighting for recognition and health care support for burn pits.
LAWRENCE: That fight is in Congress, which is where burn pit veterans will have to turn next now that they've lost in court. Quil Lawrence, NPR News.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
It is very rare in Britain for the ruling party to lose a vote in Parliament. It is unprecedented for a government to lose the way Prime Minister Theresa May did yesterday.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JOHN BERCOW: The ayes to the right - 202.
(CROWD GASPS)
BERCOW: The noes to the left - 432.
(CROSSTALK)
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
That's right. Theresa May's Brexit plan lost by 230 votes. That's - I don't know, David - like your Pittsburgh Steelers lost the Super Bowl by 10 touchdowns or something.
GREENE: Wow. Thanks, Steve.
INSKEEP: Britain now has no deal with the European Union as a deadline nears to leave. Opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is challenging Theresa May's rule today.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JEREMY CORBYN: This House can give its verdict on the sheer incompetence of this government and pass that motion of no confidence in the government.
GREENE: All right. Let's bring in Robert Shrimsley of the Financial Times, who has been covering all of this in London. A bit of news there in your country, Robert.
ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Yeah. Morning, David. It was quite remarkable last night. I was actually sitting in the press gallery of the House of Commons when the vote came in. And we all thought she was going to lose, and we all thought she was going to lose fairly badly. But the scale of it was just breathtaking. And you heard the gasps all the way across the chamber. Nobody thought it was going to be quite as bad as that.
GREENE: So what do those gasps mean? I mean, there's always a lot of energy and noises coming from British Parliament. But, I mean, it sounds like what? I mean, do those gasps mean it's sort of like what - where does the country go from here after this?
SHRIMSLEY: I think the gasps are a direct reflection of the scale of the unhappiness with Theresa May's plan. But it is also crikey what happens now. It is - I mean, as you said, there's going to be a confidence vote tabled by the opposition today. But the remarkable thing is she's probably going to win this by a relatively small majority. So we will have - and you may remember there was a leadership contest to try and topple her by her own party at the end of December. So the overwhelming likelihood is that by the end of the day we will have a prime minister who cannot get through the most important single piece of legislation she has to manage, cannot be removed by her own party till December and cannot now be removed by Parliament either. It's a very, very happy place to be.
GREENE: But in a way, I mean, the fact that she can survive this, what does that tell us about Theresa May and this moment and her leadership?
SHRIMSLEY: Well, I mean, as you say, in ordinary circumstances, a defeat like that would be the end. She would have resigned already. Historically, in British politics, if the prime minister cannot get her legislation through on anything important, she goes. So it's remarkable that she's going to hang on. I think what it tells us is that nobody has any better plans. The Conservative Party, the government, is terrified of calling an election, which what would - be happen if she falls probably because they think they will lose. There is no unity within the Conservative Party as to who an alternative replacement might be because the Conservative Party is split over the best way forward on Brexit. And that choice would see one side or another losing. Therefore, it suits everybody within the Conservative Party to leave her in place for a bit longer.
GREENE: Well, you say no one has a real plan. The European Council president, Donald Tusk, offered a plan in a tweet after this vote. I don't know how serious he was because he was basically saying like, look; British Parliament, if you can't figure this Brexit thing out, why don't you just stay in the EU with us? I mean, is that even possible after all this?
SHRIMSLEY: Everything's possible. I mean, it's not true that nobody has a plan. The problem is that everybody has a plan and they're all (unintelligible).
GREENE: (Laughter) None of them just seem workable.
SHRIMSLEY: The fundamental options that lie ahead for Britain are as follows. They can - they can revive Theresa May's plan or it can find a softer form of Brexit or it can hold a referendum and try to call it off. All these things are possible. No one would bet a large amount of money on any of them at the moment.
GREENE: All right. Robert Shrimsley is editorial director and political commentator at the Financial Times covering this extraordinary moment in Britain. A few seem to know exactly where it goes from here. Thanks so much. We appreciate it.
SHRIMSLEY: Cheers, David.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GREENE: All right. It has been nearly a month now since hundreds of thousands of federal workers have gotten paid here in this country.
INSKEEP: President Trump invited congressional leaders back to the White House on Tuesday afternoon to discuss an end to the partial government shutdown. House Democrats did not come. The many workers on hold include Frank Ruopoli, who's on furlough from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
FRANK RUOPOLI: I feel a little betrayed by our politicians. You know, I got into this many years ago, and I chose to, in a way, serve my country, and I expect the same out of my politicians.
INSKEEP: So how are workers getting by?
GREENE: Well, NPR's Jeff Brady has been trying to answer that question. He's been speaking to a lot of them. Hi there, Jeff.
JEFF BRADY, BYLINE: Hey, good morning.
GREENE: Just listening to that voice there, I mean, someone who chose to, as he put it, serve his country going through this right now, I mean, how many workers are we talking about who've been impacted by the shutdown, and where do they work?
BRADY: Well, we started with about 800,000 workers affected, and they're all across the government. None of them have received a paycheck since they started - since the shutdown started on December 22. Half of those 800,000 - about 400,000 - they were furloughed initially, so they haven't worked since then. The other half are still working and not receiving a paycheck. The numbers are changing a bit now because some employees are being called back. The IRS is bringing back tens of thousands of workers for the tax filing season. At the Food and Drug Administration, thousands of employees are resuming their work performing food inspections. And the Federal Aviation Administration has recalled several thousand engineers and inspectors. But, remember; these employees, they're just being recalled to work. They still aren't receiving a paycheck.
GREENE: Which is amazing, and we've heard different voices on our air. I mean, one that stays by me is someone who is, you know, dipping into college savings for their kids to try and get by. But you've really been hearing a lot of stories talking to people. So how are federal workers getting by as you've been hearing?
BRADY: Yeah, it's really tough because a surprising number of federal employees don't earn a lot to start with. About 1 in 8 workers earn less than $40,000 a year. Some people are taking temporary jobs to bring in money. I talked with a Forest Service employee who lives near Lake Tahoe on the California-Nevada border, and he was picking up odd jobs, you know, fixing a dishwasher or a toilet for somebody - very different from his regular job, fighting wildfires. Frank Ruopoli, who you just heard from a little bit there, is a graphic designer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He made a plan after the 2013 partial government shutdown. That one lasted 16 days.
RUOPOLI: The shutdown a couple years ago, you know, brought a lot of anxiety on me and my family and, you know, trying to make ends meet. So what I decided to do is go and get my EMT certificate.
BRADY: So he studied to be an emergency medical technician. And with that, he was able to go out and find a part-time job right away with a company that needs EMTs to fill some shifts. Some federal workers are applying for unemployment benefits. A few of them told me that was a new experience. Another said it was just really tough to find anything knowing that you might have to go back to work at any time.
GREENE: And on the political front, any movement? I mean, any light at the end of the tunnel for these employees?
BRADY: Well, Congress passed some legislation that will give workers back pay, so they know in the end they'll get paid, but that doesn't pay the bills now. And there are many contract workers who are just out of luck but not a lot of movement right now.
INSKEEP: Robert Costa, excellent reporter for The Washington Post, well-connected, is reporting that a lot of Republicans he's hearing from, and possibly some Democrats, too, I suppose, are at the point where they're expecting some outside force, some outside disaster to be needed to get this shutdown to move in any direction at all.
GREENE: We'll see if that happens. NPR's Jeff Brady. Thanks, Jeff.
BRADY: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GREENE: All right, so at least 14 people are dead after gunmen attacked an upscale hotel complex in Kenya's capital, Nairobi.
INSKEEP: One question is whether an American is among the dead. We're checking on that. The Somalia-based militant group al-Shabab has claimed responsibility. Bursts of gunfire and explosions could be heard around the hotel complex more than 16 hours after the attack began. Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta has since announced the siege is over and that all attackers are, quote, "eliminated."
GREENE: All right. NPR's Eyder Peralta has been on the scene and joins us now. And, Eyder, have things finally calmed down? Are people feeling a sense of safety? You know, I mean, there was shooting going on hours after this took place.
EYDER PERALTA, BYLINE: Yeah. There was shooting going on this morning. But right now, there are no more gunfire or explosions. But there's still a big security presence, and there's still a lot of unanswered questions. What's the total number of people dead - how the terrorists managed to get into a secure hotel? That hotel had two checkpoints. It had lots of security. It had metal detectors. So there's a lot of questions left unanswered.
GREENE: Oh, so this is a hotel that was sort of braced for something like this and yet this group was able to carry this out, which has to be making a lot of people question security structures in the country after seeing this.
PERALTA: Yeah. I think that's the big question. I think, you know, this is a city that always has braced for these kinds of attacks. That kind of security is not uncommon here in Nairobi, so it leaves people fearing.
GREENE: And al-Shabab, I mean, has struck high-traffic civilian areas in Kenya many times in the past. So, I mean, what are people saying and telling you about the way forward here if if this group is still able to carry stuff like this out?
PERALTA: I think there's a sense of disbelief here. I'm actually at the morgue right now, and it's just a lot of families looking for answers. They're sitting around. They're looking inconsolable. You know, I saw one lady faint. She was overcome by grief. I also spoke to Jasin Jama (ph) who's an older man (ph) who lost two family members in the attack. He's Somali and a Muslim - communities that always come under suspicion during these times. And what he was saying is that terrorism doesn't make sense. But every time this happens, Kenya has to come to terms with its vast diversity.
GREENE: And is the government able to deal with al-Shabab at all? I mean, does anyone feel like the government's going to be able to take care of this militant group?
PERALTA: Kenya is in a tough neighborhood. Al-Shabab obviously controls huge parts of Somalia, and they will always be a threat or they're always a threat to Kenya. But the president says that, you know, Kenya embraces peaceful coexistence, but they will never forget those who hurt their children.
GREENE: All right. NPR's Eyder Peralta on the scene of a terrorist attack in Kenya's capital, Nairobi. Eyder, thank you so much.
PERALTA: Thank you, David.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE FOREIGN EXCHANGE'S "RAW LIFE")
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Women opposed to President Trump and his policies face a challenge. Two years ago, they organized one of the largest protest days in American history. The first Women's March came the day after the presidential inauguration. Now organizers are struggling to stay unified, so the third annual march this Saturday is seen as a test, just as the presidential campaign begins. NPR's Asma Halid reports.
ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: Angie Beem was a woman who didn't pay attention to politics much. Sure, she voted, but that's about it. During the 2016 campaign, though, she started noticing troubling Facebook posts.
ANGIE BEEM: My family were starting to be racist and saying horrible things, and I didn't recognize them.
KHALID: She felt like Donald Trump was empowering people to be mean. And so when he won, she decided she had to do something. She became the president of the Washington State chapter of the Women's March. But at the end of this month, that group is dissolving. Beem says it's because of the national leadership.
BEEM: They're anti-Semitic. I mean, they claim they aren't, but they are. They're being racist.
KHALID: The accusations are a long and complicated story. In a nutshell, one of the founders of the national march attended an event last year with Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam. He's known to spout anti-Semitic slurs, but his defenders say he and his group have done a lot of positive things for people of color in poor communities.
Another founder, Linda Sarsour, has been an outspoken critic of the United States' relationship with Israel, and Beem found her opinions troubling, too. Sarsour denies any allegations of anti-Semitism. She says the women's movement, let alone the Democratic Party, has never been a united front.
LINDA SARSOUR: I think the Women's March is actually reflective of this idea that you can create a big tent. But that doesn't mean that the people inside of the tent are always going to agree on everything. And in fact, they might have very public fights about the things that they don't agree with.
KHALID: Sarsour says the idea of creating a multiracial women's movement is new. And so the fact that people are trying it, even if it is messy, is progress. She says it's what the Democratic Party needs to focus on in 2020. And Aimee Allison, a progressive activist from the Bay Area, agrees.
AIMEE ALLISON: If you look at women of color's participation in this last election, women of color and black women in particular delivered wins for Democrats.
KHALID: Both Allison and Sarsour say the party needs to put issues like racial justice and immigration at the center of the debate. But Lanae Erickson has some alternative advice. She's with the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way.
LANAE ERICKSON: I think the biggest lesson is that beating Trump can concentrate the mind.
KHALID: A lot of Democratic activists say you keep the big tent united by focusing on a common foe. Erickson says Democrats inherently have a harder job keeping everyone satisfied because the party is just more ideologically and demographically diverse than the GOP. She says the strength of that first march back in 2017 was that women were protesting for all kinds of different things under one umbrella.
ERICKSON: I think the Women's March was one of those things that was kind of like Barack Obama. It could mean to you whatever you wanted it to mean.
KHALID: That's a lesson Erickson hopes the Democratic Party heeds as it heads into 2020. Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg says all this talk about a schism in the Women's March is elitist and kind of irrelevant to most women who are just frustrated by the president.
ANNA GREENBERG: I'm not dismissing or diminishing some of those divisions, and it may lead to less enthusiasm among some people. But it's a whole other swath of less engaged people who just want to come out and march.
KHALID: Sherri Masson is one of those women. She leads a local indivisible group in a conservative Detroit suburb.
SHERRI MASSON: We decided that the Women's March was larger, was bigger than a small group of people that were organizing it.
KHALID: And so she's still planning to go. Masson says the march encouraged people who had never volunteered for an election before to make calls and knock on doors during the midterms.
MASSON: It answered that question that people had the morning after the election - what can I do? Oh, my gosh. We have to do something. And I think it sort of gave us that something.
KHALID: And, she says, even in her little group of women, there are disagreements. But what keeps them together is an urgency to defeat Donald Trump.
Asma Khalid, NPR News.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
All right, you may have seen it by now. There's this viral video of a 21-year-old UCLA gymnast earning a perfect 10 while performing this crazy difficult floor routine.
(SOUNDBITE OF TINA TURNER SONG, "PROUD MARY")
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Cheering).
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
She does flips that just seem impossible. She sticks every landing. She dances effortlessly and bounces across the floor.
GREENE: Her name is Katelyn Ohashi, and effortless is really the word. She's out there and just looks joyful, like she's having fun.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE JACKSON 5'S "I WANT YOU BACK")
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Cheering).
VALORIE KONDOS FIELD: Honestly, when you see her, it's like - the happiness that you get when you see a puppy, that's Katelyn Ohashi.
GREENE: Valorie Kondos Field or Coach Val, as she is called, is the head coach of the UCLA gymnastics team.
KONDOS FIELD: She just exudes goodness and love and joy.
INSKEEP: Katelyn Ohashi has devoted her life to gymnastics. Before joining UCLA, she was a teenaged Olympic hopeful who seemed destined to earn a spot on Team USA.
(SOUNDBITE OF 2012 KELLOGG'S PACIFIC RIM CHAMPIONSHIPS)
UNIDENTIFIED COMMENTATOR #1: This is unbelievable.
UNIDENTIFIED COMMENTATOR #2: Watch this - full.
UNIDENTIFIED COMMENTATOR #1: Beautiful.
UNIDENTIFIED COMMENTATOR #2: And just tremendous exercise from Katelyn.
GREENE: But the elite level came at a price - not just the injuries but the body-shaming, the cut-throat competition that left her questioning her self-worth. Katelyn wanted out.
INSKEEP: And she introduced herself to Coach Val, said she was looking for a new start - this time at the college-level.
KONDOS FIELD: And I remember asking her - Katelyn, when was the last time that you just loved gymnastics? And she had just won the American Cup, so she was the greatest gymnast in the world. And she said, I lost my love for the sport when I was 11. She was miserable.
INSKEEP: Coach Val tried to help her find a different way.
KONDOS FIELD: I realized that I had to earn her trust that I cared about her more as a human being than as an athlete and I cared about her in spite of her gymnastics.
INSKEEP: It shows in that video. During her entire floor routine performance, Katelyn Ohashi is smiling.
GREENE: And this is all especially meaningful for Coach Val because, after nearly 30 years as head coach for UCLA Gymnastics, this will be her final season - and what a way to go out.
KONDOS FIELD: And so many people have said that as well, that Katelyn Ohashi is really what we need right now.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Cheering).
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
The partial government shutdown is now into its 26th day. And this is largely a story of what has not been happening. Museums have not been opening their doors. Hundreds of thousands of federal employees and contractors are not getting paid, and many of them are not getting to go to work. As for negotiations between President Trump and Democrats, well, even those don't seem to be happening. Joining us is NPR White House correspondent Scott Horsley.
Hi there, Scott.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Good morning, David.
GREENE: All right. So President Trump invited lawmakers to the White House yesterday. It sounds like Democrats were just not interested in coming.
HORSLEY: Well, that's right, David. The Democrats who were invited were not leaders like Nancy Pelosi or Steny Hoyer but rather rank-and-file lawmakers from around the country. The president was looking to drive a wedge within the party and maybe expose some cracks in what has so far been a pretty united front. It didn't work. Not a single Democrat showed up for what the White House called a working lunch - and not because they were afraid they might get served fast food leftovers. This is New York...
GREENE: (Laughter) Which the president served this week to some athletes - but yeah.
HORSLEY: (Laughter) That's right. This is New York Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, who is the Democratic caucus chairman.
HAKEEM JEFFRIES: The question that I think everyone can reasonably ask is, is he inviting people to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to really try to resolve this problem or to create a photo op so he can project a false sense of bipartisanship?
HORSLEY: So hold the Democrats. Hold the photo op. The president's special order did not come through. President Trump wound up dining with a bunch of House Republicans. And David, probably few parties will have less to say about ending the shutdown than House Republicans.
GREENE: Well, I mean, the president seems pretty dug in here. The Democrats sound dug in. I mean, listening to the voice there, I mean, questioning the president's motives. But you have Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer floating the name of one person who he said could actually help break this gridlock. It's Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, which makes me wonder - where is McConnell in all this?
HORSLEY: Where is Mitch McConnell?
GREENE: Yeah.
HORSLEY: He's been largely invisible, but he is playing a critical behind-the-scenes role in extending this shutdown. He has refused to allow a vote on any spending bill that is not pre-approved by the president. You know, the Democratic-controlled House has been passing spending bills that would reopen the parts of the government that are closed but without wall funding, bills similar to those that already cleared the Senate late last year. But McConnell has said he won't bring them to the floor even though there are a handful of Republican senators who say they'd be OK with reopening the government under those conditions. So McConnell is, in effect, running interference for the White House here.
GREENE: Well, speaking of the impact of all this - I mean, this is Day 26, as we said - tax season is coming. The president knows how unpopular it would probably be for Americans to not get their tax returns because of this shutdown, so the administration's bringing back tens of thousands of employees at the IRS. But are they going to get paid for coming back to work?
HORSLEY: No, they're not. Forty-six-thousand IRS employees are going back to work today, more than half of the agency's workforce. They are not being paid. And as you say, their assignment is to process tax refunds so those are not delayed by the shutdown. That's a departure from the way earlier administrations have handled this, when they've concluded you can't pay refunds while the Treasury Department is closed. And on the one hand, it's good for taxpayers, who will not have to wait indefinitely for their refund checks. On the other hand, it's one more way to extend the shutdown on the backs of unpaid federal workers.
This reminds me, David, a little bit of an old "Star Trek" episode where the...
GREENE: Oh.
HORSLEY: ...The crew of the Enterprise shows up at this planet where the inhabitants have been at war for a really long time. And they have sanitized the war so there's no real incentive for them to end it. The administration has tried to sanitize this shutdown so there's less pressure on lawmakers, less pressure on the president. But of course, it's those unpaid federal workers who are shouldering a lot of the load.
GREENE: Yeah, it really sounds that way. All right. NPR's Scott Horsley updating us on the shutdown that goes on with no end in sight.
Scott, thanks.
HORSLEY: Good to be with you, David.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Students in Los Angeles have a new routine. When they arrive at schools in the morning, they are greeted by their teachers picketing outside.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED TEACHER: What do we want?
UNIDENTIFIED TEACHERS: Smaller classes.
UNIDENTIFIED TEACHER: When do we want it?
UNIDENTIFIED TEACHERS: Now.
INSKEEP: They're striking because the teachers union and the district failed to negotiate a new contract. So what is happening inside the schools? NPR's Elissa Nadworny is in LA with the story.
ELISSA NADWORNY, BYLINE: At Vista Middle School, students aren't in the classrooms. They're grouped by grade in the gym and in the auditorium.
SHARLENE MARTINEZ: I need all eyes up here, mouths closed.
NADWORNY: Sharlene Martinez, a vice principal, is teaching close to 150 seventh-graders.
MARTINEZ: OK. We're all transitioning to math.
NADWORNY: She passes out a worksheet. It's about shapes and spatial awareness.
MARTINEZ: My credential's in English. But covering the math? My gosh - very challenging.
NADWORNY: She's eager to have this teachers strike over.
MARTINEZ: I mean, I'm hardly getting any time to sit, eat, breathe, go to the bathroom, so yeah. But it's been very smooth.
NADWORNY: Only about a half of the student body came to school on Tuesday. Principal Joe Nardulli leads us down what's usually the eighth-grade corridor. Today classrooms are empty, hallways quiet.
If there wasn't a strike right now, what would this hallway look like?
JOE NARDULLI: Oh, this would be a full place - you know, about 410 students roaming the hallways, passing. And this is the location that students would have instruction.
NADWORNY: On the first two days of the strike, about a third of the district's students showed up. And that's a problem because funding from the state is linked to attendance. With those numbers, each day of the strike means an estimated net loss of about $15 million according to district leaders. Across town at Kingsley Elementary, about half the school was absent.
KENYA TOMAS: A lot of parents are holding their kids back. That's their way of joining in the strike.
NADWORNY: That's Kenya Tomas (ph). She's a teacher's assistant at Kingsley. Many TAs, including Kenya, are in schools during the strike. She supports the teachers but isn't in their union, and she was told she could lose her job if she didn't come to work. In schools this week, she says students are doing lots of busy work.
TOMAS: We have them doing just worksheets and movies. That's literally it.
NADWORNY: They've watched "Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs" and "Boss Baby."
KIMBERLY ESCOBAR: We didn't really learn much.
NADWORNY: Kimberly Escobar is a fifth-grader at Alta Loma Elementary School. We've been checking in with her and her mom, Rosa, this week.
ROSA ESCOBAR: She's, like, bored. She was expecting something else.
NADWORNY: At school this week, she's learned about nouns on a school iPad and watched a bunch of videos, including one about oceans. She wants to stay home tomorrow. Mom has other plans.
ROSA: She has to go to school.
KIMBERLY: No.
ROSA: Yes.
KIMBERLY: I don't learn anything.
ROSA: Something.
KIMBERLY: But there's nothing to learn. We already know about the ocean. It's like we're doing this for no reason.
NADWORNY: Few kids were in school on Tuesday. And when Kimberly came home, she was feeling really lonely.
ROSA: No friends, no teachers - I know. It's kind of sad.
NADWORNY: Kimberly buries her face in her mom's arms.
KIMBERLY: I miss my friends.
ROSA: It's OK. Chica, it's OK. Hopefully, it ends up soon. It's all right.
NADWORNY: By the end of our visit, Kimberly's decided, OK. She'll go to school.
KIMBERLY: Maybe one day we'll finally tell you everything's back to normal.
NADWORNY: With negotiations at an impasse, it's unclear when that will be.
Elissa Nadworny, NPR News, Los Angeles.
(SOUNDBITE OF MARCUS D'S "MELANCHOLY HOPEFUL")
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep with congratulations to Arizona, which is buying back its own state capitol building. During the Great Recession, the state sold the capitol and other buildings to raise money. Think of the math. The state raised $700 million in the short term, then it leased the buildings back, promising rent payments projected to total far more than the sale price - free enterprise. A decade later, the state is borrowing money to buy the capitol back.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
What does a U.S. troop withdrawal from Syria mean for neighboring Iraq? It is a big question. Just a few years ago, ISIS spread out of its base in Syria to capture much of northern Iraq. Iraqis have largely recovered their territory, but they do not want ISIS to regroup now that President Trump has ordered U.S. forces to leave. NPR's Jane Arraf joins us from Baghdad. Hi there, Jane.
JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: Hi, Steve.
INSKEEP: How does the Syria withdrawal, whenever it's completed, affect Iraq?
ARRAF: Well, you know, there's some concern here because even though ISIS was actually driven out of a third of Iraq, which is a huge accomplishment - accomplished at great cost - they're still there along the border. So if the U.S. is pulling out troops from Syria, it means that the push against ISIS has to come from somewhere. And there's a lot of talk here among diplomats, among military people that that's going to have to be based at least partly in Iraq, where there are U.S. troops at that base in Al Anbar where President Trump visited at Christmas and where they're already launching attacks across the border in conjunction with the Syrian government, actually.
INSKEEP: Oh, this is a good point. U.S. troops may be leaving Syria, but they're still based in Iraq - a few thousand of them, anyway. So what are Iraqis thinking about this situation?
ARRAF: So on the Iraqi side, they're kind of scrambling a bit, as are a lot of the Iraqi allies. So it's been a very busy week here at the presidential palace, in the prime minister's office. You know, Iraq, for a long time, was kind of isolated from the Sunni Arab world. But now there's been a parade of visitors. There's been Jordan's King Abdullah - first time here in 11 years - the French foreign minister, who said he was surprised at the pullout talk. And notably, there has been Iran - the Iranian foreign minister here - because U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo came. And his big preoccupation, of course, is Iran - containing Iran.
INSKEEP: Oh. Oh.
ARRAF: That's a tough balancing act.
INSKEEP: Well, now, this is interesting. Pompeo is very focused on Iran and - as is President Trump. Of course, Iraq is influenced by Iran. Were Iraqis reassured at all when Secretary of State Pompeo came to say the U.S. is still with them?
ARRAF: Reassured - I'm not quite sure. You know, they understand the political realities in the U.S. But it is tough. I spoke with the Iraqi presidential spokesman here, Ambassador Lukman Faily, this morning. And here's what he had to say.
LUKMAN FAILY: We have the security and the clear statement by the government that the intelligence, security, cooperation, training with the United States need to continue. But at the same time, we cannot as a government continue just having this roller-coaster relationship based on this nuclear deal with Iran. It needs to be a bit more predictable for us.
INSKEEP: Roller-coaster relationship.
ARRAF: Yeah. So what he's referring to there is there - you know, there's an ongoing push here among some political parties to get rid of the U.S. troops in Iraq. The prime minister yesterday here said there were 6,000 of them still here. But at the same time, Iraq needs those troops, and it's trying to balance relations with Iran. Iran is its biggest neighbor and a big trading partner. So thus, the roller-coaster reference oh the roller coaster because the United States is trying to isolate Iran. The United States is allied with Iraq. Iraq has a relationship with Iran. So you go up. You go down. It's awkward.
ARRAF: You got it.
INSKEEP: Jane, thanks for the update.
ARRAF: Thank you.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Jane Arraf in Baghdad.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Each year, we catch up with James McClintock. He's a marine biologist with the University of Alabama, Birmingham who does research on climate change. And he makes an annual visit to Antarctica. We reached him by phone, as we have the last two years, at Palmer Station, a U.S. research facility on the Antarctic Peninsula. James McClintock, you there?
JAMES MCCLINTOCK: Hey, David. Yes, I'm here.
GREENE: I feel like I ask you this each time we speak, but I love starting with the question, how's the weather there?
MCCLINTOCK: Well, it's a lovely day. It's probably in the high 30s maybe the low 40s, a little bit of cloud cover. They've had a record snowfall. But right now it's lovely, and the snow is not falling. So that's how it's going.
GREENE: And I feel like I have taken a personal interest in the Adelie penguin population, who you talk about whenever we speak - I mean those little creatures who look like Charlie Chaplin in their little tuxedos. Are they of interest to you on this trip, and what do we know about them?
MCCLINTOCK: The news is a little sad. The population of 15,000 breeding pairs of Adelie penguins has reached a new low. It's down to 1,100 this year. So over 90 percent of them are disappearing. What's happening mainly that's causing the big problem is that they come in at a very predetermined time of year to lay their eggs. And then along comes these unseasonably late snowstorms because it's getting warmer and more humid. Ironically, it's snowing later. And then the snow melts, and the eggs drown. So the Adelie's having a really tough time right now.
GREENE: You arrive here, you know, each year. As you arrive this time and you look out at the landscape, does anything strike you as starkly different from the last time you were there?
MCCLINTOCK: If you look behind the station, Lamar Glacier (ph) is just retreating very, very quickly. In fact, I was talking to a couple of Palmer Station staff this morning that went on a little camping trip the other day and spent the night sleeping on the rim next to the glacier. And they said they couldn't sleep. The glacier cracked, and pieces fell into the water all through the night. Like, every 20 minutes to half an hour. They'd be woken or be jarred by a crack of ice. This is indicative of 87 percent of the glaciers along the Western Antarctic Peninsula that are now in rapid retreat. This is just sort of the canary in the coal mine here.
GREENE: We're now two years into a presidency in the United States with a president who really has cast a lot of doubt about climate change, also pulled out of the big Paris climate accord. Is that affecting your work at all or affecting the work of other researchers like you?
MCCLINTOCK: Not so much here in the National Science Foundation program. But colleagues that are working in the Environmental Protection Agency, et cetera, are definitely experiencing some impacts on their climate-related research.
GREENE: Are you worried at all about the future if, you know - as priorities shift based on a philosophy and a vision set by this president?
MCCLINTOCK: Yeah. I think scientists in general are concerned because we see this as a very important time for this research. And we're looking for continued and perhaps even greater support to provide the kinds of information that'll be critical for policy decisions as we move into a future of climate change that is already upon us, quite frankly.
GREENE: James McClintock, it is always great to catch up with you. Have a great trip, and best of luck in your research.
MCCLINTOCK: Thank you, David.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Well, the future of Brexit is uncertain this morning. So is the future for Prime Minister Theresa May. Really, so is the future of Britain. The prime minister is facing a vote of no confidence today. This comes after her government suffered a historic defeat yesterday as British lawmakers rejected her Brexit deal overwhelmingly.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: The ayes to the right 202. The noes to the left 432.
(GASPS)
GREENE: Here is Prime Minister May.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRIME MINISTER THERESA MAY: Every day that passes without this issue being resolved means more uncertainty, more bitterness and more rancor.
GREENE: And all this with just 10 weeks left before Britain leaves the EU because of the Brexit referendum two years ago. Robert Shrimsley has been covering all of this. He's editorial director for the Financial Times and joins us from London. Good morning, Robert.
ROBERT SHRIMSLEY: Good morning.
GREENE: So those were gasps I was hearing in Parliament. Was that just shock over how big this margin was and how overwhelming this rejection of this Brexit deal really was?
SHRIMSLEY: Yeah, that's exactly right. I think that everybody expected that the prime minister was going to lose the vote on Tuesday night. And I think many people expected she was going to lose badly. But you're talking records here. This is the greatest ever defeat since anyone bothered keeping records of parliamentary defeats. The largest anyone could previously members a defeat of 166 votes in 1924. And she's gone way past that.
GREENE: Does that mean she's done? I mean, there's a vote of no confidence today. Is this the end of the road for the prime minister?
SHRIMSLEY: No. I mean, quite the contrary. That's the most remarkable thing about this process - is that, actually, ordinarily under the British system, if a prime minister loses on something quite as important as this, they're basically finished because you are prime minister because you have the ability to command the majority in the House of Commons. But, in fact, there'll be a confidence vote tabled by the opposition parties today. And we expect her to win it. So we'll be in this extraordinary position where she can't get her business done, but nobody can get rid of her.
GREENE: OK. So she can't get her business done. Will she be able to get any business done after this vote? I mean, what do you do if you are hanging on by a thread as prime minister - you have a Brexit deal, which basically deals with the future of a country that everyone in - I mean, a lot of people in Parliament have rejected. What's her next move?
SHRIMSLEY: Well I think what she intends to try and do it here she's announced some conciliatory moves, said she's going to talk to other people across the political divide, which she has, in fact, been doing a little bit already. But it doesn't sound like she really wants to consult very widely. And she's put some very thick, red lines about what she's prepared to negotiate. It looks to me as if she's actually trying to just run the clock a bit down, in spite of saying that she wouldn't do so, to get a few more concessions from the European Union and essentially present Parliament with what is, with all intents and purposes, the same deal but with maybe only seven weeks to go and hope that people are panicked and supporting it on the grounds that they want to avoid crashing out with no deal. The issue now is that she's facing a confrontation with Parliament with MPs on all sides who are saying, no, no, this isn't good enough. We are going to take control of this process if you can't find a way to seek an agreement that more people can support.
GREENE: I mean, the one thing a lot of people have agreed on seems to be that doing Brexit without any kind of deal could be total chaos, right?
SHRIMSLEY: Yeah.
GREENE: So what what are the options if she doesn't get some sort of new deal that that gets approval?
SHRIMSLEY: Well, it is an absolutely terrible outcome for the U.K. And it could happen in, you know, as we said, 10 weeks. We've got ministers planning for food shortages and medicine shortages at the moment in the case of a palsy (ph) that they will have led to. The problem is she has about a hundred MPs on her own side who quite like that outcome, who think that the European Union's bluffing and that Britain will muddle through. And therefore, she faces a major split in her own party in trying to seek consensus. There is this general view that Parliament will not support a no-deal outcome. So you have a few options. There's a few technical other forms of Brexit which are a bit softer, which keep Britain in certain other aspects of the European institutions. And in the long run, you have the possibility of Parliament deciding they have to have a second referendum and throw it back to the people because it can't decide.
GREENE: Donald Tusk, the European Council president, seemed to be hinting on social media after this vote that - you know, telling Britain, why don't you to stay in the EU? I guess if there's a new referendum, that's possible. But that doesn't seem like a smooth path at all.
SHRIMSLEY: Well, nothing's passed. Nothing is smooth. There's nothing good about any of this. I think - I mean, if we wanted to cancel Brexit, it would be impossible. Although legally it's possible, politically, I think it would be impossible to do so without a second referendum. And that will take a bit of time. There's no guarantee. Although sentiment has moved towards remaining, there's no guarantee that that would be the outcome. But I think that is the only way it could happen.
GREENE: How are people feeling in the country? I mean, are people going to work and doing their thing or thinking about this constantly?
SHRIMSLEY: I think there's a mix. I think there's no escaping Brexit anywhere. It's in all conversations. And everybody is both completely sick of it and, in many cases, completely mesmerized by it. Many passions run extremely high. People are very, very upset, very angry. People who are on the same side are fighting each other over tactic. And then there's a great mass of the population who's just getting on with it and wants to see a resolution.
GREENE: Robert Shrimsley is editorial director of the Financial Times, covering this extraordinary moment in Britain. Robert, thanks.
SHRIMSLEY: Pleasure.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
The Trump administration has been planning to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. The question asks, is this person a citizen of the United States? But that effort has now hit a major roadblock because a federal judge in New York has ordered the question to be removed. Here's the latest from NPR's Hansi Lo Wang.
HANSI LO WANG, BYLINE: California Secretary of State Alex Padilla says the ruling is, quote, "a win for democracy."
ALEX PADILLA: By no means is it over because there's still a chance for appeal and, ultimately, Supreme Court action on this.
LO WANG: Padilla, a Democrat, says he's also watching other citizenship question lawsuits, including one brought by his own state of California.
PADILLA: There's billions of dollars at stake. So if you care about voting rights, then you ought to care about a fair and accurate census.
LO WANG: The 2020 headcount will determine how many congressional seats and electoral college votes each state gets for the next decade. The Trump administration has insisted it wants the citizenship question to help protect the voting rights of racial minorities. But the question's critics worry it would ultimately lead to an undercount of noncitizens and some citizens afraid of answering that question.
CAROLYN MALONEY: Oh, I think it's absolutely time for Congress to act.
LO WANG: Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat from New York, tells NPR she's planning to reintroduce a bill soon that would prohibit adding any census question that has not been tested for at least three years before the census. That would include the new citizenship question.
MALONEY: Questions are not added willy-nilly by anyone who wants to add them.
LO WANG: In the meantime, the Trump administration is expected to head back to court soon, and so is Thomas Saenz.
THOMAS SAENZ: Yes, we'll be going to court and trial next week as scheduled.
LO WANG: Saenz is the president and general counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which is representing plaintiffs in one of the citizenship question lawsuits in Maryland.
SAENZ: We expect to present evidence that there was not only racial discrimination but a conspiracy within the government to discriminate against Latinos.
LO WANG: Saenz says if more plaintiffs win at the district courts, it could help ensure that higher courts can consider all of the reasons why critics of the citizenship question say it should be removed. Hansi Lo Wang, NPR News, New York.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
How did an attack unfold in Nairobi, Kenya? Gunmen assaulted an upscale hotel complex yesterday. The attack continued into today. At least 14 people are dead, including an American. NPR's Eyder Peralta has been on the scene. He's in Nairobi. Eyder, would you work us through from the beginning? How did this attack start?
EYDER PERALTA, BYLINE: This started yesterday afternoon our time. A number of gunmen breached this hotel with explosives, and then one of them blew himself up at the restaurant. Then the other gunmen - we still don't know how many there were - moved through the compound, shooting people. And they then made their way up the upper floors of the hotel, where there was a standoff with police that lasted up until this morning. We were still hearing gunfire this morning. And today the president said that the situation was under control.
INSKEEP: So there was a security perimeter of this hotel as there are for high-profile targets in this part of the world. And they blasted their way through that perimeter and then conducted a military-style assault up through the hotel, firing at civilians. Is that right?
PERALTA: Yeah, that's what we understand. And I mean, you know, this is a city that is, unfortunately, used to these kinds of attacks. So there are mitigators in place. There's checkpoints. In this particular hotel, there were two different barriers that they had to get through, including metal detectors, an airport-style scanner that you walk through as you come into this hotel. So today there are still a lot of unanswered questions, you know, including how the terrorists managed to get in here.
INSKEEP: Where are you as you speak with us, Eyder? And what have you been seeing?
PERALTA: I am at the morgue, where families are here, gathered. They're waiting. They're looking for answers. You know, some of them are just sitting around. They're looking inconsolable. They're crying. I saw one lady who fainted. You know, right now I'm watching a woman being consoled by two of her friends. She's just - she's crying. I spoke to Yasi Yama, (inaudible) who has two family members. And he's Somali and Muslim - two communities that always - they always get suspicion during these times. And this is - let's listen to a bit of what he told me.
YASI YAMA: I'm a Muslim and I'm Somali, but I'm suffering in their hands. My two young men died because of them.
PERALTA: What he says is, this doesn't make sense.
INSKEEP: I suppose we should explain, Eyder Peralta, al-Shabab is blamed for this attack. They're operating in Somalia. Kenya is nearby, is involved in that war. What message is al-Shabab trying to send? And how are Kenyans responding to it?
PERALTA: So al-Shabab has taken responsibility for this. And they want Kenyan forces out of Somalia. And so they've been attacked before. They attacked Westgate in 2013, which left 67 dead. And they attacked a university in 2015, which left 150 students dead.
INSKEEP: But the president of Kenya has said that the fighting will go on. That's NPR's Eyder Peralta. Thanks so much, Eyder.
PERALTA: Thank you, Steve.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Senator Sherrod Brown has announced travel plans. The Ohio Democrat is visiting Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. No coincidence that all four states hold early presidential caucuses and primaries. Senator Brown is one of maybe a couple dozen Democrats showing an interest, and he's on the line. Senator, good morning.
SHERROD BROWN: Hey. How are you?
INSKEEP: Are you running?
BROWN: I don't know yet. We have not made that decision. Before answering any of this, I wanted to just thank you all for doing the burn pit veteran story. We have worked for years - Congress has - generally pretty well when - presumptive eligibility for Agent Orange. And these burn pits, I mean, the government, the military should have known this, just like the chemical companies knew about Agent Orange. And Congress has got to move more quickly on this.
INSKEEP: I appreciate the thanks, and it's an important issue. But because time is brief here, let me just ask you, why would you not run, Senator Brown?
BROWN: I don't know. I've got - it's an earthquake for a family. I mean, everything - it's going to be a personal decision in that way. But I, you know, I think that in too many cases, Congress - too many people are in this country - too many Democrats. The National Democratic Party sees this in far too many - it's kind of this false choice of Democrats fight - Democrats speak to the progressive base or speak to working-class families regardless of race. I think you need to do both.
I want to at least inform the national conversation. I want whoever is the nominee to talk about the dignity of work. That's why we're doing this tour. And we will figure it out in March if I want to make this run.
INSKEEP: OK. You talked about speaking to the working class. I want people to be aware, if they're not, that on trade, you have sounded in some ways a little like President Trump. You're from an industrial state. You've been critical of NAFTA. I understand that. But do you think that Democrats are ready for anybody who has anything in common with President Trump?
BROWN: Well, I think Democrats want somebody that will speak to the dignity of work and will speak for workers? And I've - I helped to lead the fight against NAFTA when Donald Trump was still selling - and still is - his products made by low paid, exploited workers overseas, including Chinese workers. So I never talk about trade the way he does. I never pit workers in Mexico or France again against workers in the United States or Bangladesh. I never use racist terms like he does.
My position on trade is all about workers. His position on trade is something else. I appreciate the efforts to renegotiate NAFTA, but the president's not even close to being in the right place on NAFTA if he's not going to have strong enforcement for labor standards, which they don't have yet.
INSKEEP: Well, let's talk about that. You said the dignity of work - it's a good phrase. You've said that one thing you mean by that is higher wages for people, which is certainly something that has been lacking for a lot of people for decades. But according to economists, the real problem here - a real problem is globalization, automation, computers, AI taking over jobs. Are you going to be able to solve that if you were elected?
BROWN: Well, first, Steve, it's - the dignity of work is more than a phrase. For me, it's who I am. And it's a career of fighting for workers. It's a lot of things. It's minimum wage. It's the overtime rule which the president undercut. I mean, the White House looks like a retreat for Wall Street executives. They always come down on the side of special interests. I want somebody in the White House, whoever is the nominee, talking about the dignity of work, putting workers first.
And workers first means whether you - all work, whether you swipe a badge or punch a clock, whether you work for a salary or whether you're working for tips, whether you're taking care of an aging parent or raising children. We need to put workers first in this conversation, not tax cuts for the rich first, not deregulation first.
INSKEEP: Let me raise an awkward question here, Senator Brown. You've mentioned that one difference between you and President Trump is you don't want to use racist terms. You want to speak to workers regardless of race. This raises an interesting question for you. Jamelle Bouie of Slate is one of a number of analysts who have suggested in print it might be time for Democrats to nominate a woman or a person of color because of the political situation, because Democrats have so many women who succeeded in 2018. Do you think there's something to that argument?
BROWN: Sure, there is. But the most important thing is whom we fight for. And President Trump demonizes immigrants. He divides America to distract from the fact that he's using the White House to enrich people like himself. We need to fight his phony populism. I mean, Donald Trump can't campaign - candidate Trump campaigned as a populist, then he governed as a royalist. And it's important to point that distinction out.
I want to nominate a Democrat, whoever he or she is, I want to nominate a Democrat who's going to fight for the dignity of work and is going to put workers of all races first because justice issues grows out of that in a way that we need to make sure that workers have opportunities.
INSKEEP: Can you give us a sentence that would distinguish you from Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris or Beto O'Rourke or any number of people who are running or may run?
BROWN: I'm not going to do that. I only will say that I hope that they all adopt the dignity of work because, I mean, I won a state - I won Ohio, a state where Trump won by almost nine points, I won by seven points in this election. I think we need to win in the heartland, and we do it not by playing to only the progressive base or only where we do it - by playing to the progressive base and to working class voters of all races. And I think I'm ideally suited to do that.
INSKEEP: Well, Senator Brown, we'll pay attention to your travels. Thanks for joining us this morning.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Thank you, Steve.
INSKEEP: Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio.
NPR political editor Domenico Montanaro has been listening along with us. Domenico, good morning.
MONTANARO: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: What do you hear there?
MONTANARO: You know, there's a lot there. I mean, any time a candidate decides to run, they have to consider their family and consider what it would mean and do - you know, he said that it's an earthquake for a family, has to be a personal decision. And I did like at the end there how, you know, you tried to ask for a distinction between himself and some of the other potential candidates, and he said he wouldn't do it and then he did.
You know, in particular, one of the things that he talks about and that other people who talk about this potential campaign is the heartland. It is Ohio. It is those white working class lunch pail Democrats who used to be the core of the Democratic Party who President Trump targeted and won. And Sherrod Brown is somebody who would absolutely try to target those voters again to try to get them back on board.
One of his big vulnerabilities, however, and why he's talking about this tour between now and March is his sort of low name recognition. Not a lot of voters are saying they know who he is. Two-thirds of voter - of Democratic primary voters, in fact, are saying they're not so sure who he is. They don't know - maybe have an opinion of him. And he needs to be able to get people more familiar with who he is.
INSKEEP: And he's one of many people running or thinking of running. In fact, just last night, Kirsten Gillibrand, New York - senator from the state of New York was on CBS' "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert," and she said she is running. Let's listen to a bit.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT")
KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND: I'm going to fight for other people's kids as hard as I would fight for my own, which is why I believe that health care should be a right and not a privilege.
(APPLAUSE)
GILLIBRAND: It's why I believe we should have better public schools for our kids 'cause it shouldn't matter what block you grow up on.
INSKEEP: You can hear the progressive themes being pushed there, Domenico.
MONTANARO: Yeah. There are not going to be huge policy differences between these candidates, but it's going to be one of emphasis.
INSKEEP: Domenico, thanks very much, really appreciate it.
MONTANARO: You're so welcome.
INSKEEP: That's NPR political editor Domenico Montanaro.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Good morning. I'm David Greene. Maybe don't even use the word patriot in conversation this week in Kansas City. The Chiefs are playing New England for a ticket to the Super Bowl. And Worlds of Fun, a Kansas City amusement park, has gone so far as to alter the name of its roller coaster The Patriot. The Patriot is now The Patrick to honor Chiefs' quarterback Patrick Mahomes. Chiefs fans, I hope Sunday's game for you is less roller coaster and more world of fun.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Whether they're going up or coming down, walls have been an important part of history.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING MONTAGE)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: It's one of the world's greatest engineering wonders - the Great Wall of China.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: The Israeli government insists their separation wall is for security reasons - to stop Palestinians carrying out attacks in Israel.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: From the west side of the Berlin Wall, the sound that you hear and what you're seeing tonight - hammers and chisels as young people take down this wall.
GREENE: That was in 1992, when the wall that separated communist East Germany with the Western world came down. Almost three decades on, the construction of another wall is being contemplated.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We will build a great wall along the southern border.
GREENE: We wanted to examine the human impact these kinds of barriers can have. Author Marcello Di Cintio has visited some of the world's most famous walls. And he told our colleague Noel King that they all have one thing in common.
MARCELLO DI CINTIO: They're theatrical, whether they were the Great Wall of China, whether they were Hadrian's Wall or, I would argue, the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border - is there to provide kind of an illusion of security, an illusion of strength - a kind of strength that does not actually bear out in reality.
NOEL KING, BYLINE: Are there examples of when a wall did what it was supposed to do, which is, ideally, keep some people out, keep other people in?
DI CINTIO: Yeah, it's funny. The lowest tech wall that I visited was the only one that did that. And that was in the Western Sahara, where the Moroccans had built, essentially, a sand berm in the desert battlefield where they were fighting against the Sahrawi rebels. And that one worked. It's a hump of sand. And it was meant to stop kind of rebel Jeeps from advancing on Moroccan soldiers. And it does just that.
KING: When you think about the potential for damaging effects on one side or the other, which walls come to mind?
DI CINTIO: Oh, there's so many. I mean, just to think about the walls that I found - their psychological effect. For example, I spent some time along the Indian-Bangladesh border. There's one area where the culture of the people on one side of the line was exactly the same as the culture on the other. They had the same language. They had the same religion. They ate the same food. They read the same poems. All of a sudden, India builds a, quote, unquote, "wall." And in this case, it was a three-strand barbed wire fence.
All of a sudden, people started talking about their relatives on the other side of the fence differently. People in India started - were telling me things like, you know, our relatives are becoming more Bangladeshi now, or, we can't trust them as much as we used to. And the only reason was that something about that - those three strands of barbed wire rendered the people on the other side their enemy.
KING: Well, yeah. What you're pointing to is that there's an actual psychological effect.
DI CINTIO: Well, you know - and that's nothing new, either. In East Berlin during the time of the Berlin Wall, there was a psychiatrist who noticed that his patients who lived within close physical proximity to the wall showed higher rates of psychological disorders, higher rates of depression. There was more alcoholism. There was more domestic abuse. And he blamed it on the wall. And he actually coined a term that meant wall disease in German. And he claimed that the only cure for this disease was for the wall to finally come down.
KING: But at the same time, aren't there some people who actually feel like the wall makes them safer? I mean, we talk about the wall in the U.S. a lot - people who support it as a measure of security, as something that's going to keep us safe.
DI CINTIO: But a sense of security is not the same as actual security. And I understand a sense of security is valuable. What I've seen is that what those walls claim to actually accomplish, they never actually accomplish it.
KING: Marcello Di Cintio is the author of "Walls: Travels Along The Barricades." Marcello, thanks so much.
DI CINTIO: Thank you.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Here are some of the questions U.S. senators are posing to William Barr. They are questions to the nominee to serve as attorney general overseeing an investigation into Russia's election support for President Trump.
(SOUNDBITE OF SENATE CONFIRMATION HEARING MONTAGE)
LINDSEY GRAHAM: Do you believe Mr. Mueller would be involved in a witch hunt against anybody?
DIANNE FEINSTEIN: Will you commit to ensuring that special counsel Mueller is not terminated without good cause consistent with department regulation?
AMY KLOBUCHAR: Will you commit to make public all of the report's conclusions - the Mueller report - even if some of the evidence supporting those conclusions can't be made public?
INSKEEP: Those are the questions. Here are some of the answers from William Barr - gray-haired, bespectacled, articulate - with the comfort level of someone who has been attorney general before.
(SOUNDBITE OF SENATE CONFIRMATION HEARING)
WILLIAM BARR: I don't believe Mr. Mueller would be involved in a witch hunt.
INSKEEP: Barr spoke less definitely about whether he would let the public know what Mr. Mueller finds.
(SOUNDBITE OF SENATE CONFIRMATION HEARING)
BARR: That certainly is my goal and intent. It's hard for me to conceive of a conclusion that would, you know, run afoul of the regs as currently written. But that's certainly my intent.
INSKEEP: Today witnesses offer their views on William Barr, including Jonathan Turley, law professor at George Washington University, who has represented William Barr. He's been a lawyer for the guy who is angling to be the nation's top lawyer.
Mr. Turley, welcome back to the program.
JONATHAN TURLEY: Thanks, Steve.
INSKEEP: Should William Barr be confirmed?
TURLEY: Absolutely. He's really the perfect person at this time to take over the Justice Department. This is a department that has taken a lot of hits under the waterline. This has been a very difficult two years. And to bring in someone like Barr will introduce not just a record of integrity but someone who could bring real stability to that department.
INSKEEP: Although - let's be clear. He, as Democrats have pointed out, wrote, not many months ago, an unsolicited memo to multiple people around President Trump, including the president's lawyers, raising concerns about the Mueller investigation, making it clear that he is skeptical of some aspects of it.
TURLEY: Well, I think he specifically raised concerns about one aspect of the investigation. That is how to interpret one of the obstruction provisions and how it might impact the Department of Justice. He actually supports the Russia investigation, has never criticized it. And he also supported the appointment of Mueller, who he's known for many years. So his objection in that memo was to how to interpret what is an ambiguous provision under the obstruction statute as it applies to a president. And he actually says in that memo that he believes a president can be charged with crimes in office, and that includes obstruction.
INSKEEP: But if he's writing a memo unsolicited, he's volunteering for the defense team - I don't want to quite put it that way - but volunteering to help the president. Or if he has been doing that, can he be independent?
TURLEY: Well, I don't think he actually volunteered to be on the team for the president. The president called him in, and a friend of the president asked if he'd be interested in joining the team. And Barr actually declined. Barr actually has contacted - as have other former Justice officials - their colleagues and department when things concern them. He did that for Senator Menendez's case. That is, he has no connection to Senator Menendez, but he contacted Justice officials, said he was concerned about the interpretation used to prosecute Senator Menendez.
INSKEEP: Oh, this is a Democratic senator from New Jersey who was tried on corruption charges but remains in office at this time.
Does it seem, in some way, automatic that President Trump would be reaching out for someone as attorney general, hoping he would tamp down the investigation? This is something that the president explicitly said again and again and again and again and again that he wanted officials in the Justice Department to do.
TURLEY: Well, I can't speak to what the president hoped for, but I can speak to what he got. As was clear in the testimony from General Barr, he has no intention of ending this investigation. He says he fully intends to ensure that Mueller completes his investigation, that he gets the resources he needs. And he also said that he wants to make available, as to the largest extent possible, any report that Mueller produces.
INSKEEP: How does William Barr - in your experience, having dealt with him - how does he address the complexities of the law - the moral complexities, the legal complexities, the political complexities of it?
TURLEY: You know, people refer to him as a lawyer's lawyer, and that's true. He's one of the best lawyers I've ever known. He's a tough client to have. I remember when I was doing the brief in the appellate litigation during the Clinton period. I was representing a number of former attorneys general, but he called me from about 30,000 feet from his plane at about 2 in the morning to say that I did a good job but there was a typo and Footnote 32.
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
TURLEY: I had 20 people read that thing, but only Bill Barr found the typo in Footnote 32.
INSKEEP: OK. So if he's confirmed, people at the Justice Department had better have spellcheck on...
TURLEY: Oh, yeah.
INSKEEP: ...Is what you're saying.
TURLEY: Oh, yeah.
INSKEEP: Does it feel to you, Jonathan Turley, that in this time of stress, that the system is holding up?
TURLEY: I think it is. And I believe that Barr could be the solution that the department is looking for. He's respected by everyone. He's a law nerd. That's the reason he wrote that memo. You know, I know that because I'm a law nerd. I serve with 80 other law nerds. And so I think that he could be just the right person at the right time. He really has a deep affection and connection for the Justice Department. And at this point in his career, he wouldn't jeopardize either his legacy or that department. So I think that you have to give Trump credit that he picked someone that's the right person at the right time.
INSKEEP: Jonathan Turley, thanks for your comments. Really appreciate it.
TURLEY: Thank you.
INSKEEP: He's a criminal defense attorney and law professor.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Iowa Congressman Steve King is facing more pressure to quit. The Republican has been under fire for questioning why terms like white nationalist and white supremacist are offensive. In his own state, the editorial board of The Des Moines Register now says King can no longer effectively represent his constituents. We have one of King's colleagues with us this morning. It's Utah Republican John Curtis.
Welcome to the program, Congressman.
JOHN CURTIS: Thank you, David.
GREENE: Should Steve King quit his job?
CURTIS: Well, before I even go into that, let me just say - first of all, under no circumstances are these comments appropriate, nor should they be tolerated. And I think, then, that begs the question of - how do we make sure that happens? I'm very pleased in the actions of Kevin McCarthy, particularly his committee assignments. I think that has wide support in the Republican Congress. It's a very powerful move. And I think it shows that Republicans want to police themselves and that we, ourselves, see this behavior is not appropriate.
GREENE: OK. But should he leave his - should he quit?
CURTIS: Well, you see, this is interesting because he was only elected by Iowa just several months ago. And in my opinion, those are the people who need to hold him accountable and that he should be responsive to their wishes. And I think you mentioned that the Iowa paper was calling for his resignation. And to me, he was elected by those people. He represents those people. He needs to respond to what they're asking him to do.
GREENE: Although you said it's important to police yourself as fellow members of Congress...
CURTIS: Right.
GREENE: And I mean, you have your Utah colleague Chris Stewart, a fellow Republican, Senator Mitt Romney from your state both saying he should quit. Why are you - I mean, are you less offended by what King said than they are?
CURTIS: No. No, not at all. Not at all. If you want a straight up-and-down answer, I would ask him to resign. What I'm telling you is far more important than what I think is what Iowa thinks.
GREENE: You're saying you would ask him to resign. So you, yourself, as John Curtis are calling for him to resign but saying that it's up to voters to actually make that happen. Is that fair?
CURTIS: So David, I see what you're trying to do, and you're baiting me. And I'm not trying to dodge you nor dodge the debate. In my opinion, it would be great. It would be appropriate for him to resign. I don't think my opinion matters. I think Iowa's opinion matters. They're the ones who just sent him there. They're the ones he represents.
GREENE: OK. I'll obviously let our listeners parse what you're saying. But it - I do want to move on to another topic, and that is the government shutdown. Many of your fellow Republican House members were invited to the White House yesterday. Democrats did not show up at that meeting. Have you heard if there was any progress made at all on this shutdown in those conversations with the president?
CURTIS: I have not heard. But I can tell you this. What happened there represents why we're where we are. Democrats are unwilling to even talk. They're unwilling to discuss something they have previously supported. I hear lots of room for movement on the president's side. That's what needs to happen on both sides. This shutdown is not good in any way, shape or form. It's a terrible tool that we use as a government. I don't like it a bit.
GREENE: What movement are you hearing from the president? I mean, he's been so firm in saying he wants money for that border wall, period. I mean, what movement...
CURTIS: He's...
GREENE: ...Is he offering?
CURTIS: ...Offered all sorts of movement. He's willing to change the type of barrier it is. He's willing to add in things like humanitarian assistance, immigration judges, better facilities at the border. He's really given the Democrats everything they've asked for. They just haven't hardly asked for anything. And so my point is they need to step up and ask for something, and then that moves the pressure to the president. But at this point, they're not asking for anything.
GREENE: Republican Congressman John Curtis from Utah joining us this morning.
We appreciate your time, Congressman. Thanks.
CURTIS: You bet.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
An attack in northern Syria has killed U.S. service members. The Defense Department says they were on a routine patrol walking through a Syrian city when an explosion took place. ISIS has claimed responsibility. The attack follows President Trump's announcement that the United States will withdraw from Syria. NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman is on the line.
Tom, good morning.
TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: Where did this attack take place?
BOWMAN: Well, the U.S. is not saying where the attack took place. They're just saying it was a routine patrol. But from other reports and, actually, from some video from the scene, this took place in Manbij, a town in northern Syria where the U.S. has been patrolling, really, for the past couple of years.
INSKEEP: Is this a place you know well?
BOWMAN: Yes. I was there back in February. Steve, we talked about it when I was there. It was a bustling city - massive marketplace, a lot of produce. It looked like a normal city. And we were walking around without our body armor. We went to schools. We went to the government offices, and it was incredibly safe. Or it seemed that way.
But we heard back then from officials - local officials and from the U.S. - that, you know, ISIS was trying to slip back in and mount attacks, assassinations and bombings. And the following month, March of last year, an American was killed and a British soldier was also killed by an ISIS car bomb. So it seems normal. But really, just beneath the surface, there are ISIS fighters slipping back in.
INSKEEP: Well, I want to understand the context for this attack. We hear that U.S. troops were on routine patrol. I'm a bit surprised because it's a limited number of U.S. troops. They had been leaving the primary ground fighting to their Kurdish allies. Was it normal that U.S. troops in any numbers would be out patrolling city streets?
BOWMAN: It is normal. And the U.S. is actually patrolling now with Turkish forces in that area. And the U.S. has a couple of outposts along the Turkish border just north of Manbij. So yeah, this has been going on for quite some time. And the other thing the U.S. is doing is training local forces to take over those patrolling duties. But with the announcement by President Trump of removing all U.S. forces, people are uncertain whether that training program for local forces will continue. I was talking with someone at the Pentagon recently, a senior person, who said we don't know whether we'll be training local forces. And if you don't have local forces patrolling, ISIS will easily slip back in.
INSKEEP: So we have news of this attack. I gather that the details are fragmentary at best. We know that Americans have been killed. We don't know how many. Do we know the exact circumstances of the attack, how it took place?
BOWMAN: Well, what they're saying is it was some sort of roadside bomb that exploded while this patrol was going past, and that's precisely what happened last March. A car bomb or a buried bomb killed an American soldier, Master Sergeant Jonathan Dunbar, and a British soldier while they were - and actually, in that case, they were on a mission looking for an ISIS member when they were killed. But this is, you know, part and parcel of what ISIS does. They mount vehicle attacks with bombs or just bury bombs, but this is their M.O.
INSKEEP: Granting that we cannot speculate on the motives, that we can't reliably say what the motives of ISIS might be - given the timing, is this ISIS, perhaps, effectively saying to the United States - you think you're getting out; we want to draw you back in?
BOWMAN: That's possible that they would be doing this. But at this point, we really just don't know.
INSKEEP: OK.
BOWMAN: They've been hit pretty hard all around that area. But again, some of them are slipping back in but in small numbers.
INSKEEP: OK. Tom, thanks very much for the update - really appreciate it.
BOWMAN: You're welcome.
INSKEEP: That's NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman on this day when we're learning of an attack in Syria that has killed an unknown number of Americans.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
I'm not sure if you watch the show "Narcos" on Netflix. One of the narratives is drug lords paying government officials at the highest levels money in exchange for protection. Well, in a real-life courtroom in New York yesterday, just such a stunning allegation was made. A witness working for prosecutors said the notorious drug kingpin Joaquin El Chapo Guzman paid off Mexico's former president, Enrique Pena Nieto. And let's turn to one of the reporters who has been covering this trial. He's outside the courthouse this morning. It's The Wall Street Journal's Zolan Kanno-Youngs.
Good morning.
ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS: Good morning. Thanks for having me on.
GREENE: Well, thanks for taking the time for us. I know you're getting ready to head back into the courthouse. What exactly were these allegations that came out yesterday?
KANNO-YOUNGS: Yeah, no. It came out under cross-examination of Mr. Cifuentes, Alex Cifuentes, who's the top drug trafficker - the cooperating witness for the prosecution. He was under cross-examination by Jeffrey Lichtman, who's the attorney for El Chapo. And under cross-examination, Mr. Lichtman asked Mr. Cifuentes about these payments. And he asked, isn't it true - now I'm paraphrasing here. But he said, isn't it true that the president, Mr. Pena Nieto, requested $250 million from El Chapo as well as his associate Mr. Zambada, who you may know - El Mayo - who's a co-defendant in this trial.
And at first, there was - Mr. Cifuentes said, you know, I'm not sure about that amount, 250 million. But then he confirmed that a payment of $100 million was made to the former president that El Chapo paid - that he bribed the former president with $100 million. He said it was delivered via an intermediary, that there was a request for $250 million. And actually, El Chapo - even when a president - a president-elect at that time - is requesting that much money, he actually countered with the hundred million.
GREENE: He countered with an offer like it was some sort of negotiation for his protection. That's amazing.
KANNO-YOUNGS: Yes. That's - according to the testimony, yes.
GREENE: Right. And I guess we should say - I mean, as you said in your reporting, a former spokesman for the president has said this is outrageous and untrue. Right?
KANNO-YOUNGS: Yes, he did. And he also cited the fact that it was under his administration that El Chapo was captured and that it was a priority under his administration. I believe he called it false and defamatory.
GREENE: But the allegation alone, to what extent has it changed this trial, which already was almost, like, made for the big screens, it sounds like?
KANNO-YOUNGS: Yeah. I mean, earlier on in the trial, it was thought that there was some mumblings about this during a sidebar session with the judge. But now the type of thing - a lot of the feedback I've been getting is, well, didn't we already know all of this? I think, like, you know, the pop culture references you said. When it comes to the general public, there was this sort of understanding that this sort of thing might have happened.
But let's talk about who this is coming from now. You have one of the top drug associates - one of the top drug traffickers, who lived with Mr. Guzman for a period of time, who was closer than most to him - out here saying that this payment was made. I mean, we have a name, and it's on the record here. I think that's the most substantial thing to come out of it.
GREENE: All right. Zolan Kanno-Youngs covers law enforcement for The Wall Street Journal. He's outside the courthouse covering the trial of El Chapo in New York City.
Thanks a lot, Zolan.
KANNO-YOUNGS: Hey, thanks so much.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
How has the news of the past month affected the political support for President Trump? In a matter of weeks, the president has lost key advisors and has also become the central figure in a partial government shutdown. Now an NPR/PBS Newshour/Marist poll has asked voters about the presidential campaign now beginning. NPR lead political editor Domenico Montanaro is with us. Domenico, good morning.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: What do the numbers say?
MONTANARO: Well, you know, the fact of the matter here is that, you know, the president's approval rating is slipping somewhat, and it's largely because of his base. There have been some cracks that we've seen. The president approval rating dropped slightly, from 42 to 39 percent. But among some of those key base numbers from last month, suburban men and white women without a college degree, they had approved of the job the president was doing. Now they don't. He's also down some with white evangelical Christians, suburban men and even slightly with Republicans, overall.
INSKEEP: Have people been thinking already about how they plan to vote in 2020?
MONTANARO: They certainly have been. And it's not great news for President Trump there, either. Fifty-seven percent of people say that they definitely would not vote for President Trump in 2020, which is - historically, those are terrible numbers. President Obama, at the same point, was at about 48 percent of people who said they definitely would not vote for him. That wound up being roughly about where President Obama wound up doing in the 2012 election. He wound up winning, of course. But about 47 percent of people didn't vote for him.
INSKEEP: I guess we should clarify here. Fifty-seven percent of people in this survey saying they'll definitely vote against President Trump. Sounds like the president's re-election prospects are toast. But, of course, the question is who actually shows up to vote in 2020, in what percentages do they show up to vote, do they really do what they say they're going to do? Nevertheless, it's pretty dire.
MONTANARO: Yeah. It's who winds up showing up, but also who he winds up running against. Because, you know, these elections, obviously, are choices. And, you know, it's one thing to say a generic Democrat could beat President Trump. It's another thing to say who that Democrat actually would be.
INSKEEP: So what is it that seems to be driving the president's support downward?
MONTANARO: Well, a big part of it, obviously, is the shutdown. You know, there's the longest-running shutdown that the country's ever seen. And just in the past month what we've seen is that people have changed somewhat dramatically in some cases, but also we see that people say - more than 60 percent of people say that they have a more negative view of the president than they did before this as the shutdown has continued. And, you know, that crosses over, not just with, you know, Democrats and independents, but there is a significant chunk of Republicans, about a quarter of Republicans, actually, who say they have a more negative view of the president now.
INSKEEP: And that's not far from the number of Republicans who haven't made up their mind that they'll definitely vote for this president again. There are some Republicans who are in that category right now.
MONTANARO: Yeah. You only have about 30 percent of people who say that they'll definitely vote for President Trump this time around. A president generally wants to try to be closer to 40 percent in that number and definitely below 50 percent in the people who say they definitely won't vote for him.
INSKEEP: Self-identified independents are not with the president much at all?
MONTANARO: No. Not at all. And in fact, this trend has continued from the 2018 elections, where independents have largely looked like Democrats, which is pretty unusual because independents are a group that generally have, over the last couple election cycles, anyway, trended Republican. You might remember Mitt Romney won independents in the 2012 presidential election and still lost.
INSKEEP: Domenico, thanks for the update. Really appreciate it.
MONTANARO: You're welcome.
INSKEEP: That's NPR political editor Domenico Montanaro.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The partial government shutdown is triggering some anxiety around Paradise, Calif. David you know this town. You walked the streets of Paradise.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Yeah. I mean, this town - Steve, I was there two months ago, and the images stay with me. I mean, just totally devastated by the Camp Fire - I mean devastated, flattened. You looked at just rubble that was the remnants of people's belongings and a lot of residents just wondering what was going to come next.
INSKEEP: Well, that was then, and NPR's Kirk Siegler reports on what's happening now.
KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE: This cleanup and recovery is huge and largely reliant on federal aid. Marc Nemanic has been waiting for more than three weeks now to apply for up to $750,000 in disaster grants from the U.S. Department of Commerce, which is closed. The grant would help Paradise even just begin planning for its daunting recovery.
MARC NEMANIC: Roads, sewer, water - those types of things, those essential girders that you're trying to build.
SIEGLER: Nemanic is with a local nonprofit called 3CORE, which partners with the Commerce Department to do rural economic development. He says Paradise can't afford any delay or uncertainty. And so many people here are living in limbo, and they need to see signs of something happening, some kind of progress.
NEMANIC: You'll start having a brain drain and money leaving the community and making us actually in a worse position than we were before the fire.
SIEGLER: So far, FEMA and Small Business Administration loans are not affected by the shutdown. But a delay in these more under-the-radar infrastructure projects could have serious consequences. Ironically, another example is the wildfire prevention work that's now stalled on federal public land across Butte County.
STEPHEN GRAYDON: We're creating a negative feedback loop where we're going to consistently get further and further behind.
SIEGLER: Stephen Graydon and his contractors are nearly done with a 300-acre prescribed fire and fuels brake project on federal land on the ridge just adjacent to Paradise, where homes were spared last November. It's being held up because no one from the Bureau of Land Management is on site to approve the last bit of work.
GRAYDON: Our partners can't come to work, and I can't go out there and get rid of some these fuels that have been cut and piled. And we're trying to get it prepped to where this is a good strategic area and a defensible space.
SIEGLER: The rainy California winter is a key window for prescribed fire here in the foothills of the Sierra. Contracts like Graydon's are stalled, but so are talks about any future projects on federal land that were funded and ready to get done before the next fire season.
Kirk Siegler, NPR News, Chico, Calif.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Congressman Adam Schiff has a question. The California Democrat is on the House Intelligence Committee. It examined links between President Trump's campaign and Russia. In 2016, Schiff says Donald Trump Jr. met a Russian lawyer and spoke on the phone with someone using a blocked number.
ADAM SCHIFF: The obvious question was, was this call from Dad? And the response from the Republicans was, no, we don't want to know.
INSKEEP: Republican Devin Nunes controlled the committee. But that was then; this is now. Schiff now chairs the committee, and he does want to know.
SCHIFF: We do have the ability to find out. And we will find out.
INSKEEP: Democrats now have subpoena power - one of the more significant changes brought by last year's election. We met Chairman Schiff in his Capitol office, which is decorated by black and white photos of past presidents. In past generations, his committee operated quietly, overseeing U.S. intelligence agencies. Schiff sees a more public role, including a deeper look at Russia.
SCHIFF: So we're already reaching out to witnesses that we wanted to come in, but we couldn't get the then-majority to either request or subpoena. We're going to get documents that we need to get to do our investigative work.
INSKEEP: Why would you begin the Russia investigation again, granting you didn't like the way that Devin Nunes did it or that his colleagues did it? There's been a Senate investigation that was seen as credible and bipartisan. There's the Mueller investigation. What could you add?
SCHIFF: Well, first of all, we never shut down the Russia investigation. The Republicans walked away from it, but we continued to bring in witnesses. But we didn't have the power to subpoena them or compel their testimony, and that didn't allow us to do a thorough job.
And we see in the testimony of Bill Barr just how important it is that the congressional investigations go on. Barr testified that he is not committing to sharing the Mueller report with the Congress or the country.
INSKEEP: This is the attorney general nominee, right?
SCHIFF: Exactly. And we can expect he's going to give us a Cliffs Notes version that he will write himself. This means that the country may never learn about information that does not go into an indictment. And that just is completely unsatisfactory. The country deserves to know what the Russians did in our elections, what role the president played or his campaign associates played.
And to have a situation where the nominee for attorney general says, you can't indict a sitting president; you can only impeach one if it's warranted, but we're not going to give you the evidence to determine whether impeachment is in order means we're not going to have a rule of law. We're going to have immunity, and that just cannot persist.
INSKEEP: You think it is worth, then, going over the very same ground Mueller has gone over, perhaps, because you can do it in a way that you would develop public information?
SCHIFF: I think there are areas that Mueller may not be investigating that need to be investigated because he may or may not be given the charter by the deputy attorney general or acting attorney general.
INSKEEP: What's an example?
SCHIFF: Money laundering - were the Russians laundering money through the Trump businesses? Does this compromise the Russians' hold over the president of the United States? We don't know the answer to that question, but we also don't know whether Bob Mueller has been allowed to investigate that issue. The president has tried to draw a red line around it. In my view, the president has no business drawing red lines. But nonetheless, we don't know whether that has been investigated, but we do know it needs to be.
INSKEEP: Is that why you are hiring, among other staff members, a former prosecutor and an expert in money laundering?
SCHIFF: We are adding to the investigative capabilities of our committee in our staffing. And so we are interviewing candidates with an eye towards doing that.
INSKEEP: And what I said is correct - money laundering expert will be on that staff? Former prosecutor will be on that staff?
SCHIFF: You know, I - we are going to be hiring people with investigative experience.
INSKEEP: If you are going into all the president's finances, and perhaps an extensive look at his business career, at what point would that become a witch hunt?
SCHIFF: Well, we're certainly not going to go into all the president's finances. You know, whether the president was engaged in shady business transactions with people - that's not my job to find out. It is my job to find out whether a foreign power holds leverage over the president.
Even when Donald Trump was the presumptive Republican nominee for president and was denying any business dealings with Russia, he was, in fact, pursuing a multi-multimillion-dollar project in Moscow and seeking the Kremlin's help to make it happen. Now, the Russians knew this even as the President was denying it because the Russians were on the other end of that transaction, which means that at any point in time of the Russians' choosing, they could expose the president's falsehoods about this. And that is compromise.
Now, it's come to the public's attention recently that the president may have tried to acquire or destroy the records of his private conversations with Putin over the last couple years. Why is that? Why does he demand to meet alone with Putin? Why does he demand that there be no record of his discussions with Putin? This is extraordinarily worrying behavior by the president of the United States.
INSKEEP: Last year, when you did not have the power - you had to ask Republicans - you called for the interpreter from the president's private meeting with Putin in Helsinki, Finland, to be subpoenaed to testify. Now that you do have the power, do you intend to subpoena that interpreter?
SCHIFF: We intend to do everything we can to find out what took place in these private meetings. And we are examining the legal issues around either bringing in the interpreter or getting the interpreter's notes or finding out through others in the administration what took place.
INSKEEP: What are the legal issues?
SCHIFF: Well, they may make a superficial claim of executive privilege. That privilege applies when the president is talking to his advisers, seeking their counsel. And the policy reason behind it is that he should be able to get the unfettered advice of his counselors to make decisions. But we're not interested in what he was talking to his counselors about. We're interested in what he was talking to Vladimir Putin about. And it doesn't seem to me that any privilege applies there. But that doesn't mean they won't claim one.
And so we are investigating the legal issues around it. At the end of the day, though, we need to find out whether the president, behind closed doors, is sacrificing U.S. interests because of some personal motivation. That, to me, is the overriding and compelling interest here.
INSKEEP: If the White House disagrees with you about executive privilege on a matter like the president's interpreter, are you prepared to go to court?
SCHIFF: Well, this is a decision that we will have to make in discussion with our leadership. And I'm already coordinating with Eliot Engel, the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, because what we are going to have to do as an overarching matter is prioritize what fights we're going to have with this administration. We know they're going to stonewall us on whatever legitimate oversight we do, and it means we're going to have to put our most important fights first and make sure that we are prepared for them.
INSKEEP: Mr. Chairman, thanks for the time.
SCHIFF: It's my pleasure. Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
INSKEEP: Adam Schiff is the new chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
By the way, a defender of the president is revising a key talking point. President Trump often says there was no collusion with Russia. Now his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has narrowed that claim. Giuliani told CNN, quote, "I never said there was no collusion between the campaign or between people in the campaign." He says the denial applies only to the president personally.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Back in the days of the Soviet Union, the government tried to control everything from the way young people dressed to the kind of music they listened to. Well, now a generation is coming of age that was born after the collapse of the communist system. And young Russians are rebelling against the rules and regulations of the Putin regime through rap music. Here's NPR's Lucian Kim from Moscow.
LUCIAN KIM, BYLINE: At the end of November, Dmitry Kuznetsov, a 25-year-old rapper known as Husky, made headlines when authorities stopped him from performing in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar.
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Rapping in Russian).
KIM: Husky jumped onto a parked car outside the club and started rapping with fans before being hauled off by policemen. In his latest track, "Poem About The Motherland" (ph), he raps about the hardships in his gritty hometown in eastern Siberia.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "A POEM ABOUT THE MOTHERLAND")
HUSKY: (Rapping in Russian).
KIM: Husky's arrest set off a wave of protests by Russian musicians. But it also sparked even more concert bans across the country. The electronic music duo IC3PEAK, who jokingly call their work audiovisual terror, were detained by police at the Novosibirsk train station, causing them to miss a scheduled gig. Their troubles began after they posted a macabre video on YouTube called "Death No More."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DEATH NO MORE")
IC3PEAK: (Singing in Russian).
KIM: In the video, lead singer Anastasiya Kreslina describes setting herself on fire in front of the Russian government building and sings that her blood is purer than the purest drugs.
ANASTASIYA KRESLINA: (Through interpreter) It's a descriptive video. We're not revealing anything new in it. We're just saying out loud the things that people would like to say but are afraid to. We're describing the state of mind of a person of our generation, who really has nothing to look forward to and can't expect any changes.
KIM: Kreslina and her partner Nikolai Kostylev are both in their mid 20s. Kostylev says that young people who may not have cared about politics before are now paying attention because their music is being targeted. And what connects young people everywhere, he says, is the Internet.
NIKOLAI KOSTYLEV: (Through interpreter) Everyone watches Youtube, listens to the same American rappers and follows the same TV shows. We have a lot in common with people our age around the world. I'm more like some guy my age in Mexico than my neighbor who's two generations older.
KIM: Kostylev might as well be speaking about President Putin, who's 66 years old. The uproar over the banned concerts was so loud, it even reached Putin's attention during a meeting with cultural figures.
KOSTYLEV: (Speaking Russian).
KIM: "Putin said rap rests on three pillars - sex, drugs and protest." He said simply banning concerts would be counterproductive but added that the government's job is to lead and guide youth culture. It wasn't long before a video appeared on YouTube sampling Putin's words into a rap of its own.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: (Rapping in Russian).
KIM: Sociologist Yelena Omelchenko says young people in Russia's large cities are already culturally oriented toward Western Europe and follow global trends.
YELENA OMELCHENKO: (Speaking Russian).
KIM: Omelchenko says communication between the government and young people has broken down because they live in two parallel worlds. She says the authorities are still molded by the Soviet impulse to regulate but that their attempts are bound to fail since Russia's youth culture is diverse and very hard to control. Nikolai Kostylev of the group IC3PEAK can confirm that.
KOSTYLEV: (Speaking Russian).
KIM: He says even though half the concerts were cancelled on their last tour, they returned home with new inspiration. Their fans, he says, really want to make a change for the better in Russia. Lucian Kim, NPR News, Moscow.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "A POEM ABOUT THE MOTHERLAND")
HUSKY: (Rapping in Russian).
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Twenty-five years ago today here in Los Angeles, at 4:30 in the morning, the 6.7 magnitude Northridge earthquake hit. Fifty-seven people died as this area went dark, freeways were destroyed, buildings collapsed. It was one of the costliest disasters in U.S. history, causing over $40 billion in damages. Los Angeles was caught unprepared.
And decades later, there are still questions being asked about whether they are ready for the next one. KPCC's Jacob Margolis has been looking into this for a new podcast, called, "The Big One: Your Survival Guide," which is supposed to do what it suggests. It is to help people in Southern California get ready for the big one and also show how people might not be as prepared as they think. Jacob, welcome.
JACOB MARGOLIS, BYLINE: Hey. Thanks for having me.
GREENE: Let's just dig into this moment looking back 25 years ago. For people who are not familiar with LA, I mean, can you just put in context how big a deal Northridge was?
J. MARGOLIS: Yeah. So imagine you're laying in your bed. It's 4:30 in the morning. Presumably, you're sound asleep. And all of a sudden, this random force of nature that no one had predicted just rips you from it. You head outside. You see your neighbors milling about in kind of the dawn light as it starts to break, and they look like - it looks like a scenario from "The Walking Dead." And as the sun comes up, you can actually start to survey the damage. I talked to my dad about it - 'cause I was a bit young at the time - and asked him what he saw that day. And he actually let me know.
MARK MARGOLIS: I remember driving down one of the main streets, and there were broken gas lines, as well as broken water lines. There were also flames coming out of the water. Very surreal. You know? Burning water. I mean, how often do you see that?
GREENE: Wow. That's an image.
J. MARGOLIS: Absolutely. And it was chaos. And the entire time you're trying to recover from the quake, there's these aftershocks rolling through, one after the other. So there's this really deep feeling of some sort of, like, unknowable force just upsetting your life.
GREENE: Well, I mean, clearly, that was so destructive, you know, I'm afraid to ask. But talk about exactly what scientists are predicting in terms of the next big quake here.
J. MARGOLIS: There's an infinite number of scenarios, but one of the most studied is a possible 7.8 magnitude quake on the San Andreas Fault. And I asked seismologist Lucy Jones, who was the lead author for the "ShakeOut" report, which studied specifically that about the quake and how it compared to Northridge.
LUCY JONES: Northridge was an event that disrupted our community for a year or two. The big San Andreas earthquake is going to disrupt the lives of everybody in Southern California, and it could take us decades to recover what we lose.
J. MARGOLIS: So 7.8 versus a 6.7, which is what we saw in Northridge. We're talking about 44 times stronger than back in 1994.
GREENE: Forty-four times? I mean, are we - I mean, she said disrupting the lives of people for years. But I mean, are we talking about almost destroying much of Los Angeles?
J. MARGOLIS: It's going to take a lot to recover. I mean, we're looking at possibly 1,800 people could die, thousands could be injured. Big buildings could collapse, roads in and out of the area could be impassable. We could suffer losses in the hundreds of billions. And the most scary to me are the fires that are going to be caused by electrical and gas problems, which could spread just across the cities. And it's going to take 48 to 72 hours to get outside help in. There will not be enough emergency responders to fight all those fires and to help all the people that need help. And so that period of time to me is one of the scariest.
GREENE: Well, I guess real question, Jacob, is how ready is Los Angeles for something like that? Did they learn a lot of good lessons from Northridge?
J. MARGOLIS: They did. I mean, there's new building codes for hospitals, for freeways, for certain apartment buildings, as well as retrofit programs. And they're also working on improving really important things, like our water system, which will crack and break when the big one rolls through, most likely. That said, we have a long way to go. And overall, I think especially on the individual level, people are very unprepared.
GREENE: KPCC's Jacob Margolis is host of the new podcast, "The Big One: Your Survival Guide." Jacob, thanks.
J. MARGOLIS: Thanks so much.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
President Trump famously said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Well, now a survey shows a portion of his base support is a bit less solid. This is from the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll. To be clear, this is one survey. We don't know if this is temporary. But this slip comes during a government shutdown and also after the resignation of key officials.
INSKEEP: NPR lead political editor Domenico Montanaro is here.
Domenico, good morning.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Hey there, Steve.
INSKEEP: Hey. What are the numbers?
MONTANARO: Well, the president's approval rating is back down to 39 percent - down from 42 percent last month. And it is the result, underneath that, of some slippage with some key parts of his base. For example, in December, suburban men and white women without a college degree had approved of the job the president was doing. Now they don't. And he's also down with white evangelicals and slightly even with Republicans overall. You know, as we noted, it might be temporary. But the poll does show that the president is not faring well during this shutdown.
INSKEEP: Well, the president has seemed to assume that funding a wall, which is his demand for reopening the government, is the most important issue for his base supporters. Could he be wrong?
MONTANARO: Well, I think one of the potential problems with that is that they also want to see the government function. And Trump's base mostly blames Democrats for the shutdown. But 61 percent of people overall say that during this shutdown, they have a more negative opinion of President Trump. That includes almost a quarter of Republicans, 40 percent of white evangelical Christians and 55 percent of whites without a college degree. Overall, the president is shouldering most of the blame for the shutdown. I mean, that's up from when the shutdown first started. And 70 percent of people - 70 percent - think that shutting down the government to reach a policy solution is just bad strategy.
INSKEEP: Wow, 70 percent. So let me ask about this, Domenico. If you follow the president's approval rating over the past couple of years, his approval goes up a little; it goes down a little. Sometimes it's in the high 30s. Sometimes it gets up to the low 40s. It's stayed right in that range. You're telling us it's gotten back down into the high 30s again, which is the lower end of that range. But is there any sign he could be headed out of that range as the 2020 presidential campaign begins?
MONTANARO: So we started to ask a couple 2020 questions just to sort of get a feeling, a thermometer, a little bit of a temperature reading of what might be happening in next year's elections. And what really jumped out here is that just 30 percent said that they would definitely vote for President Trump for re-election. But the percentage of people saying that they definitely would not vote for him was 57 percent. You know, a president up for re-election normally wants to be close to 40 when it comes to definitely vote for and definitely under 50 (laughter)...
INSKEEP: Yeah.
MONTANARO: ...For those who say...
INSKEEP: Fifty-seven percent say, no way will I vote for this man for president in 2020.
MONTANARO: Right. And sometimes these numbers definitely close. President Obama was in a range that was not great for him. Forty-eight percent in 2010-2011 said that they would not vote for him. But that's about the percentage that wound up not voting for him. About 47 percent didn't vote for him in 2012, not 57 percent.
INSKEEP: OK. So that does not look good - at least at this moment, at least in this one survey for the president. Of course, he's not the only person up for re-election in 2020.
MONTANARO: No, he's not. You know, Republicans in the Senate are the ones who are, you know, taking a lot of the pressure here during the shutdown. There have been a few cracks among Republicans who have come out and said that they want the shutdown to end. But you know, Mitch McConnell - also up for re-election - he's somebody who has really been careful not to weigh in too much. But we're going to see if that's going to continue because a lot of people see him as one way out.
INSKEEP: OK. Domenico, thanks so much.
MONTANARO: You're welcome.
INSKEEP: That's NPR political editor Domenico Montanaro.
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INSKEEP: All right. Two police officers and a detective are accused of a cover-up in Chicago.
GREENE: Yeah, this involves the 2014 fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald. McDonald was 17 years old when he was shot and killed by Police Officer Jason Van Dyke.
(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Sixteen shots and a cover-up, 16 shots and a cover-up.
GREENE: Protests swept Chicago after that shooting. Protesters chanted, as we hear, 16 shots and a cover-up - after police released dashcam footage of the teenager walking away from the police when the first bullet struck. Activists say the trial of the shooter's colleagues are spotlighting a code of silence in the Chicago Police Department. And a judge is set to announce a verdict today.
INSKEEP: NPR's Cheryl Corley is covering this case.
Good morning, Cheryl.
CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: How did the officers allegedly cover up?
CORLEY: Well, the prosecutors say that all three of these people falsified police reports and they did so to protect Jason Van Dyke. They said in those reports, specifically, that Laquan McDonald threatened police officers with a knife before he was shot. Video from a police dashcam video contradicted that - actually showed McDonald walking away from police. So these officers are accused of three things - obstruction of justice, official misconduct and conspiracy.
INSKEEP: And I suppose part of the evidence here is that Jason Van Dyke - the officer you mentioned, the man who pulled the trigger - has already been convicted. There's no question about that part of the case, that there was a crime. And you're saying that it was allegedly not in the police reports that they filed.
CORLEY: Absolutely. And he gets sentenced tomorrow for that, but absolutely. He was convicted. People saw that video. And that video was also a big part of this case, as well.
INSKEEP: Now, how - if at all - does this reflect the broader police culture in Chicago or elsewhere?
CORLEY: Well, I would say first, Steve, I want to talk about Officer Dora Fontaine. She was a key witness in this case who says she found out that her statement about the case included false comments that weren't made by her. And she says she's had to pay a price for coming forward - that she was taken off the streets, that she was assigned to desk duty. And on the witness stand, she explained why.
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DORA FONTAINE: Other officers were calling me a rat, a snitch, a traitor. If I was at a call and I needed assistance, some officers felt strong enough to say that I didn't deserve to be helped.
CORLEY: So if you talk about the so-called code of silence by police, that's been a real big concern for years in Chicago. The U.S. Justice Department investigated the city, spurred by the Van Dyke shooting. And they issued this really scathing report a couple of years ago, said there's been a pervasive code of silence affecting police misconduct cases here. And...
INSKEEP: And what we're hearing from that witness is effectively that claim. She's saying that other officers pressured me if I tried to say anything.
CORLEY: Yeah, absolutely what she's saying. You know, it's not just Chicago, though. It's a problem for other police departments, too. But this conspiracy trial and the Van Dyke trial have just really put a spotlight on what's been happening here. And there's been really some sustained public outrage about what happens to folks who do come forward.
INSKEEP: Cheryl, thanks.
CORLEY: You're welcome.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Cheryl Corley.
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INSKEEP: All right. We now know that four Americans are dead in Syria, including two service members, after an attack that was claimed by ISIS.
GREENE: Yeah, two service members as well as an interpreter and a civilian Pentagon employee among those killed. This is just days after the U.S. said it was beginning the troop withdrawal that President Trump ordered from Syria last month. At the time, he said ISIS was defeated. Well, ISIS says this attack in the city of Manbij was carried out by one of the group's suicide bombers.
INSKEEP: NPR's Jane Arraf joins us now from neighboring Iraq, where remnants of ISIS also pose a threat.
Jane, what are people saying about this attack?
JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: Well, they're essentially saying that this really complicates President Trump's decision to pull those U.S. troops out of Syria because, we'll recall, that decision was based on the assumption that ISIS was defeated. And if this was ISIS, the attack, this is probably not what defeated looks like because it isn't really just about the soldiers and civilians killed. It's about the instability. So at one point, ISIS controlled about a third of Iraq. And with U.S. help, they still have thousands of troops fighting remnants of them. So one government spokesman here says this emphasizes it's still a threat.
And then we have to mention Turkey, which also gets a vote in this. The Turkish government issued a statement after the attack, saying that they wanted to press ahead with an agreement with the U.S. for military action in Manbij, that agreement from last year. The Turks, though, are in a campaign against a Syrian-Turkish group that they consider terrorists. So they're actually seen as potentially part of the problem rather than the solution here.
INSKEEP: Let me just ask; the reason that we think that ISIS is responsible for this attack is only because ISIS said so. Is it clear that ISIS did commit this attack that it claims?
ARRAF: It's not clear, no. But we have to point out, too, this is a hallmark - a particularly effective one - of ISIS, the suicide vest. You know, at one point in Iraq, forces here - security forces were facing dozens of suicide bombings with suicide vests every day. So I spoke to a senior U.S. military official who doesn't want to speak publicly who says it's too early to say because they're still investigating but also because there are claims of responsibility emerging from other groups. And there, that's particularly tricky because there are all those other theories floating around not based on evidence.
INSKEEP: Now, we have to mention that on...
ARRAF: And there's no word yet on what the White House thinks.
INSKEEP: Well, now we have to mention that at about the same time or on the same day as we learned of this attack, we heard from Vice President Mike Pence, who gave the standard administration statement about this. Let's listen to a bit of that.
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VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: The caliphate has crumbled, and ISIS has been defeated.
(APPLAUSE)
INSKEEP: OK. Obviously not defeated or not fully defeated - but ISIS has been substantially reduced. Is it fair to say that much, Jane?
ARRAF: So absolutely fair to say it's been substantially reduced. Now, Pence went on in a tweet later to say they've crushed the ISIS caliphate and devastated its capabilities. So yes, they have crushed the physical caliphate. But the point is - and that's the point shared by his own military people - they haven't eliminated ISIS as a threat. And that's really what we're talking about here, the potential to regenerate and launch attacks like this, which are incredibly destabilizing and feed on the tension between various groups in a very complicated region.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Jane Arraf.
Jane, thanks so much.
ARRAF: Thank you.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Having courage doesn't mean that you're fearless. It means that you overcome your fears. Our member station WNYC has been asking people to name their fears, and we're sharing some. Today we hear from Samin Nosrat. She's the Iranian-American food writer behind the influential book, "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat." And here are some of her fears.
SAMIN NOSRAT: That the color of my skin will bring harm upon me. I've always been aware of being different, but I wasn't really aware of any sort of threat to my physical person because of the way I look until September 2001. At that time, I used to wear this agate necklace, and it had the Arabic names of, like, the five main prophets of Islam on there. And so I remember I got a flat tire a few days later, and the guy who was changing my tire was black. And he was like, oh, what's on your necklace? And I told him. And he was like, you've got to put that away. It's not safe to look like you look anymore.
That no one will ever love me just as I am. There are a lot of etiquettes built into the way that Iranians relate to other people and other Iranians, and one of them is called taarof. So to taarof can mean something as simple as, if somebody offers you a cup of tea and you want it, you must first say no. And you might actually want the tea, but you just have to appear to not want the tea. Like, I had to actually have my therapist go watch videos of it so he could understand me and my culture. But, like, there's videos on YouTube of, like, Iranian parents training their kids. Like, here's a cookie. Do you want it? And the kid will be like, yes. And then the parent's like, no, no - you have to say no. (Laughter). And so it's this really complicated, like, brainwashing that I'm trying to unravel, but it is still something that controls me and probably will control me, you know, until I die.
That I will get cancer. I had a sister born with a kind of a brain tumor that children can't survive. So she passed away when she was 3, and I was a baby. And in a lot of ways, that loss has affected my family life. And I think my mom always was guided by, like, things that she heard or thought could cause cancer and kept those things away from us. So, like, we never had a microwave. So I think that that's always been a little bit there in the back of my mind.
I'll never find love. I - yeah, I don't have a long - let's put it this way. (Laughter). My professional resume is much longer and more filled out than my personal one.
(SOUNDITE OF MUSIC)
INSKEEP: Food writer Samin Nosrat. And you can hear the rest of her fears and other episodes whenever you listen to podcasts, wherever you listen to podcasts. Ten Things That Scare Me comes from WNYC Studios.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Four Americans and several others were killed on Wednesday by a suicide bomber in northern Syria. It is not clear yet who carried out this attack. But the Islamic State is taking credit, which raises new questions about President Trump's planned withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria. He declared that the fight against the Islamic State in Syria has been won. And even after Wednesday's attack, Vice President Mike Pence repeated that message at the State Department.
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VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: Thanks to the leadership of this commander in chief and the courage and sacrifice of our armed forces, we're now actually able to begin to hand off the fight against ISIS in Syria to our coalition partners. And we are bringing our troops home. The caliphate has crumbled. And ISIS has been defeated.
GREENE: The voice of the vice president there. I want to bring in another voice now. It is Michele Flournoy. She was under secretary of defense for policy in the Obama administration. Welcome back to the program.
MICHELE FLOURNOY: Good morning, David.
GREENE: So what does this attack tell you about the state of ISIS in Syria right now?
FLOURNOY: Well, I think the - with this attack, ISIS was clearly trying to demonstrate both to its donors, its recruits, the world, that it is not completely defeated. It is still capable of launching attacks that can kill Americans and, you know, get worldwide media attention.
It's true that we have taken away massive amounts of territory from ISIS in Iraq and Syria. But there are still, by intelligence estimates, thousands and thousands of fighters that are dedicated to the cause. So ISIS is certainly diminished, but it is not defeated.
GREENE: I want to be - really dig into one thing you said, that ISIS may have been trying to do something to garner attention and show that they're not defeated. Are you suggesting they may have been directly responding to President Trump's claim that they have been defeated?
FLOURNOY: I think it's quite possible. You know, one of the most important things for a terrorist group like this is to be able to create and maintain a sense of momentum and viability in order to gain resources, to gain people and recruits, to keep stature in competing with other groups. And so I think they needed to do something to show that they aren't gone. They aren't defeated. This isn't completely over.
GREENE: You know, I'm reminded of something that Ambassador Robert Ford, the former U.S. ambassador to Syria, said on our program. He was explaining why he supports the president's troop withdrawal. And he said, soldiers don't destroy ideologies.
And I wonder, is there an argument - if these couple thousand American forces who are still there are not having a clear impact, might it be better to get them out of harm's way and not be vulnerable to attacks like this?
FLOURNOY: I - you know, I agree with Ambassador Ford in the sense that, you know, you can use military forces to put pressure on an enemy to create a greater stability in the environment. Ultimately, the defeat has to be through political and economic and other means. But the problem is there's no coherent strategy from this administration.
You have the president saying, we're withdrawing right away. You have John Bolton, the national security adviser, saying, no, no. It's conditions-based. We're not rushing out. And then you have Mike Pence, vice president, saying yesterday, we're staying in the fight. And, you know, this isn't - you know, we're continuing.
And so there's no coherence, and there's no plan for how we will continue to make our allies on the ground effective against ISIS once we leave. The thing that bothers me most about this situation is when you put Americans in harm's way and they're willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, we owe them and their families and the nation a strategy and a plan that actually is coherent and makes sense. And I think the administration is all over the map on this. They have not presented a clear strategy and plan that merits the sacrifice of, you know, American lives.
GREENE: What is one key to a plan going forward that you see as really essential if, indeed, President Trump is going to go on with this troop withdrawal?
FLOURNOY: I think the key is a plan that says - that lays out, what are the other means that we are going to use to make our allies on the ground successful to hold the gains that we've sacrificed for, whether it's stabilization funding, whether it's continued training, whether it's air support and intelligence support, whether - you know, whatever it is?
We need to lay that out because right now the perception is we don't have a plan, and we're going to create a vacuum. And that's damaging not only to the current situation but to U.S. credibility with every ally we have around the world.
GREENE: Michele Flournoy is former under secretary of defense for policy under President Obama. She's also co-founder of the Center for a New American Security. Thanks a lot.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Good morning. I'm David Greene with news you're going to hate me for because - welcome to the rest of your day.
(SOUNDBITE OF TOTO SONG, "AFRICA")
GREENE: I know we report on this Toto song a lot. But come on. It's worth it. According to CNN, there's a new art installation out in the Namibian desert. It is six speakers playing "Africa" in Africa. They're powered by the sun, so the song is on an endless loop - just like in your head.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "AFRICA")
TOTO: (Singing) I hear the drums echoing...
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
President Trump's nominee for attorney general, William Barr, faced some sharp questioning this week from senators who wanted to know just how independent of President Trump he would be. The relationship between the chief executive and the nation's most influential lawyer is sometimes cozy - although also sometimes tense, as was the case between President Lyndon Johnson and his attorney general, Robert Kennedy. Nicholas Katzenbach succeeded Kennedy as attorney general, and here is how he viewed the relationship between President Johnson and Robert Kennedy.
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NICHOLAS KATZENBACH: They didn't like each other. They had to work together politically, and they did. But it was not easy for either of them.
GREENE: We want to bring in commentator Cokie Roberts for our Ask Cokie segment, where she takes your questions about how politics and the government work. And go figure; many of you had questions about this relationship. And we'll get right to them.
Hi there, Cokie.
COKIE ROBERTS, BYLINE: Hi, David.
GREENE: All right. So actually, one of the questions we got gets right at that Kennedy-Johnson relationship. It's a question from California.
LEA WILLIAMS: This is Lea Williams (ph) in Santa Barbara. Cokie, wasn't there a megamess between Bobby Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson? How did it get resolved?
GREENE: A megamess - was there a megamess?
ROBERTS: (Laughter). It was a mega mess. It got resolved by Kennedy resigning in September of 1964 to run for the Senate. And he was elected in November. But the two men really did dislike each other, and they distrusted each other. Johnson was always sure Kennedy was out to get him and keeping the flame of his brother Jack alive to overshadow the new president.
You listen to the Johnson tapes, David, and the conversations between the two are just painful to listen to. But their problems were personal, not on policy matters, until Kennedy became an opponent of the war in Vietnam.
GREENE: Well, several listeners actually pointed out that Kennedy's appointment as AG was controversial in part because of nepotism. Right? I mean, he was John F. Kennedy's brother.
ROBERTS: Right - and campaign manager. And that appointment was highly controversial at the time. And when Eisenhower appointed his campaign operative and former Republican National Committee Chairman Herbert Brownell to the job, there were outcries. But Brownell turned out to be a very tough attorney general - supporting civil rights, recommending progressive Southern judges and then Chief Justice Earl Warren.
But it goes back to the beginning, David. George Washington appointed his Revolutionary War aide-de-camp Edmund Randolph as the very first attorney general. But Randolph also, I must say, had a distinguished career in government after the war.
GREENE: Well, here's a question that came to us about the relationship between the president and AG, not on a personal level but in terms of what the law says. It comes from Ruth Compton (ph). And she wrote - doesn't the AG take an oath to defend the Constitution? She went on to say that maybe conflict exists because the president isn't always protecting and defending the Constitution. She wrote, I don't see this. I must have misunderstood the Constitution piece.
ROBERTS: Well, obviously, the most famous case of an attorney general defending the Constitution over the president's wishes was the so-called "Saturday Night Massacre," when Nixon ordered his attorney general, Elliot Richardson, to fire the special counsel investigating Watergate. Richardson refused and resigned. The deputy attorney general refused and was fired. But more recently, there's the case of John Ashcroft refusing to certify the legality of George W. Bush's domestic surveillance program. And that's a dramatic story featuring names that are in today's headlines.
The president's lawyer and chief of staff went to the hospital where Ashcroft was in the ICU to get his signature. Mrs. Ashcroft alerted the Justice Department, and the acting attorney general, James Comey, got to the hospital first with FBI chief Robert Mueller telling agents not to evict him. Ashcroft refused to sign, and Bush changed the program.
GREENE: Yeah, that's right, one of the most dramatic moments at least in my memory involving an attorney general.
ROBERTS: Right.
GREENE: That was incredible. Thanks, Cokie.
ROBERTS: Good to talk to you, David.
GREENE: Always great to talk to commentator Cokie Roberts. And you can ask Cokie your questions about how politics and government work. Just tweet us using the hashtag #AskCokie.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Gillette, the maker of razors, seems to have cut itself shaving. To be more precise, it ran into trouble when it did not stick to shaving. The company paid for a digital ad that spotlights the #MeToo movement and calls out male bullying and sexism. Now Gillette, which is one of NPR's financial underwriters, faces criticism for its gender politics. NPR's Alina Selyukh reports.
ALINA SELYUKH, BYLINE: Over the past three decades, Gillette built a manly image to sell its razors - clean-shaven men, strong jaw lines, working out, winning at work, attracting women.
(SOUNDBITE OF AD)
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Singing) Gillette, the best a man can get.
SELYUKH: But in Gillette's latest ad, men are pensive. And the famous tagline becomes a question.
(SOUNDBITE OF AD, "WE BELIEVE: THE BEST MEN CAN BE")
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Bullying.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: The #MeToo movement against sexual harassment.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Toxic masculinity.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: Is this the best a man can get?
SELYUKH: The ad shows zero razors. Instead, it's scenes of boys bullying and fighting, a sitcom joking about grabbing a woman's behind, a male executive cutting off a woman in a meeting.
(SOUNDBITE OF AD, "WE BELIEVE: THE BEST MEN CAN BE")
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: Boys will be boys.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: Boys will be boys.
SELYUKH: The ad is called "We Believe" because its actual message comes halfway through.
(SOUNDBITE OF AD, "WE BELIEVE: THE BEST MEN CAN BE")
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: We believe in the best in men.
TERRY CREWS: Men need to hold other men accountable.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #8: Smile, sweetie.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #9: C'mon.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: To say the right thing. To act the right way.
SELYUKH: The ad went viral, got lots of love on TV and social media. But on YouTube, for every person who liked the video, two gave it a thumbs-down. Angry Twitter users began a hashtag, #boycottGillette, saying they would abandon the razors they grew up using.
A lot of the criticism is political, accusing Gillette of leftist propaganda and using radical feminism to snuff out masculinity. The ad is also accused of painting men with one oversimplified, negative brush.
SUSAN CANTOR: They spent an awful lot of time in the ad exposing male stereotypes and cliches.
SELYUKH: Susan Cantor is the CEO of Red Peak Branding. She says the ad's positive message and Gillette's big financial commitment to support it got lost in the negativity. It left some men feeling lectured rather than inspired. Gillette is far from alone in the Twitter boycott club. Starbucks faced one over its pledge to hire refugees, Target for gender-neutral toys, Nike for choosing Colin Kaepernick as its spokesperson.
Gillette's parent, Procter & Gamble, is also no stranger to socially aware ads. It got an Emmy for an ad featuring black parents talking to their children about racism in society. Companies are making a bet that having a stance will resonate with core customers. Cantor cited a survey by her firm.
CANTOR: Consumers really do want companies to take a position and to take a stand.
SELYUKH: In Gillette's case, that might be exactly the calculation. Startups like Harry's and Dollar Shave Club have eroded its market share with cheaper razors. In a statement, a Gillette spokesman said the company knew its latest ad might be polarizing. And he says the campaign will be a success if people pause and ponder their actions and what it means for men to be the best they can get. Alina Selyukh, NPR News.
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JOHN BERCOW: Ayes to the right, 306, the noes to the left, 325. So the noes have it. The noes have it. Unlock.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
That is the sound of a raucous British Parliament, maybe even more raucous than usual, after Prime Minister Theresa May narrowly survived a vote of no confidence yesterday. She is clinging to power despite seeing her Brexit plan defeated earlier this week in one of the most crushing political blows for a British leader in modern memory. In the House of Commons, the prime minister vowed to engage other party leaders to try and find a Brexit compromise that Parliament would support.
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PRIME MINISTER THERESA MAY: I do not take this responsibility lightly. And my government will continue its work to increase our prosperity, guarantee our security and to strengthen our union. And yes, we will also continue to work to deliver on the solemn promise we made to the people of this country to deliver on the result of the referendum and leave the European Union.
GREENE: That divorce from the EU is supposed to happen in March, leaving very little time to figure out how to avoid the chaos that could come. Now, joining me now is Bim Afolami. He is a Conservative member of Parliament. He voted in favor of Prime Minister May's Brexit plan and also supported her yesterday in that vote of no confidence. Welcome to the program. Thanks for joining us.
BIM AFOLAMI: Good morning.
GREENE: Forgive me for saying, I mean, your country has seemed in quite a political mess this week. I mean, these deep divisions...
AFOLAMI: Really, it all looks wonderful.
GREENE: It's wonderful. (Laughter).
AFOLAMI: (Laughter).
GREENE: I sense some sarcasm.
AFOLAMI: Quite, yeah.
GREENE: I mean, what do you do if you're the prime minister right now? I mean these divisions over Brexit seem so ingrained. How does she even begin new negotiations with this very short timeline?
AFOLAMI: I think that's a pretty good analysis. I think that the important thing for - for American listeners to appreciate is that Brexit is a very unusual political issue for this very reason. It cuts across party lines. You know, there are people on the Conservative Party who - in the Conservative Party who agree more with Labour - certain members of the Labour Party on Brexit than they do with people in their own party. And that applies on both sides of the Brexit equation, whether you were in favor of remaining in the EU when the referendum came or whether you wanted to leave.
And so it's very unusual, in our parliamentary system, to have an issue that cuts across parties. And that's the core problem that the prime minister has because our system, effectively, is very heavily whipped. And so when a prime minister - and we have a hung Parliament, so we don't have a natural majority - when a prime minister has to deal with an issue that cuts across party lines, you can see how that makes things inherently difficult.
GREENE: Well, do you see any specific concession or any changes she can make to this plan that would bring enough members of Parliament together to - to support this? I mean, what is a viable option here?
AFOLAMI: It looks difficult to sort of amend the plan in a way you might normally in politics, which is, you know, you change this particular clause or you change this particular section, right? That - that, I don't think, because of the scale of the defeat was quite big, I just don't think that'll do it. That means effectually, the prime minister and the government have two options. Option one is that they - they change the plan quite fundamentally.
And option two is there's a particular provision within the plan which is called the Northern Ireland backstop, which really deals with if - what happens in the event of the Northern Irish-Irish border in certain circumstances. Now, this has been the area that's attracted the most contention because in a sense, for Britain to be able to not fall into this sort of provision, it requires the European Union to agree - a free trade agreement with Britain. And that has caused a huge amount of controversy. So if we could somehow deal with that fundamental issue, that is another way in which we can get through this.
GREENE: Well, isn't there another option? I mean, you - you represent a lot of constituents in your part of the country who wanted to remain in the EU in the first place. And there seems to be some growing talk of an entirely new referendum. What - why would you not get behind that idea if so many of your voters wanted to stay in the Europe - in the European Union in the first place?
AFOLAMI: Well, yes, I'm a constituency member of Parliament. But I'm also a national. I've got a responsibility to the country. And I don't believe, if you - if you go down the route of having referendums - and I personally don't think they're a very good idea. But once you've gone through that, to then say, well, you know, we've tried it for a couple of years, it's all been a bit difficult; let's do it again, is something that is profoundly difficult for a lot of people, the majority of whom voted to leave.
They will say, we voted to leave. We gave the - our politicians a simple instruction, to get that done, and you've manifestly failed to do so. What that does to trust, not just in politicians themselves, but also to our political system, that if you vote for something very clearly, that you at least get that, I think that's very difficult. So really, I think it's incumbent upon all politicians of all sides of this house to work together to try and find a compromise solution that can pass.
GREENE: OK, you have said that the prime minister is facing some difficult odds. The deadline is coming. You're saying you don't want a second referendum. What are the biggest consequences, and you - as you see them, if a new plan does not get through Parliament and if Brexit goes forward?
AFOLAMI: So if - so what you mean is if Brexit goes forward, but without an agreement with the European Union.
GREENE: Right, what happens?
AFOLAMI: I think there are - really, it's bad for three main reasons. The first is economically, you would go from a situation of complete frictionless trade and interaction economically to something of of trade barriers that are akin to trade barriers we have with various countries all over the world that we don't trade very much with. That's bad economically.
It's bad for society because we're in a 52-48, you know, referendum. That's 48 percent of people. That 48 percent needs to be taken along with this decision and shown that we can do Brexit in a way that benefits the majority. And I think that that is not a good outcome. And I just think it's also bad for politics because I think people will start to see that, you know, our politicians failed them at this time.
GREENE: Bim Afolami is a Conservative member of the U.K. Parliament. Thanks so much.
AFOLAMI: No problem. Thank you very much.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Later today, a judge rules if three Chicago police officers are guilty. They're accused of covering up for a colleague, Jason Van Dyke. He's the officer convicted of killing a black teenager - a killing caught on video. The trial of his colleagues highlights the police code of silence. NPR's Cheryl Corley reports.
CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: It's been just over three years that angry protesters poured into Chicago streets, shouting.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Sixteen shots and a cover-up. What? Sixteen shots and a cover-up. What?
CORLEY: Sixteen shots and a cover-up became a familiar mantra after a judge ordered the release of a police dash cam video. That video showed police officer Jason Van Dyke shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times. Protesters accused Mayor Rahm Emanuel and police of concealing the video and called for the mayor's resignation. In an emotional speech, Emanuel apologized and talked about what he said was a problem at the heart of policing - a code of silence.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
RAHM EMANUEL: It is this tendency to ignore. It is a tendency to deny. It is a tendency, in some cases, to cover up the bad actions of a colleague or colleagues.
CORLEY: The video caught the alleged bad actions. It contradicted the police claim that McDonald tried to attack officers with a knife. William Calloway is an activist who fought for release of the video.
WILLIAM CALLOWAY: The code of silence exists. We're doing our best to try to destroy that in the Chicago Police Department.
CORLEY: And activists hope this case will help do that. Joseph Walsh, David Marsh and Thomas Gaffney stand accused of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and official misconduct. They all deny lying and engaging in a cover-up to protect then-fellow-officer Van Dyke. A jury found him guilty of second degree murder and aggravated battery. He's scheduled to be sentenced tomorrow.
SANJA KUTNJAK IVKOVICH: Well, I think people have the misconception that there's just one code of silence. That code of silence covers everything.
CORLEY: Sanja Kutnjak Ivkovich is a criminal justice professor at Michigan State University. For two decades, she's studied police agencies around the world and says there is a culture of silence among them all. There's often a club-ish I've-got-your-back mentality because of the dangers of policing. The professor says her surveys show patrol officers are more likely to keep silent about low-level misconduct, like cursing at a suspect. They are more likely to come forward, she says, when there's more serious misconduct, like the use of deadly force. But there are thousands of police agencies, and each is different. For instance, there are what Kutnjak Ivkovich calls high-integrity police departments.
KUTNJAK IVKOVICH: And in these agencies, something as serious as using deadly force will not be tolerated, will not be covered by the code of silence.
CORLEY: They might have explicit rules about lying and enforce them by firing or suspending officers who ignore them. They may also reward officers who report misconduct. Then there are the others - low-integrity departments, she calls them, where almost any form of misconduct would be tolerated. The head of the police union in Chicago, Kevin Graham, isn't buying it. He says the whole idea of police secrecy is overblown.
KEVIN GRAHAM: I am not going to be so naive as to say that every officer is a saint and is perfect. What I am saying is that to have a code of silence, to try and say that people are covering up for other people - it's ridiculous.
CORLEY: There have been plenty of cases throughout the decades across the country, though, that raised concerns about the culture of police silence. It really came to the public's attention in the 1970s when whistleblower Frank Serpico outed corruption in the New York City Police Department. Now video is being used to expose possible corruption and abuse, like in this trial related to the Laquan McDonald shooting.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DOMENICA STEPHENSON: I see all three defendants. You can be seated. Present in court, can all...
CORLEY: Judge Domenica Stephenson will issue today's verdict. She'll take into account the testimony of Chicago police officer Dora Fontaine. She's a key witness who says a detective altered her statement about the Laquan McDonald shooting. On the witness stand, she talked about why she was transferred from street to desk duty.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DORA FONTAINE: Other officers were calling me a rat, a snitch, a traitor. If I was at a call and I needed assistance, some officers felt strong enough to say that I didn't deserve to be helped.
CORLEY: Fontaine's appearance, though, may bolster the notion by some that there is no entrenched police code of silence. Peter Moskos, a former Baltimore police officer, is a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
PETER MOSKOS: Time and time again, you see cops testifying against other cops.
CORLEY: Even so, Moskos calls this particular conspiracy case against the three officers rare.
MOSKOS: The silver lining of it is I do think it represents a change in police culture in Chicago, in particular.
CORLEY: A change, he says, where a cover-up might have been even standard in the past but is not anymore. Cheryl Corley, NPR News, Chicago.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
A giant in the world of investing died yesterday. Jack Bogle was 89 years old. He created the first index fund which became what economists say is the most powerful tool that Americans can use to save and invest for the future. He founded the low-cost investment firm Vanguard. Here's more from NPR's Chris Arnold.
CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: If you have a retirement account, chances are that you have more money because of Jack Bogle. By creating that first index fund back in the 1970s, Bogle started a revolution of super-efficient, low-cost investing, a revolution that took on Wall Street firms and the high fees that they charge investors. And Bogle became a champion for the little-guy investor, maybe because he knew what it was like not to have enough money. His family lost everything they had in the Great Depression.
JACK BOGLE: So I grew up having to earn what I got, help out with the family expenses and started working when I was 9 years old.
ARNOLD: Today, the company Bogle founded, Vanguard, manages more than $5 trillion. Some of that could be your retirement savings. And it's structured essentially as a nonprofit. I met Jack Bogle a few years ago at his summer cottage in upstate New York, and sitting down with him was like sitting down with an instantly likable college professor.
BOGLE: We live in this mythical world where we kind of believe the American way is if you try harder, you will do better, that if you pay a professional to do something, it will pay off. And these things are true, except in investing.
ARNOLD: This was one of Bogle's key insights. The market doesn't really have that high returns of the fees that you pay. The cost is everything. And those fees can eat up half of the money you would otherwise have down the road.
BOGLE: The tyranny of compounding long-term costs 'cause they eat you up.
ARNOLD: Hiring mutual fund managers to try to pick this stock over that stock. Bogle showed that 85, 90 percent of the time, you're going to make more money just buying the entire stock market, just a big list, an index of, say, the biggest companies in the U.S. It could be 10 times cheaper, or 20 times cheaper, and you'll make way more money over time. That's what broad-based index funds let you do. And that's why Bogle's been celebrated as basically the George Washington of an investing revolution.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
WARREN BUFFETT: Jack Bogle has probably done more for the American investor than any man in the country. Jack, would you stand up? There he is.
ARNOLD: That's perhaps the most famous investor in the world, Warren Buffett, honoring Bogle in 2017.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BUFFETT: I estimate that Jack, at a minimum, has left in the pockets of investors tens and tens of billions. And those numbers are going to be hundreds and hundreds of billions over time.
ARNOLD: Buffett called Bogle a real hero. We should say, too, that while Bogle was a critic of greed and excess on Wall Street, he was also a big fan of capitalism as the best system in the world. And he spoke out, calling for young people, the leaders of tomorrow, to be more idealistic and follow his lead and clean up the mess. Chris Arnold, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. Video in Egypt showed a college student on his knees proposing to another student.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Foreign language spoken).
INSKEEP: She leaped into his arms. He spun her around, and people watched.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO)
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Cheering).
INSKEEP: And then he was suspended from college - for two years. And she was expelled. A public embrace is frowned upon in Egypt. But after a public outcry, the punishment has been reduced. For their expression of joy, they will only be barred from first semester exams.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
"Star Trek: Discovery" begins its second season tonight. It made a big splash when it debuted last season on All Access, CBS' streaming service. NPR TV critic Eric Deggans says this season is good enough to win over even the most loyal and skeptical "Trek" fans.
ERIC DEGGANS, BYLINE: The second season of Star Trek: Discovery kicks off with an announcement sure to quicken the pulse of serious "Trek" fans everywhere.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "STAR TREK: DISCOVERY")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As crew member) Transmission coming through - Captain Christopher Pike requesting permission to come aboard. He has an engineer and science officer with him.
DOUG JONES: (As Commander Saru) Permission granted.
DEGGANS: Old-school "Trek" fans know Christopher Pike as the captain of the Starship Enterprise. Before the legendary James T. Kirk. Pike and Kirk also had a science officer in common - a pointy-eared Vulcan named Mr. Spock. Pike has come aboard the Starship Discovery to drop some important news.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "STAR TREK: DISCOVERY")
ANSON MOUNT: (As Captain Christopher Pike) Commander, this is awkward. But back in Mojave, I learned the best way to get into a cold stream is to jump right in. I'm here at Starfleet's order to take command of the Discovery under Regulation 19 Section C.
JONES: (As Commander Saru) We received no notice from Starfleet.
MOUNT: (As Captain Christopher Pike) Because I asked to deliver the news myself out of a respect for what you and your crew have been through.
DEGGANS: What they've been through, if you saw "Discovery's" first season, was an action-packed adventure featuring Starfleet officer Michael Burnham played with an intelligent ferocity by Sonequa Martin-Green. Burnham is blamed for starting a war with the Klingons, she unmasked the previous captain of the Discovery as an evil doppelganger from a parallel mirror universe and then figures out how to broker a peace deal with the Klingons.
And there's one more thing. Michael Burnham is a human woman and Mr. Spock's foster sister. She was taken in by his parents, Amanda and Sarek. Here she asks her father, Sarek, why he brought her into his household.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "STAR TREK: DISCOVERY")
SONEQUA MARTIN-GREEN: (As Commander Michael Burnham) What did you want Spock to learn from me?
JAMES FRAIN: (As Sarek) Empathy, something he would need to understand to successfully interact with humans.
DEGGANS: The show's producers have found a way to make one scene on "Discovery" accomplish a lot. It can connect the show to the classic world of Kirk and Spock and also move a new story forward. Still, "Discovery" has taken a lot of criticism from "Trek" fans, some of whom prefer a series more like the classic show or the late '80s program "Next Generation."
But I value the bold vision of "Discovery," which is trying to build a new style of "Trek" series with movie-level special effects and more modern pacing. That said, the second season does evoke the team spirit of the classic show more often. Captain Pike, played by Anson Mount, is a traditionally handsome, good-humored hero who pushes Discovery's crew to save a stranded starship.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "STAR TREK: DISCOVERY")
MARTIN-GREEN: (As Commander Michael Burnham) Landing on an asteroid traveling at 5,000 kilometers per second with spotty telemetry and no...
MOUNT: (As Captain Christopher Pike) I know what it is, Commander. I didn't sit out the war with my crew just to stand down now. Listen; I don't mind dissenting opinions. I really don't. But they have to come with solutions.
MARTIN-GREEN: (As Commander Michael Burnham) I have one. That's what I was trying to offer. But for the record, there is not a single person on this bridge who would abandon a Starfleet brother or sister - sir.
DEGGANS: Adventure ensues. But I can't reveal much more without dropping major spoilers, including the appearance of Spock, played by Ethan Peck. There are moments that may remind you of recent "Trek" movies and nods at humor that would have been better left unexplored. But "Star Trek: Discovery's" second season offers a bit more traditional "Trek" adventure while promising to show new sides of characters that fans have known for decades - talk about going boldly where no one has gone before.
I'm Eric Deggans.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We have on the line a Democratic member of Congress who met with President Trump. The president has not been meeting the last few days with Democratic leaders. He did sign legislation assuring federal workers of their back pay whenever the shutdown ends. And he met with a small group of less-senior Democrats from an organization that calls itself the Problem Solvers Caucus.
Congressman Tom Suozzi of New York is one of them. He represents part of New York City and suburban Long Island. Congressman, good morning.
TOM SUOZZI: Hey. Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: What was the meeting like?
SUOZZI: You know, it was a, you know, a heady thing. Whenever you go to meet with the president, you go into the White House. And we went, actually, in the Situation Room. We wanted to make sure there was no press there, quite frankly.
INSKEEP: OK.
SUOZZI: And, you know, I'm part of a group - I'm the vice chairman of a group called the Problem Solvers Caucus. It's 24 Democrats, 24 Republicans trying to find common ground to solve problems, which there's not enough of that going on in the country right now.
So there were seven Democrats and six Republicans, and the president and vice president were there. And, you know, he listened to us. We listened to him. And we're trying to push things forward.
INSKEEP: Well, there was a previous effort to invite over Democrats, and nobody came to that one because it was seen as an effort to just peel off Democratic votes by the president. Was the president trying to peel you off?
SUOZZI: We made it very clear from the get-go that we're not going to be peeled off, that, you know, we support the leadership. The Republicans support their leadership. And, you know, we believe that we just have to start talking to each other and working together, that we need to - we emphasized, as has the Democratic leadership, we need to reopen the government. There's too many people suffering that it just doesn't make any sense to keep the government closed like this.
And, I mean, you just mentioned in your report that they signed legislation yesterday that they're going to pay all the federal officials - all the federal employees when they come back. I mean, the president's a businessman. You're paying everybody anyway, let's bring them back to work.
INSKEEP: Oh, because they're getting - they're going to get paid for doing nothing these number of weeks now.
SUOZZI: Right.
INSKEEP: But let's talk about how this would go because you're saying the Democratic position is open the government now, we'll talk about the wall later. We'll talk about border funding later. I suppose the situation from the president's point of view is he needs to save face. Are you willing to offer him anything to save face?
SUOZZI: You know, I think it's a matter of building relationships and building trust, that people recognize that if we can get the government open, we can find a common-ground way forward. You know, I'm not representing the Problem Solvers or the Democrats. You know, I'm not in a position to be a negotiator or anything like that.
But I've said in my own district, and this is Tom Suozzi speaking, not representing anybody else, you know, let's - we can do border security. We can have more physical structures, but let's also do the radar, and let's do the personnel, and let's fix the ports of entry. Let's do all these different things. And let's finally resolve some of these problems regarding the DREAMers and regarding temporary protected status.
INSKEEP: Well, let me ask about that, Congressman. You just said, we can have physical structures. You're saying, in effect, well, OK, Mr. President, there's already some walls and a lot of fence on the border. We can have some more wall. We can have some more fence - that's fine.
But your speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has said the wall is an immorality because of what it is, because of the symbol that the president has made it. How do you find common ground when your party's position is that the wall is an immorality?
SUOZZI: I think that the language that both sides are using - the language the president uses that makes it as simplistic as the wall, the wall, the wall as some sort of simple solution, and the language of immorality makes it difficult. That's one of the reasons we're in this difficult situation is the language people are using.
But that's why you need to have meetings like this and people talking to each other and trying to build a sense of common ground. Now, is it easy to do? No, it's very difficult. It's very hard to do in the context of this massive vortex of press and point and counterpoint. But, you know, that's what your job is when you're supposed to be someone governing. You're supposed to try and find this common ground to get things done.
INSKEEP: Congressman, as you may have heard, there's a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll out which finds the president's approval rating has slipped even further down. And something like 57 percent of voters surveyed say they definitely will not vote for him for president in 2020. Do you assume - is it your working assumption that the longer this shutout - shutdown goes, the worse it is for the president - that he's weaker every day?
SUOZZI: I think it's worse for the president. I think it's worse for the country. And I think it's worse for the Congress as well. Everybody's sick and tired of people just fighting with each other. They want us to get something done. This shutdown is bad for human beings' lives that are not getting paid. It's bad for everybody.
INSKEEP: Bad for the Democrats as well?
SUOZZI: It's bad for the institution of Congress. It's bad for Democrats. It's bad for Republicans. It's bad for America.
INSKEEP: Congressman, thanks for the time. Really appreciate it.
SUOZZI: Thank you so much.
INSKEEP: That's Congressman Tom Suozzi, Democrat of New York state.
NPR political editor Domenico Montanaro has been listening along with us, and he's on the line. Domenico, good morning.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Hey, Steve.
INSKEEP: What do you hear there?
MONTANARO: You know, there's a few things. One, he's saying we have to reopen the government. Even - this is the part of that Problem Solvers Caucus. They're there to try to talk to the president, unlike the Democratic leadership right now, which is saying, come to our side, come to our position. And even these people, you know, somewhat more in the middle are saying, look; first thing is reopen the government - no conversations about the wall or any physical barriers beyond that to start with. So that's the threshold for a lot of even middle-of-the-road Democrats.
He is, however, saying that more physical structures, as you pointed out, is something that can be talked about and is something that Democrats in the past have voted for. But you kind of hear the contours of a deal that emerge there, which is something we've been talking about for a while, which is physical structures for some kind of legislation when it comes to DREAMers, those kids brought to the United States illegally as children, now some of them - many of them adults.
And this language of immorality that Democratic leadership has used and Nancy Pelosi has used - that might be a step too far for some moderate Democrats.
INSKEEP: For some moderate Democrats. But the key here, I suppose, is, is the president willing to make a tactical surrender, or are Republicans, who control the Senate, willing to push back on the president?
MONTANARO: Right. And I think that's the key thing here is whether or not Senate Republicans will intervene in a way to try to get the president to move from what he's had as an intractable position because, as you said, what is the way out for him to save face?
INSKEEP: Domenico, thanks very much.
MONTANARO: You're welcome.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Domenico Montanaro.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Of course, for American families, a single paycheck is their margin of error, and that includes many federal workers. Nearly 14 percent of the federal employees who are not getting paid make less than $50,000 per year. That's more than 100,000 people forced to make difficult decisions during this record-setting shutdown. NPR's Leila Fadel talked to some of them.
LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: Amy Fellows has been skipping meals for days now.
AMY FELLOWS: Because I want to make sure my kids have that food.
FADEL: She's a correctional officer in the Southwest for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. I reach her on Skype. She didn't get paid on Friday. As a single mom of three kids - a 10-year-old, a 3-year-old and a 12-month-old - she needs every check for the family's basics. She makes $49,000 a year.
FELLOWS: I do live paycheck to paycheck, so, 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.
FADEL: She has less than nothing - a negative balance of $400, and she's already worrying about February's rent. And as essential personnel, she still has to work, sometimes 16-hour days. But to work, she has to pay for day care she can't afford - another impossible choice. She could lose her job if she calls in sick too many times to watch her children.
FELLOWS: I've actually had to call out three times because I can't afford day care, and I don't know what I'm going to be doing, you know, tomorrow.
FADEL: Fellows could already be facing disciplinary action for the time she's missed. And to keep her family afloat during the shutdown, she's thought about getting a second job, but she already works full-time and has to get approval from the Bureau of Prisons for outside work. She's also thought about a loan, but she needs good credit to keep her job.
FELLOWS: If I apply for a loan and the government stays shut down, I can't pay the loan. It's going to go on my credit. So we're kind of stuck in a bind. We can't do anything. You know, I thought of the possibilities of getting credit cards, but then it's another bill that I'm not going to be able to pay and jeopardize losing my job, for sure, by not having good credit.
FADEL: If the government doesn't reopen soon, she might have to quit her career in law enforcement and find something else to support her family. She says politicians are treating this like a game where one side or the other wins.
FELLOWS: I don't think they're realizing how many families they're affecting. It's impacting so many people. And to think that it's OK and just send us law enforcement back into work every day, I think it's very selfish of them.
FADEL: Selfish of politicians, she says. This week, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said this on Fox News about the shutdown.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FOX NEWS SUNDAY")
LINDSEY GRAHAM: You've got two bad choices here. Continue the stalemate and see parts of the government shut down. It will be inconvenient, and it can create problems. And to the federal workforce, I'm sorry you're caught up in this mess. But the real damage is people coming across the border.
FADEL: For the government workers affected, they say the word inconvenient does not capture the dire situation they're in. And they say they're experiencing real damage. The real estate website Zillow estimates that federal employees who are not getting paid owe $438 million in rent and mortgage payments each month. And with February 1 around the corner, federal workers that aren't getting paid are using words like desperate and afraid to describe their situation.
Brianna Bedard's husband is in the Coast Guard stationed at Lake Tahoe. She's a stay-at-home mom. The couple have been saving up for a down payment to buy a house for their young family. They have two daughters.
BRIANNA BEDARD: It took us five years to save that, and we were hoping to buy a house in the spring. And now we're using that money to pay our bills this month.
FADEL: And maybe next month as well. She's planning ahead. She got the utilities company to push the due date for her next bill. She's called her Internet provider, the car insurance company, renters insurance, and she's negotiating with the landlord. But soon, her daughters' preschool tuition will come due.
BEDARD: I just really don't want to have to pull her out of school 'cause that would just be really disruptive for her life and for her learning.
FADEL: If the shutdown goes on for much longer, she says, she's considering moving in with her parents.
BEDARD: To me, this seems like it's a complete unnecessary burden to put on us. There was no reason to take away our paychecks or other federal workers' paychecks.
FADEL: She says they're caught in the crosshairs of a fight that has nothing to do with them. And she and her husband don't know if they're planning for the short term without being paid, or the long term, as the battle in Washington continues. Leila Fadel, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF DEEB'S "FLUID DYNAMICS")
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
All right, if one of your New Year's resolutions was to spend less money, you might be getting a little help right now from really low gas prices - so low, maybe you don't even want to jinx it by asking why the gas prices are low. But NPR's Camila Domonoske is going to tell us.
CAMILA DOMONOSKE, BYLINE: At the Costco in Washington, D.C., gas is going for $2.05 a gallon. And Sylvie Tiadem is pumped.
SYLVIE TIADEM: You see, $26, oh, my goodness.
DOMONOSKE: She says she was paying nearly 40 bucks to fill up her sedan back when gas prices were higher.
TIADEM: Twenty-six dollars, I'll take it any day. Expenses are growing everywhere. But when one goes down, I'm happy.
DOMONOSKE: Gas prices vary across the country. They're cheaper in the South and higher in the West. But in general, drivers like to Tiadem have been happy for months now.
JEANETTE CASSELANO: Gas prices are cheap. That's the headline, and that's the good news for consumers.
DOMONOSKE: Jeanette Casselano is a spokeswoman for AAA.
CASSELANO: We started to see prices decrease in October. And they came down slowly but consistently since then. We started this year at $2.25, which is the cheapest price we've seen at the start of January in three or four years.
DOMONOSKE: This week, gas is selling for less than 2 bucks a gallon at more than a third of the country's gas stations. Gas is cheap because of a dramatic drop in crude oil prices that started in October. Kelsey Hallahan is with the Energy Information Administration.
KELSEY HALLAHAN: Crude oil is responsible for about just over 50 percent of gasoline prices. And when crude oil prices fall, we also see a fall in gasoline prices.
DOMONOSKE: And those crude prices fell because there's a global glut in oil. Saudi Arabia boosted production under pressure from President Trump. Meanwhile, America has become the largest producer of oil. And U.S. companies have been pumping more and more. Demand is not keeping pace. The world just doesn't need as much oil as it's been making. So why were American companies producing so much?
HALLAHAN: Largely, we think it's due to crude prices.
DOMONOSKE: Back to prices. Crude is cheaper now. But before October, oil companies were seeing dollar signs. Higher prices motivated them to get more oil out of the ground. Then all the new supply pushed prices back down. Now these lower prices put oil companies in a tougher position, although analysts say U.S. companies are handling the price drop OK. And it makes consumers very happy. It's more money in people's pockets.
That's especially important for middle-class and low-income people who put a bigger chunk of their disposable income toward fuel costs. Scott L. Montgomery is an author and affiliate faculty member at the University of Washington. He says gas prices have a huge psychological impact.
SCOTT L. MONTGOMERY: We have to remember that the price of gasoline is on very large signs everywhere we drive. And so it is the price that sticks in consumers' minds.
DOMONOSKE: A change in gas prices also changes consumer behavior in a way that can be out of proportion to the actual shift in their finances, Montgomery says.
MONTGOMERY: They believe that they're saving a lot more money than they actually are. And so they will buy more SUVs or bigger cars.
DOMONOSKE: So low gas prices can have larger consequences for society. If people are less worried about fuel efficiency, they have less incentive to reduce their contribution to climate change. But if there's one constant when it comes to gas prices, it's that they're always moving.
Saudi Arabia and other OPEC nations are cutting oil production now. And analysts predict an increase in gas prices this year as the global oil trade regains its balance. Camila Domonoske, NPR News.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
And it's time now for StoryCorps. As Martin Luther King Jr. Day approaches, many will be reflecting on his I Have A Dream speech. Summer of 1963 when King gave that speech, a lesser-known moment in civil rights history was unfolding in southern Georgia. More than a dozen African-American girls, some as young as 12, were arrested for protesting segregation and held in the Leesburg Stockade, a small, cement building used as a makeshift jail. They had no working toilet, very little food. And they'd been taken without their parents' knowledge. The girls were held there for nearly two months until photographs of their living conditions were published. More than 50 years later, StoryCorps recorded with several of the women who had been imprisoned, including Carol Barner-Seay, Shirley Green-Reese and Diane Bowens.
CAROL BARNER-SEAY: The place was worse than filthy.
SHIRLEY GREEN-REESE: Being in a place like that, I didn't feel like we was human.
DIANE BOWENS: We slept on the hard concrete floors, no water. Our parents didn't even know where we were.
GREEN-REESE: And I had never been away from home. After a week, it started messing with me mentally, as if no one cared. And I gave up hope many days.
BOWENS: So did I.
GREEN-REESE: It was a lot of crying in that place.
BOWENS: I was scared Verna was going to die. If she ate, it would just come right back up.
BARNER-SEAY: If she complained to anybody, it was under her breath to God. But we never heard it.
GREEN-REESE: She wasn't aware that she was pregnant. We didn't know because we were children.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
VERNA HOLLIS: My name is Verna Hollis.
JOSEPH JONES III: My name is Joseph Jones III, and I'm the son. I couldn't believe that living in this town, I had never heard this story. I didn't know you were locked up. How did you feel when you first arrived there?
HOLLIS: I was scared and mad that you could treat a human being like they treated us. We both could've died in there.
JONES: You have been my inspiration as far as how to be strong. I'm proud of that. And I try to live from that.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GREEN-REESE: When we got out of that stockade, my classmates and my teachers never asked me where I was coming from. I felt like I didn't fit in. So after high school, I left the area and moved forward. So what I did - I got a job in the library. And for the first time in my life, I saw this picture. I said, this is us. But I wasn't going to share that with nobody because I didn't want them to know I was in that jail. We never talked about the stockade - never...
BOWENS: You're right.
GREEN-REESE: ...In 52 years.
BOWENS: Today, when I got in this elevator, I was about to have a heart attack. I just don't want to be closed in. And I don't want to be in the dark. I'm 66 years old, and I sleep with two lights on in my bedroom.
GREEN-REESE: For me, it has been in my fibers for years. And I still don't like to talk about it. But this is a part of all of our lives...
BOWENS: Forever.
GREEN-REESE: ...Forever.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GREENE: Shirley Green-Reese, Diane Bowens and Carol Barner-Seay in Americus, Ga. They were jailed in a makeshift prison for protesting segregation in 1963. We also heard from Verna Hollis and her son Joseph. Verna died in 2017. None were ever charged with a crime. You can hear more on the StoryCorps podcast by going to npr.org.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Big crowds are going to be marching through Washington, D.C., this weekend, and a major focus is going to be on abortion and reproductive rights. The anti-abortion rights March For Life kicks off its annual rally today, followed by a march to the Supreme Court. And then tomorrow, progressive women from around the country and their allies will gather for the Women's March, which was first organized in 2017 in response to President Trump's election.
NPR's Sarah McCammon covers the abortion debate and is going to be at both marches. She's in our studios this morning. Hi, Sarah.
SARAH MCCAMMON, BYLINE: Good morning.
GREENE: So I think, I mean, on all sides of debates like abortion, people would say there's always a lot at stake. Is that especially so this year, in 2019?
MCCAMMON: It really feels that way. I mean, remember, it was just not even a year ago, right, that Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement last summer. And that set up a huge debate over these issues. He had been the swing vote on the Supreme Court for a lot of issues, including reproductive rights. And now abortion rights opponents are feeling more hopeful than they have in a long time that they could see Roe v. Wade overturned or weakened. That, of course, is the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide. This march, the March For Life, in opposition to abortion, has been happening almost since that time. But organizers and activists are hopeful as they head into this year's march.
GREENE: So as we look at the March For Life happening, we're going to see more optimism and more of a sense of hope and mission that 2019 could be different for them. Is that fair to say?
MCCAMMON: For sure. They're cautiously optimistic, though, I would say. Not necessarily expecting Roe to be overturned wholesale, but they do see a big opportunity to advance state laws restricting abortion more deeply than they've been able to in the past. Here's Tom McClusky of March For Life.
TOM MCCLUSKY: If you were to ask me during the 2016 campaign that President Trump would be the one that would help in putting in these pro-life policies, I probably would have thought you were crazy. But it's certainly a much different scenario now, with both Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh on the bench.
MCCAMMON: And we hear this a lot from anti-abortion rights activists. They're happy with what President Trump is doing, his efforts to restrict public funding for organizations like Planned Parenthood and his appointees to the judiciary.
GREENE: Well, on the flip side of this, how much anxiety are we going to be sensing from abortion rights activists in this moment?
MCCAMMON: Right. They're concerned. They say they're also energized. I would expect to hear about this tomorrow at the Women's March. Planned Parenthood is one of the partner sponsors for that march. I spoke recently with Dr. Leana Wen, who's the new president of Planned Parenthood, and here's what she said.
LEANA WEN: This is a time where everything is on the line. I mean, with Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, we are facing a situation where, within the next year, Roe v. Wade could very well be further eroded or overturned.
MCCAMMON: And so abortion rights activists are organizing at the state level around these issues, trying to firm up support for abortion rights in statehouses. And they're pointing to the fact that a lot of new Democrats were just elected to statehouses and, of course, to Congress, many of them women, and others who campaigned on issues including reproductive rights. So they see that as a good sign.
GREENE: You mentioned organizing at the state level. I mean, these marches are going to be in Washington but, as we've learned from your reporting, it's really important to follow, you know, cases working their way through states, not just at the Supreme Court.
MCCAMMON: For sure. This battle will play out in the courts, but also in statehouses around the country. If Roe is weakened, those state legislatures will become even more important in terms of regulating abortion.
GREENE: NPR's Sarah McCammon. Sarah, thanks a lot.
MCCAMMON: Thank you.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
You know, normally, the Super Bowl halftime show does not have any trouble finding talent. Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Beyonce - I could go on here. But that has not been the case this time. One act after another has rejected the NFL's offer, and most are citing the way players have been treated for taking a knee during the national anthem. The pop band Maroon 5 finally accepted the job. And recently, two hip-hop stars agreed to join them onstage, Big Boi and Travis Scott. And that set off a fiery reaction from some fans. I was talking to NPR Music's hip-hop writer Rodney Carmichael about who turned the NFL down and why.
RODNEY CARMICHAEL, BYLINE: Well, this is a really long list. But the main three that were asked at different points are Jay-Z, Rihanna and Cardi B. And they all turned it down to stand in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick, who's, you know, been on the outs with the NFL since his protest against racial injustice.
GREENE: They do seem to have gotten a few, it looks like - Big Boi, Travis Scott, Maroon 5. Why those three?
CARMICHAEL: Well, here's one interesting thing. All three of these acts are managed by Irving Azoff's management company - you know, a longtime music industry guy who has a lot of power in the industry. But, you know, on the other hand, Adam Levine of Maroon 5, he's been super coy about talking about why his band chose to play the show. And Travis Scott, he apparently told Billboard magazine that he would only accept the invite if the NFL joined him in donating $500,000 to Dream Corps. Now, that's the nonprofit that focuses on criminal justice reform. And then there's Big Boi. I mean, I have to imagine that Big Boi's loyalty is with his hometown on this one.
GREENE: The home - oh, that's right. The Super Bowl's in Atlanta. And that's where he's from.
CARMICHAEL: Exactly.
GREENE: I see.
CARMICHAEL: Yeah. And I'm from Atlanta, too. You know, ATL, what's up?
GREENE: All right (laughter).
CARMICHAEL: But, you know, in theory, the NFL really couldn't have picked a better time to come to what's essentially the black mecca and the hip-hop capital, right? I mean, the city is sitting in the driver's seat of pop culture right now. And making this an A Town halftime show, it would've been such an easy ratings victory. But this league policy that they have against taking a knee during the national anthem, in a lot of ways, is really blocking them from capitalizing on this blessing.
GREENE: So what do you take from this? It's so interesting they're coming to a city that could've just been this moment to showcase such great music. And people associate the Super Bowl with music recently. So what does that tell us about this halftime show, the Super Bowl and the NFL right now?
CARMICHAEL: Well, I mean, I think in a lot of ways, this says what we already know, which, you know, is hip-hop is cooler than the Super Bowl. You know, even Jay-Z made this point. He said now that rap is the most consumed genre in America, artists really don't need the halftime show to play stadiums. It also says that a lot of black artists know that their core audience is rooting for Kaepernick. And it's not just a political play if you think about it. I mean, playing that stage, it really has the potential to hit black artists in the pocket, especially if they lose cool points with their fans.
GREENE: So there's been a real reaction among hip-hop fans in support of Kaepernick and against the NFL. I mean, is - or are there - have there been mixed reactions?
CARMICHAEL: It's mixed. It's mixed. I mean - because, obviously, you have hip-hop fans who are still fans of the NFL, right? There is an online petition. And it originally asked Maroon 5 to back out of the show. Now it's asking all three acts to take a knee during the show.
GREENE: Rodney Carmichael from NPR Music. Thanks, Rodney.
CARMICHAEL: Thanks a lot, David.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
You might sum up President Trump's message yesterday like this. You mess with my State of the Union address, I'll mess with your trip to Afghanistan.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The White House left little doubt that one act was in reprisal for the other. Pelosi, the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, had suggested that President Trump delay a big speech. She said the State of the Union called for intense security work from people who were furloughed or unpaid during a government shutdown.
The president then personally denied Pelosi's military transport to Brussels and Afghanistan. He sent a public letter about what had been, for security reasons, a secret visit to U.S. troops. Shortly afterward, news reports said the first lady took a government flight to the president's resort in Florida. Other government flights are continuing.
All this was soon overtaken by other news. BuzzFeed offers a new detail about Michael Cohen, the president's one-time lawyer. Cohen has admitted lying to Congress about the president's business dealings with Russia. And the BuzzFeed report says the president told him to lie.
GREENE: And let's start there, with congressional reporter Kelsey Snell, who is in our studios in Washington this morning. Hi there, Kelsey.
KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Hey, there.
GREENE: OK, so this is one news report so far. But if true, this is pretty serious.
SNELL: Yeah, BuzzFeed is citing two federal law enforcement officials who are saying President Trump personally directed his attorney, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress about the effort to build a Trump Tower location in Moscow. Now, like you said, NPR has not corroborated this reporting. And BuzzFeed credits the information to two unnamed sources who are said to be involved in the investigation.
Some congressional Democrats, though, immediately responded to the report by calling for further investigation. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said it's about time that special counsel Robert Mueller let Congress know what's in his investigation. And House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff tweeted that Trump may have, quote, "suborned perjury" before the committee and vowed to do what's necessary to get to the truth. Now, Trump's attorney, Rudy Giuliani, has dismissed the reporting. And he's told some reporters if you believe Cohen, that he can get you a great deal on the Brooklyn Bridge.
GREENE: Which has been the message from Trump's team about Michael Cohen...
SNELL: Right.
GREENE: ...This man who President Trump was so close to him in the past, they're now trying to undermine his credibility and - at each step here. Meanwhile, this showdown between the president and House speaker, I mean, what a back-and-forth spat developing between these two.
SNELL: Oh, yeah, and it was kind of a spectacle at the Capitol, too, because Pelosi was on her way to this flight when the president released this letter saying that he was canceling her trip. So the buses had left the Capitol and had to turn back around and deliver Pelosi back to...
GREENE: It's amazing.
SNELL: Yeah, and it is - it's a surprising turn of events - right? - because this isn't something that we usually see a president do. He has the right to do it because he controls military airspace and controls her access to a military plane, which we should say is a fairly common way for the speaker of the House to get around because she really does travel with an enormous security detail. And this was a trip to a war zone. Afghanistan is not the kind of place that the speaker of the House is likely to be taking a commercial trip, though the president did give that as an option.
GREENE: OK. This - this moment to have a speaker of the House, a president in a back-and-forth like this, both suggesting that a government shutdown is to blame, but it seems like there's been no movement to end that shutdown - what does all this tell us about the state of U.S. politics today?
SNELL: Well, if you were expecting this to be a quick way to end a shutdown, I would say this probably is not it. (Laughter).
GREENE: (Laughter) Probably not the best way to get along and come to a compromise.
SNELL: No. And soon afterwards, the House Democrats released another package of spending bills that they want to try to pass to prove that they are making efforts to reopen the government and say it's the president and congressional Republicans who aren't dealing. So we're back at the same place we were just a few days ago.
GREENE: All right, NPR's Kelsey Snell. Thanks, Kelsey.
SNELL: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GREENE: All right, so North Korea's top negotiator is in Washington, D.C., today.
INSKEEP: His mission is believed to be to arrange a second summit between his boss, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and President Trump. Negotiations with North Korea have been stalled since the last time the two leaders met in a summit in Singapore last June.
GREENE: And let's turn to NPR's Anthony Kuhn, who is in Beijing. Anthony, good morning.
ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: Good morning, David.
GREENE: OK, so neither officials in Washington nor officials in Pyongyang are confirming that new talks are going to take place. But does that - does it appear that that's the reason that this top negotiator's in Washington?
KUHN: Yes, it does. The negotiator's name is Kim Yong Chol. He's a former intelligence chief and vice chief of the ruling party. And last year, he was in Washington also. In May, he handed - delivered a letter from Kim Jong Un to President Trump. And that paved the way for the first-ever summit between the two countries in Singapore. And he's expected to do something like that on this visit. He arrived in D.C. last night. And he's expected to meet with Secretary of State Pompeo and then, possibly, President Trump before departing on Saturday.
One reason this makes sense is because that analysts generally believe that North Koreans want a second summit. And they think it's the only way to have a breakthrough, is at the presidential level. And so far, they've basically refused working-level meetings, including with Secretary of State Pompeo. Now they seem to want them, probably to work out logistics and an agenda for this meeting.
GREENE: So am I wrong? It doesn't really seem like there was much of a breakthrough coming out of - or since that last big presidential summit last summer. So what is the point of second - of a second summit? And could there actually be risk involved for the United States in meeting again?
KUHN: Sure. Well, you know, the summit produced a very vague agreement, and denuclearization is part of that. But there is no roadmap on how to get there. So that presumably would be the main aim this time. And the speculation in the reports based on anonymous subjects are saying that this roadmap would have some sort of interim goals, such as, for example, a cap on Pyongyang's nuclear programs.
And in exchange for that, they'd get some sort of sanctions relief, which is what they desperately want. One concern that a lot of observers have is that while this cap could lower tensions in the region, it could also be a step towards tacitly admitting or locking in North Korea as a nuclear weapon state, which is exactly what Kim Jong Un wants.
GREENE: Well, and the Pentagon has a report out - it came out yesterday - saying that North Korea's nukes are still an extraordinary threat. So, I mean, using that kind of language to set up a new meeting, I mean, how is that going to go?
KUHN: Well, it's certainly awkward timing, with Kim Yong Chol arriving in town. North Korea has not responded yet. It's also awkward in that President Trump tweeted after the Singapore summit that North Korea's nukes are no longer a threat. And here the Pentagon is putting it in writing. The report also mentions, though, that, you know, there is an avenue to peace with North Korea, possibly. But that could all go south. And so the U.S. needs to remain vigilant. And they seem to have a point there.
GREENE: All right, we'll see how these talks go with the top negotiator from North Korea in Washington and whether there's going to be another presidential summit. NPR's Anthony Kuhn. We appreciate it, Anthony.
KUHN: You're welcome, David.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GREENE: It's going to be a weekend of marches in Washington, D.C. Abortion rights opponents and activists are in town and will be carrying on marches.
INSKEEP: Yeah, the March for Life is today. That's been an annual event for many years. And tomorrow, women from around the country and their allies gather for the Women's March for the third year in a row.
GREENE: NPR's Sarah McCammon covers the abortion debate for NPR. She's going to be attending both marches. But first, she is in our studios in Washington. Hi, Sarah.
SARAH MCCAMMON, BYLINE: Hi, David.
GREENE: So these are not just marches to express points of view. I mean, there's a lot at stake for activists on both sides of this debate this year, right?
MCCAMMON: Yeah. I mean, just think about how much has shifted since President Trump took office and especially this past year, with a new Supreme Court justice, Brett Kavanaugh, now on the court. I mean, it was just this past summer that Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement, setting up a huge debate over the future of the court. Of course, he was seen as the swing vote on a lot of issues, including reproductive rights.
And March for Life has been happening every year for decades, since the '70s, soon after the Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion nationwide. But this is the first time, David, in decades that a lot of abortion rights opponents see what they feel is an opportunity to really substantially roll back abortion rights and for the court to have a chance to revisit Roe, something they've been working toward for a very long time.
GREENE: I mean, even the idea of revisiting Roe, does that have people who are - who are putting together this March for Life feeling emboldened, optimistic?
MCCAMMON: Yeah, they're definitely optimistic - cautiously optimistic, I would say. Activists tell me they're not necessarily expecting to see Roe reversed wholesale. But they do see a big opportunity here to advance restrictions on abortion that might not have stood up in the past under previous challenges. Here's Tom McClusky of the March for Life.
TOM MCCLUSKY: If you were to ask me, during the 2016 campaign, that President Trump would be the one that would help in putting in these pro-life policies, I probably would have thought you were crazy. But it's certainly a much different scenario now, with both Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh on the bench.
MCCAMMON: And we've heard this a lot from abortion rights opponents. They're happy with President Trump's efforts to restrict public funding for organizations such as Planned Parenthood and to appoint conservative judges.
GREENE: And so as optimistic as people are on putting together the March for Life march, how nervous are abortion rights activists at this moment?
MCCAMMON: They're nervous. They're concerned. They're also energized. Tomorrow is the Women's March, which comes at these issues and others from another point of view. And Planned Parenthood is a sponsor. So I would expect to hear a lot about women's reproductive rights this year in particular. I spoke recently with Dr. Leana Wen, the new president of Planned Parenthood.
LEANA WEN: This is a time where everything is on the line. I mean, with Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, we are facing a situation where, within the next year, Roe v. Wade could very well be further eroded or overturned.
MCCAMMON: And with that expectation, David, reproductive rights activists are organizing at the state level, trying to strengthen laws protecting abortion rights and remove restrictions on abortion. They do say they're energized and encouraged by the midterms, when a lot of Democrats, especially a lot of women and others campaigning on issues, including reproductive rights, were elected. And, of course, Democrats took over the House of Representatives.
GREENE: You know, one of the things I've learned from your reporting is - is you have to look beyond the Supreme Court when it comes to this debate.
MCCAMMON: Absolutely. If Roe v. Wade is weakened or overturned, a lot of the debate will go to the states. The states will have even more power to restrict abortion rights than they do right now. So with all the attention on these big national marches, it's still important to keep an eye on state Houses all over the country.
GREENE: All right, NPR's Sarah McCammon, who'll be covering those marches in Washington this weekend. Sarah, Thanks.
MCCAMMON: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF NOMAK'S "FORCE FOR TRUTH")
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The partial government shutdown is four weeks old. And to make ends meet, unpaid federal workers across this country have been borrowing money or dipping into savings or resorting to emergency measures.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Nate Mook is the executive director of an emergency kitchen in Washington, D.C. It's just a few blocks from the White House. It's run by Michelin-starred chef Jose Andres. They are serving free meals to furloughed workers.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Hi. How are you? Good.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Sandwich.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Sandwich. Next.
NATE MOOK: When you see hundreds and hundreds of people standing out in the cold, waiting for a hot plate of food and a fresh, hot cup of coffee, it's clear that something is wrong.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: What would you like to have today? Mac and cheese, as well?
MOOK: There is a sense of community here. People are talking to each other, sharing their stories, you know, making the best of a really tough situation. But clearly, people here are struggling.
INSKEEP: Outside, we spoke with Daniel Lewis (ph), who is just starting his career in the federal government in the Department of Agriculture, like his dad. Both are grappling with hard decisions due to the shutdown.
DANIEL LEWIS: This was actually the very, very, very first shutdown where a check was missed. And when that happened, I think reality really kicked in to him and says, well, I guess maybe I'm not essential. Maybe if I'm not essential, I could essential my way into retirement. (Laughter). That's how he said it. So with that being said, he did tell me, brace for it. You know, it may be a long ride until the end. But whatever happens, just, you know, continue fighting through it. You got to roll with the punches.
And it's caused me to have some thoughts, or second thoughts or second doubts - not having a place to go, a lot of unknowns. You know, being a homeowner's kind of frustrating 'cause you don't know when you're going to get your next check and how you're going to pay the bills. It really comes down to that. So right now I'm trying to come up with a backup plan as we speak.
GREENE: And let's go now to Michigan, where Stephanie Perkins (ph) is planning to rally in downtown Detroit today in support of her fellow furloughed workers.
STEPHANIE PERKINS: I work for the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. And what we do is we investigate discrimination complaints in the private sector in the workforce. And these citizens of the United States who have come to a federal agency seeking help, these people are not being served. Federal employees have absolutely nothing to do with the budget process. We don't have any say in how much goes where, when, how or whatever. So it's ironic to me that we're caught in the middle of this budget issue that we have absolutely nothing to do with.
Most of the people that work for the federal government - in fact, the overwhelming majority of people who work for the government, we're dedicated, patriotic people who want to serve our country, and this is our way of doing it. And to put us out on the street like this over something that we have absolutely no control over, to me, is shameful.
INSKEEP: Voices of some furloughed workers. We're on the job, and we'll continue bringing you voices from people affected by the shutdown as it enters a fifth week.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
For months, negotiations between the U.S. and North Korea on how to end North Korea's nuclear program have been stalled - well, until now.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
A North Korean delegation has arrived in Washington, and they're meeting Secretary of State Mike Pompeo today.
GREENE: I want to turn to Suzanne DiMaggio. She's senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And she helped arrange some of the Trump administration's earlier informal talks with North Korea. Welcome back to the program.
SUZANNE DIMAGGIO: Good morning. It's great to be with you.
GREENE: Well, we appreciate your time. What are you expecting from these talks in Washington?
DIMAGGIO: I think it's looking like Kim Yong Chol is coming to Washington to firm up the details for a second summit unless...
GREENE: And he's the top negotiator from North Korea, right?
DIMAGGIO: Absolutely. He is Secretary Pompeo's counterpart in the negotiations. He reportedly is going to deliver a letter to President Trump from Kim. And I expect that they'll announce a summit soon.
GREENE: Any idea of when, where that summit might take place, if there's going to be another presidential summit?
DIMAGGIO: Yes. Their earlier report said it likely will take place in Vietnam, either Hanoi or Da Nang, probably in March.
GREENE: So pretty soon - what is laying the foundation for the two countries to want to hold another summit? I mean, since Kim Jong Un and President Trump met in June, I mean, has either side actually gotten anything?
DIMAGGIO: Well, since Singapore, which is now over seven months ago, there really has been very little concrete progress. It's more or less been a photo op on the world stage. So I think the second summit is an opportunity for the U.S. to come to the table and try to formulate a policy going forward that will actually end up with results.
I think the U.S. failed to do the diplomatic work prior to and following the Singapore summit to capitalize on this breakthrough. And we shouldn't repeat that same mistake in the lead-up to a second summit. There's still time to do that.
DIMAGGIO: So talking about repeating mistakes. I mean, if the Trump administration does not do the important diplomatic work that you're talking about and if this is seen as another, quote, unquote, "photo op," does it start to get dangerous? Like, you're giving Kim kind of, you know, these photo opportunities on the world stage and seeming like he's important and, you know, in talks with the United States but not having to actually do anything to denuclearize.
DIMAGGIO: Well, after this meeting in Washington, the U.S. special rep for North Korea, Steve Biegun, reportedly will fly to Stockholm, where he'll meet his counterpart. And these two people will be responsible for negotiating the details of anything that comes out of the summit. So that's a good and positive development. And that should be a series of very intense meetings over time up until the summit. We'll see if that happens.
I mean, on the upside, we've seen a sharp reduction in tension, no talk of fire and fury. But without progress soon, we can see easily slipping toward a ratcheting tension quickly. And that's one thing that worries me. What do we do then when it seems like diplomacy has been exhausted?
GREENE: Suzanne DiMaggio is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Thanks a lot.
DIMAGGIO: My pleasure. Thank you.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Sunday marks the second anniversary of President Trump's inauguration. And it's no surprise he has an expansive view of his accomplishments.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I have actually done more than I promised. We've done a lot.
INSKEEP: Working with Congress, the president did increase the military budget as promised. Other promises haven't come through. A promised trillion-dollar infrastructure program has not materialized. A promised ban on Muslims entering the country had to be drastically narrowed to survive court challenges. A review by NPR's Scott Horsley finds many other promises somewhere between mission accomplished and mission forgotten.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: No promise from the Trump campaign stands higher than his border wall - a gleaming, new barrier along the U.S. border with Mexico.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMP: We're going to have a wall. We're going to have a barrier. We're going to have something that's going to be very strong.
HORSLEY: Two years in, President Trump has not built a wall. And Mexico certainly hasn't paid for one. But the president is willing to shut down a quarter of the government to show he's trying. And Andrew Selee of the Migration Policy Institute says the president has pursued other get-tough measures on both legal and illegal immigration.
ANDREW SELEE: We've never had a president who's focused so much attention on immigration policy and so uniformly in the direction of trying to reduce the number of people coming here and remove those who are here illegally.
HORSLEY: Trump has slashed the number of refugees entering the country, tried to revoke temporary status for the DREAMers and, after a few rewrites, he ultimately won approval for his travel ban. On trade, the president has renegotiated NAFTA as he promised, pulled out of a big Asia-Pacific trade deal and he's trying to drive a hard bargain with China.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMP: We're doing trade deals that'll get - going to get you so much business, you're not even going to believe it.
HORSLEY: Congress still has to ratify the new NAFTA deal, though. And an agreement with China remains far from certain. Trump also delivered on his promised tax cut, which has contributed to faster economic growth. Analysts disagree about whether that growth is sustainable or merely a temporary sugar high.
But there's no question the cut has reduced government revenue. Marc Goldwein of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says that's one factor in the ballooning deficit - expected to hit a trillion dollars this year.
MARC GOLDWEIN: You know, we heard some people claim these tax cuts are going to pay for themselves. Certainly, they haven't to date, and there's no evidence they will in the future.
HORSLEY: As promised, Trump has promoted fossil fuels. And last year, the U.S. became the world's largest oil producer. Coal consumption, however, continues to shrink. And while the president keeps chipping away at the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare, Drew Altman of the Kaiser Family Foundation says Trump has yet to deliver on his promise to repeal and replace.
DREW ALTMAN: The core of the ACA is still standing. It's still there. And politically, the law's more popular than it has been.
HORSLEY: Trump is also pushing ahead with his promise to roll back regulations, though some of those moves are likely to be tied up in court. And speaking of court, Trump continues to put his stamp on the federal bench, having seated not only two Supreme Court justices but 30 judges on the Court of Appeals - more than any other president at this point in his term.
Russell Wheeler, who monitors judicial appointments at the Brookings Institution, says most of the appellate seats Trump is filling were already occupied by Republican appointees. So the president's not so much building a new conservative court as locking one in for years to come.
RUSSELL WHEELER: Now obviously, you know, if you replace a 70-year-old sort of slightly-to-the-right appellate judge with a 45-year-old firebrand conservative, then you're not trading apples for apples.
HORSLEY: Wheeler says Trump is not likely to have so many appeals court vacancies to fill in the second half of his term. But the appointments he's already made will be delivering on the president's promises long after Trump leaves office. Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOUSE ON THE KEYS' "REFLEXION")
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. It must be embarrassing to call the fire department for a cat stuck up a tree. But in southern England, it was necessary because a person was also stuck. The BBC reports Maria Parry searched for her cat for three days and found it stuck up a tree. She climbed up the tree to comfort it and realized she was too terrified to climb down. Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service brought a ladder to save the woman and also the cat, named Harry, who's fine.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The end of 2018 was a time for anxiety if you own stocks. The market plunged only to soar days later and then slip again. But there might be less cause for concern than it seems. Here's Stacey Vanek Smith and Paddy Hirsch from NPR's Planet Money Indicator podcast.
STACEY VANEK SMITH, BYLINE: Market volatility is measured with something called the Chicago Board of Options Exchange Volatility Index, or the VIX.
PADDY HIRSCH, BYLINE: The VIX - also known as the fear index.
VANEK SMITH: It's a much better name but a little terrifying.
HIRSCH: And the reason it's called the fear index is because when investors are afraid, they can tend to start acting erratically, like buy, sell - wait. No. Buy. And volatility like we've been seeing recently can be really stressful unless you're Georgetown economist Jim Angel.
JAMES ANGEL: I kind of enjoy the volatility.
VANEK SMITH: Really?
ANGEL: Yeah. I mean, because this is the stuff I study, right? I'm a nerd.
HIRSCH: Now, Jim says this volatility is happening because there's just a lot of uncertainty right now. Like, there's a lot of big, important stuff - feels like it's up in the air, both politically and economically.
ANGEL: What's going to happen with the government shutdown? What's going to happen with trade wars and tariffs? And many people think that a recession is coming. We just don't know how, when or how deep.
VANEK SMITH: So, says Jim, there are reasons to be super worried. But one of the things that he told me is that volatility is actually normal and healthy in the stock market.
HIRSCH: Jim says the extra volatility that we're seeing right now worries him a lot less than what happened to the fear index in 2017. 2017 was actually one of the least volatile years for the stock market ever. Stocks just did this slow, steady march up and up and up and up.
ANGEL: When the markets are too complacent and everything looks really good, that's when you should be worried.
VANEK SMITH: So, Paddy, to sum up the first reason to be optimistic according to Jim Angel in spite of all this volatility is that a certain amount of volatility is healthy.
HIRSCH: The second reason to be optimistic, according to Jim, is that when people are scared and stock prices fall, those stocks get cheaper.
ANGEL: It means I'm going to get better prices when I buy stocks at the end of the month as part of my normal retirement plan.
HIRSCH: So if you are saving money for retirement through work in a 401(k) plan or a 403(b), Jim says a volatile market can be good news depending on who you are.
ANGEL: A fall in the stock market is great news for young people. The fact that stock prices have come down means that when they take this month's paycheck and buy some stocks with it, I get more shares than I got last month.
HIRSCH: But this brings us to the bad news. If you're close to retirement, a falling stock market or a really volatile stock market is really hard to deal with because you don't know if you should pull your money out or keep it in or move it into safer territory.
ANGEL: We call that period when people are in their 50s and 60s the retirement red zone.
HIRSCH: The red zone.
(LAUGHTER)
VANEK SMITH: Yes. And Jim says, you know, if you're in the red zone, what you have to try to figure out right now when the markets are really volatile is if this is a temporary blip or if this is signaling, you know, a coming drop in the stock market. Of course, knowing that is not possible, so you just have to guess.
ANGEL: I'm not a very good soothsayer or astrologer, so I would say consult the people who slaughter the pigeons and look at the entrails for a better forecast.
VANEK SMITH: And don't buy stocks during Mercury retrograde.
(LAUGHTER)
VANEK SMITH: And that is the point, right? When people don't know, they get scared and then the stock market kind of wigs out and jumps around just like it's doing right now.
HIRSCH: This could be a long year.
VANEK SMITH: Stacey Vanek Smith.
HIRSCH: Paddy Hirsch, NPR News.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
People who are addicted to the show know the family as simply the Gallaghers. Just a warning here - you're going to hear some offensive language. The patriarch of this family is a foul-mouthed degenerate dad who lives up to the name of the popular show, which is "Shameless."
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "SHAMELESS")
WILLIAM H MACY: (As Frank Gallagher) Frank Gallagher - father, teacher, mentor, captain of our little ship. We may not have much, but all of us, to a man, knows the most important thing in this life. We know how to [expletive] party.
It's insane, isn't it (laughter)?
GREENE: That's William H. Macy, who stars as Frank Gallagher. And it's easy to pass the guy off as just a total lowlife, but this show, into its ninth season on Showtime, is a lot more complicated. The Gallaghers are confronting harsh realities that many families face - alcoholism, how to parent, how to escape poverty. It's just that Frank often goes way too far.
MACY: I'm a Lutheran from western Maryland. I read these scripts, and I'm horrified. I didn't know some of this stuff was even possible. But as a matter of pride, I try to do everything they throw at me.
GREENE: Yeah. I mean, he - your character is an alcoholic. I mean, he's self-destructive. That might not even capture close to it. He's a con man, a really good one. But it seems like you like playing him a lot.
MACY: (Laughter) Yes, I do. He's a rascal, and he's always looking for the party, and he'll start the party if it's not going. And he's strangely optimistic, hard working. He has many qualities, but, you know, he's is a pretty bad father. He's a narcissist. And as an actor, it's such a delicious role to do because it's great to be on the outside.
GREENE: When you say outside, what do you mean?
MACY: The outside of common sense, the outside of propriety, the outside of the family, of social norms, to be the one who can do anything. It's great. You can be shocking.
GREENE: You know, I read that you grew up in part in western Maryland, in Cumberland, and went to high school there and then went to college in West Virginia. And that is an area of the country, as a reporter, that I have always loved visiting. It is one of the poorest parts of our country. Cumberland always struck me as - it's a city.
There's a bit of, like, urban Appalachia that I always felt - but, like, such characters, such inspiring people who struggle through so much. I just wonder if - what you saw growing up in that part of the country and if you ever reflect on that as you make this show.
MACY: You're right. The - Cumberland is - it was poor. It's a poor part of the country. It was the first stop on the war on poverty. As a matter of fact, I was a young folk singer, and when Vice President Spiro Agnew came to town to kick off the war on poverty, he started in Cumberland, and I sang for him with...
GREENE: Wow.
MACY: Yeah - with many little folk singing group, two high school buddies. And I told a joke, which I did not understand. I said, welcome, Mr. Vice President, on the first leg of the war on poverty. Welcome to Cumberland. And I said, you know, I thought we were doing pretty good. And it brought the house down. And I - it was years later I had to put it all together who I was talking to and what all that meant.
GREENE: What did you sing to him?
MACY: Oh, we did Peter, Paul and Mary and other folk knockoffs. We were very sincere - not very good.
GREENE: (Laughter) But sincerity can often overcome quality, right?
MACY: Especially in front of politicians.
GREENE: (Laughter) Well, I wonder if there's something else you and other people involved in the show ever grapple with, like, if there's ever a point where you risk ridiculing or mocking Americans who are in poverty and how you sort of find the right balance with that.
MACY: There is the danger, but, you know, especially in this day and age of so much political correctness, me, personally, I feel like we just got to put it on the table. We must retain the right to make fun of absolutely anything. It's for our mental health. It's for our political health. We have to make fun of anything.
Now, whether you should or not is another question. And I think the way we do it is - the strong litmus test I think a lot with the cast - when the writers come up with an idea, they test themselves and then even the cast - is it true? Is that true, or is that a joke? Is the joke out front or is the truth out front? And if it's true, there's no question.
GREENE: True being something that might actually confront a family as opposed to a joke where you're just looking for a gag, is that what you mean?
MACY: Yes. It could happen and perhaps more, not to sound airy-fairy, but does it speak to the human condition? Is it true to us, or is it something we don't know about that's true and we want to exploit that? We want to say look what's going on. There's that kind of a joke, too.
GREENE: So I'm interested. I mean, this is nine seasons now. I mean, wherever you go in your career from here - I mean, we're talking about a decade of your acting career - this is obviously going to be a big part of your portfolio. What makes you proud of this show?
MACY: I love the stories we tell. I love its attitude towards sex. I find it refreshingly realistic. And I love that it's often mundane. I think it's healthy. The humor is great, genuinely funny stuff. And I got better as an actor. And I'm - I can see it, and I'm really proud of it. And as I started the third season, my wife, who's the smartest person I know, said are you going to work on anything this season?
And I said, what are you talking about? And she said, you know, it's - you sort of got an acting salon here. You can try stuff. And I thought, good God, yes. And as mundane as it sounds, you know, they say when you act, you got to really look and really listen. I thought I'm going to work on that this season, and I did.
GREENE: Sounds like this has been, like, a real fun laboratory to just, you know, test things out and be you.
MACY: It's right up there with one of the best things that's ever happened to me.
GREENE: William H. Macy, it's great talking to you. Thank you.
MACY: Thank you. I'm a big fan. Thanks for talking to me.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE LUCK YOU GOT")
THE HIGH STRUNG: (Singing) Think of all the luck you got.
GREENE: "Shameless" - the show returns Sunday on Showtime.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
President Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen is deciding how much he wants to say in public. He is scheduled to take questions before a House committee next month. The lawyer's lawyer, Lanny Davis, tells MSNBC Cohen is feeling some pressure.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LANNY DAVIS: He's considering whether to go forward in light of the concerns about his family. My guess is that he won't let a bully silence him. But I can tell you that he is still considering whether to do this or not.
INSKEEP: As it is, Cohen has said plenty. He confirmed yesterday that he paid a company to try to rig online polls in favor of his client, Donald Trump. Cohen said he did so at Trump's direction. And BuzzFeed reports Cohen has said one thing more to federal investigators. Cohen has admitted lying to Congress about President Trump's business dealings with Russia. And according to Buzzfeed, Cohen asserts that he lied at the president's direction. Adam Schiff, the head of a House committee examining Russia, described that as a crime, saying the president, quote, "may have suborned perjury." We're going to talk about all this with Clint Watts. He's a former FBI special agent who now researches cybersecurity and intelligence. Good morning.
CLINT WATTS: Good morning.
INSKEEP: Is it important that Cohen tell his story in public?
WATTS: I don't know that it is. I think the most important, you know, investigative part of this has probably already happened with Special Counsel Mueller's investigation. And what I worry about in both these hearings at the House and this public debate that we heard - you know, the cable news at night is that it actually undermines people's understanding of what actually will come out, I think, eventually, from Special Counsel Mueller.
INSKEEP: Oh, because there are different lines of questioning. There might be different versions of the truth. And it becomes hard to keep straight what we actually know.
WATTS: That's exactly right. How would we be able to sort that out? - because ultimately, there'll probably only be one reporting round from the Mueller results. And so if you're listening to this over time, it can become very confusing to try and understand.
INSKEEP: Well, let's take it face value this BuzzFeed report - Cohen telling investigators, Donald Trump told me to lie. The president of the United States told me to lie. That is certainly consistent with everything that Cohen has said in public, that he was always acting at the president's direction. How significant is that allegation?
WATTS: I think it's significant because now it involves one branch of government, essentially, undermining another branch of government. This is different from everything we saw up in terms of Russian collusion and election interference and in terms of obstruction. This is a very current sort of thing that just happened recently. So I think it could put the president in a very dangerous position and may change some people's view in Congress of how to handle this, maybe with impeachment. This is - you know, helping someone or encouraging someone to lie to try and avoid the truth with regards to Congress, that could change people's opinion.
INSKEEP: Oh, because it was testimony before Congress that Cohen allegedly says was compromised here. That makes it more significant to you.
WATTS: I think it does because, ultimately, impeachment is a decision that comes out of Congress. And so, you know, up to this point, we've talked about it as if the special counsel produces results, then maybe they turn that over to Congress to pursue impeachment. Well, now this could just, really, be all in Congress's hands in many ways. This would be a lie that was essentially issued to Congress. This, you know, almost sets aside the special counsel investigation.
INSKEEP: I want to note a couple of things that have been said by Rudy Giuliani, the president's lawyer, as regards to Michael Cohen's latest alleged charges. Giuliani simply notes that Cohen is a liar. And he is an admitted liar. That is certainly true. Giuliani also made a statement the other day to CNN's Chris Cuomo about the president's collusion - alleged collusion with Russia. The president has always denied collusion, but Giuliani put some qualifications on that. Let's listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
RUDY GIULIANI: I never said there was no collusion between the campaign or between people in the campaign.
CHRIS CUOMO: Yes, you have.
GIULIANI: I have no idea if - I have not. I said...
CUOMO: You...
GIULIANI: ...The president of the United States - there is not a single bit of evidence the president of the United States committed the only crime you can commit here - conspired with the Russians to hack the DNC.
INSKEEP: OK. I never said there was no collusion - so no longer denying that somebody on the campaign was talking with the Russians.
WATTS: Yes, it seems like a slow pivot, meaning that there was one version of this story from Rudy Giuliani before. And it's suddenly changing or being qualified to where you're not really sure what he's saying. And this has been part of the public trial, essentially, that Giuliani's been waging against the special counsel investigation. So I think what's concerning is he either doesn't know or he does know, and he's concerned that the results of the special counsel investigation will continue to come out. And it will really change the American perception of what was going on in the Trump campaign with Russia.
INSKEEP: So we hear Giuliani - the lawyer's anxiety in the changing story there. Mr. Watts, thanks very much, really appreciate it.
WATTS: Thank you.
INSKEEP: Former FBI special agent Clint Watts researches cybersecurity at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We're also following some news in Latin America. A new group of Honduran migrants is travelling north through Guatemala. They're encountering crowded shelters, and strained resources and residents who have not been as generous as they were with an earlier caravan on its way to the U.S.-Mexico border. Maria Martin has this report.
MARIA MARTIN, BYLINE: The sign outside the migrant help organization called Casa Migrante in downtown Guatemala City reads, (speaking Spanish), we're sorry, but we're full. Still, hundreds - some estimate thousands - of mostly Honduran migrants sat or stood on the sidewalks for blocks outside the shelter on Thursday evening hoping for a meal, a bed or some direction. Many are on their second or third night of a long journey fleeing Honduras.
ELESEO: (Speaking Spanish).
MARTIN: Thirty-five-year-old Eleseo (ph), from Progreso de Yoro (ph), says one can't live in Honduras. Eleseo believes Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez is to blame for the poverty and violence driving people north. "He's corrupt and shameless," says Eleseo.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHILD CRYING)
MARTIN: Among the migrants, there are many families with children.
JUAN RAMON MURILLO: (Speaking Spanish).
MARTIN: Juan Ramon Murillo (ph) and his wife, Vivian (ph), sit on the sidewalk with their 4-year-old daughter, Katherine (ph), between them. He's 27 and says finding work is hard in their community of San Juan. They decided to take the risk to head north to the U.S. to find a better life for their family.
HUMBERTO BARRIOS: (Speaking Spanish).
MARTIN: After many hours of waiting, Father Humberto Barrios (ph) of Casa Migrante comes out to speak to the waiting throng of migrants. "Be calm and patient," he says. "Everyone will get a meal, with priority for the women and children." He says they're working to see if more beds can be found for this night.
BARRIOS: (Speaking Spanish).
MARTIN: "We are alarmed by the large number of people," says Father Humberto. "It's harder now to find shelters than previous caravans now that school is back in session," he says, "especially with no help from the Guatemalan government and the public, for whatever reason, not quite as generous with this group as when the last caravan passed through Guatemala last October." For NPR News, I'm Maria Martin in Antigua, Guatemala.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Parts of the federal government are shut down. But needless to say, the weather has continued. There's a bit of extra snow on the ground here in Washington. Rain is sweeping through the West. And emergency workers in many places need information from the government to respond. NPR's Rebecca Hersher reports the weather does not care that the government is shut down.
REBECCA HERSHER, BYLINE: On Wednesday, Christopher Berry was at his office in Santa Cruz, Calif., worrying about the rain.
CHRISOPHER BERRY: We have a storm event predicted to start, literally, in a matter of hours here, where we're going to get six plus inches of rain.
HERSHER: Berry is the watershed manager for Santa Cruz. And when it rains a lot, one of his jobs is to figure out whether the river that flows through the city will flood. To do that, he relies on stream gauges that tell him how much water is flowing down the river.
BERRY: We use stream-gauging data on a moment-by-moment basis.
HERSHER: The most important gauges for Santa Cruz are managed by the U.S. Geological Survey. But the USGS is shut down, which means the gauges aren't being calibrated. Berry can't trust that gauge measurements are accurate.
BERRY: So we know that we could have better data if the USGS staff were out in the field.
HERSHER: Which is why Barry was worried on Wednesday - he was trying to help the city plan for a rainstorm. But he couldn't trust the information he was getting, which is frustrating and scary. Across the country, the National Weather Service is fielding phone calls from nervous local officials like Berry. Unlike the USGS, the National Weather Service is still open during the shutdown to make sure we all - regular citizens, emergency managers, airline pilots - have accurate weather forecasts.
RAY MARTIN: Yeah, we are always here 24/7, 365.
HERSHER: Ray Martin is the lead forecaster in the Sterling, Va., office. He's also the office's union steward. And he says his workdays are pretty normal with one exception.
MARTIN: I can't tell you how many times in the office I've heard the comment, you know, just going to work again like usual but not getting paid, you know (laughter).
HERSHER: Working for the weather service often requires working for many hours or days on end. Ray worked 13 days straight around Christmas without pay. And storms like the back-to-back snowstorms that have hit the Midwest and East Coast only add to the workload. The phones ring off the hooks during bad weather. Alicia Miller is a hydrologist and union steward in the Pittsburgh office.
ALICIA MILLER: I do have two children. And it's very hard to explain to a daycare that I'm working and they have to watch my children, but I'm not going to be able to pay them.
HERSHER: For now, Miller has been cutting back on other expenses so she can afford to pay.
How much longer can you go on?
MILLER: Not - realistically, not much longer. A month more would be very painful for me.
HERSHER: And the longer the shutdown goes on, the greater the risk for people like Chris Berry back in Santa Cruz, who are operating without important federal data. I called him back the morning after the rainstorm.
BERRY: I would say we basically got lucky.
HERSHER: The river didn't flood this time. But if there's another rainstorm before the government reopens, he says, the risk of unexpected flooding will be even higher. Rebecca Hersher, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Next, we hear the case for a Brexit do-over. No top British leader seems quite ready to call for a second referendum in the U.K. But after 2 1/2 years of failure to work out an exit from the European Union as called for in a first referendum in 2016, a former British leader is talking about voting again. David Miliband was once a leading member of Britain's Labour Party and the British foreign secretary. He's now the president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee in New York City. He was watching from afar this week as Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit plan was overwhelmingly defeated in Parliament. Weeks remain until the U.K. would leave the EU with no deal at all.
What has this week's politics in Britain shown about Brexit?
DAVID MILIBAND: I think that the deadlock that you see in Britain at the moment reflects a couple of factors. First of all, people voted to leave the European Union without any model for what Brexit would mean. And the government has been unable to come up with a coherent definition of what Brexit is. Secondly, there are rising levels of concern that Parliament itself is so split that there is no way of bridging the divide. And that leaves people very worried that Britain might in the end so-called crash out of the European Union without a deal at all, and that would be the most damaging outcome.
INSKEEP: Do you see this as a tactical problem, by which I mean perhaps Theresa May could have negotiated things differently and managed this better? Or do you see a strategic problem that Britain is simply attempting the impossible?
MILIBAND: Well, I think that it would be impossible for Britain to achieve the Brexit that was described by the leave campaign in the referendum. The leave campaign claimed that money would flow into the U.K. and that trade deals would be ready the day after Brexit. None of this has come to pass. And so there is a structural problem relating to the way Brexit was sold, essentially the lie on which it was sold. However, it's also the case that we didn't need to be in the situation 2 1/2 years after the referendum that we're in today.
People like me who opposed leaving the European Union I think would have had to swallow hard. We'd had been sad. But if Theresa May had chosen a more pragmatic course, I think she could have found compromise, which meant that we did leave in a way that was planned and planned for and left people like me saying that it's the wrong outcome but not one that we can object to.
INSKEEP: So what is the case for a second referendum given that you will be told that you simply want a referendum because you didn't like the first one?
MILIBAND: Yeah. The case for a second referendum can't simply be that we didn't like the outcome. I think that the case runs like this. First, the Brexit that people were promised is not on offer. Second, the first referendum had no, quote-unquote, "informed consent." There was no detail that allowed people to know what they were voting for. Thirdly, and I think critically, it's better safe than sorry. And when you buy a house, you put in an offer and then you get a survey done. And if the survey reports that there is subsidence in the house, you can revise your offer or not buy the house.
INSKEEP: Oh, the home inspection, OK. All right.
MILIBAND: The home inspection, sorry. We - what you call a home inspection. So what we're saying - I mean, I'm a supporter of a second referendum, both on democratic grounds but also on economic and social grounds - is that it's better to be safe than sorry. And people should be able to - now that they know what the home inspection has revealed, now that we know so much more about what leaving the European Union means, they should be in a position to affirm their decision or choose not to. And so this is a situation that I think isn't about a retrial or a repeat. It's about a country that should be - famed for its pragmatism, for its maturity, for the seriousness of its parliamentary system of government - able to take the long view.
I mean, it's - I was foreign minister for three years from 2007 to 2010, and I spent those three years fending off voting against, leading my party colleagues against, proposals for a referendum because referendums give power to demagogues and dictators. And they are loved by demagogues and dictators. And a parliamentary system of government has to restore the balance which allows passion to be tempered by reason.
INSKEEP: Although you're getting at some of the complexities here. You're saying a referendum was a bad idea and so what is needed is another referendum.
MILIBAND: Yeah. You're absolutely right, and there's a paradox in this because, well, you can't take away what the people have voted for without giving them the chance to affirm or rescind. But I do think there are bigger questions here about how countries like Britain - after all, you're going through your own trauma of the shutdown yourself - there are big questions here about how the leading Western liberal democracies show that democratic systems of government can mobilize the wisdom of crowds and not fall foul of the screams of the mob.
INSKEEP: David Miliband, thanks for taking the time, enjoyed it.
MILIBAND: Thank you so much.
INSKEEP: David Miliband is the president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
All right. If British politics have been a mess this week, Sweden has been without a government since September after an election delivered no clear winner. But this morning, the Swedish Parliament voted to give the previous prime minister, center-left Social Democrat Stefan Lofven, another four years in power. Maddy Savage has been following the story from outside the Swedish Parliament.
MADDY SAVAGE, BYLINE: Sweden has been in limbo for four months after one of the tightest elections in history ended without a clear winner, partly due to the rise of a nationalist anti-immigration party, the Sweden Democrats. They took votes away from traditional parties on the center-right as well as the Social Democrats, who are on the center-left and have a very different agenda, despite their similar name. So it's been a complicated process as the different parties have tried to figure out who should lead a coalition government. Today, Stefan Lofven finally got enough support to do it. Here's the speaker of the Swedish Parliament, Andreas Norlen, announcing Lofven had won the vote.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ANDREAS NORLEN: Stefan Lofven (foreign language spoken).
(APPLAUSE)
SAVAGE: What is important about this vote is that a number of smaller center-right parties essentially switched sides in order to help Stefan Lofven back into power. They said they'd tolerate a center-left coalition rather than risk a center-right government that would've relied on support from the hard-right nationalists. The prime minister has had to compromise, too. He said he'll cut taxes and relax the country's strict labor laws, moving away from his typical Social Democrat agenda, which many think is controversial. Here's Samuel Engblom, spokesperson for one of Sweden's largest trade union organizations, the TCO.
SAMUEL ENGBLOM: Well, it's a good thing that we have a government. It's taking a longer time than usual in Sweden, a longer time than usual in most countries. We're worried that it will become more easy for employers to fire people for the wrong reasons, to circumvent dismissive protection legislation.
SAVAGE: Opinion polls suggest that all of this has rocked confidence in politicians in general, and many people think the fragile new government is in for a rocky ride, which might end up helping the nationalists win even more support in the long run. For NPR News, this is Maddy Savage in Stockholm.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Good morning. I'm David Greene. To catch drunk drivers, police need to conduct sobriety tests. That takes training, and apparently having fellow officers act drunk just isn't enough. Police in Kutztown, Pa., wanted real subjects. The Reading Eagle reports they asked for three volunteers to come get drunk. Suffice to say, they found three pretty easily. The volunteers don't get paid. They do get free hard liquor and hopefully a ride straight home.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
President Trump left little doubt that a canceled flight for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was an act of reprisal. One day after Pelosi suggested delaying the State of the Union speech, the president called off her secret military flight to Afghanistan. Other government flights are continuing amid a partial government shutdown. Pelosi had said the State of the Union speech should be delayed because it is a high security event, and key security officials are off work or going unpaid. Needless to say, none of this addresses the substance of reopening the government or the presidential demand for a wall that triggered it. NPR congressional reporter Kelsey Snell is here for the latest version of Groundhog Day. Kelsey, good there.
KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: (Laughter) Hi, good morning.
INSKEEP: How did this story unfold yesterday?
SNELL: Well, we congressional reporters and people in the Capitol found out that Pelosi was going on this trip in the letter from the president saying that he was canceling the trip. And that's partially because most of the time these kinds of congressional trips, particularly to war zones like Afghanistan, are not revealed beforehand for...
INSKEEP: Security reasons.
SNELL: Absolutely. I was actually talking to one senator who's been on many of these. And he told me that he's typically told the only person he can tell about the trip is his spouse. So the president revealing that this trip was going to happen was really a surprise to a lot of people. In fact, Pelosi and the rest of the delegation headed to Afghanistan in Brussels were already on the bus to their plane when this letter went out. They had to turn back and go back to their offices. It was a total scramble.
INSKEEP: And you, reporters, or some reporters, were able to watch them get off the bus, if I'm not mistaken.
SNELL: Yes. They watched them - watched the bus leave, watched the bus come back and watched them go back to the Capitol. It was a really remarkable scene.
INSKEEP: So is the State of the Union truly, truly off?
SNELL: Well, what - they'd need to have an invitation. The president can't come and speak on the House floor where the State of the Union usually happens without an invitation from the speaker. And Speaker Pelosi essentially rescinded that. She did give the president the opportunity to submit his remarks in writing or come back after the shutdown is over. She said that she doesn't have any doubt that the federal workers who secure events like this could do the job, but they should be paid to do it.
INSKEEP: OK. So a little bit of hardball being played here. How concerned are the people around the president as this shutdown completes about four weeks here?
SNELL: Well, it's kind of a mixed bag. You have Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell saying that he will not vote on any spending bills to reopen the government unless the president says he'll sign them. And he's been putting that firmly in the lap of Democrats and the president to work that out. And McConnell has more or less removed himself from this negotiation altogether, but that has some moderate Republicans really concerned. We've seen bipartisan groups trying to work together to get something done. But over and over, those bipartisan groups, groups that have involved Lindsey Graham of South Carolina or Susan Collins of Maine...
INSKEEP: Lamar Alexander of Tennessee.
SNELL: Lamar Alexander - yeah - retiring from Tennessee - they have tried. And they say that they keep hitting a wall, and that wall is the same thing. President Trump needs to be able to sign it for the majority leader to bring a bill to the floor.
INSKEEP: Are people, other than the president, inside the administration beginning to grow alarmed about the effects of this shutdown?
SNELL: It's hard to tell, but one of the things that I think people may have noticed this week is that they're talking about bringing back IRS workers to process returns. That is an effort to blunt the impact of the shutdown. And typically, you - the negotiations have wanted some sort of big impact so...
INSKEEP: The whole point of a shutdown is to inflict pain on people.
SNELL: Right, because it makes people come to the negotiating table. So as they're trying to blunt this effect, it is making it so that the shutdown maybe doesn't have greater - the great effects that usually are a negotiating tool.
INSKEEP: Meaning the White House is realizing the political impact on the president, who is blamed by most people for this shutdown, could be getting quite serious.
SNELL: Yeah. I mean, the polls have shown that, and the White House seemed to be reacting a lot to those polls.
INSKEEP: Kelsey, good to see you. Thanks so much.
SNELL: Thank you.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Kelsey Snell.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Now, the government shutdown began with President Trump vowing to stop Central American migrants with a wall along the southern border. And almost a month later, there is still no agreement on that wall. But another effort to stop the flow of migrants is taking hold. Judges are increasingly denying them asylum under a new administration policy. NPR's Joel Rose has this report on one woman's case. And just a warning - some parts of her story are disturbing.
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: When the young woman from Nicaragua got off the plane in South Florida, she hadn't seen her parents in more than a decade. She says they looked exactly like they did when they left their tiny Central American town to find work in the U.S. Her eyes light up as she describes their reunion at the airport.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Through interpreter) When I saw them, I ran to hug them. I felt a huge joy when I saw them again. And I knew that I was going to be here protected.
ROSE: We're not using the woman's name because her parents are undocumented, and she's trying to get asylum and stay in the U.S. She fled Nicaragua with her infant son to get away from the boy's abusive father. Finally in Florida, she felt like she had escaped his grasp.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Through interpreter) I felt safe here. I was far away.
ROSE: But she may not be allowed to stay in the U.S. for long. The young woman arrived at a moment when immigration is paralyzing American politics. The president wants to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and keep asylum-seekers on the other side of it. The young woman from Nicaragua has the dubious distinction of being one of the first to be denied asylum under a new Trump administration policy. Evelyn Colon (ph) is her lawyer.
EVELYN COLON: So this is the file, and the first thing is that we submit...
ROSE: Colon shows me a stack of papers more than 5 inches high. The file details years of sexual and physical abuse her client described to her. Had this woman's asylum hearing been held earlier by even a few weeks, Colon thinks she would have won.
COLON: I feel in my heart that had this case been before Matter of A-B-, we would have had a different outcome, even days before A-B-.
ROSE: What she's talking about here is a court ruling known as Matter of A-B-. It was issued last June by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who oversees immigration judges. It says, in most cases, migrants fleeing from domestic abuse or gang violence do not qualify for asylum. But Colon says some judges have begun denying all domestic violence cases.
COLON: I don't think they take the time to listen to the client, even in the hearing. They just have their script.
ROSE: In her hearing last June, the Nicaraguan woman told her immigration judge that her boyfriend got increasingly violent after she got pregnant. One day, she says, he showed up drunk and started banging on the door.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Through interpreter) I was scared because he was screaming very loud, and he was banging on the door saying, open it. You're my woman. You have to open. He kicked the door so many times that the door fell.
ROSE: The woman says her boyfriend raped her that night. She was seven months pregnant. She believes that's why her son was born prematurely a month later. Her immigration judge said he found her to be very sympathetic. Still, he denied her request for asylum, citing the new ruling from Jeff Sessions. Mark Metcalf knows how gut-wrenching these cases can be. He used to be an immigration judge in Miami.
MARK METCALF: It's a very difficult analysis. It is not easy for the judges. I've been there. I know. It's not easy to say no to people.
ROSE: In order to get asylum in the U.S., you have to show that you've been persecuted because of your race, religion or other characteristics. And Metcalf, who is now a prosecutor in Kentucky, says just being the victim of a crime doesn't qualify.
METCALF: I've had to look a person in the eye and tell them I believe you were telling me the truth. I just don't believe your claim is rewarded with asylum based on the facts that you've given to me today.
ROSE: After the ruling from Sessions last year, judges have increasingly denied asylum claims. Now they reject nearly 70 percent of all claims. But many immigration lawyers say Sessions was wrong. They say some migrants fleeing gangs and domestic violence should get asylum because their own governments did nothing to protect them. That's why the woman from Nicaragua should be allowed to stay here, argues Karen Musalo. She directs the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies in San Francisco.
KAREN MUSALO: She suffered horrendous abuse. She went to the police really to no avail and tried to escape him. That's really the classic facts of a case that should have been granted.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Speaking Spanish).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Speaking Spanish).
ROSE: Back in Florida, the Nicaraguan woman picks up her son from a neighbor's apartment. He's 3 years old now, an outgoing little kid with a "Paw Patrol" backpack. Soon after he was born, she says, her boyfriend started to hit him, too.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Through interpreter) That's when I decided to go to the police.
ROSE: But the police in Nicaragua never arrested the boyfriend or even talked to him, she says. And the boyfriend, he was furious.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Through interpreter) He told me that I was never going to leave him, that I was going to be with him forever because I was his property.
ROSE: That's when she took her son and fled to the U.S. She's appealing the judge's decision in her asylum case. I asked what she'll do if she loses the appeal. She said she doesn't know, but she can't go back to Nicaragua. Joel Rose, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The African Union has advice for the Democratic Republic of Congo. The African Union is a kind of United Nations for the continent, and its leaders voiced concern about Congo's disputed presidential election. They're calling on that giant country to hold off declaring final results because of doubts about the integrity of the outcome. NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton reports.
OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: Congo's electoral commission declared Felix Tshisekedi the provisional winner of the presidential vote, an announcement immediately contested by another opposition frontrunner, Martin Fayulu. He alleges vote fraud and has challenged the result in the Constitutional Court. Fayulu placed second but says he won outright and has accused Tshisekedi and outgoing President Joseph Kabila of agreeing a deal to squeeze him out. Fayulu has welcomed the African Union's unusually strongly worded statement expressing grave doubts and calling for a suspension of the final presidential election result declaration.
MARTIN FAYULU: (Speaking French).
QUIST-ARCTON: "It's a good thing if the goal is to get to the truth of the ballot box," says Fayulu, adding, he believes African leaders are on the side of the Congolese people. The AU is to dispatch a high-level delegation to Congo Monday to try to resolve the post-election crisis, an initiative the authorities there cannot lightly dismiss. But information minister Lambert Mende Omalanga says no one has the right to dictate how Congo's Constitutional Court should proceed.
Perhaps the African Union has information we're not aware of, says the minister, otherwise, nothing has changed. The presidential inauguration is scheduled Tuesday. Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, NPR News, Johannesburg.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
President Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen has admitted lying to Congress. He says he lied about President Trump's business dealings with Russia, that discussions of a Trump Tower Moscow continued deep into the presidential campaign. According to BuzzFeed, Cohen says he was told to lie under oath by President Trump, which congressional Democrats are saying is suborning perjury, a crime. Anthony Cormier is one of two BuzzFeed reporters who broke this story. He's on the line. Good morning, sir.
ANTHONY CORMIER: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: What is the evidence that Michael Cohen is telling this to federal investigators?
CORMIER: So according to our sources, who are two - I'll characterize them as law enforcement officials with direct knowledge of the Trump Tower Moscow investigation - have told us that there is quite a bit of documentary evidence of this, whether those are emails, internal correspondence and witness interviews that they gathered before they spoke with Mr. Cohen at the special counsel. And then Mr. Cohen, during his many interviews with the special counsel, confirmed that he was directed to lie to Congress.
INSKEEP: OK. So you're saying it's not just that Michael Cohen says to federal prosecutors, listen, I lied, but the president told me to lie. There is some kind of documentary record that would appear to corroborate that?
CORMIER: Yes. That is absolutely correct.
INSKEEP: Have you seen any of those documents?
CORMIER: I have not. But our two sources fully, 100 percent read into this. They have reviewed these documents in person. They know the sort of minutia of this aspect of the sort of sprawling special counsel investigation. And we've managed to find ways to verify these people's stories off the record through sourcing that we just weren't able to use in the story.
INSKEEP: So I think you're trying to tell me that you feel you have more than two sources, even though you were citing two sources because others were not speaking in a form that you could report.
CORMIER: Indeed.
INSKEEP: Does this story seem plausible to you, having covered Michael Cohen's story for so long?
CORMIER: Well, I think there's a clue that the special counsel's office left in the sentencing memo of Mr. Cohen. When Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress, the special counsel's office issued a memo saying that this is why - this is what we think he should be sentenced to. And among the areas that Mr. Cohen has apparently been helpful was in helping the special counsel understand how his statement to Congress, in which he lied, was crafted. It's in the sentencing memo that has been largely overlooked. We, of course, would never rely - our reporting would never be founded in sort of speculation. But it was an interesting breadcrumb, so to speak, for us.
INSKEEP: So we know on the record from Robert Mueller's office that Michael Cohen told them something about how it was that he came to lie before Congress and that he was helpful in some way. And if I'm not mistaken, the memo also alludes to conversations with the White House in that part of the memo, right?
CORMIER: Indeed. It absolutely does.
INSKEEP: So what you've done is taken it a step further, according to your sources. And the assertion here is that it was the - was it the president himself, directly, who would have spoken to Michael Cohen, or was it through some intermediary, according to your reporting?
CORMIER: No. It's our understanding that this was directly from the president of the United States.
INSKEEP: So what is the implication of this?
CORMIER: This is problematic for the president. This is a crime, if it's true. And our reporting suggests that it is. We've heard nothing from the White House. We've gotten a little bit of backlash from Trump's spokesperson Rudy Giuliani, who suggested that - I believe, last night - if you believe Michael Cohen, that he wants to sell us the Brooklyn Bridge for all cash, I think where Mr. Giuliani is mistaken is that our reporting is not based on Mr. Cohen. He is not the one that has told us this.
INSKEEP: Anthony Cormier of BuzzFeed, thanks very much. Really appreciate it.
CORMIER: Thanks, Steve.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
In the beginning, when her daughter was born, Lisa Abramson was smitten. She felt like she barely needed to sleep. She had so much energy. She was so excited.
LISA ABRAMSON: Which now I can look back and say, maybe that was a warning sign.
SIMON: Because then came delusions of helicopters circling her house and snipers on the roof. From KQED in San Francisco, April Dembosky has this story.
APRIL DEMBOSKY, BYLINE: That first week after her daughter was born, the world was nothing but love. Then, the baby started losing weight. The pediatrician said Lisa needed to feed her every two hours. All of a sudden, she felt like she couldn't keep up.
L ABRAMSON: It weighed on me as, like, I failed as a mom. Like, I can't feed my child.
DEMBOSKY: Even when she could get a break from breastfeeding and pumping, she still couldn't relax enough to sleep. As she got more and more exhausted, she started to get confused. People's voices were distorting. She went to a spin class but only lasted 10 minutes.
UNIDENTIFIED INSTRUCTOR: That's it. That's it.
L ABRAMSON: And it felt like - almost like the walls were talking to me.
UNIDENTIFIED INSTRUCTOR: Push. Push. Push.
DEMBOSKY: Then, Lisa noticed some police helicopters circling over their apartment.
L ABRAMSON: You know, there were snipers on the roof. There were spy cams in our bedroom. And everyone was watching me. And my cellphone was, like, giving me weird messages.
DEMBOSKY: Lisa waited for the police to come in and take her. But the next morning, she woke up in her own bed. The cops had arrested their nanny instead. Lisa told her husband it wasn't fair. She said she was going to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. And that's when her husband told her he was going to drive her to the police station.
L ABRAMSON: I was like, oh, OK. He's taking me in. And I guess I'm getting arrested.
DAVID ABRAMSON: It was probably one of the worst days of my life, bringing my wife to the hospital and then eventually checking her into an inpatient unit. It was really, really challenging.
DEMBOSKY: This is David Abramson. He explains there was no crime, no helicopters. And the nanny wasn't arrested. He took Lisa not to jail, but to the psychiatric ward at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco.
D ABRAMSON: You could see in her eyes and her body language that she was panicked all of a sudden that we were leaving.
DEMBOSKY: About a week in, Lisa remembers her husband showing her a printout from the Internet on postpartum psychosis. It said hormones going wild plus sleep deprivation can trigger the confusion and paranoia.
L ABRAMSON: I really was just like, no. Like, I've heard of postpartum depression. No. Like, I've never heard that, like, there's postpartum crazy. I was like, mm-mm (ph).
DEMBOSKY: Postpartum psychosis is real. It's rare, but experts believe more women are affected than previously thought. Psychiatrist Nirmaljit Dhami says a lot of doctors don't recognize the symptoms.
NIRMALJIT DHAMI: Clinicians can think that the patient is normal and probably suffering from sleep deprivation and discharge them home.
DEMBOSKY: In the U.S., mental health problems are one of the leading causes of death among new moms. California just finished its first big study on this, looking at the cases of 99 new moms who died by suicide over a 10-year period. It's not published yet, but a data preview revealed that of those 99 suicides, doctors said 98 of them were preventable.
DHAMI: The work that we do here is less than 10 percent of what needs to be done.
DEMBOSKY: For example, when Lisa Abramson first arrived at the psych ward, her husband told the resident who admitted her that he thought Lisa had postpartum psychosis. The resident said, postpartum what?
L ABRAMSON: They weren't equipped for me by any means.
DEMBOSKY: Three days in, Lisa's breasts became engorged. They were so painful.
L ABRAMSON: Because I stopped breastfeeding instantly.
DEMBOSKY: Her husband had to negotiate to bring in Lisa's breast pump from home. And she was put in a padded room to use it.
L ABRAMSON: What you would imagine from, like, a terror movie.
DEMBOSKY: But the worst thing of all was not being allowed to see her baby. The hospital says this is a safety measure for everybody. Her family argued with the staff.
L ABRAMSON: They said, you know, she needs - like, she's a new mom. And, like, she needs to see her baby. Like, that's - keeping this bond going is, like, really - it's important. Yeah. That was the hard part - was not getting to see her.
DEMBOSKY: Lisa's family was eventually able to negotiate short visits with her daughter.
L ABRAMSON: Yeah. For, like, an hour or something. It was tough.
(SOUNDBITE OF BEEPING)
DEMBOSKY: On the other side of the country from San Francisco, there's a place with a very different approach - the hospital at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Four - neuroscience, perinatal unit - how can I help you?
DEMBOSKY: This is a psychiatric unit that is reserved exclusively for pregnant women and new moms. Every room has a hospital-grade breast pump. Moms can store breast milk in a special fridge. But head psychiatrist Mary Kimmel says the most distinctive feature is the visitor policy.
MARY KIMMEL: Babies can come to the unit, and we really encourage that. We encourage, actually, older kids to also come to the unit.
DEMBOSKY: Right now, UNC is the only hospital in the country that has a designated psych unit just for pregnant women and new moms. A hospital in New York has a women's-only unit. And El Camino Hospital, an hour south of San Francisco, will soon start construction on a women's-only psych unit with a special focus on new moms.
LUCY ABRAMSON: Ready?
L ABRAMSON: Yeah.
LUCY: Set? Go.
L ABRAMSON: Good job.
DEMBOSKY: Lisa's daughter, Lucy, is 5 now.
L ABRAMSON: One...
LUCY: Two...
L ABRAMSON: ...Two...
LUCY: ...Three.
L ABRAMSON: ...Three.
DEMBOSKY: And she has a second daughter, Vivian, who's a year and a half.
LUCY: Go, Vivi (ph). Go, Vivi.
DEMBOSKY: Lisa recovered fully from postpartum psychosis, and it did not come back after her second pregnancy, in part, because of all the precautions she took. She made sure she got enough sleep, and she gave herself permission to give up breastfeeding if it was too much.
L ABRAMSON: We've got so many messages of just self-sacrifice. Do anything for your kids. And that's what it means to be a good mom. And, for me, that's not what made me a good mom. That's what made me fall apart.
DEMBOSKY: She says she's trying to put herself first and know that that's what makes her a better mom. For NPR News, I'm April Dembosky in San Francisco.
(SOUNDBITE OF C.W. VRTACEK'S "WAR")
SIMON: And that story is part of a reporting partnership between NPR, KQED and Kaiser Health News.
(SOUNDBITE OF C.W. VRTACEK'S "WAR")
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
One of the hottest tickets on Broadway this season - at least until they produce a musical about BJ Leiderman, who writes our theme music - is "Network," a stage adaptation of the 1976 movie about a news anchor who cracks up on the air - they worry about that here every week - and the executives who exploit his ravings for ratings. The film won four Academy Awards. Tom Vitale reports that, on stage, the movie's satire has become a tragedy.
TOM VITALE, BYLINE: Sixty-one-year-old Ivo Van Hove is directing "Network" on Broadway. He says he first saw the film in a Belgian movie theater when he was a young man.
IVO VAN HOVE: My memory of it is that it felt like science fiction, something which was impossible, which could never, ever happen. When I read the script a few years ago, I thought, well, this is the world that we live in today. So that was also the challenge, how to make this work that was a little bit of a parody in its time - how to turn it into a tragedy.
VITALE: In "Network's" climax, news anchor Howard Beale hears a voice ordering him to go on the air and tell his audience the truth. In his pajamas, he rushes into the newsroom and onto the set to share his epiphany. In the film, actor Peter Finch starts right in with his revelations.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "NETWORK")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Take two - cue Howard.
PETER FINCH: (As Howard Beale) I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job.
VITALE: But here, the play differs from the film. Actor Bryan Cranston rushes into the TV studio, then spends seemingly endless silent minutes grasping for words.
BRYAN CRANSTON: Like the experience of waking up from a vivid dream and we think, oh, this is indelible. And you start to try to recall it, and it dissipates like fog. And that's what happens. And so he collapses from that. And out of that despair and public humiliation comes the speech.
VITALE: Cranston actually wells up with tears when he finally speaks.
(SOUNDBITE OF PLAY, "NETWORK")
CRANSTON: (As Howard Beale) I've had it with the foreclosures and the oil crisis and the unemployment and the corruption of finance and the inertia of politics and just the right to be alive and the right to be angry.
VITALE: Beale's rants touch a nerve with his television audience, and his ratings spike. The network executives seize the opportunity to build an entertainment program around his newscast. The anchor becomes a celebrity, and infotainment is born. Keep in mind, screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky predicted this more than 40 years ago, and it won him an Oscar. In his dressing room, before a recent matinee, Bryan Cranston said Chayefsky's prescience was frightening.
CRANSTON: One of the speeches, if you'll recall, was only 3 percent of you people read books, only 15 percent read newspapers.
VITALE: The numbers were likely never that bad. But according to the most recent study, roughly half of all Americans still get their news from television, with the Internet not far behind.
CRANSTON: Howard Beale also says don't look to us for the truth because we just tell you what you want to hear.
(SOUNDBITE OF PLAY, "NETWORK")
CRANSTON: (As Howard Beale) I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the defense budget and crime in the street and the Russians.
(LAUGHTER)
VITALE: In the stage adaptation of "Network," the medium has become the message, says director Ivo Van Hove. As the action cuts between characters, the dialogue is recorded by actors with cameras and broadcast live across huge screens that wrap around the set. One scene is even shot outside the theater and follows a conversation between two actors on 44th Street into the building and onto the stage. Van Hove says he wanted to make the audience feel the intensity of being in the middle of a live TV show.
VAN HOVE: If you have been in a live TV show, it's always a pressure cooker. There's a countdown. And it's 7 o'clock. It has to start. It cannot wait. You cannot say, stop. I'm not ready. Let's do it again. No. There's no doing it again. You do it once. And it's over, you know? And that thrill, I wanted to give. And at the same time, another thing became, for me, important, that there would be cameras everywhere. It's as if the world became a television studio.
VITALE: The play began at London's National Theatre in 2017. Bryan Cranston says its message resonates on both sides of the Atlantic.
CRANSTON: The idea of anger driving policy, of fear and demagoguery as a real motivation for change, whether you view it as good or bad, i.e. Brexit or Donald Trump becoming president, there's tremendous upheaval going on.
VITALE: Cranston says over the course of "Network's" trans-Atlantic run, he's learned the value of expressing anger.
CRANSTON: You think that - what is that going to solve? But, in truth, it does. It releases the pressure valve somewhat, on some people, just a little, on others, maybe a lot. There's intrinsic value to that, to the human condition.
(SOUNDBITE OF PLAY, "NETWORK")
CRANSTON: (As Howard Beale) First, you've got to get mad. And when you're mad enough, then we'll figure out what to do.
VITALE: For NPR News, I'm Tom Vitale in New York.
(SOUNDBITE OF PLAY, "NETWORK")
CRANSTON: (As Howard Beale) Stick out your heads and yell, I'm mad as hell. And I'm not going to take it anymore.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE TUBES SONG "TELECIDE")
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The Trump administration has told states to not offer unemployment benefits to federal employees who are working without pay during the government shutdown. At least three states, including Colorado, New Mexico and California, are defying the order. In Sacramento, Capital Public Radio's Ben Adler has more.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Ground transportation and all airport shuttles...
BEN ADLER, BYLINE: At the Sacramento International Airport Thursday afternoon, TSA workers gathered out of uniform to tell California Governor Gavin Newsom how the federal government shutdown has affected them. Here are Rebecca Kane of Sacramento and Miguel Pagarigan, who commutes an hour from Vacaville each day.
REBECCA KANE: Today, I visited a food bank for the first time in my life, and they were awesome, but I'm working. I want to work.
GAVIN NEWSOM: Right.
KANE: I just want to be paid for what I do.
MIGUEL PAGARIGAN: Because of the shutdown and basically not getting paid, I had to put a for-sale sign on my house on Sunday.
ADLER: TSA workers are among the more than 400,000 federal employees who are working without pay. Newsom criticized the U.S. Department of Labor for saying that because they're working, states can't give them unemployment aid.
NEWSOM: Which is so jaw-dropping and extraordinary.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: That's not right. That's not right.
NEWSOM: Yeah, all right. So the good news is we're going to do it and shame on them.
ADLER: The 380,000 federal employees staying home during the shutdown are eligible for unemployment aid. Jim Nielsen, the top Republican on the state Senate's budget committee, says he respects that Newsom is acting from the goodness of his heart. But he cautions...
JIM NIELSEN: If we start doing too many things California alone, making it our burden and responsibility, it's going to make some real problems in the future for California.
ADLER: In other words, Nielsen added, go ahead this time, but don't make a habit of it. For NPR News, I'm Ben Adler in Sacramento.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Here's a business plan - Harry Rosenmerck, an aging cardiologist, has left New York and his medical practice, moved to Israel and raised pigs - pigs in Israel. What could he be thinking? His ex-wife, Monique, is battling illness. Their son, David, a playwright, has been estranged from Harry since he came out. And Anabelle, their daughter, is heartsick in Paris. And by the way, the local rabbi is appalled. Harry does not believe in phones, email, text messages, Facebook or WhatsApp. So the family quartet and Harry's rabbi rely on a classic technology called letters. The story that goes back and forth in those letters is told in Amanda Sthers' novel, which she's also turned into a film, "Holy Lands." Amanda Sthers, who was born in Paris, joins us from Los Angeles. Thanks so much for being with us.
AMANDA STHERS: Thank you.
SIMON: The pig business in Israel doesn't sound very promising, but Harry does pretty well for a while, doesn't he?
STHERS: Well, actually there's a real business in Israel, and this is how it all started. I read an article in a very serious French newspaper explaining how to raise pigs in Israel. And I found the paradox hilarious, of course. And for once, Muslims and Jews are agreeing on something - or, more precisely, against the same thing.
SIMON: Yeah.
STHERS: So in the novel, it's a great starting point to create very strong animosity against the rabbi. And this is the first letter - will you stop and take those pigs away (laughter)?
SIMON: Yeah, the local rabbi doesn't welcome them. Let's put it that way.
STHERS: Yeah. And while there's a lot of rules to actually raise pigs in Israel. You must raise them on wood, so they won't touch the holy ground. And they must be kind of hidden.
SIMON: Wow. But, I mean, there are people that eat pork in Israel.
STHERS: A lot actually. It's, like - it's very fashionable in Tel Aviv.
SIMON: We should explain for those who wonder - you know, there are secular Jews, especially in Tel Aviv and then, you know, Christian populations and - well, is Harry running away from something?
STHERS: Well, I think it's kind of a provocation to God. And he's also running away from reality, which is that he got a divorce from his wife. And he also is running away, not to see his son being a homosexual. And it's about his limit of tolerance. He think he's very open-minded going to Israel and raise pigs. And at the same time, he cannot accept that his son is married to another man.
SIMON: I've got to ask you about this immediately because this - Harry's - and I'll call it bigotry towards gays, including his son - his son just didn't correlate with anything else I knew about him in the book. I mean, he does pride himself on being a free thinker, right? He takes on the rabbi theologically in all kinds of ways. He thinks of himself as broad-minded. How could he have this bigotry towards other people that happens to include his son?
STHERS: Well, I think it's the same when you look at religions - it's contradictions. Most religions are serving love (laughter) and want people to be loved in any ways and don't accept homosexuality. So he's just the incarnation of, like, what do we do about those contradictions. And he's fighting against also the idea he had of what his son is going to become. We all have this image of what we wish for our children and myself included. We all imagine a destiny for them, and then we have to face the truth and keep on loving them with lots of different ways of living their life.
SIMON: Yeah. I love the very touchy relationship in this novel between Harry and Rabbi Moshe, who begin as adversaries, but what draws them together?
STHERS: This is a real friendship. This is how I think you truly love someone - is to understand the way he looks at life, even if it's completely different than yours. And I think what brings them together is that they're both very intelligent people. And it's not about being wrong or right. It's about trying to understand that maybe there's other ways to see life. And I think it's really a metaphor about what is going in Israel between Palestinian and Israelis. And this is what the book is about. It's about reconciliation, and it's about trying to see the world with another pair of eyes. And this is friendship.
SIMON: Yeah. And we should note that "Holy Lands" is not only a novel now but it's soon to be a major motion picture, which you directed...
STHERS: Yes.
SIMON: ...James Caan and Rosanna Arquette and Jonathan Rhys Myers. What came first to you, the film, the book? How do you handle this workload?
STHERS: Actually, I wrote this book 10 years ago in French. And I was living in Los Angeles. I said, well, I wanted my my friends to read it in English. And this is how it all started - just wanted to share the story more and more because in France it was a huge success and people had fun, but it's also a very moving novel I think. And what was the strongest thing for me was people telling me, you know, when I close the book, I took my phone and I called the people I loved to tell them before it was too late.
SIMON: Oh, my gosh.
STHERS: Because it's a book about what's left unsaid and about tolerance and how you can - it's really reconciliation in the big picture but also in the family. And then the motion picture was a big surprise. I didn't imagine I could cast those huge names. I feel like I'm blessed and very happy to be able to share it with you now.
SIMON: Amanda Sthers - her novel, "Holy Lands." Thanks so much for being with us.
STHERS: Thank you so much.
(SOUNDBITE OF WOLFERT BREDERODE TRIO'S "CURTAINS")
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Government employees are often the targets of jokes and wisecracks, but a lot of Americans have now stepped up to help furloughed government workers get through these weeks of enforced idleness or compulsory work for no pay. Chef Jose Andres, who has provided so much food aid to victims of hurricanes and wildfires, opened a kitchen right on Pennsylvania Avenue - yes, not far from the Trump Hotel - to give free meals to furloughed federal workers and food to bring home for their families. The lines are long. The Washington Post found a woman named Mary Wilkinson as she handed out $20 bills to workers who waited to eat. These are people that I owe a debt to, she said, because they're doing a job on my behalf, and they're not being paid.
The Capital Area Food Bank has opened five pop-up centers and report they're serving out-of-work workers from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Institutes of Health. Individuals who never had to request food, Radha Muthiah, the food bank's president, told The New York Times. Many had donated but had never expected to be on the receiving end.
The Farmer's Daughter restaurant in northeastern Massachusetts, where Chandra Gouldrup is chef, offers a free meal of eggs, toast and smashed potatoes to federal workers. Chef Edward Lee in Louisville offers free meals at his Whiskey Dry and MilkWood restaurants. He told the Courier-Journal, we're all family in Kentucky. The Top Knot Beauty salon in Metairie, La., offers free haircuts to federal employees. Adrienne Lopez, a stylist who's the daughter of retired FEMA workers, told us this is an hour you can have to be taken care of.
People are dropping off cans of soup and boxes of ramen noodles at Orlando Airport to give food aid to unwaged TSA workers. Some food vendors at Atlanta's airport are providing free lunch for the people who staff security lines for no pay. Webster Bank of Connecticut offers interest-free loans to the estimated 1,500 federal workers in the state who cannot receive unemployment assistance during the shutdown. PNM, a New Mexico power company, says it'll keep lights and heat on for federal employees who may be behind on their bills because they're not being paid.
And members of the Mizpah Congregation synagogue in Chattanooga have distributed $20 gift cards to federal employees at their local airport because it is written in Leviticus you shall not steal and you shall not keep for yourself the wages of a laborer. Rabbi Craig Lewis says there's something terribly wrong when people are working hard and not earning their wages.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Parts of the U.S. government remain shut down, but the political bombshells - they keep falling. Yesterday, the BuzzFeed News site alleged Donald Trump directed his lawyer to lie to Congress about efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. The story dominated cable news and talk shows.
Then last night, the office of special counsel Robert Mueller said the report is not accurate. NPR's media correspondent David Folkenflik joins us. David, thanks for being with us.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: Of course.
SIMON: What's the latest? What was said? What was debunked?
FOLKENFLIK: Well - so it's very unusual. The special counsel put out a statement last night saying that 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's editor-in-chief Ben Smith said they stand by their reporting. He spoke last night to our own Mary Louise Kelly on All Things Considered.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
BEN 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 because it's very hard to respond to.
FOLKENFLIK: So I think you're going to, you know, have to see BuzzFeed go and do more reporting. I certainly don't expect anything more from Mueller's office.
SIMON: A lot of news organizations reported that - reported this story without being able to confirm it. There were long discussions that began, now, if this story is true. Was that a mistake? Was that responsible?
FOLKENFLIK: You know, it becomes very difficult not to take it into account. You saw a lot of news organizations holding off - The New York Times for quite a while. NPR, for quite a while, held off. Finally, it, you know, interviewed, in our case, one of the reporters about it and asked questions about it. I think you saw CNN doing much the same.
At the same time, it sparked a lot of speculation. And yet it's hard not to. I mean, you've seen, basically, so much - so many revelations, so much investigative reporting in which people are building on the reporting of others because it's propulsive. And usually, there's confirmation in part and whole. And that is, of course, what journalism is built on.
SIMON: Yeah. Let's recall that BuzzFeed published the Steele dossier when other news organizations declined because it was unverifiable. And now we've gotten in the habit of citing that dossier, haven't we?
FOLKENFLIK: A lot of news organizations have. And here's the rub. You know, it was - it's essentially raw intelligence gathered by Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence officer.
It was published by Buzzfeed after the election. And their justification was that this was something that the president-elect had been briefed on and that people at the highest levels of government were taking seriously and that, in their words, they wanted the public to be able to take it - you know, figure out for themselves how seriously to take it.
Not all of the allegations contained in there have been verified. Some of them have. And some of them have been basically found to be fundamentally true by sort of parallel facts and disclosures from the special prosecutor's office and other documents that have come to light. But you're right. This is raw stuff, and it gets into delicate territory.
I do think, ultimately, it's kind of a service to know what was in there. But a lot of news organizations were very wary about it, and with good reason.
SIMON: David, I got to ask. The next time a responsible news organization has a sound, verifiable story that questions President Trump, does this mistake give him the license to denounce all hard reporting as fake news?
FOLKENFLIK: I think that - yes. I think that, you know, BuzzFeed needs to go back and be transparent about what it has down cold and what it does not. And if something went awry, what went awry?
But that said, this president has proven able to denounce things of fake news that prove to be completely verifiable, completely - prove to be true. And ultimately, he's not concerned with whether or not what he's denying is accurate or not. He's concerned with the forcefulness of his denial. So he can make that charge no matter what we report.
The key thing is that journalists have to be able to be not largely right, which may be still the case in this BuzzFeed story, but verifiably the case.
SIMON: NPR's David Folkenflik, thanks so much for being with us.
FOLKENFLIK: You bet.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
We're going to go to NPR's senior editor and correspondent of the Washington Desk, Ron Elving, now to talk about this week and the continuing government shutdown. Ron, thanks so much for being with us.
RON ELVING, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Scott.
SIMON: How do you see what I think we can fairly refer to now as a face-off between President Trump and Speaker Pelosi? You know, you can't give the State of the Union address here. Well, then, you're not flying to Afghanistan.
ELVING: We've seen face-offs before. President Bill Clinton and Speaker Newt Gingrich, 1995 and 1996. That shutdown drama was highly personalized, as well. And so part of what's going on here, aside from the wall and the workers, is establishing the relationship between the new leader of Congress, which is, after all, a coequal branch of the government, and the leader of the executive branch, the president. And she has been the Democratic leader now since 2002. She's been speaker before. And she thinks that she has accomplished a great deal, just as the president feels his political standing reflects the same.
SIMON: Why don't we hear more from Mitch McConnell in the middle of this shutdown?
ELVING: Because he doesn't want to get in the middle of this. He doesn't feel like he has to. He comes out on the Senate floor from time to time, and he speaks, and he tries not to make news. He doesn't want or need this. He's getting some heat from a handful of his Republican senators who are going to be on the ballot in 2020. And he just hasn't heard from enough of those yet. Most of the Senate Republicans don't want to bail on Trump. They think they can blame the media. They can blame the Democrats. So until that changes, McConnell is not likely to change. He's going to ride it out and survive.
SIMON: The president said he plans to make a major announcement this afternoon on the southern - about the southern border and the shutdown. Do you have any ideas what we can expect?
ELVING: We don't really. We don't know whether the president is going to directly respond to the shutdown or if he is going to take this opportunity to talk more about the BuzzFeed story you were just talking to David about or whether, most likely, he's going to focus on what he sees as the threat to the United States from its southern border, from the people who live to the south of our country. That seems to be the most likely thing, but we'll have to wait and see what the president has to say when he speaks to us this afternoon from the White House.
SIMON: The president met with the North Korean delegation Friday, says there'll be a second meeting with Kim Jong Un. And he announced plans for a new missile defense system, including one in space. Does this president have the mandate or political standing right now to undertake such huge policies when his ability to hold office is under investigation?
ELVING: You know, Scott, he has the office, and he has the authority and the will, so he needs to go forward on these things because that's his job and also because he needs people to see him doing it on a world stage. This morning, the president has gone to Dover, Del., to meet the aircraft that's returning the remains of the U.S. servicemen killed this past week in Syria. Earlier in the week, as you say, he went to the Pentagon. He met with some North Koreans for quite a while and emerged saying he would meet again with Kim Jong Un - date and location still uncertain. All this projects the importance of the presidency, and it sends the message that the nation needs to unite behind him even if his standing at home is at its weakest point yet.
SIMON: More candidates for 2020 this week.
ELVING: Yes, we picked up a couple more this week. Kirsten Gillibrand, senator from New York, is seen as a serious player, even though she announced her candidacy on a late-night comedy show, which people do these days. Tulsi Gabbard, a Democratic member of the House - there are going to be a lot of these candidates. Starbucks magnate Howard Schultz was talking about maybe running as an independent. We're going to break all records, Scott. We're going to need to have brackets just like for the football playoffs.
SIMON: (Laughter) Ron Elving, thanks so much.
ELVING: Thank you, Scott.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The Federal Aviation Administration is calling back to work thousands of safety inspectors, engineers and other employees. While this will allow the agency to resume some safety and oversight, NPR's David Schaper reports the shutdown is being strongly felt all across the aviation industry.
DAVID SCHAPER, BYLINE: Long before you worm your way down the narrow airplane aisle, heave your bag into the overhead bin and squeeze yourself into that tiny seat, the fingerprints of many federal government employees have been all over that plane.
MIKE PERRONE: Everything that we do, we touch the aviation system.
SCHAPER: Mike Perrone heads the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union, which represents a wide range of FAA inspectors, technicians, engineers and evaluators.
PERRONE: We do everything other than - the air traffic controllers talk to the pilots to get them, and the pilots fly the airplane. We are behind the scenes. We are all invested in making sure they've got the safest aviation system in the world.
SCHAPER: These specialists inspect and certify the planes and aircraft parts as airworthy and make sure the maintenance and mechanical work is done according to specs. Perrone says some help build air traffic control towers and radar facilities, while others license pilots and approve and certify pilot training.
PERRONE: And we have inspectors that actually get on the airplane, and they'll fly and watch the pilot's procedures, make sure that they're talking proper phraseology with the air traffic controllers.
SCHAPER: So as a result of the shutdown, pilot training is not being certified, new pilots are not being licensed, some accidents are not being investigated and some new planes are waiting to be certified.
With so many of these safety professionals sitting at home for much of the last four weeks, does Perrone think aviation safety has been compromised?
PERRONE: I think a layer of safety has been missing, absolutely. So the longer this goes on, the potential of more gaps.
SCHAPER: The FAA disagrees. In an emailed statement, a spokesman says the traveling public can be assured that the nation's airspace system is safe.
But after having only a few hundred of those safety inspectors, technicians and regulators working without pay for the first three-plus weeks of the shutdown, this week, the FAA began calling back thousands more.
John Cox is an aviation safety consultant and retired pilot, and he agrees safety has not been compromised yet, but...
JOHN COX: There is an unnecessary constraint on the aviation industry because of the shutdown.
SCHAPER: Cox says the FAA's air traffic controllers academy in Oklahoma City is closed, which could lead to a shortage of controllers in coming months.
COX: I think this is one of the unintended consequences of the shutdown. I think people didn't realize, or are just coming to realize, the ripple effect and how aviation is being disproportionately affected.
SCHAPER: Because of that, many in the aviation industry say it may take some sort of sickout by FAA or TSA workers leading to a slowdown of air traffic or even a grounding of flights in order to break the impasse. David Schaper, NPR News, Washington.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The first Women's March was two years ago, the day after President Trump was inaugurated. It proved to be one of the biggest protest days in U.S. history. Since then, we've seen some stops and lots of starts in the push for more equitable treatment for women - Harvey Weinstein, Charlie Rose - but also silence breakers as TIME's Person of the Year and a record number of women elected to the U.S. Congress. We'll hear about the mood on the streets today as women gather, once again, elsewhere on this program. But for the next few minutes, a step back with two women who've marched before. Jenny Mills lives in western New York. Thanks so much for being with us.
JENNY MILLS: Thank you.
SIMON: And Vanessa De Leon is from Worcester, Mass. Thank you very much for being with us.
VANESSA DE LEON: Thank you for having me.
SIMON: Jenny Mills, you've just moved to New York from Alaska. You organized the local march for your city of Nome, Alaska. You're not going to be affiliated with the national march today, I gather.
MILLS: I made the decision to distance myself from the national organization because of the issues that have come up regarding the leadership's link with Louis Farrakhan and the failure to fully repudiate or denounce his anti-Semitism, homophobia and misogyny.
SIMON: Vanessa De Leon, how do these allegations, these charges about anti-Semitism and other charges against some organizers and some sentiments of the - against original organizers of the Women's March - how do they affect you?
DE LEON: My experience at the Women's March in Boston was amazing. And, I mean, there was a lot of diversity, a lot of unity and people from all walks of life and men and kids, all religions, all ethnicities. So from my personal experience, it was incredible. I would like to learn more about these allegations in order to be able to give you an educated opinion, I guess.
SIMON: Two years ago, we had the election of Donald Trump, following what was heard on the "Access Hollywood" tape where he talked about - well, I think we all remember what he talked about and other remarks that were made during the campaign quite publicly and quite openly. That seemed to provide a lot of energy and focus. What do you feel has happened over the past couple of years?
MILLS: I think we've expanded the discussion about what's going on with women in this country, talking about various different issues that have come to the forefront - wage discrimination and wage inequality for working women, issues with access to health care - reproductive health care. Obviously, the #MeToo movement exploded over the past couple of years. So we're talking a lot more about sexual violence towards women, sexual harassment. So I think the landscape has really opened up to have a lot of really important conversations. And I work in the field of sexual violence against children. I am a forensic interviewer. So that's kind of what I deal with on a daily basis. And just being able to see people talk about this in public and have the ongoing dialogue has been really outstanding.
SIMON: Vanessa De Leon.
DE LEON: I am a victim of domestic violence so this - the Women's March, you know - and when I heard everything that the president said, you know, it touched me so deep. And I'm like, wow. I mean, this is not right. This cannot be normal. This cannot be how things are going to be, you know, in the country. So if I have to go to a hundred march - you know, marches - I will do that because it is not OK.
SIMON: And what about activities other than marching? Are those kinds of avenues open, too?
MILLS: Absolutely. I mean, letter writing campaigns, calling your senators, calling your representatives - there are so many different activist routes that we can take. But the Women's March just happens to kind of get the most attention because it is such a large event. But there are so many things just on a daily basis that activists are continuing to do.
SIMON: Well, I have to ask. Are there people who confuse tweeting with activism in this day and age?
DE LEON: Yes. But it also gets the word out. I mean - and you're, you know, you're right. Some people do confuse, you know, tweeting with activism. But, you know, social media has become a great tool, you know. A lot of people - that's all they do, you know. They - many people stop watching the news, watching TV, and they just go on social media. That's where they get their information - not always accurate information. But it is a good tool, you know, to use and take advantage of.
SIMON: Jenny Mills and Vanessa De Leon, thanks so much for being with us.
DE LEON: Thank you for having us.
MILLS: Thank you, Scott.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The federal government shutdown is leading to thousands of people seeing their immigration court proceedings canceled. California has the most cancellations of any state - more than 9,000 - and the largest backlog of pending cases. From member station KQED, Farida Jhabvala Romero reports.
FARIDA JHABVALA ROMERO, BYLINE: It's the end of the school day at Oceana High, south of San Francisco. Hundreds of students blast out of classrooms and swarm the halls.
Navigating the crowd is Mario Guzman, a lanky 18-year-old from El Salvador. Like other seniors here, Guzman's waiting to hear whether colleges will let him in to pursue his passion.
MARIO GUZMAN: I want to major in either graphic design or animation.
ROMERO: But unlike his friends at school, Guzman's destiny doesn't just depend on college admissions. He's applying for asylum, and his fate lies with an immigration judge. But his final hearing was scheduled for January 3. It was canceled because most immigration judges are furloughed.
GUZMAN: It's really hard because I can plan to do things here, but, certainly, I don't know how much time I have here.
ROMERO: Guzman has been preparing for his hearing with his lawyer for months. And in that preparation, he's had to revisit some of the violence and terror that made him flee El Salvador. He says his cousin, who was like his brother, was shot by gang members.
GUZMAN: And seeing how the life of my cousin was destroyed, it was really hard for me.
HELEN LAWRENCE: So it's just pretty traumatic. And he's a high-schooler. And, you know, he's trying to go about his teenage life.
ROMERO: Helen Lawrence is Guzman's attorney.
LAWRENCE: I think, for him, it's just - he would like to get it over with, to move on.
ROMERO: Guzman has waited for about a year to get his day in court. But other people with canceled hearings have waited much longer. Jasmine Ngo is a single mother of two who lives in the Los Angeles area.
JASMINE NGO: My immigration case is going to be seven years in March.
ROMERO: She's had a green card for almost 30 years, but she was convicted of shoplifting, and now she's fighting deportation.
NGO: It's hard to move forward when you have something hanging over your head.
ROMERO: She doesn't know when she'll get her next court hearing.
NGO: It could be years. It could be months. We don't know.
ROMERO: The shutdown is a massive disruption to an already overburdened system, says Judge Dana Leigh Marks, a past president of the National Association of Immigration Judges.
DANA LEIGH MARKS: Because we are so backlogged and so short-staffed, the calendars are jam-packed and basically full for the next two to three years.
ROMERO: Marks is currently furloughed. But she says once she's back in court, she'll try to squeeze in as many canceled appointments as she can.
MARKS: But, by and large, they're going to go to the end of the line.
ROMERO: For some people, the shutdown may be a blessing. Marks says good, strong cases suffer by the delay, but weaker ones that are likely to lose may benefit by having more time to prepare. Every week the shutdown continues, an estimated 20,000 more cases are delayed nationwide.
For NPR News, I'm Farida Jhabvala Romero in San Francisco.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANI DIFRANCO SONG, "UNWORRY")
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The medical profession is one that mandates hands-on training. Doctors and nurses need to experience everything from cradle to grave while they're in school. But deathbed education often gets short shrift. As Blake Farmer of member station WPLN reports, some nursing programs are attempting to make end-of-life education more of a priority. And just a note - this story includes the simulated sounds of dying.
BLAKE FARMER, BYLINE: There's a sound near the end. Some call it the death rattle. Nursing professor Sara Camp has pretty well perfected it.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHOKING)
FARMER: People stop swallowing. The lungs fill up. There can be moaning.
SARA CAMP: So you get all that noise. And that's really distressing for family members.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOANING)
FARMER: Camp and other instructors at Nashville's Belmont University are gurgling into microphones in a dark closet. In real time, the sound comes out of lifelike robots in hospital beds on the other side of the wall. The instructors watch video monitors of the students responding as teachers control the stats for the robots' breathing, pulse and blood pressure. Other than administering morphine, Camp says there's no exact prescription for nursing students to follow.
CAMP: In this one, they have to focus on communication when there's not that much to do. And it challenges them.
FARMER: In response to surveys showing death anxiety among young nurses, Belmont started hiring actors to make these end-of-life interactions more realistic. Vickie Bailey plays a grieving daughter. There are family dynamics for nurses to navigate, explaining to Bailey's character how her mom signed a Do Not Resuscitate order.
VICKIE BAILEY: No cancer - didn't want it to come back.
FARMER: The student, Sara Lindsay, sits on the bedside and puts a hand on Bailey and warns the end is near.
SARA LINDSAY: So now would be a good time if you have prayers or anything that you'd want to say.
FARMER: The monitors stop beeping. Everyone sits in silence. Half a dozen beds are going at the same time in the simulation lab. All the students gather to debrief afterward. Zacnite Vargas says she second-guessed herself.
ZACNITE VARGAS: Should I say she's dying, she's dead or she's passed? I don't know, like, how to be, like, straightforward with it.
CAMP: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
FARMER: A recent academic review of nursing textbooks found most gloss over this standard part of the job. And researchers say more than a quarter of nursing students never treat a dying patient. That's prompted a new trade group to offer mid-career education on end-of-life care. Some schools, like Belmont, have reworked their curriculum. Camp tells the students, many just weeks away from their first job, to be cautious while also showing compassion to families.
CAMP: They may not remember what you say, but they'll remember how they feel because you were there.
FARMER: It's important work that Camp says more students should rehearse. For NPR News, I'm Blake Farmer in Nashville.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Many people in America, and around the world for that matter, view Native American life as a kind of museum diorama that hasn't changed much since the 1890 Massacre at Wounded Knee. They see loss and historic injustice, bleak reservations and, these days, maybe a few gaudy casinos.
David Treuer, a Ph.D. in anthropology, who teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Southern California and is a member of the Ojibwe nation, tries to revitalize that view in a new book, "The Heart Beat Of Wounded Knee: Native America From 1890 To The Present." David Treuer joins us from Los Angeles. Thanks so much for being with us.
DAVID TREUER: Thanks for having me.
SIMON: Chapter after chapter, it's like one shattered myth after another. And I say that with great respect.
(LAUGHTER)
SIMON: Let let's begin with this one. Many, if not most, Native American communities today are urban, not tribal. How has that changed?
TREUER: Oh, my gosh, yes. So one thing that I was trying to tackle in the book was this idea - and it's a pernicious idea - that Indians are in America but not of America, that Native communities are predominantly reservation-based and, like, little islands in the American sea. And one thing that I've known to be true, and that many other Native people have always known to be true, is that we are as much a part of the country as the country has been shaped by us, too. And as such, we've been a part of all the biggest moments and migrations in American history. We joined the armed forces in World War I in great numbers and again in World War II. After World War II, like a lot of populations, we moved from rural areas to urban areas. But the fact is (laughter) we've been living Indian and American lives for decades previous.
SIMON: I've got to get you to talk about your background - your family background. It's fascinating.
TREUER: Well, it wasn't fascinating to me when I was a kid (laughter). I couldn't wait to leave it all behind when I was a disaffected and morose teenager. And as soon as I left for college, I couldn't wait to get back. I wanted what I thought of as a normal family. I wanted a kind of a stern, sort of emotionally unavailable father (laughter). I wanted...
SIMON: I saw that show. Yeah, OK.
TREUER: ...I wanted a mother who made me cookies. And what I had instead was this fierce and brilliant American Indian mother, Margaret Seelye Treuer, my mother, who survived lots of neglect and abject poverty in our village on the Leech Lake Reservation in Minnesota and went on to nursing school and from there to law school and became eventually the first American Indian woman judge in the country. My father, on the other hand, wasn't a stern and emotionally distant Scandinavian father like the ones I knew growing up. He was this wildly emotional, intense Jewish Holocaust survivor. And in his life, he suffered so many hardships. He lost his country. He lost his language. He lost his customs. He lost his culture. He lost his family. And yet, he was ever hopeful.
I asked him once shortly before he died - I was asking him about America generally and I asked him, well, how can you stand the things that this country does? And he looked at me like I was an idiot. He said, this country saved my life. I found refuge here from Europe. And without this country, I wouldn't exist. I'd be dead. He said, so I love America. And I love her so much that I spend every day thinking how I can help her be better. And I really thought about that as I started writing this book. I miss him. I miss him a lot.
SIMON: There can't be that many Ojibwe Jewish kids
TREUER: More than you think (laughter).
SIMON: Well, I need to learn that then.
TREUER: A friend of mine in college, who was mixed African-American and Greek and called himself Afro Grecian, he said, I - you know what? But that's what I call myself, but what should I call you? He says, you're half Jewish, you're half Indian. He says, I got it. I know what I'll call you. I said, please, don't because he's a funny guy (laughter). I said, Simone (ph), please, don't say it. He says, I'm going to call you Running Bernstein (ph).
(LAUGHTER)
SIMON: Oh, wait, should I laugh?
TREUER: Oh, yeah - for sure.
SIMON: It's pretty funny, Yeah.
TREUER: He was a funny guy. He was a funny guy.
SIMON: It's pretty funny. Well, that - I mean, and that's very much in line with what you suggest in this book, that Native American identity hasn't been frozen at some kind of historical plateau but that American Indians - a word, by the way, that you use, pointing out that it has gone in and out of fashion - in and out of usage - that American Indians have grown and changed and become more diverse, along with everything else in this country.
TREUER: There's so much diversity in our communities. There always has been. There are hundreds of tribes existent today. There were hundreds and thousands existent in the past. And there are so many diverse ways in which Native communities have managed not just to survive but to thrive into the 21st century. And it's so often overlooked.
SIMON: Your book, obviously, begins by invoking the memories of this great historic crime, yet, by the end, you're excited for the future.
TREUER: I am. Maybe I'm a bit like my father, who believes that part of my job here is to make America better. And part of me is much like my mother, who believes that my job is to make Native America better. I really believe that the manner of telling shapes the tale, that the narratives we use shape the stories we understand, that words shape the world. And if we continue to only see the Native American story as a necessarily diminishing line, if that's the story we tell, then that's the future we will have.
Wounded Knee was an awful loss for the people who were there at the massacre in 1890. We could focus on that. We could look just at that. But we should also remember that more people survived the massacre than died. And they went on afterwards to make life for themselves. They're why we are here. And I want to remember them. We need to remember them alongside those that we lost. Otherwise, we won't have any future at all.
SIMON: David Treuer in Los Angeles - his book, "The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America From 1890 To The Present" - thanks so much for being with us.
TREUER: Thank you so very much.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Washington, D.C., is known for gossip and leaks. But when it comes to the special counsel's investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, Robert Mueller's office has been tight-lipped. But last night, they issued a rare statement saying that a BuzzFeed news story alleging that Trump told his former lawyer to lie to Congress is not accurate. NPR's justice reporter Ryan Lucas is here to try and walk us through it. Ryan, thanks so much for being with us.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
SIMON: Let's go through this, once again, emphasizing, special counsel says the story is not accurate. What about it caused such commotion?
LUCAS: Well, BuzzFeed cites two anonymous law enforcement officials who they say have firsthand knowledge of these matters. And what the story alleges is that Michael Cohen told the special counsel that Trump personally instructed Cohen to lie to lawmakers about efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow and say that it ended months earlier than it actually did. The point of the lie, BuzzFeed says, was to hide Trump's involvement in this. Remember, Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about this Trump Tower project. He told lawmakers that it ended in January, when, in fact, these talks ran until the summer of 2016 - so deep into the presidential campaign. The other notable aspect of this story is that BuzzFeed says investigators have other evidence, such as Trump Organization emails, text messages, other witnesses, to corroborate it, which is a very important point.
SIMON: Special counsel's office says the story is not accurate.
LUCAS: That's right. The spokesman for the special counsel's office, Peter Carr, took the exceedingly rare step last night of issuing a statement. And the statement reads in full, (reading) 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.
That's it. That's the full statement - 28 words that essentially denies the BuzzFeed report. As you said earlier, it really is rare for Mueller's office to issue a statement of any sort. Mueller's office has spoken through indictments, court filings, in court itself, but we do not hear them come out in issued statements like this.
SIMON: BuzzFeed says they still stand by their story.
LUCAS: That's right. The editor-in-chief, Ben Smith, told NPR's All Things Considered last night that the publication stands behind its reporters and the story as published.
SIMON: And the White House has had a response?
LUCAS: Well, the president's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani - yesterday, he weighed in. He denied the report, called it categorically false. And then late last night after the special counsel statement came out, the president himself tweeted about it. He took a jab at BuzzFeed - not his favorite news organization to begin with. And he said a very sad day for journalism but a great day for our country.
SIMON: The story generated an - got an awful lot of attention yesterday.
LUCAS: Oh, yeah.
SIMON: There were...
LUCAS: Oh, yeah.
SIMON: ...There were these endless panel discussions, always predicated on if the story is true. If the story is true. Now that the special counsel says it's not accurate, where does that leave things?
LUCAS: Well, it's been interesting to watch Capitol Hill in particular on this. There was, as you noted, an enormous response on TV yesterday, but there was from Democrats, as well. Republicans, on the other hand, were largely silent about this. But the reason that this created so much interest is pretty simple. The central assertion of the story is that Trump ordered Cohen to lie to congressional investigators. That would amount to getting a witness to provide false testimony. And that is a crime. Democrats jumped all over this. The top Democrats on the House Judiciary and House Intelligence committees, Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff, both noted that the allegations in BuzzFeed's report would amount to a federal crime. They vowed to get to the bottom of it. Now that Democrats have control of the House, that actually has some heft behind it.
Some Democrats went even further. They began tossing around the idea of impeachment. That's a reflection of the stakes of all of this. I will add I have not seen any comments at this point this morning from Democrats since Mueller's office issued its statement disputing the report.
SIMON: And Michael Cohen will get a chance to go on the record under oath about this and much else next month, won't he?
LUCAS: That's right. Cohen is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee on February 7. This will be a public hearing. There was always going to be a lot of interest in this. It's going to be off the charts now. Lawmakers may try to get clarity on this story - ask him whether Trump instructed him to lie to Congress. But there's a catch. The chairman of the committee, Elijah Cummings, says he doesn't want to interfere with Mueller's investigation. Cohen has previously refused to answer questions related to the Russia investigation in public. So we may not get all the answers that we're looking for.
SIMON: Thanks very much, Ryan Lucas.
LUCAS: My pleasure.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
More than half of the federal workers affected by the government shutdown are considered essential. That means they have to go to work regardless. That's true at the nation's federal prisons and for correctional officers where understaffing is already a problem, some are required to work double shifts. Justin Tarovisky is a correctional officer at the Federal Correctional Complex in Hazelton, W.Va. It's a high-security prison that includes many violent prisoners.
JUSTIN TAROVISKY: We know what we signed up for. You know, I know every day something could happen at especially the United States Penitentiary. You know, it's not an easy job by any stretch of the standard. There's a lot of daily activities that you have to monitor for, the emergencies, responding to different emergencies, the contraband that you try to retrieve, whether it's drugs, knives, weapons, whatever have you. In this facility, there has been a lot of that this year. There's been three - you know, last year, there was three homicides, and there was a lot of violence...
SIMON: Including the crime boss Whitey Bulger.
TAROVISKY: Yes. It's not an easy place to work. I've been here for almost, you know, 10 years. I've never seen morale this low at FCC Hazleton. You know, are we going to come in here and do our job? Absolutely. I mean, we've got some of the best officers that respond to emergencies in the country. I can guarantee you that. I would take these guys into any situation. But is it right to be adding all these additives into the fire - understaffed, augmentation, thrown in now a government shutdown where you've got to come to work and, oh, you're going to get paid, but we don't know when? I mean, that's not right. It's just adding to that fire, throwing the fuel on it.
SIMON: You and another prison guard, Grayson Sharp, have sued the government for failing to pay wages.
TAROVISKY: Yeah. Originally, back on the 22, I worked nine hours of overtime. With that nine hours of overtime, I did not get paid on the 22 because that was the day the shutdown started. So that's not to mention not only myself but countless officers that they've gone through that. And myself, personally, I've been mandated multiple times during the shutdown. That means when I come into work and I work my eight hours, I'm told I can't leave because we're understaffed and you have to now stay here for 16. You know, does that affect you mentally? Oh, absolutely. You know, I should be paid for what I work, especially when I'm being told I can't leave the institution.
SIMON: So let me get this straight. You not only work your eight-hour shift, but you are - more than once you're told you have to work a double shift.
TAROVISKY: Absolutely. It happens every day here at Hazelton - every day. And it's because of the short-staffing, some of the call offs and the recent strain of the shutdown, the hardships. And I keep bringing up morale. I mean, you know, I want to go home.
SIMON: Justin Tarovisky is a correctional officer at the Federal Correctional Complex in Hazelton, W.Va. Thanks so much for being with us.
TAROVISKY: Thank you.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
A former Chicago police officer was sentenced to nearly seven years in prison for the 2014 fatal shooting of a black teenager. It's an end to a case that ignited protests over police shootings, prompted overhauls in their policy and changed Chicago's political landscape. NPR's Cheryl Corley reports.
CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: The sentence for Jason Van Dyke came just a day after another judge cleared three other officers accused of trying to cover up for him in this controversial case. Van Dyke faced the threat of a long prison term. Three months ago, a jury found him guilty of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery for shooting Laquan McDonald 16 times.
After a day-long hearing yesterday, a judge sentenced Van Dyke to 81 months in prison.
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DAN HERBERT: And he truly felt great.
CORLEY: Dan Herbert is Van Dyke's attorney.
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HERBERT: You know, he's certainly not happy about going to jail. He's certainly not happy about missing his family, but he's happy about the prospect of life ahead of him.
CORLEY: It was not a decision that activists and McDonald's family had hoped for. Marvin Hunter is McDonald's great-uncle.
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MARVIN HUNTER: This sentence reduced Laquan McDonald's life to a second-class citizen. And it suggests to us that there are no laws on the books for a black man that a white man is bound to honor.
CORLEY: The crux of this case was a dashcam video. It contradicted police reports that said McDonald had attacked police and instead showed him walking away, knife in hand, from officers who were following him. An ensuing firestorm prompted the dismissal of the city's police superintendent and a federal investigation.
William Calloway, an activist who took legal steps to force the release of the video, had wanted Van Dyke to serve a much longer sentence.
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WILLIAM CALLOWAY: Eighty-one months in the Illinois Department of Corrections. That's a slap in the face to us and a slap on the wrist to him.
CORLEY: At the hearing, witnesses offered two portraits of Jason Van Dyke. Edward Nance, almost weeping, recounted alleged brutal treatment at the hands of Van Dyke during a traffic stop.
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EDWARD NANCE: Well, I couldn't roll my shoulders. And I couldn't - I could do nothing.
JOSEPH MCMAHON: Did you tell the defendant that you were...
NANCE: Yes.
MCMAHON: ...In pain and he was hurting you?
NANCE: Yes.
MCMAHON: Did he respond?
NANCE: He said, shut up and lay down.
CORLEY: Nance was awarded $350,000 in a federal lawsuit. Van Dyke's wife called her husband a gentle giant. His brother-in-law, who is black, said Van Dyke is not a racist.
Prosecutor Joseph McMahon had asked for an 18- to 20-year sentence. He said the shorter term holds Van Dyke accountable while recognizing his service as a police officer.
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MCMAHON: That was our goal. It was not revenge, and not punishment for the misconduct of other abuse at the hands of other police officers, either in this city or other cities across the country.
CORLEY: Although satisfied with the sentence, McMahon added, the case that had roiled Chicago for so many years was a tragedy on many levels. Cheryl Corley, NPR News, Chicago.
(SOUNDBITE OF FLORATONE'S "THE PASSENGER")
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Two democracies who share so much are in political turmoil at the same time this weekend - the U.S., in the midst of the longest government shutdown in its history, and the United Kingdom, stuck between a referendum in which people voted to leave the European Union and the reality of having no plan to do that with the deadline just two months away.
But what about the role of a third country that may benefit from the chaos? Russia has been accused of meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections and the 2016 Brexit referendum. We're joined now by Jane Mayer, staff writer at The New Yorker, who's been covering the issue. Thanks so much for being with us.
JANE MAYER: Great to be with you.
SIMON: We've certainly tried to make our familiars - our listeners familiar with the allegations about Internet trolls and misinformation and Russian disinformation in the U.S. elections. What about Russia's role in the 2016 vote - in the Brexit vote?
MAYER: So it's interesting. It's much the same. There are parallel investigations going on in the United Kingdom to the one that we've got with the Mueller investigation here in the U.S. And they're looking at many of the same problems, many of the same tactics. And both are trying to follow the money that they think maybe came, in part, from Russia. And so it's interesting that there are even some overlapping characters in both countries.
SIMON: Well, that's what I - like Cambridge Analytica, for example.
MAYER: Cambridge Analytica, which is a big data company that worked for the Trump campaign in the end - and it was owned principally by one of Trump's largest backers, Robert Mercer - was also involved in helping the early stages of the Brexit campaign in England.
And the man who spanned both countries and pushed for both, really, was Steve Bannon, the former adviser to Trump and a great, you know, force for nationalist kind of right-wing politics in both the U.K. and the U.S. And he was bopping back-and-forth...
SIMON: Yeah.
MAYER: ...Between the U.S. and the U.K., pushing for Brexit and the "leave" campaign and pushing for Trump's rise in the U.S. starting in 2015.
SIMON: Based on your reporting, do you see any indications that Russian involvement in Brexit, and then the U.S. presidential election, or at least their alleged involvement and their interests, are not two separate efforts but part of the same effort?
MAYER: Well, it - you know, there are tons of questions. I've got more questions than answers at this point.
But I've been following what the authorities say. There are - the national security, law enforcement authorities and academic authorities are looking at the possibility - it seems there was actually a lot of Russian money offered to Arron Banks, who was one of the major political figures leading the Brexit campaign. The Russian money was offered to him in the form of business opportunities and gold mines and diamond mines by the Russian ambassador to England.
So there seems to be financial incentives that were dangled. There are bots and trolls and posts that are coming from the same Russian Internet agency in St. Petersburg. So in both countries, we see pushing Brexit and pushing Trump at the same time by the same trolls and bots.
SIMON: Jane Mayer is a staff writer at The New Yorker who is reporting on this important issue. I'm so glad you could join us. Thanks very much for being with us.
MAYER: Great to be with you.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Down now to downtown Washington, D.C., where thousands of women have gathered for the third annual Women's March. It's a protest movement that began in 2017 - still symbolizes many of the same ideas - women's rights, including reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights and more. But those messages may have been somewhat diluted by controversy about the leadership. NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben is at the march, where speakers have taken the stage. Danielle, thanks for being with us.
DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, BYLINE: Of course. Thank you, Scott.
SIMON: What's going on all around you? Can you tell us?
KURTZLEBEN: Right. So I don't know if you can hear behind me here, but, yeah, the speakers have taken the stage. Right now is the rally portion of the day. There's already been sort of a gathering this - in the middle of the morning. And after that was the march. The march went past Trump International Hotel because the march this year is not on the mall. It is in Freedom Plaza, which is situated just between the Trump Hotel and the White House. So it's kind of a fitting setting for this. And I will add - you said thousands of people. I wish I could tell you how many are here. But it is pretty packed. I mean, it's enough that cell service is hard to get. It's enough that a lot of people can't see the stage, can't get close enough. But then again, for a lot of marchers, this is about unity. It's about hanging out together. It's about energy. It's not necessarily about even being able to hear everything.
SIMON: Well, let me ask about the controversy because there have been...
KURTZLEBEN: Sure.
SIMON: ...There have been accusations that certain members of the leadership are part of anti-Semitic movements, including support for a Nation of Islam minister, Louis Farrakhan. What can you tell us about that?
KURTZLEBEN: Exactly, yeah. So this really hit - became a high-profile issue lately with one of those four women in charge of the Women's March. Her name is Tamika Mallory. She's sort of borne the brunt of the criticism because she has praised Louis Farrakhan in the past. And Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, of course, have used anti-Semitic rhetoric. It's considered a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. And so that has upset some Women's March supporters and has kept some people home from the march. Now, it really does seem to be looming over the proceedings here and - including getting into some of the speeches. We have a clip here from Reverend Jacqueline Lewis. She's a minister at Middle Collegiate Church in New York City. She didn't directly reference the controversy in her speech. But she seemed to be getting at it. Here she is.
JACQUELINE LEWIS: Our common enemy is white supremacy.
(CHEERING)
LEWIS: Our common enemy is transphobia.
(CHEERING)
LEWIS: Our common enemy is sexism.
(CHEERING)
LEWIS: And our common enemy is greed.
(CHEERING)
LEWIS: Movements are messy. But we're going to have to move together.
KURTZLEBEN: And that's really - I've talked to a lot of people here. And that's sort of the sentiment among the people who have heard of this controversy. They really seem to echo Lewis - that this is a diverse group of women and that they really want to stick together and have unity.
SIMON: We should note, unlike past years, I don't see a lot of big-name political people - not the head of the Democratic Party, not any of the Democrats who are running for president, senators.
KURTZLEBEN: Right, yeah. At least here at the D.C. march, the political presence is light. The only politician that I saw on the speakers list was representative Lucy McBath. She's from Georgia. And yeah, the DNC disappeared from the list of supporters on the Women's March's website recently. That said, some politicians are in other cities. Kirsten Gillibrand, for example, is in Des Moines today. And Iowa is a great state to be if you're running for president.
SIMON: Yes. I believe they have a caucus or something there, right, Danielle?
KURTZLEBEN: I've heard of that. Yeah.
SIMON: Yeah.
KURTZLEBEN: I'll get back to you.
SIMON: All right. Thanks very much. Danielle Kurtzleben with the Women's March. Thanks very much.
KURTZLEBEN: Thanks, Scott.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Time now for sports.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SIMON: We are so close to the Super Bowl now that we can smell the nachos. The NFL's conference championship games are tomorrow. We're joined now by NPR sports correspondent Tom Goldman. Tom, thanks so much for being with us.
TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: Not eating nachos this early but hello, Scott.
SIMON: Let's start with the early game - Rams-Saints. They met earlier this season. The Saints handed the Rams their first loss of the season. It was a high-scoring game - 45-35. But I gather tomorrow's match, as so often happens in the playoffs, comes down to defense.
GOLDMAN: Yes, it may. And I'm going to throw out a couple of names of defensive players who could have significant impact. May and could, Scott. I'm feeling bold today.
SIMON: Yeah.
GOLDMAN: Aqib Talib - a veteran defensive back for the Rams who was missing from that earlier game you talked about, and the Saints had a field day throwing and catching the ball in his half since he's back for this game. And then Sheldon Rankins for the Saints - he's an excellent run-stopping defensive lineman. He's out with an injury. The Rams have a great running attack that can only benefit from his absence. So I'm not going to say these situations the Rams win because of him, but they do help LA.
SIMON: Drew Brees, the Saints quarterback, is 40, and he has been so accurate this year. Tom, he could split an apple in two off of your head with the point of his football if he wanted to.
GOLDMAN: (Laughter) You know, that's about the only thing he didn't do this season. He set an NFL record, completing nearly 75 percent of his passes. Now, The Wall Street Journal studied all of his incomplete passes, and there weren't many. And it found...
SIMON: Two.
GOLDMAN: Yeah, exactly. And they found most were not his fault, meaning receivers dropped them or caught them and then defenders jarred the ball loose. Only about 9 percent of Brees' total passes were bad throws. So if the Rams want to beat New Orleans, put an apple on someone's head. No, I'm sorry. They can't rely on Brees beating himself.
SIMON: And then, of course, there's Tom Brady. I'm not going to call him old. He's 41. He's a vet. Kansas City quarterback, a great one, is young - Patrick Mahomes. And last time they met, the Pats stole the game in the final seconds. You think tomorrow's game going to be as close?
GOLDMAN: Absolutely, unless it's not. Can you tell I'm hedging my bets this time, Scott?
SIMON: Time will tell. Time will tell, yeah.
GOLDMAN: Right, right. But both quarterbacks can create offense so well, so whoever falls behind, there's a good chance of catching up. Mahomes is great at eluding pass rushers. He does amazing things when he's forced to run for his life. Brady needs solid protection to do his thing because he's not as mobile, and he'll need that protection against a very good Kansas City pass rush. Scott, Kansas City is a slight favorite, and I think they win this one.
SIMON: All right, a prediction. I - news I have to ask you about this week around the NFL actually might be more important long term. We've actually got a film clip from the film "Concussion."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "CONCUSSION")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As actor) If just 10 percent of the mothers in America decide that football is too dangerous for their sons to play, that is it. It is the end of football. Kids, colleges and eventually, it's just a matter of time, the professional game.
SIMON: May not be the mothers, though, right, Tom?
GOLDMAN: That's right. Turns out, in this age of concussion awareness, it may be insurance companies that decide the fate of football. This week, a report by ESPN's "Outside The Lines," a comprehensive report, said insurance companies are getting out of the business of insuring football because they're afraid, you know, they're going to have to pay out billions in legal and medical costs. Already some programs at community colleges and city rec departments have been eliminated because of the lack of insurance or rising insurance costs. The head of Pop Warner's youth football program is quoted as saying "people say football will never go away, but if we can't get insurance, it will." Scott, it's a fascinating read and a scary scenario for those who love the game, which is still this country's most popular sport. But the question is, for how long?
SIMON: And of course - but for those who love the players, it's also important to read.
GOLDMAN: Absolutely.
SIMON: NPR sports correspondent Tom Goldman. Tom, thanks so much for being with us.
GOLDMAN: You're welcome.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOE.'S "SILVER SUN")
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
France's president, Emmanuel Macron, promised to revolutionize his country when he was elected two years ago. He had plans to overhaul the economy, and they seemed on track until November when he was stopped short by a massive working-class uprising now known as the yellow vest movement. Two years after taking office now, many analysts say that President Macron is finished. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley looks at the French president's precipitous decline.
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PRESIDENT EMMANUEL MACRON: (Speaking French).
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: President Macron's election in May 2017 was like a revolution. At 39, he became France's youngest leader since Napoleon. A few weeks later, his new party won a huge majority in Parliament, sweeping away established politicians. Macron seemed unstoppable. Yet today, his presidency is paralyzed by a grassroots movement that no one saw coming. Political analyst Christophe Barbier says Macron made several key mistakes.
CHRISTOPHE BARBIER: His government is very weak. He chose two years ago weak ministers - forgive me but very big brains and very little guts, very clever but disconnected with the real France. And all these ministers thought that to know their stuff was enough. No, it is not enough.
BEARDSLEY: Barbier says if you want to make deep change in France, you need a deep connection to the people. Macron, who had never previously run for office, had difficulty interacting with ordinary voters.
(CROSSTALK)
BEARDSLEY: His cringe-worthy gaffes have gone viral on the Internet. He's called protesters lazy, and he told a young guy who admired his suit that the only way to get one himself is to go out and work for it. A comment that particularly stuck in people's craw was when Macron contrasted people who are successful to those who are nothing.
Yellow vest protesters at a roadside camp in Normandy say they are disgusted by Macron. Demonstrator Francois Boulot admits that the current crisis has been building for a while, but he says it's no accident it boiled over on the man he calls the president of the rich.
FRANCOIS BOULOT: (Through interpreter) For 40 years, our presidents have been favoring the banks, the rich and the big companies. Macron pushed these policies further. And on top of that, he has such arrogant disdain for the people. His insults have wounded us, and that's what set this movement off.
BEARDSLEY: Macron's concessions to scrap the fuel tax and raise the minimum wage have not ended the weekly protests and violence. The yellow vesters say they won't stop until Macron resigns. Christophe Barbier.
BARBIER: French people think that the duty of the people is to cut off the head of a king. Now the king's name is Macron. Fifty years ago, the king's name was de Gaulle, and French people cut off the head of de Gaulle in 1969.
BEARDSLEY: President Charles de Gaulle resigned after losing a national referendum, but Macron is hoping to diffuse and even harness people's anger in hundreds of public debates that he launched this week. Marc Lazar is a professor at Sciences Po university.
MARC LAZAR: It's going to be difficult because the yellow vests don't listen to him. It's finished. But he will have to speak to this part of the French people who have some empathy for the yellow vest but condemn and are against the violence. That's a big challenge for him.
BEARDSLEY: Political analyst Barbier believes Macron has realized his errors, and he doesn't think it's over for the young president, though he says Macron will not be able to transform France the way he wanted to.
BARBIER: This country is an old country. She does not want to move too quick. The young Emmanuel Macron frightened people with his speed.
BEARDSLEY: Macron will need a new team and a new way of speaking to the French people, Barbier says. And he'll have to slow way, way down. Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Paris.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
In the Mexican state of Hidalgo last night, a ruptured gasoline pipeline exploded in a massive fireball. At least 66 people were killed. There are dozens of burn victims, many being sent to hospitals in Mexico City, which is about 80 miles away. The explosion occurred at one of the many points where people have tapped into the pipeline to siphon off fuel. The country is in the middle of a gas shortage that's now into its third week, and the shortage was caused in part by the government's attempt to stop the siphoning by shutting down the pipeline.
NPR's Carrie Kahn has been covering this story. Carrie, thanks for being with us.
CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: Sure.
SIMON: What do we know about last night's explosion?
KAHN: Oh, Scott, it's just - it's horrific. There were so many people around that - the part where the pipeline had been tapped into. Just - there were whole families and children. And so we've seen all these videos have been circulating. I think that's why there are so many videos. And you see this sort of happy atmosphere, the beginning because it was light. It was about 5 o'clock at light - yesterday afternoon when the pipeline was ruptured. And you see this geyser of gas coming out of the pipeline and people all around carrying these huge jugs and buckets just filling up from there. And then later, you see these videos of when it exploded and it's just a hurl of this fiery ball. It's just incredible what we've seen. And the bodies - the burned bodies, shoes, everything - all those huge gas containers. It's just a horrific sight.
SIMON: And I gather there have been tragedies like this occurring before.
KAHN: Yes, this is a terrible problem that the country is facing - this gas theft and tapping into the pipelines. There have been - I think in 2010, a couple dozen people were killed at a big explosion. It's such a danger. Can you imagine - these are huge pipelines that are bringing gas at high pressure - hundreds of miles from the Gulf of Mexico transversing the country and people are tapping into it. It's just a very volatile situation. And there have been accidents, but this one is particularly bad.
SIMON: What's the siphoning about, Carrie?
KAHN: Well, this is what's been going on. Theft from the oil companies - state-run oil company, Pemex, has been going on for a long time. But in recent years, it's just become so blatant and has just - I hate to use the word but exploded in recent years to a loss of $3 billion a year in gas that's siphoned out of the oil company. So we're not talking about what we've seen last night of, you know, people that - from small towns cutting into it and coming with buckets. This is an organized crime event that is happening throughout Mexico. And so the new president decided he's going to crack down on it.
SIMON: And, I mean, how does he do that? How does he, forgive me, build a wall around pipelines? I mean, how do you do that?
KAHN: Well, it's crazy because what we've been experiencing has been a very difficult time for a lot of people in a lot of states in Mexico. What he did was he cut off the gas to six major pipelines throughout the country and began trucking the gas in a fleet of trucks around the country. But there's no way there were enough trucks. It was a very inefficient and expensive way to get gas to gas stations. And we've been dealing with a gas shortage I haven't seen since the '70s in the United States with lines hours long. And so what we saw I think yesterday was the frustration of people who still can't get gas and are still tapping into the pipelines. And it's a very big problem that - it's going to be difficult for him to combat.
SIMON: We've got a few more seconds. So are people tapping in there because they can't afford to pay for gas?
KAHN: No, it's a criminal organization. Yeah, they get gas at half the price on the black market, but it is a criminal organization. People are making billions of dollars from stealing this gas. And it's been so bold that even the security head of the Pemex, the oil company, is under investigation for collaborating collusion. Local...
SIMON: Carrie Kahn, thanks very much.
KAHN: You're welcome.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Earlier this week, Iran attempted to launch a rocket carrying a satellite into space. The Trump administration says their goal is really to develop long-range weapons. NPR's Geoff Brumfiel looks into what Iran is up to.
GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: The rocket launched before dawn.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Foreign language spoken).
BRUMFIEL: That was video of the liftoff posted to an Iranian government Instagram feed. Iran later said it failed. The satellite it was carrying, built by an Iranian university and designed to monitor things like trees and farmland, was lost. But that did not stop President Trump from making a pointed accusation about the launch.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The Iranian regime tested a space launch vehicle, which failed, that will provide Iran with critical information - if it didn't fail - that they could use to pursue intercontinental ballistic missile capability.
BRUMFIEL: Trump says the rocket launch was really about building a better missile, one that could hit the United States. So Iran claims its rockets are for scientific research. The Trump administration says it's all a cover for weapons. Is there any way to tell who's right?
Markus Schiller is the founder of ST Analytics, an independent consultancy in Germany. He's spent a lot of time looking at Iran's space program, and he says there are links to the military. For example, the engines Iran uses on its space rockets have a military origin.
MARKUS SCHILLER: It's actually a missile engine.
BRUMFIEL: But Schiller says it's not a very good missile engine. It's an old design from the Soviet Union, picked up by the North Koreans and later transferred to Iran. It's clunky and inefficient. To get even a small payload into space requires the rocket to be huge. It takes weeks to set up.
Also, Schiller says, based on photos, Iran's space rocket can't work as a missile. The second stage is just too small. To him, the launch looks nonthreatening.
SCHILLER: Iran always claims that they don't want to build an ICBM, but they want to pursue a space program. And that's what I'm seeing right now.
BRUMFIEL: But a peaceful space program could still be a step towards developing long-range missiles, right? Well, not necessarily.
MICHAEL ELLEMAN: If you look at the history of missile development worldwide, space launch activity has never been decisive.
BRUMFIEL: Michael Elleman is a physicist at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. In fact, he says, in every case he can think of, it's gone the other way around. Nations don't turn their rockets into missiles; they turn old missiles into rockets. So the technologies are linked, but it's not a straight line. And Elleman questions whether the space program should be the focus.
ELLEMAN: I think we're spending a lot of political capital complaining about something that is not a direct threat or risk to the United States or the international community.
BRUMFIEL: Instead, he says the U.S. should keep the emphasis on much-shorter-range Iranian missiles. Those missiles are used by proxy groups, like rebels in Yemen, to threaten U.S. allies in the region. Geoff Brumfiel, NPR News, Washington.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
Black lung, an epidemic of the coal miners' disease, is killing thousands of miners across Appalachia. NPR and the PBS program "Frontline" have been working together over the past year and uncovered that the U.S. government repeatedly failed to prevent the outbreak despite multiple opportunities to act. Black lung is caused by breathing in toxic silica dust found in the rock coal miners cut through to get coal. But this isn't the first time silica dust has ravaged a community. NPR's Adelina Lancianese has the story of what's called the Hawks Nest Tunnel disaster, which killed hundreds of workers nearly a century ago.
ADELINA LANCIANESE, BYLINE: The Hawks Nest Tunnel is still considered an engineering marvel today. Water rushes through the tunnel in Gauley Bridge, W.V. Its gate is visible from the lush Hawks Nest State Park on the mountain above.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
CHARLEY JONES: My name is Charley Jones. I live in Gamoca.
LANCIANESE: But almost 90 years ago, this place looked much different. This is tape from a 1930s newsreel about the project.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JONES: I lost three sons, from working in the tunnel, of silicosis. One is 18, one 23 and one 21.
LANCIANESE: It was the Great Depression. Americans were desperate for work. The tunnel project attracted thousands to West Virginia. And most of them were black men fleeing the South.
MATTHEW WATTS: And it's hard for me to even imagine what these men felt like when they got here...
LANCIANESE: That's Reverend Matthew Watts.
WATTS: ...And realized what they had gotten themselves into.
LANCIANESE: He's a minister and an amateur historian in Charleston, W.V.
WATTS: The idea that I can go to a place and work. My kids can possibly go to school. I can have a right to vote. And I'm probably - have a very low probability of being hanged - right? - that was attractive. That was paradise. And when they got here, they found that, in this case, they had ended up in a hellhole, literally.
LANCIANESE: A corporation called Union Carbide had an audacious plan for the workers. Construct a 3-mile-long tunnel through a mountain to divert river water and do it in just 18 months. Thousands of workers drilled holes and then stacked dynamite in them to blast through pure quartz, a type of rock that kicks up silica dust. Silica dust is especially toxic. Once inhaled, it slices at the lung like shards of glass, suffocating workers from the inside out. They came out caked in it, says Catherine Venable Moore, a writer who's documented the tragedy.
CATHERINE VENABLE MOORE: There was a nickname at the time for Gauley Bridge - the town of the living dead - because there were so many sick workers and, I think, also because they had this kind of ghostly presence when they were coming out of the tunnel being covered in this white silica dust.
LANCIANESE: Workers were pulling shifts of 10 to 15 hours. And they didn't understand just how quickly the dust could kill them. Here's another worker on that 1930s newsreel.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MINER: I worked in Hawks Nest Tunnel for four months. And each and every day that I work in that tunnel, I had to carry off 10 to 14 men - was overcome by the dust.
MARTIN CHERNIACK: The local doctors really were not quite clear, at first, what they were seeing. We had young, healthy people breaking down and developing acute and severe respiratory disease in a very short period of time. And there really isn't a lot of precedence for that.
LANCIANESE: Dr. Martin Cherniack of the University of Connecticut wrote a book about the tunnel. He estimates more than 760 workers died of silicosis in just 18 months' time.
CHERNIACK: So what would happen is they would become sick, profoundly short of breath, have severe weight loss, basically be unable to move and function and exercise themselves.
LANCIANESE: The African-American men were treated the worst. According to later congressional testimony, they were denied 30-minute breaks in the clean air. They were paid less. And if they were too sick to work, their supervisors would force them from their beds at gunpoint. They died in droves. And they were quickly replaced - Matthew Watts.
WATTS: There was a mentality, you know, that the contractors that were supervising the Hawks Nest Tunnel had. Kill a mule. Buy another one. Kill a man. Hire another one.
LANCIANESE: When one of those men was Dewey Flack. He was African-American, 17 or 18 years old. His age is unclear because, like hundreds of other black tunnel workers, only a few traces of Dewey's life and death remain. Records do show that Dewey was working hundreds of miles away from his home in North Carolina. He would never return.
SHEILA FLACK-JONES: My father mentioned when I was young that he did have a brother.
LANCIANESE: This is Dewey Flack's niece Sheila Flack-Jones.
FLACK-JONES: But the brother, he thought, had run away.
LANCIANESE: She didn't know anything about the Hawks Nest Tunnel or her Uncle Dewey's fate until NPR found her through genealogical records.
FLACK-JONES: I'm heartbroken that my family died thinking that he had run away, and they never knew the real truth.
LANCIANESE: Dewey died two weeks after his last shift in the tunnel. His death certificate is mostly blank. But cause of death is listed as pneumonia. Like many other black workers who died at Hawks Nest, no next of kin was identified.
FLACK-JONES: I'm really, really angry. Here it is 100 years later. Do I mourn for my uncle, the one that I never knew? Do I mourn for my family because they thought he had left? Or do I mourn for what he would have become had he lived? These are things and questions that I'll never have an answer for.
LANCIANESE: Union Carbide and its contractor denied any wrongdoing in a congressional hearing. And lawsuits filed against them were settled out of court. Local workers who died were interred in their families' cemeteries. But black migrant workers like Dewey Flack were loaded together on wagons. Records suggest their bodies were eventually buried in unmarked graves in what's now called Whippoorwill Cemetery in Summersville, W.V.
At a recent visit, fallen branches and loose cobblestones cover the ground. Rain pools in a coffin-shaped indentation, caving in from decades in the soft dirt. This grave is one of about 40. They are scattered throughout the property, all identical, each with a single, wooden cross. It's impossible to know which one belongs to Dewey Flack. Adelina Lancianese, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SILICOSIS IS KILLIN' ME")
JOSH WHITE: (Singing) I said, silicosis, you made a mighty bad break of me.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: You can find our full investigation into black lung on npr.org. The "Frontline" documentary "Coal's Deadly Dust" will be broadcast this coming Tuesday. You can see it on your local PBS station.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SILICOSIS IS KILLIN' ME")
WHITE: (Singing) You robbed me of my youth and health. All you brought poor me was misery.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
Colombia officially ended its civil war through peace negotiations a few years ago, but there are signs of increasing instability. Colombian authorities say a car bombing in the capital this week that killed 21 people was carried out by a Marxist guerrilla group known as the ELN. Colombia is also dealing with a surge of refugees fleeing the chaos and economic hardship in neighboring Venezuela. And now some of these refugees are joining the guerrillas. Reporter John Otis has more from Colombia's border with Venezuela.
JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Dozens of Venezuelans have just come across the Arauca River, which forms part of the frontier with Colombia. There are no border guards here, so crossing over on small boats is easy. But once in Colombia, they face new threats. For example, much of the river in this remote region of northern Colombia is controlled by a Marxist guerrilla group known as the ELN. Then there's the FARC. That's the rebel group that laid down its weapons under Colombia's 2016 peace treaty. However, hundreds of dissident FARC members are now rearming and recruiting new members with promises of food, shelter and cash. Homeless and hungry Venezuelan migrants have become prime recruiting targets for both rebel groups, so says Xiomara Sanchez, a government human rights worker in the Colombian border town of Arauca.
XIOMARA SANCHEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: She says the guerrillas take advantage of their neediness.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: Another human rights worker tells me that the rebels promise up to 1 million Colombian pesos per month. That's more than $300 - a small fortune for new arrivals from Venezuela, where the currency has collapsed.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: She adds that the guerrillas pressure Venezuelans as young as 15 to join their ranks. This official has a bodyguard because she's received death threats stemming from her investigations. She asked that NPR not reveal her name. It's unclear how many Venezuelans have joined the guerrillas.
ARNULFO TRASLAVINA: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: But Col. Arnulfo Traslavina, the army commander in Arauca, puts the number at several dozen. He points out that eight Venezuelans were killed when the army attacked a guerrilla camp last June and that four more were captured this month during a botched kidnapping.
TRASLAVINA: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: He says, "This is clear proof that they are recruiting Venezuelans." To dissuade migrants from falling into the hands of rebels, criminal gangs or prostitution rings, the Colombian government and international agencies have launched food, education and health care programs.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: At this medical tent set up on a bridge spanning the Arauca River, Colombian nurses provide Venezuelan migrants with vaccinations and family planning information. Social workers, like Lisandro Sarmiento, roam the Arauca slums. In this two-room shack, he speaks with Jessica Marin, an unemployed Venezuelan mother of three. Nearby sits her bored-looking 15-year-old son, who's not enrolled in school and fits the profile of those targeted by rebel recruiters.
LISANDRO SARMIENTO: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: Sarmiento explains the procedures for getting the boy into a Colombian high school. But these outreach efforts can seem like a drop in the bucket amid the flood of refugees. Colombia has received more than 1 million Venezuelans in just the past three years. And unless their living conditions improve, officials fear that more of them will join the guerrillas. For NPR News, I'm John Otis in Arauca, Columbia.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
The biggest gathering of human beings anywhere in the world has kicked off in India. It's the Kumbh Mela, an ancient Hindu pilgrimage to dip in the waters of the Ganges River. Up to 120 million people are expected to do so by March - among them, this past week, NPR's India correspondent Lauren Frayer.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: There's a huge, red sun just peeking out over the horizon. And I'm crushed in with men dressed in orange sarongs. They're draped in garlands of marigolds flowers. Sign of the times - these Hindu monks are also taking selfies of themselves on the way to the Ganges River.
The Kumbh Mela happens every 12 years with dates set according to the stars and planets. This one is a half-Kumbh, six years since the last. But it's expected to be the biggest yet. Organizers say 15 million people showed up on the first day. They include naked, dread-locked, holy men, families with infants and foreign tourists, like Santiago Merodio - on a spiritual journey from his native Spain.
Do you feel anything here?
SANTIAGO MERODIO: I'm an atheist. But because of this, it's like changing my point of view a little bit. So I was coming here to see what I was feeling. Yeah. Yesterday, I got lost, but I didn't find anything. And...
FRAYER: Do you mean that metaphorically, like you're still searching for something?
MERODIO: Yeah. I'm searching. I'm searching for something. I think there must be something there.
(SOUNDBITE OF WAVE CRASHING)
FRAYER: I've made it through these crowds down to the banks of the Ganges River. They have lined the banks with sandbags so that it's easy to step down into the waters. But it's chilly. And people are dunking in here. You can see that they're absolutely shivering - you know, dunking and then running out. There's a little boy next to me who's just blue lips and shaking.
NIRAJ SHUKLA: The water's, you know, very cold all day. So but once you have a bath, it's sort of a miracle, you know?
FRAYER: Engineer-turned-pilgrim Niraj Shukla says the waters wash away sin.
SHUKLA: You have work. You have tensions. You seem to have commit some wrongdoings. You know this thing deep down inside. Now you come over here. You take a dip. You feel that, you know, I'm in the company of some holy people, some saints. And then you, you know, step into this holy water. And you feel inside that you have - you know, you've cleansed yourself. And now I'm going back to my home as a new person, you know?
FRAYER: This holy water is found at the confluence of three rivers, the Ganges, the Yamuna - two of India's biggest rivers - and the Saraswati, a river some believe flows underground here. Another pilgrim, Gitanjali Verma, says she was awestruck by this flow of humanity down to the riverside.
Is there a message to the rest of the world that we can take from this?
GITANJALI VERMA: What should I say? We can show the unity, you know?
FRAYER: Peacefully and...
VERMA: Yes, peacefully. Truth is there. Devotion is there and the purity of mind and heart. That's it.
UNIDENTIFIED PILGRIMS: (Chanting in foreign language).
FRAYER: The Kumbh Mela festival lasts through March 4. Lauren Frayer, NPR News, on the banks of the Ganges River in India.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
My next guest is a man of many talents. He sings. He plays the keyboards and guitar. He is a graphic designer. And he makes music that's chill.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FADING")
TORO Y MOI: (Singing) You are something I feel. I can't help but notice you.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: He also embraces change like few others in his art, in his music and even in his name. Born Chazwick Bradley Bundick, he later changed his name to Chaz Bear. But he's best known as Toro Y Moi. Since 2010, he has released seven albums and toured the world. Bear's latest album is called "Outer Peace." And he joins us now from member station KQED.
Welcome.
TORO Y MOI: Hello. Thank you for having me.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So before we dive into your new music - you grew up in South Carolina, right?
TORO Y MOI: I did, yeah.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah. And your mom signed you up to play the piano. And now you make so much of your music using the computer. But does she ever sort of say, hey, I'm the one who started all this?
(LAUGHTER)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I made you do it.
TORO Y MOI: Yeah. I'm sure she'd like to take that credit.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: (Laughter).
TORO Y MOI: But I'm glad she did pretty much force me to take piano lessons. At the time, I didn't really want to. I wasn't a big fan of it at 7 years old. But by the time I got to 12, I realized I did like music. Then I told my mom I wanted to quit piano and pick up guitar.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And she was cool with that.
TORO Y MOI: Yeah. She was happy I was doing music, at least.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FREELANCE")
TORO Y MOI: (Singing) Oh, walk on the water for me.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: What was your big break?
TORO Y MOI: My big break - it wasn't, like, given to me. I had to go get it. And it was, like, when I posted my music on the Internet, I, like, literally was, like, emailing it to blogs and emailing it to Pitchfork. And this was back in, like, 2009.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: You were hustling.
TORO Y MOI: Yeah. I was just on my hustle. I just graduated college. And I was just like, I need to get this music out there because I really want to play music for a living.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I think Kanye West was one of the first people...
TORO Y MOI: (Laughter).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: ...To pick you up, right?
TORO Y MOI: Yeah. He was seriously one of the first people to blog about me - and still is unreal. Like, I haven't even talked to the guy (laughter). But it's come a long way. It really has.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FREELANCE")
TORO Y MOI: (Singing) Nothing's ever worse than work unnoticed. Freelance now, yeah, I guess you earned it. Life is only wishing we could load it. Level up, you've got to make a bonus.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So with each consecutive album, you have challenged yourself with different genres like hip-hop, R&B and electronic. What was your challenge this time around?
TORO Y MOI: I guess I'm just saying something a little bit more mature. A lot of my music is kind of introspective. And for this record, I didn't want to go in that same direction of writing about love and relationships. But it's time to just grow up. I'm 32 now and just trying to stay afloat, really.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Well, speaking of introspection, let's listen to the track "Who Am I?"
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHO AM I?")
TORO Y MOI: (Singing) Kawasaki, slow it down. This might be my brand new sound. Psychedelic, oh, wow. Add an accent to your sound. Now I don't know who I am. Now I don't know who I am.
The subject matter is more about, like, identity crisis. And I kind of wanted to just make a track that sort of outed my insecurity on being unsure, especially being biracial. That's, like, a thing that's kind of just, like, a theme of my entire life. It's like I'm black and Filipino. It's kind of - it's just a fine line to walk. So especially with being in music, I want to do it tastefully and do it right and sort of take both sides into consideration, like, literally. So it's kind of just trying to find who you are.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Have you landed somewhere with that? I mean, because you have these different identities, do you have a sense of that? I know, like, in your 30s, that's when you really start to explore that, I think.
TORO Y MOI: I felt comfortable but I think, publicly, I wasn't. And so, like, now I am. I kind of feel like I know what my strengths and weaknesses are. And I kind of know how to play into them.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE")
TORO Y MOI: (Singing) Opinions outweigh my doubts or maybe I just pay attention. I said, my opinions outweigh my doubts or maybe I just pay attention.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: What's your biggest strength?
TORO Y MOI: Going with the flow (laughter) - pretty easy at doing that. And then my weakness is probably being nonchalant.
(LAUGHTER)
TORO Y MOI: It's not that I don't care. It's just that I don't have the capacity sometimes.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: To really invest.
TORO Y MOI: To invest, yeah.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: You know, these conversations are supposed to be like therapy sessions. So that's why I'm asking (laughter).
TORO Y MOI: I am all for it.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: (Laughter).
TORO Y MOI: Nothing wrong with a free therapy session.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: (Laughter) I've got no advice to give, sadly. But I do want to talk about something you just mentioned. And it is - the indie music scene continues to be a largely white space. And as a biracial artist working in that community, do you see that changing?
TORO Y MOI: I have noticed it. There are lots of musicians of color that are dabbling in genres outside of, like, hip-hop and R&B. And I think that that's important to sort of go outside of your comfort zone or go outside of what people think you should be doing. And I enjoy the challenge because it's so easy to go with the flow sometimes.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BABY DRIVE IT DOWN")
TORO Y MOI: (Singing) Baby, drive it down for me. Let me know you're gon' do it. Baby, drive it down for me.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I got to ask you one more question before we let you go. Why did you change your name?
TORO Y MOI: I have an amazing wife who is very strong about challenging the norms. And I was like, I'm down, baby, if you are (laughter). She's like, I don't want to take your name. I want to make a name. So...
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Oh, really? So that - so you guys...
TORO Y MOI: Yeah.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: ...Like, made a name together.
TORO Y MOI: We did, yeah.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: What's her name?
TORO Y MOI: Samantha Beardsley - and so we just chopped Beardsley and made it Bear and kind of - yeah, just created our own little world.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Oh, that's actually really beautiful.
TORO Y MOI: (Laughter).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I like your wife. And I like your mom.
TORO Y MOI: Thanks.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: (Laughter) That was Chaz Bear of Toro Y Moi. His latest album is "Outer Peace." Thank you so much.
TORO Y MOI: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BABY DRIVE IT DOWN")
TORO Y MOI: (Singing) Let me know you're gon' do it. Baby, drive it down for me. Let me see you go. Baby, drive it down for me.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
Hackers love to try to breach U.S. computer systems. This now may be easier than ever before. With so many IT and cybersecurity workers furloughed by the shutdown, security professionals say government websites are more vulnerable. NPR's Laura Sydell reports.
LAURA SYDELL, BYLINE: The Trump administration may like to highlight American manufacturing, but try going to manufacturing.gov. The site has become unusable. You can't access any of the details offered about U.S. manufacturing. According to Netcraft, a British security firm, it's one of dozens of government sites that haven't renewed their security certificates. These certificates are a bit like a driver's license - they prove you are who you say you are. Dan Kaminsky, the chief scientist at the American security firm White Ops explains.
DAN KAMINSKY: You need to know you're really talking to your hospital or to something at the Air Force or wherever. And so there are certificates that make it so you know, OK, this is really the government resource that I'm trying to access and not some bad guy.
SYDELL: In some cases, the lack of a security certificate may just make a site unusable. But Kaminsky says the lack of a certificate also makes it easier for a bad actor to redirect you to a fake site.
KAMINSKY: People might get used to ignoring the browser warnings. Oh, well, you know, it's just the shutdown. And then you think, oh, you're really walking into this site. And you're really not.
SYDELL: Kaminsky offers up a worst case kind of scenario. Imagine if the security certificate was down for the Social Security website, and a bad actor sets up a fake one. Someone could go to that site, enter their password and give the hackers access to personal information. The shutdown also means that there are fewer IT staff. For example, according to contingency plans on the White House Office of Management and Budget website, only around 2,000 employees out of more than 3,500 are working at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. That's one of the agencies leading the nation's cyber defenses. Rob Ragan, a partner in the cybersecurity firm Bishop Fox, says there may be a lot of important tasks that aren't getting done, such as updating software with the latest security patches.
ROB RAGAN: You end up getting buried in a really big backlog of issues that you may never dig yourself out of. And at that point, one of those issues may have been an indicator of a compromise or a breach that may go unnoticed for months or years to come.
SYDELL: Security researchers worry that the shutdown is like putting a red blanket in front of a bull. Nations like Russia, China and Iran could see it as a signal to charge ahead. Ragan says think about the amount of information on government websites that's personal and even classified. And as the shutdown drags on, the likelihood of security lapses increases, says Vikram Thakur, a technical director at the security firm Symantec.
VIKRAM THAKUR: That risk is most definitely going to go up exponentially.
SYDELL: Ironically, Thakur says fewer personnel lowers at least one kind of security risk. One of the most popular hacking schemes is email phishing. That's when hackers send an email to an employee with a link that unleashes malware into the system.
THAKUR: If nobody's opening email and nobody's using the work network, the chances of the success rate for attackers who are using email as their primary mode of attack kind of falls all the way through.
SYDELL: NPR reached out to the cyber division at the Department of Homeland Security for comment but didn't hear back. Democratic aides in the House say they, too, are unable to get information right now about which IT workers are on the job. However, when the shutdown ends, they want to see details. In the event of a future shutdown, Democrats might move to keep IT workers on the job in the name of cybersecurity. Laura Sydell, NPR News.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
Have you posted a picture of yourself from 10 years ago, side by side with a picture of you today? It's a thing that's popular on Facebook and Instagram at the moment. And our next guest says that you should think twice before joining in on things like the 10-year challenge. Kate O'Neill explained her opinion on wired.com. She's an author and tech consultant. And she joins us now from New York. Welcome.
KATE O'NEILL: Thank you.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So we should be clear Facebook says it didn't start this meme and that people are using photos already on Facebook. But you're saying it's more about how people should think about the potential for misuse.
O'NEILL: Yeah, exactly. The particular scenario I talked about in my Wired article was the potential that someone could mine that data and use it to train a facial recognition algorithm.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: What makes you really nervous, though, about facial recognition technology in particular?
O'NEILL: Yeah, and I mentioned three types of scenarios. One I described as benign. And that's the scenario where, you know, it could be used to help with recognizing the progression of age in children who have been lost. So the police in New Delhi, India had used facial recognition technology in an experiment for just four days. And they recognized 3,000 kids who were missing. But the more mundane scenario and the more common scenario is advertising.
More than likely, this will become commonplace where displays can have some sort of camera or sensor that can recognize visual characteristics and serve up a more relevant ad, which will be better performing for the business who's advertising, which is potentially good, too, for us as as consumers - that we'll see more relevant messaging. But then as that data kind of blends with everything else that's downstream from that - all the location data, all of our movements and tracking through the world, all of our financial information, everything that's out there about us - that does start to pose, I think, some risky consequences.
And then there was one last scenario that I had talked about, which was the potential that the facial recognition, in particular age progression types of uses of facial recognition, could be used to, say, assess your risk for health characteristics and could say, maybe you're not a good candidate for health insurance.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: It's so hard, though, right? Because I see those memes pop up. And I'm like, oh. This is fun. Look at those pictures. It's so funny. Let me go - I was, in fact, just looking back at my Facebook pictures from 2008 and 2009 because I was like, oh, wow. I'd forgotten that happened. And yet we're having to learn how to protect ourselves more.
O'NEILL: You're right. And it is - and I absolutely want us to have fun. And I want us to connect with each other. And I think that's what the benefit of technology is. So, yeah - let's participate. Let's have fun. Let's communicate, stay connected with our friends and family. But I think one note of caution is we can look out for opportunities when we're being encouraged to tag photos of ourselves. That's one way we can opt out and maybe not always tag every photo with every face. We can not necessarily participate in every game or meme that asks us to provide data about ourselves in structured, specific ways.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I'm assuming that you didn't do the 10-year challenge.
O'NEILL: Well, my 10-year challenge response was the one that - that was the tweet that kind of started the whole thing that said, you know, 10 years ago, I probably would have participated and shared my photos. And now I look at it as an opportunity for harvesting all that data for a facial recognition training process.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Wah-wah-wah.
O'NEILL: Right.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That's Kate O'Neill. She's the author most recently of the book "Tech Humanist." Thank you so much.
O'NEILL: Thank you.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
And it's time to play The Puzzle.
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GARCIA-NAVARRO: Joining us as always is Will Shortz. He's puzzle editor of The New York Times and WEEKEND EDITION's puzzlemaster. Good morning, Will.
WILL SHORTZ, BYLINE: Good morning, Lulu.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So what was last week's challenge?
SHORTZ: Yes. It came from listener James Matthews of Little Rock, Ark. And it was worded very carefully. I said the challenge is to make a nine-letter word meaning left using only a B and one D. Can you do it? And the answer is abandoned. Something that's been abandoned has been left. And that - if you read those letters in order, it's a B and one - O-N-E - D.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: We received more than 1,000 responses. And our winner this week is Jeff Selleck of Alpine, Wyo. Congratulations, and welcome to The Puzzle.
JEFF SELLECK: Thank you. Hi, Will. Hi, Lulu.
SHORTZ: Hi there.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Hi. So how did you solve it?
SELLECK: Well, my girlfriend - wife Tara and I were out splitting wood. And we've done this a few times - the puzzle there. And I read it to myself. And I said to her, this doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense. So I read it...
SHORTZ: (Laughter).
SELLECK: I read it very slowly. And I said, it seems more like a riddle than a puzzle. And she just reflexively said, is it abandoned? And we thought about it and counted it out and realized, oh. It's written right there, so yeah.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: All right. And what do you do for a living, Jeff?
SELLECK: Well, I am a builder. And in the winter, I also teach skiing at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, which is where you found me.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Wow. Take me with you. I know Wyoming has some great ski slopes.
SELLECK: It does. We're in the middle of a quite powerful storm cycle, so skiing's great.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah. That's the only place in the country where, actually, storm cycles are a good thing.
(LAUGHTER)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Are you ready to play The Puzzle?
SELLECK: Sure, I am.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: OK. Take it away, Will.
SHORTZ: All right, Jeff. Every answer today is a compound word or a familiar two-word phrase in which the first part has a long I sound. And the second part has a long E sound. For example, if I said, color akin to chartreuse, you would say, lime green.
SELLECK: OK.
SHORTZ: Number one, a dish that's a la mode comes with what?
SELLECK: Ice cream.
SHORTZ: Ice cream is it - an area that may be marked off with police tape.
SELLECK: Crime scene.
SHORTZ: Crime scene, good - to completely remove, as fingerprints from a surface.
SELLECK: Wipe clean.
SHORTZ: That's it - home plate umpire's call immediately before you're out.
SELLECK: Yes, strike three.
SHORTZ: That's it - area beyond where first and second basemen play.
SELLECK: I'd love to say outfield, but that doesn't quite work.
SHORTZ: What part of the outfield?
SELLECK: (Laughter) Ah.
SHORTZ: It's not the left part.
SELLECK: Jeez.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: What's the opposite of left?
SELLECK: Ah, right field.
SHORTZ: Right field is it, good - to transmit an event over the Internet as it occurs.
SELLECK: Live stream.
SHORTZ: That's it. It has needles for leaves.
SELLECK: Oh, pine tree - we have lots of those here.
SHORTZ: I bet you do - piece of paper that records how long a worker spends on a job.
SELLECK: A time sheet.
SHORTZ: Head of a department that puts out conflagrations.
SELLECK: Oh, a fire...
SHORTZ: Yeah.
SELLECK: ...Chief.
SHORTZ: Say again.
SELLECK: A fire chief.
SHORTZ: Fire chief is it - not a main thoroughfare.
SELLECK: A side street.
SHORTZ: That's it. And here's your last one - Colorado summit that completes the phrase blank or bust.
SELLECK: Pikes Peak.
SHORTZ: Pikes Peak is it. Good job.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Good job. How do you feel?
SELLECK: I feel great.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah, you did great. For playing our puzzle today, you'll get a WEEKEND EDITION lapel pin as well as books and games. You can read all about it at npr.org/puzzle. And what member station do you listen to?
SELLECK: I listen to KUWJ in Jackson, Wyo., and KUWA in Aspen, Wyo.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Jeff Selleck of Alpine, Wyo., thank you for playing The Puzzle. And enjoy the snow.
SELLECK: Thanks, guys. It's been a pleasure.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: All right. Will, what's next week's challenge?
SHORTZ: Yes, it comes from listener Steve Baggish (ph) of Arlington, Mass. Take the name of a classic song that became the signature song of the artist who performed it. It has two words - five letters in the first word, three letters in the second. And these letters can be rearranged to spell two new words. One is a feeling, and the other is an expression of that feeling. What song is it? So again, famous song - it's a signature song of the artist who performed it. Two words - five, three - and the letters can be rearranged to spell two words. One's a feeling, and the other is an expression or what you might do with that feeling. What song is it?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: When you have the answer, go to our website npr.org/puzzle and click on the Submit Your Answer link. Remember - just one entry per person, please. Our deadline for entries is Thursday, January 24 at 3 p.m. Eastern. Include a phone number where we can reach you at about that time. And if you're the winner, we'll give you a call. And you'll get to play on the air with the puzzle editor of The New York Times and WEEKEND EDITION's puzzlemaster, Will Shortz. Thanks so much, Will.
SHORTZ: Thank you, Lulu.
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LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
A sign of some movement or another stalemate as the government shutdown enters its fifth week depends, as always, on who you ask. NPR's White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe breaks down the latest calculations being made here in Washington.
AYESHA RASCOE, BYLINE: President Trump says it's time to make a deal to reopen the federal government.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Both sides in Washington must simply come together, listen to each other, put down their armor, build trust, reach across the aisle and find solutions.
RASCOE: After weeks of a political stalemate, Trump said he would back a three-year extension of the Obama-era DACA program, a program he's tried to end. DACA blocks the deportation of people brought to the country illegally as children. Trump says he will also allow immigrants with temporary protected status - or TPS - to remain in the country for three more years. These extensions will be tied to $5.7 billion in funding for a wall on the southern border.
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TRUMP: This is not a 2,000-mile concrete structure from sea to sea. These are steel barriers in high-priority locations.
RASCOE: In addition, the White House is asking for more money to hire border agents and immigration judges. Trump argues his proposals should be able to get support from Republicans and Democrats.
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TRUMP: That is our plan - border security, DACA, TPS and many other things - straightforward, fair, reasonable and common sense with lots of compromise.
RASCOE: But top Democrats in Congress have already come out against the plan. They say Trump must first agree to end the shutdown before any negotiations over border security can begin. And they contend a wall would be ineffective at stopping people from entering the country illegally. Trump acknowledged his deal doesn't address all concerns but says it would allow time for lawmakers to work toward a more comprehensive update of immigration laws.
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TRUMP: The good news is these problems can all be solved but only if we have the political courage to do what is just and what is right.
RASCOE: The Senate plans to vote on Trump's proposal in the coming week. Ayesha Rascoe, NPR News, the White House.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
Let's go now to NPR's national political correspondent, Mara Liasson. Hey, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Hi there.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So the stalemate continues. What are you hearing behind closed doors?
LIASSON: Well, on the positive side, the president did make a real shift. He's now using the language of compromise. He's trying to reach out beyond his base. He tried to make the negotiations bigger by adding DACA in an attempt to solve the problem. Republican members of Congress are generally positive about this. But Trump's anti-immigration conservative base is still against this. They consider it amnesty. And Democrats have been pretty negative so far, even though liberal members like Jamie Raskin of Maryland told NPR recently - after the speech that there - this is actually a positive sign. The president moved off the 2,000-mile wall. There should be room for compromise. But the bottom line for Democrats is the president has to open the government first before these negotiations continue.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: But this is a strange kind of negotiation, isn't it? It's all happening sort of by spectacle. Most of the time, these negotiations happen behind closed doors. There are these meetings. And now we're getting these big, public addresses. Is that about President Trump's style, or is it a symptom of how broken the relationship is between congressional Democrats and the White House?
LIASSON: Well, their relationship is broken. But it's mostly about Trump's style. This is how he likes to operate. It turns out he's not much of a master dealmaker after all. We don't know if this is the sign of a new kind of progress or if they're still just stuck. But the other thing to remember is that Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, said he would never bring anything up on the floor the Democrats and the White House didn't agree with or something that couldn't pass. And he's going ahead anyway with this with no guarantee he's going to get 60 votes. The other thing to remember is the Democrats say this is hostage-taking squared. In other words, first, the president ended the DACA program. Then he shut down the government. Now he's saying, oh, I'll temporarily restore the program I ended and reopen the government I once said I was happy to close if you just give me money for a wall that most of the country opposes.
The other thing to remember is that the backdrop for this is that Trump's poll numbers were dropping even with parts of his base. And he had recently lost some leverage with the Supreme Court because he was hoping to have the court take up the DACA case and uphold his decision to terminate DACA, which is temporary deportation relief for certain young people. Now his leverage is gone because the Supreme Court probably won't take this up until the summer of 2020.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Mara, this idea of, you know, governing by spectacle could also apply to Trump's foreign policy. The White House just announced the president will be meeting again with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in February, even though many argue there's been little tangible progress made since the last summit.
LIASSON: That's right. For Trump, the meeting is the message. There hasn't been progress. North Korea has not dismantled its weapons program. The sanctions regime has been weakened because of - partially because of the meeting that already happened between the two leaders. And the - North Korea has reaped tremendous public relations benefits from these meetings because they've been able to have their leader on the same stage as the president of the United States. But Donald Trump would argue better to be talking than threatening war.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Let's talk about the latest in the Mueller investigation. BuzzFeed News came out with a report a couple of days ago that President Trump directed Michael Cohen, his former lawyer, to lie to Congress. But then the special counsel's office issued a rare statement Friday disputing the claims in those - in that article. So where does that leave us?
LIASSON: I think if you looked at the scorecard from this bizarre episode, BuzzFeed, of course, got a black eye. No other news organization could match their story. The president got a boost because he was able to say, look at the press. They're always - they're full of fake news. But Democrats got an assist from Bob Mueller, who helped restrain them from rushing toward impeachment before his report was out. And Mueller also really helped himself. He went out of his way to point out an inaccuracy. He rarely, rarely talks. So he strengthened his own credibility. And I think he made it harder for the president to say that he is conducting a witch hunt.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That's NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson breaking it down. Thank you, Mara, as always.
LIASSON: Thank you.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
In a little more than two months, the United Kingdom is set to leave the European Union. But the so-called Brexit process was thrown into chaos this past week after a withdrawal plan put together by Prime Minister Theresa May was resoundingly rejected by Parliament. However, Brexit - for now - goes forward. What could it all mean for those of us on this side of the Atlantic? To find out, we're joined now by Peter Spiegel, an American in London. He's also news editor of the Financial Times. Welcome.
PETER SPIEGEL: Thanks for having me.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: All right, so Theresa May says she can't completely rule out the possibility of Britain leaving the EU without an economic deal, a so-called hard Brexit. Many argue this would be disastrous for the U.K. What would that mean for the U.S.?
SPIEGEL: Well, look. I mean, Britain is still one of the largest economies in the world. And, you know, if you've seen - if you remember all the market turmoil that occurred in December, a lot of that was because of fears that the global economy was not only slowing but suddenly screeching to a halt. If, suddenly, you had Britain crash out of the EU, its economy grinding to a halt, it's going to have knock-on effects on Europe, which will have knock-on effects on the global economy, which will then start infecting the financial markets on Wall Street. So it's a large enough economy and there's enough trans-Atlantic trade that it could have an impact that could feed back into the U.S. economy.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: What would it mean, though, for Americans and American companies specifically in the financial services industry? They're very well-represented in London.
SPIEGEL: Yeah. I mean, that is the biggest American presence here in the U.K. I mean, the city of London, which is the financial center, is the second-largest financial center in the world after Wall Street. And to be honest with you, they're almost all American banks, right? It's JPMorgan. It's Morgan Stanley. It's Citigroup. It's the big names that everyone knows from Wall Street. They all have their biggest, you know, subsidiaries here in the U.K. And let's be honest. They're not here in London to serve British people. American bankers come here, and they do work for clients all over all 28 EU countries.
Well, suddenly, you know, if you're a banker at JPMorgan, there are rules that say, some products you can only sell to European citizens if you're in Europe. So already, we're seeing American banks making decisions. Do we need to move our people to Frankfurt? Do we need to move people to Paris? Should we bring them back to Wall Street? You know, is the U.K. going to be a place where we can do business anymore? Well, if they crash out without a deal, this gets sped up immediately.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: One of the things that was floated by the leavers was that the U.K. would be able to fashion a great trade deal with the United States, for example, off the back of Brexit. Trump, however, hasn't been very forthcoming on that. Any idea where that stands and what that might look like? Could that - could the United States be giving a lifeline to the United Kingdom if, indeed, Brexit goes awry?
SPIEGEL: I suspect not. I mean, look. The leavers were making this case well before Trump became president. What have we learned since Trump became president? He's not the easiest guy to negotiate a trade deal with. And there are a lot of things here that people are allergic to when it comes to - particularly, you know, American agriculture. You cite things like, you know, the hormones that go in American beef. They don't do that here in Britain. It's a real sort of hot-button issue. There are things the U.S. is going to demand for a trade deal. If you're a relatively small country like the U.K., you can't, actually, make any demands of the U.S., particularly if you're in a place where you've just cut off your largest trading partner, which is Europe. And you're desperately seeking a deal with the U.S. Trump's going to drive a hard bargain. So I'm not sure that hopes that existed three years ago that the U.S. could provide a trading lifeline are actually going to come to fruition.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Give us a sense of where you think things stand at this moment. I mean, how likely is it that Britain's going to crash out of the EU? I guess that's the billions-dollar question.
SPIEGEL: I mean, I got to say the signs are looking very bad. You know, there's a whole lot of speculation that she can't get a deal here done in London. She may have to go to another round of general elections. You know, there is, of course, lots of discussion about a second referendum. Do the Brits go back to vote again about Brexit? Can they reverse it? I think it's less likely. But if they don't have another sort of democratic moment, I think the likelihood of crashing out of the EU is becoming increasingly likely. And I just don't see a way out for her at this point.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Peter Spiegel of the Financial Times, thank you so much.
SPIEGEL: My pleasure.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
Air traffic controllers are considered essential workers. Without them, the nation's commercial flights can't fly. So controllers must report to work even though they are not getting paid. That's putting stress on those already in a high-stress job. It's also hurting the ability of the industry to attract new air traffic controllers, says our next guest. Joel Ortiz is an air traffic controller and vice president of his union. He joins us from Corona, Calif. Welcome.
JOEL ORTIZ: Good morning. How are you?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I'm good. Thank you. How hard is this shutdown hitting air traffic controllers?
ORTIZ: I'll tell you. This is a - this one is different than all the ones in the past. It's the first time they've experienced a shutdown where they haven't gotten a check. And morale is low. Stress is high. We are slowly seeing resignations come in across the country. The developmentals - or the new hires that were going to the academy - they've been sent home. Staffing is at an all-time low. So it's impacting the industry in more than one way.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: There have been warnings even before the shutdown that the industry is in trouble. Why is there a shortage of air traffic controllers? What's happening?
ORTIZ: So let's go back to 2013, the last shutdown that was 16 days long. That year, the academy, due to sequestration, was closed for the entire year. So while we're experiencing a mass exodus of retirements, we weren't bringing new hires in to replace them because the academy where we sent people to train to go to the field was shut down for the entire year. 2013 was the - at that time, the 30-year low in certified air traffic controllers. And now, at our all-time low, we're now in the midst of a - the longest shutdown in history. And it's just exacerbating a problem that's already been existing for seven, eight years.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I have to ask you, Mr. Ortiz - at one airport, members of your union, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, issued leaflets to passengers describing the effects of the shutdown. For example, one quote said, "the FAA has stopped issuing Airworthiness Directives," which mandate safety fixes to existing aircraft. I must ask you, is it safe to fly?
ORTIZ: I'll tell you. When you're in the air and the air traffic controllers are working you, you're safe. The problem with all these - the nonessential personnel not being - doing their job functions is there's jobs like quality control, safety reporting, quality assurance. All these functions are essential to making the National Airspace System work and function at its peak efficiency. So when you're not getting Airworthiness Directives, you're not getting the safety reporting. People aren't doing the quality assurance reports, quality control reports. All those things that assist the controllers in doing their jobs - slowly but surely, the longer the shutdown continues, it's going to erode the system. And that just means as time goes on, we're going to be able to put less planes in the air. When you're in the air, you're safe. But eventually, the delays and the impact of all these people not doing their job functions is going to take a toll. And it just could mean less planes in the air and farther apart, longer delays.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Joel Ortiz is the Western Pacific regional vice president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. Thank you.
ORTIZ: Thank you very much.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
If you go to buy a car, there's a good chance you'll do some comparison shopping. But if you're going into a hospital for a CAT scan or a hip replacement, for example, good luck. That is until this month, when all hospitals were required by law to make public a list of procedures and prices and post them on the Internet. The new requirement is meant to help patients navigate the nation's confusing health care billing practices. So how well are hospitals doing? Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal is the editor-in-chief of Kaiser Health News. And she has been advocating for something like this for a very long time. And she joins us in the studio. Welcome.
ELISABETH ROSENTHAL: Thanks for having me.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So are hospitals complying with the new law?
ROSENTHAL: Well, yes. They're complying. But basically, what they've done at this point is kind of a data dump. You know, here's our price list. It's hundreds of pages long. It's in codes. It's in abbreviations. So it's not in a very user-friendly form, to say the least. But it's an important first step.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: OK. Is it actually possible to comparison shop? And what are the pitfalls?
ROSENTHAL: I trained as a physician. I've spent, you know, decades covering health care. So I understand what these abbreviations mean. So I can decode some of them. And when you decode some of them, you see some crazy prices. Like, a bag of IV saline at one hospital could be $30 and at another $1,000. So I look through these all the time. And I see things that stand my hair on end.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: We had one of our editors who has been dealing with an ill relative - she went on the Washington State Hospital Association's website. And she said it was quite easy to comparison shop. It is happening. What are the caveats?
ROSENTHAL: Well, the pitfalls - and I think the problem has been a lot of states have made efforts to say, you need to make it easy for patients to comparison shop. So they'll say, OK, give us a price for an appendectomy - all in. The problem is that every hospital calculates that differently. Some will just say oh, well, that's the OR fee. And the - and then you say well, you know, you said it was $4,000 on your website. And then the hospital goes, oh, well, that didn't include the anesthesiologist or the scalpel. You know, it's literally at that level.
So what we see at Kaiser Health News is that people are often caught in the dark with this. They say, well, I tried to comparison shop. And I went to this hospital. And they told me it was going to be $4,000. And then I get a bill for $25,000. So what gives? So I think the effort here is a starting point to say we need apples to apples comparisons.
Now, the data that's been released right now is not very useful for patients generally for an appendectomy or for heart surgery because that's a big procedure. And you'd have to add up hundreds of line items. But if you're looking for something simple, like an MRI of your knee, you know, and you're willing to put in the time to decode a chargemaster, that is pretty comparable - one institution to another. So it's useful in a small way now. But I suspect having this data out there will make it useful in a much bigger way over time.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Some hospital administrators have said that the new law makes things more confusing because the prices don't account for a person's health care insurance or the fact that insurers pay a discounted rate. What do you say to that?
ROSENTHAL: Hospitals have made every argument under the sun to not release these prices. They've said, well, nobody pays that. It depends on your insurance. You know - but it's all kind of smoke and mirrors to me. You know, yes, maybe it's not directly relevant. But show us your prices. Show us what you're charging. When I go to a hotel, I may be only paying $100 a night. But I can see on every website that the normal price for that room, the list price, is $500 or whatever. So these are list prices. They're not directly relevant. But we deserve to know them. And hospitals should not be trying to hide them.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal is the author of "An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became A Big Business And How You Can Take It Back (ph)." Thank you so much.
ROSENTHAL: Thanks for having me.
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LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
When stock markets around the world crashed in 1987, Some newscasters called it Black Monday.
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TOM BROKAW: October 19, 1987, when the stock market went into a freefall, losing more in one day than it did on Black Tuesday in 1929.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That was NBC's Tom Brokaw in the 1980s. Now a new series premiering tonight on Showtime tells the story of a fictional African-American stock trader who just might have caused that crash. It's also called "Black Monday." NPR TV critic Eric Deggans says it's profane, outrageous and worth your time.
ERIC DEGGANS, BYLINE: Don Cheadle's flashy stockbroker Maurice Mo Monroe has a unconventional reaction when his company is named the 11th-biggest trading firm in the Wall Street Journal. He snorts a line of cocaine, throws everything off a nearby desk and delivers a mission statement.
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DON CHEADLE: (As Maurice Monroe) Eleven is one one too many. It's been the same Monopoly man at the top of Wall Street for a thousand years. Impossible? This is simple. What goes in your pocket when that bell rings at the end of the day comes directly out of some other sucker's, right?
DEGGANS: We meet Mo in 1986, a year before Black Monday. He's a high-living risk taker with dreams of building an empire on Wall Street by hook or crook - mostly crook. Cheadle plays him with a kinetic ferocity. Mo meets a socially awkward, super waspy aspiring trader named Blair Pfaff, played with geeky enthusiasm by Andrew Rannells. Blair has developed an early computer algorithm to trade stocks. But Mo and his team are a little skeptical when he hires Blair.
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CHEADLE: (As Maurice Monroe) You're about to learn a valuable lesson that your MBA could not teach you. The only algorithm that a real trader needs is the algo-rhythm (ph) of the night.
PAUL SCHEER: (As Keith) Ooh. You just got DeBarged (ph).
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DEGGANS: The '80s references are heavy-handed and constant in this series, which promises to tell viewers who started the Black Monday crash. As the first episode begins, we see someone jump from a building onto Mo's Lamborghini limousine - remember, it's the '80s - giving us another mystery to consider - who killed themselves? And why? Executive produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who collaborated on the film "The Interview" and the TV show "Preacher," "Black Monday" gives us lots of great moments with other characters from Mo's firm, too - for example, Regina Hall's Dawn Darcy, who's Mo's only female executive. She gets an odd reaction from her mother and husband when she tells them that Mo promoted her.
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REGINA HALL: (As Dawn Darcy) I just wanted to tell you guys that I...
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: Pregnant?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: Oh.
KADEEM HARDISON: (As Spencer) Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: Oh.
HARDISON: (As Spencer) Oh, my God.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: Should you drink?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: Well, although I did smoke a ton of ganj with you, I guess it's OK.
HALL: (As Dawn Darcy) No. I'm not pregnant. I'm partner at my firm. That's my big news.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: Oh.
HARDISON: (As Spencer) We're not also pregnant by chance, are we?
HALL: (As Dawn Darcy) No. And please don't be one of those guys that says we. I just - I don't like it.
DEGGANS: I hope the series may eventually tell us something to explain today's turbulent economic times. Otherwise, it's a huge missed opportunity. But the first few episodes are having too much fun lampooning the rampant sexism and crude behavior of these greedy, yuppie knuckleheads. When it comes from a crew this entertaining, it adds up to a pretty fun ride just before the crash. I'm Eric Deggans.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
It's been two years since President Trump's inauguration. The government is shut down over an issue that propelled him into office. So where are we? Yesterday, President Trump made an offer that Democrats easily refused. In exchange for funding to build a permanent wall, the president offered a temporary protection for some hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the proposal a non-starter. And that was before President Trump gave his speech. For more on the congressional reaction, I'm joined now by NPR's Scott Detrow in the studio. Thank you for coming in. Good morning.
SCOTT DETROW, BYLINE: Good morning.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: All right. So the offer was to give a three-year extension to DACA recipients and temporary protected status immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador, Honduras. Let's start with Pelosi. How did she characterize the president's offer?
DETROW: Like you said, a non-starter - the Democratic stance has been what it's been all along. They're saying, we need to reopen the government first. And then we will negotiate on these border issues. House Democrats have passed several bills doing that. The Senate isn't voting on them. As for the president's offer itself, they're pointing out the president is getting everything he wants here, that $5.7 billion for a border wall. And he's offering short-term restoration of two programs that he was the one who made the decision to end. So Democrats do not appear to be moved here.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: All right - was there a counteroffer from the Democrats? Because this might be the start of a negotiation.
DETROW: Right - well, we're seeing some signals, some reports that the next round of bills that the House votes on - Democrats may include a lot more money for border security but not a wall, money for things like security at ports of entry, which Democrats have been pointing out - those are the places that these drugs the president keeps talking about are coming through, not border crossings. So we are seeing really tiny steps towards some sort of serious conversation. But that serious conversation has not begun yet.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: All right - but it looks like Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who's been a little bit missing in action during this, will bring the president's plan to the Senate floor this week. Will it pass? Does he have the votes?
DETROW: Well, this is pretty notable. McConnell and Senate Republicans have really been on the sidelines this entire shutdown ever since President Trump essentially burned them. Remember way back when the Senate voted unanimously to - for a bill that did not include border funding - wall funding, rather - under the assumption that the president would sign it. Of course, he didn't. We're in the shutdown. And McConnell has just stayed out of it. But he says he will bring this to a vote now. That could create some pressure on Senate Democrats. But it's hard to see, under these current dynamics, enough Democratic votes to get the 60 that the Senate would need to pass it.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Hard-line Republicans, it should be said, like Ann Coulter, who have an outsized influence on the president also don't like this deal.
DETROW: Yeah. And we saw the president defending himself against those charges this morning, saying that this is not amnesty. Every time the president has taken a step toward compromise in the past, he's quickly walked it back and gone back to his hard-line position with his base. Here's what's different this time, though. Before he had to convince House Republicans, notably the Freedom Caucus, to call these compromise measures to a vote and to vote for them - with Democrats in the majority in the House, House Republicans' views just aren't that relevant. An eventual solution, whatever it is, will pass on House Democratic votes. So this is always a big-picture political concern for the president. But in terms of actual vote counting towards a deal...
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Right.
DETROW: ...Not really an issue this time.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: All right - so where does that leave us? Because, of course, there's hundreds of thousands of people who are not working. What key things should we be looking for?
DETROW: Two things - any more additional signs that the president or Democrats are losing political support - we saw a poll last week from NPR showing the president has lost support and two indications that 800,000 people going a month without the paycheck is hurting the economy. We've seen some indications that could be the case. I think it's notable President Trump didn't say anything about those federal employees yesterday during his speech.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That's true. He didn't. That's NPR congressional correspondent Scott Detrow. Thank you so much.
DETROW: Thank you.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
For more reaction, we are joined now by Greisa Martinez Rosas. She's with United We Dream, a DACA advocacy organization. And she's a DACA recipient herself.
Good morning.
GREISA MARTINEZ ROSAS: Buenas Dias. Good morning.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Good morning. To remind our listeners, DACA is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, aimed at giving legal immigration status to those brought to the U.S. without documents as kids. And that includes the so-called DREAMers. So what is your reaction to the president's offer?
MARTINEZ ROSAS: Yeah. So DACA is a program that - I'm someone that is lucky enough to be able to be protected by. And what Donald Trump said yesterday was officially, you know, just another trick and another cruel game to try to trick the American public that he wants to open the government. If he could and if he wanted to, he could protect me and the TPS holders. He could ensure that the 800,000 federal workers would go back to work tomorrow. But he doesn't. He wants to keep our country in chaos.
And, honestly, I'm very concerned. This is - continues to be a tactic of his. And it doesn't just impact immigrants like myself or those immigrants that are in detention centers. It means that there's one person in this country that feels so strongly that he's the one in the right that he is willing to hold all of us hostage. And all of the advancements and all of the changes that we need do not move unless he wants it to. And so, you know, I'm disappointed. I am - but I am - I'm committed to continue to fight until we're able to retake our democracy from this man.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So President Trump says that he is very interested in border security. He now talks about the wall in a completely different way, saying it's only going to be in certain sections. So far in the wrangling over this barrier, there's been no mention of DACA, unlike the last time. The Democrats say they want that to be a separate issue. Do you think permanent protections for DACA should be part of these negotiations?
MARTINEZ ROSAS: Look. What's important for me when I think about the current conversation around borders and the detention and more deportation agents that Trump is also demanding with border money is that this is part of his white nationalist agenda, that he wants to use me, the federal workers and TPS people to have an exchange conversation. And what is clear to me is that these are definitely different conversations. There's one about protecting people that he himself...
GARCIA-NAVARRO: But are you asking the Democrats? This is about the Democrats. Are you asking them to solve this issue and put it on the table in the negotiations with President Trump?
MARTINEZ ROSAS: Look. What we need is permanent protection. And what he is offering is not that. And what I think that the Democrats should pass - permanent protection for immigrating people that do not come at the cost of more enforcement, more money for the wall, more agents, more detention centers.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So it shouldn't be part of these negotiations then.
MARTINEZ ROSAS: That's right.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: OK. The Supreme Court hasn't yet taken up DACA. The court is likely to do so, though. And there's no guarantee how it would rule. That seems to portend a ticking clock. Does that make you nervous without a deal?
MARTINEZ ROSAS: (Laughter) I think that life under Trump has been really nerve-wracking, I will say. So yes, it's something that we're keeping our eye on. I think that there is a possibility that they decide to not grant the ability for the Supreme Court to hear the case. And so I am looking at the optimistic side but preparing for all cases. And I do know that people are - we're asking people to apply for DACA renewals, which means that more people get more protection for a longer time. So we're keeping our eye on it while at the same time, calling for Congress to defund money for these agencies that are the ones responsible for deporting us and detaining us.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That's Greisa Martinez Rosas, deputy executive director of the immigrant advocacy organization United We Dream. Thank you so much for speaking with us.
MARTINEZ ROSAS: Thank you.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
It's shaping up to be a brutal winter, in part, because the polar vortex has splintered. Powerful storms are moving across the country, now hitting the East Coast. In the south, heavy thunderstorms spawned an apparent tornado that hit parts of a town in central Alabama. Troy Public Radio's Kyle Gassiott reports.
KYLE GASSIOTT, BYLINE: The Coosa River runs through the heart of Wetumpka, which is 20 miles north of Alabama's capital city, Montgomery. On the east side of the river is the business district, which has a casino that brings around 3 million people to the area each year. Jonathan Smithart manages a restaurant in the casino. He says he was at an intersection on his way to work on Saturday afternoon when the storm hit.
JONATHAN SMITHART: I look up and the light starts - traffic light starts shaking, jumping back and forth. And then just gray and just strong wind, and the car starts shaking. And...
GASSIOTT: Then, he says, a tree fell on the trunk of his car.
SMITHART: So three feet and it would've been on my head, maybe - pretty scary.
GASSIOTT: Some injuries were reported after the storm passed as citizens saw the damage to buildings and houses on the immediate west side of the river.
JERRY WILLIS: This church has probably been painted and captured on canvas more than any other place or structure, you know, in our area, in our county.
GASSIOTT: Mayor Jerry Willis is standing in front of what used to be the Presbyterian church and is now a pile of wood with a few standing walls. The church was over a century old. And its tall, white steeple was one of the most well-known landmarks in the area. Now that steeple is gone as is the one on the Baptist church across the street. Emma Hoppes has lived next door to both of the historic churches for 35 years. She's ready for things to be rebuilt. But first, she wants to put the memory of this storm out of her mind.
EMMA HOPPES: It sounded awful. I thought I was working in a steel mill or something. It was awful. I never heard nothing like it - don't want to hear it no more, either.
(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINERY RUNNING)
GASSIOTT: By nightfall, with a curfew for citizens in place, work on clearing the streets of debris and power lines has begun. At the Presbyterian church, someone has rescued a painting of the steeple and placed it on a post near the street. I ask Mayor Willis if the image of Christ smiling down on the building speaks to the strength of the community.
WILLIS: Well, it tells you that. And it tells you where we need to put our trust.
GASSIOTT: The National Weather Service in Birmingham has said that it will determine if a tornado did indeed hit the area and if so, what rating it should get. For NPR News, I'm Kyle Gassiott in Wetumpka, Ala.
(SOUNDBITE OF ROBERT RANDOLPH & THE FAMILY BAND'S "I STILL BELONG TO JESUS")
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
On the other side of the Atlantic, the British government remains paralyzed over Brexit. The deadline for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union is two months away. And Parliament has yet to agree on how that will happen, increasing the likelihood of a no-deal Brexit. That could have major consequences for the economy, trade and people's day-to-day lives. We wanted to hear how that uncertainty is resonating across the U.K. How are ordinary people preparing for the stakes of this divorce as they wait for a deal to be made?
BRYAN GRIFFITHS: It is very stressful. I don't mind admitting that it does keep me awake.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That's Bryan Griffiths. He tends a flock of 900 sheep in southwest England. He wants a deal, so he can continue trading with Europe. Without one, tariffs on the lamb that he and many others sell to the EU would drive down the prices he can get.
GRIFFITHS: At the moment, a lamb off my farm is worth, let's say, 80 pounds a head. If those exporters would have to pay 50 percent of the value to export it, it means they are only in a position to pay 40 pound.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Griffiths says he voted to remain. But he understands how divided this country is over the issue.
MICHAEL COOPER: At the end of the day, this country voted to leave the EU. And if there's a number of politicians that are trying to stop this happening, they're standing in the way of democracy.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That's Michael Cooper, a staunch pro-Brexit supporter. He runs The Bubblecar Museum in the town of Boston in Lincolnshire County, located on the east coast of England. He also heads the city council. One of the main tensions of Brexit is over immigration. Cooper says about a quarter of the population of his town is Eastern European. But depending on what kind of Brexit deal is made, many of them could move away, leaving their employers short-staffed.
COOPER: This will make things slightly more difficult for some of the businesses. But we can turn the clock back. And the people that were doing the jobs 15 years ago can do the jobs again.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: He means British workers. But in some specialized fields, like medicine and public health, labor shortages might not be so easy to fix.
ROSE GALLAGHER: As a nurse, of course, I'm thinking very widely about, what will that mean in terms of the number of people that might want to come and work here in the U.K. for nursing?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That's Rose Gallagher of the Royal College of Nursing. In the past, EU citizens have helped with nursing and staffing shortages in the medical field. But many have already left since the referendum. Then there's the question of access to supplies, including medications.
GALLAGHER: We don't have the detail about, when we leave the EU, what that deal will mean for the overall supply of medicines.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: For Jan Carson, a writer in Northern Ireland, Brexit has stirred up questions about her identity.
JAN CARSON: For people like me, who grew up with a huge affinity to British culture, it's created an opportunity for us to think about our identity and think about what it means to be Protestant in Northern Ireland now in 2019 as opposed to what we inherited from our parents 20, 30 years ago. I have just in the last six months applied for an Irish passport which - even that is a massive cultural shift.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Ireland is part of the EU, while Northern Ireland is part of the U.K. and will leave Europe under Brexit. As the U.K. reconsiders its relationship with Europe, Carson says there is no question that Brexit will influence every level of people's lives. But Michael Cooper of Boston, Lincolnshire, says he's not worried.
COOPER: You know, life would still go on. Whether we have a good deal or no deal, it will still go on. And we'll still be here. And we're still be doing everything pretty well the same.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Many disagree with that prediction in the very polarized U.K. The United Kingdom is slated to leave the EU on March 29.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
In another bleak sign of climate change, last week, the National Academy of Sciences published a report stating that Antarctica's ice mass is melting six times faster than was previously thought. Disappearing ice is an indicator that author Dahr Jamail returns to time and again in his new book about our climate. It's called "The End Of Ice: Bearing Witness And Finding Meaning In The Path Of Climate Disruption." Dahr Jamail has reported from conflict zones in the Middle East. But it is his passion for mountaineering that drives this book, which begins with him dangling from a rope after having fallen into a crevasse while climbing in Alaska. Dahr Jamail joins us now from our New York bureau.
Welcome to the program.
DAHR JAMAIL: Thank you - good to be here.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So let's start with you explaining to the non-climber your deep affinity for something so inhospitable as an icy glacier. You seem to find the beauty in it even as you dangle above a bottomless pit.
JAMAIL: (Laughter) Well, I have always been drawn into the mountains. I think that's my favorite place and where I feel most called to go, really connect in with the Earth and keep the perspective that we get from going out into majestic places like that. And in that particular instance, I had to really focus that experience in to really appreciating the blue ice that was in front of me when I was unable to do a self-rescue and had to wait for my buddies while I dangled over the abyss. So it was kind of a concentrated form of meditating on what was exactly in front of me.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I want to start with Denali in Alaska because that is a place that you have a connection to. You've been going there for years. What have you seen?
JAMAIL: I made it a point to go there in the book as well as a couple of the other places because I wanted to find places that I had been to before and had an intimacy with because it's in that way we can really, really understand the gravity of the changes and really see them and know them personally. And so my first time on Denali, for example, was back in 1997. And to go back and be on that mountain 19 years later in 2016, I saw really dramatic evidence of what was happening - things like mosquitoes in base camp and Denali at 7,200 feet on a glacier, which seems preposterous, but that was happening - rockfall high up on the mountain in an area where the temperature in the summer at night still gets down to regularly -15, -20 degrees Fahrenheit. But now it's melting out at times on some of the days that you have to wear a helmet because of rockfall. Even in these wildest places, that's, actually, where we're seeing some of the most dramatic changes.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: But not only - you traveled to Miami, where wet sidewalks on a sunny day can have scary implications.
JAMAIL: Exactly, where it's called sunny day flooding there, instead of - what it actually is is the oceans are now starting to already make themselves very apparent right there in parts of downtown Miami and certainly in Miami Beach. And so here, we have a huge city that, literally, is already losing the battle to kind of remain there despite rising seas. And so spending a lot of time in Miami Beach on that trip with the - Bruce Mowry, the then-city engineer, going around talking about how they're trying to raise the levels of some of the streets and other projects they're working on to try to buy time. But that's even just preparation to buy them a little time for the kind of mid-level projections of, here's what happens if we manage to do some pretty serious mitigation on a global level of CO2 emissions. Not even to speak of the worst-case scenarios.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Indeed. You, in the book, introduce us to Harold Wanless, chair of the Department of Geological Science at the University of Miami. And he makes the point that we better start moving things we value to elevations above 150 feet now.
JAMAIL: That's exactly right. And this is a world-renowned expert that is talking about how things like the Turkey Point nuclear plant outside of Miami, that needs to be decommissioned. And all of that needs to be moved. Toxic zones need to be moved. Museums and other important sites that hold important historical information and value for us, all of that needs to be relocated, including the tens of millions of people that live there.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: This is a reworking of the world as we know it.
JAMAIL: It literally is. And I think that as more and more of this data becomes available to people as well as the realities that are now sinking in - you know, the extreme weather events, of course, that we're all too familiar now with this country - is these become the norm and not extreme weather events, if you will. We are living in a new era of a climate-disrupted planet. And this is how it's going to be. And it's a situation where, really, today is better than tomorrow in that these impacts will keep getting more severe no matter what, even if pretty intense mitigation measures do start to be taken on a global level. We already have a large amount of change already baked into the system, to use the term many of the scientists are using.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: What do you tell people who might hear this and say, well, you know, it's already happening, nothing I can do about it. Just - we'll adapt as humans have always done to whatever comes our way.
JAMAIL: Well, we will have to adapt. There's no question about that. But I think there is always the X factor. We - as bleak as things may appear, we don't know what's going to happen because we've never been here before as a species. And if there's even the slightest possibility that somehow, some way, this doesn't go worst-case scenario, that in itself is reason to throw everything we have behind, trying to do the right thing today. Plus, we're going to be answerable to future generations. And so sort of in a selfish way but albeit somewhat selflessly, I want to be able to say that I did absolutely everything I could to try to work for the betterment of the planet at a time when we still had glaciers in the lower 48 states, when we still had the better part of the Amazon rainforest, while there still was a South Florida that wasn't submerged yet. I want to be able to say that I did the right thing and I did everything I could.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Dahr Jamail is the author of "The End Of Ice." Thank you so much.
JAMAIL: Thank you.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
Isolation is an issue for many seniors, especially in rural places. It can lead to loneliness, which many experts consider a serious public health issue. As Maine Public Radio's Patty Wight reports, for decades, a federal program has addressed the problem the old-fashioned way - sending visitors door to door.
PATTY WIGHT, BYLINE: Most days of the week, you can find Kitty Gee making house calls among the mountains of western Maine.
(SOUNDBITE OF KNOCKING)
KITTY GEE: Hello.
WIGHT: Gee is a senior companion. It's a federal grant program that operates in nearly every state. The idea is simple - connect isolated seniors to a friendly visitor every week. On this day, Gee visits Wanetta Nurse.
GEE: How's my best girl today? You're doing good, eh? Looking pretty as always.
WANETTA NURSE: Good to see you, Kitty.
WIGHT: Gee is a spry 87. Nurse is only 74, but she has health issues that make it hard for her to walk or even to pursue former hobbies, like knitting and sewing.
NURSE: When Kitty showed up, that was like, oh, yay.
WIGHT: During the visits, Gee keeps the conversation upbeat - chatting about family, the old days and men.
GEE: I've been trying to find a dancing partner. They're hard to find because, you know, people our age, they're not - they don't want to do much, you know? And you and I, we're ready to roll. We want to get moving.
WIGHT: Gee became a senior companion nearly five years ago after her husband died. She was at loose ends, she says, and needed something to do.
GEE: So I said this will get me out among people. I'll have someone to talk to. And maybe I'll do some good.
WIGHT: She visits seven clients each week and receives a federal stipend - $2.65 an hour. Being a companion, Gee says, gives her a purpose. And Nurse says the visits give her something to look forward to.
GEE: (Laughter).
NURSE: I mean, sometimes, she's laughing so hard. You know, it's just so nice to see someone laughing. And then to be included in that, too, means a lot.
KERRY FARIA: These programs, I think, are essential for our aging populations in our state.
WIGHT: Kerry Faria is with the local nonprofit SeniorsPlus, which partners with the University of Maine to implement the senior companion program.
FARIA: Many times, people will end up isolating themselves because their friends are dying around them. Their family - maybe their siblings are - have died off. I mean, they may be the only one left out of their generation. So they just find themselves kind of alone.
WIGHT: Around 600 seniors receive the service in Maine. But there's a waitlist of more than 300. The demand is likely to increase as the population ages. More companions are also needed, says Faria, especially men, though there are a few.
BUD HOUGHTON: I'm Bud Houghton. I am 66 years old.
WIGHT: Houghton is a former logger. After he retired, he jumped at the chance to become a senior companion.
HOUGHTON: They need that friendship. They need that companionship. You are their ticket to the outside world.
(SOUNDBITE OF KNOCKING)
HOUGHTON: Hello.
WIGHT: Today, he's visiting 61-year-old Bill Gates.
HOUGHTON: You want to go for a ride?
BILL GATES: Yeah.
HOUGHTON: All right. I'll get the car backed up then.
WIGHT: Gates has dementia. Houghton likes to take him to scenic outlooks. The visit is as much to provide companionship as it is to give Gates' wife some respite.
GATES: (Humming).
WIGHT: Gates hums as they wind along the roads of western Maine. Being a companion, Houghton says, isn't always easy. He's witnessed clients deteriorate. Some have passed away. But these relationships, he says, are deeper than his other friendships.
HOUGHTON: It changes you. You end up doing things for other people. It's not you that's important. It's their well-being that's important.
WIGHT: And it's the simple things, Houghton says, like taking someone for a picnic lunch or a ride in the car that make a difference.
HOUGHTON: That's "Silent Night," isn't it?
GATES: Yup.
HOUGHTON: Awesome.
GATES: I'm not trying put the...
HOUGHTON: Love that song.
GATES: Yeah - always trying to keep me (ph) away from it.
HOUGHTON: (Laughter).
WIGHT: For NPR News, I'm Patty Wight.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
The shutdown is affecting federal workers' pocketbooks. But for some, it's also taking a toll on their mental health. We're joined now by one IRS agent who has been deeply affected. We're only using her first name because she fears for her job. Jamie, welcome to the program.
JAIME: Thank you, Lulu.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: When was the last time you got a paycheck?
JAIME: So my last paycheck was last year.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: How have you been making ends meet?
JAIME: So I haven't, really. I haven't been able to pay any of my bills that are due, like insurance, car payment. Like, I still need to contact my financial institutions and make arrangements with them to see what I can do. But our local Catholic food bank opened up for federal workers who were furloughed. So we have been able to get, like, a cart of groceries from them. And we will be able to go back one more time this month. You know, we survive paycheck to paycheck under normal circumstances.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Tell me a little bit about how this has affected your mental health.
JAIME: Well, it's a huge blow to, like, my self-esteem, I mean, because I do take pride in what I do. It's been extremely hard because I struggle with, like, depression and anxiety and eating disorder. And, like, it's hard to even get out of bed. Like, I'm losing track of days. Like, it's hard to, like, fall asleep and stay asleep just being worried about, you know, where my next meal is coming from, when I'm going to get paid, when I'm going to be able to pay my bills.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: When someone struggles with mental health issues, having a routine, having a place to go, having structure often helps. Is that the role that your job played for you?
JAIME: Yeah, definitely, because - I don't know. It's depressing to get up and - knowing that you can't do anything to change what's happening but wishing that you could. And then - I'm sorry. Excuse me.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: It's OK. Take your time.
JAIME: It's just hard to, like, know how much of this I can handle, you know? Like - because my - at work is where I interact with people the most. It gives me, like, a sense of purpose, you know? Like, I know what I'm doing is helping people. And I just feel kind of worthless right now.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Well, you're not. I also understand you're having trouble accessing your medication.
JAIME: Yeah. Like, I don't have money to go see my doctor and get my medications. Like, I don't have the funds. So that's also hard just because, like, I normally am on a couple of medications that really help. But yeah - just not having any structure and not having any funds. It's like I can't get the tools to help me live a more fulfilling life.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That's Jaime, a tax examiner with the IRS who has been furloughed due to the government shutdown. Thank you so much for joining us.
JAIME: Thank you, Lulu.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
It's time for another visit with our friend Felix Contreras from NPR Music's Alt.Latino. This month, we are doing something we haven't done in a while. He sent me some tracks without any information attached, labeled song No. 1, song No. 2 and so on - a classic musical blindfold test.
Welcome, Felix.
FELIX CONTRERAS, BYLINE: Good morning. Good morning, Lulu.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So I picked four songs. And I have no idea who the bands are. You're going to fill me in. Let's start.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LA PLATA")
JUANES: (Singing in Spanish).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I love this.
CONTRERAS: I sort of guessed what you were going to pick.
(LAUGHTER)
CONTRERAS: OK? We've been doing this for a while.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: We have.
CONTRERAS: You recognize the voice?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: It sounds like Juanes.
CONTRERAS: It is Juanes.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah.
FELIX CONTRERAS AND LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO: There you go.
CONTRERAS: I thought you would pick this one.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah.
CONTRERAS: This is a new track by Juanes. It's a preview of an upcoming album that he's doing. Juanes is - for those who don't know, is this global superstar that's been in the music business probably about the early 2000s - from Colombia.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I interviewed him in his early days...
CONTRERAS: Really?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: ...In Bogota. I did.
CONTRERAS: And he's taken his career and just done everything he can with it. And he's at this space where he is - OK, what can I do next? How can I keep it fresh? How can I keep it vital and still maintain artistic integrity? And his last album was this concept album that just was just incredibly complex and beautiful and nuanced. And just from this single, it sounds like he's sort of digging into the roots.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LA PLATA")
JUANES: (Singing in Spanish).
LALO EBRATT: (Singing in Spanish).
JUANES: (Singing in Spanish).
EBRATT: (Singing in Spanish).
JUANES: (Singing in Spanish).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Behind curtain No. 2, we have...
CONTRERAS: "Pretty In Pink" by Ceci Bastida.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: OK.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PRETTY IN PINK")
CECI BASTIDA: (Singing in Spanish).
CONTRERAS: This is indeed a Spanish-language remake of the song "Pretty In Pink" by The Psychedelic Furs from 1986, OK?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Awesome.
CONTRERAS: So what I really like about this is that she, of course, infuses it with a lot of different stuff, more contemporary things that are happening compared to 1986. But it also shows the passion for music of all kinds that was spreading across Latin America, big appetite for music from all over, from England, from the United States. And this whole "Pretty In Pink" thing - I'm just thinking big shoulder pads, big hair...
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I know. It brings back such happy memories.
CONTRERAS: ...Molly Ringwald.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: (Laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PRETTY IN PINK")
BASTIDA: (Singing in Spanish).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I think, you know, I didn't recognize it as "Pretty In Pink." But clearly, it went into my subconscious. And it just, like, thrummed at those 1980s...
CONTRERAS: Right.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: ...(Laughter) Nostalgic feelings, which is why I picked it. All right, take us to song No. 3.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TURISTA")
FERRAZ: (Singing in Spanish).
CONTRERAS: We're bopping our heads.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: We are bopping...
CONTRERAS: (Laughter).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: ...Our heads. This is the kind of music you don't like that I do.
CONTRERAS: You know what? I do. You know...
GARCIA-NAVARRO: You do not.
CONTRERAS: Oh, yeah. This is - (laughter) you're so funny. OK. This is called "Turista" by Venezuelan producer who goes by the name of Ferraz. This song was selected by the Alt.Latino minister of new music, Stefanie Fernandez, for our weekly Spotify playlist. And what I really liked about it - believe it or not - is that it reminds me of, like, early '70s R&B/jazz stuff that Quincy Jones produced.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: OK.
CONTRERAS: There's a handful of records where the instrumentation, the feel, the groove and that sort of lusty passion, it's infused in all those records. And that's what this reminded me of.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TURISTA")
FERRAZ: (Singing in Spanish).
(SOUNDBITE OF TAGUA TAGUA'S "NA BANGUELA")
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And this brings us to our last one - No. 4.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NA BANGUELA")
TAGUA TAGUA: (Singing in Portuguese).
CONTRERAS: This is a band from Brazil...
GARCIA-NAVARRO: OK.
CONTRERAS: ...Where you used to live.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That feels right.
CONTRERAS: This is a band called Tagua Tagua. And they are part of a resurgent Brazilian rock scene in Brazil. Rock in Brazil has always been huge.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NA BANGUELA")
TAGUA TAGUA: (Singing in Portuguese).
CONTRERAS: I really like this song because of that killer bass line. If you hear it, it's sort of reminding me of some Barry White stuff, you know, from the '70s.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Now, I see a theme here, OK?
CONTRERAS: (Laughter).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: The stuff that you like that's contemporary reminds you of stuff that was from the '70s.
CONTRERAS: There is nothing...
GARCIA-NAVARRO: See; the '80s was my moment...
CONTRERAS: Right.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: ...But clearly, the '70s was yours.
CONTRERAS: There's nothing new under the sun.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Everyone learns from everyone else. That's Felix Contreras from NPR Music's Alt.Latino. You can hear the songs from this week on the Alt.Latino Spotify playlist. Thank you so much.
CONTRERAS: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NA BANGUELA")
TAGUA TAGUA: (Singing in Portuguese).
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Senator Kamala Harris is running for president. The California Democrat made the announcement this morning.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "GOOD MORNING AMERICA")
KAMALA HARRIS: My parents were very active in the civil rights movement, and that's the language that I grew up hearing. And it was about a belief that we are a country that was founded on noble ideals, and we are the best of who we are when we fight to achieve those ideals.
GREENE: Senator Harris joins a growing field of Democrats looking to take on President Trump in 2020. And NPR's Scott Detrow is going to be covering the 2020 campaign and joins us now. Hi there, Scott.
SCOTT DETROW, BYLINE: Good morning.
GREENE: OK, so no surprise there's been a lot of talk of her candidacy for some time now. What's her pitch?
DETROW: Yeah, Harris has been a U.S. senator for the past two years. But she seems to be framing her run around her long career as a prosecutor, first as San Francisco district attorney, then California attorney general. So you're hearing that in her interview this morning with "Good Morning America" and also in the early videos and material from her campaign, talking a lot about representing voters just like she represented the state and the city in the courtroom. Of course such a focus on law enforcement could be a liability in a Democratic primary, where a lot of liberal voters are just pretty skeptical of law enforcement in the current environment.
GREENE: Even though she's putting the focus more in earlier parts of his career, I mean - her career, she has been in the Senate. One thing we often talk about is once you serve in Congress, like, you have a record...
DETROW: Yeah.
GREENE: ...That people can pick through when they're running for office. So tell us about her two years.
DETROW: Yeah, she has really gotten a lot of national attention and got it pretty quickly based on her seat on some key Senate committees - the Intelligence Committee and the Judiciary Committee. She put that prosecutor background to use in hearings early on, really hammering Attorney General Jeff Sessions and other Trump administration officials during that series of nationally televised hearings about the Russia investigation. Same thing happened last fall during those contentious Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court.
Like other Democratic candidates, Harris has spent a lot of time campaigning during the midterms. And she just got a lot of attention over the last few weeks on a national book tour promoting a new memoir that came out at a very good time if you're going to be running for president.
GREENE: Indeed.
DETROW: But, you know, it's still all relative. And as a new face on the national stage, she's going to have to work to get known by more casual voters who will be voting a year from now going forward.
GREENE: And besides trying to get that name recognition, which is a challenge for many candidates, what other challenges does she face in this primary?
DETROW: Yeah, circling back to that law enforcement background, this is...
GREENE: Yeah.
DETROW: ...An era where Black Lives Matter is a very powerful force in Democratic politics. At the time she was a prosecutor, she was a high-profile, prominent liberal prosecutor. But the ground has really shifted a lot since her time in the DA's office, and she's going to face a lot of questions from voters.
She is adamant that voters don't want to make what she calls a false choice between policing and racial justice. And you could hear her trying to walk that balance during her interview this morning.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "GOOD MORNING AMERICA")
HARRIS: It is a false choice to suggest that communities don't want law enforcement. Most communities do. They don't want excessive force. They don't want racial profiling. But then nobody should.
DETROW: You know, but Harris is in a unique position here. She's a black woman. Her father was Jamaican. Her mother is Indian, one of just three black U.S. senators. So expect her to talk a lot about that background and life experience as she tries to distinguish herself in a crowded Democratic field. The fact that she was announcing her run on Martin Luther King Jr. Day was very purposeful.
GREENE: Well crowded field - like, really crowded - like, we're talking maybe as many as two dozen candidates when things actually get started. So who's next?
DETROW: Well, she is the third high-profile candidate to make it official announcing - joining Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand, two other senators. Several other big names - we're waiting to hear their announcements, including New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. I think the one Democrat a lot of other candidates are waiting to hear from is former Vice President Joe Biden. If he decides to run, he will be an early frontrunner, a very serious candidate.
GREENE: All right, California Senator Kamala Harris is running for president on the Democratic side, and we'll be awaiting more candidates joining that group soon - that news coming from NPR's Scott Detrow. Scott, thanks.
DETROW: Sure thing.
STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: Some people who watch what they eat may be overlooking the most important things. Counting calories is a bit too simple. Cutting carbs is a bit too hard. So what can you do? NPR's Allison Aubrey has a different strategy.
ALLISON AUBREY, BYLINE: Have you ever stopped to think, what is a calorie? To find out, we're going to bring out a blowtorch.
MATT HARTINGS: If there's anything we chemists know how to do, it's burn things.
AUBREY: That's Matt Hartings. He's a chemistry professor, and we're in his lab at American University.
HARTINGS: What we're going to do is, we are going to burn our food. You ready?
AUBREY: We've got two different kinds of foods here. We've got a piece of white bread, and we've got a little handful of whole-grain wheat kernels.
HARTINGS: So I've got my propane torch here that we're going to use to start this bread. The way it needs to be going.
AUBREY: All right. Let's do it.
Now we need to measure how much heat each piece of food is giving off. That's where the calorie count comes from.
HARTINGS: You see the smoke coming up from in there?
AUBREY: That's a lot of smoke.
HARTINGS: It is a lot of smoke. These things are reacting with oxygen, or burning, and we're measuring the amount of energy that comes off when they burn. Right? It's the same reaction that goes on in our bodies.
AUBREY: It turns out that the white bread we burned has about the same number of calories as the wheat kernels. But...
HARTINGS: How the calories themselves burn in our bodies is different from one food to the next.
AUBREY: And once you understand how this really works, it just may change the way you eat. For me, I realized that if I start the day with a pastry or a bagel, I'm hungry an hour later. But if I eat an egg, I'm good until lunch. It's got some fat and protein.
DAVID LUDWIG: We've known for decades, if not a century, that different foods affect the body differently, apart from their calorie content.
AUBREY: That's David Ludwig of Boston Children's Hospital. He's a physician who founded a weight loss clinic. Now, remember those whole grains we just burned? He says they've got a lot going for them.
LUDWIG: They take a while to digest, leading to a gentle rise of blood sugar and insulin after the meal.
AUBREY: And that's good. But the white bread, on the other hand, is more likely to lead to a spike and a crash in your blood sugar. That's because all the good stuff, like the fiber and the germ, have been processed out. All that's left is the starch.
LUDWIG: According to one way of thinking, these processed carbohydrates raise blood sugar and insulin, and that directs calories more into storage in fat cells.
AUBREY: So eating a lot of refined carbohydrates can make us hungry, maybe put us on a path to weight gain and, over the long term, may increase the risk of Type 2 diabetes. And it's not just white bread. Think of all of the snack foods we encounter every day, even here at the NPR headquarters.
OLIVER DEARDEN, BYLINE: The biggest cause of obesity in the United States is offices.
AUBREY: (Laughter).
That's Oliver Dearden. He works on All Things Considered, and he sits just a few feet away from one of the best free-food tables at NPR.
DEARDEN: Open bags of chips...
AUBREY: And some cookies left over from a meeting.
DEARDEN: People are like bees. They'll just come and just swarm around it. It's gone.
AUBREY: And it's pretty clear that none of this stuff has any whole grain left in it. It's just a bunch of refined starch and sugar. So David Ludwig's advice is this.
LUDWIG: Just get off the roller coaster.
AUBREY: In other words, you want to try to cut way back on all those foods that just don't give your body much of what we need.
INSKEEP: Allison Aubrey, I've got a question. What about just going with no carbs, as some people try?
AUBREY: Hi there, Steve. If you try to give up all carbs, you're going to set yourself up to fail. I mean, think of fruit and beans. They are loaded with carbohydrates. But when you eat a piece of fruit, you're getting a lot of fiber. You're getting a lot of micronutrients. When you eat beans, it's a great source of protein. So you don't want to give up all carbs. Instead of going no-carb, why don't you go slow-carb?
And by that I mean you want carbs that digest slowly, like the whole grains we just heard about, the fruits and beans. You know, when you eat rice, opt for the brown rice instead of the refined white rice.
INSKEEP: I guess it's not too hard to avoid white bread. I could just buy wheat bread, or whatever. But on some level, are the bad carbs - if that's the right way to phrase it - are they just going to be very hard to avoid?
AUBREY: They're just sort of empty carbs, and they are hard to avoid. But you can just sort of change the way you shop. I mean, here's what I had for breakfast this morning. This is a three-grain bread, just sort of, like, traditional pumpernickel rye.
INSKEEP: OK. Thank you.
AUBREY: Have a little bite. Now, if you look at that, it's got the grain. It's still intact. Now, that's a sign that it's a whole grain.
INSKEEP: OK.
AUBREY: Here. I'm going to hand you this little wheat kernel here.
INSKEEP: OK.
AUBREY: Now, if you were to pop that open, what you would find is a little germ. And I want you to think about that germ as a little packet of nutrients. It's got magnesium. It's got zinc. It's got potassium. All of that stuff is good for you. It's also got a ton of fiber.
But think about it. All that good stuff is stripped out of all of these refined snacks and breads we eat. Do you want to eat that way?
INSKEEP: No.
AUBREY: (Laughter). OK.
INSKEEP: But I'm going to eat this bread. It's pretty good. Thank you very much. Am I eating your breakfast?
AUBREY: You are just eating my leftovers.
INSKEEP: OK. Fine. Fine. Do you have any advice for when you don't bring me breakfast, like you just did?
AUBREY: (Laughter). You know what? I'm going let you off the hook here. I'm going to say it's fine to eat those croissants or that baguette out there. Because you know what? It's completely unrealistic to think that these things are going to go away. Right? Like, I love a good croissant. I mean, I'm sure you do, too. I'm sure all of you out there do.
INSKEEP: They can go away when I eat them.
AUBREY: (Laughter) Right. But here's one thing to remember. If you want to eat those kind of things, eat them at the end of a meal. And here's why. The timing of when you eat these refined carbs really does seem to matter. In fact, there was this cool little study done a few years back. It found that compared to eating bread at the beginning of the meal, if you eat bread at the end of the meal, it actually lowered the peak blood sugar of people in the study by about 30 percent, which is big.
Now, this trick might not have the same effect on everyone, but it does suggest that the timing really matters. So think about bread as dessert.
INSKEEP: And lower blood sugar means I don't get kind of a sugar high, I don't crash later, I don't get hungry later?
AUBREY: Exactly. Short-term effect of that would be maybe you don't get hangry. Long-term effect of that is you cut the risk of Type 2 diabetes.
INSKEEP: OK. We want to mention that these tips are from Allison's latest episode of Life Kit. What is that?
AUBREY: OK. Life Kit is our new family of audio guides to help you navigate your life, Steve. We've got one new one coming out today. It's on making smarter decisions when it comes to eating well.
INSKEEP: OK. So eat the bread at the end of the meal...
AUBREY: You got it.
INSKEEP: ...Listen to the podcast before the meal.
AUBREY: (Laughter). You're good.
INSKEEP: Allison, thanks so much.
AUBREY: Thanks, Steve.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Allison Aubrey. And you can find Life Kit guides wherever you get podcasts or at npr.org/lifekit.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
At least half a dozen Democrats interested in the 2020 presidential nomination are speaking today at events commemorating the Martin Luther King holiday. NPR's Asma Khalid reports that this is really a reminder of how important black voters are in the Democratic primary.
ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: When Elizabeth Warren announced her exploratory committee for president, the Massachusetts senator didn't just talk about a crumbling middle class. She also acknowledged the impact of race and racism on our economy.
(SOUNDBITE OF POLITICAL AD, "ELIZABETH WARREN LAUNCHES EXPLORATORY COMMITTEE FOR PRESIDENT")
ELIZABETH WARREN: Working families today face a lot tougher path than my family did, and families of color face a path that is steeper and rockier.
KHALID: And she's not the only one. Here's New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," announcing her intentions to run for president.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT")
KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND: But you are never going to accomplish any of these things if you don't take on the systems of power that make all of that impossible, which is taking on institutional racism.
KHALID: Talking about institutional racism in a presidential campaign rollout feels new to Adrianne Shropshire. She's the executive director of BlackPAC.
ADRIANNE SHROPSHIRE: You see the candidates sort of centering these issues of racial justice that just didn't happen in 2016 in the same way.
KHALID: Shropshire says that's because the culture in the country has changed in the Trump era and because of a shift in public perception around police brutality. Quentin James is the founder of CollectivePAC. Its mission is to build black political power.
QUENTIN JAMES: In 2016, the Black Lives Matter movement was still new. I think candidates were unsure on how to respond to it.
KHALID: James says candidates now are a lot more nuanced when talking about police brutality. 2020 will likely be the most diverse field the Democratic Party has ever seen, with at least two African-American candidates, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris. There is no doubt that they both have a level of credibility in the community. Booker has pushed to end mass incarceration, and Harris has spoken up about the rate of black maternal mortality. But the Reverend Al Sharpton says he was also surprised by just how well Elizabeth Warren and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar have been received.
AL SHARPTON: And I thought Liz Warren had almost taken preacher lessons. I mean, they just connected better than I thought they would.
KHALID: Cornell Belcher, who was a pollster for Barack Obama's presidential campaigns, says there's a bonus for white candidates who can connect to black audiences.
CORNELL BELCHER: If you have a white candidate that, frankly, can give voice authentically to these issues in this space, it is counterintuitive in a way that, I think, helps that white candidate.
KHALID: Activists and analysts say it's not just about rhetoric. It's about how diverse your staff is, what your track record is and whether people believe you.
SHARPTON: This can't be a road-to-Damascus kind of conversion.
KHALID: That's Al Sharpton again. He's met with nearly every serious presidential contender, and he says candidates this year realize they cannot win the nomination without significant support from black voters. Cornell Belcher agrees.
BELCHER: You're not going to be the nominee of the Democratic Party if you are the candidate who's coming in fifth place in South Carolina.
KHALID: In more than half a dozen states voting on Super Tuesday, black voters make up at least 10 percent of the Democratic electorate. In some states, like Alabama, more than 50 percent of Democratic voters are black. Both Belcher and Sharpton say none of the candidates have yet offered a lot of details to black voters. But Sharpton says so far, at least, they are talking more about racial justice than before.
SHARPTON: Whether that is a political calculation or whether that's a sincere appreciation is what we've got to be able to, you know, see.
KHALID: In other words, as one analyst told me, the question is, will candidates talk the same way today, on MLK Day, as they do the next time they venture out into Trump country? Asma Khalid, NPR News.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Fund the wall, and DACA recipients will get three more years of protection.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
That is the deal that President Trump has offered, over the weekend, to end the partial government shutdown. Vice President Mike Pence called this offer, quote, a "good-faith compromise" on "Fox News Sunday."
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FOX NEWS SUNDAY")
VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: The Senate leadership, Senator McConnell have agreed to bring this bill to the floor on Tuesday.
GREENE: Even still, it doesn't look like an agreement is on the horizon. As soon as Trump made his announcement, Democrats rejected his offer. And what happens now is the big question as hundreds of thousands of federal employees get ready to miss yet another paycheck.
MARTIN: So we've got NPR White House correspondent Scott Horsley with us this morning. Good morning, Scott.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Good morning, Rachel.
MARTIN: First, can you just explain in more detail what the president was offering? And why exactly did Democrats find it to be insufficient?
HORSLEY: Sure. Under the president's proposal, Trump would get the $5.7 billion he wants to build a 230-mile stretch of border barrier. And in exchange, he's offering a temporary reprieve from deportation, both of the DACA recipients - that's the young people who were brought to the country as children - as well as several hundred thousand Haitians and Central Americans whose temporary legal status is in danger of running out. Now, we should say, some conservative commentators complain that the president's going too far here. They're calling this an amnesty. But in both cases, the reprieve from deportation would be for just three years, and that's why House Democratic Whip James Clyburn says his party is rejecting the president's offer.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JIM CLYBURN: I think it's a non-starter for him to ask for a permanent wall and for us to have a temporary fix.
HORSLEY: Now, we should add, in both these cases, Trump would be temporarily fixing a problem that he himself created in rescinding DACA and the temporary legal status. This is a sort of standard Trump bargaining tactic. You do something your negotiating partner doesn't like, and then you offer to stop in exchange for concessions on the other side's part.
MARTIN: So Democrats keep saying, we're not even going to talk to the president until he reopens the government. Only then will we even engage on a conversation about potential border wall funding. But that seems to be a non-starter for the White House. I mean, is the administration even considering doing that?
HORSLEY: You know, Democrats will sweeten their offer a little bit this week. The House is expected to pass legislation that would reopen the government and include some additional money for border security measures but not the wall. Democrats want to show that, contrary to what the president's been saying, their opposition to wall does not mean opposition to border security. And then on the Senate side, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is stirring himself to action, and they're going to vote on the president's proposal.
On the surface, Rachel, none of this looks likely to produce a resolution of the shutdown. But the question is going to be, does the president's offer change the blame game? Up until now, Trump and the Republicans have shouldered the lion's share of blame for the shutdown. And only if Trump's offer changes that public perception will Democrats feel any pressure to give ground.
MARTIN: Yeah. And meanwhile, Friday is supposed to be payday for the 800,000 or so federal workers impacted by this shutdown. And I mean, they're anticipating not getting another check. Right?
HORSLEY: That's right. And obviously, that is a great deal of hardship for those individuals. At the macro level, Rachel, it means that the jobs numbers for January that are going to come out early next month will show those furloughed workers subtracted from the overall employment picture. That will ultimately - that could be the first negative job growth we have seen since 2010. And ultimately, it'll be reversed when the workers get backpay. But it's going to be a temporary stain on what has been a record run of job growth in this country.
MARTIN: NPR's Scott Horsley for us this morning. Scott, thanks so much.
HORSLEY: You're welcome.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MARTIN: Did you see this over the weekend? A viral video of a confrontation at the Lincoln Memorial has a whole lot of people seeing what they want to see.
GREENE: Yeah. For some, the video shows a group of white high school students wearing Make America Great Again hats, mocking a Native American protester who's playing a drum.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NATHAN PHILLIPS: (Playing drum).
UNIDENTIFIED COVINGTON CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS: (Chanting) Cov Cath is best.
What?
Cov Cath is best.
MARTIN: Meanwhile, other people saw the Native American activist intentionally walk into the crowd in an act of provocation. As longer videos emerged showing even more perspectives, we're going to try to understand what actually happened there on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and the fallout. And to do that, we are joined by Bill Rinehart of member station WVXU in Cincinnati, who's been covering this story. Bill, thanks for being here.
BILL RINEHART, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: So these boys are students at Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky, which isn't far from where you are in Cincinnati. They were in D.C. for the March for Life against abortion rights. And one student in particular, named Nick Sandmann - he was the guy seen in the original video standing face-to-face with Nathan Phillips, the Native American activist.
So Bill, what can you tell us? What are each of these people - what are they saying about what happened?
RINEHART: Well, Mr. Nathan Phillips, in a video that circulated Saturday afternoon after the initial videos all on social media, he said he didn't understand what was going on. They were having their march, and suddenly, he felt like he was surrounded by young men and was confused about what the whole interaction was.
Now, the young man in question, the one that everyone has seen in the video, he released a statement Sunday evening and says that a lot of what people were saying is untrue. He says they were waiting for buses to pick them up after their attendance at the pro-life ceremonies. And he says, suddenly, there was a group of protesters at the Lincoln Memorial who started harassing them. And one of his classmates got permission from a chaperone to start a school chant. And he says that's when the Native American protesters approached our group.
MARTIN: We should say that the students also say they're the ones who were vilified by yet another group who was also gathered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. This is a group called the Black Israelites here in D.C. They're known for shouting racist and offensive things, and they were doing that at these particular students. So this is really complicated. But the school has actually come out - the high school where these kids go to school, they have come out and condemned the students. Is that right?
RINEHART: They made a statement on Saturday that says (reading) we condemn the actions of the Covington Catholic High School students toward Nathan Phillips specifically and Native Americans in general. They extended apologies to Mr. Phillips, and they said the behavior is, quote, "opposed to the church's teachings on the dignity and respect of the human person."
MARTIN: Yeah. As you point out, Nick Sandmann, the young man in the video, insists that he was actually trying to defuse the situation - that Nathan Phillips, the Native American activist, actually walked into the crowd and was approaching these students. This is Nick Sandmann's version of events. And the young man says that he was not being confrontational at all. So this is clearly confusing. How are people in the community responding?
RINEHART: There are people on both sides, folks who say these kids are - have acted incorrectly, and there are those who say the whole thing has been misunderstood and people should wait till all the facts come out.
MARTIN: Bill Rinehart of member station WVXU. Bill, thanks so much. We appreciate it.
RINEHART: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MARTIN: All right. The number of deaths continues to rise in a gas pipeline explosion in Mexico.
GREENE: Yeah. At least 85 people have been killed, and dozens more are injured and missing. This explosion occurred in Hidalgo, which is about two hours from Mexico City. And it came hours after this pipe ruptured, sending a geyser of fuel into the air, at a spot where people illegally tapped into the pipeline to siphon off fuel. And this is actually not a new problem. Mexico's president has tried to address this fuel theft. But with rising prices and a shortage of fuel, that's proving really challenging.
MARTIN: NPR correspondent Carrie Kahn joins us on the line from Mexico City. Good morning, Carrie.
CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: Good morning, Rachel.
MARTIN: What do we know at this point about the explosion? What actually happened? Who's responsible?
KAHN: The exact person who tapped into the pipeline outside the small town in Hidalgo, we don't know. But authorities say they're looking into it. The attorney general says he will not prosecute those who joined in and were helping themselves to the free gas. He says he doesn't want to re-victimize the people. You know, as you said, this spot is a favorite around here for fuel thieves. And that practice is widespread throughout Mexico. Last year, the president says it cost the state oil company, Pemex, around $3 billion a year. And many in towns like this town, where the gasoline pipelines run through, benefit from the practice, either buying cheaper black-market gas or protecting criminal organizations.
There's also one big question in the investigation - is that police and armed soldiers were called immediately to the gas breach when it occurred. And for two hours, they were on the scene. And they didn't or they couldn't disperse the crowd that, at one point, reportedly grew to 600 to 800 people.
MARTIN: Wow.
KAHN: So they just want to get to the bottom of that, why that happened.
MARTIN: I mean, this explosion is obviously horrible. People died. But this bigger problem - significant problem - I don't want to call it bigger. But the fact that people are stealing gas - I mean, clearly, they just can't afford to buy gas. That's - what is Mexico trying to do about that?
KAHN: Well, the president has launched a crackdown against what he says is this widespread criminality. He's told the country in the weeks that he's been starting the crackdown, you know, just how deep this corruption has gone to allow this practice to be so widespread. It's gone - you know, he's implicated local officials, gas station owners, even Pemex, the oil company's, top officials. The head of security for the company is being implicated in the practice, you know? But the other answer is these pipelines run through rural, poor regions of Mexico, where poverty is high and opportunity is low. And as you said, you know, like, gasoline is expensive. It's expensive here. It's about $4 a gallon.
MARTIN: Wow.
KAHN: And so you know, I talked to people out in Hidalgo before the blast. And they say, you know, salaries are low here. People do what they do to get by. And black-market fuel is cheap, so they buy it.
MARTIN: All right. NPR's Carrie Kahn for us this morning on this pipeline explosion in Mexico. At least 85 people have been killed, dozens more injured and missing. Carrie, thanks very much for sharing your reporting on this. We appreciate it.
KAHN: You're welcome.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE ALBUM LEAF'S "ANOTHER DAY [REVISED]")
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
People affected by the partial government shutdown include Americans fighting wildfires, and Scott Gorman is one of them. He's a fire superintendent with the U.S. Forest Service. He's known as a Hotshot. This is an elite firefighter with long experience who is given the most hazardous tasks. He works here in California, which just went through the worst year for fires in more than a decade. And since the shutdown began in December, Scott Gorman has done his job without being paid. He and his wife Sarah Barnes spoke to Steve Inskeep about their situation.
SCOTT GORMAN: We've been extremely busy. When the rain comes, that's usually when we get a break, but it has been nonstop.
STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: What is the biggest or most challenging fire that you have personally been involved in fighting in the last few years?
GORMAN: One of my last fires I was on - it was the Delta Fire up in Redding. We initally attacked the Delta, drove down the 5 and immediately started just evacuating people off of the 5 freeway because all these people were going to be impacted. So that one sticks to me the most just because the people's faces and the sense of urgency to get these people out of there as quick as possible.
INSKEEP: What did you mean when you said the people's faces?
GORMAN: Just them being frightened, really entrusting you with the decisions that you're making for them - not having any answers, and you're there to deliver them.
INSKEEP: Sarah Barnes, what's it like for you when this guy says, OK, I'm going off for a few days or weeks to a burn zone; hope I see you again?
SARAH BARNES: Well, it's a relief 'cause we get tired of him if he's home too much. But...
(LAUGHTER)
INSKEEP: I didn't expect that to go there, but go on.
BARNES: I'm just kidding. So we've been together the whole time he's worked with the Forest Service, and it's just how our lives are. We have two kids. They're 10 and 14. And so when they were littler - you know, when I was holding a newborn and he left, those were times that were much more difficult in some ways. Now it's hard for other reasons. This past season was so intense. I don't even know if he was home a total of two weeks. Scott is a really good firefighter. I don't worry as much about that. It's other things. Rolling rocks scare me 'cause they just come out of nowhere.
GORMAN: Lightning.
BARNES: Lightning (laughter). He was struck by lightning when I was nine months pregnant with our first child. That was a fun story.
INSKEEP: Wow.
GORMAN: Yeah. 2004, struck by lightning.
BARNES: He was in a remote part of Arizona. So even if I would have been able to fly with my advanced pregnancy, then I would have had to somehow drive another several hours to get to where he was. So he's fine - no superpowers that we know of.
INSKEEP: Oh, that's too bad.
BARNES: Yeah, I know. We were hoping for something (laughter).
GORMAN: Well, that says a lot about why I like this job. What I witnessed was everybody doing what they had to do to perform and get me and a couple other people out of there to safety. I mean, we not only take care of our own. We treat everybody the same way. We basically stop what we're doing. We run into the face of danger to save people, and we do our damndest to save their homes and property and their animals and livestock. Yeah, it just doesn't end.
INSKEEP: Is this shutdown affecting your efforts to prepare for the next fire season?
GORMAN: It stops so many things. There are a lot of things that we're not out doing at this particular moment. We're not doing any prescribed burning. We're just...
BARNES: Training.
GORMAN: We're not doing any training. We're basically just sitting and not doing anything to incur more debt. Our windows of opportunity are very small - very small.
INSKEEP: I want to drill down on this because the president of the United States around the time of the Camp Fire was very busy on Twitter repeatedly saying that forests in California are being mismanaged and that that was the reason for the fires. You are now telling me that the shutdown is causing forests not to be properly managed to prevent fires or to reduce the risk of fire.
GORMAN: Yeah. The shutdown has stopped everybody from doing what they need to be doing.
INSKEEP: Not to get into your personal finances, but what does a Hotshot firefighter tend to make when working for the U.S. Forest Service?
GORMAN: Well, it's going to vary. So an entry-level GS-4 is going to make just above minimum wage. And up to mine as a GS-9, the base hours, I'm making roughly 64,000.
INSKEEP: Sixty-four thousand dollars a year for a job where you need lots and lots of experience to earn that much, and you're risking your life.
GORMAN: Yes.
BARNES: Yeah.
GORMAN: Experience, qualifications, capabilities - a slide score.
INSKEEP: So what's it mean for your family of four to miss a paycheck?
GORMAN: A lot goes through my mind. It's taken me a lot to get to where I am now. And I've been providing for my family for that many years - contemplation, looking for another job, which I've already started doing, and then also just thinking how long this is going to go. Not knowing that, it's difficult for me to walk away from something that I've given my life to, basically.
INSKEEP: As a citizen, I suddenly felt really sad when you said you're already looking for another job.
BARNES: It makes...
GORMAN: Yeah, it makes me - it makes me sad, too. And I'm not the only one affected.
BARNES: Me, too. It's been a commitment that we both made and, by proxy, our kids have made. Anyone who does this kind of work really makes a lot of sacrifices to be able to do it. He's only about four years before he could be eligible for retirement. So, you know, it's pretty devastating for us.
INSKEEP: You got much money in the bank?
BARNES: We have not a lot. This last fire season was so intense. Scott made a fair amount of overtime. We were able to get our savings account up a little bit, but we are already seeing it dwindle down. We talked the other night about what our limit would be as far as how low will the savings get before he decides he's got to go find other work. And that's a hard conversation to have. I was joking with a co-worker that our kids love Top Ramen. So if it comes to where...
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
BARNES: ...We have to eat Top Ramen straight for a few months, everyone will think it's a great thing.
INSKEEP: Super cheap meal.
BARNES: Yeah (laughter).
GORMAN: Those are the adjustments.
INSKEEP: You were saying, Scott, that your fellow firefighters took care of you when you were struck by lightning. And that's part of what you love about the job - is people taking care of each other.
GORMAN: That's right.
INSKEEP: Is your government - is your country taking care of you now?
GORMAN: I'd like to say that I hope so. I hope so.
INSKEEP: Well, Sarah Barnes and Scott Gorman, thanks very much for taking the time to talk.
GORMAN: Thank you, Steve.
BARNES: You're welcome. Thanks for having us.
(SOUNDBITE OF RHIANNON BANNENBERG'S "FOR STORMBOY")
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
President Trump tweeted over the weekend, quote, "we have one of the best economies in the history of our country - big GDP, lowest unemployment, companies coming back to the U.S. in big numbers, great new trade deals happening," end quote. There have certainly been positive economic indicators over the past two years, but the economy is also facing some challenges. The Trump administration's trade policy has led to tensions and tariffs with U.S. trade partners, and the record-long partial government shutdown is also complicating the economic outlook now.
We're joined by David Wessel. He's director of the Hutchins Center at the Brookings Institution, a contributor to The Wall Street Journal and also a frequent guest on our program. Good morning, David.
DAVID WESSEL: Good morning, David.
GREENE: So let me just start with the basics. Are we enjoying one of the best economies in the history of the United States?
WESSEL: Yeah. Actually, the president has a point. Unemployment is nearly at a 50-year low. Inflation is roughly at the Fed's target of 2 percent. Wages are starting to climb. The Federal Reserve said last week that factory production ended the year pretty strong. In fact, if the economy keeps growing through July, this will be the longest we've gone without a recession since we started keeping track in the mid-1800s. But you know, that's not the whole story, as you said. The housing market's looking shaky. The federal budget deficit is soaring. Consumer confidence has fallen to the lowest levels of the Trump presidency.
GREENE: And I guess the partial government shutdown - we're talking about 800,000 or so workers it's affecting. I mean, does that shutdown really affect the overall economic data for the country?
WESSEL: Absolutely. I mean, first of all, it depresses the economic growth in the first quarter. The president didn't mention that. And it's kind of ironic that he's talking about the GDP numbers, the gross domestic product, because unless the shutdown ends soon, the Commerce Department, which isn't funded, isn't going to be able to put out those new numbers.
GREENE: Which is an interesting side effect of having a government shutdown. You mentioned the housing market looking shaky, the deficit soaring. Like, is there a way to understand, if we put all those pieces together, what the outlook actually is for the coming months and years?
WESSEL: Yeah. It's kind of an interesting tension. On one hand, the president is right. The incoming data has looked very strong. But there are all sorts of signals and warnings that the near future isn't going to look as good as the recent past. In fact, that's why the Federal Reserve has backed off its plans to raise interest rates in the next few months. You know, Duke University's business school does a survey of chief financial officers. And last month, they found half of them believe we're going to have a recession before the end of this year, and more than 80 percent think we'll have a recession before the end of next year.
GREENE: Soon.
WESSEL: Today we learned that the Chinese growth is slower than people thought. That's going to hurt our economy. And so there's a lot more talk about recession. I don't think it's necessarily baked in the cake. But the outlook is looking much worse than the recent past.
GREENE: Let me ask you about one other thing the president said in that tweet. He refers to great new trade deals. And you know, he said something he often says, that companies are coming back to the United States in big numbers. Is that a fair assessment?
WESSEL: Yeah. I kind of enjoyed that. He's signed two trade agreements so far, one with South Korea and the relatively modest changes to the deal we have with Canada and Mexico. He has not cut a deal with Europe yet, and he certainly hasn't cut a deal with China. In fact, the fear is that he's going to - every time there's good news out of the China talks, the stock market goes up. Jobs coming back? Yes, there is what the president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing calls a trickle of jobs coming back from companies that might've produced overseas. But the bottom line, probably some of that - it's called onshoring - but not a lot relative to the size of the workforce in our country.
GREENE: All right. David, thanks as always. We appreciate it.
WESSEL: You're welcome.
GREENE: David Wessel is director of the Hutchins Center at the Brookings Institution, a contributor to The Wall Street Journal, and you hear him here on our program.
(SOUNDBITE OF KIASMOS' "LOOPED")
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Good morning. I'm David Greene, and I am not a robot. NPR is not going the way of a Japanese hotel that began replacing people with robots. The trouble was, they weren't really doing their jobs. The concierge robot couldn't answer basic questions about places to visit. Bellhop robots were running into each other in hallways. The website The Verge reports more than a hundred robots were laid off because they were adding to the workload of the humans they were meant to be replacing. You're listening to MORNING EDITION.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Carl Reiner turns 97 years old in March. A comedian, writer, actor, director, producer, tweeter - he's a noted critic of President Trump. Reiner was part of the golden days of television, writing for 1950s comedy star Sid Caesar on a team that included Mel Brooks and Woody Allen. He helped create "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and directed Steve Martin's films "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" and "The Jerk." These days, Reiner's producing lots of books. NPR special correspondent Susan Stamberg went to Beverly Hills to talk about the latest one.
SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE: Carl Reiner lives on Rodeo Drive - not the glitzy part, the tasteful, still expensive other part. He's lived there since 1961. His longtime wife, Estelle, died there 10 years ago. She and Carl loved going out to the movies. And Estelle was in a movie, "When Harry Met Sally..." directed by their son Rob Reiner. She delivered this iconic line.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "WHEN HARRY MET SALLY")
ESTELLE REINER: (As Older Woman Customer) I'll have what she's having.
STAMBERG: Alone now but for a staff of helpers, Carl writes about his favorite films in several books. The newest one, done last year, is called "Approaching Ninety-Six: The Films I Love Viewing And Loved Doing (1951-2017)." He saw his first movie, a silent, at age 4. His parents took him.
CARL REINER: And it was "Faust." They couldn't leave me at home, my brother and I, so we sat "Faust" like this (ph).
STAMBERG: That's some heavy-duty movie to start with. Here's the guy. He's making a deal with the devil. He's selling his soul. I'm surprised you ever went to another movie after that.
C REINER: (Laughter) I know. Mainly, after that, we went to Marx Brothers movies. And we saw everything.
STAMBERG: Everything. He loved them all - silent films, the talkies. "Random Harvest," a 1942 tear-jerker, is his all-time favorite. Loved the musicals, Emma Stone...
C REINER: She just melts me.
STAMBERG: Carl Reiner was in his pajamas when we spoke, one of those little nose things pumping oxygen into him. Just a few days out of the hospital, he was happy to talk and watch Emma's latest film, "The Favourite," on a huge TV screen by his bed.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE FAVOURITE")
OLIVIA COLEMAN: (As Queen Anne) I know. That was what was so troubling about it, though, the thought that I suddenly did.
C REINER: This is not Emma, is it?
STAMBERG: No, this was a bunch of ducks.
We came to talk movies, and we did - briefly. The 1958 musical "Gigi" prompted his imitation of French star Maurice Chevalier.
C REINER: (Imitating Maurice Chevalier, singing) Thank heaven for pretty girls. Pretty girls get prettier every day.
STAMBERG: You know, Carl Reiner, you could have a career in show business with that voice.
C REINER: (Laughter) Yes. Well, I wanted to be an opera singer.
STAMBERG: Over and over again, he played his father's 78 rpm records of the great tenor Enrico Caruso, which prompted another musical interlude.
C REINER: And to this day, (singing in Italian).
STAMBERG: Did you have a big career in opera?
C REINER: No. The only thing I didn't, I sang a little off-key and a little out of rhythm.
STAMBERG: He switched ambitions after seeing a note in the New York Daily News about free acting lessons with Mrs. Wittenberg (ph).
C REINER: First day there, she says, we're going to do - all of us, boys and girls - are going to do the death of Ophelia.
(Reciting) There is a willow grows aslant a brook that shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.
STAMBERG: He's almost 97, and he recites Shakespeare monologues. So thanks to Mrs. Wittenberg, Carl Reiner ended up in all the recent "Ocean's Eleven" through 107 "Ocean's" movies. The original "Ocean's 11" in 1960 starred Frank Sinatra. Carl first saw Sinatra when he and Estelle, just married, went to the 1943 movie "Reveille With Beverly."
"Reveille With Beverly"?
C REINER: We held hands. That's it. That's why he's (inaudible) he is.
STAMBERG: Years later, after he knew Sinatra, the singer asked Carl how he got along with his parents. My mother's my biggest fan, Carl said. What about you?
C REINER: He says, my father never spoke of me.
STAMBERG: Sinatra told his story. One time, the famous young singer went looking for his fireman father in a bar. Anthony Martin Sinatra wasn't there. They said he'd had a fight. Some guy had insulted Frank.
C REINER: He says, he took a bar stool and hit a guy in the head; he defended me.
STAMBERG: Frank went over to the firehouse. His dad's locker was open, and Frank saw it was lined with record covers and photos of his son. But Anthony was Old World. He didn't know how to express pride in his only child.
C REINER: Then he says, I made him sit down and talk to me. And we got it on.
STAMBERG: Sinatra and Reiner became friends - not best friends like Carl and Mel Brooks. Lots of Mel's movies are Carl's favorites - "Blazing Saddles," "The Producers," "Young Frankenstein." He and Mel see each other all the time.
C REINER: Funniest man I know - absolutely the funniest man I know.
STAMBERG: The two met in the 1950s writing TV skits for Sid Caesar's "Your Show Of Shows." A few days after being introduced, Reiner saw Brooks in the writers' room.
C REINER: I just started talking. I said, we are lucky to have with us today a man who's 2,000 years old. I just said it to him. I said, you knew Jesus, didn't you? He says, wait a minute. Thin lad - right? - always wore sandals, walked around with 12 other guys. They were nice boys.
STAMBERG: And thus, the legendary comedy classic, the "2,000 Year Old Man," was born - totally ad-libbed, not a script in sight. They did it at parties for about 10 years. Then they made a record, invited a bunch of friends in, ad-libbed for two or three hours, cut it down to 47 minutes, handed out vinyls to friends. Cary Grant bought 12 copies and took them to England.
C REINER: When he came back, he said, she loved it. Who? The queen mother. And I said to Mel, we're home free. The biggest shiksa in the world loved the "2,000 Year Old Man."
(SOUNDBITE OF SKIT, "2,000 YEAR OLD MAN)
C REINER: (As Interviewer) Sir, could you give us the secret of your longevity?
MEL BROOKS: (As 2,000 Year Old Man) Well, the major thing - the major thing is that I never, ever touch fried food.
(LAUGHTER)
STAMBERG: Carl Reiner was pretty frail at the start of our conversation. But telling his stories, he got more and more animated. After an hour, it was time to leave. On the way out, a staffer handed me a big bag of oranges from Carl's tree - not quite ripe but I loved saying, would you like an orange from Carl Reiner's tree? After a few days, though, the oranges became as sweet as their owner.
In Los Angeles, I'm Susan Stamberg, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MCCOY TYNER'S "WHEN SUNNY GETS BLUE")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
I'm Rachel Martin in Washington, D.C., where it is day 31 of the partial government shutdown. Hundreds of thousands of federal workers could miss a second paycheck this Friday, and the urgency is growing to figure out a compromise that will put them back to work. A compromise is what President Trump thought he was offering up over the weekend.
The deal basically amounts to temporary protections for about a million immigrants at risk of deportation in exchange for funding the president's border wall. Democratic leaders quickly rejected the president's offer. So did immigration hardliners on the other side.
For its part, Republican leadership is largely on board with the president's plan. And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he'll put it up for a vote this week. We're joined now by Scott Jennings, Republican strategist who was an adviser to President George W. Bush. Scott, welcome back to the show.
SCOTT JENNINGS: Thanks. Good morning.
MARTIN: Good morning. So we reached out to you today in large part because you were the one not that many weeks ago on our show who said DACA; DACA's the solution here; DACA is our way out of this impasse; if the president can give a little on that, then Democrats will give a little on the border wall; and all will be fine. You called it a win for everybody. And it could've been, but it wasn't. So why didn't it work?
JENNINGS: Well, it hasn't not worked yet. Senator McConnell, the majority leader, is going to put this package on the floor this week. And it seems like the Senate Republicans are largely on board. So the Democrats are actually going to have a chance to vote on this despite what their leadership says.
Maybe there are a few Democrats who might want to get the ball rolling here. I think what's dumbfounding all the Republicans is in these shutdown scenarios - typically, it's an opportunity for both sides to get things that they want that they might not have otherwise had a chance to get. And so if you're Trump, you want the wall. If you're the Democrats, you've said that you want some policy extractions on immigration issues.
So why not move this legislative process forward and try to get that? Because they rejected it out of hand on Saturday, I think Republicans right now are thinking, well, maybe the Democrats don't actually want anything other than a political win here, which would be a departure from previous shutdown negotiations.
MARTIN: Although, we should say, the proposal the president made would give temporary reprieve to DACA recipients and immigrants here who are under TPS, the temporary protection status program. These are both programs President Trump moved to shut down. So this is essentially the president offering up a solution to a problem that he caused. Is it not?
JENNINGS: Well, he's also offering up, essentially, a solution called the BRIDGE Act which was sponsored by several Senate Democrats the last time around. I mean, we can dwell on all the mistakes that have been made by people in this entire immigration debate over time, and certainly the president has made some. But at this moment, with the government shut down, it appears to me the White House is ready to deal. And I think the American people are going to have to ask themselves, why aren't the Democrats ready to deal?
This is not a take-it-or-leave-it offer. I think what the White House and what I heard Vice President Pence say over the weekend is this legislative process is a negotiation. So if you're the Democrats, why not take this? And if you have a different idea, OK, throw out your idea. Maybe it flies, and then this whole thing comes to an end. But how do you ever end a shutdown if your initial reaction to every offer is this was made in bad faith, which is what Nancy Pelosi initially said on Saturday?
MARTIN: Well, I think not only is she saying that it's made on bad faith, but Democrats see it as just getting back to neutral, right? If they view this as a problem the president created, then this is just getting back out of the red - not gaining anything. So do you think the president should consider, for example, offering a pathway to citizenship, which Democrats might be more keen towards?
JENNINGS: Well, I think the Democrats now have the ball in their court. The president has made an opening offer in a legislative process. That is, essentially, how you negotiate things in our system. And so now it's on the Democrats to come back and say, well, instead of what you said, how about this? It's their turn to move their pieces. The fact that they are unwilling to take a turn grinds the game to a halt. And so I don't know what the White House would do next in offering things except negotiate against themselves, which doesn't seem like a very smart strategic move.
So I'm hoping that - and I think all Republicans are hoping that if the Senate begins a legislative process this week, Democrats will reconsider their position of not offering any counters to what the president's thrown out. Look, there's an opportunity here to get something if you're the Democrats, and the Republicans have opened the door. Most people I know are really hoping they walk through it.
MARTIN: Well, what do you make of the Democrats' request that the president should just reopen the government first, and then they can negotiate over the wall?
JENNINGS: The package that they are putting on the floor this week reopens the government immediately. And so the Democrats have said they want the government to open. This opens the government. I think the president and the Republicans have a real...
MARTIN: Well, they don't want it attached to the border wall funding.
JENNINGS: Well, they (laughter) - and there's a real fear by the Republicans that if they give up on attaching it to the immigration border security issues they've laid on the table, the Democrats will never return to that conversation. So - and I think that's legitimate here.
MARTIN: So the shutdown is the political pawn. That means the federal workers really are the political pawn here.
JENNINGS: Well, I think it means that there's a whole bunch of stuff that the Republicans want to do and a whole bunch of stuff the Democrats want to do. And it's a bit of a game of chicken. And if one side is to leave out what they want at the opening of a negotiation, then there's a real fear that you would never return to it, which is why, I think, the president and the Republicans are right to try to tie all this together.
MARTIN: Republican strategist Scott Jennings. Scott, thanks as always. We appreciate it.
JENNINGS: I hope it ends soon. Thanks, Rachel.
MARTIN: (Laughter) Indeed. Thanks.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
So Donald Trump became president two years ago yesterday. And in that time, he has shown his approach to foreign policy is anything but traditional. While Trump says his push for "America First" does not mean America alone, his harsh rhetoric against allies has made him seem isolated on the world stage at times. And his supporters say that is by design. NPR's Ayesha Rascoe has more.
AYESHA RASCOE, BYLINE: Trump says he's standing behind NATO. The transatlantic alliance has helped shape the post-World War II order.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We're going to be with NATO 100 percent.
RASCOE: That's Trump speaking at the Pentagon last week. A pledge like that from an American president in the past wouldn't have been notable. But in that same speech, Trump made clear that he's not pleased with the way America has been treated by allies.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMP: We cannot be the fools for others. We cannot be. We don't want to be called that. And I will tell you - for many years, behind your backs, that's what they were saying.
RASCOE: Trump's view that countries have taken advantage of the U.S. has led to tense showdowns with allies at international forums over the past two years. At last year's NATO summit, Trump demanded other countries begin meeting the group's target of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense immediately instead of the agreed-upon deadline of 2024.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMP: I let them know that I was extremely unhappy with what was happening, and they have substantially upped their commitment.
RASCOE: While Trump's not the first president to call for Europe to carry more of its weight, he's much more confrontational about it. He reportedly even talked about pulling out of NATO. European leaders are worried they won't be able to depend on the U.S., says Tarun Chhabra of the Brookings Institution.
TARUN CHHABRA: They are thinking seriously now about what their security would look like if the United States were to withdraw from our alliances.
RASCOE: Michael Anton is a former spokesman for Trump's National Security Council. He says it's not surprising that Trump has ruffled some feathers because he's going against the status quo.
MICHAEL ANTON: He was bound to be unpopular with a group of people and an elite consensus that he's taking on - that he has challenged fundamentally.
RASCOE: Anton says Trump campaigned on getting more out of these global institutions for the U.S., and that's what he's trying to do. He also says there's a bit of good cop-bad cop going on, where Trump takes a tough line to try to get countries to act. But detractors say Trump is actually harming long-term U.S. interests and weakening the nation's influence by pushing away partners and embracing adversaries. Again, Tarun Chhabra of Brookings.
CHHABRA: He's more interested in the mano a mano summits, like the ones he's had with President Putin, with President Xi, Kim Jong Un. And he's naturally gravitated to authoritarian figures.
RASCOE: Trump's backers defend his meeting with North Korea's leader and his decision to crack down on China with tariffs. They acknowledge they're risky, but they say they could pay off big time. Fred Fleitz was the former chief of staff for Trump's national security adviser John Bolton. He says it was the right move to meet with Kim.
FRED FLEITZ: My answer to critics is, like, what else are we supposed to try? Our relations with North Korea was on a very dangerous trajectory just when Mr. Trump came into office.
RASCOE: But Trump administration officials acknowledged that North Korea has not made any significant progress toward denuclearization since the two leaders met. With a second Trump-Kim summit now planned for late February, Trump's unconventional approach to foreign policy will once again be tested. Ayesha Rascoe, NPR News, Washington.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Martin Luther King Jr. would have been 90 years old this year. And on today's holiday, the nation takes time to commemorate his legacy.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
And, of course, a big part of that legacy stems from how King was able to touch so many people with his oratory.
MARTIN: And on this day, we take the opportunity to remember some of his words. This, from the "I Have A Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR: Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time.
(APPLAUSE)
GREENE: And King's call for justice extended beyond America's shores. In a 1967 speech in New York City, he spoke out against the war in Vietnam.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
KING JR: We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those it calls enemy.
MARTIN: We've come to honor Martin Luther King Jr. by coming together for acts of service on this day. It's the kind of unity that King called for.
GREENE: And what gave him hope, even when progress toward the America he envisioned seemed slow.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
KING JR: And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.
(SOUNDBITE OF CRAIG ARMSTRONG'S "IF YOU SHOULD FALL")
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
A video clip showing a tense moment on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial went viral over the weekend. In it, we see a group of students from Covington Catholic, an all-boys high school from Covington, Ky. Many are wearing red make America great again hats. And they appeared to some to be taunting an older man who is beating a small drum and singing a Native American chant. Let's listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Cov Cath (ph) is best. Cov Cath is best. What? Cov Cath is best. Cov Cath is best.
NATHAN PHILLIPS: (Singing in Native American language).
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Singing, unintelligible).
GREENE: So this happened on Friday as people were gathering for two events in Washington, D.C., the March for Life and the Indigenous Peoples' March. The short video sparked a furor on social media. Since then, longer videos have provided fuller context. And there have been conflicting narratives about what led to this confrontation.
The man at the center of all of this who is singing in the video we just heard is a Native American activist and an elder from the Omaha nation named Nathan Phillips. And he's in our studios in Washington this morning. Mr. Phillips, thank you so much for coming in.
PHILLIPS: You're welcome. Thank you for having me here.
GREENE: So can you tell me how you came face to face with these students?
PHILLIPS: I was - found myself on the National Mall here in D.C. And while we were finishing up our Indigenous Peoples' March and rally, there was two groups of folks there that were having problems with each other. And it got to a point where one of my nephews said, Uncle, we got to do something.
GREENE: Can I just - I want to just make sure our listeners understand - I mean, there was this group of high-school students, as I mentioned. And then I gather that this other group you're talking about is the - some members of the Black Hebrew Israelites. I mean, they're a group who believes America's emancipated slaves are God's chosen people. Some of them are known to use offensive slurs against many different groups. Who were they - it sounds like some of these students from Kentucky felt that these remarks were directed at them.
PHILLIPS: Well, when they first set up - the Black Israelites - they were - the March for Life was still going on. And it was after the March for Life ended is when all these young people started saying what they say. And I was in between the two groups. And that's when I started with the drum, an instrument to talk to God with. That's what we use that drum for. It's...
GREENE: And trying to bring peace, it sounds like.
PHILLIPS: In the moment, I didn't realize what I was trying to do or if I should be doing anything. And when we were going to hit those drums, there was no intention of getting in between the two groups.
GREENE: It looked in the video like these students started surrounding you after you approached them. And I'm wondering if - like, why you decided to walk up to them and actually, it looked like, face them, you know, not face these other protesters, the Black Hebrew Israelites, but face these students from Kentucky. I'm wondering what was happening in the moment.
PHILLIPS: I was - well, I guess maybe it was a way of protecting them.
GREENE: You felt you were protecting the black Hebrew Israelites from these - these students from Kentucky.
PHILLIPS: Well, see, that wasn't so much that I was protecting anybody. But I was coming between something that I had been witnessing, you know, on the news, in - on the Facebook - racism - because you got to understand, I came from an indigenous peoples gathering. And it was full of prayer, full of promise of a better tomorrow. You know, that's - that was the message we was putting out.
GREENE: I want to be so careful with what you're saying.
PHILLIPS: Yes, yes.
GREENE: And forgive me for - for just really being - being very careful. You said you had seen things on the news. Are you saying that based on a lot of what has happened in our country recently, you were under the impression or making an assumption that a large group of young, white men might threaten a minority, who you saw, and that you saw this group of black Israel - Hebrew Israelites as potentially in danger by this large group of white men, based on what you had seen in the news in our country in recent months and years?
PHILLIPS: Yes. Thank you for that clarity because that's that's what it was, in my mind and in my heart - because when I seen those - those young men, I was seeing their faces. And the thing is is that those young men could have chose to not feed into those guys, those Israelite fellers. They could have chose the - the students' teachers, the students' chaperones could have instructed those students to exit that area, that this wasn't something that they needed to bring their high schools into and be involved in.
GREENE: Can I - can I ask a question this way? How much of what you were feeling was based on an assumption that a large group of young white men were outnumbering a small group of black protesters, and assuming that this could be very tense and there could be racism? And how much of it was about things you were actually hearing in this moment?
PHILLIPS: Well, the thing is - yeah. The thing is that there was no assumption that there was a large group. There was a large group. And it was only four black men. So there - there's no assumption there.
GREENE: The young man who was standing in front of you has identified himself in a statement as Nick Sandmann. And, you know, he said that he was intimidated by these other protesters you're talking about. He said that - that he never felt like he was blocking you. He said that, you didn't make any attempt to go around me, is the way he put it. And he said, quote - and this is about you - "it was clear to me that he had singled me out for a confrontation, although I'm not sure why." What do you - what do you make of that?
PHILLIPS: A young man trying to alter his story to make himself look good, maybe. I don't know. It's just...
GREENE: Did he do anything to - to offend you?
PHILLIPS: Well, it wasn't so much that - I read the statement he put out. And for myself, I didn't want anything wrong or bad for the - for the students, you know, the expulsions and - and like that. You know, that's...
GREENE: You don't want them to be punished for this.
PHILLIPS: It wasn't - well, now that I've read the statement, I'm - I'm kind of revisiting that. You know, it's not so much that I want punishment. But this young man has to come to some kind of understanding of where he was at and what he what he did. In his statement, he said he - he talked to his teacher, who was acting as a chaperone, to lead the chants to taunt the black guys. So he was one of the leaders of the chants of the taunting. So...
GREENE: And I mean, it - of course, his statement, it sounds like a different picture. It's just so complicated...
PHILLIPS: So that is the statement. That came from - right - his statement.
GREENE: Yeah. There's so much more that we could talk about here. I wish we had more time. Nathan Phillips is co-founder of the Native Youth Alliance. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it.
PHILLIPS: You bet.
(SOUNDBITE OF OPTO, OPIATE, ALVA NOTO'S "OPTO FILE 1")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Rachel Martin. Royal Caribbean says it has banned a 27-year-old passenger after he jumped from the 11th deck of the world's largest cruise ship. It's called the Symphony of the Seas, and it was docked in the Bahamas last week when Nick Naydev woke up from a night of drinking and decided to take the plunge. And, of course, pics or it didn't happen, so he filmed himself and posted the video. Was the thrill worth it? Unclear - but Royal Caribbean, which happens to be an NPR underwriter, has banned him for life. It's MORNING EDITION.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Four years ago, a Japanese organizing consultant published a book that was called "The Life Changing Magic Of Tidying Up."
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "TIDYING UP WITH MARIE KONDO")
MARIE KONDO: Hello. I'm Marie Kondo.
GREENE: Now Marie Kondo has a reality show on Netflix. She has people go through all of their possessions and throw out anything that doesn't spark joy.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "TIDYING UP WITH MARIE KONDO")
KONDO: First is clothing.
(LAUGHTER)
KONDO: I can't reach. Next is books.
GREENE: To help us understand how this famous de-clutterer became such a sensation, I spoke to Linda Holmes. She's host of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. Hi, Linda.
LINDA HOLMES, BYLINE: Hi, David.
GREENE: So you like this show?
HOLMES: I do like it. It's a lot of fun.
GREENE: It is, right? And you learn things. Like, I learned exactly how to fold a fitted sheet which is something I've been struggling with since - I don't know - like, I was 12.
HOLMES: Yeah, I think if that was all that people took away from this, they'd feel like it was worthwhile.
GREENE: The idea of a reality show that is about making over your home or making over your life, that's not new. So where does this fit in the constellation of all those shows?
HOLMES: Well, there haven't just been lots of home makeover shows. There have even been other cleaning and organizing shows. But I think this one is different because it brings together that genre of television but also what you might call self-care culture, which is mostly aimed at women. And it's kind of a encouragement to be at peace and take care of yourself. And her methods of cleaning also incorporate a lot of stuff about feeling good and happy, rather than just make your office more functional.
GREENE: I want to play a clip from one conversation that happened in an episode. This was between Marie Kondo and a couple, Rachel and Kevin Friend.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "TIDYING UP WITH MARIE KONDO")
KONDO: (Through interpreter) So both of you work.
RACHEL FRIEND: Well, he mostly works. I teach intercultural communication a few days a week. But I'm mostly home with the kids. So I was going to say, ever since I had kids was when I started to get really, like, anxious about the house being not organized.
KEVIN FRIEND: I'm 50-60 hours a week, yeah. And then sometimes on the weekends...
GREENE: And, Linda, the episode I watched, I got, almost, a little emotional because it was really digging into some sensitive questions about families. And you mentioned the focus on women, that there seems to be a gender divide that really is exposed here.
HOLMES: Yeah, I think that most of the episodes that feature heterosexual couples do illustrate a kind of a responsibility that the woman often feels for household management. And I think that one of the things Marie Kondo wants to do is remove some of that burden, less by redistributing work and partly just by lessening the overall amount of work.
GREENE: Now, there has been some backlash against her on social media and then backlash to the backlash, suggesting...
HOLMES: Yeah. Sure.
GREENE: ...That there's some racism involved in the backlash. What exactly are you making of all that? What's going on?
HOLMES: Well, there's been some backlash that has to do with things like - how dare you suggest I throw away my books? There are people for whom, you know, you might as well suggest that they throw away their pets. It's very personal and intense for them.
GREENE: Sure.
HOLMES: I don't think all of that is necessarily racist. But I think there is an element of dismissiveness toward her that is probably more likely in any show that involves women of color, than it does other hosts of shows.
I do think there's a little bit of kind of exoticizing her that can be unfortunate. And sometimes I think you miss the nuance of what she's saying because the English translation doesn't always capture all the nuances of the Japanese language that she originally is working in.
GREENE: What's the most important thing you've learned from her?
HOLMES: I think the most important thing I've learned from her is that she wants you to value the things that you own and own only the things that are really valuable to you. Have less stuff. Buy less stuff.
It's not necessarily a matter of throwing all your stuff away over and over and over again. It's just a matter of living with less things.
GREENE: Good lesson to live by. Linda Holmes from NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. Linda, thanks.
HOLMES: Thank you, David.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
There's been a military confrontation between two longtime sworn enemies, Israel and Iran. According to Israel, Iranian forces in Syria fired a missile. Israel intercepted it, and Israel then struck Iranian targets in Syria. At least 11 were reported killed, including four Syrian troops. NPR's Daniel Estrin joins us from Jerusalem to find out more about what happened. Good morning, Daniel.
DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: Hi, Rachel.
MARTIN: What can you tell us? What other details do you have?
ESTRIN: Well, all this started on Sunday. Syria said it struck down Israeli missiles targeting a site near the Damascus Airport. Now, Israel's not commenting on that. But then Sunday afternoon, Israel said the Quds force, which is an elite Iranian military force active in Syria, fired a medium-range, surface-to-surface missile toward the Golan Heights, which Israel controls. Israel captured the Golan from Syria about 50 years ago. And there's an Israeli ski site there, and listen to this clip from an Israeli snowboarder. He managed to capture on film Israel intercepting the Iranian missile mid-air.
(SOUNDBITE OF MISSILE SOARING)
ESTRIN: So after that, Iranian missile was shot down. Overnight, Israel said its warplanes struck Iranian military sites in Syria, as well as Syrian aerial defenses that had shot at the Israeli planes.
MARTIN: I can't get over that scene of a snowboarder (laughter) watching all this transpire in the sky...
ESTRIN: Right.
MARTIN: ...Above him. How - I mean, this is rare - right? - this kind of military engagement between Israel and Iran.
ESTRIN: Well, it is rare for Iran to fire a missile toward an Israeli target, though it's not the first time Israel says Iranian forces in Syria have targeted Israel. There was - something happened in May where Israel said Iran fired missiles toward Israeli targets. But what we're seeing here, Rachel, is Israel's campaign against Iran coming out of the shadows. It's only been in the last few weeks that Israel has revealed that it has carried out thousands of attacks on Iran, Iranian proxies in Syria and Lebanon in recent years. The big picture here is that Israel is trying to stop Iran from building up its military presence in Syria, which Israel considers to be a direct threat on its border. And what we have seen today is what military officials in Israel call, quote, unquote, "the war between the wars." And there is concern that this kind of thing could escalate into a full-fledged war between Iran and its proxies against Israel.
MARTIN: Wow. So that's what I was going to ask - if this is a one-off, or if this could get worse? And you're saying it could.
ESTRIN: Well, for now, today things are quiet. No more missile attacks, but that Israeli ski site remains closed today. And Israel says it's on alert.
MARTIN: NPR international correspondent Daniel Estrin joining us from Jerusalem. Daniel, thanks. We appreciate it.
ESTRIN: Thank you, Rachel.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
President Trump has offered what he calls a compromise plan to end the partial government shutdown now the longest in history. He gets a $5.7 billion border wall in this deal. And in exchange, Democrats would get protections for several hundred thousand immigrants. Democratic leaders rejected the plan outright, including Representative Jim Clyburn who said this on "Fox News Sunday."
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FOX NEWS SUNDAY")
JIM CLYBURN: I think it's a non-starter for him to ask for a permanent wall and for us to have a temporary fix.
MARTIN: Here to talk through all this NPR White House correspondent Scott Horsley. Good morning, Scott.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Good morning, Rachel.
MARTIN: Does this amount to real compromise on the part of President Trump?
HORSLEY: The Democrats don't think it does. The president's plan would give Trump the full $5.7 billion he wants - enough to build a 230 mile section of border barrier. And in exchange, he is offering a temporary reprieve from deportation for both the DACA recipients - that is the young people who were brought to the country illegally as children - as well as several hundred thousand Haitians and Central Americans whose temporary protective status has been in jeopardy. You heard Congressman Clyburn say that's a permanent wall in exchange for a temporary fix. And moreover, Democrats say it's a temporary fix to a problem that the president himself created by threatening to rescind DACA and that temporary legal status.
MARTIN: OK. So assuming the Democrats stick with their position that this is a non-starter, what happens now?
HORSLEY: (Laughter) Well, Rachel, only Tony Romo can predict the future. But...
MARTIN: (Laughter).
HORSLEY: Here's what we know. The Democratic House plans to vote this week on legislation that would reopen the government and does include some additional money for border security. Democrats are - but not a wall. Democrats want to show that their opposition to the president's wall does not equal opposition to border security. And then on the Senate side, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has been largely invisible throughout this government shutdown, will suddenly spring into action this week. And the Senate will take up the president's offer. Here's Vice President Pence talking about that on "Fox News Sunday."
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FOX NEWS SUNDAY")
VICE PRES MIKE PENCE: The Senate leadership and Senator McConnell have agreed to bring this bill to the floor on Tuesday. Congress will begin its work.
HORSLEY: Now, on the surface, none of this looks likely to produce a resolution to the shutdown. But the big question is, does the president's offer made over the weekend change the blame game? Up until now, in the public perception, Republicans and the president have been shouldering the lion's share of the blame for this government shutdown. Only if the president's offer changes that public perception will Democrats suddenly feel some new pressure to give ground.
MARTIN: Well, everyone's going to feel pressure as the shutdown continues because hundreds and thousands of federal workers are anticipating losing yet another paycheck this Friday, right?
HORSLEY: That's right. And if this drags on just for another day or two, that second paycheck is in jeopardy. You have the White House economists now saying that this shutdown is costing the U.S. economy a tenth of a percentage point of growth for every week it goes on. That means by the end of this week, Rachel, we will have lost a full half percentage point of economic growth. And moreover, the furloughed workers are going to be subtracted from the January employment figures when that comes out next month. We've had eight-plus years of uninterrupted job growth in this country. That could come to an end when the January job figures come out. That's a temporary blip because that'll be reversed when the workers get their backpay. But it will be a temporary stain on what has been a record run of job growth and certainly a black eye for the policymakers responsible for this shutdown.
MARTIN: All right, and maybe the economic impact is what will finally get Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump in a room negotiating. NPR White House correspondent Scott Horsley. Thanks, Scott.
HORSLEY: Good to be with you, Rachel.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
All right. We turn now to Cristina Jimenez. She is executive director of United We Dream, a group that advocates for young immigrants in the United States. She is a former DACA recipient herself, and she opposes President Trump's offer. Thanks so much for being with us this morning.
CRISTINA JIMENEZ: Great to be here.
MARTIN: Can you explain how you view President Trump's proposal. What's wrong with it, in your opinion?
JIMENEZ: For us, we are not going to fall into this trick. The proposal that the president laid out, it's more than the over $5 billion for a wall. He also wants more millions for more agents that are already terrorizing our communities. These will mean more detentions in our communities and even more kids in cages. And, as we know, there are 15,000 of them still in cages, those kids that have been separated by this administration from their families. So for us, it's a clear no to this proposal. If the president really wants to protect immigrant youth impacted by DACA, families impacted by TPS, which - both programs which he terminated himself, he could reopen the government and start having a real conversation with Congress.
MARTIN: We should just point out that calling for more border security agents is something Democrats have also said that they want. I mean, the president calls this a commonsense compromise. Isn't this what compromise looks like, sides making concessions? Both sides aren't going to be happy? DACA protection, even if it's temporary, is something that I imagine would ease the nerves of a lot of people whom you advocate for.
JIMENEZ: Well, you know, we are living under a constant state of terror and fear in our communities. And that has been since Day One that this administration took power in 2016. It is not a compromise when what you keep pushing for, like the president is doing in this case, is the same list of anti-immigrant policies that him and Stephen Miller have been sending to Congress since last year. It is the same list. So when you are pushing the same list of policies and have also rejected every bipartisan proposal to provide a permanent legislation that will protect immigrant youth and others, we know that this is not a real compromise.
MARTIN: Is that something that would change your mind, if the president said - we have no indication at this point that he would, but - if he offered a permanent DACA fix, a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients, would you accept funding for a border wall then?
JIMENEZ: The conversation for us is for Congress to have a conversation about solutions that will be permanent without hurting our communities, without more agents and without terrorizing our communities more. And we're open to have that conversation.
MARTIN: Does that mean, yes, if a permanent DACA fix were floated, that's something you would accept or at least consider?
JIMENEZ: We'll be open to the conversation.
MARTIN: Cristina Jimenez, executive director of United We Dream. It's an advocacy group led by immigrant youth. Thank you so much for being with us this morning. We really appreciate it.
JIMENEZ: Great to be here.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We're going to shift gears now and focus in on Mexico. Authorities there say more than 80 people have died in a gasoline pipeline explosion. At least 80 additional people are injured, and dozens more are still missing. The pipeline exploded after it was illegally tapped by residents of a rural town about two hours outside Mexico City, sending fuel gushing into the air. Fuel theft is big business in Mexico, and the president there has vowed to crack down on the practice. But as NPR's Carrie Kahn reports, that's a tough fight because small, rural towns all along the pipeline's route have actually grown dependent and complicit in the illegal fuel market.
CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: One of Mexico's key pipelines runs from the Gulf of Mexico west, all the way to Mexico City. It's the most efficient way to get gasoline to the capital, but it's also a vulnerable transport method. Much of its 186 miles runs through rural, sparsely populated towns with few police around. Check out Tlanalapa, in the state of Hidalgo, population 10,000.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL RINGING)
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: An ice cream vendor rings the bell on his small cart outside the town's elementary school as kids scurry out the main gate. Else Campos (ph) is picking up her daughter.
ELSE CAMPOS: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: "I live on the road right out of town, the one that takes you straight to the pipeline," says Campos. "Everyone in town knows where it is," she says.
MARIA CRISTINA GUTIERREZ: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: "And everyone here knows that's where the thieves, known locally as huachicoleros, tap into it," chimes Maria Cristina Gutierrez (ph), another local mom. These days, that road is filled with military trucks and armed guards working for Pemex, the national oil company. They're part of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's crackdown on gas thieves. He's sent thousands of troops all over the country to protect the pipelines. Fernando Juarez Castillo, who owns the corner liquor store in Tlanalapa, is rooting for the president. Sitting in his small store, he shelves fava beans while waiting for customers.
FERNANDO JUAREZ CASTILLO: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: "I'm against them, these thieves. They're stealing my money," says Juarez, referring to the losses suffered by Pemex. Oil revenues, while down substantially in recent years, still provide about a fifth of public funding, according to Bloomberg. And while gas theft has been going on for decades, thieves have taken the practice to new heights in recent years, stealing more than $3 billion last year alone. And everyone is in on the theft - many gas station owners, local officials and even Pemex's own workers. They provide the technical know-how.
Mexico City-based energy analyst David Shields says the new president should be commended for sending troops to guard the pipelines.
DAVID SHIELDS: But I think we also need to make sure that people actually get a stiff sentence and go to jail for gasoline theft.
KAHN: He says, long-term, it's a difficult problem to solve. Complicity is widespread. A federal police officer, who asked me not to use his voice or name, out of fear of losing his job, told me local cops are often involved in the racket. He says, five months ago, Tlanalapa's town ambulance was confiscated after caught transporting dozens of plastic containers full of black-market gas.
(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINE SAWING)
KAHN: At a nearby construction site, a worker says buying stolen gas is easy and everyone in town does it. He didn't want to give his name because he buys on the black market. He says thieves don't worry about getting caught, and they've even started making home deliveries.
UNIDENTIFIED CONSTRUCTION WORKER: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: "Salaries are so low here in Mexico, people do what they have to do to get by," he says. "Black-market fuel is half the price of gas sold in stations. So many people are tired of being poor, they get into the illegal business. It's good, easy money," he says. Carrie Kahn, NPR News, Tlanalapa, Mexico.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
One of Amazon's shiny new headquarters will be located in a part of New York City that has long struggled. It'll be just a few blocks away from Queensbridge Houses, which is the name of the largest public housing complex in North America. So what will that mean for locals? NPR's Jasmine Garsd reports from Queensbridge.
JASMINE GARSD, BYLINE: The Queensbridge public houses are just two subway stops away from bustling Manhattan. But Queensbridge feels like a completely different world. Chris Hanway is the executive director of the Jacob A. Riis Neighborhood Settlement, a nonprofit which provides services to the community.
CHRIS HANWAY: Queensbridge has always been literally and psychologically isolated. It's got the river on one side, the bridge on another and then sort of light manufacturing buildings around it.
GARSD: In his seminal 1994 album "Illmatic," New York rapper Nas, who is from Queensbridge, penned an ode to the neighborhood...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MEMORY LANE (SITTIN' IN DA PARK)")
NAS: (Rapping) It's real - grew up a trife life, the times of white lines...
GARSD: ...And the strength of its people.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MEMORY LANE (SITTIN' IN DA PARK)")
NAS: (Rapping) Coming out of Queensbridge - now let me...
GARSD: It didn't take long for big companies to notice how close the neighborhood is to Manhattan. In the last decade or so, Ralph Lauren opened an office nearby, and so did JetBlue. But activists say, for many Queensbridge residents, it's like it never happened. Hanway says unemployment here is high. And that's why when Amazon announced it's setting up shop just a few blocks away...
HANWAY: People literally shrugged their shoulders and said, well, we've been down this road before. It's not really going to affect us in any way - because they've lived this experience.
GARSD: Amazon, which is an NPR sponsor, declined to comment. But the company has promised to fund infrastructure, a school and a tech incubator. It also says it will host job fairs for locals. Chris Hanway has met with Amazon officials and made it clear he wants more concrete promises than that.
HANWAY: What are our goals? How many local residents are we going to hire - into what kind of jobs? How will we get those residents ready for these jobs? And there have to be benchmarks, and Amazon has to be held accountable for that.
GARSD: On a chilly weeknight, I head over to an area near the Queensbridge Houses. It's a lot of warehouses and storage units. But inside one building, I find a software developer training class.
UNIDENTIFIED LECTURER: In other words, you're able to take your data from your app and...
GARSD: The students listening intently to the lecture are mostly Latino, African-American, and there's plenty of women - faces that are scarce in Silicon Valley. The class is part of a nonprofit called Pursuit, which trains low-income adults for tech jobs. Pursuit is also the designated community partner, co-developer and part owner of the new Amazon headquarters. Here's CEO and founder Jukay Hsu.
JUKAY HSU: I think we have a unique opportunity here and for New York to be a place where the technology community can thrive but also be inclusive.
GARSD: Hsu, who was once a classmate of Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard University, says he saw how his school friends revolutionized technology. But then he'd come home to his native Queens and wonder about those left behind. He wants to make sure Amazon's new headquarters relies heavily on local talent.
HSU: Amazon, when it's here, can be embedded in Queens. Amazon's coming to Queens, but we want to bring Queens to Amazon.
GARSD: In a lounge area outside the Pursuit lecture room, I meet a 26-year-old new coding student, Ivy Strickland. She's from Harlem. She tells me she's excited about Amazon coming to Queens.
IVY STRICKLAND: I'm the youngest of three children of a single mom. My mom had us when she was a teenager. So imagine me, someone who now makes, like, under $20,000 a year, able to get a job that could pay me enough that I would be able to do certain things, like pay my mom's mortgage or help her out.
GARSD: Although she only recently started coding, she loves it. She says she sees it as a metaphor of how, piece by piece, you can build something amazing.
STRICKLAND: To see the way that you can take something so small and grow, I guess for me personally, to know where I've come from, it's like the same thing. I can see myself growing.
GARSD: Whether or not this city and this neighborhood will be able to grow and build something good with Amazon remains to be seen. For the time being, there's hope, a good measure of distrust and plenty of that legendary Queens strength.
Jasmine Garsd, NPR News, Queens.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Today for our American Anthem series, a song that's been heard over and over and over again in many households where the kids dictate the soundtrack.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LET IT GO")
IDINA MENZEL: (Singing) Let it go, let it go, can't hold it back anymore.
MARTIN: "Let It Go" from the Disney animated film "Frozen" - Idina Menzel is singing this version. The song won an Oscar and a Grammy. But here's something you might not know. For many people with disabilities, "Let It Go" became a personal anthem. Here's NPR's Joseph Shapiro.
JOSEPH SHAPIRO, BYLINE: First, some background - in "Frozen," "Let It Go" is sung by Queen Elsa just moments after her dark, dark secret has been discovered. For years, she's tried to hide that she possesses a magic power.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LET IT GO")
MENZEL: (Singing) Don't let them in. Don't let them see. Be the good girl you always have to be. Conceal, don't feel. Don't let them know.
SHAPIRO: Elsa can create snow and ice. It flies from her fingertips.
KRISTEN ANDERSON-LOPEZ: She's this little girl. Nobody has ever been born like her.
ROBERT LOPEZ: This girl with a secret.
MENZEL: Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez - they're married - wrote the songs for "Frozen." Elsa can't control her power. On the day of her coronation, by accident, she turns her entire kingdom to ice. She runs away to the isolation of a distant mountain. Lopez and Anderson-Lopez started writing the song thinking about how Elsa was ashamed and afraid.
ANDERSON-LOPEZ: I pitched the idea of "Let It Go" as the hook being about letting go of her past, letting go of the expectations but also, how it could let her power go. And then Bobby started playing this vamp that had all this pain in it, that (vocalizing) that was full of all that fear and shame and secret isolated pain.
SHAPIRO: Now alone, Queen Elsa accepts that she has these powers. She starts to let go of her shame.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LET IT GO")
MENZEL: (Singing) The snow blows white on the mountain tonight.
LOPEZ: For this to be a good musical, that's one of the best parts - when a character transforms.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LET IT GO")
MENZEL: (Singing) A kingdom of isolation, and it looks like I'm the queen.
SHAPIRO: The moment when Elsa transforms and accepts who she is, many people with disabilities could identify, like Michelle Black.
MICHELLE BLACK: She gave me words to describe this bipolar that I had that nobody had given me before.
SHAPIRO: Black's diagnosis of bipolar disorder was still pretty new and confusing to her and her family when the film came out.
BLACK: She used words like, the wind is howling like this swirling storm inside. And that's exactly - oh, I'm going to cry (laughter). That's exactly what it felt like to me - this swirling storm of emotions and thoughts and feelings going on inside of me that no one else understood. But Elsa seemed to get it.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LET IT GO")
MENZEL: (Singing) Couldn't keep it in. Heaven knows I've tried.
SHAPIRO: Black is a choreographer in Utah where she lives with her husband and three young children. She says sometimes, she liked her bursts of creativity and the energy. But when depression came, she'd spend hours in her room. And she could be mean to people. She had that in common with Elsa.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LET IT GO")
MENZEL: (Singing) Let it go, let it go, can't hold it back anymore.
SHAPIRO: The day Michelle Black watched "Frozen" in a theater, she was sitting next to her 7-year-old son.
BLACK: And I just - I started bawling watching this - especially this song because someone finally understood me.
SHAPIRO: It wasn't just people with bipolar disorder and other mental health conditions. Autistics, people with physical disabilities identified, too. For years, long before "Frozen," people with disabilities often felt misunderstood, isolated and excluded. A big change came in 1990 when President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans With Disabilities Act into law.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GEORGE H.W. BUSH: Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down. God bless you all.
SHAPIRO: More people with disabilities began to reject the stigma, even when people around them still saw their disability as a negative.
CARA LIEBOWITZ: When you tell someone you have a disability, they go, oh, I'm so sorry. No, there's nothing to be sorry about. This is who I am.
SHAPIRO: Cara Liebowitz is 26, born two years after the ADA became law. She uses a wheelchair. She has cerebral palsy. So Elsa feels like an ally.
LIEBOWITZ: Elsa says, I don't care what they're going to say. And I love that line.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LET IT GO")
MENZEL: (Singing) I don't care what they're going to say. Let the storm rage on. The cold never bothered me anyway.
LIEBOWITZ: For once, she's confident in herself. And she's not letting other people's opinions drag her down.
SHAPIRO: The Census Bureau estimates that about 1 in 4 Americans has a disability. On college campuses, the number of students seeking mental health services keeps going up and up. One college health research group asked students, have you ever been diagnosed with depression? In 2000, 1 in 10 said yes - today, 1 in 4. It's Elsa's generation - a generation that's quicker, like Cara Liebowitz, to accept having a disability.
LIEBOWITZ: She's actively using her ice powers. And they're part of who she is, just like disability is part of who we are.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LET IT GO")
MENZEL: (Singing) It's time to see what I can do, to test the limits and break through. No right, no wrong, no rules for me. I'm free.
ANDERSON-LOPEZ: No rights, no wrongs, no rules for me, I'm free.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LET IT GO")
MENZEL: (Singing) Let it go.
SHAPIRO: When Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez wrote "Let It Go," they weren't thinking about disability. They were thinking more about the pressure to be perfect - perfect as a woman, perfect as a student expected to get the best grades.
ANDERSON-LOPEZ: I think it's the ultimate individual over society moment, especially those individuals who have - are working so darn hard every day...
LOPEZ: To conform.
ANDERSON-LOPEZ: ...To conform and fit in and meet expectations.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LET IT GO")
MENZEL: (Singing) My power flurries through the air into the ground.
SHAPIRO: Lots of people identify with "Let It Go." It's an anthem for a time when people take pride in who they are the way they are. Joseph Shapiro, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LET IT GO")
MENZEL: (Singing) Let it go. Let it go.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
So the Senate is expected to vote on a bill this week to fund the government.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Yeah, the Senate Appropriations Committee released text of the package last night. It includes President Trump's offer to extend protections for DACA recipients for three years. And in exchange, he would get the $5.7 billion he wants for a border wall.
That alone had Democrats calling the deal a nonstarter before it was even written. But it also adds $12.7 billion for natural disaster relief. This is something Democrats have pushed for. So could that sweeten the deal here?
GREENE: Well, let's ask that question, among others, to NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Hi, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Hi, David.
GREENE: All right, so tell us more about what's in this bill that the Senate's going to be taking a vote on.
LIASSON: Well, the bill has disaster relief in it, as you said, as a sweetener. And the big question is, could this proposal of the president's that will be on the Senate floor bring us any closer to the end of the shutdown? And it could. I don't think it's the final deal. But the president is now talking the language of compromise. He's come off the notion that the wall has to be 2,000 miles long. He's added relief for the DREAMers, young people brought here, sometimes illegally, by their parents.
This is not the final deal. Democrats would need more. Trump has not said how much less money for the wall he's willing to take than $5.7 billion. But the first step is to see if this can get 60 votes on the Senate floor. Democrats say it can't. But then they'll have to keep talking.
GREENE: Will they have to keep talking? I mean, so far Democrats have basically said to the president, we're not going to talk, at least publicly saying, we're not going to talk until you open the government. But - but you think this is a window. I mean, Democrats are going to be forced to actually start negotiating and getting to some of the nitty gritty here.
LIASSON: Yes, I do. I think that usually, in the past, when we've had these standoffs, there's a mechanism where the government is reopened week by week. They have to keep on voting while they keep on talking. Vice President Pence said on television yesterday this wasn't a final offer. He said the legislative process is a negotiation. That sounded so normal.
GREENE: (Laughter).
LIASSON: But I do think you're going to hear more from Democrats about their vision of border security. If the argument is about border security, the president wins. If it's about a wall, the Democrats win. And I think that they are going to start talking more about their vision of what they want on the border.
GREENE: Mara, can I ask you more about what the president was offering on this - the DACA protection for three years? Because, I mean, most Republicans have been standing by him through this and supporting this deal. But some of his supporters are calling that DACA offer amnesty. Could that hurt him with part of his base?
LIASSON: Well, that's always the big question. I think right now Republicans in Congress are pretty united behind him. And yes, the and cultures of the world, radio talk show hosts, are calling this amnesty. But Republicans in Congress want the government open because they're being blamed for the shutdown, so far more than Democrats are. Republicans I've talked to say that Trump's hold on his base is firm enough that he probably could get some relief for the DREAMers in here.
The big question is, could he go all the way to a path to citizenship, which is going to be hard since that's been defined as amnesty by the vice president? Where is the sweet spot? How much less money could he get for the wall, and how much deportation relief would he have to offer for the DREAMers?
GREENE: Many questions to answer as we go forward and as that partial government shutdown for now continues. NPR's Mara Liasson. Thank you, Mara.
LIASSON: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GREENE: Let's talk more about this shutdown. More than 50,000 TSA employees have been working without pay since the partial government shutdown began over a month ago now.
MARTIN: Yeah, and they're getting help from some unusual corners. Members of the band Kiss have been offering them free food at airport locations of their restaurant, which is called Rock and Brews. Here's Kiss band member Paul Stanley in a Facebook video.
(SOUNDBITE OF FACEBOOK VIDEO)
PAUL STANLEY: While the TSA continues to work on our behalf without pay, we want to make sure that we can at least provide them with a delicious meal to show our support.
MARTIN: But more and more TSA workers are actually just calling out sick altogether, as many as 1/10 this past Sunday. TSA released a statement saying that many of those employees said they can't get to work because of financial limitations.
GREENE: Let's talk to NPR's David Schaper in Chicago. He's been covering this. Hi there, David.
DAVID SCHAPER, BYLINE: Good morning.
GREENE: So it's amazing. As I've been going through airports and going through security lines, it seems like every passenger says to a TSA employee, like, thank you for working without pay. And it sounds like it's now getting to a point where more and more are having to call out sick. What are they telling you about this decision?
SCHAPER: Well, as you guys just said, they're not actually saying (imitating cough) I'm sick; I can't come in. They're really not able to go in because of the financial limitations. You know, working without pay for a TSA employee is a difficult thing because they're among the lowest paid federal government employees. They make about 35 to $43,000 a year on average. That's about 17 to 20 bucks an hour.
So a lot of them live just paycheck to paycheck or do just a little bit better than that. And so while the vast majority are still working their shifts, more and more of them are saying they've got to go do something else to make a little more cash. They've got to put food on the table.
So they're going to pick up work elsewhere, working odd jobs, waiting tables, whatever they can find. Or they'll stay home, stay home with the kids so a spouse can pick up extra shifts or so they just don't have that extra expense of childcare during the day.
GREENE: So a lot of hard decisions, obviously, the shutdown clearly disrupting life for them, their families. What impact is this or could this have on travel and airports if this goes on?
SCHAPER: Well, at this point we're not seeing, you know, flights canceled, flight delays and people missing flights. But we are starting to see more and more airports closing security checkpoints because of a shortage of screeners and lines getting longer at certain airports. You know, there - there were a bunch of extra screeners added to airports in Atlanta, at LaGuardia in New York, at the Newark Airport.
There were long lines, apparently, over the weekend in New Orleans, at Baltimore-Washington Airport because they had closed checkpoints. Houston's had some problems. It depends on the airport and how many employees in that - in that particular area are calling in. But it hasn't just grown to that point yet of where we're going to see canceled flights and huge disruptions to air travel.
GREENE: Is it just airport security employees? Or are there other employees at airports who are impacted by the shutdown?
SCHAPER: No, actually the FAA has hundred - has thousands of inspectors, technicians and safety specialists who inspect the planes, who, you know, do everything from licensing pilots to making sure that the air traffic control equipment is working properly. And they are working without pay. A lot of them weren't actually considered safety critical and essential employees when the shutdown began.
But a lot of them got called back to work last week and are on the job now. But they're going to have the same sort of financial troubles soon if they have to to keep working and keep doing these important jobs without pay. And that's where the ripple effect could come, where - where air travel could be affected.
GREENE: NPR's David Schaper, talking to us from Chicago. David, thanks.
SCHAPER: My pleasure.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GREENE: All right, now we want to talk about the political turmoil in Venezuela and what's looking like an uncertain future for that country's leader.
MARTIN: Yeah, officers in the National Guard in Venezuela basically went rogue and posted a video on social media early Monday morning.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO)
UNIDENTIFIED VENEZUELAN NATIONAL GUARDSMAN: (Speaking Spanish).
MARTIN: So in this video they are calling people to the streets to support their uprising against the president, Nicolas Maduro. The attempt is the latest in a whole string of calls to remove Maduro from power. The Venezuelan president was sworn into his second term earlier this month. But many, including the United States, have called Maduro's government illegitimate. He faces an opposition-run congress that is calling for the military to turn against him.
GREENE: And NPR's Philip Reeves is in Caracas covering all of this. And Phil, start if you can by telling us exactly what unfolded here yesterday.
PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: Well, it's not entirely clear. The authorities say that in the early hours, a group of National Guardsmen in Caracas took a police captain hostage, travelled across town in several military trucks, kidnapped four more officers, raided an outpost, stole a bunch of weapons and then were captured after some sort of confrontation just before that - that video was posted online calling on people to abandon Maduro. And other videos appeared too. And now the government says that 27 guardsmen have been arrested and will face what they describe as the full weight of the law.
GREENE: Well, talk to me about the broader political situation here because while this was members of the National Guard, some officers who turned against him, Maduro is focusing his criticism on congress, saying congress is trying to destabilize the country. What exactly is he talking about?
REEVES: Yeah, congress, or the National Assembly, as it's called here, is opposition-controlled. And it's long been opposed to Maduro and the ruling Socialist Party. In fact, Maduro and the party have stripped it of all its powers. But now it's launching a new drive to oust him, arguing that his second term, which has just begun, is illegitimate because it was the result of a fraudulent election.
And in this, the National Assembly has the support of the U.S. and dozens of other countries who are also stepping up pressure right now on Maduro. And the National Assembly also has a new young leader. He's 35, Juan Guaido. And he has said that he's willing to be an interim president for a transitional period leading to new elections if the public supports that and, crucially, if the military supports that.
GREENE: Phil, I mean, we've talked about with you how hard it has been for people in Venezuela. This country has been through so much economic turmoil of late. I mean, how shaky is this political moment? Could Maduro lose his grip on power? And could there be a real period of chaos and uncertainty going forward?
REEVES: Well, the country is in terrible shape. But remember, Maduro still controls the supreme court. He still appears to have the support of the top military command. And he still has the all-powerful legislature that he created last year, the constituent assembly, which is packed with his supporters. He still has that at his disposal.
But things do appear to be moving. The opposition's called for a nationwide day of protest on Wednesday. They're expecting a big turnout. We'll have to see. But there's a lot of buzz about it online.
GREENE: NPR's Philip Reeves this morning in Caracas, Venezuela. Phil, thank you.
REEVES: You're most welcome.
(SOUNDBITE OF MEMORY'S "OUTERSPACE")
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may be a freshman representative, but she is already making an impact. She has a bigger Twitter following than the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. And she has policy positions to the left of many of her peers in Congress.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: It's time to remember that universal college education, trade school, a federal jobs guarantee, exploration of a universal basic income were not proposed in 2016. They were proposed in 1940 by the president of the United States.
GREENE: Now, her commitment to ideology over process and party have put her at odds at times with some veteran Democrats who have encouraged her to take some time to learn the way things work. Rick Perlstein has studied the rise of the American conservative movement, and he is calling Ocasio-Cortez's rise a moment of change for the Democratic Party.
RICK PERLSTEIN: I think, in a word, it set the party - or at least the activist faction of this party that's really kind of driving the energy - is much more unapologetic than it has been in the recent past.
GREENE: What would you say has been apologetic in the Democratic Party, and why do you think the party had gone in that direction?
PERLSTEIN: Sure. Let me give you an example. In the middle of the 1970s, the Senator Edmund Muskie, who was basically the Senate's No. 1 environmentalist, introduced amendments to basically require the car industry to have fuel economy standards. And the car industry said, we can't do that; we scientifically and literally cannot do that. And Muskie said, I don't care; do it anyway. And they came back with kind of a counteroffer on a piece of paper. You know, this is our next negotiating position. And one of Muskie's aides folded that piece of paper into a paper airplane and sailed it over the heads of the lobbyists.
GREENE: (Laughter).
PERLSTEIN: And basically, he called the bluff. And, you know, he used the power of the environmental movement and the enthusiasm that it had, and he passed fuel economy standards. That kind of lack of apology was something that you really saw kind of receding into the background with the Reagan victory. Immediately, they started becoming, you know, afraid of their own shadow and stopped advancing those kinds of policy gains - not just policy consolidations. You know, the kind of things she's talking about - free college, like we had in the '50s and '60s, you know, postal banking, raising the top marginal tax rates. And, you know, these are opening bargaining positions, and they're going to change the conversation.
GREENE: But isn't she saying some of the same things as people like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and other Democrats? Is what she is presenting that brand new in the party?
PERLSTEIN: Well, she's part of a movement, right? I mean, she was recruited by veterans of the Bernie Sanders campaign, the Justice Democrats. And the fact is, she's part of a critical mass. You know, a party needs all kinds of people. It needs show horses. It needs work horses. It needs legislative technicians. It needs communicators. And, you know, the fact that she isn't the answer to the alpha and the omega of what the Democratic Party needs - I suspect she'd be the first person to admit that.
GREENE: So if you put her in a category of people like Elizabeth Warren, like, say, Bernie Sanders, why is she - I mean, have such a following right now?
PERLSTEIN: That's a great question.
GREENE: I mean, a lot of Americans...
PERLSTEIN: That's right.
GREENE: A lot of Democrats seem - I mean, just they're following her on social media. They seem totally fascinated.
PERLSTEIN: That's right. I think every transformative politician in America that I'm aware of has been able to communicate with the public in fresh, new and exciting ways. And her ability to educate people on Twitter, on Instagram about politics in a way that's not just, you know, kind of chewy but actually funny and entertaining - it reminds me of what someone like FDR did on the radio. You know, when he was trying to convince the American public that we needed to pass a lend-lease program - that we basically needed to provide weapons to England so they could defend themselves against the Nazis, he would say things like when your neighbor's house is on fire, you know, you're going to let him run the garden hose from your water supply so your house doesn't catch on fire, right? And everyone's like, oh, that sounds good; that's perfectly reasonable; that's - yeah, I'm for the Lend-Lease Act. That's the kind of communicating that AOC, as she's been known, has been doing on Twitter.
GREENE: I just want to pause for a second because you are comparing a 29-year-old member of Congress who has literally just started her career in Congress to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
PERLSTEIN: Well, you know, there's a wait-and-see element definitely. But when it comes to communication and the ability to kind of drive people to a message, I think it's very similar to a Roosevelt. It's very similar to a Reagan. It's very similar to a Winston Churchill. Whether she can convert that into a career of accomplishment, you know, that's going to be very exciting for us to watch.
GREENE: I guess there's a lot to see as her career plays out.
PERLSTEIN: Yeah, wait and see.
GREENE: That was historian Rick Perlstein talking about Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
And now we take a moment to remember guitarist Reggie Young.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
You might not know that name, but you certainly are familiar with some of the monster hits he played in, like Dusty Springfield's "Son Of A Preacher Man."
(SOUNDBITE OF DUSTY SPRINGFIELD'S "SON OF A PREACHER MAN")
MARTIN: And Elvis Presley's "Suspicious Minds."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SUSPICIOUS MINDS")
ELVIS PRESLEY: (Singing) We're caught in a trap.
MARTIN: Young started his career in Memphis and eventually headed to Nashville in the 1970s. He was one of the most revered and in-demand session players of the time.
GREENE: He played guitar in Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline"...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SWEET CAROLINE")
NEIL DIAMOND: (Singing) Where it began, I can't begin to knowing.
GREENE: ...And also the sitar intro on "Hooked On A Feeling" by B.J. Thomas.
(SOUNDBITE OF B.J. THOMAS SONG "HOOKED ON A FEELING")
GREENE: After playing sessions with The Highwaymen, which included Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson, Young joined them on tour for several years. And in 1997, he was nominated for a Grammy for best country instrumental performance in "Going Back To Memphis."
MARTIN: Young died on Thursday of heart failure. He was 82 years old. B.J. Thomas tweeted out his remembrance - calling Young the, quote, "greatest guitar player of them all," in his book.
GREENE: Young's first ever album, a collection of his hits from Memphis to Nashville, is due out later this month.
(SOUNDBITE OF REGGIE YOUNG'S "EXIT 209")
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
The partial government shutdown has reached the one-month mark. And the federal food stamp program is now under pressure. More than 40 million Americans participate in SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The Department of Agriculture says recipients are getting their full February benefits, but what happens beyond that is looking unclear. Michael J. Wilson is director of the nonprofit Maryland Hunger Solutions. He's been trying to help people affected by this navigate a way forward. And he came by our studios in Washington, D.C.
Give me an example of how this partial shutdown has affected someone who uses food stamps.
MICHAEL J. WILSON: So it's complicated in many ways. First of all, there are rumors and there are things that people don't know. And so they wonder if they're going to get their benefits. If they get their benefits early - in Maryland, benefits for February were dispersed on the 17 and the 18 of January. So some people actually got their February benefits before they got their January benefits.
GREENE: Oh, that's interesting.
WILSON: And the challenge is going to be for folks to be able to use their benefits throughout the end of January, through February and to plan accordingly. February is going to be a tough month for a lot of folks. And nobody knows what March is going to be.
GREENE: So if a shutdown is really going to cause problems as we look forward into coming weeks and month, what - where is that actually going to hit the hardest? Where does the system get kind of thrown into disarray?
WILSON: The money flows from the federal government to the state so that it's dispersed to recipients.
GREENE: I see, so the money would stop flowing. That's the problem.
WILSON: That's...
GREENE: The states are actually not getting the money to provide these benefits.
WILSON: That's exactly right. So what do you do if you're a state like Maryland? You have 650,000 people who are getting benefits. It's about $73 million a month. It's even bigger in places like California and New York. I mean, how do you address that issue when we've set up this program, people are getting benefits and all of a sudden, you turn off the spigot and there's no more money?
GREENE: Is this affecting federal employees? I mean, how many federal employees who might be out of work right now actually rely on food stamps?
WILSON: So there are both federal employees who are out of work who rely on food stamps and federal employees who are not out of work. We know that there are low-wage federal employees and federal contractors who actually utilize SNAP.
GREENE: Can I just make sure I understand this? It's almost like, for many people, a double whammy. I mean, they're out of work, not getting their paychecks and also can't get - potentially - their food stamps.
WILSON: That's correct. I know that the Congress has passed and the president has signed legislation saying that people are going to get their back pay. It's been my experience that people need to eat every day. And so waiting for whenever the shutdown ends or whenever it might end doesn't help them feed themselves and their families today.
GREENE: Is there any message you want to send to people in government who are working on ending this shutdown or not working on ending this shutdown on behalf of all the recipients of food stamps?
WILSON: So there's an old African proverb which says, when the elephants fight, the grass suffers. And so there are people who are experiencing poverty who don't really have a dog in this fight, who are wondering about whether they'll be able to feed their kids - if they're disabled, if they're seniors, if they're unemployed. And so it's really unconscionable. Never in the history of the program have people never gotten their benefits. No matter what shutdown happened, no matter what war happened, no matter what recession happened, people have always gotten their benefits. And this is the first time when they've really been threatened about whether or not they'll be able to have food.
GREENE: Michael J. Wilson is the director of Maryland Hunger Solutions. Thanks so much.
WILSON: Thank you.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Now to Venezuela, where this month President Nicolas Maduro began another six-year term, even though there are all kinds of questions about the integrity of the vote that brought him to power. Numerous countries, including the United States, refuse to recognize his authoritarian regime. As John Otis reports, a young opposition politician is now promising to lead Venezuela back to democracy.
JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Juan Guaido is the newly elected head of Venezuela's congress, the only branch of government controlled by the opposition.
(SOUNDBITE OF RALLY)
JUAN GUAIDO: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: At rallies like this one in Caracas, Guaido has been drumming up support for anti-government protests scheduled for tomorrow.
(SOUNDBITE OF RALLY)
GUAIDO: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: There's also speculation that Juan Guaido will declare himself acting president. Venezuela's constitution states that the head of congress takes over should the presidency become vacant, as the opposition claims it has under Maduro.
(SOUNDBITE OF RALLY)
GUAIDO: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: At the rally, Guaido called for a transitional government that would hold three elections within 30 days. All this is breathing life into Venezuela's beleaguered opposition. Its most prominent leaders have been imprisoned, forced into exile or banned from running for office. Guaido is just 35 and, until this month, was relatively unknown. And he's impressed many Venezuelans. They include Benjamin Scharifker, a leading intellectual and opposition activist.
BENJAMIN SCHARIFKER: The pieces are starting to fit together for a peaceful transition in Venezuela.
OTIS: But Maduro, who's led Venezuela into food shortages and hyperinflation, is digging in.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT NICOLAS MADURO: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: In a speech, he said, it appears that a group of little boys has taken control of the opposition and is trying to destabilize the country. On Monday, Venezuela's Supreme Court, which is stacked with Maduro allies, declared Juan Guaido and the entire congressional leadership illegitimate.
Last week, security forces briefly detained Guaido. Troops also attacked protesters in 2014 and 2017 in violent clashes that left nearly 200 dead. That has sparked fears of another bloodbath at tomorrow's planned marches.
JUAN ANDRES MEJIA: In the recent past, we've seen security forces killed innocent protesters. So what we're worried about, is for that to happen again.
OTIS: That's opposition congressman Juan Andres Mejia, who insists that tomorrow's protests will go forward. In addition, the opposition is urging the military to switch sides. The top brass has been showered with perks from Maduro and remains loyal to him. But last week, congress passed an amnesty law for officers who turn against Maduro. Early Monday, dozens of National Guard troops in Caracas did just that after raiding an arms depot.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO)
UNIDENTIFIED VENEZUELAN NATIONAL GUARDSMAN: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: In this video published on social media, one of the rebel troops urges all Venezuelans to rise up against the Maduro dictatorship. But the mutiny was quickly put down, and 25 of the rebels were arrested. Bruce Bagley, a Venezuela scholar at the University of Miami, says tougher international sanctions may be needed to help force out Maduro. He suggests a halt to purchases of oil, Venezuela's main export.
BRUCE BAGLEY: It may well require more severe economic sanctions coordinated - right? - as there were against South Africa with apartheid because, in some ways, this is as dire a situation as South African apartheid.
OTIS: Meanwhile, Brazil, Canada and the Organization of American States, have inferred that Guaido is now Venezuela's legitimate head of government. The United States is expected to do the same should Guaido declare himself president. For NPR News, I'm John Otis.
(SOUNDBITE OF HUMINAL'S "BAD BABOON")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Good morning, I'm Rachel Martin. For 31 years, the town of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, had one big claim to fame. It was home to the tallest moose statue in the world - until 2015, when Norway stole the title with a moose statue of their own. The Norwegian moose is less than a foot taller than Mac the moose.
So the city of Moose Jaw is considering how to make him taller, maybe ice skates or just making his antlers bigger. The mayor of Moose Jaw said Canada's national pride is on the line, and we can't lose it to Norway over a moose. It's MORNING EDITION.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
The Academy Awards still do not have a host. And it's looking like there may not be one. But this morning in Beverly Hills, the nominations were announced. And Mandalit del Barco from the NPR West team here in LA is here to talk about the actors, directors and producers who got the call this morning. Hi, Mandalit.
MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: Hi, David.
GREENE: OK, was there history made this morning?
DEL BARCO: There was. And here's a headline, David. "Marvel's 'Black Panther' Becomes The First Superhero Movie To Be Nominated For Best Picture."
GREENE: What a moment for the academy.
DEL BARCO: Yeah. The movie also got nominated for a total of seven. And maybe this is how the Black Panther feels about the Oscars.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BLACK PANTHER")
CHADWICK BOSEMAN: (As T'Challa) What happens now determines what happens to the rest of the world.
GREENE: See what you did there.
DEL BARCO: (Laughter). Yeah. And, David, there is this also. Thirty years after his seminal "Do The Right Thing," Spike Lee has finally been nominated for best director.
GREENE: Wow.
DEL BARCO: Yeah. His "BlackkKlansman" has six nominations, including best picture. "Roma," Alfonso Cuaron's black-and-white film about his childhood in Mexico City, got 10 nominations - best picture, best foreign-language film. Cuaron is up for best director. And his two lead actresses made the list, Marina de Tavira for best supporting actress and first timer Yalitza Aparicio for best actress. And this is also Netflix's first best picture nomination.
GREENE: OK, here we are in 2019, and Netflix is up for best picture. That's amazing. All right. So who else is celebrating?
DEL BARCO: So the 18th-century drama "The Favourite" was also a favorite, with 10 nominations, including all three actresses, Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone and Olivia Colman, as well as best picture. "Bohemian Rhapsody," the Freddie Mercury biopic, is also up for best picture. Rami Malek, who plays Mercury, is up for best actor.
GREENE: A lot of fans are going to be happy about that.
DEL BARCO: Yeah. And the movie got three other nominations. "Green Book" is also up for best picture. And both actors, Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen, got nominations. And, as expected, "A Star Is Born" did well. It earned eight nominations for best picture and for its stars Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, as an actor and producer - but not as best director or for any of the songs he co-wrote. The duet they sang in the movie, "Shallow," is up for best original song.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SHALLOW")
LADY GAGA: (Singing) I'm off the deep end, watch as I dive in. I'll never meet the ground.
GREENE: And there is our earworm for the rest of Tuesday.
DEL BARCO: (Laughter).
GREENE: All right.
DEL BARCO: Yeah, you know, another musical got multiple nominations, "Mary Poppins Returns," although Emily Blunt, who plays her, did not get one. And the animated "Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse" is a fan favorite and critical darling, so Marvel fans are having their Spidey senses activated.
GREENE: Sure are. OK, and another big question, who was snubbed this morning?
DEL BARCO: Well, as pretty much every year, no women were nominated for best director this time.
GREENE: Wow, yet again.
DEL BARCO: Yep. And there were no nominations at all for the hit "Crazy Rich Asians," which is crazy. And our listeners may be disappointed that the Mr. Rogers documentary, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" didn't make the list.
GREENE: Oh, no.
DEL BARCO: Yeah. So NPR special correspondent Susan Stamberg, who was in it, will not be on the red carpet.
GREENE: Well, she's always on our red carpet.
DEL BARCO: That's true. But, you know, NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg might be on that red carpet. She was in the documentary "RBG," about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And we called Nina this morning to get her reaction.
NINA TOTENBERG, BYLINE: (Laughter) Well, whoopee, that's wonderful for the producers and directors of this movie, who did such a great job in depicting Justice Ginsburg and her work and how it changed the country for all of us.
GREENE: What is Nina going to wear at the Oscars? That's my question.
DEL BARCO: That's the big question, yes. I'll be there to capture it all for NPR listeners next month.
GREENE: Fabulous. NPR's Mandalit del Barco here at NPR West. Thanks, Mandalit.
DEL BARCO: Thanks, David.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Here's one statistic that tells the story of the partial shutdown of the federal government. According to the Transportation Security Administration, 10 percent of its employees stayed home from work on Sunday. TSA said many employees said they couldn't make it in due to, quote, "financial limitations."
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Yeah, the officers at airport security checkpoints have been working without pay. And the news that many are calling in sick, not showing up to work comes just two weeks before the Super Bowl in Atlanta. That city's international airport is the busiest in the world.
GREENE: David Mollett is with the American Federation of Government Employees, a union that represents TSA workers. He's the national vice president of District 5, which includes Georgia. And he joins me from Atlanta. Welcome to the program.
DAVID MOLLETT: Thank you.
GREENE: So what are TSA employees in your union saying about why they can't come into work right now?
MOLLETT: Finances, child care - some of the main issues why they can't make it to work. A lot of these employees work 30 to an hour away from their jobs, and they have to figure out how to get gas to get back and forth because they have no income coming in - a number of single-parent households.
GREENE: It sounds like it's been really disruptive for a lot of families.
MOLLETT: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Anytime you have to be a working employee and depend on food banks being set up around the airport to feed your family has to be very disheartening.
GREENE: So we've actually seen food banks that have been set up at airports. So the people who are working at those security checkpoints are there checking our IDs, going through our luggage and then getting their meals at food banks because they can't pay for their meals.
MOLLETT: Yes, and by donation by various restaurant organizations around those given cities.
GREENE: What are you telling these employees? I mean, I suppose they - I mean, they feel a sense of responsibility. This is their job. This is the work that they do. They keep people safe. But if they can't make it to work and can't afford to support their families, like what advice do you even give to them?
MOLLETT: Right. Well, the only thing to do is the donations that we have coming in. We're putting them in touch with United Way, who's working with our union to be one of the efforts to get assistance out to them, and then making sure they have the information about what's available in the community near them. But it doesn't change the fact that someone has to make decisions about, do I comply with work rules? Or do I do exactly what the administrations have been saying about seek another job so that I can feed my family, keep a roof over their head? Tough decisions, I'm sure.
GREENE: And so what what are the options? I mean, if some of these workers find other jobs, do they think they can come back and work for the TSA afterwards? Or are we actually going to see a lot of people who are just going on into other lines of work because of the shutdown?
MOLLETT: Well, I'm not sure about the specific numbers, but I do know about the work history and some of the work morals of the new generation. They're not concerned with leaving one job to go to another to take care of themselves. So I don't think they have the same commitment that some of the employees who may have been there for 10 or plus years. You know, so some of those may not even care about coming back, you know, to that job.
GREENE: Obviously, I mean, the biggest issue is the effect on these workers and their families. But I also want to ask you about, you know, how this could affect the nation's transportation network. I mean, if we use the city of Atlanta as a case study, Atlanta is about to host the Super Bowl. Huge numbers of people are going to be flying in. Is there a security risk if there is a shortage of TSA workers?
MOLLETT: Oh, I would say definitely. Anytime you attempt to cut down on the number of - whether it's checkpoints, number of individuals doing those checks, then you absolutely increase the risk of exposure to danger for the public.
GREENE: And have you talked to people at the airport? Like, are they getting ready for that or are bracing for something like that?
MOLLETT: Yes, they are. They are gearing up similar to what what they do for Thanksgiving, holidays - or the big holidays when they know it's going to be an influx of travel. So I'm sure they're doing all those things and preparing for that as best they can.
GREENE: I know you're at a conference in Atlanta with union leaders from different government agencies. What are some of the larger themes that are coming up?
MOLLETT: Some of the main things that we're talking about is the shutdown - make sure that leadership understand where the resources are, so they can get that out to their membership, let them know what can assist them during this period of the shutdown.
GREENE: David Mollett is with the American Federation of Government Employees. Thanks so much for your time this morning.
MOLLETT: Thank you.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
This week, China announced that its economy grew at its slowest pace in decades this past year. And as NPR's Rob Schmitz reports, the slowdown has economists worried about the impacts on the global economy.
ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: After decades of near-double-digit economic growth, China's finally beginning to slow down. What does this mean for the U.S. economy?
ARTHUR KROEBER: The direct impact of the Chinese slowdown on the U.S. economy is modest.
SCHMITZ: Modest - that's Arthur Kroeber's take. He's the author of "China's Economy: What Everyone Needs To Know." And most economists agree with that assessment. The proportion of the U.S. economy that depends on China is tiny when taking the overall economy into consideration. Kroeber says a bigger impact on the U.S. economy is the government shutdown, which, according to economists' estimates, is knocking a tenth of a percentage point off the U.S. economy each week.
KROEBER: The Chinese slowdown is more likely to show up in specific sectors or companies that have, you know, big exposure.
SCHMITZ: Like Apple - CEO Tim Cook blamed China's sluggish growth for lower-than-expected earnings forecasts. And construction equipment companies, like Caterpillar, will likely be hurt as China's slowdown continues. China economists have been warning about a tough start to 2019 for months, says economist Christopher Balding.
CHRISTOPHER BALDING: Even back in November, they were talking about the cold winter coming up. They weren't referring to the weather.
SCHMITZ: They were talking about consumers cooling down their spending and local governments mired in debt. Balding says he's surprised Beijing hasn't hatched a stimulus package to counter the slowdown, which has been a staple of government remedies in the past. Instead of impacting the U.S., he says China's sluggish growth will instead impact the economies of Australia and parts of Africa that China has depended on for commodities.
Rob Schmitz, NPR News, Shanghai.
(SOUNDBITE OF BOOKA SHADE'S "SACRED")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Russia and Japan are still at war, at least on paper. The two neighbours in the Pacific Ocean never signed a peace treaty officially ending World War II. Today Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. And there are high expectations for some kind of deal out of this meeting. NPR's Lucian Kim joins us on the line from Moscow. Hi, Lucian
LUCIAN KIM, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: World War II ended more than 70 years ago. Why have Russia and Japan still not been able to make peace?
KIM: Well, the two countries have been military rivals in the Pacific for more than a century. And actually, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan in the last month of World War II, so those hostilities were relatively short. But then came the Cold War. Japan was a key U.S. ally, and there really wasn't a lot of room for negotiation. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was talk of normalizing relations. But the sticking point here has been the Kuril Islands. It's a chain of islands between Russia and Japan. The Soviet Union seized them at the end of World War II and claims them now as their own, while Japan still considers them occupied territory.
MARTIN: Wow. So World War II isn't over between these two countries because of a territorial dispute?
KIM: Yes, exactly. And this issue is very sensitive in both countries. There were actually leaks in the Japanese press earlier this month that Russia is ready to give back two of those islands, which caused a very angry reaction here in Moscow. The Foreign Ministry said the Japanese were really jumping the gun. In fact, Moscow and Tokyo have been talking about this kind of compromise since the 1950s. But in a poll released in November, it showed that 74 percent of Russians are against a transfer of territory even if that does mean a peace treaty with Japan. Of course, there is a precedent. President Putin has given China a couple of river islands back to settle a border dispute. But after annexing Crimea, Putin has kind of positioned himself as a leader who's into expanding and not shrinking Russian territory.
MARTIN: Right. So Japan is still a key U.S. ally in Asia. Obviously, the United States has a very fraught relationship with Russia. But can you outline how a potential peace agreement between Japan and Russia might affect the U.S.?
KIM: Right. Well, I mean, Japan is a very close ally and right now is cooperating with the U.S. on a new missile defense system, which Russia is vehemently opposed to. And it's also been reported that Russia is concerned that - if there is a transfer of some islands, that no U.S. troops would be stationed on them if they are returned to Japan. Putin is really interested in weakening U.S. alliances everywhere, whether that's in Europe or in Asia. And Japan, as a member of the G-7, also has sanctions on Russia because of the annexation of Crimea. So a peace deal and, you know, just a general warmer climate between Moscow and Tokyo could help increase Putin's leverage in the region.
MARTIN: So what's actually going to come out of this meeting between Putin and Abe today?
KIM: Well, this is their 25th meeting. They do talk a lot with each other and have established a certain rapport. Putin indicated last year that he's ready for a deal. But again, this issue of the islands is very sensitive. Putin faces falling popularity at home, and this kind of territorial transfer could hurt him even more.
MARTIN: Lucian Kim in Moscow. Thanks so much.
KIM: Thank you.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
The ongoing partial government shutdown has some furloughed workers seeking short-term gigs to stay afloat. Temp agencies are seeing resumes of federal employees pile up. But many of these applicants have been rebuffed. Furloughed workers are seen as too temporary for even the temp jobs. Here's NPR's Rebecca Ellis.
REBECCA ELLIS, BYLINE: Tressa Rivera needs a job.
TRESSA RIVERA: Expert-related or business-related requirements and...
ELLIS: But she already has one. And it's a good job as a human resources liaison for FEMA. She moved to D.C. this summer just to do it, taking a pay cut and leaving her daughter in Oregon to finish her senior year. Then the government shut down.
RIVERA: You finally get into this rhythm and boom - you don't have a job.
ELLIS: Now she needs a second job. She's been scouting for side gigs on a site called FlexJobs, which pairs users with part-time work.
(SOUNDBITE OF COMPUTER CHIMING)
ELLIS: Rivera has landed two interviews, and she wants more. She needs the cash.
RIVERA: Right there on my fridge is a late notice for my car insurance.
ELLIS: And she needs to get her mind out of her basement apartment.
RIVERA: I have no windows, so I don't get any sunlight unless I go outside. Well, I don't have a reason to go out of my house because I can't afford to go anywhere.
ELLIS: So she hunts for positions from her couch. But for some employers, furloughed workers like Rivera are too unpredictable a hire.
RIVERA: You get there on Monday, and everything is great. And then Tuesday, they pass the resolution.
ELLIS: Heidi Parsont is the president of a staffing firm called TorchLight. She says her agency has seen an influx in accomplished applicants like Rivera.
HEIDI PARSONT: We've seen scientists. We've seen people in agriculture. We've seen IT people.
ELLIS: But she says there's too much uncertainty that comes with government employees. Peter McChesney, the head of D.C.'s Palmer Staffing Services, has the same problem. His pile of candidates has grown by a quarter since the shutdown. But he says he can't, in good faith, send any of them to employers.
PETER MCCHESNEY: They don't want turnover. They don't want to have to train two different people in two different weeks.
ELLIS: Temp agencies that supply companies with manual labor don't usually have this issue. They can match companies in need of extra hands with those in need of a paycheck in one day. During the shutdown, this quick fix is appealing to out-of-work government contractors like janitors and construction workers.
(SOUNDBITE OF PHONE RINGING)
ELLIS: Sharmaine Jones has been taking calls at the Labor Finders in Suitland, Md. The story on the other end of the line is the same one she's been hearing for the last month.
SHARMAINE JONES: He is a contractor for the government. Right now, he doesn't know what's going on with his job.
ELLIS: Jones estimates the branch gets upwards of 30 calls a day from government workers out of the job. They call in.
PRE-RECORDED VOICE: Thank you for calling Labor Finders.
ELLIS: They receive a 20-minute training, and they can get matched with whichever company needs the labor.
JONES: Sometimes, our guys come here at 5:30 in the morning, and they don't get anything.
ELLIS: The shutdown has made this a tricky month to rely on Labor Finders. Jones says it's been slow.
JONES: Some of our facilities that are ran through the government have slowed down and some of them just not working anymore.
ELLIS: This is how Gregory Stewart lost his paycheck. Pre-shutdown, Stewart worked for a government contractor, clearing rubble at the headquarters of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. When funding ran out for the project, his boss told him to head home. So now he's here at Labor Finders bright and early.
GREGORY STEWART: Today, I had to get up, like, quarter to 4. I live all the way across town.
ELLIS: He's got a family to feed.
STEWART: My child's only 4 months.
ELLIS: But this morning, no company is calling in with work.
STEWART: We just sit here and we wait and wait and hope.
ELLIS: When the sun rises, workers start to give up and filter out.
(SOUNDBITE OF PERSON SNORING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: I got better things to do.
ELLIS: A little later, Stewart decides to follow suit. He'll play with his daughter and try again tomorrow. Rebecca Ellis, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF GLOWWORM'S "LUX")
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
So what did you see in a video? And what didn't you see? Footage of a Covington Catholic High School student named Nick Sandmann face-to-face with an Omaha elder Nathan Phillips at the Lincoln Memorial grabbed the nation's attention over the weekend. But now differing narratives and more videos are complicating the story.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
In his response, Sandmann, the student, urged people to watch a longer video. It shows contentious moments that came before what's shown in the viral video, with an apparent confrontation between the students and members of the Black Hebrew Israelites.
GREENE: I spoke with Phillips, the Omaha elder, yesterday on the program. And he told me that played into his decision to step in.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
NATHAN PHILLIPS: I was coming between something that I had been witnessing, you know, on the news, in - on the Facebook - racism - because you got to understand, I came from an indigenous peoples gathering. And it was full of prayer, full of promise of a better tomorrow. You know, that's - that was the message we was putting out.
GREENE: And so it was something he said that he had been witnessing in the news.
MARTIN: In his response, President Trump also mentioned the media. He tweeted out last night that Sandmann and his fellow Covington students were treated, quote, "unfairly with early judgments proving out to be false - smeared by media," end quote. And now the Twitter accounts suspected of helping make that first video go viral has reportedly been suspended.
GREENE: So many questions people have and I want to bring in another voice here. It is someone who attended and graduated from Covington Catholic High School. It's Kentucky state Representative Adam Koenig. He's also one of the lawmakers representing the county where this school is located.
Representative Koenig, welcome to the program. Thank you.
ADAM KOENIG: Thank you for having me, David.
GREENE: So as someone who went to this school and knows the school - as you watch these videos, what do you see?
KOENIG: I see, as you stated, a complicated situation where there was a lot of people exercising their First Amendment rights in front of the Lincoln Memorial - Kentucky's son Abraham Lincoln. And, you know, obviously, some folks were there. And I'm speaking specifically of the Black Hebrew Israelites who were - it seemed like they were there to stir up problems and a bunch of kids who were there to go to the March for Life and exercise their First Amendment rights and were just waiting for a bus. And things, I guess, changed and put a lot of people in strange situations that certainly a bunch of 15, 16-year-old kids are not used to handling.
GREENE: I want to play one more clip from my interview with Nathan Phillips, the Omaha elder, yesterday because he was talking about the actions of the students from Covington High and the actions about this one student Sandmann. This is what he said.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
PHILLIPS: It's not so much that I want punishment, but this young man has to come to some kind of understanding of where he was at and what he did.
GREENE: You said the students were just waiting for a bus. You know, as I've been watching these videos, they were doing a lot of chanting and, you know, a lot of yelling. Is there anything you wish or think they should have done differently having been, as you say, put in this situation?
KOENIG: Look, put yourself in the - we were all 15 or 16 once. And all of a sudden - and this is not something I had to deal with, probably, or many of your listeners. But you're surrounded by people with cameras. And you have individuals who are hurling insults and epithets at you. And that's an uncomfortable situation to be in, especially when you're in a city that you've probably never been in and you're eight, night hours away from home. So they decided to do some school cheers, which is - you know, whatever their motivation was. It was a - draw attention away, get out nervous energy. Whatever it may have been, I think they were just trying to take an uncomfortable, strange situation where strangers are yelling insults at them that are - some of which we can't even say on the radio here. And they were just trying to make it into a positive situation or get rid of the nervous energy associated with being in that situation.
GREENE: Is this a teaching moment in some way? I mean, if you were to sit down with some of these students and go through what happened, what would you tell them about next time?
KOENIG: Well, I have a lot of faith in Covington Catholic to take care of that. But obviously, I think what these kids need to know and what America needs to know is that people don't need to be rushing to judgment. And obviously, they are on the - I think the wrong side of that where they were accused of behaving poorly when I don't think that's nearly the case. Obviously, there's a lot for everyone to learn. But, you know, they obviously have seen firsthand that everyone has a camera. There's very little you can do anymore outside of your own home that's not on tape. And, you know, see - and I would encourage them to know what they've gone through with the attacks - I mean, death threats on them, attacks on - or threats of attacks on the school and know that this is not the way to behave online or in life. And hopefully, this will be a opportunity for them to teach that to their children to behave in such a way as to model-correct behavior with social media and hopefully encourage others to do the same.
GREENE: Can you see in the moment - you know, Nathan Phillips has talked about the experience. He's done some thinking and reflecting about what assumptions he brought into this moment. Can you see how he might have found these students as intimidating as they were chanting and jumping, not knowing what was going on?
KOENIG: Look, I don't want to get in anyone's head. I think Nick Sandmann, the young man that was right up next to Mr. Phillips, did a nice job with his comments and his statement that said, look, I don't know what was going through Mr. Phillips' head. And honestly, I've been disappointed in Mr. Phillips saying what he thinks was going on in the heads of these children. And that's what these young men are. I mean, they're still kids. And I think it's unfortunate that, in this case, we had a bunch of adults often acting like kids. And we're expecting the kids to have to act like adults in this situation.
GREENE: Speaking to Kentucky state Representative Adam Koenig. He's also a graduate of Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky. And we should add that we are reaching out to Sandmann's family for an interview or a statement and have not heard from him yet. Representative Koenig, thank you very much for your time.
KOENIG: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF GAUSSIAN CURVE'S "BROKEN CLOUDS")
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Good morning, I'm David Greene. An eye doctor in Louisiana is offering free eye exams - well, to a select group - NFL referees. Many in New Orleans believe their Saints lost a trip to the Super Bowl because of a missed pass interference penalty on Sunday. Louisiana Family Eyecare posted their offer on Facebook saying they don't want other fans to feel their pain. The Saints lost that game to the LA Rams. And listen to sports talk here in LA, and you'd think the ref's eyesight was just fine. It's MORNING EDITION.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Let's expand the list of suspects in the 2016 election. We know about Russian propaganda and social media troll farms. We've had congressional hearings into how social media giants, like Facebook, were manipulated to destabilize the country. Few investigators though have focused on us. Why did so many ordinary people apparently believe what the Russians told them? NPR's social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam has some research on that. Hi, Shankar.
SHANKAR VEDANTAM, BYLINE: Hey, Steve.
INSKEEP: So this is a reminder that when there's a con artist, someone gets conned - they may allow themselves to be conned.
VEDANTAM: That's exactly right, Steve. It was deception, but it wasn't simple. Contrary to what partisans on both sides think, voters are not idiots. They don't like being manipulated. So the question is, why were they manipulated? I was talking to Cailin O'Connor, at the University of California, Irvine. She's a mathematician and philosopher and co-author of the book "The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread." O'Connor told me about one very interesting technique used by these propagandists.
CAILIN O'CONNOR: They made Black Lives Matter groups. They made gun rights groups. They made LGBTQ groups. They made an animal lovers group weirdly.
VEDANTAM: So all over the political spectrum, from left to right - now that seems crazy except that it was based on a psychological insight. If you show someone you are on their side on an issue that is close to their heart, it becomes much easier to nudge them on other issues.
O'CONNOR: It seemed that what they were doing was trying to use shared beliefs and values to ground trust with people. And then once they grounded that trust, they could use these different pages to try to drive polarization within the United States.
INSKEEP: We're hearing that the propagandists took advantage of tribalism here, aren't we?
VEDANTAM: That's right.
INSKEEP: They're saying, I'm part of the Black Lives Matter tribe. You should listen to me - or some other tribe.
VEDANTAM: That's exactly right. Now, what makes this devilish, Steve, is that this is how all of us learn nearly everything we know. We first figure out whom to trust. And then we learn from those people. So none of us can go out and learn everything about the world on our own. So the only way we can function is to rely on what O'Connor calls the testimony of others. Children trust their parents. Students trust teachers. Listeners trust NPR. And once you have gained that trust, you can exploit it.
INSKEEP: Well, how do we guard against that then?
VEDANTAM: Well, in many ways, it's very difficult to guard against this because, in some ways, we are all vulnerable to believing those who seem to think like we do. Once I can convince you that I care about your issues, that I share your views, you become much more vulnerable to my manipulation. It's very hard to see how you could eliminate this without also eliminating all the useful things we learn from social trust.
INSKEEP: I suppose it just means we have to spend a lot more work figuring out what is true - not only online but in our day-to-day interactions in life.
VEDANTAM: And also to be skeptical about people who seem to agree with us.
INSKEEP: Shankar, it seems like you're agreeing with me here, but I'm really kind of beginning to doubt what you say.
VEDANTAM: (Laughter) I think that's right, Steve.
INSKEEP: NPR's Shankar Vedantam - or so he says - he is a social science correspondent for NPR News, also the host of a podcast that explores the unseen patterns in human behavior. You can trust him. It's called Hidden Brain.
(SOUNDBITE OF TIM ENGELHARDT'S "SAWTOOTH ORCHESTRA")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The partial government shutdown has now surpassed the one-month mark, and there seems to be little movement toward any deal to end the shutdown. President Trump proposed a new plan to reopen the government temporarily restoring some protections that he'd previously stripped from people brought into this country illegally as children. But he hasn't budged on his demand for more than $5 billion for a border wall. And Democrats say that's a nonstarter. Republicans insist that the president has offered up a compromise and now it is the Democrats' turn to come to the table.
We will speak with one of those Democrats, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia. Good morning, Senator.
TIM KAINE: Hey, Rachel. How are you?
MARTIN: Doing well, thanks. So Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is going to fold the president's proposal into a bill that he plans to bring up for a vote this week. It also will include more than $12 billion for natural disaster funding. This is meant as a sweetener to get Democrats to sign on. Is that enough for you?
KAINE: Not unless government reopens, Rachel. That's what we have to do first. We have to reopen government. But then Democrats - I certainly am, and my colleagues are, too - are glad to have the discussion about the elements in the president's proposal. We hear that Leader McConnell is going to introduce the president's proposal today. It's, like, a 1,200-page bill. The last thing we should be doing is just trying to force a vote immediately on it. Let the Senate with committees and on the floor promptly take it up. Give Democrats a chance to make amendments to make it better.
In other words, treat it like every other item of business we have, rather than a take it or leave it. But we've got to open government first.
MARTIN: Except the administration has been fairly explicit that they understand that this is their leverage. The government shutdown is the leverage. So why would they give that up?
KAINE: Well, think about that, Rachel. They're saying people's lives are the leverage they want to use, and we want to discredit the use of government shutdown as a negotiating tactic. Why take paychecks away from FBI agents? Why shutter food stamp offices because the president's not getting his way on border security? If we give in to that kind of a tactic - using massive swaths of the American government, federal workers and American citizens as leverage - you can be sure this president will turn to that again, and again and again, every time he doesn't get his way.
So government needs to reopen. And then, yes, the president's elements of his proposal - border security, the dollar number doesn't worry me, how the monies are going to be used - we've got to debate. The TPS program, DACA, those are very legitimate points to discuss. And we can find a bipartisan resolution, as long as the president is serious and they're not just trying to jam through a vote with no meaningful opportunity to dig into it and hopefully make it better.
MARTIN: What is a good deal? I mean, let's just say, hypothetically, that the president agrees to reopen government, which I think is highly unlikely. But setting that issue aside, what would be a good deal on border security? What is the Democrats' plan for border security?
KAINE: Well, first, as you know, Rachel, I was part of a group in 2013 that did a comprehensive immigration bill that had $44 billion in border security over 10 years. And earlier, in 2018, we presented to the president a proposal to protect DREAMers, the full universe of 1.8 million DREAMers, in exchange for $25 billion in border security. So the Democrats invest in border security over, and over and over again. Both the plans I mentioned to you were killed by Republicans. So...
MARTIN: Well, Republicans are into 5.7 now so...
KAINE: Five-point-seven is a number that I have no trouble with, as long as the dollars are used right. So get the president's team up on Capitol Hill and have them walk through each of the elements they propose - why do you want to spend this amount on barriers or fencing? Why do you want to spend this amount on judges and immigration proceedings? Let's walk through the elements, and we can have a meaningful discussion, in my view, just like we have in the past, about how to spend the dollars. What I don't want to do is spend money that's wasted.
So when you have every member of Congress who represents the border saying spending it all on a wall would be a waste, they're not saying that there can't be any barrier or that we shouldn't shore up points of entry. But every member of Congress who represents the border says spending it all on a wall would be a waste. Let's get the White House up. Let's have them tell us what they want to do, and we can find a deal. Similarly, let's take DREAMers. There's 1.8 million DREAMers in this country. The president has stripped their protection, and he's proposing to temporarily restore protection to about 700,000 of them. Well, I'd like to see if we could restore protections longer or maybe permanently for the 1.8 million. We could have that productive discussion back and forth.
But again, if what the president wants to do is just say take it or leave it, that's not the way it works with the Article I branch. He should introduce the bill today. That's great. I'm glad Senator McConnell is doing it. And, as you know, I've kept the Congress in this week. We were supposed to be in recess, but I objected so that we would be in to consider it. But let's reopen government, and then let's engage in a meaningful discussion about the proposal that the president has put on the table.
MARTIN: So let's re-engage with the reality, which is that President Trump doesn't want to reopen the government, that he sees that as a necessary part of the negotiations. You are from a state that has a whole lot of federal workers and a whole lot of other people who are affected by government programs that are not servicing them right now. At what point does the suffering of those people outweigh your party's resistance to sitting down with the president?
KAINE: Well, Rachel, I just - I've got to challenge you. We are not resisting to sitting down to the president. What we resist is this president using the intentional infliction of pain on workers and citizens unrelated to the border dispute as a way to get his way. So you'd say that's the reality. That's not our reality. My federal employees tell me, do not do a deal that encourages the president to shut down the government every time he doesn't get his way. We're going to come out of this with a deal that will not only solve these problems but will discredit use of shut down as, you know, as a terrorizing negotiating strategy going forward.
MARTIN: Senator Tim Kaine, we have to leave it there. Democrat of Virginia. Thanks, as always, sir. We appreciate it.
KAINE: Glad to.
MARTIN: I'd like to bring in NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson, who listened into that conversation. So Mara, you heard there Tim Kaine saying, I'm OK with 5.7, that's a number I can deal with. But they want the government to reopen first. How's this going to end when the president insists that he can't make that happen?
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Well, they're going to have to come up with some kind of a compromise about opening the government. What polls really badly is shutting down the government to get money for a wall. The wall itself is more popular than the tactic of shutting down the government to get it. So maybe they reopen the government for a week at a time while they talk. That's something that's been done in the past. But I thought you heard some movement for compromise. He said 5.7 isn't the problem, but spending it all on a wall is a problem. The Democrats want more protection for more DREAMers, DREAMer-eligible people.
MARTIN: Right.
LIASSON: So they are still at a standoff, but something's moving because something is coming to the floor of the Senate.
MARTIN: OK. We'll see if there's an opening there. NPR's Mara Liasson. Thanks. Appreciate it.
LIASSON: Thank you.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Days after President Trump took office, he formally withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The TPP would have brought together the economies of 12 countries, allowing for free trade of everything from agriculture to pharmaceuticals. Despite the United States abandoning this pact, the deal has now gone into effect, and it's giving the 11 member-countries a competitive edge. Here's NPR's Jackie Northam.
JACKIE NORTHAM, BYLINE: On the campaign trail, then Republican candidate Donald Trump regularly railed against the TPP trade deal. Here he is in 2016.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The Trans-Pacific Partnership is another disaster done and pushed by special interests.
NORTHAM: Trump made good on his campaign promise and pulled out of the trade deal as soon as he took office. That left the remaining 11 partners in the TPP wondering what to do.
JEFFREY SCHOTT: The initial reaction was the U.S. was the dominant economy. So if the U.S. was out, the benefit was marginal.
NORTHAM: Jeffrey Schott, a specialist on international trade policy at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, says many analysts felt the TPP couldn't survive without the U.S. But Schott says the remaining 11 countries, from Australia, to Vietnam, to Chile, realized it was worth trying to finalize the trade deal.
SCHOTT: It was still a very good deal without the United States because of what it required in terms of instituting economic reforms at home and opening up new opportunities for exports and investments.
NORTHAM: Now a rebranded TPP has entered into force just as the U.S. is engaged in a major trade war with China. Under the agreement, known simply as TPP-11, tariffs have been slashed on nearly all goods amongst its members. Speaking at a recent conference, Michael Froman, a former U.S. trade representative who negotiated the original TPP, said American exporters will be hurt by losing preferential access to the TPP markets.
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MICHAEL FROMAN: We'll find ourselves at a competitive disadvantage with a windfall going to our competitors at our expense. And that will be hard to reverse over time if we lose those market-access opportunities.
NORTHAM: Take beef, for example. In Japan, beef exporters traditionally face a tariff of about 38 percent. That rate will fall to about 10 percent for members of the TPP-11, but not the U.S.
Australia, New Zealand and Canada are expected to absorb the U.S. share of the beef market and other agricultural products. A report by the Canadian government finds that country's economic gains will be significantly higher than if the U.S. had stayed in the TPP.
CHRIS SANDS: Many of the things that Canada produces are similar to things that the U.S. produces. But Canada is now in and the U.S. is out.
NORTHAM: Chris Sands, the director of the Center for Canadian Studies at Johns Hopkins University, says many of Canada's gains will be found in the agricultural sector.
SANDS: Whether it's wheat or soybeans or rice, or even beef and pork or chicken, all of those products are available from Canadian suppliers.
NORTHAM: The Peterson Institute predicts the U.S. stands to lose over $130 billion over the next decade by not being part of the pact. The new trade deal is written in such a way to make it easy for other countries to join in the future. But for now, the Trump administration is looking to do bilateral deals, including some in Asia. Jackie Northam, NPR News.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
A Native American tribe whose land extends along parts of the U.S.-Mexico border says President Trump's proposed border wall would devastate its community. The Tohono O'odham Nation says it has 34,000 enrolled members. Some live on tribal lands in southwestern Arizona. Some live in Mexico. While they already have to contend with some barriers that tear apart their nation, they say a wall would be different.
VERLON JOSE: It would be as I, say, if I walked into your home and felt that your home was not safe, but I want to build a wall right smack in the middle of your home. And let me divide your family. And in order for go from one end of your house to the other, you would have to go through me.
GREENE: That's Verlon Jose. He's the vice chairman of the Tohono O'odham Nation. Now, there's this. He opposes building a wall, but Jose says he also understands firsthand why it's important to deter migrants from crossing that border illegally.
JOSE: We have a ranch a few miles just north of the international border, and they come by the ranch way too often. There's been a decrease over the years, but they still come by. And if we're not there - my cousin, who takes care of the ranch - they'll break in and help themselves to food and water. Or if we're there, they get water, they go on their way.
GREENE: And how do you feel about that?
JOSE: Well, Tohono O'odham, we've always been hospitable people, even with the first European contact. So that's just our thing. Nowadays, a lot of drugs are being involved and so forth. They seem to just want to go in and destroy your homes. And that's where we feel that we're being disrespected and that we're being violated by these migrant crossers. But at the same time, there are two probably different groups of people that come through the border. You got the migrants that are coming, that looking for the American dream, and then you got those who are hauling drugs.
GREENE: So when we hear President Trump talking about the need to increase security and to stop migrants from crossing the border illegally because, the president argues, some of them are dangerous, some of them are bringing drugs into the United States - I mean, you share that concern?
JOSE: We share that concern, but a wall is not the answer.
GREENE: Why not?
JOSE: Facts will tell you that the majority of those things are coming through ports of entry. So that's why we believe that a border wall in or on the Tohono O'odham Nation is not the answer.
GREENE: We had a Republican congressman from Alabama, Gary Palmer, on our show recently. And he said, you know, even if this is not a route we're talking about that is used often by people who are dangerous, it only takes one person getting through to carry out a terrorist attack that could kill hundreds, even thousands, of people in the United States. I mean, can your tribal police, working with border agents, really do as much as a wall could do?
JOSE: I believe that working together, we can do more. Technology is a key. Right now, they're proposing the Integrated Fixed Towers. That's a virtual wall that's going to be out there that will be the eyes out there that a human eye can't see. And so that's why we believe that a wall would not work. Yes, one terrorist could come through there. But look at all the tragedies that happen in America. And I have not done any research on this in myself. But if you look at it, how many of those devastations that America has faced, with the shootings and so forth, are caused by people coming across the border? It's America killing America.
GREENE: Mr. Vice Chairman, thank you so much for your time.
JOSE: Thank you.
GREENE: Verlon Jose is vice chair of the Tohono O'odham Nation.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
About 20 million Americans live in manufactured or mobile homes. Some own the structures. Most rent the property underneath. And for many, rents are rising. Here's Anna Casey of Illinois Public Media.
ANNA CASEY, BYLINE: Terry Baker has lived at Wilson's mobile home park in Urbana, Ill., for more than 20 years. Baker is a retired home health worker and a proud grandmother who was looking for a place of her own after her divorce.
TERRY BAKER: I could not get over the rent. When I moved in here, my rent was $142 a month. Where else was I going to live for that kind of money?
CASEY: Baker's rent has doubled now. It started to rise three years ago. She describes a letter that residents got.
BAKER: Dear Wilson's resident, Dennis and I are writing to inform you we have made a difficult decision to sell Wilson's on University.
CASEY: The local owners sold the community to Colorado-based RV Horizons. It owns mobile home parks in more than 25 states. Its business model is to buy up mom and pop parks and raise the rent. Frank Ralph works at RV Horizons and something called Mobile Home University, a so-called investors' boot camp that teaches people how to buy mobile home parks. This is from a promotional video on their website.
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FRANK ROLFE: You only rent the land when you own a mobile home park. And the customers are relatively easy to please. They're just happy to have a roof over their head.
CASEY: The investor who bought the park where Baker lives and 12 others in the county has steadily increased rent and fees. Frank Rolfe wouldn't return a request for an interview, but in this video from 2015, he laid out his business strategy.
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ROLFE: Yeah. Well, raising the rent is simply part of the Day One purchase because often, the mom and pop has not raised the rent in years. So they're far below market.
CASEY: It's unclear how many mobile home parks remain family-owned, but they're an increasingly popular investment. Just five of the biggest mobile home real estate companies now own nearly 300,000 sites. The largest is Michigan-based Sun Communities. Russell Watson is with the Federation of Manufactured Home Owners of Florida. He liked living in a Sun Community.
RUSSELL WATSON: These guys keep the parks as parks. They aren't looking to simply displace you and send you on your way.
CASEY: In larger cities, mobile home communities are increasingly redeveloped as more profitable real estate. But Watson, who moved to a mom and pop park in Fort Pierce, says the downside is rents become less affordable when corporate owners take over.
WATSON: And they will rapidly price out people who came to those parks because it was affordable housing.
CASEY: Back in Illinois, residents like Terry Baker are worried that more rent hikes are coming.
BAKER: And if I wanted to move this place, it's going to cost me $5,000 to $7,000 to move it and set it back up. OK? And they own almost every park around here. They got me by the butt.
CASEY: That's why Baker and some other Illinois residents are advocating for rent-control measures. But there's a ban on rent control in Illinois and at least 20 other states. Mobile home owners worried about escalating rents fueled by speculators are pushing for legislation to control them. For NPR News, I'm Anna Casey in Urbana, Ill.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Police in upstate New York say three men and a 16-year-old boy had a plan. It was a conspiracy to attack a community of Muslims. The alleged target is a rural settlement known as Islamberg. North Country Public Radio's Brian Mann reports.
BRIAN MANN, BYLINE: At a press conference Tuesday, police chief Patrick Phelan from Greece, N.Y., just outside Rochester, said the four people arrested had assembled a sizable arsenal, including more than 20 firearms and three improvised explosive devices.
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PATRICK PHELAN: If they had carried out this plot, which every indication is that they were going to, you know, people would have died. I don't know how many and who, but people would've died.
MANN: Police aren't saying what the motive was or releasing details of the plan. Islamberg lies in a rural area a three-hour drive from Rochester. It was settled by Muslim families in the 1980s. About 200 people live there. Local authorities and neighbors say the religious community is peaceful, a long-established part of the region's culture. But in recent years, Islamberg has become the target of suspicion and conspiracy theories among right-wing groups and conservative media. This, from a broadcast on Fox News (ph).
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STUART VARNEY: People in an Islamist compound are stockpiling guns in preparation for the Trump administration. We're going to show you...
MANN: In 2017, a Tennessee man was sentenced to nearly 20 years in federal prison after plotting to burn down Islamberg's mosque and school. Anti-Muslim activists regularly hold protests nearby. Lisa Joseph spoke at a rally there in 2017.
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LISA JOSEPH: We will not tolerate ISIS training camps, militant-style training camps, radicalized training camps.
MANN: State police and the FBI have debunked those claims repeatedly and say is Islamberg poses no threat. Authorities say this latest alleged plot involved young men. The oldest was 20, and two of the suspects are still in high school. It was uncovered after the 16-year-old, who's been arrested, talked to friends in the lunchroom at his school. Police chief Patrick Phelan says another high school student then raised the alarm.
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PHELAN: The kid that initially said something to an adult saved people's lives. We tell kids this all the time. We say if you see something, say something; you got to report anything suspicious. The lesson is that it works. And as a result, nobody's dead.
MANN: A spokesman for the Islamberg community says they'll hold a press conference later today. The FBI, New York State Police and other agencies say they're still investigating, including a review of the suspect's phones and computers. They say more arrests are possible. Brian Mann, NPR News.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Big news here around LA. Students attending school in Los Angeles today will find something different - teachers in the classrooms.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
A six-day teacher strike is over. The educators were demanding better pay, smaller class sizes and other changes. Support for this deal was overwhelming, although different teachers see different implications for them. NPR asked a few what they thought.
JENNIFER LIEBE-ZELAZNY: I am actually pretty excited about our new, tentative agreement.
TERESA RIVAS-NASOQEQE: Feeling a little uneasy and not fully satisfied with the agreement.
LIEBE-ZELAZNY: We are going to have smaller class sizes. That's big.
JESENIA CHAVEZ: For my class setting, the number of students actually increased.
RIVAS-NASOQEQE: But I'm excited in moving forward to see what else we can accomplish as a collective.
INSKEEP: Those are teachers Jennifer Liebe-Zelazny, Teresa Rivas-Nasoqeqe (ph) and Jesenia Chavez.
GREENE: All right. Kyle Stokes is the education reporter from member station KPCC and joins me here in our studios at NPR West. Kyle, good morning. You've been covering a six-day strike, and it's over.
KYLE STOKES, BYLINE: Oh, boy, I'm tired.
GREENE: I bet you are. Well - so it sounds like from those voices that there are still some - a lot of questions, but there is a deal. Teachers are going to get back to the classroom. What is in the deal? What are the details here?
STOKES: Well - so the deal includes a raise for teachers. That wasn't a big question. They had been looking for a 6 1/2 percent raise, but they've been - it looked like they were going to accept the 6 percent raise the district has been offering for months. It also looks like the teachers are going to get the hiring of new staff of nurses, of counselors and school librarians that they had been asking for, for instance. The union says that the district will hire enough nurses now to guarantee a nurse in every school five days a week, which is something that not a lot of schools have right now. Coming up in just a few years is when that's going to be in place.
The big breakthrough, David, though, was on class sizes, that the district agreed to try and hit some very ambitious targets for reducing class sizes here in Los Angeles schools. But they're going to do it over 3 1/2 years instead of the kind of one-year window that they'd been trying to hit before.
The other piece of the class size deal is that the school district gave up the power that it had in the old contract to essentially raise class sizes almost whenever they want because class size reduction is very expensive. And the district felt like they needed this flexibility in order to save money in the event of a fiscal crisis. The district gave that up, and the union found that old provision very toxic. They find that concession to be a huge one.
GREENE: All right. A lot more nurses, guarantees of smaller class size - these things cost money. The district had been saying they don't have the money. Did they come up with more money? What happened?
STOKES: Well - so part of this is still being costed out. It's still not entirely clear how much the entire deal is going to spend. And that's going to be calculated over the next couple of days. But on the class size and staffing pieces, part of the way that the district is going to pay for it is by spreading this out over 3 1/2 years, again, instead of that one-year window we had been talking about before.
But what also appears to be happening, David, is that the district is taking what Mayor Eric Garcetti called the leap of faith, that the funding is going to materialize somewhere, that either the state is going to come in down the road with more funding, that maybe local voters are going to raise their own property taxes. It is that leap of faith that seems to be what's going to move forward here. And that's going to be the way that the district is going to make this work is what it appears.
GREENE: It feels like a big moment of coming together. Is that what teachers and others involved are saying to you? Or is there still some sort of uncertainty out there?
STOKES: A big moment of coming together, yeah. There's a lot of relief certainly among parents that this is - that this deal is done.
GREENE: Sure.
STOKES: Teachers obviously feeling very empowered, like they got a lot done with this deal, and some actually, a minority apparently, felt like they maybe could have gotten more. But we saw overwhelming majorities vote in favor of this tentative agreement and look like they're ready to accept it.
GREENE: All right. Strike over in Los Angeles, although teachers in Denver are planning to strike beginning on Monday. So we're going to have to keep our eyes on that. Kyle Stokes from member station KPCC covers education here. Kyle, thanks.
STOKES: You're welcome.
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INSKEEP: This week, the Senate will vote on two bills to end the partial government shutdown.
GREENE: That's right, two bills. One of them is backed by Republicans. The other is backed by Democrats. What the bills have in common is that neither is expected to actually pass. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke for the Republican option.
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MITCH MCCONNELL: The proposal outlined by President Trump is the only one currently before us that can be signed by the president and immediately reopen the government.
GREENE: Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said that bill has no chance.
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CHUCK SCHUMER: The president's proposal is one-sided, harshly partisan and was made in bad faith.
GREENE: OK. Now Democrats, then, have backed the same measure that passed the Senate by unanimous consent back in December, a bill that has no funding for a border wall. That one died after President Trump said he wouldn't sign it.
INSKEEP: NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith is following this story. Tamara, good morning.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: How are these bills different, other than one having border funding - border wall funding and the other not?
KEITH: Well, that's the big one. But the other difference is, really, one is simply a clean bill to fund the government for a short period of time. It would basically - the Democratic bill basically reopens the government for a couple of weeks to allow negotiations to continue. President Trump's bill, the Republican bill, is based on the remarks that the president delivered over the weekend. It includes wall funding, other border security funds. It also would have a temporary extension for the DACA program for young people known as DREAMers, as well as some other extensions for other immigrant groups. And it makes some pretty significant changes to the way the asylum works. And that, Democrats say, is a poison pill that is built into that measure.
INSKEEP: That - it's one of the parts that Chuck Schumer would refer to as being bad faith. So does voting on these two bills, neither of which seems likely to get 60 votes and pass, advance the process in any way?
KEITH: Well, sometimes taking votes that fail proves what can pass and what can't pass, and then they can move on. So in that sense, it might advance things. I mean, at least they're voting on something - right? - which they haven't done much of on the Senate side or any of on the Senate side as long as this shutdown has been going on. But does it resolve the underlying problem? No. The underlying problem is that President Trump doesn't want to end the shutdown - that he said he would be proud to own - until he has funding for a border wall. And Democrats say they don't want to start negotiating over a border wall until the government is reopened.
INSKEEP: Are lawmakers or the White House feeling increasing pressure?
KEITH: I think that they are. The pain is growing from the shutdown as it continues. Admiral Karl Schultz, the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, posted a video last night on Twitter. He says we're five-plus weeks into this government lapse, and your anxiety and your non-pay, you as members of the armed forces should not be expected to shoulder this burden.
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KARL SCHULTZ: I find it unacceptable that Coast Guard men and women have to rely on food pantries and donations to get through day-to-day life as service members.
KEITH: And then he made sure that they knew about assistance that's available. That is not a good look.
INSKEEP: No, hearing a commandant say that this is an unacceptable situation. Tamara, thanks so much.
KEITH: You're welcome.
INSKEEP: That is NPR's Tamara Keith.
Now, the shutdown is also affecting the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
GREENE: Yeah. Thomas O'Connor is the president of the FBI Agents Association. He says that the shutdown is making it more difficult for the agency to do its job to protect the people of the country from criminals and terrorists. It sounds like the shutdown is affecting a lot of important operations at the agency, including going after terrorists, drug traffickers, also gangs.
INSKEEP: NPR justice reporter Ryan Lucas is here to tell us more. He's in our studios in Washington. Ryan, good morning.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: So how is it that this shutdown affects the FBI?
LUCAS: Well, according to the FBI Agents Association, the impact of the partial shutdown is pretty significant on them. The association represents around 14,000 active and retired FBI special agents, so they have representation members in all of the field offices across the country. And the group released a report yesterday that outlines how this lack of funding is hindering the FBI's work. It's based off of anonymous comments from members. And they say that it's having an impact on everything from training to operations and investigations. And the kinds of investigations that are taking a hit are serious. We're talking about sex trafficking, crimes against children, counterterrorism, cybersecurity, violent gangs, drug traffickers, everything. The Agents Association also says that this may have a long-term impact on the FBI on its ability to recruit and retain the kind of talent that it needs to do its job.
INSKEEP: Oh, sure, because it's embarrassing to have people not paid. But I want to understand this a little better. I presume that a lot of FBI agents are considered essential personnel. They're not being paid, but they're told to show up to work, meaning they can investigate things. But they're sending word they're unable to investigate even though they're on the job. Why would that be?
LUCAS: Well, one thing that stands out in this report again and again is agents saying that they no longer have the money to pay confidential sources who are critical to their investigations.
INSKEEP: Oh, who are not necessarily willing to wait till the end of the shutdown to get paid, I suppose.
LUCAS: When sources aren't getting paid, sources can dry up. Sources can go silent. And these sorts of sources are used in a lot of the work that the FBI does, stuff that I mentioned earlier - the counterterrorism cases, counterintelligence, gang, drugs. One example from the report comes from an agent who says that they're investigating a street gang that's pushing a lot of methamphetamine and heroin. And the agent says that their probe has been undermined because they don't have money to pay their confidential sources. And they also don't have money to make controlled purchases of drugs, which is something that they often use in narcotics investigations. Now...
INSKEEP: I'm just imagining an undercover officer having to stand there and say, listen; I can pay you for this. I just need to wait a couple weeks or maybe a little longer. No, go on, go on. I'm sorry.
LUCAS: (Laughter) Now, you also have to remember that the FBI doesn't work on its own. It can't do all of what it needs to do in order to carry out investigation on its own. It works closely with state and local law enforcement. The Agents Association says that in some cases that sort of cooperation has been hampered because they can't pay those partners for work on their joint investigations. And they also say that grand jury subpoenas are being delayed because there are no funds for them, and staff at U.S. attorneys' offices are furloughed.
INSKEEP: How are unpaid agents personally affected?
LUCAS: It's really hurting them, according to the FBI Agents Association. There are even food banks that have been set up at some of the field offices to try to help people make ends meet.
INSKEEP: OK. Ryan, thanks so much, really appreciate it.
LUCAS: Thank you.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Ryan Lucas.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
The big news here around Los Angeles this morning - tens of thousands of public school teachers from the LA Unified School District, the nation's second-biggest, are heading back to the classroom. A six-day strike ended last night after a deal between the union and school officials was ratified. This deal includes a pay hike for teachers, also a commitment to reduce class size, and it will bring in more school nurses. This is elementary school teacher Jennifer Liebe-Zelazny.
JENNIFER LIEBE-ZELAZNY: I am actually pretty excited about our new, tentative agreement. Nobody got everything, but everybody got something.
GREENE: And then this is teacher Jesenia Chavez. She said that she felt that the community had really rallied around the teachers.
JESENIA CHAVEZ: We reached a place where people respect us and people care about us. And it's really - I feel like a rock star, like, with my red T-shirt. And I feel like I'm appreciated and valued by my city. And I completely want to say thank you 100 percent to everyone who supported us.
GREENE: All right. Kyle Stokes covers education for member station KPCC, and he's with me in our studios at NPR West. Good morning, Kyle.
KYLE STOKES, BYLINE: Morning, David.
GREENE: All right. So the strike you've been covering for, like, almost a week now is over.
STOKES: Yes.
GREENE: Tell us what's in this deal that brought the two sides together.
STOKES: Well, so, first of all, the teachers are going to get a raise. They had been - the district had been offering a 6 percent raise for months, and the teachers have accepted that. The district also has offered to raise staffing levels of nurses, counselors and librarians as the union had been looking for for a long time. So, for instance, over the next two or three years, the district is going to roll out enough school nurses to make sure that every Los Angeles Unified School has a school nurse on campus five days week, which isn't the case right now...
GREENE: Because there were some days when there was no nurse at all - right? - at some of those schools.
STOKES: Some days when there's no nurse at all or one or two days a week. But the big breakthrough here, David, is class sizes. Not only has the district agreed to try and hit some very ambitious targets for reducing class sizes in Los Angeles over the next three years, the district also gave up this power that it had under the old contract to essentially raise class sizes almost whenever it wants. Class size reduction is very expensive, and the district felt like it needed flexibility, thus this provision in the old contract, kind of a safety valve that would let them raise class sizes in order to save money. They gave that up. That's a big win for the union.
GREENE: OK. So the teachers got a lot of what they were asking for.
STOKES: A lot of what they were asking for, but it's going to have to be spread out over three years, so that's sort of the compromise there.
GREENE: The school district had been saying they just didn't have the money for some of this stuff. Is there a concern about coming up with that money or what this might do to the school district if they've committed to spending so much?
STOKES: Well, the key here is that the deal has been spread out over 3 1/2 years. So instead of trying to hit this one-year window, which is what had been happening before, the district trying to figure out how to scramble and come up with this money to cover just one year, now they've got three years to try and figure out how to pay for all of this. And there is sort of an understanding that - as the mayor of Los Angeles, who's been sort of facilitating these talks - that the district is going to try and take a leap of faith here, that they're going to try and have to figure out how to pay for all of this over the next three years, try and secure more state funding, maybe more local funding through some sort of property tax increase. We call it a parcel tax here. That - at least the district now, because it's been spread out over 3 1/2 years, they have some time to figure out how to make this work. But there is a question of how they are going to make this work financially.
GREENE: Kyle, a lot of people around the country are paying attention to this strike, and some of the national coverage focuses - focused on the growth of charter schools in LA. How did that impact these negotiations to this strike?
STOKES: Well - so charter schools aren't necessarily central to the dispute on the contract negotiating table, but they are central to the reasons why teachers are striking because charter schools, the competition with charters, is central to a lot of teachers' anxieties. Now, there are some regulations that have been written into the new contract. I would not call them central to the deal here. There also is going to be a school board vote on a resolution that would ask the state to cap the number of charter schools here in Los Angeles. Now, that says that something again can't be part of the contract deal. It needs to be something that state lawmakers do. But it looks like a charter-friendly majority on the school board here in Los Angeles is going to vote on a resolution that would call for that.
GREENE: Kyle Stokes from member station KPCC. Kyle, thanks.
STOKES: You're welcome.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
People outraged by a confrontation in front of the Lincoln Memorial had help in getting outraged. Nobody was harmed as a Native American drummer faced a group of primarily white Catholic school students. But the incident spread on social media, and it was boosted by a single Twitter account that has since been suspended. NPR's Laura Sydell reports Twitter says the account was using misleading information to manipulate the public conversation.
LAURA SYDELL, BYLINE: The video went viral in a number of different ways, but a major player was an account with the handle @2020fight. The video shows a Native American elder banging on a small hand-held drum surrounded by a group of high school boys, some of whom are wearing Make America Great Again hats. One of the boys stands a few feet from the man's face, staring at him with a slight smile. It's a brief moment in a much longer, more complicated situation. The @2020fight account has been in the sights of Rob McDonagh with Storyful, a firm that analyzes social media conversations.
ROB MCDONAGH: And I had spotted it before tweeting out very hyperpartisan views very much in Democratic talking points.
SYDELL: While that in itself didn't necessarily mean anything was wrong, there were other signs.
MCDONAGH: What made this account stand out is its high rate of tweets and highly political tweets. You're talking 130-plus tweets a day. And it had a fake profile pic. It was using the profile photo of a Brazilian blogger.
SYDELL: McDonagh says the account also had over 40,000 followers, but it wasn't verified by Twitter. He says that's unusual for an account with so many followers. According to McDonagh, CNN pointed out the account to Twitter, and it was taken down. Twitter has not disclosed who it believes might be behind the @2020fight account. But Molly McKew thinks it bears the hallmarks of an account designed to spread discord.
MOLLY MCKEW: I think this little bit of video content really hit a nerve with a lot of people, and I think that's exactly what it was intended to do.
SYDELL: McKew is a researcher who's worked for the governments of the countries of Georgia and Moldova, consulting on how to fight Russian disinformation. She says the video hit a nerve with progressives because it looked like a member of a minority group, a Native American elder, was being attacked by a group of white boys with MAGA hats.
MCKEW: Everybody rushes to their polls (ph) as quickly as possible.
SYDELL: McKew says she also noticed that @2020fight is followed by accounts she thinks are suspicious. Those accounts retweeted the video and sent it out to more people. Whitney Phillips, a professor at Syracuse University, has studied the way stories like this blow up on social media. Phillips says this situation is a near-perfect model of how social media and the news media end up working together to heighten conflicts between Americans.
WHITNEY PHILLIPS: You basically throw a match into some kindling, and then the American people supply the oxygen.
SYDELL: Then it rises to the top on Twitter, and the professional media notices it.
PHILLIPS: And so you have this race to cover the story first, and then once the story has been covered, every publication needs to, you know, publish their own take.
SYDELL: Including NPR. Phillips says the end result is that a small group that wants to keep Americans fighting amongst themselves is able to leverage social media and manipulate the traditional media. Unfortunately, she says, social media companies like Twitter are ultimately not prioritizing the good of society.
PHILLIPS: Sometimes it takes down really offensive content and sometimes it keeps that content up because it is good for their bottom line.
SYDELL: Phillips says divisions in our society are real, and the video may have taken off without fake accounts. But she would like to see people look at the source of the information before retweeting. Laura Sydell, NPR News.
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DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Good morning. I'm David Greene with some advice I had thought was unnecessary. If you're at the petting zoo, no, you can't take the animals. A woman was reportedly arrested for trying to kidnap a kangaroo from the Peaceable Kingdom Petting Zoo in Pennsylvania. CBS3 reports police discovered her trying to squeeze the animal into a Honda and drive it to Florida. She reportedly said the kangaroo was hers, but a court made her surrender it. Can we assume it wasn't a kangaroo court?
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
There has been a controversy raging in the NFL since Sunday that has now turned political. Louisiana's governor, John Bel Edwards, has sent a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell complaining about a missed penalty that New Orleans Saints fans say cost their team a chance to play in the Super Bowl. This letter follows lawsuits, a petition and just general rage about this now infamous no call by referees in the NFC championship game. And let's talk about this with NPR sports correspondent Tom Goldman. Hi, Tom.
TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: Hi there, David.
GREENE: OK. So for people who were not watching that game, remind us what happened and what is causing all this.
GOLDMAN: Only one of the most obvious cases of pass interference you'll ever see, and it wasn't penalized. It happened late in the game between the Saints and the LA Rams. A Rams defender blasted a New Orleans receiver before a pass reached the receiver, and there was no flag. And after the game, the Rams defender acknowledged he interfered. The NFL head of officials admitted they blew the call, which, under NFL rules, wasn't reviewable, so they couldn't check replays and see what everyone else in the world saw.
Now, as a result, the Saints lost a chance to run down the clock and kick a short field goal for the win in the final seconds. Instead, they were forced to kick a tiebreaking field goal with over a minute and a half left. That gave the Rams lots of time to get the ball back, drive down the field, kick the tying field goal, which they did, and then they won in overtime.
GREENE: So Saints fans are going to want you to answer yes to this question, but I'm going to ask it. Would they have definitely won the game if this penalty had been called?
GOLDMAN: (Laughter) Highly likely, Saints fans, but not certain, David Greene. This is just between you and me. Even if the Saints had run down the game clock and attempted that very short field goal for the win, the kicker could have missed or it might have been blocked. Even with the botched call, the Saints could have won. Yes, the Rams got the ball with lots of time after the Saints went ahead, but, hey, what about that great Saints defense? They could have stopped the Rams from driving down the field, kicking the tying field goal. And then in overtime, the Saints had the ball first and had a chance to win.
So now that all Saints fans hate me, I will say, yes, the odds were pretty good that had the penalty been called, the Saints would be playing New England in the Super Bowl February 3.
GREENE: All right. Well, sports fans like me, we just suffer and deal with a bad call. It sounds like in Louisiana I guess you could do lots of things like file lawsuits and get your governor involved. So what - tell us - tell me more about the response here.
GOLDMAN: The governor sent that letter to Commissioner Goodell to make rule changes that allow for expanding use of replay. Otherwise, he said, the integrity of the game will be called into question. Edwards also said Louisiana football fans will move on but will not forget. There are these lawsuits by fans. One of them alleges damages of mental anguish and loss of enjoyment of life. I know you've felt that as a Pittsburgh Steelers fan.
GREENE: Thanks.
GOLDMAN: (Laughter) Saints fan Matt Bowers has rented billboards in Atlanta, the host city for the Super Bowl, with messages like Saints got robbed. And there's an online petition asking for a rematch this Sunday. As of early this morning, David, the petition had over 680,000 signatures.
GREENE: OK. There's not going to be a rematch. I'm going to predict that right now. But what is the NFL going to do here going forward?
GOLDMAN: What should happen and probably will is replay needs to be expanded. That play should have been reviewed and the call corrected. The league has said subjective penalties like pass interference cannot be reviewed. The NFL, you know, worries that too much replay will slow down games. But if you watch the other conference championship game between New England and Kansas City, which I'm sure you did, there were a bunch of replays during a thrilling fourth quarter, and it didn't take away the excitement at all.
GREENE: NPR sports correspondent Tom Goldman. Thank you, Tom.
GOLDMAN: A pleasure, David.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Five hundred forty-four days - that's how long journalist Jason Rezaian was held in Iran's notorious Evin Prison. At the time, he was working for The Washington Post and living in Tehran with his wife, Yegi, who is also a journalist.
JASON REZAIAN: We had cultivated this life. I'd been living in Iran for about five years. We'd been married for about 15 months. And it all came crashing down very quickly in a really dramatic fashion that would take many months to make sense of.
INSKEEP: One night on their way to a party, Jason and his wife were stopped in their garage at gunpoint. They were arrested and sent to prison on suspicion of espionage. Jason's wife was released a few months later, but he stayed behind, spending some of that time in solitary confinement. In his new memoir titled "Prisoner," Jason Rezaian lays out the details of his incarceration, the prisoner swap that got him out and what life has been like since. He spoke with Rachel Martin.
RACHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: Who exactly were your captors?
REZAIAN: So the Iranian power structure is broken up into different parts. And one of the most powerful ones is the Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Revolutionary Guard Corps is a military force but has become an economic and security force in the country as well. The people that took me were the Revolutionary Guard Corps' intelligence service.
MARTIN: Who sort of work, is it fair to say, on the outside of the mainstream government.
REZAIAN: Yes, and not only that, they are outside of the government and above power. So, you know, they have their own section of Evin Prison. This is a section that has no oversight. Nobody has the right to come in and see what's going on inside this prison section and who is in there. So, you know, you were really at the whims of your captors the whole time. And that's a very frightening feeling. But also you feel powerless in a lot of ways.
MARTIN: What were your interrogation sessions like?
REZAIAN: Maddening. I mean, they had hacked into our emails and our social media accounts and, you know, were able to print out some emails. And they would bring them into the interrogation room with captions highlighted, some of my stories that appeared in The Washington Post and the most innocuous things, you know, a story that I had written about baseball or a line that I sent in an email to a friend saying, you know, apologizing for going radio silent for a few days.
MARTIN: Like radio silence...
REZAIAN: Yeah.
MARTIN: It must mean, like, radio intercepts, something nefarious.
REZAIAN: Well - and only spies use those type of terms. All of these things were being construed as evidence of my espionage that was so complex and complicated, they had no idea what I had done wrong.
MARTIN: Did you have an understanding of what was happening on the outside to get you free?
REZAIAN: Not until about six weeks into it. Up until that point, we had been told that you were reported dead in a car accident, that The Washington Post hasn't said a peep, your family has - you know, they don't have any idea where you are, nobody knows that...
MARTIN: Did you believe that when you heard those messages?
REZAIAN: I didn't know what to believe.
MARTIN: Yeah.
REZAIAN: Right? But my in-laws were able to come to a court session that we had. I was told by my sister-in-law that John Kerry has spoken about you a couple of times, and The Washington Post is writing about you, and nobody's forgotten about you, and everybody knows you didn't do anything wrong. It was a shot of hope that I hadn't had yet, and it felt pretty good. But it was short lived because, you know, by the end of that day, I was back in my solitary cell and Yegi was as well.
MARTIN: In the end, you decided to sue the Iranian government, asking a federal judge to impose a billion dollars in damages. Is that purely symbolic? I mean, do you think Iran would ever pay that money?
REZAIAN: Iran would not willingly pay that money, but the point is, whether or not Iran will pay that judgment, it's not a symbolic question. The idea is let's make this expensive for them so they don't do it to other people. The Iranian government needs to feel as though, hey, you know what? This isn't worth it.
MARTIN: Do you know how many Americans are being held in Iran right now?
REZAIAN: We know of at least six U.S. persons. You know, that includes citizens and dual nationals. Bob Levinson has been missing in Iran for 11 years. The Iranian government contends that they don't know what happened to him. But I find that impossible to believe. Siamak and Baquer Namazi, father and son, businessmen, Xiyue Wang, a Princeton scholar who was there with a valid student visa, Michael White, a Navy veteran who was apparently visiting his girlfriend - and, you know, these are real people.
MARTIN: May I ask how you navigate life now? I mean, do certain smells or sounds trigger specific memories for you of your time in Evin?
REZAIAN: Not so much. I mean, I think about - I still have a very hard time being in situations where people are behind me - right? - where I can't see what the activity is behind me because so much of what I experienced was, you know, under a blindfold. And so many of their interrogations were done with people, you know, behind me.
MARTIN: Voices that were disembodied.
REZAIAN: Exactly.
MARTIN: Yeah.
REZAIAN: And so that's still an issue for me. You know, I write about the fact that the lights were on 24 hours a day in my cells. And, you know, they're artificial lights, fluorescence, and I'm still incredibly, you know, almost unnaturally sensitive to those kinds of overhead lights in a way that I never was before.
MARTIN: You had at least a couple different cellmates when you weren't in solitary confinement. Do you know what happened to them?
REZAIAN: Yeah. Well, one of them was apparently convicted in a court case I learned later and is spending - I think he's been behind bars for - coming up on eight years now. I don't have any contact with his family, but I learned that through others. The other one who I spent the bulk of my time with was released about two months after I was. And we have a wonderful sort of back and forth over messenger from time to time. He's got two nieces who are very fluent in English who serve as translators. And every once in a while, we'll jump on a FaceTime call. We both put a bunch of the weight that we lost in prison back on, and we joke about that.
And we both look forward to the day that we can meet in a free country and give each other a big hug and reminisce about a really hard time in both of our lives but one in which we both experienced a really unique kind of friendship.
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INSKEEP: Rachel Martin talking with Jason Rezaian about his new book, "Prisoner."
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DAVID GREENE, HOST:
OK. It is Day 33 now of a partial government shutdown, the longest shutdown in history. We are now seeing some activity on Capitol Hill. The Senate is expected to take up competing proposals in the coming days, one with funding for President Trump's border wall and one without. Neither are expected to go anywhere.
In the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is beginning to come under some pressure from more moderate Democrats in redder districts. They have written a letter to Pelosi asking her to make the White House an offer. If President Trump reopens the government, Pelosi would promise to open a debate over border security and guarantee a House vote by the end of February. One of the Democrats backing that idea is Congressman Ben McAdams of Utah, and he joins us this morning.
Congressman, welcome.
BEN MCADAMS: Good morning, David.
GREENE: So your compromise would require the president to reopen the government as a first step. Isn't that what Pelosi and other Democratic leaders have been asking for the whole time? How is this different?
MCADAMS: Yeah. You know, I think we're unified on that. We can't be shutting down the government every time there's a disagreement in Congress, and so we've got to get the government back open. The American people should not be a pawn in this negotiation, so we should reopen the government. But look; there are mechanisms in Congress for us to have debates like this about tough issues. And so we should just reopen the government and then commit to the president that we're going to move forward, we're going to continue to have a back-and-forth, we're going to take, you know, his concerns for border security seriously. I think Democrats agree that border security is an issue that we care about.
But we've also got to talk about the broader issues of immigration reform and how we're going to protect the DREAMers and other people who are here. And so let's have that that conversation through the mechanisms that have already been used, you know, for decades. We will move forward. We'll have that conversation. We'll commit to a vote on border security and move forward. And I think that's - you know, hopefully, that's an olive branch that we can return to the president to say we're at the table; we're going to continue these conversations; we're going to take his concerns and his priorities seriously, listen to the issues that he's raising as we also work to build consensus across the Congress.
GREENE: So as you talk about continuing the conversation and things like that, I mean, Pelosi, Senator Schumer have said, you know, they would talk about these things as you go forth. The real difference here - just so I'm really clear - is just promising an actual vote in the House. That's what you're asking Speaker Pelosi to do?
MCADAMS: Yeah. Look. I think that's it. I think we should stay at the table. I didn't think the president's offer over the weekend was sufficient. It wasn't good enough. But we should always stay at the table and continue to negotiate and give him the sign that, look, we will have a vote on this. We'll have a debate. We'll have a vote. Nothing is ruled out. Nothing is ruled in. Let's just resume the work of government. And then let the political process, the debates in Congress and consensus-building move forward. And...
GREENE: Move forward.
MCADAMS: Yeah.
GREENE: Well, let me just ask you, if I can. Were the president to agree to something like this - I want to play you something a fellow Democrat said on our program yesterday. It's Virginia Senator Tim Kaine. He's really concerned about Democrats with to cave here.
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TIM KAINE: We are not resisting to sitting down to the president. What we resist is this president using the intentional infliction of pain on workers and citizens unrelated to the border dispute as a way to get his way. We're going to come out of this with a deal that will not only solve these problems but will discredit use of shutdown as a terrorizing negotiating strategy going forward.
GREENE: Could this compromise backfire? The president comes out there and says, OK, Democrats have said they're going to give me a vote on my border wall. And then that might encourage him to use shutdowns as leverage in the future.
MCADAMS: Look. I think we need to send that message loud and clear, that a shutdown is never a way that we're going to - it's not an acceptable negotiating tactic, that we're going to work and have these conversations like adults and without the threat of a shutdown so that one side or another gets their way. So I think - I agree with Senator Kaine in that regard, that we've got to move past the shutdown and then move into the regular course of how we have these conversations, how we have these debates and allow his priorities to come forward and to be discussed. I don't necessarily agree with them, but I think that we can all agree that we should have these conversations.
GREENE: You have a distinction. You are in the most Republican district in the country represented by a Democrat. Are you under a lot of pressure from voters to consider, like, the president's idea for a border wall?
MCADAMS: You know, I think my district is also not anti-immigrant. So people are frustrated by the shutdown. They're frustrated that both Congress and the president can't have a mature conversation about these things and listen to each other and try and find consensus. So that, I think, is what people are most frustrated about. We're frustrated by the impacts on the American people, the potential risks and the hits we're making on the economy that's going to affect everybody. And so we've just got to find a way, as adults, to have this conversation and to move it forward.
GREENE: Democratic Congressman Ben McAdams of Utah, thanks so much.
MCADAMS: Thank you.
GREENE: I want to turn now to NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith.
Good morning, Tam.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Hi.
GREENE: So is this proposal from centrist Democrats significant?
KEITH: I'm not sure if it was handed to President Trump right now that he would be particularly persuaded. The issue is that, at this moment, with the government shutdown, he has more leverage than he'll ever have to get border wall funding. If he, to use a term the Democrats would use, releases the hostages - if he reopens the government, then even if Democrats promise to vote, there is no way that a democratically controlled House of Representatives is going to approve $5.7 billion for a border wall, which is what President Trump says he wants.
GREENE: I see. So the White House is going to see this maybe, you could argue, for what it is. Sure, you're going to get a vote. But there's no way that I'm going to get that border wall, which would look like a defeat in the House. And that might not be something the president wants at all to see.
KEITH: The president is, for now at least, holding firm that he wants the wall. He also wants other border security measures that Democrats do want. So there is a lot of common ground in terms of, you know, securing ports of entry, preventing drugs from going across the border, adding more immigration judges. There are lots of areas of agreement. But the wall is the central argument.
GREENE: So just to be clear, we are not appearing very close at all to some sort of negotiation that might end the shutdown as of now.
KEITH: As of right now, there continues to be a fundamental disagreement. President Trump has leverage. He believes he has leverage. He wants wall funding before he reopens the government. Democrats will not discuss - negotiate until they reopen the government.
GREENE: NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith.
Tam, thanks.
KEITH: You're welcome.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
The writer Russell Baker has died at the age of 93. He was a newspaperman, a columnist, who across decades, wrote almost 5,000 New York Times commentaries under the headline "Observer," which is what he was - offering wry or satirical observations about American life.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Russell Baker described his work on NPR in 1993.
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RUSSELL BAKER: I have spent half my life now interpreting America to Americans.
INSKEEP: Those interpretations won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1979 for distinguished commentary.
GREENE: Now, Baker started his journalism career working the police beat at The Baltimore Sun, where he remains a legend, as those of us who work there are well aware. Laura Lippman once wrote in The Sun that Baker is our literary Babe Ruth, the Baltimore kid who made good in New York. He'd go on to cover Congress and the White House and the presidential campaigns of 1956 and 1960. And as a sort of second act in his career, Baker, in 1993, became host of "Masterpiece Theater" on PBS.
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BAKER: It's very interesting to be associated with something that's really an enduring ornament of American culture. This is one of the things that justifies television and nobles it somehow. And I like being identified with that.
INSKEEP: Although he felt a bit awkward being made up for TV.
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BAKER: But I like to think I'm a, you know, just plain, mud-between-the-toes America.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: (Laughter).
BAKER: And I'm not going to be pushed around like that by television.
GREENE: Russell Baker was born in rural Virginia to a stonemason dad and a schoolteacher mom. His 15 books included "Growing Up," the story of his childhood during the Great Depression, a tale that earned him a second Pulitzer in 1982. Baker's son tells The Baltimore Sun that his father was just a regular Joe with an extraordinary job.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Today, we're hearing from the Catholic school student at the center of a much discussed confrontation with a Native American activist. Nick Sandmann is seen on video standing uncomfortably close to Nathan Phillips in a crowd of demonstrators at the Lincoln Memorial. He spoke with NBC's "Today" show.
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NICK SANDMANN: As far as standing there, I had every right to do so. I don't - 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.
INSKEEP: People have sharply different views of this event despite or maybe because of multiple video perspectives. Adam Benforado is the author of the book "Unfair," which argues that camera angles and our preconceived notions influence how we view video. He's on the line. Good morning.
ADAM BENFORADO: Good morning.
INSKEEP: When you started seeing the videos of this, was it clear to you who was in the wrong?
BENFORADO: It wasn't. And that's one of the things that's really challenging about camera perspective bias. When you're only offered one perspective, I think all of us tend to view events and make attributions based on the shoes we're standing in. And I think that the research that's been done in psychology, particularly in the suspect interrogation context - where you put a camera behind the suspect and a camera behind the interrogator - really shows how powerful the frame matters.
INSKEEP: Oh, meaning that one angle can suggest one truth. Another angle can suggest another truth. In this case, we have a teenager in a Make America Great Again hat who's standing really close to this demonstrator pounding a drum. What is the way that the framing or the way - the place the video starts or the place the camera is, why would that change who we think is in the wrong there?
BENFORADO: Well, I think it's a couple of things here. I mean, first of all, that first video that we're shown, we don't have any context for it. We don't see the events leading up. We don't see the events afterwards. And so that can be powerfully biasing. I think the other thing here is we're really seeing things from Nathan Phillips' perspective. And so we appreciate - right? - what he might have been going through. But when we see that - those later videos, which offer sort of a third-party perspective, it becomes a lot more clear that this was a much more complex set of interactions than what we...
INSKEEP: Oh, that's when we learned that there were the Covington High School kids. There were the Native American demonstrators, but there were also these Black Israelites...
BENFORADO: Black Hebrew - yep.
INSKEEP: Black Hebrews who were casting insults and kind of intensifying the situation before that confrontation between the two.
BENFORADO: Exactly. And I think the other psychological dynamic that's in play here is what's commonly referred to as cultural cognition. All of us see the world through tinted lenses, right? So we think that we're just getting reality exactly as it is going on. But, really, everything is being filtered by - through our backgrounds, our experiences and our identities. And so if you're a Trump supporter, you see a very different set of events than if you, say, are an avowed progressive.
INSKEEP: You know, I'm thinking the hat is crucial to this whole thing. If you see that hat and you think anybody who wears that hat is a racist or at least is comfortable with racist language that's been used by the president of the United States, that colors your opinion of anything that the kid in that hat might have done.
BENFORADO: I think that's exactly true. And we see this all over in society, right? So the same event, say, a kneeling NFL player - right? - I can watch that. My father-in-law who's a Trump supporter can watch that. We see completely different things, and that's because my lens is tinted by my research on racial bias and police brutality and the people that I grew up with. My father-in-law, who's in his 70s, has a very different set of experiences, watches very different shows, and those things matter.
INSKEEP: So this event might have been more complicated than people realized at first, but are you saying it's impossible to establish what the truth actually was?
BENFORADO: Well, I don't want to go that far. I think what, you know, the takeaway for me here is that we all need to slow down when we are approaching media. And we need to be more humble. I think we need to understand that what our gut tells us in the instant is likely to be only part of the story.
INSKEEP: Mr. Benforado, thanks so much.
BENFORADO: Thanks.
INSKEEP: Adam Benforado is author of the book "Unfair."
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
An American ex-Marine accused of espionage in Russia has made his first public appearance in a court in Moscow. Paul Whelan was arrested at the end of last month by the FSB. That's Russia's Federal Security Service. A judge turned down his petition to be released on bail while he's awaiting trial. Here's more from NPR's Lucian Kim.
LUCIAN KIM, BYLINE: Russian state television showed Paul Whelan in a Moscow courtroom wearing glasses and a blue, button-down Oxford shirt. He was sitting in a glass box customary for defendants in Russian court cases. And his lawyer and an interpreter were leaning into a tiny window to talk to him. The lawyer, Vladimir Zherebenkov, spoke to reporters outside the courthouse.
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VLADIMIR ZHEREBENKOV: (Foreign language spoken).
KIM: He said the prosecution maintains that Whelan received state secrets on a digital memory stick. The lawyer insisted Whelan was expecting to get information about a church because of his interest in Russian culture. Paul Whelan holds U.S., British, Canadian and Irish citizenship. His lawyer said the prosecution had not made clear which country he's alleged to have been spying for. Whelan's family says he was in Moscow to attend to fellow Marine's wedding. His brother, David Whelan, spoke with NPR at the beginning of January.
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DAVID WHELAN: Russia is just one of many places that he has traveled to over the last 20 or 30 years. He's just always enjoyed travel. So I think Russia just happened to be a place that he was at the time.
KIM: American Ambassador Jon Huntsman visited Paul Whelan in a Moscow jail at the beginning of the year, and U.S. diplomats have sought further access to him. But an embassy spokeswoman told Russian reporters that a planned visit last Thursday had been abruptly canceled by the FSB. Whelan's detention has raised speculation that he may be traded for a Russian national, Maria Butina, who is in U.S. custody and has pleaded guilty to working as an unregistered Russian government agent.
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SERGEI LAVROV: (Foreign language spoken).
KIM: Last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters that was not a possibility. He said Russia doesn't do those kind of things and that Whelan was caught, in his words, red handed. Whelan maintains his innocence and is appealing the court's decision not to release him on bail. If convicted of espionage, Whelan could face a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. Lucian Kim, NPR News, Moscow.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The partial government shutdown is affecting the FBI. Sure, most FBI agents count as essential personnel. They're still turning up at work. But the FBI Agents Association is warning that the shutdown is interfering with their operations against crime. NPR justice reporter Ryan Lucas is here to talk about this. Hey there, Ryan.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: I guess we should note first that the agents who are working are unpaid, right?
LUCAS: Absolutely. And actually, this Friday, if there's no deal to end the partial shutdown, this will be the second paycheck that they will have missed. And like a lot of other federal employees who are not getting paid, this is proving pretty painful for people who work at the FBI. Here's the Agents Association president, Thomas O'Connor, describing the toll on FBI agents from this.
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THOMAS O'CONNOR: Every family in the FBI has mortgages, car payments, bills that come in at the end of the month. And you have to pay those. Try doing that without a paycheck.
LUCAS: Now, O'Connor says that he and his wife, who also works for the FBI, collected food in their neighborhood this week to bring to the office for a food bank there for those in need. There's an extra twist for FBI agents who aren't getting paid, though. They have to do a financial disclosure every year. Any defaults on loans, missed payments - that has the potential to hurt their ability...
INSKEEP: Wow.
LUCAS: ...To get their security clearance or retain their security clearance, which is critical for their jobs.
INSKEEP: And then let's talk about the jobs themselves. How is the day-to-day operation of the FBI affected here?
LUCAS: Well, according to the Agents Association, it's having a pretty significant impact. The association represents around 14,000 active and retired FBI agents. So they have members in all of the FBI's field offices across the country. And the group released a report yesterday that outlines how the lack of funding is hindering their work. It includes anonymous comments from agents in the field, and they say that it's having a significant impact on pretty much everything the Bureau does, from training to investigations. And the kinds of investigations that are being impacted are serious.
We're talking about sex trafficking, crimes against children, counterterrorism, cybersecurity, violent gangs, drug traffickers. The Agents Association also warns that this partial shutdown may have a long-term impact on the FBI on its ability to recruit and retain the kind of talent that it needs to do its job.
INSKEEP: What is the practical way that an inability to spend federal money would hinder the investigation of a drug network, say?
LUCAS: Well, one thing that stands out in this report again and again is agents saying that they no longer have the money to pay confidential sources. And those are critical to their investigations. They are used in all sorts of the FBI's work, from counterterrorism to counterintelligence, to the gang and drug sort of investigations that you asked about. When sources aren't getting paid, they go silent.
INSKEEP: Wait. You can't just tell a confidential source to please wait until the government shutdown is over?
LUCAS: Somehow, they like to get...
INSKEEP: They want to be paid on the barrel. OK.
LUCAS: Right. So one example in the report comes from an agent who says that they're investigating a street gang that is pushing a lot of methamphetamine and heroin. That investigation has been undermined because they've run out of money to pay their confidential sources. And they've also run out of money to make controlled purchases of drugs, which is an important part of narcotics investigations.
INSKEEP: So the one question comes up - by raising these issues, is the FBI getting into politics here?
LUCAS: It's funny that you ask that. The FBI itself put out a statement last night making clear that the report is from the Agents Association, not from the FBI. But the Agents Association says, for its part, that this is not about politics. For them, this is about getting the funds that they need to protect the country.
INSKEEP: Ryan, thanks.
LUCAS: Thank you.
INSKEEP: NPR's Ryan Lucas.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
All right. Farmers have been hit by the government shutdown in a different way. They are struggling to get information. The U.S. Department of Agriculture usually publishes the price, sales numbers and inventory for many agricultural products, but now some of those reports are not happening. Iowa Public Radio's Amy Mayer explains why this matters.
AMY MAYER, BYLINE: Here's an example of why reports matter. The government launched some of its crop and livestock reports as a response to the Soviet Union's huge purchase of U.S. grain in the 1970s. Commodities economist Arlan Suderman says the quiet purchase, worth about a billion dollars at the time, came as a shock.
ARLAN SUDERMAN: Then when it became known, we suddenly realized that much of our known inventory was gone, and the markets reacted very violently.
MAYER: Commodity prices soared. With that in the back of his mind, Suderman says he's now thinking about whether China could pull off a similar trick during this lag in public reporting. While not likely, it is possible. Suderman's company relies mainly on proprietary research, but he says they use USDA figures to fact-check their own. He's concerned there could be some surprises when the government reports resume.
SUDERMAN: Particularly, if once the reports start, we find that there is information that we missed that the market needs to adjust for. And that's the greatest risk.
MAYER: More immediately, farmers don't have all the information they count on. In Dallas County, Iowa, Marvin Shirley has been farming since the 1960s and uses USDA reports to guide his decision-making.
MARVIN SHIRLEY: We sell our calves sometime in January, February. Those would give projections and ideas on the amount of cattle around.
MAYER: Without them, he may put off that sale. At this time of year, his family's also thinking about the amount of corn and soybeans they'll plant in the coming season. But they don't have the information they need to make any adjustments. Shirley says the shutdown and last year's tariffs on many U.S. products create new problems for struggling farmers.
SHIRLEY: The president is very good at creating a problem then either using taxpayer money or some other means to solve the problem he created. And it's just a very unsettling time.
MAYER: To be sure, some Trump supporters in farm country don't feel unduly burdened by the shutdown. One cattle feedlot owner in Iowa said he could get by without the reports for some time and was embracing the politics of the moment, saying he's, quote, "tickled to death with what's happening." Iowa State University livestock economist Lee Schulz says the missing data means he can't put out his January reports, and he's already hearing chatter from worried farmers.
LEE SCHULZ: The longer this goes, some of that added uncertainty in the market, you know, may cause producers to not make decisions they normally would have.
MAYER: Daily price reports are still being published, but January is a big month for other data - a world supply and demand estimate, last year's totals for U.S. crop production and the number of cattle in the country. A USDA spokeswoman says the agency's intent is to publish them all once the government reopens. But by then staff and farmers will be playing a game of catch-up. For NPR News, I'm Amy Mayer in Des Moines.
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GREENE: Amy's story comes to us from Harvest Public Media, a reporting project in the Midwest and Plains.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. Scottish historians believed for a moment they'd found an ancient monument. Stones were arranged in a circle like a modest version of Stonehenge. Experts dated the circle to 4,000 years ago. Archaeologist Neil Ackerman called it amazing and forthrightly admitted his mistake soon after when residents informed him the stones were placed in a circle in the 1990s - not so long ago, though it can feel like ancient history.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
There was Nancy Pelosi suggesting that President Trump delay his State of the Union address. There was President Trump taking away her military transport to Afghanistan. This standoff between the president and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been spawning some comparisons with other strong speakers, among them Sam Rayburn of Texas, whose death was noted in this newsreel from 1961.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Congress has lost a longtime resident - Sam Rayburn. Mr. Sam served in Congress and as speaker longer than any other man.
GREENE: Now, since then, others have served longer in the House than Mr. Sam. But Sam Rayburn retains the record for the longest-serving speaker and one of the most powerful. The role of the speaker is our topic this week. And we're going to put your questions to commentator Cokie Roberts, who joins us.
Hi, Cokie.
COKIE ROBERTS, BYLINE: Hi, David.
GREENE: All right. It's great to have you back, talking about how government and politics work. Let's get to our first listener. This is a topic that a lot of people were interested in.
VINCENT HARRIS: Hi. This is Vincent Harris from Greenville, S.C. And my question is, from a historical perspective, how effective have strong speakers been at influencing presidential policy?
ROBERTS: Well, what we mainly see in terms of presidential policy is either a speaker who helps enact it or who thwarts it. So in the Rayburn example, he helped presidents from Roosevelt to Kennedy with their agendas, including momentous actions such as shepherding the extension of the military draft through the House by one vote...
GREENE: Wow.
ROBERTS: ...Right before Pearl Harbor all the way up to helping push through changes in the Rules Committee, which allowed civil rights bills to pass in the 1960s.
GREENE: How do you pull that off? How do you get Congress...
ROBERTS: (Laughter).
GREENE: ...To basically do what you want?
ROBERTS: Well, he, himself - Rayburn said it was through persuasion and reason. But Rayburn cultivated friendships among both parties, was admired greatly for his integrity and his humor. I actually knew him quite well, David. He was a grandfather figure in our house. And he always said, tell the truth in the first place, then you don't have to remember what you said.
GREENE: (Laughter) I love that.
ROBERTS: (Laughter).
GREENE: Those are words to live by. All right. Well, I think this next question is going to take us even further back in history.
MARSHALL ANDERSEN: Hi, Cokie. This is Marshall Andersen in Oregon. During Buchanan's presidency, I understand there was Democratic majority in the Senate and a Republican majority in the House. How does the political climate then compare to the political climate today?
GREENE: Taking us back to the days of Buchanan, OK.
ROBERTS: Well, yes, right before the Civil War - and happily, these times are not as bad as those when the issue of slavery, of course, tore the country apart. It was so divided it took 44 ballots and almost two months to elect a speaker. And people were ready to fight at any moment. A congressional wife, Abigail Brooks Adams, wrote to her son Henry that, quote, "the other side all go armed." But she admitted that she should like to punch a head or two.
(LAUGHTER)
GREENE: OK.
ROBERTS: So it's not quite that bad now. That horrible Congress ended in a lame duck session, where the southern states began seceding. It's an object lesson of what can happen when you can't come together.
GREENE: All right. Here's one more question about historical precedents.
BEVERLY MELO: Hi, Cokie. This is Beverly Melo from Black Point, Conn. When in the past has there been so much rancor and ill will between the White House and the Congress? And how was that result?
ROBERTS: Well, civil war resolved it, unfortunately, in the mid-19th century. But mid-20th century, you had the example of Harry Truman running against the do-nothing Republican Congress, which was not really fair, David. That Congress had done a lot. It enacted the Marshall Plan, created the CIA, the National Security Council. Truman's campaign worked. He brought in a Democratic Congress in his surprise victory in 1948. And that resolved the conflict. It really does usually take an election to sort things out.
GREENE: All right, Cokie. Thanks as always - interesting stuff.
ROBERTS: Good to talk to you, David.
GREENE: Commentator Cokie Roberts - and you can ask her your questions about how politics and government work. Just send us a tweet. Just use the #AskCokie.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
How do Congress and the White House get out of this? The Senate will vote on two measures tomorrow to end the partial government shutdown, and neither is favored to pass. President Trump insists he will continue a shutdown that he said he was proud to own until he gets $5.7 billion for a border wall. Republicans have followed the president's direction while Democrats say he's holding the government hostage. We could've said all those same things on any day in the past month or so. Marc Short once coordinated the president's relations with Congress. He was the White House Director of Legislative Affairs, and he's back on the line.
Mr. Short, welcome back to the program.
MARC SHORT: Good morning, Steve. Thanks for having me.
INSKEEP: Is your former boss pursuing a constructive strategy?
SHORT: I think that the president is committed to getting border security. And he feels that he's frustrated with Congress's impasse, and this is the only way forward. But the...
INSKEEP: But I asked if it's a - if this is a constructive strategy. You didn't say yes or no.
SHORT: Well, I think the reality is that there's very few options left to them. I think that shutdowns are never really productive for either side. And, you know, it was only one year ago today in January of 2018 that Democrats shut down the government because they said before they reopen it, they needed protections for DACA. So it is sort of ironic the president's now put that on the table. And yet we're still at the same place.
INSKEEP: Well, let's describe what the president has put on the table. The president has put forward this proposal that includes DACA protections. But it appears to be a three-year window where people with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals would be - the so-called DREAMers - would be protected. But there's no pathway to citizenship, which is something the president has discussed in the past. Why would Democrats see any point in signing onto that?
SHORT: Well, there's a couple reasons. No. 1 is that right now DACA is still working its way through the courts. As your audience will recall, President Obama said that he felt reluctant to actually create the program without congressional authority because he didn't know it could withstand legal scrutiny. He went ahead nonetheless and did it and created the program out of thin air. I think that those who are DACA recipients stand at great risk that if the courts rule that it was unconstitutionally created, then they're in great legal jeopardy.
The president put on the table a proposal that actually protects them not just from a court system. But when you actually legislate it, it becomes the law of the land. So it is providing a pathway forward for those who are - who care most about the DACA participants.
INSKEEP: A pathway forward but not a path for citizenship in this particular law - let me just ask. You said the president has very few options. Isn't one option reopening the government and continuing to negotiate these really complicated issues?
SHORT: Yeah, Steve. But you know what people forget is it does take two to tango on that. And to date, the president - when everybody says the president shut down the government, of course they recall the moment he had in the Oval Office in which he said he would own it.
INSKEEP: Right.
SHORT: But the reality is that there's not one bill the president has vetoed. Not one bill has reached his desk to shut down the government. It takes two sides here. And Congress has not completed its appropriations process to provide him with a bill...
INSKEEP: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa - the House of Representatives has passed a bill. The Senate, last year, passed a clean bill to reopen the government. But the...
SHORT: They both passed independent bills, Steve. They were not the same.
INSKEEP: Senate Republicans have declined to move anything the president says he will veto.
SHORT: That is correct.
INSKEEP: So to say the president has not done a veto is a little disingenuous. Don't you think?
SHORT: Well, neither side - neither bill was the same. And so the reality is that what we face is that Congress has to do its job as well. And I do think, this week, having actual votes moves us past the point of posturing because it's easy for politicians to say what they won't vote for in a media interview. When they're actually forced to come to the table and say, here's a vote to reopen the government. How are you going to vote? - I think does change the dynamic.
INSKEEP: Mr. Short, I want to ask about the job of trying to negotiate on behalf of the president of the United States, which is something that you had to do in the past. Mike Pence, the vice president, has attempted to take on that role in recent days. And at one point, as you may recall, he made an offer that suggested the White House might sign on for about half the money the president is demanding.
Democrats said no, in part, because they didn't believe that Pence really spoke for the president. And it emerged in a meeting later that Pence didn't. The president wanted all the money. Is it an impossible job to represent the president because he's so unpredictable and doesn't stick to one approach?
SHORT: You know, Steve, I don't think it's impossible. I think if you look back at the record of the last couple years of passing tax reform, passing the largest increase in funding for our military, getting judges confirmed, getting significant deregulatory legislation passed, passing criminal justice reform, passing opiate legislation, there's a large record of legislative accomplishment.
So it's clear that it's not impossible to represent the president. I think that this, again, is a situation in which the two sides can still come together. But ultimately, if they don't, I do think the president's still keeping out the option of a national emergency declaration.
INSKEEP: Marc Short, thanks so much - appreciate it.
SHORT: Thank you, Steve.
INSKEEP: He was President Trump's legislative director until last year. He's now at the University of Virginia. NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith has been listening along with us.
Good morning, Tam.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: What did you hear there?
KEITH: Well, near the end there, where Marc Short was talking about all of the legislative accomplishments of the past two years - there have been a lot of legislative accomplishments of the past two years. But those were a Republican House and a Republican Senate. And I was talking to a Republican congressman last week who was telling me that he felt with all of those things, the president was relatively agnostic on the details, that he just wanted a win.
He just wanted Congress to send him a bill to sign on taxes and even on the health care bill, which was not a win on opioids, on veterans. Just send me a bill to sign - also on criminal justice. So this is different now. This is - the dynamic has completely shifted. You have a Democratic House, a Republican Senate and a president who does care about one detail in particular - building the wall.
INSKEEP: So Marc Short also said he thought that the act of voting might move this process forward, even if these votes seem likely to fail. Is there a way forward here?
KEITH: Well, he's right that not voting for the last 32 days hasn't really accomplished anything. In the Senate, there have been no votes since the government shut down. The House, of course, has voted a lot. The act of going out there, voting, proving that things can't pass, that actually does advance things somewhat.
INSKEEP: NPR's Tamara Keith, thanks so much.
KEITH: You're welcome.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
The Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Massachusetts is the only known school in the country that uses electric shocks to control the behavior of its special needs students. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced plans to ban the controversial device that administers the skin shocks by the end of this year. But Jenifer McKim from the New England Center for Investigative Reporting says school officials won't give up the practice without a fight. And just to warn you, this story does contain audio that some listeners could find disturbing.
LUIGI: I didn't know. I look like...
JENIFER MCKIM, BYLINE: This is Luigi. The 47-year-old autistic man has lived for the past 20 years at the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center based in suburban Boston. He wears a backpack equipped with a battery and wires that are attached to his body and give him a two-second shock if he misbehaves. His sister Angela Disisto says the center and its shock treatments have been a lifesaver for her brother, who was once violent to himself and others.
ANGELA DISISTO: I see the results from 20 years ago to today. His behaviors have changed, calmed down. He's not even aggressive towards others or himself anymore.
MCKIM: The Rotenberg Center is a private, taxpayer-funded school catering to adult and minor students from across the country. Many struggle with profound disorders causing severe aggressive and self-injurious behavior like head-banging and biting. The so-called shock treatment has pitted family members who swear it has been the only way to control their loved ones against critics who call it torture.
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JENNIFER MSUMBA: They will give you a shock - a two-second shock somewhere on your body. And it really, really, really hurts. It's not just like a little static shock that you get when you touch a doorknob.
MCKIM: That's former resident Jennifer Msumba. The autistic woman declined to be interviewed for this story but described in an online video how she was afraid while wearing the backpack. Msumba filed a civil suit in 2014, alleging mistreatment during her seven-year stint at the center.
MSUMBA: I want everyone to know because I'm still suffering. And I know other people that were there that I am in contact with that are still suffering.
MCKIM: Rotenberg officials deny wrongdoing. They say instead, her treatment was a success. But the pending civil suit adds to a mounting number of legal and political challenges facing the center.
When the FDA announced plans to finalize a proposed ban on the shock device by the end of the year, FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb said the apparatus presents an unreasonable and substantial risk to public health. Potential risks, federal records show, include burns to the skin, anxiety, fear and pain. Sam Crane is with the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. She's hopeful that the ban will finally stop the shocks.
SAM CRANE: There are also a lot of people in our community who know how long we've waited for this and are just trying to make sure it doesn't get delayed again.
MCKIM: Delays are possible. For one thing, FDA employees have been furloughed since late December. Glenda Crookes, the school's executive director, says the center and its loyal supporters will defend their right to use what she calls a lifesaving treatment.
GLENDA CROOKES: This is our larger workshop.
MCKIM: Crookes gave me a tour of the facility over the summer past students wearing headgear to protect from banging and staff members wearing padding to stave off biters. Currently, 48 adults at the school are court-approved to receive shocks. Crookes swears by the treatment.
CROOKES: I often say a two-second shock to the surface of the skin versus a lifetime of restraint, medication - it's not right. In such a short time after being court-approved for the use of the contingent skin shock, the change in their personalities - it's unreal.
MCKIM: The Rotenberg Center has prevailed against other efforts to stop it. In 2013, the state of Massachusetts filed a legal action after a video was released during a court hearing of a teenager receiving dozens of electric shocks over a period of hours. The sound from that video is hard to listen to.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: That hurts. That hurts. That hurts. That hurts. That hurts. That hurts. Ow, that hurts. OK, stop. Stop. Stop, for real.
MCKIM: A local judge ruled in the school's favor, finding the practices within an accepted standard of care. Now eyes are on the FDA. Luigi's sister, Angela Disisto, worries about what could happen if regulators do strip her brother of the backpack that she says keeps him in check. Until then, Luigi and others at this special needs school in Massachusetts are susceptible to jolts of electricity meant to inflict pain some call treatment and others, torture. For NPR News, I'm Jenifer McKim in Boston.
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GREENE: And Jenifer's story came to us from our member station in Boston - WGBH.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Faced with an aging population and an acute labor shortage, Japan is doing something previously unthinkable. They're allowing immigration. Critics point out that foreign workers in Japan often face exploitation and the system that allows them in has to be fixed. NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports from the city of Koriyama.
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ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: Koriyama is part of Fukushima Prefecture, which was devastated by the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown. There's a shelter here for foreign workers. As the wind howls and the snow drifts outside, Vietnamese workers make dinner inside. Among them is a man surnamed Nguyen (ph). He asked that we only use his last name, as he doesn't want his family in Vietnam to know what he's been through.
Mr. Nguyen came to Japan in 2015 as part of a government program for technical trainees. He signed a contract to get on-the-job training as a rebar worker.
NGUYEN: (Through interpreter) I expected to come to a country more developed, clean and civilized than my own. In my mind, Japan had many good things, and I wanted to learn professional skills to take home.
KUHN: Instead, he said he was ordered to do menial jobs, including removing radiation-contaminated topsoil from land around the Fukushima nuclear plant. Nguyen says he wasn't given protective equipment, and he wasn't paid in full. He complained to his company, but they ignored him. An added complication was that he had borrowed money to pay a Vietnamese agent who had helped him get to Japan.
NGUYEN: (Through interpreter) I wanted to sue my company, but I didn't know how. I didn't speak Japanese or understand Japan's legal system. So all I could do was be patient and keep working to pay off the debt.
KUHN: Technical trainees account for about 20 percent of Japan's 1.3 million foreign workers. Most are from developing countries, including China, Myanmar and Vietnam. Japanese labor ministry data shows most are paid less than the minimum wage. Critics have derided the system as slavery or human resources minus the humanity. They warn that if the technical trainee program isn't fixed, many of the newcomers could end up exploited like Mr. Nguyen. Speaking to lawmakers last October, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe denied he's opening Japan's door to immigrants.
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PRIME MINISTER SHINZO ABE: (Through interpreter) We are not considering adopting a so-called immigration policy. To cope with the labor shortage, we will expand the current system to accept foreign workers in special fields.
KUHN: Japan's Parliament passed Abe's plan last month after a brief debate. Sasaki Shiro is secretary-general of the Zentoitsu Workers Union, which represents some of the foreign workers. He says that Japan's government is not facing up to the reality of immigration.
SASAKI SHIRO: (Through interpreter) Abe's definition of an immigrant is someone who lives in Japan long term with family. But by international standards, the trainees are immigrants. In this sense, we can say that Japan is already an immigrant society.
KUHN: Sasaki says that opening Japan's door to immigrants even a tiny crack is better than tricking them into coming. He says Japan has never experienced mass immigration, and he sees it as a test of character of this island nation.
SASAKI: (Through interpreter) Japan has never been able to examine itself and define itself in terms of diversity. Now we must live with diversity. And every single Japanese person must think about it.
KUHN: Then again, Robert Dujarric, director of the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies at Temple University in Tokyo, argues that Abe may have no choice but to reform by stealth.
ROBERT DUJARRIC: Immigration is unfortunately not popular even in countries like the U.S. or in Western Europe, which historically have been nations that have been built on immigration. So obviously, he's not going to say, vote for me; I will bring in 10 million foreigners.
KUHN: Japan's government says it will crack down on brokers and provide effective oversight to the trainee system. Current trainees, like Mr. Nguyen, may be eligible to remain in the country for up to five years on a new class of visas. But Nguyen says that without decent pay and a chance to learn new skills, he has no interest in staying on.
Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Koriyama, Japan.
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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Now let's talk of religious voters. When we talk about voters who are people of faith, religious conservatives get most of the attention. But with liberals increasingly energized, some faith leaders want to rally religious voters for progressive causes. NPR's Tom Gjelten reports on the prospects for reviving the religious left.
TOM GJELTEN, BYLINE: There's been no hotter political issue in recent months than what to do about all the migrants, including families, showing up at the U.S. border. Among those pushing for a more open policy is a group called Faith in Public Life. It's led by an ordained Presbyterian minister, Jennifer Butler, who shows up at rallies wearing her clerical collar.
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JENNIFER BUTLER: So today we say what Moses said to Pharaoh. Let my people go. Let the children go. Say it with me. Let...
GJELTEN: Rallies like this one are not uncommon, but Reverend Butler says her movement is grounded in religion.
BUTLER: There are over a hundred verses of Scripture that say we're to welcome immigrants and welcome strangers. And so I think we're driven by our moral values and not by politics.
GJELTEN: Besides supporting migrants, Butler's movement advocates for LGBT rights, universal health care and racial justice. She founded the organization 13 years ago with a precedent in mind. It was religious leaders who drove the abolitionist movement in the 19th century and the civil rights movement in the 20th.
BUTLER: I think religion helps people understand who they should be.
GJELTEN: Butler's group and others of like mind and mission represent a renewed faith-based movement on the left. The obvious comparison is to the religious right. The reverend Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority in the late '70s to oppose abortion and promote private Christian schools during a time of cultural change.
HENRY OLSEN: What motivated the religious right to begin organizing is a feeling of loss.
GJELTEN: Henry Olsen is the author of "The Four Faces Of The Republican Party."
OLSEN: They felt their deepest values from their religion were being taken away from them.
GJELTEN: Now left-leaning believers feel it's their religious values that are under threat, with respect, for example, to social and economic justice.
TARA HARRIS: Jesus talked about reaching out to the poor, reaching out to the marginalized, reaching out to the oppressed.
GJELTEN: Tara Harris is a lay leader at Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte, N.C., and newly active in support of immigrant rights.
HARRIS: The way that I personally interpret my own Christian faith and my own Christian walk, it's an active challenge. How can I make a difference in the lives of others? So I would say there's a direct tie and a direct linkage there for me.
GJELTEN: She was speaking there over Skype. The religious left is not yet a match for the more familiar religious right. For one thing, it draws on a smaller base. Surveys show liberals, by various measures, are simply less religious than conservatives. In fact, the agenda of the religious left doesn't seem all that different from what secular groups on the left push for. The religious right, on the other hand, is almost exclusively an evangelical movement with priorities that secular conservatives don't push quite so much.
OLSEN: They are more interested in preserving the Constitution than the Bible.
GJELTEN: Henry Olsen is now with the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a center-right think tank.
OLSEN: The secular right may agree on some issues, but they are primarily motivated by a concern about what they would argue is the growing power of government.
GJELTEN: The religious left does have some advantages, Reverend Butler argues. She says her faith in public life movement is strengthened by its interfaith character.
BUTLER: We're working with Muslims and Jews and Sikhs and every sort of faith group. We all have the same sort of core values in mind, which is that everybody is created in the image of God, and we need to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
GJELTEN: An approach that unites religious traditions makes sense given that the nation is becoming increasingly diverse. Another advantage, Butler thinks the religious left, compared to the secular left, has a deeper commitment to bridge-building.
BUTLER: A lot of folks on the secular left are a bit reticent to form common cause with people who see things differently on an issue.
GJELTEN: Consider the abortion issue, for example.
BUTLER: We've been able to form alliances with people who are pro-life and pro-choice because all of us agree that there's a common ground of wanting to reduce the numbers of abortions in the country.
GJELTEN: One more thought. A politics inspired by moral values is especially passionate. A religious left can bring new energy to a movement with the reputation of being too cerebral.
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WILLIAM BARBER: Jesus, a brown-skinned Palestinian Jew...
(APPLAUSE)
BARBER: ...Called us...
(APPLAUSE)
BARBER: ...To preach good news to the poor, the broken.
GJELTEN: The most rousing speech at the last Democratic Convention was delivered by a pastor, the Reverend William Barber of North Carolina. Barber, who combines theology with activism, is now Butler's partner in her religious-left coalition. While their movement doesn't yet have the political clout of the religious right, it is growing. Faith in Public Life says it has so far mobilized more than 40,000 local clergy and faith leaders around the country. Tom Gjelten, NPR News.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
President Trump conceded a small defeat with words that were, for him, fairly measured.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
He said he would delay the State of the Union speech. Days ago, you will recall, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would, quote, "suggest" that he delay it because of the partial government shutdown, or else submit the speech in writing. In a rambling letter yesterday, the president said he would do that speech anyway. Pelosi then wrote him again, saying he was disinvited. And on Twitter last night, the president said that is her prerogative. He said no other room besides the House chamber will do, so he will not try to find some alternate venue.
Amid this exchange of messages, protesters stood outside Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's office.
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UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Stop the shutdown. Stop the shutdown. We need a paycheck. We need a paycheck.
INSKEEP: They're chanting, we need a paycheck. The Senate does plan to vote on two bills that would fund the government today, although both are expected to fail.
MARTIN: NPR lead political editor Domenico Montanaro is with us this morning. Hey, Domenico.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Good morning, Rachel.
MARTIN: So President Trump, as we know, not someone who backs down easily, but I guess he didn't really have a choice - right? - if Nancy Pelosi said he is not invited to her House.
MONTANARO: Well, he's always got a choice. But, like you said, he's not somebody who's really known to back down. He's known to escalate rather than take the temperature down. But he did tweet out that he would do the address when the shutdown was over. He said, I'm not looking for an alternative venue because there is no venue that can compete with the history, tradition and importance of the House chamber and said he looks forward to doing it in the, quote, "near future." No sign on when.
But it's a remarkable moment. And, you know, look; the politics of this - there's a confluence of polling that's been out that's shown his numbers getting worse and worse during the shutdown.
MARTIN: Right. So does that mean - because his poll numbers are dropping, is the president bearing the bulk of the political cost of the shutdown?
MONTANARO: So far, he absolutely is. There were three polls that were out yesterday from The Associated Press, from CBS News and from Fox, by the way, an outlet that the president watches a lot but does good polling. And all of them showed more people blaming the president for the shutdown than Democrats.
And the Fox poll, for example, found that three-quarters of people found that the shutdown was more of a problem than the border. And those are numbers that he has to be seeing. In the AP poll, his approval rating was just at 34 percent, which is really a low for him in that poll, down eight points from a month earlier and really bad - doing very badly with independents, 69 percent disapproving of the job he's doing.
MARTIN: Meanwhile, federal workers are expected to miss their second paycheck tomorrow. I mean, people are really suffering in this moment. There is political pressure on both sides. The Senate's got these two bills that they're going to bring up. They're both expected to fail. So where's the opening to end this?
MONTANARO: Well, the president has said, so far, that he's not budging on a wall. Democrats say they have a reason for not caving either. Take a listen to what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said about that yesterday.
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NANCY PELOSI: There is serious and justified concern that this president would shut down the government anytime he does not get his way legislatively. That is why we must hold the line.
MONTANARO: And that's a line that you've heard from Democrats all day yesterday. So Democrats, like she said, want to hold the line. The Senate is going to vote this afternoon on these two proposals - one on the president's proposal for the $5.7 billion for a wall for temporary immigrant protections - that's expected to fail - and one from Democrats to simply open the government for a few weeks to negotiate. That's also expected to fail.
But a little bit of news here. NPR's Susan Davis reports that Democrats are prepared to make a counterproposal to the president that would spend a significant amount of money on the border, but not on a wall. We'll see if Republicans blink.
MARTIN: OK. NPR's Domenico Montanaro. Thanks, Domenico. We appreciate it.
MONTANARO: You're so welcome.
MARTIN: All right. So question - what do actual voters across America think of the shutdown?
INSKEEP: Past shutdowns have not always had much effect on elections. Republicans shut down the government in 2013 over Obamacare, for example. It was a very unpopular shutdown, but they still won the Senate in 2014. In 2019, though, the shutdown has gone much longer.
MARTIN: Right. NPR's Don Gonyea has been in Ohio this week getting reactions from voters about the standoff. Don, good morning.
DON GONYEA, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: Where are you?
GONYEA: I'm in Chillicothe. It's about an hour south of Columbus. This is a red part of the state - not deep, deep red, but red. And in Chillicothe, there are precincts that vote Democratic as well. But when you talk to people here, the first thing you notice is that the partisan divide holds.
So Democrats I talk to say this thing is all on Trump - period. He owns it - that he's chosen a very unpopular path on the shutdown and that polls back that up. And they complain that Trump's demand for funding of the wall leaves just no room to negotiate.
Talk to Republicans, it gets a little more interesting. They're still with Trump, many as much as ever, but it's more complicated. And some will wonder, you know, what the president's plan is here.
MARTIN: What more do they tell you, those Republican voters? I mean, when they say it's more complicated, what does that mean?
GONYEA: Well, let's meet a few of them. Greg Rouse (ph) - I talked to him downtown yesterday. He's a government worker, but he works for the county. So he is working, but he says he knows people on furlough. He is a bit confused about Trump's strategy to, you know, to double down on the border wall after Republicans lost control of the House.
GREG ROUSE: I'm a little bit frustrated, but I'm not sure towards him exactly. I'm still a strong Trump supporter.
GONYEA: So I also talked to Fran Burdette (ph), who works in a law office in Chillicothe. She voted for Trump in 2016 but is quick to say, not enthusiastically. She does not like the way the president is handling these negotiations.
FRAN BURDETTE: I truly believe that we do need a wall if you look at all the statistics, but I don't think this is the right way to do it. The thing that worries me the most is the people that are not getting paid. And these people are living from paycheck to paycheck, you know, especially, like, the Coast Guard and different places, people on food stamps - all that kind of stuff. You know, they need help.
GONYEA: And I asked Burdette if she still supports Trump, and she said that she does. But then I said, can you look ahead to 2020 a bit for me? Will you be voting for him again? And she gave me a look, and she said, it is way too early to think about whether she's going to do that. So she's, you know, kind of wavering.
MARTIN: Yeah, interesting. I mean, you talked with a cross-section of people there. Are people really thinking about 2020, or are they more like her and saying, you know, just give me some time?
GONYEA: They're certainly watching the debate in Washington over the wall very closely. 2020 has crept into their consciousness whether they like it or not. And some are quick to say, hey, I voted for the president, and I'm with him again. But again, there is an awareness that a choice is coming up, and it's going to be on them before they know it.
MARTIN: And that the shutdown is playing into their calculus, at least a little bit.
GONYEA: Absolutely. Absolutely.
MARTIN: OK. NPR national political correspondent Don Gonyea. Thanks, Don.
GONYEA: A pleasure.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MARTIN: So there are two people claiming to be the president of Venezuela right now. And as you'd imagine, there's all kinds of chaos as a result.
INSKEEP: Nicolas Maduro was re-elected president, but the Socialist government that's been in power for many, many years has been accused of rigging elections and also changing the rules when they lose. And the leader of the legislature, Juan Guaido, has declared himself the interim president.
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JUAN GUAIDO: (Speaking Spanish).
INSKEEP: He's saying that he's the national executive in charge of Venezuela. He was speaking to a massive crowd in the capital, Caracas, yesterday. The United States, Canada and much of Latin America have formally recognized him as Venezuela's leader. Now, Maduro, the other leader, responded by expelling U.S. diplomats. But the U.S. has said they will not leave because the legitimate president did not ask them to go.
MARTIN: All right. NPR's Philip Reeves is in Caracas covering all this. Phil, one country, two presidents. What is happening right now? What are people telling you?
PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: Well, what's going on is a major crisis with serious international implications. I want to step back just a second because this is kind of complicated. Venezuela's opposition refuses to recognize Maduro as president because they say his re-election for a second term, which just began recently, was fraudulent. And a lot of people agree with that.
So Juan Guaido has declared himself interim president, as you heard. Now, he's head of the National Assembly. That's Venezuela's congress. He says he'll be transitional leader until new, free and fair elections can be held. He's done that with the full support of the U.S., most of Latin America, Canada. And they say he's the president, not Maduro.
Yet, Maduro is in the presidential palace, and he says this is an attempted coup led by Washington, who wants Venezuela's oil and gas. And he's portraying it as a throwback to the Cold War and another installment in the U.S.' history of supporting coups and other forms of intervention in Latin America.
MARTIN: I mean, where are the people in this moment, Phil? Does Maduro have any actual grassroots support still?
REEVES: He does. It's often said he enjoys the support of about 20 percent of the country. I have no idea how reliable that figure is. But he does have supporters, and they were out on the streets yesterday, summoned there by the ruling Socialist Party, holding counterdemonstrations in answer to the day of national protests called by the opposition.
MARTIN: Are these U.S. diplomats actually going to leave? I mean, the U.S. doesn't recognize Maduro, so Maduro kicked the U.S. diplomats out. What's happening there?
REEVES: Yeah. This has become a really critical issue. Secretary Mike Pompeo says Maduro doesn't have the legal authority to break diplomatic relations with the U.S. The U.S. doesn't recognize him as president. It therefore follows the U.S. thinks that Maduro doesn't have the legal authority to throw out its diplomats.
But what happens if they don't leave? Maduro controls the streets here, and he controls the security forces so far. And I honestly don't know the answer to that question.
MARTIN: In just a couple seconds, do you think new elections will be held?
REEVES: Very difficult to say at this point. We're really at the beginning of this crisis, and no one really knows how it's going to play out.
MARTIN: Phil, thank you so much. Philip Reeves from Caracas reporting on the political crisis there.
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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
When Democrats took charge of the House of Representatives, their leaders were clear. They had no intention of starting off with impeachment proceedings. An investigation of President Trump's ties to Russia is not finished. Many Democrats may view the president as unfit for office, but if the House were to impeach him, he would likely survive a trial in the Republican Senate anyway. That has been the thinking of Democratic leaders.
Yoni Appelbaum views it differently. He is a student of history and a writer for The Atlantic, and he argues an impeachment process could be helpful for the country, for the president's critics, and even, in a way, more fair to the president.
What is it you think people are getting wrong about the idea of beginning impeachment proceedings today?
YONI APPELBAUM: Well, I think most people think of impeachment as an outcome rather than as a process. And so when people debate this question, they're often really debating whether or not they think that Donald Trump ought to be able to continue as president of the United States. I'd rather that Americans approach this as a process, as an orderly, rule-bound way to have a debate that is already raging in this country.
INSKEEP: Here's one way to look at impeachment through history. No president has ever been impeached by the House of Representatives and then convicted by the Senate and removed from office. The process has never gone all the way through. Therefore, it's pointless. That's one point of view. What's yours?
APPELBAUM: Well, I'd flip that around, and I'd say that the process has actually worked extraordinarily well on several occasions. And so with the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, which I think is a prime example of this, you've got a president who is remarkably unpopular and yet has a core of extraordinarily loyal supporters.
INSKEEP: The guy who took over after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at the end of the Civil War. OK.
APPELBAUM: Right. So his holding that office is of contested legitimacy. He comes from a different political party than Abraham Lincoln does. He clashes with congressional Republicans. And the fight, really, is over what Johnson calls his urge to preserve a white man's government. He does not wish to see America be a place with any degree of racial equality.
Congress passes laws; the president vetoes them. For the first time in American history, we get a veto override of a major piece of legislation, and Congress asks the president to do something that no president has ever done, which is to enforce a law that he has previously vetoed. And Johnson, effectively, won't do it. And this sets up an enormous power struggle.
Congress moves forward with impeachment, and it instantly does, I think, three critical things. One is it diffuses the potential for violence. The second thing it does is it separates the reasonable charges against Johnson from the unreasonable ones. And then the third thing that it does is it took a debate that was unformed and raging in public, and it moves it into Congress.
And as it does that, it focuses the president's attention on his own political future. Johnson is no longer talking to raucous crowds and calling for the hanging of his political rivals, as he had previously done. Instead, he buttons up a little bit, and he ultimately decides to give Congress its way on Reconstruction. It does not result in Johnson's removal, but it does result in his essential political death.
INSKEEP: One pattern of Congress in recent decades has been to outsource its powers or its responsibilities to other people, to set up a commission to try to solve a problem, to let the president handle it while they look the other way. Would you argue that that is what has happened here - that there are members of Congress who don't want to look too closely at the president - it's politically embarrassing, and they are relieved that Robert Mueller is there to perform his own investigation about which they can avoid commenting for as long as possible?
APPELBAUM: I think there are many members of Congress, I should say, of both parties who believe that this president is fundamentally unfit for office and are hoping for a sort of deus ex Mueller to save them from the constitutional response...
INSKEEP: Deus ex Mueller - is that Latin? I think it is. Go on. I'm sorry.
APPELBAUM: And that's what they're hoping for. They're hoping that somebody else will come and bail them out here - that if they wait patiently on the sidelines, they won't have to do this hard thing, which is have a process, and potentially a divisive one, of looking through the evidence and hearing from witnesses.
They would rather that Mueller deliver them a gift-wrapped box, and inside it is all the damning evidence that will force Donald Trump to resign without the need to trigger this process.
INSKEEP: Wouldn't impeachment also be hard for the country and the people at large? It's a process that would be enormously divisive, enormously distracting at a moment when we have a lot of things we really should be focusing on.
APPELBAUM: There's no question that a process of impeachment would be divisive. On the other hand, I think it's very hard to look out at the current political landscape and conclude anything other than that these questions are tearing the country apart.
I don't think that this is a process that needs to lead to Donald Trump's removal in order to be healthy for America. What we need at this moment as Americans is a process that can take the passions of the public debate and channel them into an orderly way that will lead to a path toward resolution.
If we get that, if Congress takes its responsibilities here seriously, triggers an impeachment inquiry into the president and weighs and assesses the evidence, then I think wherever that inquiry comes out, America will be better off for Congress having pursued it.
INSKEEP: Yoni Appelbaum of The Atlantic. Thanks for coming by.
APPELBAUM: Thank you.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
A disturbing story out of Arizona to update you on now related to sexual assault. Phoenix police say they have arrested a nurse at a long-term care facility who allegedly raped a 29-year-old female patient who had been incapacitated for more than two decades. The woman was impregnated as a result of the assault and delivered a baby in December. Kathy Ritchie of member station KJZZ reports.
KATHY RITCHIE, BYLINE: The story stunned disability advocates and the community at large. A young woman with limited mobility and communication abilities delivered a baby in December, but her caregivers did not know she was pregnant. That included her doctors, both of whom are no longer providing medical services.
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JERI WILLIAMS: And at this time, I am announcing the arrest of the suspect we believe who is responsible. He is 36-year-old Nathan Sutherland.
RITCHIE: That's Phoenix police chief Jeri Williams.
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WILLIAMS: Sutherland is a licensed practical nurse who was responsible for providing care to the victim during this time the sexual assault occurred.
RITCHIE: Through the course of their investigation, Phoenix police obtained DNA from several individuals who worked at Hacienda Healthcare, including Sutherland. Here's Phoenix Police Sergeant Tommy Thompson.
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TOMMY THOMPSON: That evidence was sent to the Phoenix Police Department crime lab, and those individuals worked tirelessly to compare those DNA samples with DNA obtained from the baby.
RITCHIE: One of those samples belonged to Sutherland. He was booked Wednesday and charged with one count of sexual assault and one count of vulnerable adult abuse. Thompson says the investigation is ongoing. It's unclear if there are other victims or how many times the victim was sexually assaulted. In a statement, Hacienda Healthcare says the alleged perpetrator held a current state of Arizona practical nurse's license and had undergone an extensive background check when he was hired. Hacienda says he was fired after learning of his arrest. Although police have not offered an update on the mother's status, they say the baby's doing well. The family of the birth mother says through their lawyer that they will care for the baby boy.
For NPR News, I'm Kathy Ritchie in Phoenix.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The country is in a state of limbo. It is Day 34 of the partial government shutdown, and there are reports the White House is preparing for the possibility that the shutdown could last another two months or longer. Meanwhile, 800,000 federal employees are going to miss yet another paycheck tomorrow. We're going to get two views of the shutdown and the impact it's having. First we head out of Washington, D.C., to the state of Ohio, which is where NPR's Don Gonyea has been talking to folks about the shutdown standoff. Hey, Don.
DON GONYEA, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: Where are you exactly in Ohio, and what are you hearing?
GONYEA: I am in Chillicothe, Ohio. Columbus is about an hour to the north. This is the part of the state where the map turns red. Maybe not deep, deep, deep red, but red. Though, in Chillicothe, there are precincts that vote Democratic, as well. But people are absolutely watching the shutdown. And the first thing you notice when you ask about it is that the partisan divide holds. You know, we've seen President Trump's poll numbers drop since the shutdown began in December, and Democrats I talked to here say this is all on Trump. His demand for funding the wall leaves no room to negotiate. You talk to Republicans, and it gets a little more interesting. They're still with Trump, but it's more complicated. And some will say Democrats have to come to the table, but they also wonder what the White House plan is here.
MARTIN: I mean, as you allude to, Trump did very well in Ohio. He carried the state easily and was really popular exactly where you are. So it would make sense, I suppose, that supporters are standing by him. Is that across the board?
GONYEA: They're standing by him, when you talk to Republicans. But let me introduce you to some people here. Let's start with Beverly Chapman (ph), a high school English teacher. I talked to her at a shopping mall, about a mile from downtown Chillicothe. She is in that category of hardcore Trump supporter, as strong as ever.
BEVERLY CHAPMAN: I think he's got us on the right track and he's helping out, and...
GONYEA: And she says it's on the Democrats to make the next step toward reaching a deal that could then reopen the full U.S. government.
CHAPMAN: They need to get back to the table and start negotiating. You know, I think the Democrats need to work with him.
GONYEA: So that's the solid-as-a-rock Trump base speaking there. But let me give you a different reaction to what's going on from a Trump voter in Chillicothe. Fran Burdette (ph) works in a law office. She actually says she was a reluctant Trump vote. She just couldn't pull the lever for Hillary Clinton. She told me that she agrees the U.S. needs a wall to keep people from crossing the border illegally, but she does not think it is the thing to shut the government down over.
FRAN BURDETTE: But I don't think this is the right way to do it. I mean, you've got to worry about the people first.
GONYEA: And here's what she means by that.
BURDETTE: Thing that worries me the most is the people that are not getting paid. And these people are living from paycheck to paycheck. You know, especially, like, the Coast Guard and different places. People on food stamps. All that kind of stuff. You know, they need help.
GONYEA: One more thing about Burdette. She says she still supports Trump. But when I asked her if she's voting for him in 2020, she says it's too early to talk about that.
MARTIN: So there's support for the wall, but not always for the president using the wall as a non-negotiable demand in the shutdown.
GONYEA: Right. And you hear some Trump supporters say they wish there could be normal negotiations absent the shutdown, especially with Democrats now controlling the House. Listen to this exchange I had with county worker Greg Rouse (ph).
They could've done this when they had the House and Senate.
GREG ROUSE: I agree.
GONYEA: And now he's trying to do it with the Democrats in control of the House.
ROUSE: Yeah. I don't understand what - but (laughter) I don't think they had a very strong Republican House to start with. I don't think Paul Ryan was very good. So yeah, I don't know. That is kind of puzzling.
GONYEA: So they're sticking with Trump.
MARTIN: Yeah.
GONYEA: But...
MARTIN: But you can hear the frustration there. NPR national political correspondent Don Gonyea.
GONYEA: Pleasure.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Now let's hear the effects in Washington, where the traffic has seemed a bit lighter at rush hour lately. Fewer people are going to work. Tourists have fewer destinations since many museums are closed. The lack of people is affecting Washington restaurants and food trucks. Here's Mikaela Lefrak of our member station WAMU.
MIKAELA LEFRAK, BYLINE: On a regular day at lunchtime, the streets around the National Mall are crammed with tourists and office workers. But these are the days of the shutdown, and things are far from normal.
MOHAMMAD BADAH: There's no tourists - nothing.
LEFRAK: Mohammad Badah leans out his Mediterranean food truck and surveys the empty streets. He's parked in a prime spot, right near the National Portrait Gallery and a couple big federal office buildings. But business is horrible.
BADAH: So far, I have not even sold one piece of falafel - nothing. Not even one piece of French fries.
LEFRAK: The portrait gallery's closed, as are all Smithsonian museums here. Normally, Badah sells about 80 lunches a day to tourists and office workers. During the partial shutdown, he's been averaging a fourth of that. He says he can't hold out much longer.
BADAH: Next week, if it's going to stay like this, I'm going to shut down. It's really bad.
LEFRAK: Restaurants big and small are feeling the pain. Kathy Hollinger is the president of the Metropolitan Washington Restaurant Association.
KATHY HOLLINGER: They are seeing a decrease in sales ranging from 20 percent to as high as 60 percent. And that is a lot.
LEFRAK: She says dozens of restaurants have been offering special deals to furloughed workers - free coffee or 20 percent off a meal.
HOLLINGER: They want to help, and they want to give back to a constituency that has been loyal but may, right now, not be in a position to be able to come in and spend money.
LEFRAK: The deals help attract business, too. But not all restaurants can afford to offer steep discounts. Kristen Brabrook is the executive pastry chef at a local bakery called Bakers & Baristas. They've been giving away free coffee, but it's not enough to make up for lost business.
KRISTEN BRABROOK: It's been rough. I mean, we rely so much on office parties and meetings and all that sort of stuff. And there's just nobody having birthday parties and nobody having meetings because nobody's in the office.
LEFRAK: Their sales have been down by more than 30 percent from last January. At their sister business, a cupcake shop down the street, sales are down 50 percent. She's had to start making a lot of tough decisions regarding her staff.
BRABROOK: It's really depressing. I mean, we're cutting hours left and right. It's difficult to have those conversations, especially with people with kids. And you're just like, I'm really sorry. Like, these are literally all the hours I can give you. Yeah, it's heartbreaking.
LEFRAK: Even as they cut shifts, restaurants are being deluged with applications from furloughed employees in need of a paycheck. One furloughed worker has been picking up bartending shifts at a fine dining restaurant across the street from the White House. Others have turned to food delivery as a way to earn cash. Brabrook says she has just one thing to say to the politicians debating the federal budget in Congress just a mile away.
BRABROOK: Stop having standoffs with each other, and think about all the little people who are not getting paid.
LEFRAK: She says she knows it isn't that easy. She's really just hoping the shutdown ends by Valentine's Day. It's their biggest sales day of the year, and her livelihood depends on it. For NPR News, I'm Mikaela Lefrak in Washington.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. A company is helping Britain prepare for the worst, selling a Brexit Box - food rations for 30 days in case Brexit causes chaos. The meals are described as British favorites - chicken tikka, chili con carne, macaroni and cheese, chicken fajitas. Yes, Britain's voted against foreign influence. And if they are alone at last, they will eat foods associated with India, Italy and Mexico. Apparently, 30 days of bangers and mash will not do.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Pope Francis is in Central America. He's in Panama to attend the Catholic Church's World Youth Day. While travelling, the pope was asked about the wall that President Trump wants to build on the border with Mexico. And the pope responded by saying, it is fear that makes us crazy. Ines San Martin of the Catholic news site Crux Now is travelling with the pope. And she's on the line. Welcome to the program.
INES SAN MARTIN: Thank you very much.
INSKEEP: The pope must have known when he decided to take questions from reporters that somebody was going to ask him about the wall since he was heading to Latin America.
SAN MARTIN: Yeah. Technically, at this time, the way it works is on the outbound flight to where he's going, the pope doesn't actually take questions. He just greets all of us. And we try to sneak in a question. What happened this time was an Italian journalist who was recently in Tijuana say, you know, I've seen the border. It goes all the way to the ocean - the wall that has already been built. And it's crazy. And the pope said, yes. It's fear that makes us crazy. He actually fielded questions on a lot of issues. But all of them were kind of on the quiet side.
INSKEEP: On the quiet side except for this remark - so he was responding to a view or an opinion that was expressed by an Italian journalist. Was this unusual?
SAN MARTIN: Not really because I mean, personally, for instance, I told him that an Iraqi bishop, the new archbishop of Mosul, told me that they are waiting for the pope. And the pope said, hey. I'd love to come. It's the bishop who told me not to. So it's not all that unusual that the pope has a comment to say - especially in the past, he's talked about nuclear wars. He's talked about how he will pray for the Korean peninsula. So it's just the - we journalists get together at the end of the papal greeting to exchange what he said or not. Sometimes, journalists decide that it's private. Sometimes, we share it because we want to get the story out.
INSKEEP: How does the pope's remark about the wall fit with his other statements about President Trump over the last few years?
SAN MARTIN: You kind of expect it. Although, I mean, it's worth noting that the wall the journalist was talking about had been there. It was built before the Trump administration.
INSKEEP: Oh, yeah. It's a steel fence. It goes down into the ocean at Tijuana - between Tijuana and San Diego, absolutely.
SAN MARTIN: Right. But we've heard the pope before say, he who builds walls is not a Christian. He was, of course, referring to Trump because Trump was the question. But he was also referring to what's going on across Europe. We have very Catholic countries, such as Poland, building up fences to keep migrants off the country. So it's definitely aligned to what he said with Trump before. And it's also aligned to what he said about immigration in general.
We, obviously - you know, Trump right now is in the news because he's the president of the U.S. But when it comes to Pope Francis and migration, being that he's the son of migrants himself, he's always been very - a very strong advocate to - you need - you know, we need to help these people who are fleeing hunger, violence. And when you see, you know, what's happening in Nicaragua right now - I was there in November for two weeks. I understand why people want to flee their country. The problem is, how do we deal with it? How do we address it? How do we help these people?
INSKEEP: What is the Pope's official purpose in being in Panama?
SAN MARTIN: He is attending, as I said, a Catholic event called World Youth Day, which is a youth gathering that takes place every two or three years in different cities. Last time we had it was in 2016 when he went to Krakow in Poland. That is the official reason for his visit. Obviously, one can understand that the Vatican chose Panama for various reasons, including the fact that it's often seen as a bridge between the north and the south and the west and the southern hemisphere. And he's definitely going to be talking about that during some of his speeches in the next four days.
INSKEEP: Ines San Martin is a reporter for Crux Now and is travelling with Pope Francis in Central America. Thanks so much.
SAN MARTIN: Well, thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF WILLIAM TYLER'S "FAIL SAFE")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
It is a busy week for the movie industry. The Oscar nominations are out, and one of the industry's biggest film festivals kicks off today. Actors, directors, executives and, of course, critics are on their way to the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. NPR film critic Kenneth Turan is among them. But before heading to the mountains, he talked with David Greene.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Hi there, Ken.
KENNETH TURAN, BYLINE: Hey, David. How you doing?
GREENE: I'm good. I'm sad to be missing you. I was there with you last year. I'm not going this time, so you'll have to send us stories.
TURAN: They're going to miss you. They're asking about you already, Dave.
GREENE: I'm sure they are. I'm sure. So I want to start with Dr. Ruth, the sex therapist. She has a movie here?
TURAN: Dr. Ruth. Well, she didn't make a movie. It's a documentary about her. But she is a trip, as they used to say. You know, she's 90 years old. She's still working. She's still great and funny and lively. But this tells her story. You know, she was a Holocaust refugee. She grew up in another country for - you know, her parents died. She ended up in Israel. She was a sniper for the Haganah.
GREENE: She was a sniper?
TURAN: Yes. I know.
GREENE: Wow.
TURAN: And she is 4-foot-7. I don't know if that's good or bad for a sniper.
GREENE: I don't either.
TURAN: But just how she got started, how the program caught on, how her personality just has kind of lit people up from the start to today - it's really a treat to be in her presence.
GREENE: It's a life that - it sounds like that's a lot to take on for one movie. I mean, there have been a bunch of different lives during her 90 years.
TURAN: They really have. That's why it's so interesting. I mean, again, this is one of those things where this is a person you think you know. You say Dr. Ruth, and everyone has a picture.
GREENE: Yeah.
TURAN: And that picture is true, but there's a lot more to it that nobody really has known until now.
GREENE: And Kenny, what's the name of the Dr. Ruth film?
TURAN: It's called "Ask Dr. Ruth."
GREENE: "Ask Dr. Ruth" - seems appropriate.
OK. Someone else I think many people think they know is Mindy Kaling. But it sounds like she's going to be in a film about having a late-night talk show. That sounds fun.
TURAN: It's a film about a late-night talk show. It's called "Late Night."
GREENE: OK.
TURAN: And it's a script that she wrote and she stars in. And she co-stars with Emma Thompson. And Emma Thompson plays the woman who's been the host of this late-night talk show for 28 years. And the lines that Mindy Kaling has written for Emma Thompson's character are hysterical. Mindy Kaling plays a diversity-hire intern who comes into an all-male comedy room and has to cope with that and cope with Emma Thompson's show, which is having some difficulties, needs to kind of find a new direction. So it's a very smart film. It's a funny film. It's an unexpected film. I think it's going to be a real crowd-pleaser, a real audience film.
GREENE: Might learn a lot about what late-night television is like.
TURAN: It's not a pretty picture.
GREENE: How interesting. But what a rise it's been for Mindy Kaling, too. I mean, from "The Office" to - she had her own show for a while. Now she's writing a film that you say is going to be a crowd-pleaser and probably, I imagine, one that distributors are going to be trying to grab at Sundance.
TURAN: Yeah. No, I think definitely the distributors are going to be lined up. It's got a key slot on Friday night, and everyone's going to be waiting for this. And you know, bids will be made.
GREENE: So what else are you excited to go see?
TURAN: You know, there's something called "Maiden" that I really enjoyed. It's a documentary that has already played at Toronto. But sometimes Sundance brings in films that it really likes, even if they've debuted somewhere else.
GREENE: Oh, interesting.
TURAN: And "Maiden" is about the first all-female crew on an around-the-world yacht race. And it's such a heartening story. You know, the women now - it's, like, 30 years after the fact - they talk about the experience. The men who didn't believe that this was possible for an all-women crew, they talk about kind of how foolish they were. It's just a wonderful story. It was - you know, it's one of these against-all-odds documentaries where people fight tremendous obstacles. I just felt so good watching this film. It was just wonderful.
GREENE: The fact you're excited to see something again. Or...
TURAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I look forward to the next time I see it.
GREENE: What's the weather supposed to be like, snow?
TURAN: I'm afraid to look, David (laughter).
GREENE: OK. Don't look. Just report back. That is Kenneth Turan. Ken, thanks a lot, as always.
TURAN: Oh, thank you, David.
GREENE: He reviews movies for the Los Angeles Times and for us here at MORNING EDITION.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The things that scare us sometimes reveal a lot about who we are. Member station WNYC recently asked people to list their biggest fears, and we've been sharing a few of them.
Today, we hear from Tom Morello. He was born to a Kenyan father and an American mother and raised outside of Chicago. He became famous as the guitarist for the band Rage Against the Machine. Here are some of his fears.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
TOM MORELLO: Nooses. As a 13-year-old, there was a noose in my family's garage. You know, I was the only black kid in an all-white town. While it was, in some ways, this bucolic community with good schools and lots of fields, occasionally there'd be a noose in your garage. It was not the only noose. I saw three nooses growing up. It just made me feel that, you know, while I was sleeping last night, people crept up my driveway, quietly opened my garage door to send a message that they wanted to kill me or the members of my family...
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MORELLO: ...That empathy is dead.
I grew up in Trump country, where the factories have closed down, where the employment options are Walmart or the Army or selling meth, where 1 out of every 4 houses on the street where my family grew up has gone back to nature, and they're looking for something different. And so when a demagogue steps forward and says, I've got the answers, like, we're all going to be winners, and the problems are brown-skinned people. Well, that certainly is clear.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MORELLO: That my children will be unsafe around the police. I've been put in handcuffs coming back from the bar walking to my mom's house of my hometown of Libertyville for walking while black. And so I've had to have the discussion already with my kids that while they could probably pass, you know, when you are around a police officer, there's no joking, and you just sort of get through that situation so that you can live a long and healthy life to confront injustice in other places.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MORELLO: The devil. I'm afraid of the devil. And I grew up - I grew up Catholic. And in Catholicism, like, the devil's, like, a dude with a pitchfork who's, you know - who you will meet and answer to.
I do really remember having a literal discussion with high school classmates about what of yourself you would forfeit in order to achieve fame or excellence or something like that. As a young guitar player, I thought, will I ever find myself having to sell my soul? But I really want to play guitar great. I started when I was 17. I'm kind of late. But I don't want to forfeit my soul. I mean, I was straight - I grew up straight Catholic. The devil was invoked early and often.
(SOUNDBITE OF PICTOMUSIC'S "KILLING IN THE NAME OF (INSTRUMENTAL KARAOKE VERSION)")
MARTIN: Guitarist Tom Morello. His latest solo album is called "The Atlas Underground." And that was an excerpt from the new podcast 10 Things That Scare Me. 10 Things That Scare Me comes from WNYC Studios.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Venezuela has two men claiming to be president right now. Opposition leader Juan Guaido and sitting leader Nicolas Maduro are locked in a battle for power. Speaking to cheering crowds yesterday, Guaido declared himself the country's interim president.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JUAN GUAIDO: (Speaking Spanish).
(APPLAUSE)
MARTIN: The Trump administration quickly gave him its support, but Maduro has not agreed to cede power. In fact, in response, he announced a break in diplomatic relations with Washington, D.C., and ordered U.S. personnel out of the country. NPR's Philip Reeves is in Caracas and joins us now.
Phil, I guess just the big question - who is in charge this morning?
PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: Oh, I think there's no doubt that, in truth, Maduro remains in office. And he is the de facto president of the country right now. He controls all the instruments of power. He controls the Supreme Court, the intelligence agencies and the military. Which way the military goes in this will be critical in determining the outcome of it. So far, there's no really concrete evidence that's emerged, although there are a lot of rumors, that suggest the military's ready to abandon Maduro. But that could be a really key factor.
So we have one man, Juan Guaido, who's the head of the National Assembly. He's declared himself interim president. He says he's a transitional leader until free and fair elections are held. The U.S. supports him. Many others do, too. The U.S. has helped orchestrate this. But Maduro, in fact, remains in office.
MARTIN: I mean, you say the U.S. has helped orchestrate this. It is interesting. There are a lot of international implications to what's happening in Venezuela right now.
REEVES: Yeah. I mean, we are witnessing a major coordinated drive to push Maduro out of office to end the economic and humanitarian crisis that's been going on here for a long time that's been getting worse and that's been causing severe problems in the neighborhood because of mass migration. And the U.S. is playing a central role in that. Maduro's accusing it of orchestrating a coup, and he's drawing comparisons with the Cold War years when the U.S. was - you know, U.S. interventions in Latin America, including in organizing behind-the-scene coups - he's drawing that comparison.
And let's not forget that Maduro has some big friends on the international stage. His government's been propped up for years by China and Russia and, more recently, Turkey. And Turkey's been expressing their support for him. They say that by recognizing someone else as president, the U.S. and others could cause chaos here.
MARTIN: In the meantime, the U.S. diplomats are caught in the middle of this. I mean, Venezuelans in general are the ones who are really bearing the brunt. But are the U.S. diplomats going to leave now that Maduro has told them they have to?
REEVES: Well, this has become a really critical issue. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says that Maduro doesn't have the legal authority to break diplomatic relations with the U.S. because, you know, the U.S. doesn't recognize him as president. It therefore follows that the U.S. thinks Maduro doesn't have the legal authority to throw out its diplomats. But what happens if they don't leave? Maduro controls the streets here right now. He controls the security forces. Last night on TV, a senior member of the socialist party was talking - which is the ruling party, allied with Maduro's regime - was talking about cutting off water and electricity to the U.S. Embassy if the diplomats don't leave after 72 hours, as instructed. Now, that may well just be rhetoric to please the crowd. But we really don't know how this is going to play out.
MARTIN: What's Guaido's next step? I mean, it's one thing for him to stand among throngs of cheering supporters and say, I am the interim president. But what's he going to do to bring about a new vote, if he even has the ability to do that?
REEVES: Well, it's difficult to know because the National Assembly has been totally sidelined by Maduro for a long time now. And the Supreme Court here, which he controls, has just reinforced that by declaring the National Assembly's decisions null and void. So you know, he has declared himself to be interim president. But where he's going to take that is difficult to know. Having said that, having all that international support - especially from the U.S., the biggest player on the block - is extremely important. It's a source of influence for him, and it's also important because it's backed up by U.S. threats of more sanctions.
MARTIN: Just briefly, Phil, what are you hearing from people in the streets? I mean, this is political chaos there. What are the effects of people's day-to-day lives?
REEVES: Well, you know, the protests against Maduro yesterday were huge. Hundreds of thousands of people were on the street. They were very happy when Guaido declared himself interim president, although they weren't ecstatic. You know, they've had high hopes before only to see them dashed. They're exhausted.
On the other hand, Maduro does have some supporters. His socialist party had big rallies yesterday. And they all see this as another chapter in the U.S. war against Venezuela, as they call it, aimed at taking control of their country.
MARTIN: NPR's Philip Reeves reporting from Caracas. Thanks so much, Phil.
REEVES: You're welcome.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
You know what they say about your favorite movie. No matter how many times you watch, it always ends the same. That is not true for one episode of the Netflix show "Black Mirror." An episode called "Bandersnatch" lets viewers make decisions for the main character. The format reminds some people of the "Choose Your Own Adventure" book series. And that prompted "Choose Your Own Adventure's" publisher to choose this adventure; they chose to sue. Here's Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi of NPR's Planet Money podcast.
ALEXI HOROWITZ-GHAZI, BYLINE: "Choose Your Own Adventure" books are what people often point to when trying to explain the concept of interactive narrative. The series sold more than 250 million copies over its heyday in the 1980s and 1990s. Its popularity waned, but the fanfare around Netflix's "Bandersnatch" has signaled a new hope for the interactive genre. Shannon Gilligan is the CEO and publisher of Chooseco, the company that currently publishes the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books and is suing Netflix. Even she sees "Bandersnatch" as a turning point for the interactive narrative market.
SHANNON GILLIGAN: I think that we are seeing the beginning of a new genre in streaming and in theatrical release.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: So why is the small publisher of the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books suing the company that could help jumpstart the market for interactive content?
GILLIGAN: We simply want to protect our trademark.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: "Bandersnatch" tells the dark and sometimes gruesome story of a teenage programmer as he works to adapt a fictional book, called "Bandersnatch," into a video game with multiple branching plotlines. Chooseco's lawsuit evolved out of this scene.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BANDERSNATCH")
WILL POULTER: (As Colin) It's a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book. You decide what your character does. They're like a game.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: That is the moment Chooseco claims that Netflix ran afoul of their trademark. Chooseco's suit claims that Netflix's use of the phrase "Choose Your Own Adventure" causes confusion for viewers about whether or not "Bandersnatch" is affiliated with Chooseco's signature book series. It's not, for the record. It also claims that being associated with the dark content in "Bandersnatch" tarnishes the family-friendly reputation of "Choose Your Own Adventure" books, and the company is suing for both an injunction against Netflix and damages of at least $25 million. Again, Chooseco's publisher Shannon Gilligan.
GILLIGAN: Trademark law requires that you protect your mark because if you don't, you lose control of it.
CHRIS SPRIGMAN: So it makes perfect sense, from Chooseco's perspective, to try to wring whatever value remains out of this trademark.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: Chris Sprigman teaches law at New York University. Sprigman says that Chooseco's lawsuit is also about combating one of the great dangers to trademark holders, a concept known as genericide.
SPRIGMAN: Genericide is the idea that trademark law is not supposed to be withdrawing words from the English language.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: If the trademarked name for a particular product manages to become so popular it's used in everyday language to describe a whole category of products, it runs the risk of losing its status as a valid trademark. Case in point...
SPRIGMAN: The word zipper was originally a trademark for a toothed closure. But people started using the word zipper for any toothed closure, and that trademark became worthless. It became generic.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: Aspirin, thermos, escalator - just a few onetime trademarks that have succumbed to genericide. And while companies are obliged to fight to protect their trademark, they also run the risk of losing it in the process because the legal determination that a trademark has become generic often happens through lawsuits like this one. Chris Sprigman says that means there's an inherent risk to Chooseco's strategy.
SPRIGMAN: Yeah. They're playing with fire because it's entirely possible that Chooseco files a lawsuit, they end up with a finding that the mark has become generic.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: Carla Engelbrecht, director of product innovation at Netflix, wouldn't comment on the lawsuit. But she says that "Bandersnatch" has tested the technology and confirmed the appetite for new interactive programming.
CARLA ENGELBRECHT: What does it mean for romance? What does it mean for documentaries? You know, personally, I would love to see a really soapy, cheesy telenovela that's like, slap him or cheat on him.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: What's still unclear is whether they'll choose their own descriptions of what they make. Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi, NPR News.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Zimbabwe has lost one of its most beloved voices. His name is Oliver Mtukudzi, and he died yesterday at the age of 66. The musician was one of the few constants in a country that's been through a lot and faces an uncertain political future. Here's NPR's Andrew Limbong.
ANDREW LIMBONG, BYLINE: Outside Zimbabwe, Oliver Mtukudzi's style of music is described as jazz or world.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MUTAVARA")
OLIVER MTUKUDZI: (Singing in foreign language).
LIMBONG: But in Zimbabwe, Mtukudzi was so big, people just refer to it by his nickname, Tuku music. It's a mix of various types of traditional Zimbabwean music blended with Western rock and pop - whatever he heard as a kid. His career began in the late 1970s, when he used that music to talk about the white minority rule in his country then known as Rhodesia.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MUTAVARA")
MTUKUDZI: (Singing in foreign language).
LIMBONG: Mtukudzi told NPR in 2002 that this song was written as a message.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
MTUKUDZI: If you translate it, literally, it says, hit the drum, Mutavara. Hit it hard so that everybody else can hear and can follow your tune. But the actual meaning then wasn't like, hit the drum. It was like, take your arm and fight.
LIMBONG: Mtukudzi steered clear from naming names. He wanted his music to live on beyond specific people and events. But he did address the crisis of HIV and AIDS directly in his music.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TODII")
MTUKUDZI: (Singing) Oh, todii.
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing in foreign language).
MTUKUDZI: (Singing) What shall we do?
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing in foreign language)
MTUKUDZI: (Singing in foreign language).
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) What shall we do?
LIMBONG: This song, in particular, deals with issues of sexual violence and gender roles within the HIV and AIDS crisis in Zimbabwe and elsewhere. In 2013, he said he just wanted to open the conversation.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MTUKUDZI: It's a song that was full of questions with no solution at all. And all those questions started making people talk about the disease and try and take the stigma away from it.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TODII")
MTUKUDZI: (Singing in foreign language).
LIMBONG: Throughout his career, Oliver Mtukudzi released more than 60 albums and toured the world despite personal tragedy. His son and collaborator, Sam, died in a car accident in 2010. Oliver Mtukudzi saw music as a way to relieve grief and defuse tension. It wasn't about forgetting your problems, but giving a reason to dance in the face of them. Andrew Limbong, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TODII")
MTUKUDZI: (Singing) Oh, todii.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
In his final State of the Union speech in 2016, President Obama declared, the state of our union is strong. In his State of the Union speech in 2018, President Trump declared, the state of our union is strong. It's a common sentiment. President Bush said it. President Clinton said it.
Today, we can say the State of the Union is delayed. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made it definite yesterday the president may not use the House chamber until a partial government shutdown is over. The president replied by Twitter last night that that is her prerogative, and he will wait.
NPR political editor Domenico Montanaro never waits. He's here once again this morning. Domenico, good morning.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Hey there, Steve. And I'll wait as long as you need.
INSKEEP: OK. Why did the president not seek some other place?
MONTANARO: Well, he decided to relent and back down, which is not usual for his - for what he's done over his presidency. But he decided that he was not going to seek a different venue. He tweeted that there's no venue that can compete with the history, tradition and importance of the House chamber. He said he looks forward to giving it in the near future after the shutdown is over.
And, you know, it's probably no coincidence that there were three polls out yesterday continuing to show the president's numbers getting worse and worse during the shutdown. People are blaming him for it. They're saying the shutdown is more of a problem than the border. And his approval rating in an AP poll, for example, went to 34 percent, the lowest of his presidency in that poll. And among independents, almost 7 in 10 disapprove of the job he's doing.
INSKEEP: You know, I was looking at the FiveThirtyEight polling average. You take an average of polls since any one poll might be a little off. His approval rating was 10 points underwater in December - like, 41 percent approved, around 51 percent disapproved, which is really bad. And now it is far worse, something like 55-39 - 55 percent disapproval and only 39 percent approval. That is appalling for a president.
MONTANARO: Yeah, it's really expanded since the government shutdown began December 21. And, you know, it's hard to ignore a confluence of polls. You know, you can cherry-pick one thing, but when you see that trend, which is really the way to consume them, even the president has to look at that and think, something has to change here.
And, you know, a Fox News poll was out yesterday. They conduct very good polls. And it showed, you know, three-quarters of the country think that the border is - I'm sorry. Three-quarters of the country think that the shutdown is a big problem compared to fewer than that - maybe about 6 in 10 - who thought the border was.
INSKEEP: And, of course, that is a poll that we would presume the president has seen since he spends a lot of time watching Fox News and often tweeting about it, although he hasn't tweeted that poll so far as we are - so far as we know.
MONTANARO: Probably not going to tweet that if it's a...
INSKEEP: No.
MONTANARO: ...If it's not favorable to him.
INSKEEP: Have Democrats offered the president any way to get out of this?
MONTANARO: Well, Democrats have not offered anything yet to the president, except to say that - open the government back up, and then we can negotiate, which the Democrats are saying. You know, that's one of the bills that's going to be voted on today and expected to fail. Of course, the president's proposal in the Senate is also going to be voted on, where he wants $5.7 billion for a wall and offering temporary immigrant - temporary protections for immigrants in the country.
But Democrats are likely to offer a counterproposal, according to NPR's Susan Davis, that does spend significantly on border security, just not going to offer anything for that wall.
INSKEEP: Would it be $5.7 billion, which is the exact amount the president is demanding, just not for a wall - for other kinds of security?
MONTANARO: Well, you know, Democrats have shown a pension to actually spend potentially more money than that in past years when it comes to other things - when you think about, you know, drones or technology.
Really, the wall has become symbolic for both Democrats and Republicans, you know, at least for this president to say that this is his, you know, physical view of saying that he's tough on the border, and Democrats saying that this is also a physical view of saying that you're trying to keep people out. So - because Democrats in the past, of course, have been in favor of securing various parts of the border and fencing.
INSKEEP: Domenico, thanks for the update. Really appreciate it.
MONTANARO: You're welcome.
INSKEEP: That's NPR political editor Domenico Montanaro.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Spain received the highest number of migrants on their shores last year, topping both Italy and Greece. Spain saw a sharp increase of arrivals last summer, which overwhelmed refugee centers in the south. And this year, Spanish officials expect the number to keep rising. Lucia Benavides reports.
LUCIA BENAVIDES, BYLINE: Mamaru Lamine Sarr is ironing shirts for a clothing store in downtown Barcelona. The store is run by an association of undocumented migrants. Sarr, who's from Senegal, is one of the union's founding members. He says they opened the shop in 2017 to help migrants find steady work.
MAMARU LAMINE SARR: (Speaking Spanish).
BENAVIDES: Since he arrived in Spain in 2006, Sarr says he's had to take care of himself. There's been virtually no official support, just some help from local activists and the migrant community. This past year, he says he's seen the numbers increase as authorities bus migrants into Barcelona from overcrowded reception centers in the south.
SARR: (Speaking Spanish).
BENAVIDES: "They drop you off at a bus station," Sarr says. "And you don't know anyone. The only solution," he adds, "is to sleep on the street until someone helps you out." Maria Dantas is one of those people. She works with a network of activists across Spain to coordinate help for migrants with nowhere to go.
MARIA DANTAS: (Through interpreter) This summer, we saw a peak in arrivals. Our goal was to not let these people stay in the streets.
BENAVIDES: Around 58,000 migrants arrived in Spain in 2018, more than double the number in the previous year. Dantas says authorities were totally unprepared.
DANTAS: (Through interpreter) There was a lack of foresight and provisions in place for the Spanish government to take in these people.
BENAVIDES: Barcelona's immigration coordinator, Ignasi Calbo, agrees. He says the city received 5,000 of the nearly 60,000 migrants last year, yet the central government didn't send any extra funds to deal with the influx.
IGNASI CALBO: (Through interpreter) The biggest complaint that cities have is that we are dealing with this alone.
BENAVIDES: And it's not just the migrants crossing the sea from Africa, Calbo adds. There are people migrating to Barcelona from all over the world. The biggest percent of asylum-seekers are actually from Venezuela. Barcelona has doubled the capacity of its homeless shelters. But Calbo says many migrants, including unaccompanied children, still end up living on the streets.
CALBO: (Through interpreter) For Europe and European countries, immigration is a political problem. They talk about flows, numbers and quotas. But cities have to deal with the day-to-day reality.
BENAVIDES: And the flow of migrants could continue to increase. According to the U.N. Migration Agency, 3,400 migrants have arrived in Spain in the first three weeks of this year - three times the number in 2017. For NPR News, I'm Lucia Benavides in Barcelona.
(SOUNDBITE OF VETUSTA MORLA'S "MAREA BAJA")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Rachel Martin. Four-hundred-and-thirty applicants to the University of South Florida St. Petersburg got great news the other day, an email confirming that - yay - they were accepted. And for one blissful hour, that's what they thought. Then they got another message that there was an error in the system and they should disregard the previous email. The students were actually not admitted. In a statement, the school apologized and said they'll try to help those students find other, quote, "pathways for admission in the future."
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The fifth and final season of Comedy Central's "Broad City" begins tonight. "Broad City" follows Abbi and Ilana, two 20-something women living in Brooklyn, finding their way as 20-somethings do - but with a twist. NPR's Sam Sanders talked recently with Abbi Jacobson, one of the creators and stars of the show. And they talked about "Broad City's" subversive feminism.
SAM SANDERS, BYLINE: In the very first episode of "Broad City," Ilana shows up at her best friend Abbi's job.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "BROAD CITY")
ABBI JACOBSON: (As Abbi Abrams) What are you even doing here?
ILANA GLAZER: (As Ilana Wexler) Nothing, just strolling through the neighborhood and wanted to see my No. 1.
SANDERS: And then Ilana tries to get Abbi to leave her shift so the two of them can try to score tickets to a Lil Wayne concert.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "BROAD CITY")
GLAZER: (As Ilana Wexler) I think you deserve, like, an "Abbi Bueller's Day Off" to just leave work in the middle of the day. Yes, you can. You just lie and leave. All they let you do is fold towels anyway.
JACOBSON: (As Abbi Abrams) No, they don't. They let me do a lot more than that. I wash the towels, and then I dry the towels.
SANDERS: Abbi leaves her shift, and then there's high jinks. In many ways, this could be any show about young people in a big city fooling around, doing dumb stuff. But "Broad City" is different because it is nasty. Abbi and Ilana are gross. They're slobs. They joke about and revel in bodily functions I can't mention at this hour on this show. They get to be crass - like men. Creator Abbi Jacobson says that's the point.
JACOBSON: Like, don't you know - a lot of your girlfriends, don't they - aren't they like us?
SANDERS: Oh, yeah.
JACOBSON: So it's like, when you - if you've watched the show, you're not like, that's a dude thing.
SANDERS: That's a dude thing. It's just like a...
JACOBSON: No. Those are like girls I know...
SANDERS: I know girls like that. Exactly.
JACOBSON: ...But maybe not girls that you've...
SANDERS: I see.
JACOBSON: ...Seen on - yeah.
SANDERS: Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer started "Broad City" as a Web series in 2009. Jacobson says FX was going to take the show to TV but pulled the plug after a year of development. The reason?
JACOBSON: It was that it was too girly.
SANDERS: For FX's audience, at least - Comedy Central picked it up, and "Broad City" was a hit. Anne Helen Petersen is the author of the book "Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud." She talks about "Broad City" in that book. And she's intrigued by the way the show lets these two characters spend their free time.
ANNE HELEN PETERSEN: Their leisure time isn't consumed with bettering their bodies. Like, they're not sitting around painting their nails or doing their hair.
SANDERS: "Broad City" is also very specific in representing a particular kind of woman - young, white, urban, liberal. The show has been critiqued for that at times. Abbi Jacobson says she gets it.
JACOBSON: We try to comment on the fact that we are these, like, two dumb white girls. It's not representing everybody.
SANDERS: Do you feel bad about that?
JACOBSON: I mean, in a way - but I think that when we first started the Web series, like, 10 years ago, we were just trying to create characters for ourselves because we couldn't get roles on anything.
SANDERS: And that story - their story - that's guided the whole show the entire time. Anne Helen Petersen says the heart of "Broad City" is Abbi and Ilana putting their relationship above chasing a career or chasing beauty or chasing a man.
PETERSEN: Yes, they have relationships. But their primary relationship, the love story, is their friendship with one another and their absolute support for one another.
SANDERS: Five seasons in, that's still pretty radical.
Sam Sanders, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Here is the state of play in efforts to reopen the federal government. The Senate votes on two bills today. The Republican measure has funding the president demanded for a wall along the border with Mexico along with some other immigration measures. The Democratic measure just reopens the government. In the House, a leading Democrat, James Clyburn, says his party is ready to give the president all the money he is asking for border security, just not a wall.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JAMES CLYBURN: If his $5.7 billion is about border security, then we see ourselves fulfilling that request, only doing it with what I like to call - using a smart wall.
INSKEEP: Republican Mark Meadows sees no change here.
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MARK MEADOWS: On Day 1, there was zero dollars for new border fencing measures. On Day 33, there's still zero dollars for new border fencing measures.
INSKEEP: So how's all this look from the White House? Our next guest is Mercedes Schlapp. She is White House director of strategic communications.
Welcome back to the program.
MERCEDES SCHLAPP: Thank you for having me.
INSKEEP: Would the president consider that offer, all the money - $5.7 billion - just not a wall?
SCHLAPP: Well, why don't we have the Democrats come over and propose that over to the president? What we have not seen, sadly, is the Democrats willing to - especially Democrat leadership with Speaker Pelosi - come wanting to negotiate. We have been waiting for a counteroffer. The president, last Saturday, presented a good faith, reasonable proposal that would immediately reopen the government and as well as provide measures that would secure the border. They not...
INSKEEP: Are you - forgive me. Are you saying the president would seriously consider what Clyburn just put on the table there?
SCHLAPP: Well, what we need is a conversation to happen...
INSKEEP: So yes?
SCHLAPP: ...'Cause Democrat leadership...
INSKEEP: Is that a yes or just come and talk?
SCHLAPP: We've been waiting. What we need to determine - is that their counteroffer? Speaker Pelosi hasn't told us what their counteroffer is. What we know in the president's proposal is that includes several elements that the Democrats would agree with, including an extension of DACA, an extension of temporary protected status and as well as asylum laws that would actually - that they would support, which would be that young minors would be able to apply for asylum in their home country.
Before - when the president was about to give the address - even before that, Speaker Pelosi put out a statement. And she said that Democrats want stronger, more effective border security. Two of the bullet point she included, which was more immigration judges to deal with the backlog and also basically allowing for counternarcotics technology. Those are two elements that are included in the president's proposal.
INSKEEP: We should...
SCHLAPP: We are ready to have this discussion with the Democrat leadership. Question is, are they going to come to the table?
INSKEEP: We should...
SCHLAPP: And so far, we have not seen a counteroffer.
INSKEEP: We should note that Democrats disagree with the way the president has laid out the DACA protections as well as the asylum protections. We'll discuss at another time. But I want to ask about this shutdown because it goes on. It's more than a month old.
And the National Air Traffic Controllers Association has put out a statement because, of course, air traffic controllers are affected here. They're not being paid. There are some things they can't do. The statement says, quote, "we cannot even calculate the level of risk currently at play, nor predict the point at which the entire system will break." If a plane crashes and people are killed because of this shutdown, is the wall worth that?
SCHLAPP: Well, I will say that at this point, what the president and speaker - what the president wants to do is have the Democrats come to the table. The Democrats keep...
INSKEEP: Is a plane crash...
SCHLAPP: ...Delaying the process (unintelligible).
INSKEEP: The president is the one who's making a demand. Is the...
SCHLAPP: No, no, no. The demand is...
INSKEEP: ...Wall worth people getting killed?
SCHLAPP: The Democrats' demand is not going to work because of the fact that they don't even want to have a discussion with the president. The president has asked time and time again to come to a compromise, and they refuse to do so. So we want to open the government. We want the Democrats to come to the table. We want to secure the border where we have seen increased crime, where we have seen increased gang activity, where we have to deal with a decades old problem. And it's time we - and we have put forward a good faith proposal, and yet we have no answer coming from the Democrats.
INSKEEP: You also have DHS leaders, former DHS leaders - five of them, including John Kelly, the former White House chief of staff and the president's DHS secretary - saying that it's unconscionable that Homeland Security workers are not being paid. We have the FBI Agents Association saying that investigations are being hampered. So that leads to another question. If the shutdown leads to a terror attack that gets Americans killed, is the wall worth that - yes or no?
SCHLAPP: Again, I'm going to say that the Democrats need to come to the table. We are ready to open this government immediately. We want to be able to secure the border, which we know is an issue that is incredibly important, especially as our Border Patrol agents have asked for these resources. And so it's time for the Democrats to stop going home - because this is what's happening. Speaker Pelosi will be going home this weekend, will not be in Washington. She is not taking this seriously.
INSKEEP: Well, the Senate will be out as well. Why are you uncomfortable answering yes or no to that question?
SCHLAPP: I think, at the end of the day, no one - not any American thinks, you know, that we want a plane to crash, any safety concerns. And that is why the president wants to open up the government, secure our border, have the Democrats come to the table - as opposed to the Democrats continuously going home and not working and not getting to a resolution.
INSKEEP: Mercedes Schlapp, thanks for taking the time. I really appreciate it.
SCHLAPP: Thank you.
INSKEEP: She is the White House director of strategic communications. NPR's Domenico Montanaro was listening along with us.
Domenico, what did you hear there?
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Well, you certainly heard much less about a border wall. There certainly wasn't the idea of, you know, build a wall; crime will fall - as the president talked about yesterday. Instead, when you asked her if the president would accept $5.7 billion or potentially more than that that Democrats could put on the table as early as today for border security, she said, well, why don't we have the Democrats propose that to the president? Certainly sounds like an openness and a potential way out of this shutdown. At the same time, of course, we don't know inside the mind of the president. We don't know if he will accept that, but it certainly sounds like an opening, Steve.
INSKEEP: We should be clear. People close to the president, including the vice president, Mike Pence, have sounded more willing to deal than the president has sounded over the past several weeks.
MONTANARO: They are always more willing to deal. They just don't know what the president will exactly sign off on.
INSKEEP: OK. Domenico, thanks for the update. Really appreciate it.
MONTANARO: You're welcome.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Domenico Montanaro.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Denmark will soon begin construction on its own controversial wall along that country's southern border. This one will stretch 40 miles along the divide between Denmark and Germany. But it's only going to be five feet tall. And it's designed to keep out wild boar. Sidsel Overgaard reports.
SIDSEL OVERGAARD, BYLINE: Pig farming in Denmark is serious business. Just getting in to see one is a bit of an ordeal.
Oh, socks too.
BERITH NISSEN: Yes.
OVERGAARD: OK.
Farm owner Berith Nissen pulls out a couple of brightly colored coveralls and two pairs of socks.
NISSEN: And we have to - of course, to wash our hands, too, and disinfect them.
OVERGAARD: Yeah.
NISSEN: Super. We'll go inside.
(SOUNDBITE OF PIGS SQUEALING)
OVERGAARD: There are plenty of diseases to worry about when you're responsible for 10,000 pigs, as Nissen is. But the one keeping her up at night these days is African Swine Fever or ASF.
NISSEN: We have heard that it's a very painful disease. And most of the pigs will die. And those who doesn't die, we have to kill them.
OVERGAARD: ASF isn't in Denmark yet, but it's become widespread in China and parts of Eastern Europe. And there's even been an isolated outbreak in Belgium. ASF isn't dangerous for people, but the virus can spread through contaminated meat products or among wild boar and so infect domestic pigs. It's so serious that if even one wild boar in Denmark were found with ASF, Danish pig farmers could lose markets worth $1.5 billion a year. Nissen says her farm alone could lose half a million.
NISSEN: We cannot survive that very long. It will be a disaster.
OVERGAARD: And that is where the fence comes in.
BENT RASMUSSEN: You have a lot of wild boars in Germany, but you don't have many wild boars in Denmark. So actually, we have a - it's possible to prevent them coming into the country.
OVERGAARD: As chief forester for southern Denmark, it's Bent Rasmussen's job to keep the boars out while letting other wildlife pass freely.
RASMUSSEN: So the deers will be able to jump over the fence. And we establish small gates for foxes, brown hare, otters and other small mammals to pass the fence line.
OVERGAARD: But opponents say there's little evidence these solutions will work, especially for bigger animals like the protected wolf. And they say there's even less evidence that the fence will actually stop the boar because there are gaps where roads and paths cut through, not to mention that boar can swim and can easily cross the narrow fjord separating Denmark from Germany.
HANS KRISTENSEN: What we're trying to do here politically is to build a fence in order to feel safe. But it doesn't make any difference.
OVERGAARD: Hans Kristensen is standing along a quiet stretch of the German border where he often comes to hunt. Kristensen is one of the leaders of the campaign against the fence. Like many people here, he has family on both sides and feels this isn't just a problem for Denmark.
KRISTENSEN: This is a problem all across Europe. And we have to make a solution that includes Europe instead of excluding the rest of Europe.
OVERGAARD: Kristensen believes the fence's $12-million budget would be better spent on vaccine research. Meanwhile, he says, wildlife is paying the price.
KRISTENSEN: In some way, they would be prevented from following the routes that they have been followed for decades.
OVERGAARD: As if to prove his point, four deer come bounding into the field, passing effortlessly from Germany to Denmark, a border they don't know is there - yet. For NPR News, I'm Sidsel Overgaard in Denmark.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We can all use a little encouragement, motivation and joy in our lives, right?
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Rachel, how did you know? Anyway, that's where Donte Colley comes in.
(SOUNDBITE OF INSTAGRAM VIDEO)
MARTIN: Colley makes Instagram videos. It's just him, dancing in front of the camera by himself.
DONTE COLLEY: I start by throwing on a song and hitting record on my iPhone and kind of just improvising a little bit of a dance.
INSKEEP: With his perfectly timed twirls and twists, he edits in emojis that pop up on screen - stars and fireworks and hearts, confetti explosions.
(SOUNDBITE OF EXPLOSIONS)
COLLEY: I really have no idea what is going to happen. So it's, like, kind of like a fun journey for everything.
MARTIN: And there is giant text over all the images, feel-good phrases like, keep going. You matter. You complete this planet.
COLLEY: I just wanted to encourage my friends to really just push through through any kind of struggle that they are going through. And social media is a great platform to do that.
INSKEEP: Using social media to spread a positive message. And many people have responded.
MARTIN: This week, Colley took his show on the road, showing off his moves on "Good Morning America."
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "GOOD MORNING AMERICA")
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Do it, Donte.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY")
WHITNEY HOUSTON: (Singing) Oh, I wanna dance with somebody.
COLLEY: I've been getting quite a bit of messages like, this made my day or, this kind of saved my day, which - I actually didn't expect that at all. But I'm super grateful for it.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY")
HOUSTON: (Singing) With somebody who loves me.
(CHEERING)
COLLEY: It definitely made me feel good that it was making other people feel good, which, at the end of the day, is just the objective, is - we all just need each other.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Time for a little-known piece of history, which comes to us from StoryCorps. In 1961, an American bomber was flying over North Carolina when it broke apart, and the two hydrogen bombs in the plane fell into a tobacco field. They did not explode. If they had, the bombs would have been about 250 times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima.
Lieutenant Jack ReVelle, an Air Force munitions expert, was called to the scene. And his job was to make sure the bombs did not go off after they were on the ground. ReVelle came to StoryCorps with his daughter, Karen, to talk about what happened.
JACK REVELLE: One night, I get a phone call from my squadron commander. And instead of using all the code words that we had rehearsed, he says, Jack, I got a real one for you. You don't often have two hydrogen bombs falling out of aircraft onto U.S. property. The weapon was 3 feet across in diameter and about 9 feet long. And it looked like a Washington Monument right in the middle of a bunch of trees.
What the status of the weapons were at that time was unknown. So we were working in the dark. Once we determined it was safe to handle, we used the crane to tip it over and put it on the back of a flatbed truck. But the second bomb, the parachute had not deployed. And this huge, multi-ton weapon penetrated the ground at 700 miles an hour and buried itself in the swamp.
KAREN REVELLE: You started digging, you and your crew. How many men total did you have with you?
J REVELLE: Ten - we call them the Terrible 10. I knew all of them very well. But nobody was cracking jokes like they usually did. And the first couple of days there, they didn't even have food for us - nothing. It was snowing. It was raining. It was frozen. That's why we worked in shifts, sometimes on our hands and knees.
And as we started digging down, trying to find the second bomb, one of my sergeants says, hey, Lieutenant, I found the arm safe switch. And I said, great. He says, no, not great. It's on arm. But we all knew what we were there for and the hazards that we were facing. So we pulled it up out of the mud and brought it up over this wooden rickety ladder that we had, to the surface of the ground, in a safe condition.
The next morning, I got up and showered and shaved and decided to sit down to write a letter to my folks. And by the time I'd written, dear mom and dad, my hand was shaking. I thought to myself, my God, where have I been? What have I been doing?
You have to understand, had one or both of the weapons detonated, you would have created a bay of North Carolina, completely changing the configuration of the East Coast of the United States. And the radiation could have been felt as far north as New York City. At the time, nobody knew it. But it could have easily been the start of another world war.
INSKEEP: Jack ReVelle, speaking with his daughter, Karen ReVelle, at StoryCorps in Santa Ana, Calif. Details of what happened in 1961 were classified for more than half a century. This interview will be archived, along with hundreds of thousands of others at the Library of Congress.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Every day of the partial government shutdown, funds that help millions of low-income people buy food or afford a home come closer to running out of money. Ben Carson oversees some of those programs. He is secretary of Housing and Urban Development. He's been mostly out of the spotlight since the shutdown began in December. But in an interview with NPR News, he challenged elected officials to set their egos aside.
BEN CARSON: We can continue to hope that our leaders will recognize that this is an easy problem to solve. Just take your ego out of it.
INSKEEP: Secretary Carson was speaking with NPR's Brakkton Booker, who's in our studios.
Brakkton, good morning.
BRAKKTON BOOKER, BYLINE: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: Where'd you find him?
BOOKER: So we were at an event in D.C., where we were talking with homeless people. And HUD staffers and Ben Carson were trying to get basic information from the homeless population about health information and also how they became homeless.
INSKEEP: Oh, this is a survey that HUD staffers - Housing and Urban Development staffers - do all the time. And on this occasion, the secretary himself attended the...
BOOKER: Yes, that is right. So what I was talking to him - you know, it's hard to get this man riled up. He never really gets, really, that flustered. But it was - his frustration was evident. And you heard him say, our leaders, and, take your ego out of it. So no doubt he was talking about Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. But, perhaps, he was also talking about President Trump.
INSKEEP: Did you get a clarification on that?
BOOKER: Yes. Well, HUD staffers came back to me later and said, oh, no, no, no. He's just strictly talking about congressional leaders there.
INSKEEP: Ah - not talking about the president when he mentioned ego. But that is a different tone than some other members of the cabinet, like the Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who acted baffled on television yesterday about why federal workers weren't just taking out loans to pay their bills.
BOOKER: Right. Ben Carson actually told me he was actually worried about federal workers, many of whom work at the Housing and Urban Development. He told me that, you know, even when these federal workers get back pay, they will never be whole. This is what he had to say.
CARSON: I mean, yes. I know we're going to give them back pay. But that doesn't take care of the interest if they borrow money. It doesn't make them whole again. And what - we really need to think about them as opposed to some political victory. And it does worry me about the future of our country.
BOOKER: Federal workers' missed paychecks aren't Carson's only worry. As we've said before, he heads a department that provides rent payments for millions of Americans. And then there's Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Everything from nutrition assistance to affordable housing programs are on the line. By the end of February, many of those safety net programs are expected to dry out if the government fails to reopen. Again, Ben Carson.
CARSON: The real danger comes on March 1.
BOOKER: March 1.
CARSON: That's where the problem is.
BOOKER: Even before March comes, HUD has more pressing issues. Just after the start of the new year, the department announced more than a thousand low-income housing contracts with private landlords expired. That left some unpaid HUD staffers scrambling to find any unused funds. Some landlords got lucky, but hundreds more did not. HUD is urging those unlucky ones not to evict tenants and to use reserve funds to cover what the department can't supply.
CARSON: And I know no one's ever been evicted during a shutdown. But we've never had one that lasts this long, either.
BOOKER: All of this is taking a toll on Jennifer McQuerrey.
JENNIFER MCQUERREY: No, I'm not a tenant in jeopardy of losing my home. However, I am a landlord in jeopardy of losing everything.
BOOKER: McQuerrey owns 10 properties in Charleston, W.Va., where she rents to low-income tenants with Section 8 housing vouchers. The tenants pay a portion of their income towards rent. And normally, HUD supplies McQuerrey with the difference. She says she's operating very close to the red and can't afford a single missed payment.
MCQUERREY: If one Section 8 payment does not come through, I will default on my mortgage.
BOOKER: She did receive a January payment. But with no end to the shutdown in sight, she's having second thoughts about doing business with the government in the future.
MCQUERREY: You know, yes, there's going to be some vacancy. There's going to be some unexpected expenses. I just never thought the federal government could kind of be the cause of my downfall.
BOOKER: Other departments are making on-the-fly changes as the shutdown inches closer to its sixth week. The Agriculture Department runs the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and WIC, which helps low-income women and children. Those programs are expected to have funds until - you guessed it - early March. Robert Rector studies poverty and welfare policy at the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation. While some people are panicking about programs running out of money, he says they shouldn't yet.
ROBERT RECTOR: So far, there hasn't been much of any impact on any poverty programs.
BOOKER: Rector says there are 90 different government programs to help the poor, which cost way more than the $5.7 billion the president wants for his U.S.-Mexico border wall.
RECTOR: For every thousand dollars that the government spends across the board, the president is asking for $1 for a wall. And to basically put the food stamp program in jeopardy because you don't want to spend any money to constrain illegal immigration is, I think, in the long term, not a very viable strategy.
BOOKER: Rebecca Vallas disagrees. She's the vice president of the poverty program at the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank. She sees cause for concern in Trump's threats to keep the government shuttered for months or even years over border wall funding.
REBECCA VALLAS: To say that we shouldn't be worried about the fact that millions and maybe even tens of millions of Americans could see their food and housing and other basics jeopardized because of this administration's unprepared handling of this shutdown, it frankly boggles the mind.
BOOKER: So as you know, Steve, in the Senate yesterday, a pair of bills each failed to get the 60 votes needed to end the government shutdown. So Senate leaders are continuing to talk. So that's an improvement. But to Rebecca Vallas' point, the shutdown lingers on. And many low-income Americans are concerned that their federal assistance will go away once the federal government funds really run out in February.
INSKEEP: Brakkton, thanks for the reminder that this is affecting not only 800,000 federal workers and a lot of federal contractors as well but also people who depend, in one way or another, directly on the U.S. government. What are the various parts of the government doing to prepare for an even longer shutdown, should that happen?
BOOKER: So that's the million-dollar question, right? We know that The Washington Post reported earlier this week that acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney asked different agency heads to supply a list of programs that were in dire need of funding if the shutdown runs into March. And when I spoke to HUD Secretary Ben Carson earlier this week, he did acknowledge that he was compiling lists but did not divulge which programs were going to be in that list that he sends over to the White House.
INSKEEP: Although, it's a little odd to try to figure out, like, how you adjust and how you pay for things because the point of shutting the government down is to shut it down. And yet you have the administration trying to ease the effects of the thing that it is, in fact, participating in doing.
BOOKER: That's right. But there are millions of people that rely on federal assistance to keep a house and keep food on the table, so they're really trying to mitigate the dire impacts of the shutdown.
INSKEEP: Brakkton, thanks.
BOOKER: Absolutely.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Brakkton Booker.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Actor and producer Jada Pinkett Smith is expanding her onscreen presence. From the early '90s in "A Different World"...
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "A DIFFERENT WORLD")
JADA PINKETT SMITH: (As Lena) Understand that I'm here just trying to get an education. I'd rather be here than out on the corner doing absolutely nothing ending up with a city job.
MARTIN: ...To the hit comedy "Girl's Trip."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "GIRL'S TRIP")
REGINA HALL: (As Ryan) How much did she drink?
PINKETT SMITH: (As Lisa) Why have you forsaken me, baby Jesus?
MARTIN: She's been all over TV and movie screens for decades. Now you can add laptop and smartphone screens to the list. Jada Pinkett Smith is hosting "Red Table Talk" on Facebook Watch with her mother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris, and her daughter, Willow Smith. We should mention Facebook is an NPR underwriter. This season, they've explored complex and emotional topics - mental health, racism, relationships and, yeah, even her own marriage to fellow superstar Will Smith.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "RED TABLE TALK")
WILL SMITH: I was much more conscious of public perception than Jada.
PINKETT SMITH: Yeah.
WILL SMITH: Right? There was an idea of...
PINKETT SMITH: I think I was trying to live up to an idea for him.
WILL SMITH: Right.
MARTIN: Jada Pinkett Smith joined me from our studios in New York. And she told me her desire to open up started with the candid conversations she was having with other women in her life.
PINKETT SMITH: I was like, why don't we talk like this more often? Like, why is it such a secret, like (laughter)...
MARTIN: Right.
PINKETT SMITH: ...Of what people go through? And so I was like, I really want to create conversation where people don't have to feel like they're alone. And whatever pieces individuals can take with them to make whatever changes they might feel is necessary for more happiness, more joy, more peace, I want to be part of that journey.
MARTIN: But it does stand in such contrast. There will be many people out there who are like, I thought Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith - they're like these super private people.
PINKETT SMITH: (Laughter) Yeah.
MARTIN: So what was the decision to say, I'm going to put it out for millions of people to see and hear?
PINKETT SMITH: People have a lot of romantic and fantasy ideas around relationships. And, you know, considering the powerful journey that Will and I have been taking together, I really thought it was important to shatter, you know, whatever facade had been out there. And now that I'm older and with all the work that I've done, I feel like I have the capacity to be more transparent and, luckily enough, so is my family.
MARTIN: Yeah.
PINKETT SMITH: So just because there's certain things that we talk about on the "Red Table" doesn't mean that we don't have boundaries. But I don't see the necessity to hold onto knowledge of certain experiences...
MARTIN: Yeah.
PINKETT SMITH: ...That we've had.
MARTIN: We see the different generational perspectives at play in all the episodes. But it was particularly notable the episode with diversity educator Jane Elliot.
PINKETT SMITH: Yeah.
MARTIN: You and your mom talk about growing up in different eras as black women in this country. And the focus was really the dynamic between black women and white women. And your mom had particular views on this. Your mom...
PINKETT SMITH: Oh, yeah.
MARTIN: ...Admitted to having her own - as we all do...
PINKETT SMITH: Yeah.
MARTIN: ...Her own biases.
PINKETT SMITH: Yup, definitely.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "RED TABLE TALK")
ADRIENNE BANFIELD-NORRIS: I remember growing up and not being able to go to downtown and try on hats. And we couldn't go to the bowling alley. And to get ice cream, we couldn't sit at the counter. It still bites.
PINKETT SMITH: She had to experience very different things than what Willow and I have had to experience.
MARTIN: Yeah. What's it like? How - I mean, how old is Willow?
PINKETT SMITH: Willow is 18 now.
MARTIN: She's 18.
PINKETT SMITH: Yeah.
MARTIN: Oh, man.
PINKETT SMITH: (Laughter).
MARTIN: She's a young lady. And she brings her own wisdom.
PINKETT SMITH: She does.
MARTIN: I imagine - you two seem very close anyway. But...
PINKETT SMITH: Yeah.
MARTIN: Have there been things that are said at the "Red Table" where you're like, oh.
PINKETT SMITH: (Laughter).
MARTIN: I did not know that that's where you were at on that.
PINKETT SMITH: The idea that even though Willow hasn't had the same experiences as my mother, that some of her views were pretty similar. They had this concept as if it's not our responsibility as women of color to educate white women - the idea being, well, they need to educate themselves. And that's true, too. But at the same time, I do believe that we, as women of color, have to have a certain openness in having conversations to help white women understand our experience.
MARTIN: Is there a particular episode that was revelatory to you? Is there one that just hit you in your gut, taught you something you didn't know?
PINKETT SMITH: I think that the episode on loss - you know, I had literally lost a friend on that tape day.
MARTIN: A friend died.
PINKETT SMITH: A friend died...
MARTIN: Wow.
PINKETT SMITH: ...Literally before we started taping that day.
MARTIN: Oh, no.
PINKETT SMITH: And on that particular episode, I got to learn, you know, about some struggles Willow had been going through.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "RED TABLE TALK")
WILLOW SMITH: Like, it was just so crazy. And I was just like plunged into this, like, black hole. And I was, like, cutting myself.
PINKETT SMITH: What?
WILLOW SMITH: Yeah - and doing crazy things.
PINKETT SMITH: Really? When were you cutting yourself?
WILLOW SMITH: Yeah.
PINKETT SMITH: I didn't see that part.
WILLOW SMITH: Totally lost my sanity for a moment there.
PINKETT SMITH: Wow.
So I lost a friend, but I also gained some really deep insight about love and child rearing. And that was that, you know, we can't always be with our children in their darkest moments but that if we pour as much love as we can into them, that love remains. And that love can help pull them through. And at the "Red Table," that's what we try to share.
MARTIN: Are there some topics you haven't wanted to tackle at the "Red Table?"
PINKETT SMITH: Not necessarily not wanting to tackle but figuring out how to tackle them.
MARTIN: Right. Can you give me an example of one that's been vexing you that you'd like to do?
PINKETT SMITH: There's, you know, like a couple of topics on infidelity. You know, we're looking at different doctors and different specialists to come and talk about infidelity, you know, and how to actually produce it and who would be willing to come and talk about...
MARTIN: Right.
PINKETT SMITH: ...Experiences in infidelity.
MARTIN: Right. That's tough.
PINKETT SMITH: It's tough. It's tough. And it's sensitive. You know, there's far more complex explanations than, you know, men who don't know how to control themselves...
MARTIN: Right.
PINKETT SMITH: ...And blah, blah, blah, blah. So...
MARTIN: I'd listen to that blah, blah, blah, blah.
PINKETT SMITH: Yeah. No, we - I think we have a very interesting perspective about it. And I think that it'll be a fiery show to say the least (laughter).
MARTIN: Jada Pinkett Smith is the creator, one of the hosts of "Red Table Talk" on Facebook Watch. Jada, thank you so much. It was such a pleasure.
PINKETT SMITH: Thank you. This was wonderful.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Members of the Senate sometimes like to refer to themselves as the world's greatest deliberative body.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
In modern times, the speeches in the Senate debate draw limited attention. But Senator Michael Bennet was an exception yesterday. The Colorado Democrat is usually a pretty reserved guy. But yesterday, the Senate failed to advance two plans to end a partial government shutdown, and Bennet wasn't having it.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MICHAEL BENNET: How ludicrous it is that this government is shut down over a promise the president of the United States couldn't keep and that America is not interested in having him keep.
MARTIN: Republicans for their port - for their part reportedly lashed out at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell over the impasse at a private lunch.
INSKEEP: So what now? NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith is here. Tamara, good morning.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: Have Senators come up with anything that maybe could pass?
KEITH: Well, not necessarily...
INSKEEP: (Laughter) OK.
KEITH: But they're talking. And that's the thing. There were these two test votes yesterday, and they failed. But taking a test that fails has a purpose. And it really kickstarted conversations. I think part of why it kickstarted conversations is that six Senate Republicans crossed party lines and voted in favor of the Democratic bill to reopen the government and fund the government without funding a wall...
INSKEEP: Which is the big - the big dividing line here, the president's demand for funding for a wall on the Mexican border. OK.
KEITH: Right. And so that prompted the majority leader, Mitch McConnell, and the minority leader, Chuck Schumer, to go huddle and talk about what was possible. And then they didn't really come up with anything fully, but they're talking, which is a new development.
INSKEEP: OK. And I guess they've talked about possibly a temporary reopening of the government while they negotiate. Of course, Democrats have demanded, open the government first; we'll talk about the wall later. Republicans have largely - with the exceptions you mentioned - obeyed the president in the Senate and voted the way that he wants, only to - only to have reopening the government with wall funding. Would the president approve of some kind of temporary - temporary movement?
KEITH: It's not 100 percent clear. He was asked about it yesterday. He said, you know, McConnell and Schumer, they're working on something. Let's see what they come up with. But, you know, maybe - maybe he said, he might support it.
INSKEEP: Let's listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: One of the ideas suggested is they open it - they pay a - sort of a pro-rated downpayment for the wall, which I think people will agree that you need.
KEITH: So Senator Schumer's spokesman put out a statement after that saying, Democrats are a hard no on the wall, pro-rated or otherwise. President Trump was asked, well, what if they come up with something that doesn't have wall funding in it? And the president was a little squishy on it and then said, you know, I've got other options too.
INSKEEP: Oh, which would be a reference, I suppose, to the possibility of declaring a state of emergency, which is something the White House has discussed but dismissed up to now.
KEITH: Exactly.
INSKEEP: The idea of a down payment on the wall would go against the Democratic position here. They've said they don't want to continuously have the president threatening to shut the government down to get things that he wants. Giving him a little bit of what he wants for a temporary reopening of the government would go against that position, wouldn't it?
KEITH: Indeed, it would, which is why Democrats are not open to that idea.
INSKEEP: Do you have any insight as to what the president is thinking now beyond what he has said in public?
KEITH: Well, he has - he had this meeting with conservatives earlier this week. They came away thinking that he was going to hold firm and that he wasn't going to fold. They said they're used to Republicans folding in shutdowns. But they feel like the president is pretty strong on wanting wall funding.
INSKEEP: OK, Tam, thanks for the update.
KEITH: You're welcome.
INSKEEP: NPR's Tamara Keith.
Now, today federal workers miss their second paycheck.
MARTIN: Right, and crucial programs to help Americans pay rent or buy food are actually running out of money at this point. On TV yesterday, U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said he was baffled by this. He said it should be simple for federal workers to take out loans. Ben Carson, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, told NPR's Brockton Booker - Brakkton Booker, rather, that's not so simple.
BEN CARSON: I mean, yes, I know we're going to give them back pay. But that doesn't take care of the interest if they borrow money. It doesn't make them whole again.
INSKEEP: And NPR's Brakkton Booker is in our studios. Brakkton, good morning.
BRAKKTON BOOKER, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: Where did you run into Ben Carson?
BOOKER: So we were at an event in D.C. It was a late-night event. We were actually - he was out there talking with members of the homeless population. He was getting basic information about their health and about their general circumstances, about how they became homeless. And we were chatting in between these interviews that he was conducting. And Carson is typically low-key, doesn't get riled up about things. But you could tell he was getting very frustrated about how long the shutdown had lasted. And here's what he had to say.
CARSON: We can continue to hope that our leaders will recognize that this is an easy problem to solve. Just take your ego out of it.
BOOKER: So there, you hear him say, our leaders and, take your ego out of it. So, you know, at first glance I was like, well, does he mean Nancy Pelosi? Does he mean Senator Mitch McConnell? And does - does he mean President Trump? And I - I checked with the staff, and they insist that he was only talking about congressional leaders.
INSKEEP: Oh, OK, although when you think about ego, there is a person who comes to mind. What are the secretary's concerns as this shutdown goes on? What makes it so bothersome to him?
BOOKER: Well, he's certainly got the federal workforce on his mind, including many of his staff at HUD, who are, again, missing their second paychecks today. There is another concern, though, that obviously HUD provides rental assistance to many millions of low-income Americans. So his real concern, too, are evictions. Now, Carson pointed out that, you know, no tenant has ever been evicted as a result of a shutdown. But then again, no shutdown has ever lasted this long.
INSKEEP: OK, are there safety - safety net programs here that are going to run out if this goes, like, another month or so?
BOOKER: Well, it looks like a lot of programs, including housing choice voucher programs and project-based programs that HUD organizes, there are - there's food stamps, SNAP benefits that is run out of USDA. Most of these programs are going - it appears to be they're going to be running out of money by mid-February, certainly by early March. And that is giving a lot of concern to a lot of Americans.
INSKEEP: You know, I'm thinking if you're a tenant, it's going to be stressful not to be able to pay your rent and embarrassing not to be able to pay your rent. But you probably won't be evicted right away. The person who really ends up short there is the landlord.
BOOKER: Right. And the landlord - I talked to one landlord who does have Section 8 housing. Her name is Jennifer McQueary (ph). Here's what she had to say.
JENNIFER MCQUEARY: No, I'm not a tenant in jeopardy of losing my home. However, I am a landlord in jeopardy of losing everything.
INSKEEP: Everything?
BOOKER: Everything. I mean, she owns 10 properties, all of them with Section 8 housing vouchers. And she says if she misses one payment, she is very close to losing it all. And she's hoping to not have to evict anybody. But, you know, times are tough right now.
INSKEEP: Oh, because she borrowed money to own the buildings.
BOOKER: Right.
INSKEEP: And some people have really strict terms on those loans.
BOOKER: And she's also - yes. She has mortgages to pay. And she's expecting money from HUD to supplement the mortgage there.
INSKEEP: Brakkton, thanks for the update, really appreciate it.
BOOKER: Absolutely.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Brakkton Booker.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
INSKEEP: Some other news now. How is a crisis in Venezuela evolving?
MARTIN: Some but not all Americans are moving out of harm's way. The State Department ordered non-emergency U.S. government employees to leave Venezuela. But key personnel remain in defiance of an order from Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The U.S. says it's not going to follow the president's demand to evacuate because the U.S. recognizes not President Maduro, but instead, the opposition leader, Juan Guaido, as his replacement.
INSKEEP: Reporter John Otis has been following the situation closely. He joins us now. Hi there, John.
JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Hey, Steve.
INSKEEP: How is each rival president moving to consolidate power?
OTIS: Well, it's a pretty bizarre situation. Maduro claims, you know, that he is the legitimate president because he took power through an election that was held last year. But that election, most international observers say it was a sham, that he basically stole the election. Nonetheless, he was sworn in for another six-year term just this month. And that's kind of what set off all these protests.
Juan Guaido is Venezuela's - the head of the congress. And under the constitution, if there's a vancancy in the presidency, you know, the head of congress takes over. And that's his claim to legitimacy. He wants to lead a transitional government and hold new elections. And he's been recognized by the U.S. and most Latin American countries.
But for now, Maduro would seem to have the upper hand because he pounced on the backing of Venezuela's powerful military. So, you know, it's kind of a situation where Maduro has lots of power but not much legitimacy. And Guaido has a lot of legitimacy but no real power.
INSKEEP: You said Maduro counts on the backing of the military. Is it clear that he has it and will continue to have it?
OTIS: Well, Steve, the military is sort of a black box. You never really know what's going on. But on the surface, his support would - would appear to be holding. Yesterday, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino came out and said the armed forces continues to recognize Maduro as Venezuela's only legitimate president.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
VLADIMIR PADRINO: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: Now, Steve, one reason for this support is that Maduro's given officers a lot of perks. He's put them in charge of government ministries and even the vital oil industry. Also, some top officers have been accused of drug trafficking and human rights abuses. And so they fear that if the opposition and if Guaido actually take power, that they could go to jail or be extradited.
INSKEEP: Oh, so they've got money on the line and their own futures on the line. And yet, they must understand the instability of the situation. And this is a military that once produced Hugo Chavez, the guy who established the socialist government, didn't it?
OTIS: That's correct, Steve. And, you know, the military, you know, they've been involved in a lot of rebellions over the years. And there are a lot of disgruntled officers. And there have been a lot of coup plots. But at the same time, Cuban intelligence agents are working very closely with the top brass in Venezuela to snuff out any conspiracies. So that's why all the rebellions that we have seen have all been quite small. You may remember that attack on Maduro last year. It wasn't carried out by army battalions. It was carried out by a couple of drones.
INSKEEP: OK. John Otis, thanks for the update, really appreciate it.
OTIS: Thanks, Steve.
INSKEEP: That's reporter John Otis, who is based in South America, has been following this situation in Venezuela.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The Supreme Court ruled this week that the Trump administration can, for now, enforce a ban on many transgender military personnel. The president announced that ban on Twitter in 2017. The Pentagon effort to refine his tweet into policy is being challenged in court. And the justices say the policy may go into effect while the court challenges proceed.
Army Staff Sergeant Patricia King is among those affected. She has served in the military for almost two decades, received much attention in recent years as a transgender woman in the years when President Obama's administration was allowing transgender personnel to serve. Before her transition, she was deployed to Afghanistan three times.
PATRICIA KING: My second trip to Afghanistan was in 2003. And it was one of the most life-altering experiences for me. And the reason I say that is we had the opportunity, when we were there, to see the difference that had been made in the short time from our occupation to 2003. I saw women driving cars. I saw children going to school, and I saw the difference that we had the opportunity to make. And that sat with me.
INSKEEP: How did you identify at that time?
KING: At the time, I had not come out, even to myself. So I still identified as a male. And I was wrestling with the feelings that I was having. I felt like I was stuck in the wrong body. But this was at the birth of Google. There was no Internet search history to find an understanding. There were very few books. So I didn't have an understanding of the feelings I was having.
INSKEEP: When did your thoughts clarify?
KING: Towards the end of that decade, towards around 2010, I started to understand what it was. I understood that this is not something that's just going to go away. But I was married, happily so. And at that point in time, what I had decided was that I was going to repress these feelings. I had made the assumption that my family would not be accepting, that I couldn't just end one life and start another as a different person.
INSKEEP: And you decided on a different course when?
KING: Towards the end of my most recent deployment in 2014, my wife and I decided the best course for us was to dissolve our marriage. And in that moment, I had the opportunity to make a decision about what I wanted the rest of my life to look like. Through a lot of thought and a lot of prayer, I made the decision that I was going to come out and start a transition. And then it was time to come out at work.
Now, the Army was not yet at a point where we had changed our policy. So coming out at work was a risky thing. But I knew that being authentic to myself was important. So I came out to my leaders and my peers in the Army.
INSKEEP: And then President Obama did change the policy for a while. Is that correct?
KING: Yes, shortly after that there was an announcement that there would be a freeze on transgender discharges while they did a one-year study. In the end, the DOD rolled out a policy allowing us to serve openly and genuinely.
INSKEEP: Now the rules have changed again. What do those rules mean for your day-to-day life as a soldier?
KING: The policy that is going into place creates a grandfather clause for transgender service members, which essentially makes those of us who are serving openly right now kind of like the last white rhinos. This particular policy affects all of us. This decision and this policy give a false sense of credibility to the inaccurate notion that transgender people are somehow less or less capable than our peers.
INSKEEP: How have you answered the objection, which I'm sure you've heard from someone in the military, that they want you to be ready to serve and not going through surgeries?
KING: Every service member will likely go through a period where they are not deployable for some small period of time, whether it be an injury, the birth of a child. We all go through that. Service members are not robots. We are people with lives. And human lives sometimes have factors that slow us down.
Transition can be that. But in my experience and in my case, the portion of time where I was not deployable and not ready to go to war was incredibly small. And every transgender service member knows that our first responsibility is to our job.
We employ the best and brightest in the military. And we appreciate what they bring to the table. Providing world-class care to the best and brightest is the cost of doing business to have the finest military and all-volunteer force in the world.
INSKEEP: Staff Sergeant King, thanks so much for taking the time.
KING: Thank you.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
It is Day 35 of the partial government shutdown, and critical services that make sure our food is safe have taken a hit. This month, the Food and Drug Administration scaled back many regular inspections of things like seafood, fruits and vegetables. Other inspectors, though, like the ones who inspect meat and poultry, are still on the job. Here's Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SONNY PERDUE: I know many of you have been wondering during this shutdown, what about my food? Is it safe? I'm happy to tell all Americans today, because of our hardworking food-safety inspectors across America, your chicken, your pork, your beef - all that protein that they're inspecting is safe. They've been on the job. They're on the job. They're staying on the job. And to them, I want to say thank you.
MICHAEL GAFRANCESCO: We have to go to work to protect the food chain - food supply for the Americans. And that's what we do. And we're not getting paid.
MARTIN: That second voice there - Michael Gafrancesco. He's a longtime federal food inspector in upstate New York. He's been out on approved sick leave since mid-December with a heart condition, but he's not getting paid, either. Gafrancesco is also a local union leader with the American Federation of Government Employees. And when we spoke, he told me food inspection workers in the area are struggling.
GAFRANCESCO: And matter of fact, I've got two people - a husband-and-wife team - that work, and they couldn't even afford to drive their vehicles to go to work. They couldn't afford to heat their home with wood. They have to go to food banks. I've got people that are suffering like that. All we want to do is get paid for the work that we do.
MARTIN: Can you describe, just so we understand the effect of you not being at your job and your colleagues, what do you do?
GAFRANCESCO: What we do is we inspect all federal meat and poultry food-processing plants and slaughter plants, and we insure and protect the public's food supply. We start from the slaughterhouse. We examine the animals and antemortem. We do post-mortem once it - which is like a autopsy on an animal, to determine if the animal has any diseases. And we ensure that they're slaughtered properly, boned, boxed and shipped to wherever they ship it to.
MARTIN: How many plants do you inspect a day personally when you're on the job?
GAFRANCESCO: I personally inspect five plants a day.
MARTIN: Wow. So while you are on sick leave and not getting paid...
GAFRANCESCO: Right.
MARTIN: ...Who's checking on those facilities?
GAFRANCESCO: We have another inspector in the Syracuse area who's doubled up.
MARTIN: And is that person not furloughed?
GAFRANCESCO: We are what they consider essential. We have to go to work. We're forced to go to work.
MARTIN: Your colleague now has taken a double shift, basically.
GAFRANCESCO: Oh, yeah. He's really killing himself.
MARTIN: You talk about people taking double shifts just so they can make sure the work is done because it is so important. Are you concerned that things are getting missed? Is there any kind of public health threat?
GAFRANCESCO: Well, you can only spend so much time in a plant. Like I said, if the other inspector that's covering for me has got nine plants - let's see. You've got all that driving time. There's lots of miles between certain places. How much time - quality time can you spend at a place to do inspection - real inspection? It's not really there, in my opinion.
But we've been going through this for a long time. We've been going through hiring problems. We were just getting caught up. We were getting close to filling all our vacancies. Well, I've been doubled up almost a year and a half to two years.
MARTIN: What are your long-term plans? We're hearing some reporting that the White House is making its own plans for the shutdown to last weeks or even months.
GAFRANCESCO: I'm going to my family, and I'm trying to get financial help from my family - and that I've got a daughter that lives with us and her granddaughter here, and she just took in a child to babysit to help with money. My wife was working, and she can't work because she's taking care of her mother. So there's no income there right now.
It's very devastating. And I don't know how long it's going to go. That's why I'm praying that the politicians get together and end this and pay us federal employees our wages. We need to support our families.
MARTIN: Michael Gafrancesco, a federal food inspector for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Michael, thank you so much for your time.
GAFRANCESCO: You're very welcome, and it was nice speaking to you.
MARTIN: We reached out to the USDA. They let us know essential personnel continue to work during the government shutdown.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The United States no longer recognizes Nicolas Maduro as the leader of Venezuela. The U.S. is promoting an opposition leader instead, but Maduro still has friends, including Russian President Vladimir Putin. Here's NPR's Lucian Kim.
LUCIAN KIM, BYLINE: After the Trump administration announced that it no longer considers Nicolas Maduro to be Venezuela's legitimate president, the Kremlin has been denouncing the move as a typical example of American unilateralism and regime change. On Thursday, President Vladimir Putin called the Venezuelan leader.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT NICOLAS MADURO: (Speaking Spanish).
(APPLAUSE)
KIM: Speaking at a ceremony in Venezuela's supreme court, Maduro said he had spoken with Putin for 20 minutes.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MADURO: (Speaking Spanish).
KIM: Maduro said Putin told him he could count on unconditional support and even greater economic aid. Russia is deeply interested in the survival of the Maduro regime, having invested billions of dollars in Venezuela's economy. If Cuba used to be Moscow's closest ally in Latin America during the Cold War, now it's Venezuela, which is far more attractive because of its lucrative oil industry. The fact that Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chavez, was defiantly anti-American made Venezuela an ideal partner.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: (Speaking Russian).
KIM: In December, Putin hosted Maduro outside Moscow, voicing his full backing for his already embattled regime. Less than a week later, Putin sent two long-range bombers 6,000 miles to Venezuela as covered here by the Kremlin's English language news channel Russia Today.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED BROADCASTER: Here it is. One of the two Russian Tupolev Tu-160 strategic, nuclear-capable bombers has just landed here in Venezuela. Wow, spectacular.
KIM: At the time, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said two corrupt governments were squandering public funds while their own people suffer. Putin's domestic critics are finding inspiration in President Trump's recognition of an opposition figure, Juan Guaido, as Venezuela's legitimate leader. Alexei Navalny, Russia's most outspoken opposition politician, called Trump's decision outstanding and drew parallels with Russia whose people are poor despite the country's enormous oil wealth.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ALEXEI NAVALNY: (Speaking Russian).
KIM: Speaking on his weekly webcast, Navalny said Chavez and Maduro have brought Venezuela to the brink of catastrophe and calculated that every Russian has involuntarily invested more than $100 in the Latin American country. Navalny, however, is still just a Russian opposition leader. And Putin, for his part, is ready to stake even more in Maduro's government. Lucian Kim, NPR News, Moscow.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Rachel Martin. Last weekend, NFL player Dee Ford of the Kansas City Chiefs was getting all kinds of angry tweets. He was hit with a late penalty, and his team lost to the Patriots. The thing is Dee Ford is not on Twitter, but a 47-year-old English woman also named Dee Ford is, so she's the one who got the Twitter rage. It's been happening for years, so the two Dee Fords have become friends. British Dee Ford said some of the tweets are quite nasty, and she is glad football Dee Ford doesn't have to see them.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The World Economic Forum at Davos in Switzerland was the stage for an argument this week. It was an argument over differing visions of the world held by the leaders of the world's two largest economies. NPR's Gregory Warner was listening from Davos. Hi there, Gregory.
GREGORY WARNER, BYLINE: Hey, Steve.
INSKEEP: I guess we should note part of the U.S. side of this argument was expressed symbolically in that U.S. officials - many of them, anyway - did not show up.
WARNER: Right. The entire U.S. delegation canceled their trip because of the government shutdown. But Mike Pompeo - Secretary of State Pompeo addressed the Davos crowd by video link from D.C. And just to set the scene here - it was pretty weird. The main hall in Davos is this huge, blue auditorium, seats over a thousand people. Mike Pompeo's headshot pops up on this giant videotron (ph). He makes a joke about the cold weather in D.C.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MIKE POMPEO: You see the Lincoln Memorial to my back. So while I'm not here in person, I at least feel like I'm in Davos with the weather.
INSKEEP: OK.
WARNER: But then Secretary Pompeo says, look. In terms of China, it's really important for China not to steal technological secrets from American companies that do business there. And he says, quote, "those aren't fair arrangements." So very next day, same blue auditorium, China's vice president Wang Qishan takes the stage. And he's there in person. And when he's asked about that allegation, he responds with a fable.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
QISHAN WANG: (Through interpreter) There was a story of a devil and a demon. So when the devil is eight inches tall - and the demon might be ten inches tall.
INSKEEP: OK. What's going on there, Gregory?
WARNER: So the story about the devil and the demon did leave a lot of us confused. So I called my colleague Jess Jiang at our Rough Translation podcast. She's fluent in Mandarin. And she explained that this is a reference to a famous line in a classic Chinese novel. And you can paraphrase the line as the bad will always stand taller than the good. So the vice president follows that line with an analogy about policemen and thieves.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
WANG: (Through interpreter) So this is like the relationship between the thief and the policeman. So for 60 percent of the thieves, if they could be caught and things stolen could be recovered, then we'll have significantly fewer thieves. But if there are no thieves at all, I believe that will be too good to be true.
WARNER: So it sounded like he was setting expectations for the trade talks between the U.S. and China next week. It's like he was saying, look. Stopping all theft of American intellectual property, that's going to be too much to demand.
INSKEEP: Yeah - and also suggesting if you say the bad will stand taller than the good, he's suggesting that we're going to steal some things. And you're never going to stop all of it. And we're going to win as a result of that (laughter). That's the way I would read that. Is that what the vice president was trying to say as far as you can tell?
WARNER: He definitely talked about that being idealistic. He said that we shouldn't stand in the way of innovation. He said globalization has caused income inequality in the U.S. That is something for the U.S. to deal with, not to scapegoat China. He - you know, he was very defiant about the state of the things right now.
INSKEEP: So did you feel you understood from these two speeches how it is the United States and China are seeing the world differently at this moment?
WARNER: Look. I think this whole conference is always a reference on globalization. And in this case, I think the Chinese vice president was specifically saying, look. The tables have turned. Western countries now have more anti-elitism, more nationalism. But developing countries - or in China's case, a more developed country - is pro-globalization. And they see the benefits of that. And they want it to continue.
INSKEEP: Gregory, thanks for the update from Switzerland - really appreciate it.
WARNER: Thank you, Steve.
INSKEEP: NPR's Gregory Warner has been in Davos. He is, of course, also the host of the outstanding podcast Rough Translation.
(SOUNDBITE OF ENRICO SANGIULIANO'S "HIDDEN T")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Two bills designed to bring an end to the partial government shutdown. Both brought to the Senate floor for a vote. Both failed. Although, a window for negotiation may have opened as a result. Congresswoman Nita Lowey is a Democrat from New York. She is also the chairwoman of the House appropriations committee, which gives her a unique insight into what is happening on Capitol Hill with these negotiations. And she joins me now. Congresswoman, thanks for being here.
NITA LOWEY: Good morning. It's a pleasure.
MARTIN: You have said, given your role as an appropriator, you are always compromising. That is the work. So what is the compromise you think can pass right now?
LOWEY: Look. First of all, as you said, Democrats support strong, smart, effective border security. And as an appropriator, I'm used to working across the aisle to get things done. Once we end the shutdown - and that's exactly what we must do and should do. The Trump shutdown, as we know, is now in its 35th day. And we all know the harm that it's inflicting on families, businesses, communities across the country. And the solution should be simple. It's very clear to me. Reopen the government, pay our federal employees and then we have to negotiate strong, smart and effective border security.
MARTIN: But that's been - forgive me for interrupting. That has been the Democrats' position for weeks on end now. And President Trump hasn't moved, and federal workers are missing a second paycheck today. So at what point do you need to change tacks? If holding out for the president to reopen government and only then negotiate over the border - that's clearly not working right now.
LOWEY: Well, we've been consistent. And that's exactly our position. That's exactly the position of Speaker Pelosi. It's exactly my position as an appropriator. We have to open the government, and we have to make sure we sit at a table and negotiate. In fact, last night, when a group of us Democrats went over to the Senate side, I was chatting a little bit with Senator Shelby, who is my counterpart on the Senate appropriations committee. We know we can get a deal. We can work together. We've done that over and over again. That's the way the democratic process works. But the president has to understand unless he opens the government, nothing is going to happen.
MARTIN: Well, he - the White House has suggested that he would consider a three-week temporary stopgap spending measure to reopen government. And in exchange, he'd like a downpayment on the wall. Why not do that?
LOWEY: Well, first of all, that's how we began this whole negotiation. For weeks, we were bringing bills to the floor. And we even said, we'd take a 30-day reprieve after he signed the other bills to discuss homeland security. So he cannot say to us unless you do this, I'm going to shut down the government. If the president is really ready to talk, we can talk, but you just have to open the government.
MARTIN: What - how is this going to move, though? I mean, Democrats, as you say, have been consistent, but that means that they haven't given an inch.
LOWEY: Well, how about the president? To close the government for 35 days - you've had on your program, Rachel, the harm that it's inflicting on families, businesses, communities across the country. The solution is very simple.
MARTIN: And you think Republicans and the president are going to be the only ones to bear the political brunt of that?
LOWEY: I don't think it's ever a good thing to have the government shut down, to have federal employees not getting paid, to have people who can't go to the store and buy food for their families. We have to open the government and then negotiate.
MARTIN: Will Democrats propose a new plan today?
LOWEY: Pardon?
MARTIN: Will Democrats propose a new plan today?
LOWEY: The plan is very simple - open the government, let's negotiate and let's talk. Lucille Roybal-Allard, who's my chair of the committee that really puts together - excuse me - all the border security plans, has worked all weekend. We have proposals. We have to open the government.
MARTIN: Democratic Representative Nita Lowey, chairwoman of the House appropriations committee. Thank you, ma'am.
LOWEY: Thank you.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
An opposition leader in Venezuela declared himself president. Now how does he propose to get his hands on the levers of power? Juan Guaido says the elected president, Nicolas Maduro, won election through a sham, and he has the backing of the United States. But Maduro still has his office, command of security services and the support of Russia.
Isaias Medina represented Venezuela at the United Nations until he resigned in 2017, accusing President Maduro of crimes against humanity. He's now at Harvard's Kennedy School. And he is on the line. Good morning, sir.
ISAIAS MEDINA: Good morning to you. And thank you very much to your show.
INSKEEP: Do you think Guaido has a plan to actually end up in power?
MEDINA: Yes. And I believe it's very important to clarify that he did not self-proclaim himself as president. He actually is fulfilling the void. The original was illegally convened by a constituent assembly of the elections in 20 of May. And now he's fulfilling the end of the period of Maduro that has expired.
INSKEEP: Oh, because Venezuela's constitution says if there's a vacancy in the presidency, Guaido, who is the leader of the legislature, should step in. That is where he claims his legitimacy from, right?
MEDINA: Absolutely, and he also took the articles of the constitution that, as a duty, observed the Venezuelan people, with authority or not, to restore democracy in the country.
INSKEEP: But you have a problem - or he has a problem in that he's declared himself president, but he's not in the office. He doesn't have the command of the military. The military seems to be following the orders of President Maduro, who has powerful friends. Do you think he has a plan to complete this transition in some way that is not catastrophic?
MEDINA: Yes, I do. And I think it's very important to signal that Venezuela today, under Maduro, is a failed proxy state, Cuba-run with more than 20,000 Cuban agents that have been infiltrating our armed forces and other institutions that are running the country. It's financed by China, with $64 billion in debt, and armed by Russia, with $12 billion in a weapon arsenal. So with intimate ties to Iran - exploiting thorium, coltan, uranium and Turkey buying illegal...
INSKEEP: Certainly a bad...
MEDINA: ...Sanctioned gold.
INSKEEP: ...Situation, but that just underlines Maduro has powerful friends. What is Guaido going to do about that?
MEDINA: Well, there's a big difference between today and previous protests - is that the opportunity that we can certainly highlight is the support of the international community due to the presence of new international leaders, such as President Trump, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Pinera in Chile and Duque in Colombia.
Together with the secretary general of the OAS, Luis Almagro, they have managed to show that this complexity of humanitarian apocalypse inflicted to the Venezuelan civilian population is a broader problem that impacts the American hemisphere...
INSKEEP: Well, maybe you can give us...
MEDINA: ...In so many ways.
INSKEEP: Maybe you can give us insight on this next question then. We know the United States has supported the opposition leader. The United States has refused the demand that American diplomats leave the country, although nonessential personnel are leaving. Do you have any information suggesting what assurances the United States has given Guaido of support? In other words, how far do you think the U.S. is willing to go to support him?
MEDINA: I think it has been very clear. President Trump has - says that every option is still on the table. And I think that it was very clear yesterday as well, at the OAS, when the United States offered $20 million in humanitarian aid. So are we talking about responsibility to protect principle and international humanitarian intervention?
I think, by all means, more than half a million people have died for weaponization of starvation and medicine scarcity to remain in power. So is this not the responsibility of the international community to respond and to protect the civilian population?
INSKEEP: It's a catastrophic - it's a tragic situation. Do Venezuelan opposition figures believe that they will have American military support should it come to that?
MEDINA: Well, what I can tell you is Venezuela under Maduro is a gateway to transnational organized crime, illegally financing international terrorism with the presence of ELN, FARC and Hezbollah through drug trafficking, grand corruption, kidnapping, illegal mining. And he's a clear threat to peace and security in the region...
INSKEEP: Right.
MEDINA: ...And a clear risk to the national security of the United States. So I believe we all have to work together to free our country and restore democracy, justice and freedom.
INSKEEP: Mr. Medina, thanks so much, appreciate it.
MEDINA: Oh, thank you.
INSKEEP: Isaias Medina is now a fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE ROYAL SCOTS DRAGOON GUARDS' "AULD LANG SYNE")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Should old acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind - the opening lines of "Auld Lang Syne," a song people often turn to while ringing in the new year.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Its words were written by Robert Burns, and today marks his 260th birthday. He's regarded as the national poet of Scotland. Here's Dr. Pauline Mackay, a lecturer in Robert Burns studies at the University of Glasgow.
PAULINE MACKAY: Robert Burns has done a great deal to take Scotland to the world. It's through Robert Burns that Scottish culture has been communicated in places that it may not have been otherwise.
MARTIN: One of his works is "Ae Fond Kiss," sung here by Scottish singer-songwriter Eddi Reader.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "AE FOND KISS")
EDDI READER: (Singing) A fond kiss, and then we sever - a farewell, alas, forever.
ALISON WALKER: His legacy is the way he wrote and the compassion with which he wrote about a whole range of subjects.
MARTIN: That's Alison Walker. She's a journalist and member of the Guild of Burns Speakers (ph).
INSKEEP: Who knew?
MARTIN: That means she toasts Burns' accomplishments at what are called Burns suppers.
INSKEEP: Burns suppers have roots in the 1800s. People gather together on Burns' birthday to celebrate his works, a tradition that has spread.
WALKER: Honestly, everywhere, to - in more than 200 countries, there will be a Burns supper happening, which is phenomenal. It's just phenomenal. And they will all follow the traditional format.
INSKEEP: The format includes toasts and traditional Scottish dishes - another way that Burns has helped to spread Scottish culture.
MARTIN: So tonight maybe consider some haggis for dinner, a little Scotch whisky to toast the great poet.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
It is Day 35 of the partial government shutdown. We wanted to take a moment to check in with some of the people being directly affected, starting with Don Drewett. He is a correctional officer in Otisville, N.Y., and the national legislative coordinator for CPL 33, which is the union for federal prison workers. He shared what some of those workers are going through.
DON DREWETT: It's not a matter of dollars and cents. It's about life and death right now. And not that I'm going to be able to mention personal identifiers, but we had somebody attempt suicide already. We have folks that can't even afford to pay for their insulin because they're diabetics. You know, if you want to use your sick leave or you want to take your mom to chemotherapy, you're doing that under the understanding that you might not get paid for it.
We're at a point where the morale, the despair, the inability to do the things that you've been planning, that all goes out the window. And because of that now, people's lives have been impacted to the point where it's not only affecting them but their parents and their family and their friends. And the longer it goes, the more affected more people are.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Heather Harrell is a contract employee at the Bureau of Land Management in Colorado. And as a contractor, she doesn't know if she'll receive backpay, which has her making hard decisions at a very difficult time.
HEATHER HARRELL: About two weeks into the shutdown, my grandmother actually passed away. And actually, the day after she passed away is whenever Trump said that this shutdown could last for months or years. And at that point, I knew I couldn't responsibly buy a plane ticket. And I had to just make the choice not to go. It was the responsible choice to make. But it doesn't make it any less upsetting.
My fiancee, he got diagnosed with brain cancer in May of 2018. He has been out of work since then. My very modest entry-level salary is, like, basically all we've had since May. This kind of thing is - it's not good for morale. And it makes people wonder, No. 1, why you have been through that. And No. 2, well, if they're going to put me through this, why should I stick around?
INSKEEP: Last night, Eleanor Holmes Norton, who is the elected delegate for Washington, D.C., held a town hall meeting to hear from residents affected by the shutdown.
(SOUNDBITE OF TOWN HALL MEETING)
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON: I'm going to ask my colleagues to join me in writing the credit companies and asking them to forbear on changing the credit score.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
INSKEEP: Monica Louis (ph) was one of the people who attended. And she said she's used to giving, not receiving.
MONICA LOUIS: I was in a line to get groceries. And I looked at a board that showed the people who have donated over the years. And I saw my name on a donation board. I was like, wow, you could never get too comfortable.
MARTIN: That's a sentiment probably shared by a lot of federal employees as they prepare to miss a second paycheck.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. General Colin Powell says thanks. The former secretary of state, who turns 82 this year, had a flat tire and had trouble changing it until Anthony Maggert saw him and stopped. Maggert has a prosthetic leg after being wounded in Afghanistan which did not keep him from helping. Powell posted a photo of Maggert on social media, writing you touched my soul with a reminder of why the country is great. Powell added, let's just take care of each other.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
"Black Earth Rising" is a fictional thriller about the modern repercussions of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. It debuts on Netflix today, but it was a co-production with BBC Two and aired on British TV last year. NPR TV critic Eric Deggans says the series offers a compelling look at an atrocity many Americans may never have fully understood.
ERIC DEGGANS, BYLINE: If you know British actress Michaela Coel mostly for her charming, off-the-wall performance in the sitcom "Chewing Gum," you're in for a jarring, impressive surprise. Coel has transformed herself from an awkward, wisecracking comic into a hardened, damaged trauma survivor for "Black Earth Rising." She plays Kate Ashby, a black woman rescued from an orphanage in Rwanda as a child after her family was killed. She was raised to adulthood in London by a white woman. Kate still carries the scars from her childhood, emotionally and physically, as she reminds her adoptive mother Eve during an argument.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "BLACK EARTH RISING")
MICHAELA COEL: (As Kate Ashby) This is what they did to me. I don't remember my family or my country - nothing. I don't know my own name. The only thing I know is that it happened to nearly a million people, and I will never forget it. And neither should anyone else.
DEGGANS: "Black Earth Rising" sets this drama before a complicated backdrop - the consequences of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, where up to 1 million members of the Tutsi community were killed by Hutu extremists. Kate's angry because her mother Eve is a respected prosecutor about to try an African general for war crimes in international court. But the general's not a member of the Hutu militias who committed the genocide in Rwanda. He was part of the force that stopped the killing but committed war crimes afterwards.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "BLACK EARTH RISING")
COEL: (As Kate Ashby) I mean, to me, what you're doing - it's like the Second World War is over, and we're Jewish. And suddenly, you've decided to prosecute General Eisenhower because he tried to stop Hitler.
HARRIET WALTER: (As Eve Ashby) Well, if Eisenhower had committed war crimes, he would've been prosecuted.
COEL: (As Kate Ashby) Yes, but not by you - not you, my mother - because for me, it's like the SS is still out there. And all you're trying to do is prosecute one of the few men who tried to stop them.
DEGGANS: Writer-director Hugo Blick gives some characters illnesses that also seem like physical expressions of their guilt and trauma. One key character has seizures. Kate grapples with mental issues. And "Roseanne" alum John Goodman plays Eve's boss, a lawyer struggling with prostate cancer. He's also a confidante of Eve's, helping her keep a secret from her daughter.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "BLACK EARTH RISING")
JOHN GOODMAN: (As Michael Ennis) You rescued a child, and you gave her a life.
WALTER: (As Eve Ashby) But not her past.
GOODMAN: (As Michael Ennis) And you're about to do that, too.
WALTER: (As Eve Ashby) Well, what if I was right in the first place, and what if she's still not ready?
DEGGANS: That's a question asked many times about Kate and the people of Rwanda. Can they handle the truth? Blick does a masterful job of unwinding a complex plot that touches on the arrogance of European nations imposing their justice on Africans and the brutal nature of political arrangements that are often made to keep the peace while enriching those in power. Just when you think you're seeing one type of story, Blick changes the narrative often by killing a key character unexpectedly. He does have some odd obsessions as a director, including a love for showing close-ups of doorknobs and a habit of showing characters regurgitating. It's a tough story, but it's also a thrilling, entertaining show with a unique storytelling style. "Black Earth Rising" is a political thriller, social issues drama and legal yarn all at once, centered on a world-shaking calamity which should be in every student's history book but too often isn't. I'm Eric Deggans.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Roger Stone is set to appear in federal court. He was arrested in Florida. And he's been indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The indictment says that Stone spoke with senior Trump campaign officials about organization one, which we believe to be WikiLeaks, and information it might have had that would have been damaging to the Clinton campaign. Here is reaction from White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SARAH SANDERS: This has nothing to do with the president and, certainly, nothing to do with the White House.
INSKEEP: So Sanders says, although at one point in this indictment, we are told that someone in the Trump campaign directed a senior official to direct Roger Stone to ask Wikileaks if there was more damaging information available on Hillary Clinton. We're joined now by a former member of the Trump campaign, Sam Nunberg, who is on the line. Good morning, sir.
SAM NUNBERG: Good morning. Thank you for having me on.
INSKEEP: Having seen this indictment, which we've described on the air, is there any reason in your mind to doubt that Roger Stone acted as an intermediary between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks?
NUNBERG: You know, it's not an easy question to answer, Steve. I know that your audience will want a yes or no. What I would say is that, if your audience can understand, I and Roger worked in and around with the president from 2011 to mid 2015. I was fired on August 3. It was, basically, a coup by Corey Lewandowski and Hope Hicks. Roger quit that next Friday. And through that time, there had been different maturations of the campaign. Certainly, in the indictment, when it says that Stone - that somebody directed senior officials, that was at a time when Rick Manafort - Rick Gates...
INSKEEP: Paul Manafort, sure. Yeah.
NUNBERG: ...Paul Manafort and Rick Gates were there. Paul was a close ally and friend of Roger's. Roger was well aware that Paul was going to be on the campaign before he was, you know, that things - that there were movements being made.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
NUNBERG: What I would basically say to Sarah Huckabee and directly to the president here is be careful because Roger was in constant communication with then-candidate Trump. I had warned Roger not to do these things. I didn't think he should do these things, one - because it looked at that time that Hillary Clinton was going to win the election. And she would go after him. No. 2 - if she didn't and James Comey had kept his job, he would certainly heavily investigate Roger. Then No. 3 - if the president were to win who's president today, it's not as if he would do anything to help Roger. And I think it's important for your audience to understand Roger's not had any - I'm not a special pleader here for him on this. But he hasn't had his legal fees paid as opposed to others, such as Corey Lewandowski and Hope Hicks. And...
INSKEEP: Are you - wait. Let me just stop you for a second there, Sam Nunberg. Are you telling me that you were aware that Roger Stone was on his way to serving as a conduit of some kind or communicator of some kind...
NUNBERG: No.
INSKEEP: ...For getting stolen emails out there and that you warned him not to do that sort of thing?
NUNBERG: No, I'm not, Steve. What I'm telling you...
INSKEEP: What did you warn him not to do that you thought he was going to do?
NUNBERG: Make public statements that he was in communication, which I didn't know were true. And they, apparently, weren't true, if you read the indictment - to make himself look - make himself a suspect because, Steve, he is not indicted here in this indictment for having any contact or doing any hacking. He's not indicted here for strategizing on when these emails were released. He had none. He was bluffing. He was trying to ingratiate himself and make himself relevant in the process. He's indicted here for allegedly lying to HPSCI and for witness...
INSKEEP: That's the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, right - and for witness tampering. That is...
NUNBERG: ...And for witness tampering.
INSKEEP: That is true. But his behavior is described. And he is, in fact - and this gets to the big question. Did the president, in some way, collude with Russia to get help during the presidential election? This describes a friend of the president, Roger Stone, serving as an intermediary between WikiLeaks, which is alleged by U.S. intelligence to have gotten a bunch of emails from Russian-connected people, connecting between them and the presidential campaign.
NUNBERG: Now I think you're misdescribing it because he - Roger was trying - excuse me. Roger was trying to get - to be an intermediary, but he wasn't. These were people that conspired against themselves. They're the gang that can't shoot straight. That's the irony of all this. The people in here - if you go through this, Roger - I mean, basically, they're indicting Roger for lying about when he spoke to Jerome Corsi and/or Randy Credico. They're talking about...
INSKEEP: You're naming a couple of people who aren't specifically named in the indictment. But you're making a good guess as to who they may be. Is that correct?
NUNBERG: Correct.
INSKEEP: Yeah, OK.
NUNBERG: And Roger - I think, once again, this does not show that Roger or the Trump campaign had those emails and/or did - and/or colluded directly with Russia. So with that said, I'm not going to - I'm not here to defend Roger's actions during the investigation either because that was one of the reasons, Steve, that I didn't talk to him after my grand jury because I didn't want to be called back to the grand jury. I didn't want to get him in trouble for anything if he talked to me about anything. And I think that this is something that's, therefore, sad. It didn't have to happen had he just simply cooperated and been truthful because...
INSKEEP: Sam...
NUNBERG: At the end of the day, he has not been charged for hacking.
INSKEEP: Sam Nunberg...
NUNBERG: He has not been charged for - yes.
INSKEEP: Sam Nunberg, thanks for taking the time to talk with us. I really appreciate it.
NUNBERG: Thank you, Steve.
INSKEEP: Sam Nunberg is a former Trump campaign official. NPR's Tamara Keith has been listening along with us and is on the line. Tamara, what do you hear there?
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Well, there's a lot there. Sam Nunberg does point out that he has also testified before the grand jury and also has testified before congressional committees about this time. What does stand out is that in this indictment, there are numerous instances where Roger Stone talks to Trump campaign officials and tells them things that are going to happen. And then those things, more or less, do happen.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
KEITH: On October 4, 2016, the indictment alleges that he was in communication with a couple of different Trump campaign-affiliated people, telling them, don't worry. Wikileaks is going to come through. They're going to have a dump of stuff every week until the election. And then on October 7, WikiLeaks started releasing Clinton campaign emails in tranches every few days.
INSKEEP: Just got a few seconds here, Tamara Keith - how important were those WikiLeaks email dumps to the overall campaign that you covered?
KEITH: Well, let's just say the first dump came on the day that the "Access Hollywood" video came out. It was the darkest moment of the Trump campaign. And pretty quickly, the attention turned away from that and to the drip, drip, drip of emails from the Clinton campaign that were leaked out.
INSKEEP: Tamara, thanks for the insight - really appreciate it.
KEITH: You're welcome.
INSKEEP: NPR's Tamara Keith talking with us on this day that we have learned of the indictment and arrest of President Trump's friend and longtime adviser Roger Stone.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Major airports on the East Coast are experiencing delays today. Air traffic controllers have called in sick to work at airports including LaGuardia in New York. The White House says it's monitoring the delays. Air traffic controllers are among the of thousands of federal workers today will miss their second paycheck because of the partial government shutdown. Two competing bills meant to end the shutdown failed in the Senate yesterday. And while it appears there could be a window for negotiations, both the president and Democrats aren't giving up on their core demands.
Meanwhile, furloughed workers are paying the price. A couple weeks ago, we spoke with the executive vice president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association about the toll the shutdown is taking on its members.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
PATRICIA GILBERT: Even when we do eventually come out of the shutdown, there will be a lot of things that have to be done and effects that will be felt for many, many months afterwards.
MARTIN: Air traffic controllers have now missed a second paycheck. So we're checking in again. Jim Marinitti of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association joins us now. Mr. Marinitti, thanks for being here.
JIM MARINITTI: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
MARTIN: Are people getting on airplanes today as safe as they were before the shutdown started?
MARINITTI: We will continue to maintain the highest levels of safety. But every day that this - and we are now in day 35 - that this shutdown continues, the layers of safety degrade more and more. And it is a concern. And that's why we are coming on shows like yours to express what's happening behind the curtain - because it's important that everyone knows because everyone is affected.
MARTIN: Your colleague, others at the Air Traffic Controllers Association, have been talking about the long-term effects of the shutdown. Can you - can you give us more details? I mean, we're 35 days in. If the government opens tomorrow, everything is not going to go - snap back into normal, is it?
MARINITTI: No, absolutely not. Things are very abnormal, as a matter of fact, and we can talk about this from a professional point of view, a personal point of view. There is so much that is involved in this. We work 50,000 aircraft a day - 50,000. And in most professions, if you are 99.9 percent efficient, you'd be celebrated. In our profession, that would mean we would lose 50 airplanes a day. That 0.1 percent margin of error for us is unacceptable. That is what is involved in our job.
So we have a 30-year low of staffing of certified professional controllers. That's exacerbated by the fact that the FAA Academy, where the hiring takes place, where all the training takes place, is closed - closed indefinitely. We don't know when it's going to open. There is no pipeline for the future of the air traffic control profession in this country right now. So we were just making a turn.
MARTIN: Yeah.
MARINITTI: We were in a good relationship with the FAA. Collaboration was the word of the day. And everything has come to a stop. The national airspace system in this country - which, by the way, is the gold standard for aviation safety around the world - right now is at a complete standstill.
And it really is unconscionable that it's our own government doing it to us. They've intentionally harmed the civil servants who are responsible for keeping the skies safe. And they have caused a crisis here where there was none a month ago. And that is what is so aggravating for controllers.
MARTIN: Just briefly, I want to hear from you how your air traffic controllers are holding up, in just a couple seconds.
MARINITTI: The controllers are demoralized. I mean, take one word. They are demoralized. And that is not a way to describe the people in this type of field.
MARTIN: Jim Marinitti of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, talking about the toll of the partial government shutdown on his employees. Thanks so much for your time.
MARINITTI: Thank you, Rachel.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Let's go to South America now. Venezuela begins another day with two presidents. As we've been reporting, the leader of Venezuela's legislature, Juan Guaido, says he is president under the constitution, replacing Nicolas Maduro. But the president who kept office through a disputed election still has the military on his side and is going nowhere. John Otis reports.
JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: The U.S. and a growing list of foreign governments now consider Juan Guaido to be Venezuela's new president.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Cheering).
OTIS: Guaido, who had been the head of congress, took the oath of office Wednesday before a huge crowd of supporters, who also called on Maduro to step down. Maduro has led Venezuela into hyperinflation and food shortages but was sworn in for another six-year term this month after an election widely considered a sham.
The opposition claims that backing from the military is the only reason why Maduro is still in power. And they are betting that the emergence of Guaido will erode this support. So far, they've been disappointed.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
VLADIMIR PADRINO: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino declared that the armed forces would continue to back Maduro as the country's legitimate president.
BRUCE BAGLEY: It is my opinion that, at least through 2019, we are going to see Maduro remain in power backed by the military, which is the crucial element here.
OTIS: That's Bruce Bagley, a Venezuela scholar at the University of Miami. He says the military has often served as Venezuela's ultimate power broker. The late socialist leader Hugo Chavez gave vast powers to military officials, a trend that has accelerated under Maduro. Today, officials run everything from food distribution to the vital oil industry. Critics contend that some officers make millions through drug trafficking and other shady deals.
EVAN ELLIS: There were a ton of industries where military officers had opportunity to make money.
OTIS: That's Evan Ellis, a professor at the U.S. Army War College. He says that many officers stick by Maduro because they fear prison or extradition for their crimes should the opposition take power. Rather than pushing for a traditional coup, the opposition could lobby officers to simply stay in the barracks and allow street protests against Maduro to build. So says Frank Mora, who heads the Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University.
FRANK MORA: The opposition has to give them a reason to at least withdraw support from the government, which, in a sense, is a coup d'etat.
OTIS: One carrot now being offered to the military is amnesty. As Ellis points out, Guaido is promising to pardon officers who abandon Maduro and join the opposition.
ELLIS: For the military, especially the amnesty, it lets you say, hey, if I lead the unit that goes over to the other side, I will get to keep my stolen money. And all the things that I've done will be cleansed. And I emerge as the democratic hero.
OTIS: So far, however, there have been few cracks in military solidarity. Counterintelligence agents have reportedly squashed several rebellions before they could even be launched. That's why in Venezuela's battle of the presidents, analysts say that Maduro continues to hold the upper hand. For NPR News, I'm John Otis.
(SOUNDBITE OF TULPA'S "THE BIRDS AND BEES")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Roger Stone has been arrested and indicted. President Trump's longtime friend and adviser is due in a Florida courtroom this morning. He was arrested at his home in Florida. Stone faces seven federal charges relating to the special counsel's investigation into possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election. Joining us now, NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith and national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson. Good morning to you both.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Good morning.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: Carrie, I'm going to start with you. What more can you tell us about the indictment?
JOHNSON: Roger Stone is charged with obstruction, with lying to congressional investigators and with alleged witness tampering. Stone has been denying wrongdoing throughout this investigation, basically saying whatever conduct investigators or authorities thought he was up to with WikiLeaks in the course of the 2016 campaign was merely a good guess.
But this indictment, Rachel, lays out some new evidence that Stone was in regular contact with WikiLeaks, labeled as Organization 1 in these court papers, and senior officials in the Trump campaign in the course of the 2016 campaign, including a particularly critical time in September and October, when WikiLeaks was dumping negative information about Trump's political rival, Hillary Clinton.
MARTIN: So if we know that Roger Stone was in communications with WikiLeaks and we know U.S. intelligence agencies have said WikiLeaks was operating at the behest of Russia, does that mean that Roger Stone has been now connected directly to Russia's efforts to interfere in the U.S. election?
JOHNSON: Well, we don't see all the evidence in this indictment this morning. More is likely to come out in the course of the court proceedings later today and in the weeks ahead. Roger Stone has always said he did nothing wrong. WikiLeaks has denied it's been in cahoots with Russia. But authorities seem to have some evidence to back up these claims in the indictment issued by a grand jury.
MARTIN: Tamara, can you remind us about Roger Stone's relationship with President Trump? How - it goes back a long time, right?
KEITH: It goes back a long time. Roger Stone is a longtime political consultant who worked on presidential campaigns going back to Richard Nixon, even has a tattoo of Richard Nixon's face on his back. He actually worked on the Trump campaign itself, though he quit in August of 2015. But he never really lost touch with the Trump campaign. That often happens in Trump orbit. People never really leave even when they fall out.
And in this case, based on what the indictment alleges, there were numerous contacts between Roger Stone and - and high-ranking people in the Trump campaign at very critical moments in the campaign and as related to the wiki - WikiLeaks release of stolen campaign emails.
MARTIN: We saw - as Michael Cohen - as his legal jeopardy started to increase, we saw President Trump distance himself from his former attorney. Have we seen President Trump distance himself from Roger Stone in the past months?
KEITH: Not in the past months but way before that. President Trump has, you know - the White House has said, like, Roger Stone, he's not our issue. He left the campaign back in 2015. But what this indictment shows is that he wasn't completely out of the loop.
MARTIN: We do have a clip of Roger Stone. Carrie mentioned that he has been consistent in his denials. Here he is from an MSNBC interview back in March 2018.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDNG)
ROGER STONE: And I can say with confidence that I know nothing about any Russian collusion or any other inappropriate act, that I never had any advance knowledge of the content, the source or the exact timing of the WikiLeaks disclosures.
MARTIN: So now we have an FBI indictment that suggests otherwise. Carrie Johnson, there is another close former adviser to President Trump who will appear in a courtroom today.
JOHNSON: That's right. Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman, is appearing in court in Washington, D.C., today, part of a proceeding to determine whether he intentionally lied to investigators in the special counsel's office and blew up his plea deal. This is remarkable, Rachel, because Manafort and Roger Stone are former business partners.
During the 1980s, they were as high-flying as it gets in Washington, D.C., sometimes walking right up to the line, some people would say walking over the line, when it came to their lobbying activities in the U.S. and around the world. Now both of these men have been indicted by federal grand juries, quite a comedown from the heights of the 1980s.
MARTIN: OK, NPR's Carrie Johnson and Tamara Keith, thanks so much. We appreciate it.
KEITH: You're welcome.
JOHNSON: Thank you.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
How close does this case come to Russia, and how close does this case come to the president of the United States? Let's work through the evidence with former Assistant U.S. attorney Kim Wehle. Good morning.
KIM WEHLE: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: I want to start with the man who's indicted here, Roger Stone. I think about other figures who've been linked to Russia or Russian activity in the past couple of years, people like Carter Page. President Trump dismissed him as not being ever an important part of his campaign.
Paul Manafort was the campaign chairman. And yet the president has dismissed him as a guy who just worked for him for a little while. But Roger Stone, there's just no denying it at all. He's quite close to President Trump and has been for decades.
WEHLE: Yeah, and the - this indictment in particular, it refers to him as a senior official in the Trump campaign. And I think what really stands out is the numerous references to communications directly with the Trump campaign, both before and during the WikiLeaks releases of information that's - was damaging to the Clinton campaign.
INSKEEP: Yeah, I want to read, actually, just one line in this indictment mentioning one of those communications. It's dated 2016. So this is long after Roger Stone had formally left the Trump campaign, was clearly, though, still in the Trump orbit, as we heard Tamara Keith say.
And the indictment says, (reading) after the July 22, 2016, release of stolen DNC emails by Organization 1, which is WikiLeaks - we've figured that out - a senior Trump campaign official was directed - we don't know who directed him - was directed to contact Roger Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information WikiLeaks had regarding the Clinton campaign. Stone thereafter told the Trump campaign about potential future releases of damaging material by WikiLeaks.
Roger Stone is acting there as the intermediary, as the source, as the connection between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks.
WEHLE: Yes, and the indictment details lots of emails and texts that back up that allegation. And it also suggests that the emails and texts - many of them came from Mr. Stone himself. And he lied about having this information. We need to remember the key date here, which is October 17, 2016. That's the date that President Obama announced that Russia was behind the hack of the DNC through an entity - a hacker called Guccifer 2.0, which was alleged to be a front for Russian operatives.
That same day, the "Access Hollywood" tape was leaked. And then WikiLeaks' postings of the Podesta emails started that same day. And that went on for many days. Thousands of emails were leaked at that point. And of course, Mr. Trump himself was making public statements sort of egging on WikiLeaks to release this kind of information.
So this is pretty at the - pretty much at the core of what people have called loosely collusion, but is really umbrella for sort of many other potential crimes and, really, a larger criminal enterprise that, as you indicated, involves lots of people that were close to the Trump campaign - Mr. Cohen, Mr. Manafort, Mr. Flynn, Mr. Stone, Mr. Papadopoulos, Mr. Gates, et cetera.
INSKEEP: So we have this friend of the president who's very close to the president, still close to the campaign. Let's work in the other direction back toward Russia. How strong, to our knowledge, is the evidence that WikiLeaks is in some way working with or in a way that is favorable to Russia?
WEHLE: Well, you know, in this indictment, I think the introduction makes the link without making it expressed. It says in May, the DNC became aware that their computer systems had been compromised by unauthorized intrusions. In June, the DNC announced that it had been hacked by Russian actors.
And in July, an organization, Organization 1, WikiLeaks, which had previously posted documents stolen, started releasing tens of thousands of documents stolen from the DNC and the personal email account of the chairman, Mr. Podesta, of the Clinton campaign. And then, of course, the indictment goes on to talk about how Mr. Stone communicated with the Trump campaign about the information damaging to Hillary Clinton coming out of WikiLeaks.
So we have to be careful about drawing any, you know, clear conclusions that aren't in the documents, in my view, that have been filed by the special counsel's office. And there's a lot of them. But I think, you know, we're at the point that it's quite easy to connect the dots with just our logical minds, as I tell my law students.
INSKEEP: Does this indictment significantly advance your understanding of what happened during the 2016 election, then?
WEHLE: Well, it does to the extent to which now we have lots of quotations from the direct communication between the Trump campaign - Mr. Stone, I should say - and this Organization 1. It also, I think, starts building this other thread of witness tampering. There's sort of "Sopranos"-like allegations in here - again, quotations about threats to someone known as - referred to as Person 2, that Mr. Stone threatened his dog, said you're a rat, a stoolie, prepare to die.
And of course, we've seen with Mr. Cohen other allegations of sort of obstruction of justice, lying, potentially bullying witnesses. And I think that as we've seen historically to the extent to which that is connected in any way with the president - has brought down presidents. Witness tampering has brought down both Mr. Clinton as well as Mr. Nixon in terms of the articles of impeachment.
INSKEEP: OK, Kim Wehle, former federal prosecutor, thanks very much, really appreciate it.
WEHLE: My pleasure.
INSKEEP: And she's talking with us on this day that we have learned that Roger Stone, friend and longtime adviser to President Trump, has been indicted and arrested on charges relating to stolen emails during the 2016 campaign or, more specifically, toward his statements about those stolen emails.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Fear is leading many immigrant families to cut their ties with health care and other critical government programs. Researchers in Texas say that's one reason why there are more children going without health insurance. Ashley Lopez of member station KUT has the story of one family that is avoiding care even though a little girl needs treatment.
ASHLEY LOPEZ, BYLINE: Ana lives in central Texas with her husband and two kids. Danny is a playful, healthy toddler. Sara is 9 years old and was diagnosed with autism a few years ago. Ana says at first it was unclear what was wrong with Sara exactly. When she acted out, it was really hard to calm her down.
ANA: (Speaking Spanish).
LOPEZ: "To other people, Sara just seemed spoiled or a brat," Ana says. After the diagnosis, though, Ana felt a little lost about what to do next. She went to a nonprofit in Austin that helps parents whose children have disabilities. It's called Vela, which means candle in Spanish. There, Ana learned about all these different therapies Sara could get through Medicaid, therapies that would help her communicate better, among other things. But that was right around the time of Trump's election, and immigrants like Ana were nervous.
ANA: (Speaking Spanish).
LOPEZ: "I'm looking for groups who are not associated with the government," she says. Ana entered the country without documentation about 10 years ago, so that's why we aren't using her last name. Both her kids were born in the U.S. and automatically got Medicaid coverage. But ever since President Trump took office, Ana has only been using it for the kids' checkups and vaccinations.
ANA: (Speaking Spanish).
LOPEZ: "I'm afraid they will not give me a legal resident status," she says. Ana's husband has a green card, and she's in the process of getting one, too, but the rules could be changing. The Trump administration wants to make it harder for people to get a green card if they use government services or even if they might use them in the future. And so Ana and her husband have decided, just to be safe, not to seek out any more help from the government, even if her daughter, who is a citizen, needs more therapy than she's getting right now.
ANA: (Speaking Spanish).
LOPEZ: "I feel bad doing that," Ana says. For Ana, treating her daughter's autism would be great, but there's nothing more important than keeping the family together. Nadine Reub (ph) works with Ana at Vela. She says she's seeing this a lot.
NADINE REUB: I'm running into families that when it's time for re-enrollment or re-application, they're pausing, and they're questioning if they should.
LOPEZ: Reub says immigrants are foregoing government services for lots of reasons. Some are trying to stay under the radar to avoid immediate deportation. Others are more like Ana. They just want to be in the best position possible to finally get legal status and move on with their lives. And in Texas, a quarter of children have a parent who is like that, undocumented or trying to become a legal resident. Cheasty Anderson works with the Children's Defense Fund in Texas. She thinks the parents' fears have led to more kids going without health coverage in Texas.
CHEASTY ANDERSON: The climate of fear is so pervasive at this point, and there is so much misinformation out there.
LOPEZ: A recent study from Georgetown found that 1 out of every 5 uninsured kids in the U.S. lives in Texas, and a big percentage of them are Latino. Anderson says this is all happening despite the state's vibrant economy.
ANDERSON: Texas is proud to be Texas in so many ways, but this is one way in which we are failing ourselves.
LOPEZ: Anderson says the failures fall hardest on kids with disabilities. That also worries Nadine Reub, the advocate who is working with Ana. She says when it comes to treating childhood disabilities, earlier is better.
REUB: The sooner you catch it, the sooner you support the child, the sooner you support the family. I think it's just a win-win for everybody, right? You're supporting the emotions of the family and then that supports the child.
LOPEZ: But Ana is still uncomfortable asking Medicaid to do more for Sara. For now, she's relying on services from her daughter's school, and she'll keep doing that until she gets that green card. For NPR News, I'm Ashley Lopez in Austin.
SIMON: And that story is part of a reporting partnership between NPR, KUT and Kaiser Health News.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
In the United States, nearly a quarter of LGBT teens attempt suicide. For LGBT youth who are Navajo, the figure is 70 percent, according to a study. In some families on the Navajo Nation, an unlikely champion is coming forward to celebrate gay youths. Member station KJZZ's Laurel Morales reports from Flagstaff.
LAUREL MORALES, BYLINE: When she was 5 years old, Michelle Sherman learned exactly what her mother thought of gay men.
MICHELLE SHERMAN: I remember seeing two guys holding hands. And then my mom's like, oh, that's disgusting. So it kind of was, like, OK. Maybe it is disgusting.
MORALES: But then Sherman realized she was attracted to girls.
M SHERMAN: And I really thought something was wrong with me.
MORALES: At only 11 years old, she attempted suicide. Through her teens, Sherman tried to fit in on the northern edge of the Navajo Nation. But she was living a double life. At 19, her sister walked in on Sherman and another girl in her bedroom.
M SHERMAN: She just barged in the door and, you know, yelled at me like, what the hell are you doing? Like, you shouldn't be doing this.
MORALES: Her sister said what she was doing was wrong.
M SHERMAN: Disgusting and - you know, made me feel less human. She's like, what do you think grandma's going to think about you?
MORALES: That's when Sherman felt she had to leave the reservation and her family. At 19, she moved to Phoenix and turned to alcohol. It wasn't until she sought help from a Navajo medicine man that she reconnected with her grandmother, who embraced Sherman as a lesbian. It turns out it was her grandmother who has known and has loved Sherman all along for who she is.
ALICE PALMER: (Unintelligible).
MORALES: Ninety-three-year-old Alice Palmer recently suffered a stroke and is now difficult to understand. But she and Michelle have always been close. They watch wrestling, grind corn and go to the flea markets together.
ALRAY NELSON: When I came out to my family, my mother, of course, took it the hardest. But my grandparents didn't.
MORALES: Alray Nelson is a Navajo LGBT rights activist. Historians say federally run boarding schools and other assimilation tactics have taught generations of Navajo, including Nelson's parents, that same-sex relationships were wrong. Nelson says just look at Navajo leadership. In 2005, the tribal council passed a law forbidding same-sex marriage.
NELSON: We are seeing clearly the after-effects of what colonialism can look like and how it really shifted our values as Navajo people, whereas, at the time, if you were LGBTQ and grown up in a Navajo traditional families, families celebrated that fact. They said that we were sacred. They said that we had sacred roles.
MORALES: Roles as mediators, as leaders - Navajo medicine men and historians say the two-spirited, as they're sometimes called, are a crucial part of the Dine creation stories.
In Michelle Sherman's family, her grandmother Alice has persuaded other family members to open their minds. Even Michelle's mom, Virgie Sherman, agreed to go with her last June to the Dine Pride Festival, where Michelle gave a speech.
VIRGIE SHERMAN: I was there for her. She can talk to audience. She wasn't even embarrassed about what she is. Yes, I'm proud of her.
MORALES: As her mom talks, Michelle looks down at her forearm where she's tattooed a black diamond, the same design her grandmother used to weave into her rugs. On the other side of her arm are scars from her suicide attempt, reminding her every day that she's still here, that she has a purpose. And that's to help Navajo youth like herself. For NPR News, I'm Laurel Morales in Flagstaff.
(SOUNDBITE OF LUMPY SPACE PRINCESS' "THE LITTLEST VIKING")
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The novel "At The Wolf's Table" begins with what sounds like a fine meal - string beans doused with melted butter, roasted peppers, rice and peas, apple strudel for dessert. Opulent cuisine, really, for 1943 Germany, and Rosa Sauer is hungry. But she struggles to keep her meal in her stomach. She has to stay at the table, seated and squirming, for an hour. Rosa Sauer and nine other conscripted women are food tasters for the Fuhrer at Adolf Hitler's forest headquarters called the Wolf's Lair. Rosella Postorino's international bestseller has been translated from Italian and published in English in the United States. She joins us from Rome. Thanks so much for being with us.
ROSELLA POSTORINO: Thank you. Hi.
SIMON: Tell us about the real person who - whose story set your mind in motion.
POSTORINO: Yeah. The story is inspired to a real story. That's the story of Margot Woelk. Four years ago, I was reading an Italian newspaper, and I found a brief article about Margot Woelk. That was a German woman. She was from Berlin. And for the first time in her life, she confessed that she had been, during World War II, one of Hitler's food tasters. And what was interesting to me was that she was not a Nazi, but she risked her life every day, three times a day...
SIMON: Yeah.
POSTORINO: ...To save Hitler's life. So I wrote her a letter to ask if we could meet. But, in the same week, she died.
SIMON: She was in her 90s, right?
POSTORINO: Yeah. She confessed this secret at the end of her life. And I was very sad and upset because I couldn't meet her. And, at the beginning, I also thought that I couldn't write anything about her or her story because, you know, I'm not a German. I've never lived under a dictatorship. And so I thought that I hadn't the right to speak about her. But, at the same time, I feel obsessed by her story. What would I have done if I had been in her shoes?
SIMON: Yeah. Well, that question resounds throughout the novel. When we meet Rosa, she's got a husband, who's on the Eastern Front. She's living with her in-laws. What else could she do?
POSTORINO: Yeah. She can do anything. She lived in Berlin. Her house was destroyed by a bomb, and she was alone. And she decided to move to her parents' - in-laws' house. And they lived very close to the Wolf's Lair, one of Hitler's headquarters. And so one week after her arrival, she was recruited by SS to become one of Hitler's food tasters. And what is interesting to me is that she was, at the same time, a victim and a guilty person.
SIMON: Yeah. The - in the novel, the women who were the food tasters are told, eat up, wait an hour, live or die. That's not exactly buon appetito, is it?
POSTORINO: No, no.
SIMON: It's interesting. Hitler was convinced the British were out to poison him. I have read a lot of Winston Churchill biographies. And Churchill ate and particularly drank whatever he wanted.
POSTORINO: Yeah (laughter).
SIMON: So he didn't seem to think the Nazis were...
POSTORINO: He wasn't scared.
SIMON: Yeah. So why was Hitler so frightened? I mean, if the British could figure out a way, they would have. But there was no reason to think they were even close to poisoning him, was there?
POSTORINO: Yeah. But Hitler was paranoid. He was a neurotic person. He had problems in sleeping, had problems in trusting people. So he always thought he'd be killed, not only by his enemies but also by his friends. And so he was right.
SIMON: Rosa is there in the Wolf's Lair. And on her way to taste the Fuhrer's food, when the plot of German officers to assassinate him explodes, truly, but, of course, doesn't kill him, is that when she begins to wonder if she's on the right side of history?
POSTORINO: You know, in my novel, the story is told by an old Rosa. She's telling this story from a future, and she knows everything about the Reich. She has no alibi. And so the fact that she tells the story from this period allows me to represent, also, Rosa's conscience. And, probably, she - now she knows that she was at the bad part of the story.
SIMON: Did you like Rosa, your character?
POSTORINO: Yeah. I like her because she's very human, I think. This contradiction - I mean, the fact that she is victim and guilty at the same time is very human. I mean, this contradiction is typical of human beings in every era. I always choose characters that allow me to represent the ambivalence of human behaviors.
SIMON: She says, at one point, the one thing I've learned from life is survival.
POSTORINO: Yeah. She survived. She's old. She was not killed by poison. She was not killed by Russian people. But, actually, she doesn't leave because she's always like if she was in prison. Prison is the memory of the traumatic experience of the war and of her absurd job, eating Hitler's food.
SIMON: Rosella Postorino - her novel "At The Wolf's Table." Thank you so much for being with us.
POSTORINO: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF FEVERKIN'S "CALENDAR PROJECT: JANUARY")
(SOUNDBITE OF NICOLA CRUZ'S "SIETE")
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Our next guest is one of the most well-known electronic musicians in South America.
NICOLA CRUZ: I'm Nicola Cruz. I'm a musician based in Ecuador. I mainly focus on electronic music, kind of mixing the folklore and roots from around South America.
SIMON: He creates vivid soundscapes using various instruments, including wood flutes, percussions and small guitars.
CRUZ: Living in a place like Ecuador, it just feels natural. You know, all around folklore and roots are quite present. You know, you turn on the radio and you listen to folkloric music.
(SOUNDBITE OF NICOLA CRUZ'S "SANACION")
CRUZ: It came to a point where I was making techno music with I guess a faster BPM, and I decided to slow down and, you know, investigate, like, music from here, never thinking about, like, what would sell or whatever, you know? And it got to a point where I created this song called "Sanacion," which opens "Prender El Alma."
(SOUNDBITE OF NICOLA CRUZ'S "SANACION")
CRUZ: And that really made me take a step back and realize what what I was doing. And, like, it really felt magical. It felt powerful.
SIMON: Nicola Cruz released the song "Sanacion" on his first album four years ago. Now he's out with his second project called "Siku."
CRUZ: "Siku" is a reference to an wind instrument here from the Andes, but at the same time, "Siku" means - well, it's, like, an Andean tradition, which means playing in pairs, not necessarily playing, like, in the physical form but really being connected with one another while playing.
(SOUNDBITE OF NICOLA CRUZ'S "SIKU")
CRUZ: I tried to be as experimental as possible. You know, I feel that's one of the things we can take advantage of in electronic music.
(SOUNDBITE OF NICOLA CRUZ'S "ARKA")
CRUZ: At the same time, in lots of other songs, I like to record outside of a conventional studio or space where things can be a bit more chaotic.
(SOUNDBITE OF NICOLA CRUZ'S "ARKA")
CRUZ: So "Arka" was recorded in these caves in a volcano near me. It's not an active volcano but pretty much all the mountains around here were once a volcano. And "Arka" is done in collaboration with Esteban Valdivia. And he does such a great job in - I don't like the word rescuing but at the same time, he - that's what he does, pre-Columbian instruments, and he's a master at playing those.
(SOUNDBITE OF NICOLA CRUZ'S "ARKA")
CRUZ: We always wanted to do a song together. And so we thought, like, these caves, which are near our homes, was the perfect place to experiment. So we got together, just the two of us. I set up some microphones, started experimenting with the space. Those caves have quite a vibe. So it really puts you in a nice, nice mood to be creative, you know.
(SOUNDBITE OF NICOLA CRUZ'S "SENOR DE LAS PIEDRAS")
CRUZ: Do I change the perception of pop music here in Latin America? Well, I hope so, you know? I really - at least I know I'm doing my music, you know, with quality and intention. So, yeah, I really hope it gets heard, and it replaces our concept of, you know, popular music - enough reggaeton (laughter). No, I like reggaeton.
(SOUNDBITE OF NICOLA CRUZ'S "SENOR DE LAS PIEDRAS")
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Fannie Drumwright Davis Robinson was an esteemed civic figure in Detroit. She was married to her teenage sweetheart, came up from the segregated South, lived in a fine red-brick colonial house where she cared and cared well for their five children, had a playroom with toys from FAO Schwarz in their basement. Fannie Davis, stay-at-home mother, also ran a numbers racket from her dining room table, an underground gambling operation that collected bets and paid out winners on the right three-digit numbers. Of course, the numbers game was illegal, but Fannie Davis was known for running an honest illegal game.
Bridgett M. Davis, the novelist and filmmaker, has written a memoir of a remarkable character who happened to be her mother - "The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother's Life For The Detroit Numbers." Bridgett M. Davis joins us from New York. Thanks so much for being with us.
BRIDGETT M DAVIS: It's great to be here.
SIMON: So (laughter) you would hear your mother doing business over your Frosted Flakes, I gather.
DAVIS: Every morning.
SIMON: (Laughter) Well, what was that like?
DAVIS: It was my normal. And, in fact, I found great comfort in the sort of recitation of numbers that she would actually basically be saying over the telephone as she took her customers' bets. I liked the sound of it.
SIMON: So how and why did your mother enter the numbers business?
DAVIS: My mom entered the numbers business out of necessity. She had migrated with my dad and three oldest children to Detroit in the mid-'50s. And my father found it very difficult to get and keep work in the auto plant in the auto factories in the city. And that's for several reasons. There were discriminatory practices in the auto factories against black men who had migrated there to get work. Lots of things were going on. And my mother just took stock of the situation and realized she really had to make a way out of no way.
And she approached my uncle, her brother John, who had a really good, steady job at the racetrack in Detroit. He was actually an exerciser, a horse exerciser, and he went on to be a trainer. So he had steady money, and she showed up one night, as he says, woke him up and everything and said, listen; I want to bank the numbers. I think I can do this. Do you have $100 that you can loan me? He said, OK, I'll do it.
SIMON: Boy.
DAVIS: And that started her business.
SIMON: And we should explain the numbers were derived from the Daily Racing Form.
DAVIS: Yes, they were, yes. Back then, it was a very convoluted system that apparently only my mother knew how to figure out amongst the family members. But that was how they did it. They came up with three different digits every day.
SIMON: Your mother sounds like she was quite brilliant with numbers.
DAVIS: My mom was brilliant. She was. She had - as they used to say, she had a way with numbers (laughter).
SIMON: As you grew up, how did you handle your love and pride for your mother with the need for secrecy? It's not like you could say, boy, you ought to see my mom do this.
DAVIS: You have really captured the heart of my dilemma my entire life. Imagine being that proud of your mom and not being able to brag about her. But it was a legitimate business that just happened to be illegal.
SIMON: (Laughter) Well - and so widely accepted. I mean, it, if I might put it this way, inspired many states, including the state of Michigan, to begin their own lottery.
DAVIS: Oh, that's a nice word, inspired (laughter). I would say they usurped it.
SIMON: And how did it affect your mother's business?
DAVIS: Well, it was sort of affected in stages. What a lot of people don't know is that originally when the lottery was made legal in states like Michigan, it was a weekly drawing. Once a week, you could have a chance to win. You didn't get to pick your numbers. And that was not direct competition with the numbers, which was a daily operation in which people were betting on these three digits that they got to choose.
SIMON: Yeah. So they could do birthdays. They could do lucky numbers.
DAVIS: Oh, there are so many numbers in the world that you can bet on. It's in...
SIMON: Three-one-three.
DAVIS: Exactly, 313, Detroit's area code, my favorite because 313 in the "Three Wise Men Dream Book" plays for the word joy.
SIMON: So the state of Michigan did not immediately run your mother out of business, did they?
DAVIS: No. It took five years before the state lottery commission finally got around to its real point, which was to be direct competition with the underground numbers operation. And so that is when they introduce the daily.
SIMON: So that gave immediate rewards and...
DAVIS: Yeah, immediate payoffs, 500-to-1 payout. People got to choose their numbers. They adopted slogans in their ads that came right out of the black community. It was pretty whole cloth sort of a grab of the system that was already in place.
SIMON: I love towards the end of the book when you not only talk about the ways your mother inspired you emotionally, intellectually, her character, her acumen, but materially, you benefit from it today, don't you?
DAVIS: How about that? Yes. And believe me, I've never been more appreciative. Essentially without my realizing it, my mother was providing me with generational wealth. And it had a direct consequence in my life all the way up to now. Thanks to property that my mom bought using money from the numbers, I was able to take that property that I inherited, sell it and use it to invest in a co-op in New York City in Brooklyn. And that led to what I call - every Brooklynite's sort of American dream is to have a brownstone where you can rent out the ground level.
SIMON: And that's your mom.
DAVIS: That's my mom, all the way.
SIMON: Yeah. Bridgett M. Davis - her book, "The World According To Fannie Davis: My Mother's Life In The Detroit Numbers" - thanks so much for being with us.
DAVIS: Thank you for having me.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
I try not to say sports hero. An athlete may be electrifying and adored and do much for their communities, but real heroes are people who run into burning buildings to save lives. Heroes are people who enrich the lives of others and sometimes move along history. There is one athlete who has to be called a hero. Jackie Robinson was born 100 years ago next week, January 31, 1919, in the small, segregated town of Cairo, Ga., the youngest of five children. A year later, his father left, and the Robinsons moved to Southern California where Jackie Robinson became one of the most celebrated young athletes in America.
He became Lieutenant Robinson in the segregated U.S. Army during World War II but was court-martialed for refusing to move to the back of a bus on the U.S. Army base in Fort Hood, Texas. Jackie Robinson was proudly unapologetic and was acquitted. As he said many times, I am not concerned with your liking or disliking me. All I ask is that you respect me.
He began to play baseball in the old Negro Leagues after the war. There were many talented stars there, like Larry Doby and Satchel Paige, who could and would eventually be signed. But Branch Rickey, who ran the Brooklyn Dodgers, foresaw that the first African-American player in Major League Baseball would also be the star of a daily national drama. I had to get a man who could carry the burden, said Mr. Rickey. I needed a man to carry the badge of martyrdom. He signed Jackie Robinson.
He broke into the big leagues in 1947. Most Americans saw baseball then in black and white. Bigots in the stands hurled curses and sometimes bottles and threats. Some opposing players slid into him with their spikes. Some opposing pitchers threw at his head. Jackie Robinson played calmly, nobly and superbly under that profane hail.
When civil rights marchers of the 1960s walked across a bridge in Selma or the streets in Birmingham through a blizzard of police sticks, snarling dogs and water cannons, they could hold in their minds the image of Jackie Robinson walking brave and unbowed to home plate.
Jackie Robinson was an athlete, not Martin Luther King in baseball stripes, but his own story galvanized his life. And when he left baseball, he became an activist for integration and justice. As President Barack Obama said, there's a direct line between Jackie Robinson and me. The history Jackie Robinson made helped make America better.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DID YOU SEE JACKIE ROBINSON HIT THAT BALL?")
NATALIE COLE: (Singing) Did you see Jackie Robinson hit that ball? It went zooming across the left field wall.
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Yeah, boy.
COLE: (Singing) Yeah, yeah, Jackie hit that ball. He swung his bat.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Venezuelan media is controlled by the government. Figuring out what is truth, rumor, propaganda has always been difficult. In recent days, though, it's been even more confusing. President Nicolas Maduro has refused to cede power to the opposition party. There have been widespread protests and looting. And the rumor mill continues to churn on social media. NPR's Jasmine Garsd reports.
JASMINE GARSD, BYLINE: Javier Rojo (ph) owns a pharmacy in the capital city of Caracas. This week, as chaos took over the country, he gave his workers the day off, went home and turned on the TV - only to find nothing was being reported.
JAVIER ROJO: (Speaking Spanish).
GARSD: Rojo says right now people get their news on social media and WhatsApp. Professor Gregory Weeks teaches Latin American politics at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He says in Venezuela...
GREGORY WEEKS: Independent media has been gradually attacked and shut down over time so that, in general, social media becomes the means by which you learn what's going on on an ongoing basis.
GARSD: Back at his house, Rojo says he started getting messages on WhatsApp from one of his workers.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Spanish).
GARSD: "Tanks are rolling into the park," she says. "They're launching tear gas." She's one of his employees. He trusts her. But then he started getting WhatsApp voice messages from people he doesn't even know.
ROJO: (Speaking Spanish).
GARSD: One guy, who says his aunt's husband is a military officer - and he swears Nicolas Maduro has resigned. Rojo is getting bombarded by fake news and wild rumors. And it's happening to a lot of people in the country. Professor Raisa Urribarri researches technology and politics at Universidad de Los Andes in Venezuela. She says it's hard to trace the origins of some messages. It can be panicked citizens or the opposition. The government has also gotten savvy at digital propaganda.
RAISA URRIBARRI: (Speaking Spanish).
GARSD: In the last few days, she says, there's been a wave of tweets in favor of the current regime - #ImWithMaduro - from many accounts she and her colleagues have traced back to Turkey, a country that has backed Maduro. It's not the first time social media has been caught up in international turmoil. Last year, the military in Myanmar used Facebook to spread rumors about the Rohingya Muslim minority, eventually leading to atrocities. In Brazil's last presidential elections, misinformation about candidates spread like wildfire on WhatsApp. Just this week, WhatsApp announced it will no longer allow users to forward messages to more than five people. But professor Urribarri says Venezuelans have lived with fake news for so long, they've become smart news consumers. She points me to this trusted WhatsApp group.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking Spanish).
GARSD: The audio bulletin is so low production it almost sounds fake. But it's a public information broadcast created by a group of Venezuelan journalists. Every few hours, they release audio which gets shared countless times on Whatsapp, Facebook and Twitter.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking Spanish).
GARSD: In this one broadcast, the announcer lists the neighborhoods and streets that have been experiencing violent clashes and looting. Follow us, he says. We are online. Jasmine Garsd, NPR News, New York.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Eight hundred thousand federal employees are headed back to work and will be paid. We'll ask a federal worker how she feels about the deal that returns her to work and the prospect of another shutdown. But first, NPR's Ron Elving joins us now to talk about the shutdown, the wall and the arrest of a longtime Trump ally. Ron, thanks so much for being with us.
RON ELVING, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Scott.
SIMON: The government will reopen with no money guaranteed for a wall. Will we just confront another shutdown in three weeks?
ELVING: That's what the president said on Twitter. He said if there's no wall we'll be, quote, "off to the races" - unquote. But, you know, right now, that does not seem likely. The shutdown weapon is looking like a spiked cannon after this 35-day debacle in its latest use. The White House was simply not prepared for the stunning effects of this - the airport delays, the hardships for federal workers and their families. I think there's going to be very little desire for a replay next month. And the president may well try to wring some concessions by threatening to declare a state of emergency.
SIMON: Did Speaker Pelosi make President Trump raise a white flag of surrender?
ELVING: Ultimately, it was the polls and the bad optics and the pressure from Republican senators that made the difference. So we don't want to reduce all of this to just a personal confrontation, but on the other hand, it surely looks that way. She stood up to the president in the Oval Office in December. She stood up to him when he said he would come to the Capitol to deliver his State of the Union whether welcome or not. And finally, she refused to negotiate for changes in border security until the government was open. So right now, she's looking kind of like she's three for three in showdowns against the White House.
SIMON: Question to the wall over who would pay for it, which, let us not forget, the president always said it would be paid for by Mexico, is apparently going to be hashed out in conference committee. Did this country just go through the losses and misery of the longest government shutdown just to agree to handle the issue in what's usually called the regular order of business?
ELVING: Short word - yes. That is exactly what happened. And that includes in regular order a lot of backroom negotiation. And there is no guarantee of success for all of that, but at least if people know that they are back to what they need to do and know how to do best, sure, we could be right back here in three weeks with the difference being this far smaller chance of a shutdown. Now, they really ought to be able to do what they do best in that period of time, but if not, the president will be back in the same poker game with a far weaker hand than the one he just folded this week.
SIMON: Roger Stone, one of the president's closest friends, a longtime adviser, of course was arrested yesterday, charged with lying to Congress, witness tampering, among other things. What does this tell us about the Mueller investigation?
ELVING: It tells us that investigation is as robust as ever and moving forward. The former CIA chief, John Brennan, said yesterday he expects many more indictments in the weeks ahead, including some people who are household names. Now, the Mueller team is closely following the performance of some other actors like Paul Manafort, an old business partner of Roger Stone's. They say he has not followed through with the factual and truthful testimony he promised when he pled guilty on several counts last year. So that's another space to be watching.
SIMON: Report from NBC this week - Jared Kushner got his security clearance only after administration officials overruled career security specialists. What do you make of this?
ELVING: And there were roughly 30 other cases of administration officials who were turned down by the White House security people who investigated their backgrounds. NBC reported there were concerns about pressure on Kushner from foreign connections. But then those same security people were overruled by one man handpicked by President Trump who took over in May of 2017 after working in the Pentagon and had the power to do that and restore Jared Kushner to his full credentials.
SIMON: NPR's Ron Elving, thanks so much for being with us.
ELVING: Thank you, Scott.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
That growing political crisis in Venezuela concerns the opposition leader Juan Guaido, who's president of the National Assembly and has declared himself the country's interim president. But President Nicolas Maduro was re-elected last year in a contested election widely suspected to have been fraudulent. The governments of the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and a number of Venezuela's neighbors support Mr. Guaido. And there have been mass protests against Maduro. At least 20 people have been killed, according to the U.N. Human Rights Office. Francisco Toro is editor-in-chief of Caracas Chronicles, an English-language news site. He has reporters throughout Venezuela but runs the newsroom from his home base in Montreal and joins us from there today. Thanks so much for being with us.
FRANCISCO TORO: Good morning.
SIMON: President Maduro says this is nothing more than a coup d'etat ordered, promoted, financed and supported by the government of the United States. How do you assess that statement?
TORO: Well, that's the statement that they've been running on a loop for the last 15 years whenever Venezuelans raise their voices against what has been a badly deteriorating attack on democracy and autocratic drift. It's nothing new. The government's discourse and the government's line on this is really exhausted. And Venezuelans, when they hear that, at this point, they roll their eyes.
SIMON: Does Mr. Maduro still have the support of the Venezuelan military, or is that sort of divided as well?
TORO: Well, there is a top clique of generals around Maduro that have profited lavishly from Maduro's patronage, from opportunities to skim off the top in the oil industry, from drug trafficking, from illegal gold mining in the Amazon. These people live very lavish lifestyles. And they certainly support Maduro. They understand that regime change is not in their interest. Now, as you get down the ranks, it becomes much iffier.
SIMON: Help us understand how - what life has been like in Venezuela over the past few years that's brought the country to this point.
TORO: Venezuela's shockingly misgoverned. It's hard to wrap your head around a country that has lost half of its GDP in five years without a war. That's worse economic performance than Syria. It's the - only the first case of hyperinflation in Latin America in the 21st century. Inflation is running at over 1 million percent a year, and prices are doubling every three weeks or so. And so what we've seen is a mass exodus. People have just walked - in many cases, actually walked - tens, hundreds of kilometers to the border of Colombia and Brazil to find a better life in neighboring countries.
So it's a first humanitarian crisis in South America in the 21st century. And neighboring countries have never seen anything like it. Colombia had to send a fact-finding team to the Turkish-Syrian border to figure out how to deal with an influx of hundreds of thousands of desperate, hungry people.
SIMON: Can your reporters operate freely?
TORO: Our reporters do OK because we report in English, but the people who reach everyday Venezuelans through radio and TV are under enormous pressure and censorship. And now, they're aiming - they're taking aim at the Internet as well. Earlier this week, there was a crackdown on Twitter. Twitter was shut down throughout Venezuela. Instagram was spotty. The state ISP wouldn't allow people access to these critical sources of news.
SIMON: Tell us about Juan Guaido, head of the National Assembly. How did he become the main challenger to Maduro?
TORO: He is a smart, young guy. He's an industrial engineer. He's 35 years old. His grandparents were members of the military a couple of generations ago. So he has this kind of family understanding of what military codes and military conduct and sort of the military lifestyle it's like in Venezuela. And that really scares the regime because he knows how to speak to military officers. And we're all very clear that this will ultimately come down to whether the mid-ranking members in the military go to their generals and say, sorry, your time is up.
SIMON: Francisco Toro, who's editor-in-chief of the news site Caracas Chronicles, thanks so much.
TORO: Thank you.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The longest government shutdown in U.S. history has ended but only for three weeks. What does this mean for thousands of federal workers? Kristie Scarazzo is a botanist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Ventura, Calif. We spoke with her after the government shut down back in December.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
KRISTIE SCARAZZO: I am very worried. I just moved to the area in September for this job, and I drained my savings account in the move. So it is a source of great anxiety.
SIMON: Kristie Scarazzo joins us now. Thanks very much for being back with us.
SCARAZZO: Thanks so much for having me.
SIMON: Will you be headed back into the office on Monday?
SCARAZZO: It's highly likely. I'm waiting for the final word, but it's looking like, yes, we can go back in on Monday. So my fingers are crossed.
SIMON: It sounds like you're happy.
SCARAZZO: Oh, I'm overjoyed. I'm so excited. I can't believe it.
SIMON: Aw. Well, help us understand what life has been like these past few weeks for you, some of what you've had to do to get by.
SCARAZZO: It's been extremely stressful, from anxiety to depression to panic, fear, anger. It's been a full palette of emotions. And I've paid my bills through the month of January. I applied for unemployment. I applied for many, many jobs, everything under the sun, from biotech lab work to retail to a fishing boat. I applied for at least 25 jobs.
SIMON: The effect was building up on you, I guess.
SCARAZZO: Right, and just scrambling, panicking. What am I going to do? How am I going to pay my rent February 1?
SIMON: Yeah, sounds like you enjoy your work.
SCARAZZO: Oh, I love it. I live for my job. You know, I'm so committed to my mission, and I feel like I was put on this Earth to do botany. And there's not very many botany jobs out there, let alone my dream job, which I have my dream job at the service.
SIMON: Well, it does raise the question, though, if - I mean, we are looking at perhaps another government shutdown in three weeks. Do you ever think maybe I better look for another employer, maybe even another line of work?
SCARAZZO: I certainly started to consider the options during this time period, but to be honest, once we reopen, it just makes me more committed to dig deeper and go back and do a really great job because part of the reason that I value my position so much is being a public servant.
SIMON: Will you be, nevertheless, though, having to devote one eye to events in the capital and hoping against hope there won't be another shutdown?
SCARAZZO: Absolutely. I mean, having had this experience, it really is a game changer, and I hope to be in a position to plan for something like this again. You know, one of the reasons that I took this job was in my own mind I felt like working for the federal government is one of the most secure things that one can do. However, with this recent experience, I need to make a savings account. I need to plan for this in the future and pursue, you know, side things, whether it be, like, herbal business or yoga teacher instruction, getting my substitute teaching credential. I mean, these are all ideas that I had while we were in limbo. So it'd be nice to have those things on the side if we come to this again.
SIMON: Kristie Scarazzo of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Ventura, Calif., thank you so much for being with us.
SCARAZZO: And thank you.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Criticism of the president from conservative media helped kill a deal last month that could have averted the government shutdown in the first place. What's the reaction now that the government is open but without money for a new border wall? NPR's Don Gonyea tuned into conservative talk radio.
DON GONYEA, BYLINE: When President Trump stood in the Rose Garden yesterday to say the government would reopen while negotiations on border security resumed, conservative talk radio hosts were watching closely. Sean Hannity of Fox News hosts a national radio show, as well. His loyalty to Trump is unwavering.
(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO SHOW, "THE SEAN HANNITY SHOW")
SEAN HANNITY: I know some of you say, well, he didn't get any money for the wall. He didn't get any money for the wall. No. He didn't. But he's going to.
GONYEA: Hannity says the president is demonstrating that he's reasonable, that he's giving Congress a chance to reach a deal Trump likes. But if they fail at that - and Hannity thinks they will...
(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO SHOW, "THE SEAN HANNITY SHOW")
HANNITY: One of two things is going to happen on February 15th - that either the president will declare then a national emergency. Or the government's going to be shut down again.
GONYEA: But not all conservative pundits have been so quick to support the president on this. Ann Coulter unleashed a series of tweets, including one that says, quote, "good news for George Herbert Walker Bush. As of today, he is no longer the biggest wimp ever to serve as president of the United States." Now back to the radio dial.
(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO SHOW)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: The Brett Hollander Show.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: WBAL NewsRadio 1090. And now...
GONYEA: This is Baltimore station WBAL, where host Brett Hollander was critical of Ann Coulter for demanding that the president not give an inch to get the government reopened.
(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO SHOW)
BRETT HOLLANDER: I don't think it's helpful. I don't think she's right on most the things she says.
GONYEA: Then a caller named Tawanna (ph) said it's all part of the president's plan to get his canceled State of the Union address back on the schedule.
(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO SHOW)
TAWANNA: Maybe we can go ahead and plan, and he can still get his State of the Union through. Then he can come back and play his trump card - shut the government down or do the state of emergency. That's the way I look at it.
GONYEA: Now west to Omaha and station KFAB and midday host Chris Baker. He put it this way to his audience.
(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO SHOW)
CHRIS BAKER: Did the president cave? Or did he punt?
GONYEA: Callers gave different answers to that question. Baker himself said the president punted in an attempt to improve his field position in the debate. He continued with the football analogy.
(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO SHOW)
BAKER: But I've also got to say this. He had to punt because his offensive line, which would be Republicans, suck. They're horrible. Quote me on that.
GONYEA: And so we did. All of this, of course, is just a snapshot of some immediate reaction to yesterday's news. The president's base seems to be giving him room to maneuver - at least for the next three weeks. Don Gonyea, NPR News, Washington.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Soccer is the most popular sport in the world. And it is awash in scandal. Club owners, coaches and players are accused of taking secret payments and stashing cash. The game's biggest star, Cristiano Ronaldo, was just fined $21 million for tax fraud. He also faces newly resurfaced charges of sexual assault. Many of the game's most incriminating secrets have been released by the website Football Leaks. The man behind those leaks, a Portuguese national named Rui Pinto, has been celebrated as a whistleblower. But he's now under arrest in Hungary. We're joined now by Tariq Panja of The New York Times. He covers soccer from London, where, of course, they call it football. Thanks so much for being with us.
TARIQ PANJA: It's great to be with you.
SIMON: The information Rui Pinto has provided has figured in some of the biggest investigations in the world of international soccer, hasn't it?
PANJA: Absolutely. He's lifted the veil on an industry which is, in many ways, operating in ways that the authorities - some of them - think are criminal. In other ways, there are ethical concerns over the way football, the world's most popular sport, is run. And some people say, without this guy, none of this would have been known.
SIMON: But the Portuguese government insists he's not a whistleblower. He's an extortionist.
PANJA: That's right. And that relates to one particular case, an alleged extortion attempt in 2015. Pinto had accessed documents belonging to this company, Doyen Sports. And he allegedly said to them, I will give you your documents back, and they won't go public if you pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for that not to happen. In the end, this never took place. Doyen's documents were all over the Internet. And the key point here, according to Pinto's lawyer, who happens to be the same lawyer that handled Edward Snowden's case - he represented him a couple of years ago. He says, I'm not denying the fact that there may have been an extortion attempt. What I'm saying is there was no follow-through. So there is no extortion.
SIMON: That's quite a novel defense, though, isn't it? He began to try and extort a group of people but didn't follow through.
PANJA: Absolutely. I was quite surprised. The lawyer, Monsieur Bourdon from Paris, was so open about this fact because I found it quite strange, quite jarring.
SIMON: What's known about Rui Pinto? Is he simply a dissatisfied, disenchanted soccer fan?
PANJA: Well, that's what they say. He's from Portugal. And Portugal is one of the nations that is totally obsessed with football. He is a soccer romantic, they call him. And they say he has become jaded because of what's happened to football, how money has infiltrated it. He had no connection with football. I spoke to his lawyer. He confirmed there is no connection here except he's a soccer fan. What we've seen is a spiky-haired, 30-year-old who looks much younger than that, diminutive in stature. When he was walking in the court, he seemed to have the air of a naughty schoolboy who'd been caught by the teachers, I must say, looking at those videos. I'm wondering whether he knows how serious this is, whether he cares how serious this is. But this is a serious case. It's been a week since he was arrested. The magnitude of it seems not to have touched upon his demeanor from what we've seen in pictures and videos.
SIMON: Tariq Panja of The New York Times. He covers international football, soccer, whatever you want to call it, from London. He spoke with us on Skype. Thanks so much for being with us.
PANJA: Great to be with you.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Story now about a small Chicago brewery called 5 Rabbit. It was the first company to break ties with the Trump Organization after the president's infamous comments about Mexican immigrants when he entered the 2016 campaign. Since President Trump's election, the Hispanic-owned beermaker has made a business of brewing protest. It's even the subject of a documentary that premieres this weekend. NPR's Tim Mak has more.
TIM MAK, BYLINE: This is how it all started.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
MAK: This was a big problem for Andres Araya and his wife, who were producing a house beer for the Trump Tower in Chicago. Araya and his partners decided to take a stand and became the first business to cut ties with Trump for this.
ANDRES ARAYA: When we hear the comments that he makes, it went in direct opposition to the founding principle of our brewery.
MAK: But this came with costs. They had the equivalent of 20,000 pints of beer sitting in their warehouse.
ARAYA: It was going to cost us $10,000. That is, basically, our working capital at that moment.
MAK: Local bars and restaurants hearing about their ordeal agreed to take the barrels they had on hand and sell it as a generic golden ale but not before workers in Araya's warehouse put a colorful twist on the name. Here's Jason Polevoi, who, along with his colleague Nick Jenkins, produced the documentary we mentioned.
JASON POLEVOI: Some of the guys working in the brewery wrote on the keg collars - there's no direct translation from Spanish to English. But the closest is [expletive] your mother.
MAK: In Chicago beer circles and on social media, critics began questioning why they had to bring Trump's mother into all of this. Beer historian Liz Garibay, a friend of the brewery founders, suggested something else that wasn't much more polite.
LIZ GARIBAY: So as we were on the phone, I said, you know, why don't we just change it to be about his hair, him and his hair? So I suggested call it [expletive] tu pelo, which means [expletive] your hair.
MAK: Beer sales took off at Chicago bars friendly with 5 Rabbit, backed by a logo that became an iconic sketch of Trump's tufts made by a local artist. Here's Scott Weiner, who owns a number of restaurants and bars in Chicago.
SCOTT WEINER: We sold an extreme amount in a short period of time.
MAK: As Trump's campaign ended, 5 Rabbit's founders thought that was the end of the story. But when Trump won the election, they decided to use that same beer recipe and make it into a social justice-themed beer called La Protesta. Each batch benefits a different cause - one for the environment, one on DACA and another on transgender rights. Here's Araya again.
ARAYA: We're a small business. But, you know, those small things of just getting involved with organizations that are working towards things that you think are important or just voicing your concerns or getting involved in politics - that matters.
MAK: We should point out that The Trump Organization did not comment despite multiple requests. It's been 3 1/2 years since Araya pulled out of Trump Tower in Chicago, and batches of La Protesta are still in demand. Tim Mak, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF BOOGIE BELGIQUE SONG, "SMILE")
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Howard County, Md., is home to roughly 50,000 federal employees and government contractors. County officials estimate the government shutdown affected at least 10 percent of the people who live there. And as member station WYPR's Rachel Baye reports, the three-week funding agreement that Washington, D.C., political leaders reached yesterday gives many of those federal workers little reason for optimism.
RACHEL BAYE, BYLINE: Blue tote bags filled with fresh fruit and vegetables and dry goods lined tables at the Bain Senior Center in Columbia, Md. They were waiting for federal employees who hadn't seen a paycheck in more than a month. Howard County officials had bags for the first hundred federal workers who walked in the door Friday afternoon. Within an hour, the bags were gone. Just before the giveaway began, news came that Congress and the president had agreed to fund the government for three weeks. But for many of the people here, it didn't bring much hope.
SUSANA DOUGLAS: The fact that it's only three weeks doesn't really make things - you know, they might be in the same position in three weeks.
BAYE: Susana Douglas is an engineer at NASA. This shutdown hit her family's finances hard.
DOUGLAS: I mean, we're probably going to miss a mortgage payment if I don't get paid soon, so I don't like being in this kind of position.
BAYE: She says she just started working for the government about a year ago, something she thought would be more stable than the private sector. But now she and her husband are trying to protect themselves from the next shutdown.
DOUGLAS: Just try to work more on building a savings, you know, is something that we always talk about. And, you know, things happen, and you just - you always seem to dip into it. But I feel like we really need to get more serious about really having a savings, so we don't end up in a position like this.
BAYE: For Demille Richardson, who works for the Department of Agriculture, the best way to protect herself and her 6-year-old son from a future shutdown might be to find a new job.
DEMILLE RICHARDSON: I mean, you know, I spend a lot of my time putting out applications back in the private sector. I came from the private sector. This is my first government job, and it's making me want to go back to the private - and I took - you know, I took a pay cut.
BAYE: She says she spent years unemployed, relying on government for assistance. That's what inspired her to take a government job.
RICHARDSON: Quite frankly, I saw the help I got when I wasn't working, and I felt I should be giving back. And now they've taken that altruism away from me.
BAYE: She says she spent some of the last 35 days submitting job applications. Many of the people who came here to get groceries say they have never needed help like this before. For Bridget Michaelson, an analyst at the Department of Homeland Security, coming here and waiting in line for food is hard.
Are you OK?
BRIDGET MICHAELSON: (Crying) Not completely. I just never thought I would have to be looking for someone to help me with groceries. It's - but staying strong.
BAYE: She says the end of the shutdown gives her some hope. At least she'll get paid. But, like so many others here, she says the shutdown could also push her to find a new job. For NPR News, I'm Rachel Baye in Columbia, Md.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
More than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled violence at the hands of security forces in Myanmar - that's in the last year alone. Today, nearly a million of them live in refugee camps in Bangladesh, where, as NPR's Sasha Ingber reports, they're using traditional music to document atrocities and hold on to who they are.
SASHA INGBER, BYLINE: Inside a dim mud house a 40-minute bus ride from Thangkali refugee camp, Mohammed Taker takes his instruments off a shelf. The 35-year-old keeps his mandolin and harmonium stashed here, coming in the morning and going back to the refugee camp in the evening.
MOHAMMED TAKER: (Through interpreter) If the government finds out that I'm singing songs, they will find me.
INGBER: He's worried that if he plays music in the camp, informants from Myanmar - formerly known as Burma - will send word to the government.
TAKER: (Through interpreter) We have people in our community who are friends with the Burmese government, and maybe they will sell them information. It's possible to find me because I'm one of only a few musicians. (Playing mandolin).
INGBER: He plays a song about how the Rohingya sought refuge in Bangladesh and how they used to have their own land back in Myanmar.
TAKER: (Singing in foreign language, playing mandolin).
INGBER: The Rohingya call such songs taranas. And they aren't about melody or phrasing. For a group that's largely illiterate, taranas are an important way of keeping historical, if ephemeral, records. Even back home in Myanmar, Taker says, it was hard, even dangerous to make music. Authorities wanted to keep the Rohingya community quiet.
TAKER: (Singing in foreign language, playing mandolin).
INGBER: Another singer and mandolin player, Amir Hussein, recounts what happened when he and his friends played music without getting permission.
AMIR HUSSEIN: (Through interpreter) They came and arrested us that night. And one guy tried to run away. Then they dragged him on the ground and kicked him with their boots.
INGBER: Hussein says his family paid a fine, and he was released from jail the next day. After that, he started to make music secretly in Myanmar.
HUSSEIN: (Through interpreter) We needed to do it secretly because through these songs, we spoke about facts. Most of the time, they would either put us in jail or fine us some big amount of money. We did not have money. We are poor.
INGBER: He wanted to show the dignity of his people, so Hussein made a song called "Proof Of Rohingya," a musical inventory of prominent Rohingya men - a politician, a police officer, a community leader.
HUSSEIN: (Singing in foreign language, playing mandolin).
INGBER: The songs give him a place to put his sorrows.
HUSSEIN: (Through interpreter) When I sing songs or play music, the soreness I have, the unhappiness I have in my body, it goes away.
INGBER: Hussein shares a mandolin with his friend, Ali Akbar, who made the instrument in the refugee camp and painted it pink because he liked the color. Akbar says he had to leave his own mandolin behind when he fled Myanmar.
ALI AKBAR: (Through interpreter) The previous one played well. I used to love to play it.
INGBER: Akbar has been playing for nearly 30 years. He got so good that, for a time, his neighbors in Buddhist and Hindu villages nearby would call him to perform Jatra - or open theatre. But that didn't mean that he, as a Muslim minority, was accepted.
AKBAR: (Through interpreter) They always used to call me blackie. I would have felt proud if they called me Rohingya.
INGBER: Years before the violent crackdown of 2017, bullying, restricted movement and poverty stopped Akbar and other Rohingya from ever going to school.
AKBAR: (Through interpreter) We could not study. That's why I feel quite lost. I don't know what to say to God.
INGBER: And so he remembers the injustices through his music.
AKBAR: (Through interpreter) That's why I learned how to play this instrument. (Playing mandolin).
INGBER: There was the night he was attacked in his village by men he had never seen before.
AKBAR: (Through interpreter) They came holding bamboos with blades on the tip and stabbed me on the back. Then I lost consciousness.
INGBER: There were the heads of children he found when he fled his village in 2017.
AKBAR: (Through interpreter) And the people who were crippled, who were too slow or weak to run away, they had to die inside the houses. They burned them alive.
INGBER: He wanted to pay tribute to them in song.
AKBAR: (Singing in foreign language, playing mandolin).
INGBER: Today in Kutupalong, what has become the world's largest refugee camp, he plays music for aid organizations and teaches younger people how to make their own taranas.
AKBAR: (Through interpreter) So that when we are old and gone, the next generation, our kids, our grandkids, they can hear this music and get a sense of what kind of suffering we have been through. We are still suffering, just to share these emotions.
INGBER: Sasha Ingber, NPR News.
AKBAR: (Singing in foreign language, playing mandolin).
SIMON: Reporting for this project was supported by Music in Exile and the Pulitzer Center.
AKBAR: (Singing in foreign language, playing mandolin).
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The government is back up and running, but President Trump says he may let it shut down in just another three weeks if Congress doesn't authorize billions of dollars to build his border wall. We begin this hour with a Democratic member of Congress. Joaquin Castro, of course, is from Texas and chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Mr. Castro, thanks so much for being with us.
JOAQUIN CASTRO: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
SIMON: So how do you react to that? Are you and other Democrats willing to risk another shutdown by not authorizing any money for a wall?
CASTRO: Yeah. Most of Congress is not supportive of a wall in the same way that most Americans are not supportive of a wall because it's not the best approach to border security. Instead, it's a political ploy by the president. And so I hope that during these three weeks, the appropriators from both chambers that have been appointed to the conference committee can come up with an agreement on border security. But I think if they approach the issue reasonably, they'll see that a wall doesn't make the most sense.
SIMON: When you talk about an agreement for border security, give us some idea, if you could, of a price tag that you're willing to accept - you know - what? - $2 billion, $3 billion - and don't call it a wall, but call it border security.
CASTRO: Well, remember; the purpose - at least in theory, the purpose of a wall is for border security, is to secure the border. So when folks were talking about a compromise, for example, the compromise is not a wall. The compromise is doing more on border security. So we've talked about things like greater technology, for example, reinforcing customs in our ports because the biggest threat coming through the border is actually not people. It's drugs, and most particularly opioids, that kill thousands of Americans every year. And yet the president has focused very little and actually the Congress has not focused as much as it should on combating that threat.
SIMON: Mr. Castro, I can't pretend to read the president's mind, but I think he's been pretty explicit about saying when he talks about a compromise, he means the amount of money for a wall. He says maybe it won't be bricks. Maybe it'll be steel spikes. But he wants something standing there.
CASTRO: Yeah. No, I agree. I agree that that is what he said that he wants. But you also saw that he didn't get that yesterday, and I don't think he's going to get it in three weeks.
SIMON: What's your reaction to the argument that build a wall was a chant at Trump campaign rallies, he promised the wall, of course, he said Mexico would pay for it if he was elected and, in the end, he's just carrying out a promise that he made to the American people?
CASTRO: That may be so, but it was a foolish promise because most Americans don't want it, and it doesn't make sense in terms of effectiveness. In fact, there have been stories even recently about migrants and immigrants tunneling beneath the sections of the border that actually have a wall, literally digging tunnels and going underneath and then popping up on the American side. So it's something that doesn't make the most sense.
SIMON: Mr. Castro, in the minute we have left, the president also says if he doesn't get a deal from Congress, he might invoke emergency executive powers to build a wall. How would you react to that?
CASTRO: We would push back in every single way that we could. There would be lawsuits that would be filed. Of course, we'd file legislation to undo it. And I'm sure the American people would protest that because there is no national emergency at the border. There is a humanitarian crisis, but that's different from the picture that the president has painted of all of these folks coming to invade the United States and do harm to Americans. These are asylees and folks that are seeking refuge in the United States.
SIMON: Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas speaking to us from his home district in San Antonio. Mr. Castro, thanks so much for being with us.
CASTRO: Thank you.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Going a month without a paycheck if you don't plan to can create lasting financial wounds. NPR's Leila Fadel has been checking in with federal workers.
LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: Friday was the second time that Amy Fellows was supposed to get paid and did not.
AMY FELLOWS: Without work and without getting paid, we've missed out on so much.
FADEL: She is a correctional officer in the southwest for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and she welcomed the news that finally there will be money in her account but not for long.
FELLOW: I'm just going to pay my bills and save all that I have.
FADEL: The past month was scary. Fellows is a single mother of three children, and she continued to work full time and overtime with no pay. The bank let her overdraft, but she didn't know how much she could spend before it turned off the tap, so she said no to buying school supplies, no to karate lessons her daughter had been taking, no to toiletries that ran out.
FELLOW: There were times where I was like, well, maybe I should go to the store today and buy this stuff. But then what if that's my last $10 that I'm able to overdraft? I can't do that. I don't get food stamps. I don't - you know, I have to save every dollar to buy food to make sure my kids are eating.
FADEL: Fellows has received donations of food and offers of prayer.
FELLOW: We've had a lot of outreach. It was nice to see that all these people truly care about America.
FADEL: She still skipped meals, though, so her kids had enough, not knowing if she'd be able to replenish the pantry. And she felt hesitant and a little ashamed to take handouts from strangers.
FELLOW: I was always raised to know you go to work, you get paid for what you do, and I don't understand how anybody can shut it down to where we don't get paid for doing our daily jobs.
FADEL: And Fellows says she and her family were punished because of a political fight. Brianna Bedard feels the same way. She's a stay-at-home mom to two young children. Her husband works for the Coast Guard and hasn't been getting paid.
BRIANNA BEDARD: I took my kids to food banks twice this month so, you know, that was a new experience. I had someone in line with me give me some of her food, and it was just the most humbling experience because you don't expect that kind of a thing.
FADEL: She says she's angry at politicians, but the kindness of strangers showed her the best of humanity. It didn't mitigate the stress, though, of stretching every dollar.
BEDARD: We were fortunate in that we didn't reach a point where we had to start taking out loans that require interest and - or late fees and things like that.
FADEL: They were lucky, she says, they had a little bit of savings. But watching the president's speech, all Bedard heard was that in three weeks, she and her family might have to go without pay again.
BEDARD: I definitely am not going to pretend that everything's back to normal. I'm actually going to plan on the government shutting down again on the 15 and make whatever preparations we can.
FADEL: So when the money comes in, she'll save every dollar. She doesn't trust Washington to think about her family, her needs and the needs of hundreds of thousands of other federal workers. Leila Fadel, NPR News.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Now to the indictment of Roger Stone, President Trump's longtime friend and adviser. Mr. Stone was arrested early yesterday at his home in Florida and spent the day and well into the evening vowing to fight the charges. NPR justice reporter Ryan Lucas joins us. Ryan, thanks so much for being with us.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Good morning, Scott.
SIMON: Well, you were busy also.
LUCAS: Indeed.
SIMON: And let's remind ourselves now - seven counts against Roger Stone. What are they?
LUCAS: Well, one for obstruction of an official proceeding, one count of witness tampering and then the remaining five counts relate to alleged false statements that Stone made to congressional investigators. In broad brush strokes, what this indictment alleges is that Trump campaign officials directed Stone to get into contacts with WikiLeaks to find out what sort of hack Democratic emails the organization had and what its plans were for releasing them. Remember; it was WikiLeaks that published thousands of stolen Democratic emails. The U.S. government says Russia provided those emails to WikiLeaks.
The indictment also alleges that Stone later took steps to try to keep secret the details of his efforts to be in contact with WikiLeaks. It is important, though, to say one thing of what this indictment does not say and that is that Stone has not been charged with conspiring with Russia or with WikiLeaks.
SIMON: Which presents the question, based on your experience, how do you see this arrest and these indictments fitting in with the rest of the Mueller investigation?
LUCAS: Well, Stone is the sixth Trump associate to be charged by Mueller in this investigation. He's the 34th individual overall. Mueller has documented over the course of his investigation multiple contacts that Trump associates had with Russians or with Russian proxies. Now, with this Stone indictment, Mueller is providing the most detailed account to date of contacts that people associated with the Trump campaign allegedly had with WikiLeaks. And Stone emerges in this indictment as an intermediary of sorts between WikiLeaks and the campaigns. Stone has denied any such role publicly.
But looking ahead, there's a line in this indictment that really grabbed my attention, and that's this - it says a 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, Scott, is who directed that senior official to contact Stone?
SIMON: And, of course, the president and Roger Stone have a longtime personal relationship, right? So a lot of people have to look at the possibility that that's what that means.
LUCAS: That is what some people may interpret that to mean, but the thing is, we don't know at this point.
SIMON: I got to ask - Roger Stone spent much of Friday night giving exclusive interviews (laughter) - a couple of exclusive interviews at least to Tucker Carlson on Fox, Chris Cuomo on CNN. Attorneys usually customarily advise people who just get indicted don't talk to anybody...
LUCAS: Right.
SIMON: ...Much less do national interviews on TV. What - can you begin to help us understand what those interviews were aimed at?
LUCAS: Well, you're right. This is not usual. This is not standard from a defendant. But Roger Stone is not your standard or usual defendant. Stone loves this sort of political fight, I've been told. He relishes it, the spectacle, the scene. And, remember; he's also been saying for months that he expects to be indicted. He's been sending emails, doing videos asking for donations to help fund his defense. And actually yesterday, right after his court hearing, he was interviewed on infowars.com. He explicitly asked people to send donations. So we may see a lot of this from Roger Stone in the months to come.
SIMON: He's going to come to Washington, D.C., too, isn't he?
LUCAS: That's right. His first court hearing was in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He will be arraigned in Washington, D.C., this upcoming week on Tuesday. So the sort of spectacle that we saw on the courthouse steps in Florida on Friday, that whole Stone circus is coming to D.C.
SIMON: NPR justice reporter Ryan Lucas, thanks so much for being with us.
LUCAS: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SUFFER LIKE G DID'S "JAMIENDER SAMBI")
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Stressed air traffic controllers, too few IRS workers, possible cybersecurity breaches - a chorus of voices, including from the FBI, warned that the U.S. government shutdown posed a threat to this nation's security. So how much damage was done? How long will it take to repair? Michael Chertoff was secretary of Homeland Security under George W. Bush, and earlier this week, he was one of several former secretaries who wrote President Trump in Congress to urge an end to the shutdown. He joins us on the line. Mr. Chertoff, thanks so much for being with us.
MICHAEL CHERTOFF: Good to be on.
SIMON: How harmful was the shutdown in your estimation?
CHERTOFF: Well, I think it was very difficult for the people involved, both in terms of their financial situation and in terms of their morale. Happily, we didn't see any events that took advantage of the shutdown. But I think people were still going to be nervous because this is only a temporary extension. And what we need to do is reassure the front-line soldiers, Coast Guardsmen, Border Patrol officials, that they're going to be supported and not be in an up-and-down situation.
SIMON: I have to ask, Mr. Chertoff, because, as you mentioned, there might be another shutdown on the horizon in just three weeks. Government security agencies rely on long-term, nonpolitical employees to create a truly civil service. Are you concerned that the effect of all these shutdowns are going to discourage a lot of people from working for the U.S. government?
CHERTOFF: I certainly think there's a risk that when young people are looking at a career, the attractiveness of working for the government and doing public service will be diminished if they feel that they're becoming footballs for political actors or if they feel that there's no job security in turn for their public service. So, yes, this is not a helpful element in the picture that recruiters like to portray to folks who are entering the workforce.
SIMON: Is there a lot of catch up that has to be done now in various government security departments because they haven't been at work for a month on investigations and other security procedures?
CHERTOFF: I think what you'll see with the investigators, again, is that they will have to catch up. They'll have put their pencils down unless they were essential employees. Now they have to pick them up. They have to catch up to where they were. There will have been some lost time. There will be perhaps some leads that they were going to pursue that have gone cold. So I do expect there'll be some catch up. I don't think it's going to be overwhelming. But certainly, it's going to add to a level of inefficiency.
SIMON: But you seem to be suggesting that you just don't turn the key on Monday and pick up where you left off.
CHERTOFF: Well, that's right. I mean, if, for example, you were following the trail of something that you're investigating or examining, events have moved in the last three or four weeks. So now you've got to catch up not only to what you were doing before you had to leave your job, but you've got to see what's occurred in the interim. And that simply takes more time and adds more complexity to your task.
SIMON: The president again suggested that if Congress doesn't approve funding for a wall, he might call a national emergency and invoke executive powers - forgive me - to build that wall. In your estimation, Mr. Chertoff, is that wise? Is it a matter of national security?
CHERTOFF: Well, there'll be some elements of border security that are fairly described as national security, but that's a very broad term. I think to declare an emergency, there are certain legal requirements. I'm not a legal scholar in this area, but they're going to need to make sure that they have a valid legal basis to use funds that were allocated for something else and to move them over into the border security area. That's wholly apart from the question of whether building a wall is anything other than a waste of money.
SIMON: Michael Chertoff, former Homeland Security secretary, is executive director of The Chertoff Group. Thanks so much for being with us.
CHERTOFF: Good to be on.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
A controversial change in the United States asylum system was supposed to start yesterday at the San Diego port of entry. But there was no sign of change. Reporter Max Rivlin-Nadler was there just across the border.
MAX RIVLIN-NADLER, BYLINE: The day began like most days have since large groups of asylum-seekers began arriving in Tijuana from Central America last November.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Sylvia Balarcez Madia (ph).
RIVLIN-NADLER: The list of names of people whose turn it was to claim asylum was read out loud. And 25 asylum-seekers were let into the U.S. A man sang as he watched as some of his loved ones were admitted.
UNIDENTIFIED ASYLUM-SEEKER: (Singing in Spanish).
RIVLIN-NADLER: The new policy requires most asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico as their legal case winds through the American court system. That was supposed to start Friday. As the day went on, however, it became clear that no asylum-seekers in the U.S. would be returned to Mexico, which only led to more confusion for those who had already traveled thousands of miles to the border.
Twenty-four-year-old Denis Lazaro, who had traveled from Guatemala, was worried about the safety of his two young daughters if they have to wait months and possibly years in Tijuana.
DENIS LAZARO: (Speaking Spanish).
SIMON: He said it just didn't seem fair.
Nicole Ramos, an immigration attorney, believes the policy will make completing the asylum process almost insurmountable to migrants.
NICOLE RAMOS: This isn't remain in Mexico. This is stay in Mexico forever.
RIVLIN-NADLER: The Department of Homeland Security has not responded to a request for comment about when the plan will be implemented. For NPR News, I'm Max Rivlin-Nadler in Tijuana.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Now it's time for sports.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SIMON: Spoiler alert - this is a news show. We're going to have the results of the Australian Open. Naomi Osaka of Japan has won the women's title at the Australian Open, defeating Petra Kvitova. And rumor has it there's a big football game of some sort next week in the United States. Howard Bryant of ESPN The Magazine and espn.com joins us. Howard, thanks so much for being with us.
HOWARD BRYANT, BYLINE: Good morning, Scott. What do you mean you need a spoiler alert? You didn't - you weren't up at 3:30 in the morning to watch the women's championship of the Australian Open...
SIMON: I was up at 4:30. And, you know...
BRYANT: (Laughter).
SIMON: ...There are people who complain when we put the results of a sports event in - you know, on the news. So...
BRYANT: In real time.
SIMON: Yeah, exactly. Well, you know, it's news, not a novel.
BRYANT: (Laughter).
SIMON: In any event, Naomi Osaka has followed her victory in the U.S. Open with this Grand Slam title. Makes her No. 1 in the world right now, doesn't it?
BRYANT: First Asian woman to be named No. 1 in the world ever, amazing follow-up to winning her first major back in September at the U.S. Open over Serena Williams, first woman since 2001 - Jennifer Capriati - to win the next major following her first - so to go consecutively - an incredible match. It wasn't easy for her at all, considering the fact that she was up a set and serving 5-3 - I'm sorry - receiving 5-3 for the match and ended up having three match points, lost them all, ended up losing four straight games. And she showed a lot of heart for a 21-year-old to...
SIMON: Yeah.
BRYANT: ...Not finish off the match the way she did. And to really come back in the third set and claim this championship was remarkable and tough for Petra Kvitova as well. This was a match that I really had no - you didn't want to see anybody lose...
SIMON: Yeah.
BRYANT: Coming back from the knife attack that the - Petra suffered in the Czech Republic in 2016, she didn't think she was ever going to play tennis again. And it was just an amazing match between...
SIMON: Yeah.
BRYANT: ...Two champions.
SIMON: We got to note to a particular significance in Japan. Naomi Osaka has become a national symbol there. She has a mixed racial background. That's unusual in Japan...
BRYANT: Her Haitian father, Leonard, who we never see. We hear of him. We know he exists, but he never sits in her box because he is so nervous to watch the match, to see his daughter play that he sort of roams the stadium. He's never on camera, but he's always with her. And it's a fantastic story.
SIMON: Aw, God bless him.
BRYANT: (Laughter) It's a fantastic story, considering that this is one of the things that you look at with tennis, that at 20 years old, 18 years old, people have been talking about her being a great player. And now she's really backed it up. And it's also in this tournament, as well, that Serena Williams had a 5-1 lead against Pliskova in the quarterfinals to have a rematch with Osaka. And Serena ended up losing that match. She injured her ankle and lost the next six games and lost the match. That's the beauty of tennis. It's the reason why I love tennis so much. It's the reason why I love baseball. You can't run out the clock in this sport, Scott. You've got to get that - you've got to win the final point. You have to get the final out. Otherwise, things can happen.
SIMON: Let's turn a little bit to that football game just a week away. The Rams are back in LA again, against the Patriots with what seems like their annual appearance in the Super Bowl. A lot of people, though, still aren't over that controversial no-call of pass interference by officials.
BRYANT: In the NFC Championship game between the Rams and the Saints and then, also, the officiating between - in the Patriots game with the phantom roughing-the-passer call against - with Tom Brady in the Chiefs-Patriots game. It's a really interesting thing, Scott, because you want to look at football and say that the sport is obviously in trouble for all the problems that it has. Aesthetically, of course, it has problems. You can't tell what a catch is, you know, arguing about the rules and the referees getting involved. But, at the same time, when you look at the revenue, when you look at the excitement, when you look at the interest, it's hard to say that the sport has a problem. But, at the same time, how do you look at a championship game - every year, we have these questions or these controversies. At some point, maybe you're going to start reviewing even pass interference calls. I can't imagine more conferences during a football game.
SIMON: Do you love or hate the Patriots?
BRYANT: I'm from Boston. I can't answer that.
SIMON: Oh.
BRYANT: (Laughter).
SIMON: You can't answer it, which suggests you don't have, well - I - you got to respect Tom Brady, Bill Belichick and that dynasty headed back for their ninth Super Bowl.
BRYANT: Phenomenal accomplishment what that team has done.
SIMON: Howard Bryant of ESPN The Magazine and espn.com. Thanks very much, Howard. Talk to you soon.
BRYANT: My pleasure.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
You might want to set aside your cornflakes for a moment now. Ed Yong writes in The Atlantic about a substance he says, quote, "looks revolting but is also one of nature's more wondrous substances, unlike anything else that's been concocted by either evolution or engineers." Ed Yong, science writer for The Atlantic, joins us now. What are you celebrating here?
ED YONG: Hi. I am celebrating the slime produced by a type of fish called the hagfish. So the hagfish is, you know, a 2-foot long creature that lives in the deep ocean. It looks a bit like an eel, but it's not. It has no backbone. It has no jaws. And, most tellingly, it has the ability to produce incredible amounts of this very, very weird and unusual slime.
SIMON: I guess we could both make a lot of jokes about how similar it is to members of the U.S. Senate, but (laughter)...
YONG: Can neither confirm nor deny that.
SIMON: Slime. A teaspoon of slime at first, but it really multiplies, doesn't it?
YONG: So a hagfish will release about less than a teaspoonful of the slime from the glands on its side. But in, like, less than half a second, that teaspoonful will expand into liters of slime. If you put a hagfish in a bucket, at first, it'll look like these thin wisps of, like, white, cloudy stuff have been released from its flanks. And then, if you stick your hand in and swirl it around, you'll just be pulling out, like, handfuls of this stuff. It's almost like the entire bucket will have converted into slime.
SIMON: But this is what they do to protect themselves?
YONG: Right, it's a defensive measure. They release it when they're attacked or when they're stressed.
SIMON: Because a lot of predators might say, ha-ha-ha, no backbone, no teeth? I know what I'm having for lunch.
YONG: Right, exactly. They often get bitten and attacked. But when they do, they instantly release this massive cloud of slime which is very, very good at infiltrating nooks and crannies, including the mouths and gills of predators. So there have been these incredible videos of sharks biting hagfish and then just recoiling, their mouths and gills full of slime and just gagging and being forced to retreat.
SIMON: Sharks essentially saying, I'm sorry (laughter). I'm not a Spielberg shark. They don't pay me enough to swallow slime.
YONG: I think it's more like they're saying, (vocalizing).
SIMON: (Laughter) Now, hagfish slime is in the news because of a new fossil, right?
YONG: So partly, yes.
SIMON: A newly discovered fossil.
YONG: A newly discovered fossil. The fossil is interesting because the evolutionary relationships of hagfish to other fish have long been controversial. Like, a lot of scientists have thought of them as very primitive creatures, like some sort of transition from a kind of worm-like thing to a fish-like thing. But this new fossil helps us understand that it looks like hagfish are vertebrates. They are part of the backbone lineage. They just seem to have lost a lot of the traits that we have, things like complex eyes and bones and taste buds. So rather than being this weird, evolutionary throwback, they're actually very, very well-adapted animals to the somewhat grim and grotesque life that they live at the bottom of the ocean, feeding on corpses, sliming things that might want to eat them.
SIMON: Oh, boy, does that sound - ah, what a life that sounds like.
YONG: (Laughter) Right. But I tell you what, I was serious when I said that it's one of evolution's marvels. I think very rarely do you see a substance with this combination of properties produced by an animal that most people have never heard of.
SIMON: Ed Yong covers science for The Atlantic. Thanks so much for being with us.
YONG: Thanks for having me.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
You might not think sake is brewed in America. But there is a brewery in Holbrook, Ariz., where a master brewer from Japan set up his business. From member station KNAU, here's Aaron Granillo.
AARON GRANILLO, BYLINE: Holbrook, Ariz., is like a snapshot of a bygone era. Kitschy diners, vintage motels and mostly mom-and-pop shops line the main drag through the city. Population 5,000 - zero Japanese restaurants. It wasn't the ideal place for Atsuo Sakurai to set up a sake brewery.
ATSUO SAKURAI: Arizona is, you know, last place to locate for me because it is really severe condition to live here and with business, I thought.
GRANILLO: But four years ago, Sakurai came here from Japan with his wife, a Holbrook native, to be closer to her family. That's when Sakurai established his company, Arizona Sake.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOOR OPENING)
GRANILLO: His brewing space is tiny - about the size of a cubicle - sealed off behind a door in his two-car garage.
You can already smell...
SAKURIA: Yeah.
GRANILLO: ...The sake.
SAKURIA: Sake, right?
GRANILLO: Sakurai learned to make the rice-based alcohol in his home country. He spent a decade working at factories in Japan, learning the ancient brewing methods.
SAKURIA: Smell like apple and pear and melon, like, very fruity. This is the original sake flavor.
GRANILLO: This is the original sake flavor?
SAKURIA: So I tried to save this flavor in my premium sake.
GRANILLO: Sakurai has passed a rigorous Japanese government exam, earning the highest title of first-grade sake brewer. When he ended up in Holbrook, he found brewing in the desert was a blessing in disguise.
SAKURIA: When I did a test batch, I figure out, oh, the Arizona condition is really good to make sake.
GRANILLO: That's because the dry air provides less chance for molds to form during fermentation, a common problem in Japan's humid climate. Plus, the Holbrook tap water Sakurai uses comes from one of the best sources of groundwater in Arizona.
SAKURIA: That sake tasted, like, clear and pure and fantastic. Like, oh, here's really good.
GRANILLO: So good, he thought, Sakurai submitted a bottle to last year's international Sake Competition in Tokyo. He won first place in the overseas category. Kenya Hashimoto was one of the judges.
KENYA HASHIMOTO: (Through interpreter) Arizona Sake was well-harmonized and excellently balanced with the aroma and taste. I thought the sake was made using high skills.
GRANILLO: Sakurai says after he won the competition, orders started to pour in. He sells his sake to about 50 liquor stores and restaurants around the states (ph), including Karma Sushi in Flagstaff. Rebekah Kaufman just ordered a cup during happy hour. One sip, and her palate goes wild.
REBEKAH KAUFMAN: I'm getting almost like a little bit of pear. But it's really smooth. It's definitely not overly sweet. It's perfect. This is good.
GRANILLO: Atsuo Sakurai says he hopes one day people in all 50 states will enjoy Arizona Sake. And he insists it's not all about making money.
SAKURIA: My business is to get friendship or, you know, love or peace - like that I'm seeking.
GRANILLO: Sakurai knows he'll need to move out of his garage to grow. And he plans to do so. He just broke ground on a new commercial property a few blocks away from his home. For NPR News, I'm Aaron Granillo in Holbrook, Ariz.
(SOUNDBITE OF BONOBO'S "KERALA")
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
A vicious dog on the loose, a harsh landscape and a ragtag group of kids on a forbidden adventure - Jamil Jan Kochai's debut novel "99 Nights In Logar" follows 12-year-old Marwand as he returns to the family's ancestral home in Afghanistan at the height of the war. Raised in America, the pre-teen fumbles to fit in with his Afghan cousins. His path is guided, in part, by family lore and magical storytelling, reminiscent of "1001 Arabian Nights." Jamil Jan Kochai joins us now from Iowa Public Radio.
Welcome to the program.
JAMIL JAN KOCHAI: Thank you.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So this has been described as a coming-of-age journey. Young Marwand is visiting his family in Afghanistan in 2005 when the family guard dog goes missing. Marwand embarks on a series of adventures to get him back. And that sounds like a simple plot, right? But the book is about a lot more than his physical journey.
JAN KOCHAI: Yeah, absolutely. I really wanted it to start off on sort of this - you know, sort of an adventure tale premise. But from that point, I did want the novel to both sort of deepen in its storytelling and then also expand as well. Just as Marwand is going on his own journey, these other stories that he's hearing, I wanted them to also impact him in different ways historically, religiously, in all these different manners.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: The book takes us into the villages of Afghanistan - the family meals, you know, the squabbles, the discussions. Why is that important to just sort of open a window into sort of the mundane aspects of life?
JAN KOCHAI: Well, I think part of it was to sort of demonstrate the ways that, you know, the occupation of Afghanistan, the war in Afghanistan is not only bombings and shootings and the surveillance and such. But there are also all these, like, minor forms imbued in the language and the jokes and, you know, in the way we think about time and the way we think about movement and travel and how you're going to go about planning a wedding. I think that was important for me to demonstrate just another facet of how the war exists in Afghanistan.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah. We should mention at this point that you were born in Pakistan. But your family is from Logar. And you grew up in the United States. So how many...
JAN KOCHAI: Yes.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: How many of these stories are from your memories? - and how much from your imagination?
JAN KOCHAI: Yeah. I mean, like, a great deal of these stories are from my own memories, from memories of my family members, my grandmother, especially. The most important memory that sort of started the whole premise of the novel itself was when I was 12 years old, I - we - my family and I, we were visiting Logar, Afghanistan. And we, actually, did have a guard dog named Budabash, who one day - you know, he was this massive, beastly dog. And he hated me for some reason. He'd growl at me viciously whenever I got near him. And one day, he actually did get loose out on the village. And, of course, my uncles and my father, they all went out searching for him because he was such a powerful dog that they were literally afraid he might, you know, kill someone.
They told all younger guys in the in the compound to stay home. And, of course, as soon as they left, we also went out. And I remember going out with my cousins but at a certain point, becoming sort of afraid of the journey. And they all went on forward. And I decided to stay back with my brother underneath this mulberry tree. And that memory had stuck with me for such a long time. I remember just sitting beneath that mulberry tree not knowing whether I should continue the journey or head back home. And it was so vivid. I still remember, you know, the trees and the winds and watching the fields. And the sun was setting at the time. And it gave the land sort of this, like, magical, overwhelming hue to it. And it was from that memory that I sort of started the whole novel. I was like, this is where the story starts. And then after that, I was like, OK. Now I just got to figure out what happens on the adventure.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Afghanistan is the scene - the setting of America's longest running war. It's also a place that has been at the nexus of so many conflicts for so long. And I'm wondering if you think Americans understand Afghanistan.
JAN KOCHAI: The people, they sort of - this - we have this - sort of this stereotype attached to us now that we are violent people, that we are a war-hungry people. And that's something, I think, that I was very much adamant about taking apart, deconstructing that image, that understanding of Afghanistan being exclusively (laughter) this violent land, this land of warfare. And it was really important for me to demonstrate its incredible, incredible beauty, its tradition of storytelling and faith and dance and music. And so I do hope that if there are misunderstandings, at least my story might be able to give a new outlook.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I'm thinking of a final scene in the book when Marwand is leaving the country. And he's stopped by an American soldier who sees that he's injured. And he's, of course, been bitten by the dog. And the soldier immediately assumes that he's been abused by someone in his family. And it seemed to speak to this wider misconception - right? - this wider lack of understanding.
JAN KOCHAI: Absolutely. I think what that scene was trying to get at a little bit was this sort of - sense of that Afghans need saving. And - which is something that I'm pretty resistant to, this idea that - especially that Afghanistan and Afghans as a people need saving from the outside and that some, you know, foreign force needs to come together and help these people rise up out of this carnage that they've brought themselves into. And so I am very resistant to that sort of a mythology. That's something that in that scene and, I hope, throughout the entirety of the novel, I wanted to demonstrate that Afghans are - they're absolutely capable of lifting themselves up. But there's been so many years, so many centuries now of foreign domination that, really, that's what's keeping us behind, not anything innate in ourselves as a people.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Jamil Jan Kochai's novel is "99 Nights In Logar." Thank you so much.
JAN KOCHAI: Thank you so much for having me. This was an absolute pleasure.
(SOUNDBITE OF EMANCIPATOR'S "GOODNESS")
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
And it's time to play The Puzzle.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Joining us is Will Shortz. He's puzzle editor of The New York Times and WEEKEND EDITION'S puzzlemaster. Good morning, Will.
WILL SHORTZ, BYLINE: Good morning, Lulu.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: All right - what was last week's challenge?
SHORTZ: It came from listener Steve Baggish (ph) of Arlington, Mass. I said take the name of a classic song that became the signature song of the artist who performed it - two words - five, three. And I said the letters can be rearranged to spell two new words. One is a feeling, and the other is an expression of that feeling. What song is it? Well, the answer is "Piano Man" by Billy Joel. And you can rearrange those letters to make pain and moan.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: We received 952 responses. And our winner this week is Erin Rodriguez of San Antonio, Texas. Congratulations.
ERIN RODRIGUEZ: Oh, thank you so much. Thank you.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So are you a Billy Joel fan?
RODRIGUEZ: Actually, when I got married in 1997, my husband sang "She's Got A Way" at our reception. So...
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Aw.
RODRIGUEZ: ...I am a huge Billy Joel fan.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: (Laughter) Is that how you solved it?
RODRIGUEZ: I just kept thinking. I thought I was, like, Elvis' song "Hound Dog."
SHORTZ: "Hound Dog."
RODRIGUEZ: Yeah. And I thought - and we couldn't figure that one out. But when I said "Piano Man," my 16-year-old was next to me driving. And within about 20 seconds, he got the - he anagrammed it out. And it was a joint effort. His name's Tony (ph).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: His name's Tony. So it was a family affair - all right. I like it. What do you do for a living?
RODRIGUEZ: I actually work for a nonprofit in San Antonio called Youth Orchestras of San Antonio. And my oldest son Tony, that I just mentioned, is a cellist in YOSA.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Oh, how beautiful - well, that's great. So it is a musical family with a musical answer to the quiz. Are you ready to play The Puzzle?
RODRIGUEZ: I hope so.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Here we go.
SHORTZ: All right - Erin, I'm going to read you some famous advertising slogans, past and present. Each contains the advertiser's name but anagrammed. You name the advertiser. For example, if I said this dubs for you, you would say bud - as in, this Bud's for you.
RODRIGUEZ: OK.
SHORTZ: That was the simplest one. Number one, please don't squeeze the rich man.
RODRIGUEZ: Oh, my goodness - I'm totally (unintelligible).
SHORTZ: And it's a bathroom tissue. Please don't squeeze the rich man.
RODRIGUEZ: Oh, Charmin?
SHORTZ: Charmin is right. Number two, you're in good hands with a tall set. You're in good hands with a tall set. And it's an insurance company.
RODRIGUEZ: Allstate?
SHORTZ: Allstate is right. The best part of waking up is golfers in your cup.
RODRIGUEZ: Folgers.
SHORTZ: Folgers is it. I don't want to grow up. I'm a U.S. story kid.
RODRIGUEZ: Toys R Us kid.
SHORTZ: Toys R Us - no longer around. The best...
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Rest in peace.
SHORTZ: Rest in peace. Try this. This is not your father's idle blooms - I-D-L-E - blooms. This is not your father's idle blooms.
RODRIGUEZ: Oh my gosh. This is - (laughter).
SHORTZ: And it's a make of auto that was discontinued, I think, about 10 years ago. And during their last years, they were trying to jazz up the brand and said, this is not your father's idle blooms.
RODRIGUEZ: Gosh.
SHORTZ: What if I told you it starts with O?
RODRIGUEZ: Oldsmobile?
SHORTZ: Oldsmobile is it - good. Nobody better lay a finger on my better fig earn.
RODRIGUEZ: Gosh.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Do you watch TV at all?
RODRIGUEZ: I do, actually.
(LAUGHTER)
RODRIGUEZ: I used to be a news producer in Miami.
SHORTZ: You must zap...
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I'm bewildered because you must zap through these commercials...
SHORTZ: You must zap through them. Yeah.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: ...Because they are ringing in my head.
RODRIGUEZ: Oh.
SHORTZ: OK. It's a brand of chocolate bar - candy bar. Nobody better lay a finger on my better fig earn. All right - you know this one, Lulu?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I do - Butterfinger.
SHORTZ: Butterfinger.
RODRIGUEZ: Butter...
SHORTZ: That's right.
RODRIGUEZ: Oh, yeah.
SHORTZ: All right - try this one. Pardon me. Do you have any younger pop?
RODRIGUEZ: Grey Poupon.
SHORTZ: Yes. How about this? Nobody doesn't like a resale. And they're cakes, like snack cakes. Nobody doesn't like a resale - R-E-S-A-L-E.
RODRIGUEZ: Oh, Little Debbie - no.
SHORTZ: No - probably a competitor.
RODRIGUEZ: Sara Lee?
SHORTZ: Yes. Yeah. Nobody doesn't like a Sara - doesn't like Sara Lee. That's right.
RODRIGUEZ: I better have gotten that right. My brother used to work for Sara Lee. So - (laughter).
SHORTZ: Whoa. And here's your last one. There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's dream carts.
RODRIGUEZ: Mastercard?
SHORTZ: Mastercard is it.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Good job - congratulations. I got to ask you something, Will. How do you come up with these? Do you go back into the sort of - the mists of time to look up old advertising?
SHORTZ: Yeah, I did Google searches of classic advertising slogans, went through literally thousands of them.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Wow. OK. So there you go. It was a tough puzzle, but you did great. How do you feel, Erin?
RODRIGUEZ: I feel like my brain got a workout.
(LAUGHTER)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That's what we want. For playing our puzzle today, you'll get a WEEKEND EDITION lapel pin, as well as puzzle books and games. You can read all about it at npr.org/puzzle. And, Erin, what member station do you listen to?
RODRIGUEZ: I listen to KSTX in San Antonio. And I'm a member.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Erin Rodriguez of San Antonio, Texas, thank you for playing The Puzzle.
RODRIGUEZ: Thank you.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: All right - Will, tell us next week's challenge.
SHORTZ: Yes. It comes from listener Joe Krozel of Creve Coeur, Mo. Name a vehicle in two words, each with the same number of letters. Subtract a letter from each word. And the remaining letters in order will spell the first and last names of a famous writer. Who is it? So again, a vehicle, two words, same number of letters in each word - subtract a letter from each word. And the remaining letters in order without any rearranging will spell the first and last names of a famous writer. What writer is it?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: When you have the answer, go to our website npr.org/puzzle and click on the Submit Your Answer link. Remember, just one entry per person, please. Our deadline for entries is Thursday, January 31 at 3 p.m. Eastern. Include a phone number where we can reach you at about that time. And if you're the winner, we'll give you a call. And you'll get to play on the air with the puzzle editor of The New York Times and WEEKEND EDITION'S puzzlemaster, Will Shortz. Thanks so much, Will.
SHORTZ: Thanks, Lulu.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
If you have a kid anywhere from 6 to 10 years old and they like science or you want to get them to like science, you may have already heard of the Netflix show "Brainchild," which takes science and makes it fun.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "BRAINCHILD")
SAHANA SRINIVASAN: How big is the universe? Where are we in the cosmos? What are stars made of? And most of all, are we alone in the universe?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That's the host, Sahana Srinivasan. And she joins us now. Welcome.
SRINIVASAN: Hi. Thanks for having me.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Hi. So you're in school. You're in university.
SRINIVASAN: Yes, ma'am. So I'll be graduating in May from UT.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That's really exciting. What are you studying?
SRINIVASAN: I'm studying film - Radio Television Film.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Fantastic. OK. So I guess, as we know, getting young girls interested in STEM is vital to getting women working in STEM. And seeing a young woman like yourself talking science seems like it was deliberate. They wanted to sort of encourage that in young girls.
SRINIVASAN: Yeah, exactly. A lot of people compare the show to, like, "Bill Nye" or "Beakman's World," "Adam Ruins Everything." And all of those include a male host. So when we see that, it could be discouraging for young girls who are very interested in going into STEM fields or STEAM, which incorporates art into engineering and science.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I've heard you get a lot of mail from young fans. What do they say?
SRINIVASAN: Oh, yeah. It's so sweet when I get mail or messages. They talk to me about stuff like seeing a woman talk to you about science and stuff is very encouraging for young girls. And they message me about that. And then I also have women of color - Indian young girls who tell me that they're interested in going into acting. And this is inspirational for them. Yeah. It's really cool to hear about that.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Well, needless to say, I came across this because I've got a 6-year-old daughter who absolutely loves you. And she was so excited that I was going to talk to you. And she asked me to send you a message. Here it is.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: I love how you say it. And I watch "Brainchild" every day. And I'm really interested into "Brainchild."
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Do you want to be a scientist?
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: I want to be a scientist.
SRINIVASAN: Aww. That's so sweet. That's awesome.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So, yeah. There you go - a little bit of fan mail that I thought might perk you up.
SRINIVASAN: Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that message. I definitely think she can...
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Let's hope she sticks with it.
SRINIVASAN: ...Do it. Yeah.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: (Laughter).
SRINIVASAN: I think she can do it so...
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So you've said, actually, people interested in science are diverse. What they see on television is not.
SRINIVASAN: Yeah. If you're in a room and you look around, it's so colorful. It's so diverse. And if you look on a screen and you see a group of friends, and they're all the same, that's surprising. It's more surprising, you know, to see that than to see a woman of color hosting a science show. You know, at first you think, oh, that's rare, like, I haven't seen that, you know. But I think the other is actually more startling because it's totally not how it is in real life.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: You're from Texas. And science nowadays has been under assault. In Texas, the state Board of Education has voted to allow textbooks to have language doubting evolution. What does this show do about showing young people how the world works?
SRINIVASAN: Yeah. So I think what "Brainchild" does really well is explore topics that may not be discussed in school traditionally. For example, our first episode is social media. I feel like we do it in sort of an entertaining and fun way, which really is engaging for kids to see.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Sahana Srinivasan, the host of "Brainchild" on Netflix, thank you so much.
SRINIVASAN: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
The all-female trio Lula Wiles is giving folk music a new reputation through the band's sophomore album "What Will We Do."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SHAKING AS IT TURNS")
LULA WILES: (Singing) Is this land yours? Is this land mine? The fault lines crack and the fists, they fly. In the heat of the night, I touch the falling sky.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: The three women met as little girls at a fiddle camp one summer and bonded over their love of folk music. Now the group's in their 20s. And in their new album, they speak to some of today's most pressing issues. Isa Burke, Eleanor Buckland and Mali Obomsawin are the members of Lula Wiles. And they join me now from Boston.
Welcome.
ISA BURKE: Thank you so much for having us.
MALI OBOMSAWIN: Hi, Lulu.
ELEANOR BUCKLAND: We're glad to be here.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So I have to ask. You met at a fiddle camp when you were little girls. I want you to take me back to that meeting.
BURKE: (Laughter) So this is Isa speaking. We went to this fiddle camp every year. When I first went, I was 11.
BUCKLAND: This is Eleanor. And I think I went when I was 12. And I'm pretty sure I met you, Isa, the second year I went. I do remember you teaching me a fiddle tune called "Old Yeller Dog Come Trotting Through The Meeting House." And that is one of my first memories of our friendship.
BURKE: Yeah.
OBOMSAWIN: And I - this is Mali speaking. I started going when I was 12 or 13. And I actually grew up in the same hometown as Ellie. So I knew her. I met her in swimming lessons.
BUCKLAND: Yeah.
OBOMSAWIN: But I remember in the dinner line...
BURKE: Oh, yes. I love this story.
OBOMSAWIN: I was complaining to a few of my friends - my camp friends - that I couldn't sing. And Isa turned around and was like, shut up. You can sing.
BURKE: (Laughter).
OBOMSAWIN: And that was how we met.
(LAUGHTER)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I love that. It's a great story.
BURKE: Yeah.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I'm going to talk about this album. A lot of the songs on this album are about love and relationships, but they're not romantic songs. I'm specifically thinking of the song "Bad Guy" because it turns...
(LAUGHTER)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: ...Male-female relationships on its head. Let's listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BAD GUY")
LULA WILES: (Singing) Followed her husband down into the glade. And I drew my dagger across his chest. And the wound I dug as deeply as his grave. How black his blood did flow. If I was the bad guy, would you love me less?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Tell me about this song.
(LAUGHTER)
BUCKLAND: Well, this is Eleanor speaking. And it's about this concept of fleeing from a crime and confessing that crime to your lover, to somebody that's really important to you. And we set it to music specifically in a pretty old-time fiddle traditional murder ballad style of music because - and if people aren't familiar with the folk tradition, there are just scores and scores of murder ballads. And in most of them, the man kills the woman because she either says no to his advances or they get pregnant and he's upset. And so he brutally kills them both. It's horrendous. And we wanted to put a drop in the bucket of sort of settling that score.
BURKE: Yeah. And this is Isa speaking. I think we kind of wanted to explore the murder ballad from a perspective that made sense to us, which was one of female solidarity.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Mali, you are a citizen of the Abenaki nation. And there's a song on this album that examines the exploitative relationship between cowboys and native people. Let's listen to that.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GOOD OLD AMERICAN VALUES")
LULA WILES: (Singing) Good old American cartoons, Indians and cowboys and saloons. It's all history by now. But we hold the pen anyhow.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Tell me a little bit about this song.
OBOMSAWIN: It's about erasure and the relationship between native people and settlers. That line is definitely sourced in me growing up and not learning any Abenaki history or hardly any Native American history at all in school and having to really seek it out myself and do my own research. And, you know, I find myself noticing that when I go to bookstores, you know, native history is in a different section than American history, for instance. Right?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah.
OBOMSAWIN: And that seems like an enormous problem because that means that native history is optional. It's not a serious interest, right? It's elective, whereas American history is something that is important. And they are two separate things.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GOOD OLD AMERICAN VALUES")
LULA WILES: (Singing) On these good, old, American values, there's a fortune to be made.
(SOUNDBITE OF LULA WILES' "HOMETOWN")
GARCIA-NAVARRO: You are all from rural Maine. And listening to this album and to the thoughts that sort of informed it, there seems like there's something that you really want to get across.
BUCKLAND: This is Eleanor. And one of the songs that I wrote primarily is a song called "Hometown." And it speaks directly to my experience and Isa and Mali's experience of growing up in rural Maine.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HOMETOWN")
LULA WILES: (Singing) Your hometown shot in like a magazine ad, prom queen crown and a picket fence. Everybody's chit-chatting on the Main Street drag. They all know you from way back when. Flip the page, it's a broke-down dream. There's a truck in the yard and a bird in a cage.
BUCKLAND: So in the case of this song, what we were trying to say is that we feel like the American dream is broken. And yet, lots of rural people - and specifically conservative, working-class people and lower economic class - are still operating with the idea that the American dream can give back to them. And in fact, we think that it is mostly broken.
OBOMSAWIN: This is Mali speaking. I think sharing the stories that get erased and drawing attention to them and starting conversations about those stories is one of the primary goals of our album and what we're talking about with each other...
BUCKLAND: Yeah.
OBOMSAWIN: ...And with our friends, what we're worried about, we're losing sleep about.
BURKE: Yeah, what's on our minds, whether that's learning to be on our own when we've been heartbroken - there's quite a few (laughter) songs on the record about that - or the more overtly political songs. That's why we called the album "What Will We Do" because that's the question that we're all asking in a myriad of different ways.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHAT WILL WE DO")
LULA WILES: (Singing) What will we do if we marry a tinker? Oh, true lovers, what will we do then? Only sell a tin can and walk on with my man, and we'll yodel it over again.
OBOMSAWIN: You know, as musicians, we're sort of answering our own question - right? - like, what will we do? You know, people listening to the album will ask themselves that question. But for us, what we will do is write a series of songs that start conversations, hopefully, because we kind of think that the best route to justice of any kind is sort of demolishing and dismantling ignorance. And that comes through starting discussions...
BUCKLAND: Yeah.
OBOMSAWIN: ...And actually talking to each other and not stigmatizing each other or each other's viewpoints.
BURKE: Yeah.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Mali Obomsawin, Isa Burke, Eleanor Buckland are the members of Lula Wiles. Their new album is "What Will We Do." Thank you all so much.
OBOMSAWIN: Thank you, Lulu.
BUCKLAND: Thank you. Yeah, we had a great time.
BURKE: Thanks so much.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHAT WILL WE DO")
LULA WILES: (Singing) What will we do if we have a young...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Hey hey, ho ho, shutdown has got to go.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
AMY FELLOWS: 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)
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.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NANCY PELOSI: 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.
(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO SHOW, "THE SEAN HANNITY SHOW")
SEAN HANNITY: I know some of you say, well, he didn't get any money for the wall. He didn't get any money for the wall. No. He didn't. But he's going to.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ALISYN CAMEROTA: Longtime Donald Trump associate informal adviser Roger Stone has been arrested and indicted by a grand jury on charges brought by the special counsel Robert Mueller.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ROGER STONE: I will plead not guilty to these charges. I will defeat them in court. I believe this is a politically motivated investigation.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
SARAH SANDERS: What I do know is that this has nothing to do with the president, has nothing to do with the White House.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JUAN GUAIDO: (Speaking Spanish).
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MICHAEL POMPEO: The regime of former President Nicolas Maduro is illegitimate.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MIKE PENCE: We say to all the good people of Venezuela - estamos con ustedes. We are with you.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
Those are some of the voices in the news talking about Venezuela, the indictment of the president's friend and ally Roger Stone and, of course, the end of the government shutdown - for now.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
Our Mara Liasson is here to tell us more. Good morning, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Good morning, Lulu.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: OK. So the shutdown is over for now. There's just about three weeks to come to an agreement. What happens next?
LIASSON: What happens next is that House and Senate negotiators from both parties start talking to each other. The president has said that at the end of three weeks, if he doesn't get money for a wall, he will either declare a national emergency - in other words, build the wall himself with unobligated Pentagon funds - or shut down the government again. But no one I've talked to on either side of the aisle thinks that he will actually shut down the government again. Some people do think that declaring an emergency is still his endgame. But many Republicans are against that because they say it'll set a precedent. And a future Democratic president could declare an emergency for gun safety or health care or climate change. And these Republicans say that any kind of an emergency declaration would be tied up in court, and he would end up getting no wall after all.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: This was such a bruising fight, Mara. Over the last month, as we talked about the possibility of declaring a national emergency, you said it was kind of like a life vest. He could use it to show his base he did everything that he could, and that would satisfy them. Do you think, after all this, it still holds?
LIASSON: I think some of the dynamic on that has changed a bit because he took a big hit with his base this week. He went into a macho standoff and lost to Madam Speaker. And some of his base is angry with him because they think he had no strategy. They think he wimped out. And don't forget this was a kind of two-step capitulation. First, he played brinksmanship (ph) on the State of the Union address, then retreated on that. And Nancy Pelosi had a strategy. As she reportedly told a group of columnists this week, she says, you start with a feather. Then you get to the sledgehammer. So her "Art Of The Deal" was smarter and more strategic than the president's. His critics say his strategy was more whining than winning.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: It's interesting to hear you say that because, elsewhere in the show, we spoke with a conservative talk show host who said that his base is, quote, "very forgiving." So what gives?
LIASSON: I think that's right. His hardcore base will never desert him. As he said, he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes. The big question is, how big is his hardcore base? We know from polling, including NPR's polling, that his approval rating was starting to slip with white, working-class voters who are the core of his base. And we know that in every shutdown - shutdowns end because one side reaches their pain threshold first. In this case, it was the Republicans and Donald Trump. Maybe it was the long lines at the airport, that angry video statement from the FBI director or all those Senate Republicans who were starting to jump ship. But he had a weak hand and played it poorly. And his base is angry at him.
What I've heard is not so much because he capitulated, not so much because they won't get the wall - because, after all, immigration restrictionists don't put the wall as their No. 1 priority. But they're angry because he seemed weak and feckless and in over his head. And what we learned this week, also, is Democrats, at least for now, do not have an Herbal Tea Party problem. In other words, Pelosi was able to control her left flank a lot better than John Boehner or Paul Ryan ever did with the Freedom Caucus. So far, the Democrats are hanging together more than the White House thought they would.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And seeming tough while they do it - I like that, an Herbal Tea Party problem. Well, to add to the pain of the president's week, we would be remiss not to mention his longtime friend Roger Stone was indicted this week.
LIASSON: That's right. His longtime friend Roger Stone, who is a self-described dirty trickster. I can't think of another president who's had a fixer and a dirty trickster in their orbit. But Roger Stone was invited - indicted. That increases the number of close associates to the president who have pled guilty or been indicted. Stone says he won't plead. He won't cooperate. He won't turn on the president. Maybe he's banking on a pardon. But what it seems like is that Robert Mueller is doing what most organized crime prosecutions do, working their way up the food chain, starting with small fry like Papadopoulos and then going up the ladder to people who are closer to the president. So it was a bad day for the president. But on the other hand, his capitulation on the shutdown took some of the attention away from the Robert - Roger Stone indictment. It was a bit of a distraction.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: NPR national political reporter Mara Liasson - thank you so much, Mara.
LIASSON: Thank you.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
In Venezuela, protests against the government of President Nicolas Maduro continue. The United States and others have recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as the interim president. And European countries promise to follow suit unless Maduro announces a new election within a week. The bedrock of support for the socialist government has always been among the poor in Venezuela, but that has changed. So we reached out to a Venezuelan journalist who lives in one of the most impoverished areas to get a sense of what poor Venezuelans think of the current crisis. We're not using his name for his protection.
UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST: The slum I live in was very, very pro-Chavez. And they even voted for Maduro in 2015. The chavismo won even though in everywhere else in the country, the opposition did. But right now the things with Maduro have gotten really, really bad. People have no enough food, water, electricity. The minimum wage is worth nothing, so they're getting paid $6 a month. So it's really difficult for them to eat. And people start demonstrate spontaneously on the slum, which is something that we have never seen before in at least 15 years.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Tell me about those protests. You say that there were spontaneous. They were inside the actual community in which you live. What were people saying? What were they doing?
UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST: Yeah. The main model in this protest was, the people is hungry. We are hungry. And I say they were spontaneous because Juan Guaido was calling for a demonstration in the east of the city very organized. But in the slums, it got a bit nastier. Like, people were burning tires in the middle of the street, throwing rocks at the police. It's different when people rallies in the east of the city, which is the wealthiest and, let's say, the most organized part of the city. In the west, people is more passionate, is more angry because they are the ones who are suffering this crisis the most.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And you are a father, and you have a partner. How do you survive? What is it like there on a day-to-day basis when you live in, you know, an impoverished community, which is being affected the most?
UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST: Oh, yeah. It's rather difficult. I mean, sometimes, it's not just about money - general scarcity for stuff. I remember when my baby was a newborn. We couldn't find the special milk she needed because my wife couldn't breastfeed her. So it didn't matter if you had all the money in Venezuela. You couldn't find milk, which is very desperating (ph). I consider myself very lucky because I can at least make three meals a day. But I don't have to go too far to see the situation's pretty bad. I see, for example, my sister-in-law. She has a baby, too. And there have been nights where she told me in confidence that she's been having for dinner just a glass of water with some sugar because she has no food.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: You don't want to use your name. You are a working journalist inside Venezuela. And we know that there's been a lot of repression of an independent media. Can you tell me why you don't want to use your name? And what is the situation for journalists there now?
UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST: Yeah, it's a huge risk. The government has an enormous intelligence apparatus. So if they find out who you are and if you're working as a journalist trying to tell what's going on in the street, they might target you. The worst part is that they threaten your family. They don't care. I mean, they just want you to stop.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: We've seen millions of Venezuelans leave - young people like yourself. What effect has that had on the country?
UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST: There's a lot of sadness. I mean, we have seen, for example, the depression levels in general have increased drastically, the suicide rate. My brother left the country last year. And, you know, I've been with him my entire life. And that was very depressing. I mean, he had to leave because he has two kids, and he has no way to feed them. And it's so sad. And my mother and my father have been so sad about it.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That was a Venezuelan journalist speaking to us from Caracas about the situation in his country.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
Here in Washington, the president and Congress will be negotiating to avoid another shutdown over a wall at the southern border. Well, down at the border in El Paso yesterday, hundreds of residents took to the streets to protest more physical barriers along the edge of that city. Monica Ortiz Uribe reports.
(SOUNDBITE OF CONCH TUNE)
MONICA ORTIZ URIBE, BYLINE: An Aztec dancer in a feathered headdress blew into a coral-colored conch. Families waving American flags marched behind him, some wearing T-shirts that said, resist the wall. They marched with their dogs and toddlers chanting in both Spanish and English.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Hey, hey, ho, ho. The border wall has got to go.
ORTIZ URIBE: Congresswoman Veronica Escobar, the freshman Democrat who represents El Paso, kicked off the protest by shouting into a bullhorn.
VERONICA ESCOBAR: And I am going to fight every single day for compassionate, humane and just immigration reform. And I...
ORTIZ URIBE: Escobar denounces the Trump administration's immigration policy for using, quote, "cruelty as a means of deterrence." And she's among the House majority who won't support more funding for a wall. Lawmakers in the House will likely have to compromise with the Senate, whose majority tends to side with the president. That worries Joe Heyman, a professor of border studies at the local university.
JOE HEYMAN: I'm a little concerned that what we're going to get is, you know, more Border Patrol officers, which is, you know, an agency that's already overstaffed and unaccountable, and more beds for ICE.
ORTIZ URIBE: ICE is Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the interior immigration force. The Trump administration favors opening more detention space and extending stays for immigrants beyond what's now legally permissible. Among the weekend protesters were 53 members of a Seventh-day Adventist church in Dallas. Their pastor is Jaime Kowlessar.
JAIME KOWLESSAR: Jesus was a migrant. You know, the Bible talks about - he had to flee to Egypt because of danger. So how can we profess to love Jesus and what he stands for, but we show hatred towards those that are running from the same thing? So this is our faith in action.
ORTIZ URIBE: A record number of Central American families are showing up at the southern border, many fleeing violence and extreme poverty. The Dallas congregation spent the evening sorting clothes at a local migrant shelter in El Paso and meeting with the families housed there.
KOWLESSAR: We actually had a waiting list of some people who wanted to come. And so we are going to plan another trip.
ORTIZ URIBE: The protest ended in El Paso's Chihuahuita neighborhood. From here, Mexico is just a quick sprint across the dry bed of the Rio Grande. An 18-foot steel fence has stood behind single-story adobe homes here for about a decade. Some residents say it's helped reduce crime and illegal crossings. Others, like Mariana Barlea, say they barely notice a difference.
MARIANA BARLEA: (Speaking Spanish).
ORTIZ URIBE: "People still keep crossing over," she says with a laugh. Sometimes, the Border Patrol catches them. Sometimes, they don't. For NPR News, I'm Monica Ortiz Uribe in El Paso.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
Members of a small Muslim community in upstate New York say they're frightened and angry after police announced last week that they uncovered another terror plot that targeted local families. Islamberg is a community near the Catskill Mountains. North Country Public Radio's Brian Mann reports.
BRIAN MANN, BYLINE: Rashid Clark stepped to the microphone at a press conference in Binghamton, N.Y., and found himself again talking about a deadly threat to him and his neighbors.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
RASHID CLARK: The community of Islamberg is, once again, in shock. If you are wondering how we feel, just imagine waking up and having to tell your children of such a plot.
MANN: About 200 people live in Islamberg. The religious settlement was established in the 1980s. And it's been viewed by most locals for decades as a normal part of life in the rural area. Clark says people who visit find nothing out of the ordinary.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
R CLARK: We grow crops. We raise animals. And we live like law-abiding citizens.
MANN: The Police Chief Patrick Phelan in the town of Greece, N.Y., three hours away announced the arrest of four men. They were allegedly preparing an attack against Islamberg that involved more than 20 firearms and three homemade bombs.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PATRICK PHELAN: If they had carried out this plot, which every indication is that they were going to, people would've died.
MANN: There's no indication any of the suspects had visited Islamberg or interacted with families there. But the community has been the target of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories on conservative websites and social media for years.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: It appears to be a faithful group of devotional Muslims. But when you look into it, you'll find a lot of very concerning activities going on there.
MANN: Videos like this one, suggesting that Islamberg's residents are dangerous militants, has spread widely on Facebook and other platforms despite being debunked by state and federal police.
SCOTT HEGGELKE: We have never found any evidence that there's anything nefarious going on.
MANN: Captain Scott Heggelke is a New York State Trooper.
HEGGELKE: We all have been working with the community there in Islamberg. And never have we found any shred of evidence that would indicate anything whatsoever.
MANN: But frightening reports about Islamberg have continued to appear online. And they've been featured on Fox News and Fox Business and other outlets. Anti-Muslim protests have been held near the community. And in 2017, a right-wing activist from Tennessee was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison after he used Facebook to build support for an attack on Islamberg's mosque and school. At the press conference Rashid Clark, Islamberg's leader, blasted news and social media organizations, accusing them of helping spread fear about Islam.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
R CLARK: Holy Islamberg is a small community - mostly women, children. We have elderly. We hold jobs. We are doctors, lawyers, engineers, construction workers. We're normal people.
MANN: Tahirah Clark, an attorney who lives in Islamberg, noted that two of the suspects arrested in this latest plot are high school students. She cautioned parents about the information about Islam their children are seeing online.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TAHIRAH CLARK: We urge parents to be vigilant. Know what your children are doing, particularly on social media, because many are being radicalized by hate by the right-wing domestic terrorists.
MANN: Much of the false information targeting Islamberg was stripped from the Internet last year after conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was banned by YouTube, Facebook and other sites. But an online search by NPR turned up plenty of websites and videos that still describe the families living there as a threat. State police say they've stepped up patrols around Islamberg and their investigation into this latest plot continues. Authorities say more arrests are possible. Brian Mann, NPR News.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
The Islamberg plot wasn't the only threat that was thwarted last week. In Utah, a 27-year-old man was arrested on a terrorism charge after posting on social media about being a virgin and saying he wanted to become, quote, "the next mass shooter." What both in New York and Utah incidents have in common is the profile of those involved - young, white men. According to a recent report by the Anti-Defamation League, 98 percent of the extremist-related murders in the United States in 2018 were carried out by right-wing extremists, a large portion white supremacists. We wanted to explore further this issue of men, particularly young men in the U.S., who turn to violent extremism. And we're joined now by a man who understands this firsthand - Tony McAleer. He's a former organizer for the White Aryan Resistance. He left that life behind and helped then start Life After Hate. It's a group of former violent extremists committed to education and countering violent ideologies.
Welcome to the program.
TONY MCALEER: Thank you for having me.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: How did it work for you? How were you lured into that world?
MCALEER: I wasn't so much lured. In a way, I went seeking it out. And I'm not saying that to excuse any of the things I did because I've done a lot of horrible things. But I'm trying to share with you the lens through which I made those decisions. I grew up in a middle-class family. My father was a psychiatrist. But, you know, I walked in on my father when I was 10 with another woman. And that turned my world upside down. I rejected all the authority figures in my life. I went into sort of rebellion mode. And I went from this A, B student to a C, D student. My parents and the teachers got together and said, well, let's beat the grades into him. And so they tried to - you know, I got hit on the rear end with a yardstick every time I didn't get an A or B on major tests and assignments.
And all those times that I spent in that teacher's office getting hit on the rear end, to this day, I don't think I've ever felt more powerless in my entire life. So I got involved in the punk scene because I was really angry. And then, you know, when I came across the skinheads, they had what I didn't. And that was toughness. And that's what drew me to them initially was - my bullying survival skill growing up was befriend the bully, become the bully. And that's what I did because when I was with them, I was safe.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So when you hear these stories of these alleged attackers supposedly planning these attacks, what do you think?
MCALEER: Well, I think that when I was in the depths of my involvement with Aryan Nations and White Aryan Resistance and all of that, I had stockpiled weapons. Once you're that far into it, you become that far disconnected from your own humanity in the process of getting there - that human life, especially if it's not white, doesn't mean anything. You know, if you see yourself as very small and insignificant in the world deep down inside - you look at, you know, anyone who's done these mass killings in the name of the white race. They become legendary. And people want to emulate them. You know, when you've got nothing going on in your life, you know, the fantasy of going out in a blaze of glory to have your name forever etched in the history books, that can be enticing.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: How did you get out of this? - because it seems that young, white men, in many ways - on social media specifically nowadays, but in other ways - are sort of being targeted. And they're vulnerable to this kind of messaging. How do we prevent young men and boys from falling into extreme camps?
MCALEER: I mean, my case, ultimately, it was the birth of my children. You know, at the age of 20, I thought I'd be dead or in jail as a white revolutionary by the time I was 30. I was a father at 23. For the first time in my life, I started to make decisions for someone other than myself because I was a complete narcissist. And the crazy thing about children is their love is unconditional. They didn't care that I was a neo-Nazi. They didn't care that I had assault rifles in the closet. They don't see that. They just see the human that's interacting with them. And that's sort of what compassion does. And it allowed me to thaw. And when we're compassionate with someone, we hold up a mirror and allow them to see their humanity reflected back at them when they're incapable of seeing it on their own. And I think that's the power of compassion. It's at the power - it's - compassion is at the root of, you know, what we do at Life After Hate.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: What I'm hearing you say, perhaps, also, is that there is a problem with the way we teach young men, specifically white, young men, that they need to be in the world, that there might not be a model for them to deal with these difficult feelings.
MCALEER: That's definitely part of it. I mean, who teaches white men? Most of the time, it's fathers. And who teaches those fathers? Their fathers' fathers. And so the thing about, you know, these negative attitudes is they cascade through generations, right? If my father is misogynist, if I observe my father belittling and treating my mom poorly and, you know, he puts stuff onto me, chances are I'm going to continue the family tradition. And, you know, I've seen that the way roles are transferred through generations that people and families have to play. The job, I think, we have to do is we have to break these cycles.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I can see someone hearing this and thinking, these men are violent. They profess violence. And we normally don't say compassion is enough when we talk about Islamist terrorists, for example. Isn't it a double standard?
MCALEER: Well, I think - and I'm remiss a little bit here. Compassion only works when it's accompanied with healthy boundaries and consequences. It has to have that component of healthy boundaries and consequences. Otherwise, it's an invitation for abuse and re-abuse.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Do you see that there's a spike right now, though? Do you see that there are a lot more of these kinds of attacks and people that are being drawn to this ideology? And does it concern you?
MCALEER: Absolutely, because it's growing. The polarization of our society is growing - and, you know, from that polarized part on the violent far right, I think, is growing. And the attacks are becoming more frequent. And in a strange way, it's almost becoming normalized. You know, it's not normal. But it's happened with such a frequency that we don't react the same way after five or six or seven of them as we did at the first one or two. That's a concern.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Tony McAleer of the group Life After Hate. Thank you so much.
MCALEER: Thank you.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
It all began with a tweet. Colorado Avalanche Center Nathan MacKinnon was all set to compete in the National Hockey League's All-Star Skills Competition, but he got a bruised foot. So he had to pull out. But McKinnon had another player in mind to fill in. And his team tweeted out an invitation to Kendall Coyne Schofield. She's a forward for the U.S. women's national team, which took the gold medal at last year's Olympics. Her first thought, she said, was, I can do this. And so she did. In the fastest skater event, she posted a time of 14.346 seconds, which placed seventh among some of the NHL's top players. And it made her the first woman to ever compete in the NHL All-Stars Skills Competition. Obviously, I was a little nervous, Coyne Schofield told ESPN. But she said, I knew it was a moment that was going to break a lot of barriers and a moment that would change the perception of our game.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
Gina Rodriguez is having a moment. Her leading role on TV's "Jane The Virgin" is ending. It earned her a Golden Globe in 2015. But she's now graduated to a lead in a major motion picture, which opens Friday. It comes at long last and with some stage fright.
GINA RODRIGUEZ: It is scary. It's - I can be very transparent and say it is very scary.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: The film is "Miss Bala," where Gina Rodriguez plays Gloria Fuentes, a young Hispanic-American makeup artist who gets involved with a drug cartel in order to find her missing friend.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "MISS BALA")
RODRIGUEZ: (As Gloria) I grew up in the States. I've lived here for a few years. My father is American. And he owned a factory of (speaking Spanish) here.
ISMAEL CRUZ CORDOVA: (As Lino) I can help you find your friend. But you have to do something for me first. You do that, and I'll help you find Suzu. You mess around, and I'll kill you both.
RODRIGUEZ: I was actually more intrigued by this role because of what it meant and what they were creating. So when I was approached with it from Sony, they told me they were reimagining the original Mexican film "Miss Bala." And they wanted to do it with an all-Latinx cast and crew. And they wanted to make sure that the American girl was Latina. I was very excited about that prospect. It has never - that - I've never been approached with that opportunity in my life.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Like, the explicit opportunity to be who you are in a film (laughter).
RODRIGUEZ: Yes, the explicit opportunity to be who I am in the film as well as make it with my community in front of and behind the camera. And I then read the script. And what was beautiful was the open conversation of making sure that this young girl who goes from an ordinary woman to an extraordinary woman and really solidifies her power and finds her strength was going to have agency, was going to have an agenda, was going to work consistently at every opportunity she had to save herself and to save her loved one. And that you don't see often in action movies. And you definitely don't see it reflecting in action movies led by women, which felt like a really great opportunity.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "MISS BALA")
RODRIGUEZ: (As Gloria) La bala - in the end, the bullet settles everything.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Gina Rodriguez grew up in Chicago salsa dancing and learning from her Puerto Rican parents the importance of confidence and hard work. Rodriguez made it big late for an actress. She was 29 when she landed "Jane The Virgin."
RODRIGUEZ: I was in first class for, like, the first time ever.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: (Laughter).
RODRIGUEZ: I was making sure I wrote down every feeling, make sure I was sitting in - all that hard work, all those nos, all that failure, all that rejection, sitting there and appreciating it because it got me to this point.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And now she's starring in "Miss Bala."
Do you feel like it has to be a success because you represent so much to so many people because you are trailblazing?
RODRIGUEZ: Oh, man. Well, now I'm going to take that one.
(LAUGHTER)
RODRIGUEZ: If I wasn't thinking about that before...
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Sorry.
RODRIGUEZ: Thanks, Lulu. No, I'm kidding (laughter).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah, my pleasure.
RODRIGUEZ: But, you know - no, you know what it is? - is that if this is a success, then they will make more. That's the pressure. I just want the studios to see, see. You made your money back. Now go make more. Now stop acting like we're such a risk, you know? And, like, that's what I want.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Do you say that when you go into the room with executives?
RODRIGUEZ: Yeah, of course I do (laughter).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I mean, you are so outspoken in public. But I'm wondering if behind closed doors, there has to be a different kind of conversation.
RODRIGUEZ: No.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Or do you think that that works?
RODRIGUEZ: No, the conversation is the truth. We call a spade a spade. And it's very real to me. I was just having a conversation the other day with a possible line producer for a TV show that we just sold - who happens to be a white male. And we're doing an interview. And he says, you know, I would do this. And I would do that. And I would do that. And I was like, OK. I won't allow that. And he was like, excuse me. I said, I won't allow that. We're doing 50 percent females at the head of department. He said, well, makeup and hair - I said, no. I want a female DP. I want females in the art department and in construction. I want women everywhere. And I want it intersectional. So if you're down for that, then you can jump on board. If you're not, there are plenty of productions out there.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: She's been pushing for representation consistently, but it hasn't been without controversy. Two years ago, she tweeted, Marvel and DC are killing it in inclusion and women. But where are the Latinos? - asking for a friend. She was referring to the movie "Black Panther." Black Twitter said Rodriguez was ignoring Tessa Thompson and Zoe Saldana's roles in other Marvel movies that year. Both are Afro-Latinas. And she's received criticism for other things - comments about pay equity, not inviting enough Afro-Latinas to a brunch at her house - prompting think pieces asking if she's anti-black.
I'm going to ask you about a controversy. You've been criticized for what some people see as the erasure of Afro-Latinos. What are your thoughts now on that?
RODRIGUEZ: But where have I erased anyone? You're telling me that people's opinions about my advocacy makes them feel a certain way, which is unfortunate for me because that's not my intention. But that has never happened. So it's - so I - personally, it's very difficult to have a conversation about people's opinions that haven't read or understood the factual words that have come out of my mouth. I've never said anything controversial about anyone in particular - period. I am not against anyone. I create opportunities for everyone. So I think we often - like, we're living in a culture and in a climate where this is where we're getting our factual information. But they're not facts. They're opinions. So I can't live my life based off of social media opinion. Like, that's unfair for me. And that's unfair for me to have a legitimate conversation with a journalist about something that I don't believe is a - is fair. I don't believe that the context was taken correctly. And if I hurt anyone, I apologize.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: You've mentioned this. And you've been very public about your anxiety and your mental health and how that's escalated with your success. Now that you're busier than ever, how are you handling it? How are you sort of taking care of yourself but also doing all the things you need to do?
RODRIGUEZ: I'm figuring it out one day at a time with each interview. Because of my words being taken out of context, it has definitely prevented me from wanting to have interviews and speak up and speak out, which is unfortunate because that was so much of who I am. I am currently in search of a therapist that understands this world because it's a very specific experience and not too many people know it. It draws me to speak about it because I felt so alone and afraid and embarrassed because I used to feel so strong in my ability to stand up for what I wanted and what I believed. And to think that it debilitates me is interesting and different as I evolve, as I get older and remember that the - you know, at the heart of everything is family and love. And that's most important. So that's what you do, I think. I guess. I'm still learning, though.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: (Laughter).
RODRIGUEZ: I'm definitely still learning.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: How would you describe this moment in your life? If you had to say, you know, this particular moment that you're living through right now, what would you say?
RODRIGUEZ: It's a mix between feeling 13-year-old Gina say, one day, I'm going to be in an action movie, and I'm going to be the lead - and that only took 21 years to get here - and kind of scared. Those two feelings at once make for a crazy, little ying yang (ph) in your body.
(LAUGHTER)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Gina Rodriguez - her latest film is "Miss Bala." Thank you so much.
RODRIGUEZ: Thank you, Lulu - appreciate it.
(SOUNDBITE OF KASEY ANDRE AND JOAKIM KARUD'S "DREAMS")
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
One thing's clear about the political crisis in Venezuela. Nicolas Maduro is still in power despite a multipronged campaign, led by the U.S., to drive him out. Yesterday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo addressed the U.N. Security Council, asking them to act.
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MIKE POMPEO: Time is now to support the Venezuelan people, to recognize the new democratic government led by interim President Guaido, and end this nightmare. No excuses.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Several European countries yesterday gave Maduro an ultimatum - call new elections within a week, or we'll recognize the opposition leader Juan Guaido as president. Maduro, in an interview broadcast this morning, rejected that demand. It's been four days since Guaido declared himself Venezuela's interim president before a vast crowd of supporters. Yet the actual levers of power remain with Maduro and the ruling Socialist Party. Joining me now is NPR's Philip Reeves, who is in Caracas. Good morning.
PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: Good morning.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So, Phil, are cracks beginning to appear?
REEVES: Yes, a few. One, his military attache in Washington, D.C., has defected to Juan Guaido. Secondly, Maduro's climbed down from his decision to expel U.S. diplomats after severing diplomatic ties with D.C. He had given them until this weekend to go. He's now suspended that order for 30 days for both sides to work out what the future relationship is going to be. And three, he's talking about negotiations, although the opposition don't appear to be at all interested in that because they don't recognize him. And they want him to leave.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Well, what does the man at the center of this, Juan Guaido, do next?
REEVES: He's piling on the pressure, taking his campaign to the streets, promising a week of mass demonstrations next week. He's doing so at the risk of arrest. And he's appeared in person at a couple of rallies since that huge gathering in Caracas on Wednesday where he swore himself in as interim president. Yesterday, he showed up at quite a small gathering - a couple of thousand people, mostly middle-class - and didn't stay long. He repeated his offer of amnesty to security forces and the - and to civil servants who want to abandon Maduro. And when you talk to his supporters, they do seem convinced that he will eventually win this battle. This is Jose Carvajal.
JOSE CARVAJAL: I think this is our time. Change comes from leadership. And at this moment, we are gifted with some guys - very young guys that are bringing wisdom to our leadership. After a long time, we are having that.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So a voice of hope there. But you've been out on the streets. What are other people saying?
REEVES: Well, to get a sense of that, I dropped into a market in East Caracas. It's an upscale part of town where they actually have food, unlike much of this country. And I started talking to people there about what they think is now actually happening in their nation after years of hyperinflation and hunger and medical shortages and economic collapse. And I met Maria Sanchez, who was doing her family shopping.
MARIA SANCHEZ: For the first time, people from the east and from the west know that this is a correct time.
REEVES: Of this city, you mean?
SANCHEZ: Yes, of this country.
REEVES: What's changed things? Is it Juan Guaido? Is it...
SANCHEZ: Yes.
REEVES: ...International support?
SANCHEZ: He's a new politician. He's fresh. He's not polluted. I think he's very honest on what he's doing.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So what about Maduro's supporters, of which he has a few?
REEVES: Indeed. And if you drive around Caracas, you still see groups of Chavistas - that's his supporters and the supporters of the Socialist Party - in their red baseball hats and T-shirts. Maduro's main platform is state-run TV. And yesterday, the TV was flooded with propaganda about the - that U.N. Security Council meeting that you mentioned in New York where Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged nations to turn against Maduro and to financially disconnect themselves from the Maduro government, a remark aimed at China and Turkey and also Russia, which, at that meeting, accused Washington of attempting a coup. Now, that meeting has been seized upon by Maduro, who appeared on TV yesterday at a rather eccentric performance in which he sang at one point. And he portrayed yesterday's U.N. Security Council meeting as a triumph for Venezuela.
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PRESIDENT NICOLAS MADURO: (Speaking Spanish).
REEVES: So as you can see, Maduro's still very defiant.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Phil Reeves in Caracas, Venezuela. And we'll be following this story throughout the day. Thank you so much.
REEVES: You're welcome.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
We are joined now by Representative Donna Shalala, who represents a district in Miami with a lot of Venezuelans in it.
Good morning.
DONNA SHALALA: Good morning.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Your view of the administration recognizing the head of the national assembly as the interim president.
SHALALA: Well, I think it's very important. And all of us in South Florida absolutely condone the Maduro government, which has resulted in sickness and hunger and a destroyed economy. So what the administration is doing has our support. But we also are introducing bills to make sure we protect the Venezuelans who are here in the United States, to extend temporary protected status to them. Three million Venezuelans have left, have been forced out. Thousands are in South Florida. We want to protect those that are here in the United States. But we also want to prevent the Maduro government from buying guns and tear gas and batons, anything that they could use against the people.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Representative Shalala, I want to ask you, though, what next? I mean, do you have a sense of what the administration plans to do? Fellow Floridian Senator Marco Rubio is warning of significant consequences and that all options are, quote, "on the table." What are those options?
SHALALA: Well, I think at the moment, those options have to be diplomatic. And you can see the administration using every diplomatic means that it can. The U.S. always leads with diplomacy. And all of us are waiting to see what the military will do and to make sure that we send very clear messages of our support for the people of Venezuela, for the acting president as well as for military leaders that are prepared to step up and bring down the Maduro government.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Would you support military intervention, if it comes to that?
SHALALA: I think that option, which, obviously, the administration is talking about - it's too early to come to any conclusion until we have used everything else.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: This has been unfolding for a long time. I mean, would you support the military intervening in Venezuela?
SHALALA: The United States military intervening in Venezuela - it's literally too early to come to a conclusion about that option. There are plenty of other options that we're now exercising. And the Venezuelan people and the military have to make a decision about whether they want freedom and they want to rebuild their country. And I think all of us want to support all of those efforts.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Since I have you on the line, I must ask you about the shutdown. The president is promising another go around if he doesn't get some funding for his wall in three weeks. What do you want from these negotiations? You've said that you are looking for TPS for Venezuelans. Should immigration be on the table?
SHALALA: Well, I would love for immigration to be on the table, including extending TPS for the Haitians, the Hondurans, the El Salvadorians, the Nicaraguans, all of those who have had their TPS cut off now. And so we'll be looking to see whether that's possible, as well as for the DACA kids, many of whom I know from the University of Miami. But I'm not sure that we can get full immigration reform as part of this deal. The president has an edifice complex. He's totally focused on building a wall. But we have seen some softening of his position. We are focused on border security, which measures - measures which include investments in technology and personnel as well as whatever barriers are necessary but certainly not a rigid approach.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Whatever barriers are necessary - I want to - we don't have much time. But are you saying there might be some flexibility with building barriers?
SHALALA: There always has been flexibility about fencing that needs to be strengthened. This is not a rigid position by the Democrats. We have never said that a comprehensive border security system wouldn't include some fencing. But technology and personnel as well as respecting the amnesty laws of the United States are extremely important...
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Well...
SHALALA: ...As well as strengthening the ports of entry...
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Sure.
SHALALA: ...Which is where the drugs come into this country.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: We'll have to leave it there, I'm afraid. Representative Donna Shalala, a Democrat representing Florida's 27th district - thank you so much.
SHALALA: You're welcome.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
With the federal shutdown over for now, this weekend, some national parks around the country are opening back up. Sara Hossaini from member station KQED reports.
SARA HOSSAINI, BYLINE: Stinson Beach is gleaming in the warm January sun. Surfers float in the distance, occasionally dropping into a wave. Kids like Kyle Johnson are busily erecting a sand barrier to protect their castles from the relentless tide.
KYLE JOHNSON: Now we're trying to build a wall. But it's not going so well, either.
HOSSAINI: Wall or no wall, the beach is back to its regular schedule after private donations kept the park partially open for the past four weekends. Max Farber of nearby Fairfax says he's happy to see the park clean and busy. But he says it's not fair for taxpayers to have paid for the same services twice.
MAX FARBER: To have everybody and community members having to kind of foot the bill is, you know, an unfortunate circumstance.
HOSSAINI: Residents crowdfunded thousands of dollars to help reimburse the owner of a beachside cafe who's been writing personal checks to keep trash picked up, bathrooms open and a ranger on duty. While a deal was failing to materialize on Capitol Hill, Mary Margaret Stewart of Siren Canteen was busy striking one here, which allowed her to keep her business afloat while keeping the beach open for her neighbors. For that, she says she's grateful to park officials.
MARY MARGARET STEWART: Because it wasn't easy because the - you know, we had to, like, meet in a dark - it was almost like this clandestine - just giving a check, like, meeting at 10:15, exact. And, like, sometimes, the check didn't go through because my number was written wrong. You know, it was just, like, crazy.
HOSSAINI: Stewart says she knows it might not be the last time. She's already thinking of saving the crowdfunded cash.
STEWART: I almost feel like it should be in an account for only this kind of stuff even for future closings. Hopefully, there won't be any.
HOSSAINI: President Trump has given until mid-February for Congress to reach a deal. For NPR News, I'm Sarah Hossaini at Stinson Beach.
(SOUNDBITE OF TOMMY GUERRERO'S "AT THE CIRCLES EDGE")
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
Conservative reaction was swift to President Trump's decision Friday to sign a bill that keeps the government open until February 15 without any new funding for a wall on the Mexican border. Ann Coulter let fly this tweet. Good news for George Herbert Walker Bush - as of today, he is no longer the biggest wimp ever to serve as president of the United States. Other conservatives have been kinder. Phil Valentine has been getting reaction on his talk show, which airs in Nashville. And he joins us now.
Welcome.
PHIL VALENTINE: Thank you, Lulu - appreciate that.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: There are federal workers in Nashville. In fact, a food bank opened to serve them. It's a state, though, that went for Trump. What are you hearing?
VALENTINE: Well, I think that people are disappointed. At least, the conservatives I know are disappointed that he had to do this. I think the reality was that the government shutdown wasn't working to get the wall. So he's going to have to take a different tact.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: What's your reaction? I mean, what do you think of the president and how he handled this particular face-off?
VALENTINE: Well, I thought it was, you know, good intentions. And, you know, sometimes, you have to use a government shutdown as leverage. I was disappointed that he had to do it to open the government back up and not get the wall. But I think he's got another plan. And yeah, I think that a lot of Trump supporters - at least, the people listening to my show - are very forgiving. They think that he's probably going to outsmart everybody in the end. Who knows? We'll have to wait and see. But I think he's probably going to go the emergency - national emergency route. That'll probably be tied up in court for a few months, probably till October. And then we'll see what the Supreme Court does. I think that's - that was his last resort. But I think he's run out of options.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: What do the federal workers who call into your show say?
VALENTINE: Well, I had one that was calling in, saying he was going into Buffalo Wild Wings. It was a vacation for him. But see; he'd been with the government a while. If you've been with the government a while, you know that these things happen. And he says as a longtime government employee, I have to understand that I have to save up for these times when I may not have money, you know, at the ready when there's a government shutdown. So it was a mess. But then you had places like USAA, you know, Navy Federal Credit - these people were giving interest-free loans. And I was hoping a lot of people would take advantage of that. But it's tough. I mean, when you're not getting a paycheck and you're being used as a pawn between the two political parties to get something done, it's not a good thing.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: You know, national public polling shows a dip in support for Mr. Trump even among his base. Does this moment mark any kind of shift that you can tell from your talk radio fans to their general support of President Trump?
VALENTINE: Well, I think it's too early to tell because it's like watching a football game. Trump threw an interception. Nancy Pelosi did a pick six, took it to the House and then spiked the ball in the end zone.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: (Laughter).
VALENTINE: But now it's like Tom Brady with two minutes to go in the game. And we're going to see if Trump can drive all the way to the other end and score the winning touchdown. That remains to be seen in the next three weeks.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Something that you said - the idea that Trump voters are very forgiving of the president. Everyone has sort of portrayed this battle as the opening salvo of the 2020 election, of his re-election campaign. Do you think that this will hurt him?
VALENTINE: I don't think this incident as far as, you know, caving on the government shutdown will hurt him as long as he gets the wall in the long term. I mean, sometimes, you know, you're in negotiations. And things don't go as you had planned. And you have to go to plan B or plan C. But I will tell you this, Lulu. If he doesn't do the wall or if he doesn't do everything he can to get the wall, I think, yes, that will definitely hurt him. But if he goes his route, gets blocked by the lower courts, gets blocked by the Supreme Court on a national emergency, I don't know what else he, himself, as the president can do. At that point, he's done all he can do to try to get the wall. And I think that the people understand that.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Phil Valentine, host of The Phil Valentine Show, heard on the news talk radio WWTN in Nashville, thank you so much.
VALENTINE: Thanks, Lulu.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
Investigations into child sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests took a highly public turn last year. State prosecutors took the novel step of releasing the names of hundreds of accused priests, as well as those who covered up their crimes. As NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports, the revelations and the church's response severely damaged the church's credibility and Pope Francis's reputation. In response, he has called for an extraordinary four-day summit on sex abuse next month.
SYLVIA POGGIOLI, BYLINE: Vatican acting spokesman Alessandro Gisotti recently told reporters the summit's goal is that bishops understand that clerical sex abuse is a global problem that needs a global response. He added, Pope Francis insists that when the bishops return home...
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ALESSANDRO GISOTTI: They understand the laws to be applied and that they take the necessary steps to prevent abuse, to care for the victims and to make sure that no case is covered up or buried.
POGGIOLI: With high expectations, the summit could be as big a media event as a papal conclave. This prompted a Vatican editorial claiming the media hype is excessive. Participants will include the presidents of the world's nearly 130 bishops' conferences, abuse survivors and experts. Francis will attend all plenary sessions, working groups, witness testimony, penitential service and final Mass. Massimo Faggioli, professor of theology at Villanova University, speaking over Skype, says the summit should produce global guidelines.
MASSIMO FAGGIOLI: Setting universal standards that all churches have to implement.
POGGIOLI: Francis announced the summit in September as his papacy reeled over botched handling of abuse cases. And he was accused of ignoring in the past sexual misconduct by disgraced former U.S. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, currently under Vatican investigation. Philip Pullella, veteran Vatican correspondent for the Reuters news agency, says the pope could take an important step even before the summit begins.
PHILIP PULLELLA: There's a very good possibility that ex-Cardinal McCarrick will be further disciplined. You know, there's a very good possibility that he will be defrocked. And that will send a strong signal.
POGGIOLI: Should that happen, McCarrick, once an important powerbroker as archbishop of Washington, D.C., would become the highest-profile figure to be dismissed from the priesthood in modern times. Meanwhile, prosecutors in Australia and in France have taken bold steps against church officials, putting bishops on trial for failing to report clerical abuse of minors.
ANNE BARRETT DOYLE: There is now a worldwide movement by prosecutors and legislators and an outraged public to treat the church like ordinary citizens.
POGGIOLI: Anne Barrett Doyle is co-director of Bishop Accountability, an online research group that tracks clerical abuse cases around the world. Speaking over Skype, she says centuries of secrecy to shield the church from secular law gave its leaders a sense of impunity.
BARRETT DOYLE: That illusion that they are still untouchable will probably persist until a bishop ends up behind bars for covering up. And that day may not be far away.
POGGIOLI: Activists like Barrett Doyle and abuse survivors want the Vatican to implement what it has always avoided - accountability, that officials who knew but looked away while predator priests committed crimes abusing minors be finally brought to justice. Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News, Rome.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
We're now going to update you on a story we've been following about two people caught between President Trump's many immigration policies. This past week, at a big city airport, a man and his son met face-to-face for the first time.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Spanish).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking Spanish).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: In the video, you can see the father rushing out to greet his son, hugging him long and hard.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking Spanish).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: To recap their story, the father is from Honduras and has been in the United States since the 1990s. He had temporary protected status or TPS, which President Trump announced he won't renew. The son, without the dad's knowledge, joined one of the caravans cited by President Trump last year. And he ended up at the border desperate to join his father in the United States. We've brought them back together to pick up their story. We are not using their names for their protection.
The son says he saw the caravan announced on Facebook in Honduras. And he decided to join it. It was, he says, a perilous journey.
UNIDENTIFIED SON: (Through interpreter) We came on foot. On the way, there were times when we would eat and times when we wouldn't. We just had to endure it. We were always afraid. Why? - because we left our country to go to another country that we didn't understand. We kept up with the news while we were traveling. And we knew that President Trump was fighting to stop us from coming to the United States.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: He eventually arrived in Tijuana, where, initially, they were put up in a migrant shelter. But then there was a terrible storm, and everything was destroyed.
UNIDENTIFIED SON: (Through interpreter) That was really sad. We had to sleep on the street for almost two weeks in tents. Then they put us up in an empty shop. And I stayed there for more than a week. There were groups that gave us food and clothing.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: He decided to finally take action. And amid the debate about walls, he says, he ended up sneaking across the one in California, entering the United States illegally. Once on the other side, he was taken in by Border Patrol, processed and let go after he said he was seeking asylum. He made his way to his dad last Thursday.
UNIDENTIFIED SON: (Through interpreter) God helped me get to my father, and I need to take advantage of that.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: We should say here that the reason he's never met his father face-to-face was because he was born a few months after his dad left Honduras. And the rules around TPS meant his dad was never able to go back to his home country and visit his son. They knew each other only over FaceTime. The father, who makes a good living in the U.S. as a handyman, said he instantly recognized his son when he finally saw him.
This must have been a very emotional meeting since you had never really met your son face-to-face. How do you feel now that you are able to see him? (Speaking in Spanish).
UNIDENTIFIED FATHER: (Through interpreter) It was incredibly exciting. I feel so happy to have felt that emotion. I've been waiting for this for a long time. We never thought it would actually happen.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: But now, even though they're together, the uncertainty around their futures remain. The father still doesn't know if he'll have to leave when his TPS expires in 2020. President Trump offered to extend the canceled TPS protections during the shutdown talks but nothing has been resolved.
UNIDENTIFIED FATHER: (Through interpreter) We've been watching what's been going on. And we have faith that it will be resolved. My message for the politicians is to not forget that we need them, and they need us. And whatever deal they make, it should help us and also help this country.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: The son will have an asylum hearing next month where his fate could also be decided. President Trump has made it harder for migrants to get asylum in the United States. So I asked him...
You know, there are many people who would listen to this story, and they think that what you did was wrong and that the system is broken. What would your response be to that?
UNIDENTIFIED SON: (Through interpreter) I would say that I came because of a dream to try to make my life better.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: The day they met father and son went out to eat. And then his dad took him home and put him to bed to rest as he never could when he was a child. They both say they want to enjoy the time that they have together for as long as it lasts.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
Oliver Jeffers is an author of children's picture books and an artist. His latest installation is called "The Moon, The Earth And Us." It's in New York on the High Line - a park built on an old, elevated railroad. And since Jeffers' work appeals to kids and adults, reporter Jeff Lunden brought two children along to meet the Belfast-born artist.
JEFF LUNDEN, BYLINE: On a dank, windy, January afternoon, we met Oliver Jeffers to get a tour of his new installation, which consists of two scale-sized globes of the Earth and moon separated by a scale-length dotted line between them.
ELEANOR: My name's Eleanor. I'm 5 years old.
HENRY: My name is Henry, and I'm 9 years old.
OLIVER JEFFERS: Hello, Henry. I'm Oliver - 41 years old.
LUNDEN: Jeffers told Eleanor and Henry Ying and me that his work was inspired, in part, by Apollo 8, which flew around the moon about 50 years ago.
JEFFERS: And it was the very first time the planet had been photographed in its entirety. And it completely changed people's outlook on Earth.
LUNDEN: So Jeffers wanted to recreate that perspective for people visiting the park today. On one side of the installation is a globe representing the Earth - eight feet in diameter, made of foam, steel and acrylic - all hand-painted by Jeffers.
JEFFERS: This thing is actually spinning but very, very, very slowly.
LUNDEN: As you get closer, you see writing all over the globe.
JEFFERS: Every single country that exists is drawn in here with all of the borders. And inside every single one, it says, people live here.
ELEANOR: Except for the bottom.
JEFFERS: Well, there it says...
ELEANOR: People...
JEFFERS: People sort of live here...
ELEANOR: Yeah.
JEFFERS: ...Because that's the South Pole.
LUNDEN: We walked around the globe.
JEFFERS: All of South America, all of North America, all the Caribbean islands, it just says over and over and over again, people live here. You know, even this border right now that's been very contested in the news at the minute between the U.S.A and Mexico, you know who lives on either side of that border?
ELEANOR: Who?
JEFFERS: People.
LUNDEN: Then it was time to blast off - figuratively - into space. Jeffers pointed to a spot on the globe.
JEFFERS: Cape Canaveral, I think, the Apollo mission took off from. And imagine you're a little astronaut. You come flying out of the Earth's atmosphere.
LUNDEN: And the two little astronauts followed Jeffers along a dotted, yellow line with marks saying 10,000 miles, 25,000 miles, 60,000 miles. At each mark, we turned back to look at the Earth.
JEFFERS: It's getting smaller and smaller. You're probably feeling very alone right now in your spaceship. It's a long way.
ELEANOR: (Laughter).
JEFFERS: I hope you brought a book or, at least, some sandwiches. So here we are. This is about halfway. And we're 120,000 miles from Earth.
ELEANOR: I can see...
JEFFERS: So right now we're halfway between the moon and the Earth. Let's keep going.
LUNDEN: Finally, we reach the hand-painted moon - two feet in diameter. And in golden letters written across the surface, it says...
ELEANOR: No one lives here.
JEFFERS: No one lives here. And that's it.
LUNDEN: While there's a political component to Jeffers' vision, he also means for his work to be playful, which Eleanor and Henry totally got.
JEFFERS: I love that these guys right away got the idea to play, to pretend you're an astronaut, pretend you've got a spaceship and actually traverse this and what it feels like to have actually venture that far away from our planet and then do a loop around the moon and come back. And I'm hoping that people do that and enjoy that experience and consider what it is like to think of our home as just this tiny thing floating in the middle of nowhere and with a hopeful sense of unity that that might bring.
LUNDEN: Both Henry and Eleanor Ying certainly enjoyed experiencing Oliver Jeffers' "The Moon, The Earth And Us." As they got one of his picture books signed, Henry, age 9, looked back at the globe of the Earth and observed.
HENRY: Last time, it was ocean. Now I see Africa.
JEFFERS: Yep - slowly rotating.
LUNDEN: The installation will be displayed on the High Line in Manhattan until February 14. For NPR News, I'm Jeff Lunden in New York.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Suppose you have a stressful day. You get home. You walk in the door and hear this.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOG BARKING, BABY SCREECHING)
INSKEEP: As you listen to that...
(SOUNDBITE OF DOG BARKING, BABY BABBLING)
INSKEEP: ...Do you start feeling just a little bit irritated - maybe even angry?
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "KINDERGARTEN COP")
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER: (As Kimble, yelling) Shut up.
INSKEEP: That is Arnold Schwarzenegger expressing his anger in the film "Kindergarten Cop." Whether it's your home life or politics or Twitter, anger surrounds us. And over the next month, NPR will explore this emotion to learn from it. Today NPR's Michaeleen Doucleff reports on a method that could transform your relationship with anger.
MICHAELEEN DOUCLEFF, BYLINE: We're going to start with the infamous scowl, you know, where you scrunch up your eyes and your forehead when you're angry. The common theory is that no matter where you're born - San Francisco, India, Tanzania - you're born knowing how to make this expression.
LISA FELDMAN BARRETT: Everyone will scowl in anger most of the time, and they will also recognize a scowl as anger.
DOUCLEFF: That's Lisa Feldman Barrett. She's a psychologist at Northeastern University. She says for decades, many scientists thought anger was a universal emotion hard-wired in the brain. When something is unfair - say, somebody takes credit for your success at work - your body automatically launches the anger program.
(SOUNDBITE OF BLOOD PULSING)
FELDMAN BARRETT: Your blood pressure will go up.
DOUCLEFF: Your heart will start pounding.
FELDMAN BARRETT: Maybe you'll breathe heavily.
(SOUNDBITE OF PERSON PANTING)
DOUCLEFF: Maybe you'll feel hot, and your face will turn red. Then a switch flips on in your brain and...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "KINDERGARTEN COP")
SCHWARZENEGGER: (As Kimble, yelling) Shut up.
DOUCLEFF: We all know what happens next. Feldman Barrett says there's no doubt this type of anger exists.
FELDMAN BARRETT: That's the sort of stereotype of what anger is.
DOUCLEFF: But it's not the full story.
FELDMAN BARRETT: There is no single bodily change in anger. What it feels like to be angry depends on the situation. So sometimes anger is very unpleasant, and sometimes it's very pleasant.
DOUCLEFF: So, for example, you can feel exuberant anger when you're getting ramped up to compete in sports or a sad anger when your spouse doesn't appreciate you. Maybe you even cry when you're angry.
FELDMAN BARRETT: Sometimes, if you're like me, you know, you'll sit and imagine the demise of your enemy. All right, so (laughter) - and very quietly, right? So that was a joke.
DOUCLEFF: Feldman Barrett says your body reacts differently depending on a few things - what's causing you to be angry, what your past experiences have shown you about that situation and how your culture has taught you to respond. As a result, there is enormous variation in the types of anger here in the U.S. and around the world. Remember that scowl we were talking about? That's probably not universal. For example, many people in India don't squint when they're angry but open their eyes very wide to give an intense glare.
FELDMAN BARRETT: There are many, many emotion categories that exist in other cultures that don't exist in English - in our culture.
DOUCLEFF: For instance, in Mandarin Chinese, there's a word specifically for anger directed towards yourself...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Mandarin).
DOUCLEFF: ...Which is like anger mixed with regret. And the ancient Greeks differentiated between a short-term anger that doesn't stick around...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking Greek).
DOUCLEFF: ...With a long-term anger that's permanent.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking Greek).
DOUCLEFF: And then there are the angers of India. Abhijeet Paul teaches South Asian literature at Middlebury College. He says Indians are really creative when it comes to anger.
ABHIJEET PAUL: There's a very common form of anger which means, like, when the eggplant meets the oil.
DOUCLEFF: When the eggplant, like, hits the hot oil in a pan?
PAUL: Yeah, like you suddenly become, like, really angry at hearing something shocking or learning about something that you really, really deeply dislike.
DOUCLEFF: So like when you read the news headlines or check Twitter and there's something almost outrageous, your eggplant may hit the hot oil. Paul says Indians also have another interesting type of anger, political anger...
PAUL: (Foreign language spoken).
DOUCLEFF: ...That you feel against the ruling class, the boss man. And you would never express that type of anger toward a neighbor or a family member.
PAUL: That is not good.
DOUCLEFF: Now here's the cool thing. Learning about all this - all these different types of anger is actually useful. Maria Gendron studies psychology at Yale University. She says giving names and labels to all your various angers can help you regulate them - not let them take over or overwhelm you. And it gives you clues about how best to respond.
MARIA GENDRON: There's definitely emerging evidence to show that even just the act of putting a label on your feelings is a really powerful tool for regulation.
DOUCLEFF: The idea is to take a state that's broad and general, like saying, I'm so angry, and making it more specific, more precise, nuanced. And you don't have to use the labels that already exist. You can just make up your own. Give your different types of anger names and start using them. Let me show you how it works.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOG BARKING, BABY SCREECHING)
DOUCLEFF: The screaming baby and barking dog you heard at the beginning of the story...
(SOUNDBITE OF DOG BARKING, BABY BABBLING)
DOUCLEFF: Those belong to me. And when my husband comes home at night and hears that, it triggers a lot of anger. I decided to break it down and name it.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOG BARKING)
DOUCLEFF: The dog is barking.
(SOUNDBITE OF BABY SCREECHING)
DOUCLEFF: The toddler is screaming - two sounds together.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOG BARKING, BABY BABBLING)
DOUCLEFF: We decided to call this new type of anger disonophous from the Latin for two sounds.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOG BARKING, BABY BABBLING)
DOUCLEFF: Gendron says psychologists have a name for this strategy of precisely defining your emotions.
GENDRON: Emotional granularity.
DOUCLEFF: Studies show that the more emotional granularity you have, the more you can find subtle variations in your anger - the less likely you are to yell or act aggressively.
GENDRON: If you're making that a practice in your family - right? - of coming up with words and then using them together, that actually is kind of a mechanism - right? - that actually can regulate physiology, can resolve the kind of ambiguity about the situation.
DOUCLEFF: What emotional granularity does is it lets you see your anger with higher resolution, kind of like watching HDTV versus regular TV. Higher resolution gives you more information about your emotions.
GENDRON: What it means - whether we value that experience or not and give you choices - right? - about what to do next.
DOUCLEFF: And this last part is key. Being granular with your anger helps you figure out what's the best way to handle the situation. Here's what we did at my house.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOG BARKING, BABY BABBLING)
DOUCLEFF: Now when my husband says, I have disonophous anger, Michaeleen - instead of me getting angry back, I know what we can do. Put the dog outside, pick up the baby and we all get some peace and quiet. Michaeleen Doucleff, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CARMINA BURANA: O FURTUNA (FORTUNA IMPERATRIX MUNDI)")
LONDON PHILHARMONIC CHOIR: (Singing in Latin).
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Fifty years ago today, a damaged oil well off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif., caused what was then the largest oil spill in the history of the United States. The public reaction helped to shape the modern environmental movement. It also led to restrictions on offshore drilling, restrictions the Trump administration is trying to roll back. Here's NPR's Jon Hamilton.
JON HAMILTON, BYLINE: The disaster started here, about 6 miles from shore.
DOUGLAS MCCAULEY: You can see behind us here Platform A, the sign right there on the rig.
HAMILTON: I'm on a boat with Douglas McCauley, a marine biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. We're circling the oil rig known as Platform A. McCauley says back in 1969, it was owned by Union Oil, and workers were drilling a new well.
MCCAULEY: And then, 10:45 a.m. January 28, they ran into a problem.
HAMILTON: The drill hit a pocket of gas and oil under enormous pressure. The result - a blowout. McCauley says crude oil and natural gas began rocketing to the surface.
MCCAULEY: So they're taking these big drilling pipes and shoving them back down the hole and then these gigantic steel blocks on top of that to seal off this blowout.
HAMILTON: It worked, briefly.
MCCAULEY: They had capped off the blowout successfully, but they created so much pressure at the bottom of this well that it actually broke open the seabed.
HAMILTON: Oil and gas began to pour through five separate fissures. Eventually, that created an oil slick on the surface that was nearly the size of Chicago. It took a few days for the oil to reach the coast. Mark McGinnis, a lawyer, came down from San Francisco to take a look.
MARK MCGINNIS: I smelled it long before I saw it. It really stank around here. And when I looked at the oil on the beach, I cried.
HAMILTON: McGinnis left his job at a big law firm to help mount a legal response to the spill. He soon became a leader in the environmental movement. McGinnis says a few weeks after the blowout, President Richard Nixon arrived in a helicopter.
MCGINNIS: (Imitating helicopter blades slapping).
HAMILTON: McGinnis says Nixon surveyed the slick from the air, then visited an oil-soaked beach to show his concern.
MCGINNIS: It was a matter of walking around gingerly to make sure that one's shoes - if you were the president wearing those shoes - didn't step in this stuff.
HAMILTON: By this time, hundreds of oiled birds were arriving at the Santa Barbara Zoo. Nancy McToldridge, the zoo's director, says there was nowhere else for them to go.
NANCY MCTOLDRIDGE: So the zoo closed its doors and concentrated its time and energy and - to taking in these oiled birds, treating them and then rehabbing them back out into the wild.
HAMILTON: Most didn't make it. But photos of oil-coated gulls and grebes and brown pelicans got the public's attention, and Peter Alagona, a historian at UCSB, says 1969 marked a turning point for environmental activism.
PETER ALAGONA: The Santa Barbara oil spill really helped to take an issue that was growing and really converting it into legislative action and a whole body of environmental law at the federal level and also at the state levels that we still have with us today.
HAMILTON: The first Earth Day took place just over a year later. Then the Environmental Protection Agency was formed, and Congress passed the Clean Water Act. Alagona says it probably helped that Santa Barbara was home to a lot of wealthy Republicans who had helped elect Nixon. He says Nixon himself was no environmentalist.
ALAGONA: But he realized, during a time when there were many other extremely controversial, divisive issues - like the Vietnam War, for instance - that as American public concern grew about damage to the environment - that this could potentially be a winning issue for him.
HAMILTON: Today, Santa Barbara is much better prepared for an oil spill. There's a 46-foot fast response vessel in the harbor ready to deploy oil containment booms. And there's a statewide group called the Oiled Wildlife Care Network ready to help sickened animals. Julie Barnes is a veterinarian at the zoo. She says animal experts learned a lot from the 1969 spill here and even more from the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989 and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
JULIE BARNES: Many more animals survive now than they would have back in the '60s or '70s or even in the '80s. The care that we can find for them now is phenomenal compared to the care that would have been provided in, you know, those early years of oil spills.
HAMILTON: Douglas McCauley says the greatest danger from oil these days probably isn't another spill. It's the climate change caused by burning all that oil. He says a year ago, Santa Barbara got a preview of what that might mean. It came in the form of a mudslide.
MCCAULEY: Boulders and trees rushing through the community traveling at, like, 22 miles an hour down the street. It destroyed a hundred houses and killed 21 people.
HAMILTON: McCauley says the mudslide was caused by the sort of extreme weather that accompanies global warming.
MCCAULEY: I think of that as being the most insidious, the worst thing that the oil industry has done to our community.
HAMILTON: McCauley says an end to offshore drilling could slow down climate change by reducing the supply of oil. But the Trump administration seems headed in the opposite direction. It's preparing a five-year plan to encourage offshore drilling in federally controlled waters, including those off the coast of Santa Barbara. Jon Hamilton, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MECCA:83'S "2AM SAMBA")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
When was the last time a kid in your life said something that just got you in your gut? I bet it wasn't that long ago - a well-placed I love you in the middle of a stressful day, an unsolicited hug when you needed one most. We are in that season. And, yes, we can all agree Valentine's Day is a commercial holiday. I know. But it is also a great excuse to talk about how we nurture those around us, how we connect with others and how we love.
And as our friend, poet and parent Kwame Alexander knows very well, kids are often way better at expressing love and openness than the rest of us. He is in our studios in Washington. Hi, Kwame.
KWAME ALEXANDER: Hey there, Rachel.
MARTIN: So you got two daughters.
ALEXANDER: Yep.
MARTIN: I imagine you have learned some things about loving and nurturing from them.
ALEXANDER: I have learned that love is sometimes the only thing that will keep you sane...
MARTIN: Right.
ALEXANDER: ...That keeps me smiling even when I don't feel like it. You've got kids, so you know what I'm talking about.
MARTIN: Absolutely. It is the best medicine.
ALEXANDER: It's actually oxytocin. That's what it is (laughter).
MARTIN: (Laughter) Right. Like a chemical reaction. It goes to your brain. It makes you feel good.
ALEXANDER: It's those moments that when our kids challenge us. It kicks in that we do actually love them. Last week, I was having a little too harsh, I guess, talking-to with my 10-year-old. And, well, she was getting an earful for, like, 10, 15 minutes about honesty and my disappointment regarding a decision she had made. And she just starts bawling.
And so I hug her, and I just tell her, look, I love you. I love you. And part of my job as a parent is to help you become good, is to help you become a kind, happy and loving adult. And I'm just saying this over and over to her. And she's looking at me like, really? It doesn't feel like that (laughter).
MARTIN: Right. I don't feel good.
ALEXANDER: And that's when I remembered this poem.
MARTIN: Of course you did because you're you.
ALEXANDER: (Laughter) I mean, I didn't recite it.
MARTIN: OK, good.
ALEXANDER: But it felt like it would have been the perfect poem for that moment.
MARTIN: Yeah.
ALEXANDER: So this is for the parents listening when your kids question whether you love them. It's called "Resignation" by Nikki Giovanni. And here's a few excerpts. I love you because the earth turns round the sun, because the north wind blows north sometimes, because the winters flow into springs and the air clears after a storm, because only my love for you, despite the charms of gravity, keeps me from falling off this Earth into another dimension. I love you more than I love my privacy, my freedom, my commitments and responsibilities. I love you because I changed my life to love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.
MARTIN: That's it. That's everything.
ALEXANDER: It's that unexplainable, unconditional love. And it's simply a beautiful thing. I mean, we know how to love our children with kindness and patience and always giving them the benefit of the doubt. We don't take things too personally. Loving our children can really be a model, Rachel, for loving ourselves and each other. Everything we ever need to know about love, we learn from our kids.
MARTIN: For sure. So the next time we talk to you, it's going to be Valentine's Day. And so we want to hear from kids, children, about what love is to them, how they think about it, and use that as a way to remind all of us what's really important in our own relationships in the way that we connect with each other.
ALEXANDER: Yeah. So teachers out there from kindergarten to 12th grade, we would like you to do this activity with your students. Give them the prompt, love is, and let them just go for it. Fill in the blank. Write a line or a whole poem. For example, Rachel, if I were to say...
MARTIN: Oh, you're doing this to me again?
ALEXANDER: Here we go.
MARTIN: OK.
ALEXANDER: So fill in the blank.
MARTIN: Yeah.
ALEXANDER: Love is...
MARTIN: Love is vulnerability.
ALEXANDER: Love is...
MARTIN: Love is scary.
ALEXANDER: Right. Now end it. Give me that clincher. Give me that final phrase. Give me a couple words. Love is - bring it home for me.
MARTIN: It is the only thing. Does that work?
ALEXANDER: That's perfect.
MARTIN: OK, good (laughter).
ALEXANDER: That's a great line (laughter).
MARTIN: All right. So we want to hear you give it your shot. Record your students reciting their entry. What is love to you? And then we're going to share some of these entries on Valentine's Day. You can do this at npr.org/morningpoem. That's where you want to share your students' love is lines and their poems. Again, npr.org/morningpoem. I cannot think of a better way to celebrate Valentine's Day than to read those submissions. Having said that, you got another love poem to share for us?
ALEXANDER: I'll share a final love is poem. Love is the way I feel when your laugh dances across the room of my memory. Love is doing the dishes even when you don't feel like it. Love is you, you, you, you, you, you, then everything else.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
ALEXANDER: Rachel, love is friendship and art. And this canvas called life can be vast and lonesome without a full heart to trust, without a joyful noise to share, without you, without love.
MARTIN: That is a beautiful thing. Kwame Alexander, thank you so much, my friend.
ALEXANDER: Thank you.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
For more than a century, those little, brightly colored, chalky candy hearts have helped people share their messages of love.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We're talking about Sweethearts. This is a candy made by Necco, the New England confectionary company. Even Martha Stewart loved them.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MARTHA STEWART: And in my hand, I just happened to randomly pick out a handful. Miss you. Yes, dear. You are a 10. And, my pet, my love. So romantic.
INSKEEP: But this year, the romance is in short supply. Or, at least, the little hearts are. Necco, which was one of the oldest candy companies in America, abruptly shut down in 2018. And while a different company has purchased the Sweethearts' brand, it did not have enough time to produce enough candies for this Valentine's Day.
SHIRLEY GOULART: That's terrible. That's a staple. They're getting rid of the conversation hearts.
MARTIN: She's so upset. That's Shirley Goulart (ph). We caught up with her and Hannah Derousseau (ph) outside a candy store in Washington, D.C.
HANNAH DEROUSSEAU: I'm sorry. If they can put a man on the moon but they can't make hearts...
GOULART: (Laughter).
DEROUSSEAU: I'm sure that someone could do it. If they really wanted to, they could.
GOULART: Yes. It's a great way for kids to talk to each other that are shy when they're little. And I just think it's sad.
INSKEEP: Chris Stanovic (ph) in Los Angeles was one of those kids who used the candies to let his grade-school crushes know his feelings.
CHRIS STANOVIC: You know, I was a little kid walking up with those little heart-shaped candies in your hand. You know, sweaty palms-type of Valentine's, queasy stomach. You know, I think every kid did that at one point.
MARTIN: Let's be honest, though. These candies didn't taste that great. Carissa Brones (ph) from Los Angeles never cared for the chalky taste.
CARISSA BRONES: I would always throw 'em out and give 'em away. (Laughter). I'd rather have, like, chocolate candy or something better-tasting.
MARTIN: There are versions from competitors available, but not the classic. And you can still find Sweethearts on eBay for your valentine.
INSKEEP: Good to know. They may not be fresh, but it's the message that counts.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Today is the first day back at work for hundreds of thousands of federal workers across the country. President Trump signed a bill to reopen the government late Friday, bringing an end to the longest shutdown in U.S. history. Now, federal workers are worried. They could be out of work again in a few weeks if the president and Congress can't come up with a deal. NPR's Brakkton Booker reports.
BRAKKTON BOOKER, BYLINE: Just a few blocks away from the White House, a food bank is set up for furloughed federal employees.
UNIDENTIFIED FOOD BANK WORKER: Hey, how are you?
UNIDENTIFIED FOOD BANK RECIPIENT #1: Good. How are you?
UNIDENTIFIED FOOD BANK WORKER: Welcome. Welcome.
BOOKER: All that's required to come in is a federal work badge. Yesterday's offerings included chicken torta and winter vegetable panzanella.
UNIDENTIFIED FOOD BANK WORKER: Check your IDs inside.
UNIDENTIFIED FOOD BANK RECIPIENT #2: That sounds good.
UNIDENTIFIED FOOD BANK WORKER: Enjoy lunch.
UNIDENTIFIED FOOD BANK RECIPIENT #2: Thank you so much for doing this.
UNIDENTIFIED FOOD BANK WORKER: Hello. You check IDs inside.
BOOKER: Here at World Central Kitchen, I meet Terri, a federal worker. She asked that we not use her last name because she's afraid her boss won't be happy with her when she shows back up at work.
Can you tell me what you got in the bag?
TERRI: I've got some fruit and some vegetables, and I've got my lunch (laughter).
BOOKER: Terri works as a janitor at the Smithsonian here in Washington. Like many other federal employees, she's missed two paychecks as a result of the 35-day shutdown. She says two things got her through.
TERRI: For me, it has been prayer and my family. If I had not been able to depend on my family, I probably would not have gotten through the past couple of weeks.
BOOKER: She says the shutdown has been painful. Terri's not sure politicians though have any empathy for her or anyone else in the federal workforce.
TERRI: My thing is I don't - I don't like being used. And that's what we feel like. We're being the ones pulled apart and plucked apart and left out to dry when these people that are making these decisions don't have the financial worries that we have.
BOOKER: Terri wasn't getting paid, but she also didn't have to go into work. Duane Wilson did have to show up. He's a federal police officer at the Department of Homeland Security. He expects back pay soon. And another thing he expects - the government to be shut down again in a few weeks.
DUANE WILSON: I personally feel like we're gonna be there. I think you have to - at this point, you have to assume the worst.
BOOKER: The deal reached by Congress and the White House only keeps the government open for three weeks. It included none of the $5.7 billion for President Trump's U.S.-Mexico border wall. And when Trump announced the agreement from the Rose Garden, he showcased his willingness to shutter the government once again.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: If we don't get a fair deal from Congress, the government will either shut down on February 15 again.
BOOKER: Or, the president says, he will declare a national emergency to get his border wall - a move that will almost certainly be challenged in the courts.
(SOUNDBITE OF PHONE RINGING)
ERIC INGRAM: Hello.
BOOKER: Hi. It's Brakkton from NPR.
INGRAM: All right, great. I'll send my wife to come let you in real quick.
BOOKER: OK, great.
Eric Ingram and his wife Andrea Jensen live in Alexandria, Va. Both are federal workers. Ingram works for the Federal Aviation Administration and took the shutdown saga in stride.
INGRAM: I guess it's cool to be a part of history. That's nice.
BOOKER: If it sounds like he's laid back, it's because his wife, who works for the Department of Energy, has been on the job and has been getting paid. Jensen says the shutdown made her realize something important. Maybe it's not wise for both of them to work for the federal government.
ANDREA JENSEN: It seems like there's more job security in not working for the same agency or having one person in private industry and one person in the government.
BOOKER: Her husband says that is something he's considering. But today he's heading back to work where he's got a ton of projects to get up and running before the next possible shutdown. Brakkton Booker, NPR News, Washington.
(SOUNDBITE OF SOUND SCIENTISTS' "MAY 6")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
What, if anything, really needs to be done at the southwestern border?
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
That's the question that led to a government shutdown. The question remained unanswered when President Trump gave up and agreed to end the shutdown on Friday. Lawmakers gave themselves three weeks to work out a border security deal. The president's chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told CBS, the fight isn't over.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FACE THE NATION")
MICK MULVANEY: Keep in mind, he's willing to do whatever it takes to secure the border.
INSKEEP: The president spoke of another shutdown or declaring a state of emergency to get the money from elsewhere. He is still demanding that Congress pay for a wall, the construction project that he once promised Mexico would pay for. Beyond the symbolism of that demand, there is a whole range of border issues - what technology to use, how to manage asylum-seekers and much more.
MARTIN: All right. We are joined now by NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith. Good morning, Tam.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: So is it fair to say we are exactly where we were before the shutdown began?
KEITH: More or less, except that now America and federal workers and Congress and the president have all lived through the longest government shutdown, partial government shutdown in U.S. history, and it wasn't pretty. And that might affect how everyone views the possibility of another shutdown in the future, a future that is not that far away. You know, the question before the shutdown began was, more or less, what is a wall?
MARTIN: (Laughter) Right.
KEITH: What will President Trump accept? Is it steel bollard? Is it replacing old fence? Is it only new wall? Does it have to be concrete? Can it be steel slats?
MARTIN: And there's still no agreement on that definition.
INSKEEP: There really isn't. And there's been a whole lot of fighting about a wall, Nancy Pelosi still saying, have I not been clear? - there will be no wall. But there's always been some nuance below the surface of that. Congresswoman from Florida, Democrat Donna Shalala, was on Weekend Edition Sunday yesterday, and here's what she said.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
DONNA SHALALA: There always has been flexibility about fencing that needs to be strengthened. This is not a rigid position by the Democrats.
MARTIN: I mean, in fact, I mean, it's been pointed out several times - I'm sure you and I have had this conversation - Democrats have funded border security, even in excess of the $5.7 billion that President Trump wants for this wall. So they're on board with putting more money down there. It's just the idea of funding what is President Trump's fundamental campaign promise. They don't want him to have that win.
KEITH: They do not want to call it a wall. They do not think that $5.7 billion should be spent on wall alone. President Trump seems to be saying in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, said that he still wants the wall. Asked if he would accept $5.7 billion in the next round of - less than $5.7 billion in the next round of negotiations, according to this Wall Street Journal article, he said last night, I doubt it. I have to do it right.
INSKEEP: Well, let's remember that this is only one of an incredibly broad range of border security issues and, arguably, not even the most important one. There are so many questions - how many judges do you have? How many border guards do you have? What are the rules under which they operate? What happens with asylum-seekers?
What has made this so intensively difficult is that the president has insisted that the wall is the most important thing, and it has symbolic importance both for him and for Democrats. But even people around the president have complained that there's so much focus on the wall, that it's only the president himself who keeps bringing it back to that.
KEITH: And there's this 17-member conference committee of members of Congress, appropriators, people who like to make deals, who are skilled at making deals, who are going to get together and look at these priorities. The question, though, is in the end, if they come up with something, is it something that President Trump will be willing to accept?
MARTIN: Right. NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith for us this morning. Tamara, thank you. We appreciate it.
KEITH: You're welcome.
MARTIN: So meanwhile, federal workers are finally getting back to work for the first time since the shutdown started. NPR's Brakkton Booker has been talking to some of them here in the Washington area, and Brakkton's in our studio. This has got to be an unsettling time, Brakkton, for these folks.
BRAKKTON BOOKER, BYLINE: Yeah, to say the least. You heard Tamara Keith describe the shutdown as not being pretty. I think a lot of federal workers who've gone 35 days without getting paid and 35 days, you know, of working and not really knowing when the next paycheck is coming, it was downright brutal. I mean, some people expressed some excitement about going back to work. But really, it was relief. Some people said that they were depressed because they really didn't know when that next paycheck was coming.
I talked to Terry (ph), who is a federal worker who works as a janitor in the Smithsonian here in Washington. She says lawmakers don't have any empathy for her or the rest of the federal workforce. And here's what she had to say.
TERRY: My thing is I don't like being used. And that's what we feel like. We're being the ones pulled apart and plucked apart and left out to dry when these people that are making these decisions don't have the financial worries that we have.
MARTIN: Right. A lot of these people, just living paycheck to paycheck. And when those paychecks don't exist, what are they supposed to do? And these are supposed to be stable jobs, right? Like, for generations, working for the federal government was supposed to be the thing that gave you peace of mind.
BOOKER: Right.
MARTIN: Are these people suggesting it might not be that anymore?
BOOKER: Well, now they're suggesting that perhaps maybe the government is not that stable. And some people are starting to look, or at least have conversations about looking to the private sector, especially those households that have both husband and wife working in the federal government.
MARTIN: Dual incomes that are tied to...
BOOKER: That are tied to...
MARTIN: ...Politics.
BOOKER: ...The government. Yes. Exactly. So I spoke with Andrea Jensen (ph). She works for the Department of Energy. Her husband works for the Federal Aviation Administration. And she said, you know, the shutdown really had her thinking, like, maybe it's not a really good idea to have both of them working for the government. Here's what she had to say.
ANDREA JENSEN: Seems like there's more job security in not working for the same agency, or having one person in private industry and one person in the government.
BOOKER: So virtually all the federal workers I spoke to have no confidence that three weeks from now we're not going to be in the same predicament. So people are starting to budget. People are, like, really going to spend money on things that they absolutely have to spend money on and try to squirrel away the rest.
INSKEEP: I want to note something quite profound that has perhaps happened over the last month or a little bit more. And Tamara Keith alluded to the fact that the pain of this shutdown has to be part of the political calculation as President Trump decides if he wants to shut down the government again in a little less than three weeks here. Federal workers have been portrayed as faceless bureaucrats, as evil elites, as out-of-touch beltway types. But for the last 30 days, we have seen federal workers as people that Americans at large can relate to, people who were caught up in broader problems of income inequality, people who don't have a lot of money in the bank.
Americans have related, I think, to this pain, according to surveys, and that is something that lawmakers will have to consider if they think it's going to be a good idea to shut down the government again.
MARTIN: Speaking of these people, though, Brakkton, just real quick. They're supposed to get backpay, right?
BOOKER: They're supposed to be getting backpay. It could come as early as this week. But, look. Payroll employees were also furloughed. So we're thinking maybe it takes a little time to get the systems back up and running. So maybe by the end of the week, they all...
MARTIN: The people who send the paychecks out weren't working.
BOOKER: Yes. Absolutely.
MARTIN: OK. NPR's Brakkton Booker, thanks so much. We appreciate it.
BOOKER: Absolutely.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MARTIN: OK. So today is another inflection point in the trial of drug kingpin Joaquin El Chapo Guzman.
INSKEEP: The prosecution rests its case today. Federal prosecutors have presented dozens of witnesses to testify over the past three months, and now it is the defense's turn. Guzman faces 17 counts linked to running the world's largest drug trafficking organization and has already been convicted, of course, of crimes in Mexico.
MARTIN: All right. We've got Keegan Hamilton on the line. He is U.S. editor for Vice News. He hosts a podcast, called, "Chapo: Kingpin On Trial." So he's been following this real closely. Keegan, thanks for being here.
KEEGAN HAMILTON: Good morning. Thanks for having me.
MARTIN: The prosecution is about to have its last act here. What are you expecting?
HAMILTON: So they've got their last cooperating witness on the stand. He was a former bodyguard and hit man for El Chapo. He should finish up sometime this morning, and they'll have two law enforcement witnesses and then that's it. Then it's the defense's turn, at which point they may or may not call their defendant, Joaquin El Chapo Guzman, to testify in his own behalf.
MARTIN: Do you know what the pros and cons are of having Guzman up there?
HAMILTON: Well, the cons are obvious and large. And that is that he opens himself up to cross-examination from the government, when they can ask about basically all of the evidence that's been heard, all of these crimes that he's accused of. Anything that came up in the testimony could potentially be fair game. He can either, you know, open himself up to perjury, which is the least of his problems. The pros for the government is that they - he can essentially get the last word. I mean, he's heard, you know, dozens of his former associates get up and testify against him. This would be his chance to tell his side of the story.
MARTIN: What has it been like watching him through these proceedings?
HAMILTON: You know, for the most part, he has been pretty cool and collected. He's, you know, in some cases, staring down the witnesses. He's taking notes, passing it to his attorneys. He's flirting with his wife and the audience of the courtroom. But there have been a couple moments when the testimony was really devastating where he almost hung his head a little bit, and it seemed to sink in that the case was not going as he hoped it would go.
MARTIN: Can you give us some description of just some of the moments that have stood out? I mean, there have - this is an exceptional trial in so many ways. But the jury, just when you think they can't be shocked anymore, they're presented with evidence that does just that.
HAMILTON: The end of last week was particularly shocking. You know, we've heard references to murders and violence throughout the trial. But the testimony from his former bodyguard and hit man that, you know, described him as personally committing torture and murder, just some very graphic and gruesome descriptions of people being buried alive, tortured. It really sunk in. You had thousand-yard stares in the eyes of the jury. And I think everybody in the courtroom who thought they'd heard it all was shocked by what they were hearing with that witness.
MARTIN: That Guzman himself was committing these atrocities?
HAMILTON: That he was personally pulling the trigger on at least three murders and was, in some cases, beating rival cartel members who had come into custody of the Sinaloa Cartel. It was pretty disturbing stuff.
MARTIN: Is there any way he is not convicted on all these counts?
HAMILTON: It's hard to see a way. I think the defense, at this point, is hoping for a mistrial or a hung jury or something along those lines that gets him out of this without a full acquittal.
MARTIN: Keegan Hamilton of Vice News talking about El Chapo's trial. Thank you so much. We appreciate it.
HAMILTON: Thanks again.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
This week, newly empowered Democrats are asking why President Trump sent U.S. troops to the border with Mexico. The question comes from the House Armed Services Committee. New Chairman Adam Smith says he will use his power to question the president's use of the military.
ADAM SMITH: If you ask the military anything, do you know what the answer is? Yes. Can you take that hill? Can you win this war? They always say yes. That's why we have civilian control of the military. They need to have that attitude. We need to make the smart decisions to say, I appreciate the positive approach; I don't think you can, and I don't think it's in the best interests of the United States to spend your blood trying.
INSKEEP: Adam Smith has represented Washington state for more than 20 years. We met in his Capitol office, where he's preparing for a hearing on Tuesday. He has questions about the president's chaotic decision-making. He says that even though he broadly agrees with some of the president's goals. For example, he favors the president's move to reduce the U.S. presence in Syria, just not doing it so suddenly in a tweet.
SMITH: And that is the troubling thing, of course. The president - we won; it's over; ISIS is done; we can leave now. You know, I mean, where do you get that from?
INSKEEP: Well, has the president been right to push for a smaller U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan?
SMITH: I believe so. Yes. And Afghanistan's a real big problem. I really wish that the United States did not have national security interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Our interest in the region is the threat of transnational terrorist groups, obviously. That's where bin Laden was hanging out when he hit us on 9/11. We want to make sure they don't rise again. But the perpetual notion that if we just put in another 5,000 troops, if we just stay another five years, then we'll have a stable enough government in Kabul that we'll have an ally - yeah. We are losing lives and spending money in Afghanistan, and I'm not sure we're making progress.
INSKEEP: Just go. You're open to that, you said.
SMITH: Well, not just go - there's no way to just go.
INSKEEP: But...
SMITH: OK.
INSKEEP: ...Get going in whatever fashion...
SMITH: Yes. Do it...
INSKEEP: ...You can.
SMITH: Yeah. It takes time - probably years, not months - in order to pull people out in a responsible way. But a strategy that says our continued military presence in Afghanistan is unlikely to improve the situation, is unlikely to be worth the cost, is an argument that is becoming more and more persuasive to me.
INSKEEP: Do you intend to use the power that you have as the head of this committee to push for that outcome?
SMITH: I intend to use the power that I have on this committee to spur that debate. And the only way out of this is through a negotiated settlement. And there will not be peace in Afghanistan, probably in my lifetime. There are so many factions and so many warlords. What you want is you want to try to reduce them. And the way to do that - make peace with the Taliban. You know, build some sort of coalition government. Believe me; there are costs to that. I understand that. You know, and then, hopefully, yes; use that group to fight off, you know, ISIS and others. But the Taliban blows hot and cold on that, you know, depending on the day, and I don't know.
INSKEEP: When President Trump ordered troops to the border to help secure the border against a caravan that - been in the news shortly before the midterm election, was that a legitimate use of U.S. military power?
SMITH: Absolutely not. And the active-duty troops, I think they, like, put up some barbed wire and maybe built a temporary structure or two, and you can't tell me that was a good use of their time. Border security has gotten a ton better in the last 14 years, in part because we've made a lot of policy decisions to do it. But the president is manufacturing a crisis to pander to his base and try to keep a - well, and obviously, he's not trying to keep his campaign promise because his campaign promise was that Mexico was going to pay for it. But he made that promise because it played well with the crowd. Something that plays well to the crowd doesn't translate into policy. Now, to the extent we have a - these caravans that are coming - they're turning themselves in. OK? You don't need a wall. You know, you don't need anything (ph) to stop them. We need stuff to process them. The only thing that has really changed is we could use some more money for judges to process asylum-seekers. You know, processing asylum-seekers is the crisis, and the president is demagoguing this issue instead of addressing the problems that he raises.
INSKEEP: If the deployment to the border right before the election was not a legitimate use of military power, what was it? Was that a political use of the military?
SMITH: Absolutely. I mean, the president was trying - this crisis - they're coming for us. You heard his language. You know, we have an invasion, you know, coming at us, which was utter and complete nonsense. But when you engage the active-duty military, that drives up the debate because that's what we use - and the military is stopping an invasion. Well, the military didn't stop anything. Most of those people who went down to the border were sitting around playing cards because they didn't have anything to do because there was no invasion.
INSKEEP: What, if anything, are you prepared to do now that you are in the majority, should you see another deployment of the military that you view as political?
SMITH: Well, the deployment's still going on, so this is not a past-tense problem. This is a present-tense problem, and our first hearing is going to be on this subject. We want an explanation of the policy. We want to shine a light on it and make it clear, in my view, that there is no legitimate purpose here. And if there's no legitimate purpose, then why are you wasting the amount of money that you're wasting to put them down there?
INSKEEP: Are you concerned about further political deployments?
SMITH: Absolutely. This president does not operate like any president I've ever dealt with or ever read about. He is unabashed in pursuing his agenda in any way he sees fit.
INSKEEP: That leads to another question. We've been following the news from Venezuela, where there are two competing presidents. And one key factor, as we have reported, is - who is in charge of the military? - whose orders the military will follow. The United States is nowhere near that level of chaos, but it's a tense political moment. Have you asked questions of military leaders to be sure they know what rules to follow in the event of a crisis?
SMITH: I think this is part of the debate and part of what went into the border deployment - was the concern that the president - there was mixed messages coming out of the White House that wanted to use them for law enforcement in the U.S., which is a clear violation of our Constitution and a precedent that we do not want to set. So yes; part of this discussion about the border deployment is going to be to emphasize the clear constitutional law that U.S. military does not do domestic criminal situations. They are not allowed to act as a law enforcement agency.
INSKEEP: Have you already raised that question with military officials that you must talk with from time to time?
SMITH: Yeah. I - well, I raised it with Secretary Mattis, but he's not there anymore, so - and we talked about this a couple times, as we were concerned about it. And I will say that the Pentagon secretary, Mattis, and everybody I spoke to was - you know, they were very adamant about not stepping across that line. The mixed messages were coming out of civilians in the White House, not out of the Pentagon. They were very clear that they were not going to engage in law enforcement activity.
INSKEEP: Mr. Chairman, thanks very much.
SMITH: Thanks for the chance.
(SOUNDBITE OF MAMMAL HANDS' "TRANSFIXED")
INSKEEP: Adam Smith is the new chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, which plans a hearing on the border deployment tomorrow.
(SOUNDBITE OF MAMMAL HANDS' "TRANSFIXED")
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. Cross Scott did the right thing. He saw a driver in distress, pulled over to help and found the woman had no pulse. But he did not know CPR. Luckily, he did know Season Five of the TV show "The Office." In one episode, employees are told to press a victim's chest in time to the beat of "Stayin' Alive." The Washington Post reports Mr. Scott did this until the woman woke up. The Bee Gees and "The Office" saved a life. It's MORNING EDITION.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The partial government shutdown is over, so hundreds of thousands of federal workers are heading back to work today. But all throughout the shutdown, one government agency was actually in the midst of a massive recruiting effort. The Census Bureau is busy trying to hire a half million workers for the 2020 census. NPR's Hansi Lo Wang reports.
HANSI LO WANG, BYLINE: The national headcount of every person living in the U.S. officially kicks off less than a year from now. More than 90,000 have applied to help carry out the census, including at the Bronx Library Center in New York City.
JESSICA RODRIGUEZ: So right now we're on census.gov. And if we scroll down to the...
WANG: Career coach Jessica Rodriguez shows me the website that for months she's helped job seekers navigate. Many of the openings are for outreach specialists who work with local community groups and supervisor positions, like the one Pamela Hudson is applying for.
PAMELA HUDSON: I'm thinking about transitioning into this job because it's very important to me because we have children that need education. We have children that need health care.
WANG: Hudson says she wants to do her part to make sure communities get their fair share of the hundreds of billions of tax dollars distributed based on census numbers. The partial government shutdown, though, did give her pause about working for the Census Bureau.
HUDSON: When I went on the website, I noticed it said lack of funding. So does that mean that at certain period that the census workers may not get any pay? I'm concerned about that.
WANG: Funding carried over from last year has kept preparations for the 2020 census going. In case there's another shutdown in the coming weeks, the Bureau has said it has enough money to work on the census into April. Whatever happens, though, Tayesha Hudson - no relation to Pamela - says she's not worried.
TAYESHA HUDSON: I know eventually the government is going to have to get it together. And I know that they're going to want this 2020 census to go forward.
WANG: Tayesha Hudson's interested in helping with door knocking and collecting information from people who don't fill out their census forms themselves. Fewer than 7 in 10 households plan to take part in the count, according to a new Census Bureau report. Hudson says she expects to do a lot of persuading if she's hired for the job.
HUDSON: It's about making sure that we get the things that we need in our community, that everybody is counted regardless of their race, regardless of whether or not they're a citizen. We're all in this life just trying to make sure that we can go day by day. So we all should be counted.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
AL FONTENOT: The one thing that keeps me up at night is the one thing I have less control over, and that's our ability to recruit and hire.
WANG: That was Census Bureau official Al Fontenot speaking at a public meeting last year. He's been worried about filling a half million jobs for the census. As of last week, the bureau has hired a tiny fraction of that number. A low unemployment rate could result in an applicant pool smaller than the bureau would like.
Elzie Wright is a program coordinator for a community group based in Brooklyn. And she says there's another challenge. The Trump administration wants to include on the 2020 census the question, is this person a citizen of the United States? A federal judge in New York has ordered the removal of the question. The administration wants the Supreme Court to let the question stay. Wright says, if it does, many census workers will have a harder job.
ELZIE WRIGHT: They know that they probably (laughter) won't get too many answers or too many participants, especially now in this environment.
WANG: Wright has worked on outreach to the Haitian community in Brooklyn.
WRIGHT: Let's face it. There's a lot of undocumented people in the community. And that makes them suspicious, you know, to talk to anybody.
WANG: The Census Bureau is expecting fewer households to respond to the census if there is a citizenship question. That could mean the bureau might have to hire more workers in an already tight labor market. Hansi Lo Wang, NPR News, New York.
(SOUNDBITE OF BERRY WEIGHT'S "YETI'S LAMENT")
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
How does the debate over border security look from the border? That debate hardly ended when President Trump gave up on Friday and agreed to end a partial government shutdown. The agreement with lawmakers allows three weeks to develop a border security plan that Republicans and Democrats can agree on. Though the shutdown was a political disaster for the president, his acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told CBS he is ready to do it again.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FACE THE NATION")
MICK MULVANEY: Yeah. I think he actually is. Keep in mind, he's willing to do whatever it takes to secure the border. He does take this very seriously. This is a serious humanitarian and security crisis. And as president of the United States, he takes the security of the nation as his highest priority.
INSKEEP: That is one view from Washington, D.C. Dee Margo has a view from El Paso, Texas, which sits right along the U.S. border with Mexico. He is the Republican mayor of that city, and he's on the line.
Mayor, good morning.
DEE MARGO: Good morning.
INSKEEP: Would you just describe, for people who haven't been there, El Paso's relationship to the border, what it's like?
MARGO: Well, we're the largest U.S. city on the Mexican border. We say we're the nexus of three states - New Mexico, Chihuahua, Mexico, and Texas. Two countries and one region that comprises over 2.5 million people.
INSKEEP: And I guess if we look down on El Paso, there's a river. It's like El Paso and Juarez, Mexico, are one big city with a river running through it, and that river is the border. Right?
MARGO: You can't tell the difference between El Paso and Juarez when you stand at the top of one of our bank buildings and look south.
INSKEEP: Wow. Except, of course that, there is some fence along that river channel. You do have a lot of fencing in El Paso. Does it work?
MARGO: It works, yes. As a matter of fact, we're rated the safest city of over 400,000, 500,000 in the United States. But this particular fence - and I prefer that nomenclature...
INSKEEP: To a wall.
MARGO: Than to a wall. This fence was done under the presidency of George W. Bush. It was built in 2008. And it works to stop more of a criminal element than anything else. We had a number of auto thefts and things of that nature, and that's gone down to almost zero or nil. So it does function when and where it should function.
INSKEEP: Although, I wonder if it really addresses the problems that the president worries about when he talks about walls. I'm thinking about drugs, for example. The president talks about them a lot. We're told that most drug traffic comes through legal ports of entry. It's smuggled through. Is that your understanding of what happens in El Paso? If you have a drug problem, it mostly comes through a legal port of entry, it goes through your very safe city and ends up somewhere else in America?
MARGO: That's what we understand. Yes. That is correct. I mean, we're the second-largest land port with Mexico. We have 13,000 pedestrians, legal pedestrians, that cross north every day and 21 million-plus private passenger vehicles on an annual basis. We've been one community, one culture, for 400 years.
INSKEEP: So if it were up to you to identify the most serious problem along the United States border, would it be, wow, we need more walls?
MARGO: Well, we're a sovereign nation, and we need to control our borders. My frustration with the listening to all the pundits on the national media is that they keep talking about winners and losers over this shutdown, and I don't think there were any winners, whatsoever. But what I haven't heard - I'm a - I spent 35 years as a CEO. What I haven't heard is the Homeland Security say what they want for border security. I hear our political leaders, our elected leaders, make comments. But I haven't heard what they think we ought to have.
Texas, from a geographical standpoint, you can't put a fence from one end of Texas down from El Paso to Brownsville. It would geographically not work. So what do you do? There's technology. There are all - but I haven't heard a presentation under the auspices of Homeland Security to tell us exactly what they need.
INSKEEP: It sounds like the combination is going to be maybe some barriers in places, but probably also border security people, technology. It'd be a mix of things. Do you think also judges would be part of that, increasing the number of immigration judges so that people who cross and are stopped can be - their cases can be adjudicated?
MARGO: Absolutely. But the biggest problem we've got is the whole immigration system to begin with. I mean, it hasn't been addressed for 30 years. There's been a lack of intestinal fortitude on both sides of the aisle. And it's time for them to step up and do something about it. Anybody that comes into the border and claims credible issues related to security, harm - credible, you know, they're claiming credible harm, they're, under our laws, able to assume asylum. My biggest issue is some of that. I mean, if you do a shutdown, we've got over 13,000 - not counting the military, which wasn't involved in this, but - we've got over 13,000 federal civilian and other employees here. And that's pretty critical. Our food banks were having - were depleted. We have all kinds of issues.
But I'm also dealing with migrants coming north every day. Yesterday - I get that every day. Yesterday, we had 290. Saturday, we had 250. Friday, we had 420. And that's what you have coming forth. And they're here from 24 to 48 hours, typically. Could be as long as 96 hours. But we have an NGO and the Annunciation House, which does a great job, and processes them with 20 shelters and sends them on their way.
INSKEEP: And you had, also, these practical problems of dealing with that when some of the government people were unpaid or furloughed. In just a sentence, has our debate over this issue been almost irrelevant? I mean, given what you say is really important?
MARGO: Well, it's ancillary to - I mean, if it prompts and prods and gets people to step up and do what they ought to be doing, I mean, this whole issue for the last several weeks, all it does is say to me why we need term limits.
INSKEEP: Dee Margo, thanks so much. Really appreciate it.
MARGO: You betcha (ph).
INSKEEP: He's the Republican mayor of El Paso.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Immigration will surely be an issue in the 2020 presidential election. The most recent Democrat to enter the race is also the one capturing the most attention, at least in this moment. California Senator Kamala Harris drew an estimated 20,000 people to her kickoff rally in Oakland yesterday. NPR's Scott Detrow was there.
OAKLAND INTERFAITH GOSPEL CHOIR: (Singing) ...Through the perilous fight.
SCOTT DETROW, BYLINE: The setting had all the hallmarks of the traditional campaign kickoff. Oakland City Hall was draped in flags and bunting as Harris stood in front of it, launching her bid for president. The rally also had the unmistakable feel of both the East Bay and of Harris's black heritage.
OAKLAND INTERFAITH GOSPEL CHOIR: (Singing) ...The bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night...
DETROW: The Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir sang, and a drum group played Marvin Gaye, among other touches.
KAMALA HARRIS: I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for president of the United States.
(CHEERING)
DETROW: Harris is organizing her message around her long career as a prosecutor and the way that, in that job, she would always announce herself to the judge and jury.
HARRIS: I walked into the courtroom for the first time and said the five words that would guide my life's work. Kamala Harris, for the people.
DETROW: But while that for the people slogan permeated her speech, it was another repeated theme that energized the crowd - the idea that the policies President Trump promotes don't represent the United States of America.
HARRIS: When we have children in cages, crying for their mothers and fathers, don't you dare call that border security. That's a human rights abuse.
(CHEERING)
HARRIS: And that's not our America.
DETROW: Harris criticized the president implicitly...
HARRIS: Lord knows I am not perfect, but I will always speak with decency and moral clarity and treat all people with dignity and respect.
(CHEERING)
DETROW: ...And also explicitly.
HARRIS: When authoritarianism is on the march, when nuclear proliferation is on the rise, when we have foreign powers infecting the White House like malware...
DETROW: Harris also laid out a campaign platform that looks increasingly familiar among the Democrats in the race. She promised to push for "Medicare-for-all," for debt-free college education and universal pre-K, among other policies. She did so on a scale and stage that sought to signal to Democratic voters and donors that in a crowded and growing field of candidates, she is a contender who should be taken seriously.
The heavily produced and attended rally was a much different approach from the purposely low-key way other top-tier Democratic candidates have begun their campaigns. Senator Elizabeth Warren launched her bid with a web video, then went right to Iowa.
(SOUNDBITE OF RALLY)
ELIZABETH WARREN: Hello, Council Bluffs. Woo.
DETROW: And after an appearance on CBS's "Late Show," Senator Kirsten Gillibrand visited her hometown diner in upstate New York.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND: People want common-sense solutions. They want you to fight for them and get things done, and I have a really strong, proven record of doing that in my last decade in public service.
DETROW: In Oakland Sunday, supporters packed the plaza in front of City Hall, as well as several surrounding city blocks. They ranged from the interested but uncommitted, like Isaac Pingrey...
ISAAC PINGREY: I'm excited that she's announcing her candidacy. I think we have a lot of great candidates. So, you know, if Amy Klobuchar's announcement was, you know, a mile from my house, I'd go to that, too.
DETROW: ...To people like Malaika Bobino, who says she'll definitely vote for Harris in California's primary. Pointing to the just-ended government shutdown, Bobino says of all the issues out there, to her, the most important one is simply electing a Democrat.
MALAIKA BOBINO: That and the wall and just who he is, yeah. Change is more important than anything.
DETROW: That's something Democrat after Democrat has told NPR here in Oakland but also Iowa, New Hampshire and elsewhere. If that's the criteria many Democrats will be voting on, the question is how candidates will distinguish themselves in a field that grows more crowded every week. Scott Detrow, NPR News, Oakland.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The people eager to challenge President Trump could conceivably include Howard Schultz.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The man who made Starbucks into a global brand says he is considering a run for president. Though he's a lifelong Democrat, Schultz says he would run as an independent. He spoke last night on CBS' "60 Minutes."
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "60 MINUTES")
HOWARD SCHULTZ: I don't care if you're a Democrat, independent, Libertarian, Republican. Bring me your ideas, and I will be an independent person who will embrace those ideas because I am not in any way in bed with a party.
INSKEEP: The prospect of an independent bid is annoying some Democrats who do not want to divide the vote against President Trump. So what would a Howard Schultz candidacy stand for? We expect an interview with Schultz tomorrow here on MORNING EDITION.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANATOLE'S "EMULSION")
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Rosemary Mariner has died. She was one of the first six women to fly aircraft for the United States Navy. Her career began in the 1970s. Here's Capt. Mariner speaking on NPR's Talk Of The Nation in 2013 about who inspired her to break down barriers.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
ROSEMARY MARINER: My role models were African-American men who had led the vanguard in integration of race in the armed forces and studied many of the lessons that they had to pass on.
INSKEEP: Rosemary Mariner died on Friday of cancer at the age of 65. The people she inspired over the years include her friend Tammie Jo Shults, who was also a Navy aviator. She retired as a lieutenant commander. She became a commercial pilot later on who made the news last year safely landing a Southwest Airlines plane that suffered engine failure. Ms. Shults, welcome to the program.
TAMMIE JO SHULTS: Well, thank you. Good morning.
INSKEEP: And I'm sorry for your loss. How long did you know Rosemary Mariner?
SHULTS: Probably approaching 30 years.
INSKEEP: Oh, goodness. How did you meet? Was it in the military?
SHULTS: I checked into her squadron, VAQ-34, when she was executive officer getting ready to take command.
INSKEEP: What was it like to serve under her then, to take an order from her from time to time?
SHULTS: You know, it - first of all, just checking into her squadron even as the XO, her leadership changed the atmosphere as leadership does. It always sets the tone. And she was one of those completely unique individuals that was able to help everyone cross the great divide. And the squadron that I came from - there was usually one woman a year that went through it. And they still had some of their set ideas and ways about women aviators. But when I checked into her squadron, VAQ-34, there was just a completely different atmosphere. Everybody was pulling together for one mission, and the differences in race or gender were completely invisible.
INSKEEP: Now, when you say set ideas or ways about women aviators, I guess that would be the men who would think, as men sometimes do, well, women can't drive the car. I mean, that sort of thing?
SHULTS: Right, right. Well, and you have to also remember, like, when we talk about Rosemary being in the first class, you know, those kind of changes - they may speak fairly quickly when you say them. But those caused huge ripples of effect. And everywhere Rosemary went in naval aviation, she was the first to do that - the first to fly jets, the first to have command of a squadron. You know, she was - and she was more than a first. She was an original.
INSKEEP: Meaning that she had an influence beyond whatever she did in her day-to-day life. She was a Jackie Robinson kind of figure.
SHULTS: Very much. She had one of the most - I would say whenever you're new at something - you're doing something new, walking through a door - and I will say she was a champion of people - not of women - of people. And the doors that were unlocked for women in aviation and the Navy were unlocked by men. It took women like Rosemary, JoEllen, Mary Louise - there was a group of those ladies in that - six of them, I believe, total. It started with eight, and then it went to six in that first class. And they had to push the doors open with their own hard work, determination and brilliance. And she was one of those leaders that could do that and wield that machete to open up a path and do it with as little malice and with grace.
INSKEEP: Wielding the machete with grace and without malice. Wow. OK, is it possible - we've just got a few seconds. Is it possible to put in a few words what she loved about flying?
SHULTS: You know, I will tell you one of the things that she loved about flying was probably the adventure of it, and her flying was just a small part. That was what she did. It wasn't who she was, and that's part of the reason she was very well-grounded. She found her foundation in Christ, and that's what springboarded her into being a good leader.
INSKEEP: Well-grounded. Tammie Jo Shults, thanks so much.
SHULTS: You bet. Bye-bye.
INSKEEP: She told us about Rosemary Mariner, who died at 65.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We turn now to southern Brazil, where a catastrophic dam collapse has left 60 people dead. Up to 300 others are missing. Catherine Osborn reports that the scale of this tragedy has outraged Brazilians.
CATHERINE OSBORN, BYLINE: Mine worker Luiz Castro was taking iron ore to a grinding machine on Friday when he heard what he says sounded like the noise of giant truck wheels exploding.
LUIZ CASTRO: (Speaking Portuguese).
OSBORN: Then he said he saw a mountain of mud descending on the building where he works.
CASTRO: (Speaking Portuguese).
OSBORN: He ran and made it out alive. After watching and hearing of the deaths of several co-workers, he faced new stress on Sunday when his neighborhood was evacuated due to the threat of a second dam collapse at the mining complex. The mine is on the outskirts of the small city of Brumadinho, population around 40,000 people, in southeastern Brazil. The panic since Friday's disaster has also left some residents outraged at the mining industry that dominates the region.
DILCE ALMEIDA: (Speaking Portuguese).
OSBORN: "It was negligence, and it was a crime," said retired clothing vendor Dilce Almeida. She spent the weekend between hospitals and emergency response centers searching for her nephew Andre. Authorities say by now, it's likely most people who disappeared in the flood of mining waste have died, believed to be buried alive. What most angers Almeida, she says, is how little the mining company, Vale, appears to have learned since a 2015 dam collapse at a mine it co-owned with multinational BHP. That killed 19 people.
Since Friday, Brazilian judges have frozen over $2.9 billion in Vale's accounts for immediate relief for victims and the environment. Still, Brazilians are predicting this kind of tragedy will continue to happen. Alexandre Alves, a disaster relief coordinator with the federal government, is overseeing his fifth dam collapse.
ALEXANDRE ALVES: (Speaking Portuguese).
OSBORN: He says risk management at Brazilian mining dams really needs to improve. Federal officials have pledged to make mining regulations more strict. But for many, this disaster has laid bare the difference between pledges and enforcement. Vale's president told press that a few months ago an audit found the dam stable. Search efforts continued overnight on Sunday. For NPR News, I'm Catherine Osborn in Brumadinho, Brazil.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BURNING PARIS'S "LET'S WATCH THE WORLD COLLAPSE")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Will Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman take the stand? The prosecution is wrapping up its arguments in the trial of the notorious drug kingpin. Federal prosecutors have presented dozens of witnesses to testify over the past several months in a Brooklyn courthouse. Now it will be the defense's turn to make its case, and it's not yet clear whether or not they will put Guzman on the stand. He faces 17 counts linked to running the massive drug trafficking organization and has already been convicted of crimes in Mexico.
Joining us on the line, Keegan Hamilton. He is U.S. editor for VICE News. He hosts a podcast called "Chapo: Kingpin On Trial." Keegan, thanks for being here.
KEEGAN HAMILTON: Morning. Thanks for having me.
MARTIN: Let's start with what is going to happen today. The prosecution gets its last chance to make its arguments. What are you expecting?
HAMILTON: So the prosecution still has one cooperating witness on the stand, and then they have two law enforcement witnesses afterwards who should be brief. They'll get a chance to talk to the jury again when they make their closing arguments. But this is their last chance to present evidence to the jury and, you know, prove their case that El Chapo is the leader of the Sinaloa cartel and is guilty of all of these crimes he's accused of.
MARTIN: What is left in their case to make? I mean, what are these witnesses expected to say that others have not?
HAMILTON: We haven't heard about El Chapo's final capture in 2016. They sort of have taken the jury chronologically from the late '80s start of Chapo's career up until the very end. And we - last week, we heard about his 2015 escape. But we haven't heard about when he was recaptured, which involved a shootout with Mexican marines and another attempted escape through a tunnel that didn't quite work out for him.
MARTIN: All right. So the prosecution gets to question these final witnesses, and then it's the defense's turn. The big question is whether or not they're gonna put Guzman on the stand. What are the factors that go into that decision?
HAMILTON: So the factors that go into that decision are what do they have to lose? And at this point, it seems like the defense has nothing to lose. Usually a defendant taking the stand is sort of a last-ditch effort. And that seems like it might be needed in this case. I mean, on one hand, he opens himself up to self-incrimination and perjury if he's questioned by prosecutors on cross-examination. On the other hand, he can sort of maybe control his narrative a little bit and respond to some of the witnesses who have testified against him.
MARTIN: This trial, as we've noted, it's been going on for months. And the jury has had to hear all kinds of gruesome stories recounting some of these horrific crimes. Can you detail moments that have stood out to you?
HAMILTON: Absolutely. So, you know, initially the judge in this case said this is a drug conspiracy trial. It's not a murder trial. Throughout the course of the trial, there have been references to murders that were committed, kidnappings, things of that nature.
But it wasn't really laid out in vivid, graphic detail until the end of last week, when a witness who was El Chapo's bodyguard for a while and a hitman for him came to testify and described in just the most gruesome, vivid details you can imagine him - El Chapo personally pulling the trigger on executions, personally being involved in beatings of men who'd been kidnapped - we heard description of one man who was shot and buried while he was still alive - just truly stomach-churning stuff that really seemed to impact the jury and, frankly, everyone who was in the courtroom.
MARTIN: When do you expect a verdict?
HAMILTON: We're expecting a verdict sometime in the next two, possibly three weeks. Although, given the totality of the evidence that's come across so far, it's hard to see them taking long to need a guilty verdict.
MARTIN: Keegan Hamilton of VICE News. Thanks. We appreciate it.
HAMILTON: Thanks.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Here's how the power struggle in Venezuela looks this week. An opposition leader, who was declared interim president, plans a week of mass protests. The United States is backing his campaign to replace the longtime president Nicolas Maduro. NPR's Philip Reeves says both sides are courting Venezuela's security forces.
PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: No president in Venezuela can keep power without the support of the armed forces. Nicolas Maduro knows that. So far, his generals appear loyal. Maduro's working to ensure it stays that way...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT NICOLAS MADURO: (Speaking Spanish).
REEVES: ...By rallying his troops in person. Maduro went to a military base yesterday west of Caracas. His forces paraded their Russian-made arms and fired some tank shells into a hillside just for show.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MADURO: (Speaking Spanish).
UNIDENTIFIED SOLDIERS: (Chanting in Spanish).
REEVES: "Do you support a coup?" Maduro asks them. "No, president," the soldiers reply. The coup Maduro has in mind is one that he says is masterminded by the United States. Last week, opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself Venezuela's interim president. The U.S. and much of the Western Hemisphere at once recognized him, arguing that Maduro's presidency is illegitimate because he rigged his re-election. Then everyone waited to see if Maduro would fall. He's still there. A duel for power is underway focusing on Venezuela's military.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JUAN GUAIDO: (Speaking Spanish).
REEVES: Guaido is taking the fight to the streets by holding rallies with a message for the armed forces. "Abandon Maduro, and we'll offer you amnesty." Venezuela's National Assembly, which Guaido heads, passed a law laying out how this works. His supporters yesterday went around the streets handing out copies of this law to soldiers and police. People posted videos of them on social media. Though it's unconfirmed if they're authentic, several videos appear to show national guardsmen accepting the pieces of paper and setting fire to them. Yet Guaido's supporters believe Maduro's military support is fracturing.
MARIA JIMENEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
REEVES: "In the lower ranks," says opposition activist Maria Jimenez. Guaido's had one success. Venezuela's defense attache in Washington is now on his side. Guaido is also targeting civil servants and the judiciary, offering them possible amnesty, too. Judges in Maduro's Venezuela are particularly important, says Alfredo Romero.
ALFREDO ROMERO: Imagine that the judiciary are like soldiers of the regime and, actually, is being used - the judiciary system - as a weapon for political persecution.
REEVES: Romero knows Venezuela's judiciary well. He's director of the human rights group Foro Penal in Venezuela. Romero says he spends a lot of time in front of judges trying to persuade them to release detainees. His organization says the security forces detained more than 800 people last week mostly in poor areas. Romero believes as Venezuela's political crisis unfolds, its judiciary is playing a waiting game.
ROMERO: There is not a possibility of Maduro leaving power. They will keep the way they are.
REEVES: However, says Romero...
ROMERO: If there is a risk of Maduro leaving power and a race for them to also lose power, they will think about ways to exit.
REEVES: Philip Reeves, NPR News, Caracas.
(SOUNDBITE OF BOSSK'S "THE REVERIE")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Rachel Martin. When was the last time you went bowling? Maybe you got a few strikes and were pretty happy with yourself because bowling a strike every time is hard - right? - which is why Kai Struthers' family is so excited. Kai, who is just 10 years old, became the second youngest person in the country to bowl a perfect 300-point game. His coach said when he doesn't have a bowling ball in his hand, Kai is just a regular 10 year old, but when he does, he is bowling perfection. It's MORNING EDITION.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Monday morning - that is the start of a workweek for hundreds of thousands of federal workers who had been furloughed for the past month. President Trump acquiesced to congressional Democrats who insisted that the government reopen before they debate border security. But the clock has now been reset, and the White House and Congress have three weeks to resolve the border debate. If not, the government could shut down again. Jonah Goldberg is in the studio with us this morning. He's a conservative commentator and senior editor of National Review. Jonah, good morning.
JONAH GOLDBERG: Hey, it's great to be here.
MARTIN: How do you read what just happened over the past month?
GOLDBERG: Well, I think it's fairly obvious - scoring on conventional Washington terms - that Nancy Pelosi won and Donald Trump lost. And any of - any effect - any effort to spin it another way is precisely that - spin. He lost. He backed down. He blinked. That said, he also punted, which is also another time-honored Washington tradition. And so now we have till February 15 to figure something out. And they've created, essentially, a commission, which is also - it's like the trifecta of Washington cliches.
(LAUGHTER)
GOLDBERG: And...
MARTIN: The game of chicken, blinking, the commission...
GOLDBERG: That's right. I mean, we could play shutdown bingo...
MARTIN: (Laughter).
GOLDBERG: ...And almost everything would be checked off. And so my own deeply cynical - searching Amazon for deals on hemlock - interpretation of all of this is that Donald Trump is speaking honestly and somewhat accurately in the Wall Street Journal interview that came out last night when he says it's less than 50-50 chance that this commission - I mean, this group of lawmakers, gang of 17, is going to come up with a solution that pleases everybody and we avoid another government shutdown. I think that what Trump was doing in that very almost Castroite in length speech the other day was doing - is setting the predicate to declare a national emergency, which he may have the legal authority to do. There's an interesting debate about it, but which, I think, is personally a constitutional and philosophical monstrosity - declare a national emergency and just sidestep the entire political process with the full knowledge that the courts will intervene and stop it. And that lets both Democrats and Republicans save face...
MARTIN: Right.
GOLDBERG: ...And avoids a shutdown.
MARTIN: Let's listen - Marco Rubio was asked about this on "Meet The Press" Sunday. Let's listen to this.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MEET THE PRESS")
MARCO RUBIO: It's just not a good precedent to set in terms of action. It doesn't mean that I don't want border security. I do. I just think that's the wrong way to achieve it. It doesn't provide certainty. And you could very well wind up in sort of a - the abstract victory at the front end and then not getting it done.
MARTIN: Other conservative commentators, Erick Erickson comes to mind, has pointed out the fact that, listen, President Trump, if you decide to evoke a national emergency over a "border crisis," quote, unquote, get ready for the Democrats to - the next time they control the White House - to declare a national emergency over guns in America or climate change. I mean, what kind of political precedent does this set?
GOLDBERG: Oh, I think it probably takes - it sets a terrible one. I've been banging my spoon in my highchair about this for a while now. And it's - but it's - to me, it's not just the partisan precedent, which I think is an important thing. It's also just simply that the failure to get the legislation you want out of Congress is not a national emergency. And if it were a national emergency that required sending military troops on domestic soil, it would've been sufficiently obvious that we would have done it a while ago, or he would've done it a while ago. Instead, this is an attempt for him to save face. And I really worry - if you play this out, what does it look like if the U.S. military starts going onto private land through eminent domain, seizing eminent domain? It doesn't seem to me science fiction to think that there's going to be someone in - I don't know - Texas or Arizona who might have a gun and say, get off my land (laughter).
MARTIN: People who might be Republicans, people who might have voted for Donald Trump.
GOLDBERG: Very much so. And part of the irony of this situation is that demand for a wall is much higher in the sort of upper Midwest than it is in the border states themselves. 'Cause in the border states themselves, there are a lot of people who understand that it's a little more complicated situation. The further away you get, the more sort of cartoonish and symbolic this whole thing gets. And for whatever reason, Donald Trump has decided - he said the other day, apparently, that this is his read my lips pledge. This is the defining pledge of his presidency, so he's locked in. He has to prove that he's doing something about this symbolic issue of his presidency. And it's going to push us into a place where even more democratic and constitutional norms get damaged. And then the Democrats are going to seize upon those precedents to do even more damage. And it's going to be a vicious cycle for a while.
MARTIN: Speaking just in pure, raw, political terms, would declaring a national emergency repair some of the damage that's been done between the president and his base?
GOLDBERG: I think so. I mean, there's an interesting split in the Trump supporting base - that 30, 35 percent of the Republican, you know, electorate that really stands by him. Some of those people are what you might call America Firsters, who were there before Donald Trump. They wanted less immigration. They wanted, you know, sort of pull-the-troops-home kind of foreign policy long before Trump showed up on the scene. And then there are the people who are sort of the Trumpists who just like Donald Trump. The America Firsters were very angry about Trump caving on the shutdown, most obviously people like Ann Coulter. And so there's a bit of a rift there. I think if Donald Trump declares a national emergency, that might help heal that rift.
MARTIN: Jonah Goldberg of National Review. Jonah, thanks as always. We appreciate it.
GOLDBERG: It's great to be here. Thank you.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The librarian Nancy Pearl is with us next. She joins us regularly to give us book recommendations, and she has sent me a stack of books here that is going to take us on a series of journeys to different parts of the world. Hi there, Nancy.
NANCY PEARL, BYLINE: Hi, Steve.
INSKEEP: So we're going to travel here, beginning with a novel called "The Night Tiger." Is it Yangsze Choo the author?
PEARL: Yes. And it's set in the 1930s, so we're not only traveling in place, but we're traveling backwards in time.
INSKEEP: Bravely (ph).
PEARL: 1930s in Malaya. This is the kind of book that when you read it, you really are transported back to that time and place. And when I was reading it, I - as I often do, I got out an atlas and started looking for the towns in Malaya - which, of course, is now Malaysia - the towns that she talks about and kind of seeing where they are. The main character is a young woman named Ji Lin who moonlights as a dancehall girl. And during one of her working evenings, she makes a rather gruesome discovery. And then in alternating chapters, we learn the story of a young Malayan boy, Ren, who's 11 years old who works as a houseboy for a British doctor. And when the British doctor dies, he gives Ren his final instructions, which is to find the doctor's finger that the doctor lost during a hunting expedition years ago. And the reason the doctor wants - needs that finger to be found is that it has to be buried with the rest of his body, or his spirit will roam the world uneasily forever.
INSKEEP: OK. Alfred Hitchcock talks about the MacGuffin...
PEARL: (Laughter) Right.
INSKEEP: ...The object that you're searching for that causes the movie to go - the finger is the MacGuffin in this novel.
PEARL: Right, yes, yes. And these two seemingly totally unrelated characters come together through this quest to find the doctor's finger. Really, she's captured - the kind of magic realism that we read so much of in Latin American fiction has now gone to Malaya where magical things happened and numbers have real meanings. And there's a train to the world of the dead that these characters have to take. It's a pretty wonderful book.
INSKEEP: Wow. Airfare to Malaysia, by the way, is not too bad, but the back-in-time fee is considerable. So we travel with this historical fiction to a real landscape in the past, and now there's this book here called "The Memory Of Love." What's that about?
PEARL: Oh, my gosh. This is such an amazing novel. It's the second novel by Aminatta Forna, who is the daughter of a Sierra Leonean and a Scottish mother. And she's written a book that's set in - you know, Sierra Leone went through a terrible, terrible civil war. And the civil war lasted 11 years, from 1991 to 2002. And this is a book that takes place after the war is over.
It's about three men and the woman who connects their lives in different ways. She has a different relationship to each of those three men. Two of the men lived through the war, an older man who is a professor at the university and a younger man who has become a surgeon. And the third man is a British psychologist who comes to the country to try to treat all the people who were so affected by the war. One of the things that I think the book asks you to think about is that during a war, you can either do good or you can do well. And to think about the choice that one has to make is pretty stunning.
INSKEEP: You said do good or do well, meaning do what is morally right or profit somehow.
PEARL: Right, yes - or profit, yes. Don't you think that's just so apt?
INSKEEP: Yeah. Where do we travel in this book here by Emma Hooper called "Our Homesick Songs"?
PEARL: We travel to the very eastern edge of Canada to Newfoundland, and it takes place in 1992. 1992 was the year that the Canadian government shut down the fishing industry because the cod were overfished. The families who are affected who made their living from fishing are offered money to leave their homes, abandon their homes and move north and west to make a living, especially in the booming oil and gas business that was then going on in Alberta. But the main characters in this book are a family, the Connors, and it's a book that talks about how each of the members of that family, the parents and their two children, deal with the potential loss of the way of life that they've always known.
INSKEEP: Maybe it's fitting since we've been traveling around through these books that the final book on your stack is called "Landmarks" by Robert Macfarlane.
PEARL: Robert Macfarlane, who is a fellow at Cambridge University, is so interested in landscape and language. And he, in this book, is writing about how we've lost the specific words for details of the landscape. And each chapter ends with a glossary of words that we no longer use or no longer know. It occurred to me that it would be so much fun to pick a word and use that word as much as we can over the year.
INSKEEP: OK. Here it goes. Here it goes. What's the word? What do you got?
PEARL: Fleeches.
INSKEEP: What?
PEARL: Fleeches.
INSKEEP: Spell it, please.
PEARL: F-L-E-E-C-H-E-S - large snowflakes. Is that not wonderful?
INSKEEP: (Laughter) I stood at the window watching the fleeches of snow.
PEARL: Fall.
INSKEEP: Or just fleeches - just fleeches fall.
PEARL: The fleeches, right.
INSKEEP: I stood at the window watching the fleeches fall.
PEARL: Can I just read one quote that he says...
INSKEEP: Please, go ahead.
PEARL: ...Because, you know, this is why I love Robert MacFarlane so much. (Reading) Before you become a writer, you must first become a reader. Every hour spent reading is an hour spent learning to write. This continues to be true throughout the writer's life.
Isn't that wonderful?
INSKEEP: Yeah.
PEARL: So this - all these books are just such discoveries. I love it.
(SOUNDBITE OF FRAMEWORKS' "ALL DAY")
INSKEEP: Librarian Nancy Pearl, who is also the author of fleeches of books, including "George And Lizzie: A Novel," you can find more of her book recommendations and our favorite books of the year at NPR's Book Concierge at npr.org/books.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The federal government is getting ready to give Puerto Rico nearly $20 billion to help rebuild from Hurricane Maria. Local officials say it's enough money to transform the island and boost the economy there for years - if the money is well spent. Here's NPR's Adrian Florido.
ADRIAN FLORIDO, BYLINE: Puerto Rico's governor, Ricardo Rossello, got up in front of hundreds of people at the convention center in San Juan last month.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
RICARDO ROSSELLO: (Speaking Spanish).
(CHEERING)
ROSSELLO: (Speaking Spanish).
FLORIDO: It was an event for people interested in getting jobs in construction because as federal money starts flowing to fund the next phase of the island's recovery from Maria, the government expects it will need 100,000 people to do all the work.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ROSSELLO: (Speaking Spanish).
FLORIDO: "We know we've been through difficult times," the governor said. "But now we're standing at the doorstep of Puerto Rico's reconstruction." The government expects to repair tens of thousands of homes and build many new ones, new bridges and roads, projects to promote tourism and the economy - all funded by $20 billion in disaster recovery grants from the federal housing department over the next several years.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ROSSELLO: (Speaking Spanish).
FLORIDO: We have an opportunity we haven't had in generations, the governor said. We have to make the most of it. Puerto Rico is mired in a 13-year-long recession. Its debt burden and budget cuts mean the island could never fund many of these projects on its own. But as they prepare to spend the money, officials also know they're facing a lot of scrutiny, especially from President Trump, who said he expects the island's, quote, "inept politicians" to mismanage the funds and has also tried to block some funding for Puerto Rico.
Many Puerto Ricans dismissed those attacks as unfair stereotypes. That doesn't mean, though, that there aren't people on the island with their own concerns about how the money is going to be spent. Ariadna Godreau-Aubert directs Ayuda Legal Puerto Rico, a nonprofit pressuring the government to more deeply engage with local communities as it develops its plans for the HUD grants.
ARIADNA GODREAU-AUBERT: This money could be the answer for many communities that, within an austerity crisis, will never see any kind of money coming in.
FLORIDO: But she says that in its rush to get the money flowing, the government has cut corners, not gotten enough public input.
GODREAU-AUBERT: When people is not part of the process, people are displaced by the process.
FLORIDO: The government plans to spend much of this money to relocate many thousands of people from flood-prone and risky areas to new homes elsewhere. To advocates like Godreau-Aubert, that sounds like tearing communities apart.
GODREAU-AUBERT: What we have seen so far is that this is a plan for developers and not a plan for the people.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
ROSSELLO: I'm telling you this from the bottom of my heart. We want this plan of reconstruction not to be the governor's plan or not to be, you know, the mayor's plan. It needs to be the plan of all Puerto Ricans.
FLORIDO: That was Governor Rossello when I asked him about Godreau-Aubert's concerns at a recent press conference.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
ROSSELLO: Make no mistake about it. We're moving fast, but we're moving transparently and collaboratively so that we can have the best long-term reconstruction of Puerto Rico.
FLORIDO: Cesar Diaz says if that long-term reconstruction looks like what happened at his house, he's worried.
(SOUNDBITE OF METAL CLANGING, GATE OPENING)
FLORIDO: Diaz lives in the town of Loiza, on the island's north coast. He got his roof patched up under a program paid for by FEMA and run by Puerto Rico's housing department. But when the work crew showed up, they weren't very professional, he remembers. He says the first day it rained after they made the repairs, his roof leaked in places it hadn't before. He points to brown splotches on the ceiling.
CESAR DIAZ: (Speaking Spanish).
FLORIDO: "Here, there, over there," he says, "all those leaks are new." Diaz says that many of his neighbors who still have blue tarps over the roofs are hopeful that once the billions start to flow, the government will finally help repair their roofs. But Diaz worries that if the work's not done well, the next hurricane will blow the roofs off again.
DIAZ: (Speaking Spanish).
FLORIDO: "Puerto Rico has always been in the path of hurricanes, and it always will be," Diaz said. "So having a strong roof is a matter of life or death," Diaz says.
Adrian Florido, NPR News, Loiza, Puerto Rico.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARP'S "NZUKU")
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
This story takes us to the shores of Lake Erie - to Ashtabula, Ohio, a port city with access to Canada and beyond through the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway. Its economy is tied to Ohio's steel industry. It's name-checked in an old Bob Dylan song; I'll look for you in old Honolulu, San Francisco and Ashtabula. And it's the hometown of U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer, who was President Trump's chief negotiator in talks with China. In that city, NPR's Jim Zarroli found the backstory of a hard-line trade negotiator.
JIM ZARROLI, BYLINE: A bitter wind is whipping off Lake Erie on an overcast day in Ashtabula. Nearby sits an enormous ramp that's used to load coal onto freighters. Ray Gruber has lived in the area all his life.
RAY GRUBER: When I was a kid - 1960s, OK? - this was a pretty booming operation down here. You had all your steel mills in Pittsburgh, and this would be the port of entry for all these ore boats. I mean, this is where all the activities happened.
ZARROLI: Before he retired, Gruber worked as a machinist. The company where he started out is no longer around.
GRUBER: When that recession in the '70s happened, a lot of places moved out and a lot of companies moved out. We became the Rust Belt. You know, a lot of stores became empty.
ZARROLI: These days, the waterfront is home to coffee bars and brew pubs. The harbor attracts tourists from Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Much less freight comes through the port. Among those old enough to remember the way the port used to be is trade representative Robert Lighthizer who grew up in town. Lighthizer is a longtime critic of global trade. In a 2017 speech, he said unfair practices by China and other countries have devastated American manufacturers.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ROBERT LIGHTHIZER: There has been a growing feeling that the system that has developed in recent years is not quite fair to American workers in manufacturing and that we need to change.
ZARROLI: Those who know him say Lighthizer's views on trade were shaped in part by watching steel's decline in Ashtabula and the financial hardship that followed. Today Lighthizer is the man charged with carrying out Trump's ambitious trade agenda. Among other things, the administration has imposed steep import tariffs, which are a kind of tax on goods brought into the United States. For his hometown, those changes are bringing uncertainty but also some hope. Over the years, Ashtabula County has worked hard to rebuild its economy. Manufacturers here today tend to be smaller and tied to global trade. There are companies such as Welded Tubes which makes auto parts.
DAVID JENKINS: We are a supplier to Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Subaru.
ZARROLI: David Jenkins is Welded Tubes' vice president of operations. The company makes metal backing for car seat headrests. The parts are sent to seat manufacturers in Canada and Mexico. Then those seats are brought back to the U.S. and installed in cars. The new trade agreement replacing NAFTA requires cars to use more parts made in North America, and Jenkins says that could mean more orders.
JENKINS: Now that all the auto manufacturers are looking at onshoring additional manufacturing and assembly plants, it's very good for Welded Tubes.
ZARROLI: In fact, a big problem Jenkins faces today is finding workers. He wants to expand. But these policies being carried out by Lighthizer have had a downside. Welded Tubes makes parts made of steel, and steel prices have jumped.
JENKINS: We're looking at a $300- to $20,000-a-month increase in the operating cost.
ZARROLI: And that's because of steel.
JENKINS: That's because of steel.
ZARROLI: In many ways, tariffs have complicated life for manufacturers here. Grand River Rubber and Plastics makes belts that get shipped to China and used in vacuum cleaners. President Donald Chaplin says the vacuum cleaner business has slowed since tariffs took effect. He's also having to pay more for a polymer he uses in production. Still, Chaplin shares a view often expressed by Lighthizer. He hopes the troubles will be temporary, and he is cautiously optimistic about trade. Over the years, many of his customers have fled to low-wage countries and no longer buy from him. But, he says, when his company tries to export to other countries, it often faces unfair barriers. Chaplin says Trump is trying to ensure a level playing field for manufacturers like him.
DONALD CHAPLIN: I don't agree with all that he's done and definitely some of the - some of his methods sometimes. I think if you take him at his word, I think he does have the American worker at heart. I think he is concerned about America.
ZARROLI: Like many people in Ashtabula, Chaplin hopes Trump can encourage companies that have fled abroad to come back. If he and Lighthizer succeed in restoring some of the luster to American manufacturing, they say, it will be worth the pain those policies are causing. Jim Zarroli, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
How do we adapt to a world with more people and less fresh water? The question becomes urgent as climate change accelerates. The oceans may rise, but some regions are becoming drier. Farmers use a lot of water growing rice as a basic food for billions, but some need to do it with less. Danielle Preiss reports from Nepal.
(CROSSTALK)
DANIELLE PREISS, BYLINE: Apsara Bharati and her neighbors are spread across a small bit of land in Kavre about 20 miles outside Nepal's capital. The women bend to plant rice seedlings in mud to their calves in Bharati's fields.
APSARA BHARATI: (Speaking Nepali).
PREISS: One by one, Bharati instructs the women, who are used to placing several plants at once. Bharati is practicing SRI, or the system of rice intensification. The technique, which developed in Madagascar in the 1980s, involves planting fewer seedlings, planting them younger and using less water. It seems counterintuitive, but in countries like Nepal, subsistence farmers have seen their harvest grow.
BHOLA MAN SINGH BASNET: We are getting more than 50 percent or in some cases 100 percent increase in yield you see by following the SRI.
PREISS: Bhola Man Singh Basnet is a retired agronomist from Nepal's National Agriculture Research Council. He says SRI is not a technology but a set of practices that helps plants grow stronger roots and more seeds per plant. Small farmers in India have broken yield records, and Nepal plans to incorporate it into next year's agriculture policy. While some in the scientific community doubt the sensational results and peer-reviewed research has been limited, SRI appeals to Basnet because there's no need to invest in new technology or buy seeds.
BASNET: I like this SRI system very, very much as an agronomist also because farmers, without spending extra money, they can increase yield.
PREISS: There might be a more pressing reason for countries like Nepal to try SRI. If you've ever seen rice paddies, you've probably seen them flooded.
SRIJANA KARKI: Because rice is not water-thirsty plant, but this is the tradition. That's how people plant rice.
PREISS: Srijana Karki, who promotes SRI use in Nepal through the organization World Neighbors, says the water is really to control weeds. With SRI, farmers weed more but use less water.
SONALI MCDERMID: We are very close to hitting a crisis, if not, you know, starting a crisis already, in terms of the amount of water available to sustain production.
PREISS: Climate researcher Sonali McDermid at New York University, who I reached by Skype, is working with collaborators from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University to see whether SRI might help in the face of global water shortages.
MCDERMID: I've seen estimates of about 25 percent reductions in water consumption all the way to 50 or 60 percent reductions in water consumption.
PREISS: Through test plots in India and Latin America, the researchers aim to isolate the parts of SRI that seem to work for poor farmers. They'll then use climate models to see how it might fare in a drier future. With longer root systems, the plants should better withstand drought. Back in Kavre, Srijana Karki translates for farmer Indira Lamisal who is noticing changes in the climate.
KARKI: In earlier days, rainfall was pretty predictable and regular, but nowadays, there's no rainfall, and it's not predictable.
PREISS: But Karki says the hardest part is convincing farmers' families to take the risk on SRI.
KARKI: There's no insurance, and they don't have much land, you know, and they depend on the produce. And they don't have extra money to buy rice if it doesn't work.
PREISS: Shanti Rai, who is helping her neighbor plant, remembers seeing what looked like a barren field when she tried SRI for the first time.
SHANTI RAI: (Through interpreter) I was scared, and my family yelled at me, what did you plant?
PREISS: Rai's family changed their minds when they saw their production increased almost 25 percent. This meant they grew enough to eat from their fields for eight months out of the year instead of the six they managed before. For families like theirs, this is all the evidence they need. For NPR News, I'm Danielle Preiss in Kathmandu.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We had a talk yesterday with Howard Schultz. The billionaire former CEO of Starbucks says he is considering an independent run for president. In our talk, the man who popularized upscale coffee answered critics who warned he could split the vote against President Trump.
HOWARD SCHULTZ: If there is a choice between President Trump and a progressive, liberal-minded person on a Democratic side, it would kill me to see President Trump be re-elected. And I believe that's what would take place.
INSKEEP: You think the Democrats are going to be too far left to win?
SCHULTZ: That's what I believe.
INSKEEP: What would Howard Schultz stand for, we asked, in a long conversation in New York? It was fitting that we met there because Schultz grew up there, and the most concrete thing he is selling is his life story. In a book called "From The Ground Up," Schultz describes a childhood in red brick public housing projects.
SCHULTZ: My father, in many ways, was a classic blue collar, uneducated laborer, a World War II veteran. I also think in many ways he felt as if he was a victim of the system, not respected for his work, and over time felt beaten down and bitter and, unfortunately, never kind of found himself in a job or profession that had much purpose. He would come home fatigued. He would come home depressed. And at times, there was abuse.
INSKEEP: Of you?
SCHULTZ: Yes. There was.
INSKEEP: What sort of abuse?
SCHULTZ: There was physical violence. There was rage. As I look back on it today, I think that rage was not directly towards me. It was just a release for him of how angry and disappointed he was at his own station in life and the world.
INSKEEP: Howard Schultz insists he held onto that background as he built Starbucks into a national brand and then a global one. His parents never had health insurance. He made sure his employees did, even part-timers. Though the company staggered in the Great Recession, its overall success is his clearest credential in running for office.
This was a portion of President Trump's sales pitch. Do you think Americans are ready to elect another businessman with no political experience?
SCHULTZ: Well, I don't accept the premise, with all due respect.
INSKEEP: Well, it's one of the things that he said...
SCHULTZ: Yeah. Well, yeah.
INSKEEP: ...I'm a businessman; I'm independent; I can make my own decisions.
SCHULTZ: Well, I just think we should ask ourselves, is that what we got? I mean, we have two years of immorality, and we have two years of broken promises. People should not be interested or support me because of my experience at Starbucks. It's what I've learned along the way.
INSKEEP: What he says he's learned is better corporate citizenship. He says he resisted calls to cut benefits. He created initiatives to find jobs for veterans. He came to question the idea that a CEO's sole responsibility is creating value for the stockholders.
SCHULTZ: I certainly believe that a hundred percent - but not in the absolute. Shareholder value had to be balanced and equaled with creating value for our customers and, most importantly, for our people.
INSKEEP: Would you be changing, as president, laws or pushing to change SEC regulations, anything else, to change the business environment in which shareholder value has become utterly paramount for companies across this country?
SCHULTZ: I don't think I would be changing laws, but what I would try and do is influence public CEOs to understand that we have a moral obligation and responsibility, not only to make a profit and create shareholder value, but also to do everything we can to do more for our employees and the communities we serve.
INSKEEP: Can you preach your way to that change on a large scale in a system where a CEO who doesn't maximize shareholder value can get sued or lose the company?
SCHULTZ: Financial performance, in a way, is the price of admission. We have to - a company has to perform. But you don't have to perform at the expense of your people.
INSKEEP: What Schultz has not made clear - at this early stage, at least - is how, if at all, he would change the economic or political systems under which he grew rich. It is not clear how he would reduce the national debt, although he says it is far too high. He says Republicans fail to take it seriously, and he accuses Democrats of making promises that could enlarge it.
SCHULTZ: Free Medicare for all, government-paid, free college for all - first of all, there's no free. I mean nothing is free.
INSKEEP: President Obama's theory was that you reduce the deficit in small measure by raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans. President Trump's theory was that you reduce the deficit by cutting taxes on the wealthiest Americans. You're smiling. Which, if either of those, is true?
SCHULTZ: Can I say it in my own words?
INSKEEP: Please.
SCHULTZ: So we are in dire need of comprehensive tax reform, which would include a significant level of infrastructure developments.
INSKEEP: Is it safe to say that the wealthiest would have to pay more? Whatever the rates become, however the reform is structured?
SCHULTZ: What I would say is that we need comprehensive tax reform.
INSKEEP: Why do you stick with that particular phrase?
SCHULTZ: Because I think there are a number of areas here that need to be addressed. And I'm not trying to dodge any question. I just feel like, you know, what we have today is an unfair system. However, when I see Elizabeth Warren come out with, you know, a ridiculous plan of taxing wealthy people a surtax of 2 percent because it makes a good headline - or sends out a tweet when she knows for a fact that's it's not something that's ever going to be passed, this is what's wrong. I mean, you can't just attack these things in a punitive way by punishing people.
INSKEEP: But I'm just thinking, you've got trillion-dollar annual deficits now in good times. Getting that down calls for some specific, painful-sounding things - drastic cut in military spending, at a time when the United States is confronting China and Russia and who knows who else, changes to Medicare and Social Security, tax increases on somebody. Are you going to do that?
SCHULTZ: Well, you haven't talked about growth. So...
INSKEEP: You think you can grow your way out of a trillion-dollar deficit?
SCHULTZ: I don't think you can - no. No. I don't think you can grow your way out of a trillion dollars. But I - remember, I've been an entrepreneur for the last 40 years. I view things a little bit differently than, certainly, a traditional politician. And I have a 30-year-plus record of being able to solve complex problems in unique ways.
INSKEEP: Though he is vague about what he would do if elected, Howard Schultz is insistent that he can be an alternative in the presidential campaign.
SCHULTZ: I can't think of anything that is a more quintessential expression of our democracy than providing the American people with a choice that doesn't have to be binary between a Republican and Democrat.
INSKEEP: He says the next president must be the right person, and he will decide within months if he thinks that person should be him.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We know Roger Stone's public position. Now, what is his legal defense?
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Yeah, President Trump's longtime friend and adviser is scheduled to be arraigned today. He was arrested Friday - accused of lying to Congress, witness tampering and more. Since Stone's arrest. He has gone on TV multiple times. And yesterday on Fox, he echoed President Trump's words about Russia's effort to sway the election.
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ROGER STONE: I am not going to testify against him because I possess no negative information. There is no Russian collusion. This is a witch hunt.
MARTIN: The federal indictment described Stone acting as a conduit between the 2016 Trump campaign and the organization of WikiLeaks.
INSKEEP: NPR justice reporter Ryan Lucas is here. Ryan, good morning.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: Why would Stone be so public about his defense in just this way?
LUCAS: Well, first of all, no one has ever accused Roger Stone of being a shrinking violet.
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
LUCAS: It's just not his personality. This is a man who is a self-described political dirty trickster. He loves a political fight. He loves the spectacle. Remember...
INSKEEP: And Donald Trump fired him as a campaign adviser. We should just note for a moment - he said Roger Stone was too much about himself. Donald Trump felt that Roger Stone was too much about himself. Anyway, go on. Go on.
LUCAS: Anyway, so remember after his court hearing Stone stepped out of - after his court here in Florida, Stone stepped out on the courthouse steps, flashed that V for victory sign that Richard Nixon made famous.
INSKEEP: Right.
LUCAS: Stone has used his own Instagram account since his arrest on Friday to mock Robert Mueller and his investigation. As for the TV interviews, Stone has used those to take aim at the FBI and Mueller. He has argued that having heavily armed FBI agents knock on his door first thing in the morning, take him into custody - that that was an abuse of power. I will say that legal experts say that what the FBI did was actually pretty standard in a case in which prosecutors have concerns that a defendant could tamper or destroy evidence. Stone has also used his TV appearances to appeal for money to help his defense fund.
INSKEEP: OK, so he gets his side of the story out. He asks for a little bit of help for the lawyers. Now, he's in court presumably with a lawyer. What happens in an arraignment by the way?
LUCAS: Well, he will be read the charges. There are seven counts in this indictment against him. Those include obstruction of an official proceeding, witness tampering and making false statements. The allegations all relate to efforts that Stone made to contact WikiLeaks about hacked Democratic emails during the campaign to find out what WikiLeaks planned to do with those materials. And Stone also tried to keep some of those efforts about those contacts secret.
Stone will enter a plea today. He has said over the past few days that he will plead not guilty. The magistrate judge could impose a gag order in this case. That's something that we saw in Paul Manafort's case in D.C. here. That's what will take place inside the courthouse. Now, I'm also very curious to see what is going to transpire outside the courthouse. You remember the scene in Florida on Friday - this raucous scene with the crowd jeering Stone, chants of lock him up. It will be interesting to see if we see something akin to that here in D.C.
INSKEEP: Another thing that will be interesting to see is what exactly is meant by a statement by the acting attorney general that the Mueller investigation will be finishing soon. What exactly did he say?
LUCAS: Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker was asked about the Russia investigation at a news conference yesterday. He said that he's fully briefed on the investigation. And then he added this.
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MATTHEW WHITAKER: The investigation is, I think, close to being completed. And I hope that we can get the report from Director Mueller as soon as we - as possible.
LUCAS: This is the first we've heard anything like this from a senior Justice Department official. This is not a concrete timeline. Whitaker did not define what he meant by close. But this is the first thing that we've heard like this from a senior official.
INSKEEP: And it's also a little odd because he said that in passing while trying to answer a question about something else. So it is hard to know how much it means.
LUCAS: Exactly.
INSKEEP: Ryan, thanks very much. That's NPR's Ryan Lucas.
LUCAS: Thank you.
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INSKEEP: Exactly what evidence does the United States have on the Chinese company Huawei?
MARTIN: Up until yesterday, we knew the U.S. was seeking extradition of a top executive detained in Canada. We also knew the U.S. has been campaigning to restrict the telecom giant's business around the world. Now, the U.S. has filed criminal charges against the company itself. It is accused of stealing trade secrets, of lying to banks and violating U.S. sanctions against Iran. Acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker announced two indictments against Huawei. One centers on a robot named Tappy.
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WHITAKER: Huawei's engineers allegedly violated confidentiality and nondisclosure agreements with T-Mobile by secretly taking photos of the robot, measuring it and even stealing a piece of it.
MARTIN: Stealing a piece of it - the piece was Tappy's arm. The indictment alleges Huawei management offered its employees bonuses for stealing technology.
INSKEEP: For more on the story, we go to NPR's Rob Schmitz in Shanghai. Hi, there, Rob.
ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: I guess we're hearing so much about Tappy, this robot, not because it's the biggest industrial theft ever but because it's the thing that prosecutors think they can prove. But what is the story there?
SCHMITZ: Well, this indictment stems from a civil suit that T-Mobile won four years ago against Huawei for stealing T-Mobile's technology. Now, the Department of Justice is filing criminal charges against Huawei for this, and this involves that robot named Tappy. Tappy was created by T-Mobile to test phones. At the time - this was seven years ago - Tappy was cutting edge. No other cellphone maker had a robot like this. Huawei, at the time, was a much smaller company, and its phones were not good.
So Huawei entered into a business agreement with T-Mobile that allowed its engineers to used Tappy at T-Mobile's factory. And according to what at times is a comical email trail, Steve, Huawei engineers bungle their way as they try to figure out how Tappy works. They take illegal photos of Tappy. They email measurements of the robot back to managers in China. They ask so many questions about Tappy that T-Mobile tells them to stop or they'll be thrown out of the factory. And at one point, one Huawei engineer dismembers Tappy to steal its arm and bring it home in a bag.
INSKEEP: Poor Tappy - I feel kind of sympathetic for the robot now.
SCHMITZ: Me too.
INSKEEP: But this is serious stuff because, according to the United States, this is part of a much larger pattern by this company - in fact, by a large swath of the Chinese economy - to steal technology. How is this connected to the other Huawei story about the chief financial officer who's been detained in Canada and the United States wants to extradite to the U.S.?
SCHMITZ: Well, that is a separate indictment that was was unsealed yesterday. And that indictment concerns CFO Meng Wanzhou, who is now in Vancouver and is being - is awaiting her extradition to the United States. What's new in that indictment is the allegation that Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, who is Meng Wanzhou's father, was actually questioned by the FBI in 2007. And he allegedly misled them when he was asked about Iran sanctions and their violation of that.
INSKEEP: Remarkable that China made him available for questioning, that he was willing to take the questions - but they say he didn't tell the truth.
SCHMITZ: That's right. And I think that this is definitely going to be playing into what will be some pretty intense rounds of trade talks this week in Washington.
INSKEEP: Very briefly, how is China responding to all of this?
SCHMITZ: Well, a Huawei spokeswoman said that Huawei's denying all the charges. And she said it reached out to the Department of Justice to talk about Meng, but they did not receive a reply. Beijing responded by saying the U.S. was violating the rights of Meng Wanzhou.
INSKEEP: Rob Schmitz, thanks very much for the update and deepest sympathies to Tappy.
SCHMITZ: Thank you.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Rob Schmitz.
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INSKEEP: OK, also the Treasury Department has announced new sanctions against Venezuela.
MARTIN: U.S. oil refineries will no longer send cash to the state-owned oil company. It is a move designed to pressure Nicolas Maduro, the president of Venezuela, to step down. Here's Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. And when you hear Mnuchin say PDVSA, is referring to the state oil company.
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STEVEN MNUCHIN: Today's designation of PDVSA will help prevent further diversion of Venezuela's assets by Maduro and will preserve these assets for the people of Venezuela where they belong.
INSKEEP: Let's talk about this with NPR's Camila Domonoske, who's in the studios. Good morning.
CAMILA DOMONOSKE, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: Thanks for coming by. So how does this work exactly?
DOMONOSKE: So these sanctions target PDVSA, the state-owned oil company, but they don't actually block U.S. refineries from accepting oil from PDVSA. They just can't pay for it by sending money back to Venezuela directly. Instead, that money has to go into a blocked account in the U.S. And we're talking billions of dollars here. All that money will stay in those blocked accounts and will be available if there's a new government that takes over in Venezuela.
INSKEEP: I don't - I assume that's because the Treasury Department has the authority to focus on the payments. Do we imagine that Venezuela is going to keep sending the oil to not quite get paid for it?
DOMONOSKE: That's an excellent question. I mean, this is different than just blocking a bank account where the money already exists and is in these funds, right? We're talking about ongoing oil payments. I spoke to Peter Harrell, who used to work on sanctions at the State Department. He says this does pose a bit of a challenge to the Trump administration.
PETER HARRELL: Maduro still controls the production in Venezuela. And so in some sense, if they want a scheme where Maduro is shipping oil to the U.S. and not receiving payment for it, Maduro is still going to have to play ball.
INSKEEP: Oh, meaning that he would still have to say, OK, this is fine. I will allow the payment to be impounded and hope that maybe I'll get the money back later.
DOMONOSKE: Right. And so he could choose not to send crude oil to the United States. The problem is that it might be a little bit challenging to figure out where to send it instead. Not every refinery can take the kinds of oil that Venezuela exports. And places where Venezuela does sell oil, aside from the U.S., include China and Russia. But China and Russia don't really pay for that crude oil from Venezuela either right now. They accept it as a debt payment. So the U.S. is really important as a source of cash money for Venezuela. But whether that cash money is still a motivating factor when it's going into frozen accounts, that remains to be seen.
INSKEEP: OK, so the U.S. is hoping to still get the oil, prevent Maduro from getting the money. In any case, Maduro will be prevented from getting the money - or the Venezuelan government, we should say, will be prevented from getting the money. How does that fit into the broader U.S. strategy here?
DOMONOSKE: The U.S. wants Maduro out. So Maduro declared a victory in a re-election where the election was disputed. And since then, the leader of the opposition, Juan Guaido, has also declared himself president. And the U.S. backs Guaido, as do a bunch of Venezuela's neighbors. Meanwhile, Maduro still has the backing of major Venezuelan allies, like China and Russia. So these sanctions are part of the U.S. effort to put as much pressure on Maduro as possible to get him to step down and get the United States' preferred president actually in power.
INSKEEP: The economy is a total mess. Oil money is about all the government has left.
DOMONOSKE: Yeah, they're heavily reliant on this.
INSKEEP: Camila, thanks so much. I really appreciate it.
DOMONOSKE: Thank you.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Camila Domonoske.
(SOUNDBITE OF THRUPENCE'S "FOREST ON THE SUN")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
There's another development from the frontlines of the U.S.-China trade war. The Trump administration has filed criminal charges against Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei for stealing trade secrets from T-Mobile and then covering it up. The indictment alleges Huawei management offered its employees bonuses for stealing technology from other companies. The company's CFO Meng Wanzhou was detained in Canada and faces an extradition hearing this week. NPR's Rob Schmitz is following all this closely and joins us now.
Good morning, Rob.
ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: Good morning, Rachel.
MARTIN: So the Department of Justice unsealed two indictments related to Huawei yesterday, the first involving the CFO, Meng Wanzhou. Let's start there. What's the U.S. alleging?
SCHMITZ: It alleges that Meng lied about a Huawei affiliate company, called Skycom, telling U.S. banks it was not part of Huawei when it actually was. And not only was it part of Huawei, but it was allegedly helping Huawei get around U.S. sanctions on Iran. What's new here is that this indictment alleges that Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, who's the father of Meng, misled FBI agents in 2007 about all of this.
MARTIN: OK. That's the first one. And the second one, this involves a robot. What can you tell us here?
SCHMITZ: That's right. The second indictment stems from a civil suit that T-Mobile won four years ago against Huawei for stealing T-Mobile's technology. And that lawsuit resulted in Huawei paying T-Mobile millions of dollars in damages. But now the Department of Justice is filing criminal charges against Huawei for this, and the details laid out here are pretty fascinating. It involves this robot named Tappy that was created by T-Mobile to test phones. And at the time - this is seven years ago - Tappy was cutting-edge. No other cellphone maker had a robot like this. Huawei, at the time, was a much smaller company and its phones were not that great.
So Huawei entered into this business agreement with T-Mobile that allowed its engineers to use Tappy at T-Mobile's factory. And according to what is at times a pretty comical email trail, Huawei engineers bungle their way through trying to figure out how Tappy works. They take illegal photos of Tappy. They email measurements of the robot back to managers in China. They ask so many questions about Tappy that T-Mobile tells them to stop or they'll be thrown out of the factory. And at one point, one Huawei engineer dismembers Tappy to steal its arm and bring it home in a bag.
MARTIN: Wow. They were very intent on figuring out how - what made Tappy tick.
SCHMITZ: That's right.
MARTIN: So do we know if this is just, like, an isolated incident with this particular robot? Or is it indicative of something bigger?
SCHMITZ: Well, that brings us to the most damning part of this indictment. It alleges that around the time Huawei was caught stealing T-Mobile's technology, Huawei headquarters in China launched a company-wide policy establishing a bonus program that rewarded employees who stole technology from competitors.
MARTIN: Wow.
SCHMITZ: So if that's true, then it's possible there are more Tappies out there.
MARTIN: How is China responding to this?
SCHMITZ: Well, a Huawei spokeswoman, she said that she denied all the charges, said it reached out to the Department of Justice to talk about Meng Wanzhou but did not receive a reply. Beijing responded by saying the U.S. was violating the rights of Meng Wanzhou. We're going to find out how all of this plays out later this week when Chinese Vice Premier Liu He meets with the Trump administration to continue those trade talks. Huawei is too big of a Chinese company to not be part of these talks. And it's a good bet these new criminal charges against the company are going to come up.
MARTIN: All right. Rob Schmitz, joining us from Shanghai this morning to talk about all this.
Rob, thanks. We appreciate it.
SCHMITZ: Thank you.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Now here's the latest U.S. move against the government of Venezuela. The U.S. Treasury announced new sanctions targeting Venezuela's oil exports. U.S. refineries say they will no longer send cash to Venezuela in exchange for crude oil. Here's Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
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STEVEN MNUCHIN: The United States is holding accountable those responsible for Venezuela's tragic decline.
INSKEEP: And in a complicated scenario, the United States says it is happy to keep receiving Venezuelan oil but wants to avoid directly paying for it. How's that going to work? Well, NPR's Camila Domonoske is here to try to explain. Good morning.
CAMILA DOMONOSKE, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: So what is the basic theory of the U.S. approach of targeting Venezuela's oil at all?
DOMONOSKE: So Venezuela's heavily reliant on its oil exports. And it's specifically heavily dependent on sales to the United States because the U.S. is one of the few remaining sources of cash for the Venezuelan government. And Venezuela's economy is in free fall. It's been collapsing for several years, and the country has massive shortages of food, medicine, electricity, pretty much everything.
INSKEEP: Socialist government management hasn't gone really well. Things have gradually gotten worse, and then you have political chaos as protests have mounted against that government.
DOMONOSKE: Right. So Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is increasingly unpopular. He declared victory in a re-election. The election was disputed. And now the opposition leader Juan Guaido has also declared himself president, so, like you said, political chaos. And the United States has a firm position on this. The U.S. has backed Guaido against Maduro. So these sanctions are designed to put as much pressure as possible on Maduro's government in order to attempt to get him out of office.
INSKEEP: OK, so how do the sanctions work?
DOMONOSKE: So the sanctions say that U.S. refineries cannot send money in exchange for oil that they receive from PDVSA, the state-owned oil company. They can still take that oil in if Venezuela's willing to keep sending it, but the billions of dollars of payment that would be put out will go into blocked accounts in the U.S. instead of going to Venezuela.
INSKEEP: Oh, it'd be like - they'd be impounded. They'd be frozen assets that might be going to Venezuela at sometime later or maybe end up with the opposition government at some point.
DOMONOSKE: Exactly. The Treasury Department says if there's a new government in Venezuela, that government will get access to these blocked accounts.
INSKEEP: Why would the U.S. specifically say, Venezuela, it's fine for us to send the oil anyway?
DOMONOSKE: So the reason to leave this channel open, the possibility of receiving this crude oil, the Trump administration wants to push Maduro out of office. But they don't necessarily want to totally disrupt the oil industry. For one thing, U.S. refineries on the Gulf Coast have been buying this oil. And it would be really disruptive for them to not have any access to it at all. It could also affect world oil markets.
INSKEEP: Wait a minute. So the United States needs the oil that it doesn't want to pay for?
DOMONOSKE: We have been taking that oil in and processing it. Whether we need it is a little bit of a point in dispute. Venezuela's oil production has already dropped significantly over the last several years. So refineries that used to be pretty dependent on this crude oil are less dependent on it now than they used to be. But that said, it is a significant factor in some refineries on the coast.
INSKEEP: Any particular reason the Maduro government would allow the oil to continue being sent even though they would not be receiving payment anytime soon, if ever?
DOMONOSKE: So like I said, Venezuela's really reliant on cash money from the U.S. And one reason is because there aren't a lot of people around the world who are buying Venezuelan oil and paying money for it. Russia and China are taking oil in, but they aren't paying for it either. They're accepting it as debt payment, so it is possible. We'll have to see if that money is still a motivating factor for Venezuela if it's temporarily frozen.
INSKEEP: Camila, thanks for the update - really appreciate it.
DOMONOSKE: Yeah, thank you.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Camila Domonoske.
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RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Rachel Martin. A 911 dispatcher named Antonia Bundy took a call earlier this month from a boy who sounded frustrated and sad.
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UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: I had a really bad day, and I don't know.
ANTONIA BUNDY: What happened at school that made you have a bad day?
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: I just have tons of homework.
MARTIN: Which is not a reason to call 911. But Bundy wasn't busy, so she helped the young man work through what clearly felt to him like a math emergency. It's MORNING EDITION.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Today, tourists in Washington, D.C., no longer need to be disappointed by the limited museum offerings as of late. Thanks to the end of the government shutdown, the Smithsonian Institution reopens its museums, along with the National Zoo. It all happens this morning. As NPR's Rebecca Ellis reports, getting it all up and running was no easy task.
REBECCA ELLIS, BYLINE: The Smithsonian museums are springing back to life.
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ELLIS: With the end of the shutdown, the National Museum of Natural History's 500 furloughed staff members all came back to work Monday, but many arrived to find things a little out of whack.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Neither are amphibians and reptiles over here - uh-huh.
ELLIS: Some of the museum's videos wouldn't play properly because the software had become outdated. The museum's project manager, Siobhan Starrs, says the fluid that preserves the dead squid had turned.
SIOBHAN STARRS: So you can see looking in there it looks kind of cloudy.
ELLIS: And the Easter Island sculpture was not yet ready for its debut.
STARRS: We had moved this beautiful Easter Island head that a lot of people recognize as Dumb Dumb from the movies.
ELLIS: The figure's look-alike had a starring role in "Night At The Museum" as a talking sculpture desperate for some chewing gum.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM")
BRAD GARRETT: (As Easter Island Head) You new Dumb Dumb. You give me gum gum.
ELLIS: Yesterday afternoon, staff was securing the head in its new location near the entrance, ready to greet visitors. Last Friday, when it was clear the shutdown was coming to an end, the Smithsonian Institution sprang into action. They promised to open everything by Tuesday. This meant a hectic Monday for Siobhan Starrs.
STARRS: Imagine you had to shut your home down for 38 days and then all of a sudden open the doors.
ELLIS: Except, she points out, it's not a home. It's a 300,000-square-foot building that's over a century old. And it's not just a few guests coming through.
STARRS: And your home is going to open and welcome over 50,000 visitors, potentially, the first day you open the door.
ELLIS: Most Smithsonian museums spent the day scurrying to get their exhibits presentable for the crowds. At the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, director Melissa Chiu says staff spent much of the day lugging water around for an installation that displays people's pulses in ripples.
MELISSA CHIU: We drained it, and now we have to fill it all up again (laughter).
ELLIS: In Manhattan, the Cooper Hewitt's head of exhibitions, Yvonne Gomez, finally got into the building to see how the museum's exhibit on color had fared in her absence. She'd been worried about leaving out a bunch of rare books, like a 1704 treatise by Isaac Newton on prisms.
YVONNE GOMEZ: We had four hours to shut down indefinitely.
ELLIS: The books were fine. There was just a lot of dust.
GOMEZ: We did a very deep cleaning of mainly dusting - no bugs or anything like that.
ELLIS: By today, she says, it should be sparkling.
GOMEZ: We're excited to be open to the public. This is our mission.
ELLIS: Siobhan Starrs says she can't wait to hear the footsteps echoing through the entrance of the Natural History Museum.
STARRS: It was a dark kind of cold, quiet space. It felt very lonely. We miss our visitors.
ELLIS: The museum's director, Kirk Johnson, was on site through the shutdown, and he says it was just like the movies.
KIRK JOHNSON: I was here every day. It was a big night at the museum and a big day at the museum. I was the only person on the entire third floor.
ELLIS: He's really looking forward to having some company.
JOHNSON: We'll be very happy to see a huge crowd at 10 a.m.
ELLIS: He'll be downstairs to greet visitors personally. Rebecca Ellis, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF EMANCIPATOR'S "TIME FOR SPACE")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
After 17 years of war in Afghanistan, the United States wants out. And there now appears to be a framework for making that happen. But the Afghan central government hasn't been directly involved in these discussions. So far, the negotiations have been between the U.S. and the Taliban, which has left many Afghans worried about their future. Roya Rahmani is not one of them, though. She was recently appointed Afghanistan's first female ambassador to the U.S. And she is optimistic the U.S. will do right by her country. What is less clear to her is whether the Taliban is negotiating in good faith.
Do you trust the Taliban negotiators?
ROYA RAHMANI: I haven't been at the table to be able to directly respond to this. However, what I could say is that our people has demonstrated the generosity to let go of the past and to let go of the grievances as a price for peace. And they are willing to come in terms. There is one other thing also - that Afghanistan is a changed place. The resolve to democracy is one of our highest values. I will quickly share with you something that really moved me when I visited Afghanistan after parliamentary election, and that was that a taxi driver sacrificed seven hours of his income earning hours while he is responsible for feeding four of his children at home in order to cast his vote. That shows there is resolve to democracy - our resolve to the values that we have earned. And Afghanistan's nation, a changed nation now, has different standing and aspiration today. So whatever the outcome, it has to cater to that.
MARTIN: What happens to Afghanistan's young democracy if the Taliban is either incorporated into a power-sharing agreement or, at the very least, legitimized through this peace plan?
RAHMANI: The Taliban, if part of the Afghan society, they can certainly participate in the democratic processes. We have laid out a very clear roadmap towards peace on how we could go about this. And we are hoping to be able to unroll that. That will specify the rules, and they are most welcome to join and be part of the power sharing, stand for election, have people vote for them. This is their right like every other Afghan citizens' right.
MARTIN: You are the first woman to serve as ambassador from Afghanistan to the United States. Are you concerned that if the Taliban is incorporated into government, if the Taliban is legitimized, that all those advances for minorities in Afghanistan - for women in particular - are you concerned that they will be reversed?
RAHMANI: Rachel, I don't believe that Afghanistan could fall back. We are a changed nation. There is a shift in the mindset. Let me give you an example. I have met a soldier who has joined our forces simply because he has two daughters. And he will not agree that his daughters will not go to school. That's the reason he told me he joined our forces. Afghanistan is a changed place, and this is why that there is more to a peaceful Afghanistan to offer to all its partners as a partner - not as a dependent - in the foreseeable future.
MARTIN: At some point if the peace talks continue, you as an ambassador, I would imagine, would have occasion to be in a meeting with a Taliban leader. Would they even tolerate your presence there considering their subjugation of women? I mean, it's one thing for you to say you believe that Afghanistan is moving forward, but the Taliban have not conceded that at all. They still maintain the same views about women's place in society.
RAHMANI: Well, that question is for them to answer. But at the same time, let's not forget if I am at the table like many other women, I will be representing half of my population. If - no deal would be acceptable if it ignores half of our population.
MARTIN: Ambassador Roya Rahmani, thank you so much for talking with us.
RAHMANI: Thank you very much.
MARTIN: She is Afghanistan's ambassador to the U.S., the first woman to serve in that role. NPR's Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman was listening in to that conversation and joins me now. Good morning, Tom.
TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: Hey. Good morning, Rachel.
MARTIN: So Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad is the special envoy leading the U.S. in these peace talks. He insists - Khalilzad does - that nothing is for sure until the Afghan central government signs off on it. But how likely is that?
BOWMAN: Well, right, that's what he said. It's important to note, Rachel, we're in the very early stages of this process. The Taliban have yet to agree even to sit down with the Afghan government. That's what really has to happen. And that's what the Afghan government is demanding, and so is the U.S. government. Now, the Taliban say before they sit down with the Afghan government, they want a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Meanwhile, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani says the rights of the Afghan people will not be compromised in the name of peace. So that clearly means making sure the rights of women are assured, that women can work outside the home, girls can go to school and so forth. But again, we're sort of at a stalemate a little bit here, you know, because the Taliban want that timetable withdrawal of U.S. troops before they sit down with the Afghan government.
MARTIN: Right, and...
BOWMAN: Again, there's a lot that has to be done here.
MARTIN: I mean, we heard a lot of optimism in the ambassador's voice there. But what is to prevent the Taliban from overthrowing the Afghan government once the U.S. is gone?
BOWMAN: Well, that's of great concern of people within the Afghan government who just don't trust the Taliban and are wary of any deal and, of course, are concerned that the U.S. will leave abruptly. President Trump has said he'll pull about 7,000 troops out. That's half the number there now.
MARTIN: Right.
BOWMAN: So again, there's a great concern within the Afghan government about whether you can even trust the Taliban.
MARTIN: NPR's Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman. Thanks, Tom.
BOWMAN: You're welcome.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The deadline for the United Kingdom to leave the EU is in two months, and there is still no consensus on exactly how to make that happen. Prime Minister Theresa May has proposed her plan. Today lawmakers will vote on amendments to her proposal. From more, we go to NPR's Frank Langfitt in London. Hi, Frank.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: Hi, Rachel.
MARTIN: So we have been following this - as our listeners will know - for many, many months.
LANGFITT: We have.
MARTIN: We have. Is today the day that British parliamentarians finally settle on how the U.K. is going to leave?
LANGFITT: I would - Rachel, I would not go that far. However, what I would say is we could get a much clearer picture by the end of tonight what things look like. Basically, what they're trying to do here is take control of the process after Prime Minister May's bill went down and try to figure out where we go from here. Two big amendments to watch - one is designed to force the prime minister to ask the European Union to delay Brexit if she can't get this deal - that failed badly earlier - through Parliament by the 26 of February. The prime minister is backing a different amendment, and this one would provide support for her bill but only if they can find an alternative to the U.K. remaining in a customs arrangement with the EU. And that's, of course, to try to avoid having a hard border on the island of Ireland. So those are the two big ones to watch tonight.
MARTIN: All right. So as you just said, the first amendment asks for an extension of the whole process for Brexit.
LANGFITT: Yeah.
MARTIN: The other one tries to remove the Irish challenge. What is the impact if either of these amendments pass the House of Commons today?
LANGFITT: Well, if the first one passes and you get a possible - it leads towards a potential delay, it'd be a significant victory for people who want to stay in the European Union or want a closer relationship with the EU. The other amendment, if that passed, it would allow May to actually go back to Brussels and say, look; I have support for my Brexit deal, but you've got to work with me. You've got to make concessions on the Irish border to help me get it through Parliament back in London.
MARTIN: Right.
LANGFITT: But that amendment's chances of passage are not looking so good at the moment. There's a sign - Basically, in a sign of how incredibly divided Parliament is here, there's some Brexiteers, they say they won't support it 'cause it's not legally binding. So one of the great challenges she faces is, how does she get enough people here to support something that the EU will support back in Brussels?
MARTIN: All right. A pivotal figure in today's events is a guy named John Bercow. He is the speaker of the House of Commons. You've been doing some reporting on him. What can you tell us?
LANGFITT: He's a very divisive figure. He's humorous, pugnacious and loud. Listeners may recognize what sounds like a foghorn voice that he has. And that's where I begin my report.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING MONTAGE)
JOHN BERCOW: Order.
Order.
Order.
(Yelling) Order.
LANGFITT: Today he plays a pivotal role. He'll choose which amendments Parliament will vote on, which could shape the path of Brexit. He spends much of his time trying to maintain order as members battle over the biggest issue the United Kingdom has faced in decades. Bercow is known for his lighthearted putdowns and a pension for polysyllabic words. Here's some of his more memorable lines as he's tried to calm the House of Commons' famously boisterous proceedings.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING MONTAGE)
BERCOW: Mr. Angus Brendan MacNeil, calm yourself.
(LAUGHTER)
BERCOW: You may be a cheeky chappy, but you're also an exceptionally noisy one.
(LAUGHTER)
BERCOW: Get a grip of yourself, man.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: Yeah, yeah.
BERCOW: Calm. Take up yoga. You'll find it beneficial, man.
(LAUGHTER)
BERCOW: (Yelling) Order. You are a very over-excitable individual. You need to write out a thousand times, I will behave myself at Prime Minister's questions.
LANGFITT: To learn more about Bercow, I went to see his biographer.
Hi, Bobby. I'm Frank.
BOBBY FRIEDMAN: Hey. Great to meet you.
LANGFITT: Nice to meet you.
FRIEDMAN: Come on in.
LANGFITT: Bobby Friedman is a barrister. That's an attorney who works in the higher courts. Friedman is the author of "Bercow, Mr. Speaker: Rowdy Living In The Tory Party." While Bercow may sound to Americans like a quintessential British character, Friedman says his style of speech is actually an affectation.
FRIEDMAN: It's incredibly old-fashioned. As one person said to me, it's like he swallowed a dictionary, and then he spits it out again every time he speaks. And he will never use two words if he can use a thousand.
LANGFITT: Bercow grew up in north London, the son of a cab driver. Friedman thinks the future speaker, who stands about 5-foot-6, developed his gift of gab as a defense mechanism.
FRIEDMAN: He was bullied at school. He was relatively unpopular, but he was more intelligent than most of his bullies. And so he used the fact that he could speak and could do it better than others as a way of fighting back against them.
LANGFITT: While many who watch Parliament find Bercow entertaining, he is controversial. For instance, Bercow has faced bullying accusations himself. Vicky Ford, a member of Parliament, said she'd been a target.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
VICKY FORD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have heard the words stupid woman being used in this chamber about myself. And I'm afraid to say I've heard it from yourself in the speaker's chair. So Mr. Speaker, please, can we have an apology, draw a line against this and move on?
LANGFITT: Bercow denied it.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BERCOW: I say with absolute certainty it is not correct. I have not said that to or about the honorable lady.
LANGFITT: A recent inquiry into bullying in the House of Commons found a lack of support for victims and a culture that tried to cover it up. Bercow is what the British call a Marmite character. Like the yeasty spread some here put on toast, you either like him or loathe him. Again, his biographer Bobby Friedman.
FRIEDMAN: He's someone who has always rubbed people up the wrong way while simultaneously having a lot of supporters. But he does fall out with people very easily. He sometimes overspeaks. He's too critical.
LANGFITT: And more recently, has become the target of tough political criticism - Brexiteers have complained that Bercow, who's supposed to remain neutral as speaker, tore up Commons rules to try to help lawmakers who favor staying in the European Union. Adam Holloway, a fellow Conservative Party MP, confronted Bercow earlier this month in the House of Commons.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ADAM HOLLOWAY: We've all noticed, in recent months, a sticker in your car making derogatory comments about Brexit. No, this is a serious point about partiality.
LANGFITT: Bercow's acknowledged voting against Brexit. But he said Holloway had it wrong. The sticker wasn't on his car but his wife's.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BERCOW: And I'm sure the honorable gentleman wouldn't suggest for one moment...
(LAUGHTER)
BERCOW: ...That a wife is somehow the property or chattel...
(CHEERING)
BERCOW: ...Of her husband.
MARTIN: What a fascinating character, Frank Langfitt. And he's going to be at the center of the Brexit events today?
LANGFITT: He will. He's going to choose the amendments, and that could have a huge influence on where everything heads next. So people will be watching very carefully to see which amendments he chooses and which ones pass.
MARTIN: NPR's Frank Langfitt. Thanks so much, Frank. We appreciate it.
LANGFITT: Happy to do it, Rachel.
(SOUNDBITE OF HIDDEN ORCHESTRA'S "WESTERN ISLES")
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Roger Stone will be in federal court today. The longtime informal adviser to President Trump is set to be arraigned in Washington, D.C. Stone was arrested last week and charged as part of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. Since then he's had a lot to say. He's done multiple interviews, including one last night on Fox News.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "LIBERTY FILE")
ROGER STONE: I'm not going to testify against him because I possess no negative information. There is no Russian collusion. This is a witch hunt.
INSKEEP: Not going to testify against him, meaning against the president of the United States, whose language about a witch hunt Stone was repeating. NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas is here to tell us more. Hey there, Ryan.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: Is it unusual for a criminal suspect to be giving so many interviews?
LUCAS: It is indeed unusual. That's not the normal path that they take, but no one has ever accused Roger Stone of being a wallflower.
INSKEEP: No.
LUCAS: He is a man who loves a political fight. He loves the spectacle of this. He describes himself as a political dirty trickster. We've seen a lot of his personality on display already. You remember after he was in court in Florida on Friday, he came out on the courthouse steps, flashed that V for victory sign that Richard Nixon made famous. Stone has used his Instagram account in the past couple days to mock Robert Mueller and the Mueller investigation. As for these TV interviews, Stone has used them to take aim at the FBI and at Mueller. He's argued that having heavily armed FBI agents knock on his front door before dawn to take him into custody was an abuse of power, it was a step too far.
I will say that legal experts call what happened outside of Stone's house essentially standard operating procedure in the case in which prosecutors have concerns that a defendant could tamper with evidence or destroy evidence, as prosecutors say they have in this case. And Stone has also used his TV appearances to make appeals for money to help fund his defense.
INSKEEP: I suppose we should also note the president - Stone supports - has publicly urged police officers to slam the heads of suspects on the car while putting them in the car. That's a thing he actually said in a campaign speech. And Stone - that didn't happen to Stone, right? Nobody slammed his head into anything.
LUCAS: No. And he actually said later that the FBI agents were very polite.
INSKEEP: OK. So he's now to be arraigned this morning. What does an arraignment mean in this case? What happens?
LUCAS: Well, Stone will be read the charges. There are seven counts in this indictment against him. They include obstruction of an official proceeding, witness tampering and making false statements. All of the allegations in the indictment relate to Stone's efforts to contact WikiLeaks about hacked Democratic emails during the 2016 campaign to find out what WikiLeaks planned to do with those materials and also what Stone did to try to keep some of those contacts secret.
Now, Stone will enter a plea at today's hearing. He's said over the past few days that he will not plead guilty. The magistrate judge could impose some sort of gag order in the case. That's something that we saw in the case of Paul Manafort here in D.C. That's what's going to take place inside the courthouse. I'm also curious to see what will take place outside the courthouse and whether we will see the same sort of raucous scene that we saw outside of the courthouse when Stone was in court in Florida.
INSKEEP: Let's remember what Stone was accused of lying about. He was accused of lying about interactions in which he seemed to be acting as an intermediary between the Trump presidential campaign and WikiLeaks, which was in the process of releasing damaging information about Hillary Clinton and about Democrats over the course of the election year. That's the heart of the Mueller investigation. Is that investigation any closer to being finished?
LUCAS: Well, there's been a lot of speculation about that. And then yesterday acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker was asked about the investigation. He said he's been fully briefed on it, and then he added that he believes that it is close to being completed and that he hopes that he can get Mueller's report as soon as possible. This is the first time we've heard anything like this from a senior Justice Department official, but there was no concrete specifics.
INSKEEP: He said the investigation is close to being completed as soon as possible, but it was a passing remark. Right?
LUCAS: It was. It was at the end of a press conference that related to another matter, a Chinese enforcement matter. But again, there has been a lot that has been achieved over the course of this investigation. Mueller has so far charged more than 30 people.
INSKEEP: OK. NPR's Ryan Lucas. Thanks.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Public health officials are struggling to contain a measles outbreak in the Pacific Northwest. The number of people infected has grown to 35 - with 11 more suspected cases. Molly Solomon from Oregon Public Broadcasting reports.
MOLLY SOLOMON, BYLINE: Patients in Washington state who visit the Vancouver Clinic are greeted with free face masks and pumps of hand sanitizer as they enter the health facility. A large sign outside urgent care alerts patients who have measles symptoms, like a runny nose or a high fever, to put on a mask before entering the waiting room.
MARCIA SPARLING: If you haven't been immunized, we'd like you to wear a mask.
SOLOMON: Marcia Sparling is the medical director at the Vancouver Clinic. Two of their facilities are among more than three dozen locations where people may have been exposed. Other places include an IKEA, Costco and a Portland Trail Blazers game. Sparling says the clinic recently created a measles taskforce that meets daily. Sometimes they see patients in the parking lot to avoid contamination. Doctors are also asking patients with measles symptoms to come later in the day to avoid spreading the illness during busy hours.
SPARLING: We're trying to be as careful as we can because we'd like to try to shut down this infection chain.
SOLOMON: The outbreak started in southwest Washington's Clark County but has been spreading. One case has been confirmed across the river in Portland, Ore., and another has been identified in Seattle. Health officials say they suspect another case linked to the outbreak in central Oregon. The viral illness is highly contagious and can remain in the air for up to two hours. Ninety percent of people exposed to measles who have not been vaccinated will get it, says Clark County public health director Alan Melnick.
ALAN MELNICK: We have an exquisitely contagious disease, can be really severe, and we have a prevention for it that's cheap, incredibly effective and incredibly safe. And we wouldn't be dealing with this if we had vaccination rates up.
SOLOMON: Thirty-one of the confirmed patients had not been vaccinated against measles, and the region has been identified by health experts as an anti-vax hotspot. Clark County's vaccination rate is 78 percent, well below the 94 percent level necessary to protect people who can't get vaccinated for medical reasons. Melnick blames misinformation shared on social media for the area's lower-than-normal rates.
MELNICK: What keeps me up at night is worrying that we're going to have a child die from this, something that's completely preventable.
SOLOMON: It's a worry shared by many parents in the area, especially those with newborn infants. The vaccine is generally not given to children under a year old.
MEGAN JASURTA: Tristan, can you say hi?
SOLOMON: Vancouver resident Megan Jasurta holds 11-week-old Tristan as he wakes up from a nap. She hasn't felt comfortable leaving the house with him and worries he might be vulnerable without a vaccine.
JASURTA: Like, he's on house arrest.
SOLOMON: Jasurta's other two kids, who are 3 and 6, are both up to date on their shots, but she still has them wash their hands when they come home and change into new clothes before seeing Tristan.
JASURTA: I think I kind of gave into the fear right away because of having such a young child.
SOLOMON: For now, Jasurta and her family are avoiding crowded areas and even decided to delay their daughter's birthday party. She knows some people in her community choose not to vaccinate their kids, and it's not worth putting her family at risk. For NPR News, I'm Molly Solomon in Vancouver, Wash.
(SOUNDBITE OF PENSEES' "LUNAMOTH")
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep with news from the lost and found. A woman in Conyers, Ga., cleaned house. She gave items to Goodwill, including a travel mug that belonged to her adult son. WSB-TV reports the son would like that mug back - not because of the mug, although, he says, I miss the mug. It's mainly for the $6,500 he kept inside. If you see it, you can tell the mug by the heavy wad of cash within and the Mickey Mouse logo on the side. It's MORNING EDITION.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
How should the United States avoid another partial government shutdown? President Trump gave in last week, ending a shutdown without funding that he had demanded for a border wall. He says he is willing to shut it down again in three weeks if negotiations fail. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said Trump will not get his demand saying, quote, "have I not been clear on the wall?" White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders is urging federal workers to beg Democrats to concede.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS: My advice would be to call your Democrat members of Congress and ask them to fix the problem so that we don't have to continue having this process and so that we actually secure the border and protect American citizens.
INSKEEP: Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, represents many federal workers, and he's on the line.
Senator, welcome back to the program.
MARK WARNER: Steve, thanks for having me.
INSKEEP: Are your constituents who are federal workers calling you?
WARNER: No, my constituents are just fed up - 35 days of inflicted harm, many folks having huge amount of bills. Many of our contractors will have no back pay at all. And then if we think about the private businesses, whether it's the food trucks around the Smithsonian or the restaurants around our national battlefields, they get no back pay as well. So we have to find a way to put an end to this. I've actually got some legislation - took us a while to come up with the acronym but is Stop the STUPIDITY Act (ph). And it basically says this.
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
WARNER: I know. And it took some time to figure out how to get the acronym STUPIDITY out of this.
INSKEEP: Oh, OK.
WARNER: But we figured it out. But the - basically, it's about as simple as you can imagine. It says, if there is an impasse, continue to fund the government at its existing level - so no win for either side. The only two parts of the government that would not be funded, the Congress and the White House would have to come to agreement on, is the legislative branch and the Office of the White House. So if there's going to be pain it ought to be the pain inflicted on the folks who are not doing the job - the legislators and the office of the White House.
INSKEEP: OK, understood. I would imagine that legislation is not likely to become law before mid-February, when this next deadline is. Is it up to your party to avoid a shutdown as the White House spokesperson suggests?
WARNER: Absolutely not. It's up to both parties to negotiate in good faith. This has not been - what we've not seen, unfortunately, from Mr. Trump is any willingness to negotiate in good faith. We have seen...
INSKEEP: Can you just say no to a wall on your side?
WARNER: No. Listen. I've said repeatedly that increased border security, even if some of that means a barrier, but it ought to be based upon the experts who know how to spend funds at the border, not simply some arbitrary number picked by the president.
INSKEEP: Senator Warner, I want to ask about something else because many people will know you're the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. You've got a technology background. You follow technology issues. And there was a tech indictment - a couple of indictments yesterday announced by the Justice Department against Huawei - giant Chinese telecommunications firm, does business around the world. And it is accused of stealing trade secrets from American companies, among other things. I want to note that the United States has also been pressing its allies around the world not to adopt Huawei technology, not to fold it into their networks. Is Huawei a serious national security threat to the United States?
WARNER: I believe Huawei is a serious national security threat. I can't speak to the component parts of the indictment. But as we move from our existing telecommunication system into next generation, which is in fact called 5G, what you've seen is not only America - you've seen Australia, New Zealand, the British, increasingly other allies - say this is vulnerable equipment that, frankly, has so much influence from the Chinese government that if you install it, our networks could be compromised.
INSKEEP: Let's just be frank about what you mean by compromised. Your fear is that the Chinese government, with its influence over this company, might get it to put backdoors in technologies so they can read emails, listen to phone calls, gather whatever information they would like to from networks around the world.
WARNER: Those are your words, Steve, not mine. But I would say that the consensus view of the intelligence communities of not just our nation but our closest allies indicate that this equipment could provide a vulnerability. And I hope people around the world would think twice before installing this equipment. And that's - I think our intelligence community's reached the right conclusion. The specifics of this indictment that's been made, I can't speak to. I'm not that familiar with that. But I do know we have tried to enlighten, at least, as many potential vendors and purchasers as possible.
INSKEEP: Senator, always a pleasure speaking with you. Thanks so much.
WARNER: Thank you, Steve.
INSKEEP: That's Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia.
Now, NPR White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe has been listening along with us. Ayesha, good morning.
AYESHA RASCOE, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: What do you hear there?
RASCOE: Well, on the issue of Huawei, they were asked about - the White House was asked about this yesterday. And they wanted to make clear that this doesn't have anything to do with the China trade talks and that the actions that they are taking are because of these concerns and that they're totally separate from that.
SANDERS: Oh, they don't want this to seem like it's gamesmanship or putting pressure on the Chinese on that issue. But they want - they say there's a serious national security concern.
RASCOE: Yes.
INSKEEP: And then there is the matter of the shutdown. Is this matter moving toward another crisis?
RASCOE: The White House, yesterday, was basically saying - as you pointed out, they're putting it on the Democrats. But they're not ruling out a shutdown. Sarah Sanders was asked specifically about a bill, like Senator Warner talked about, that wouldn't allow shutdowns. And what she said is she hasn't seen any legislation yet, and she didn't want to get into hypotheticals. But she also wouldn't say that there wouldn't be another shutdown. She said the president doesn't want one but basically said Democrats need to come to the table.
INSKEEP: Republicans in Congress seemed to have signaled pretty clearly the shutdown didn't work for them. It was a disaster. Are people in the White House insisting it still could work for them?
RASCOE: It doesn't - I don't think they're saying that it could work for them. But they're not taking it off the table. But that is the issue that they will face, is that a lot of Republicans do not want another shutdown. And so they would need that support if they were going to go that route.
INSKEEP: Ayesha, thanks very much - really appreciate it.
RASCOE: Thank you.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Ayesha Rascoe.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Roger Stone was arraigned in federal court in Washington, D.C., this morning. The president's friend and former adviser has been charged with seven counts, including lying to Congress and witness tampering. In court today, Stone's lawyers entered a plea of not guilty to all charges. NPR justice reporter Ryan Lucas is here in the studio to tell us more. Hi, Ryan.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Hi, there.
MARTIN: What was the scene today at the courthouse?
LUCAS: Well, Stone arrived at the district courthouse here in Washington. It's close to the Capitol, just off the National Mall. There was a giant gaggle of reporters, of cameramen, photographers. There were also some members of the public. Some of them were carrying signs saying free Stone, jail Hillary - reference to Hillary Clinton. Others held signs that said Roger Stone did nothing wrong. There were also opponents of Roger Stone in this crowd. There were chants of lock him up - so a sort of raucous scene.
Stone showed up at the courthouse dressed in a blue suit, a bright blue tie and a pocket square - always dapper. He waved to the crowd outside and then strode into the courthouse for the proceedings.
MARTIN: OK. So as we noted, his lawyers entered a plea of not guilty. What more can you tell us about what happened inside the courtroom?
LUCAS: Well, that "not guilty" plea was to all seven counts that Stone faces in the indictment. So that's one count of obstruction of an official proceeding, one count of witness tampering and then five counts of making false statements. The magistrate judge advised Stone not to have any contacts with witnesses in his case. That would include two people who are in the indictment that aren't mentioned by name but whose identities are known. That's radio host Randy Credico and Jerome Corsi, a journalist and conspiracy theorist.
Stone has also been instructed not to apply for a new passport and not to travel except between his home and the court here in Washington, D.C. The judge asked Stone if he understood these conditions. Stone stood up and replied, yes, Your Honor.
MARTIN: Roger Stone, we know him to be someone who doesn't shy away from a microphone. Did he speak after his arraignment?
LUCAS: As you noted, Stone is not a wallflower. He does love the spotlight. He loves the spectacle of all of this, and he certainly loves the political flight (ph). As we saw after his arrest in Florida and his court appearance there, he came out on the courthouse steps and gave a kind of rolling press conference...
MARTIN: Right.
LUCAS: ...To reporters as well as members of the public. He did not do a repeat of that today here in Washington, D.C. He walked out of the courthouse today with his lawyers. He headed to a black SUV that was waiting for him on the street. He did, however, turn and flash that V for victory sign that Richard Nixon made famous and that Stone has taken a liking to.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
LUCAS: He did that right before he got into the car. Then he did, indeed, get into the car and drove off.
MARTIN: That's becoming a thing for him. So what happens next with Roger Stone?
LUCAS: Well, this case, prosecutors for the Special Counsel's Office, say they are going to try jointly with the U.S. attorney's office here in Washington, D.C. This is going to proceed as the other court cases have. This is going to take a fair amount of time to get through all of this. Stone himself will be back in court here in Washington on February 1 for a status conference. So this case is really just getting underway.
MARTIN: All right, NPR justice reporter Ryan Lucas. Thanks so much. We appreciate it.
LUCAS: Thank you very much.
(SOUNDBITE OF EMANCIPATOR'S "TIME FOR SPACE")
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
You know it's cold in Chicago when TV video shows the railroad tracks on fire. Steel rails contract in exceptional cold. So to warm them up, transit workers stretch rope soaked in kerosene along the tracks, and they burn it. The temperature in Chicago was 18 degrees below zero this morning, and it was even colder elsewhere. What's it feel like to be in that cold? NPR's David Schaper found out, so you don't have to.
(SOUNDBITE OF WALKING THROUGH SNOW)
DAVID SCHAPER, BYLINE: When it's this cold outside, pens won't write. You got to use pencil. And batteries and digital recorders die quickly, so I got to talk fast. One of the ways to tell it's getting really, really cold is how the snow sounds when you walk on it. The colder it gets, the more it kind of crunches and squeaks. Anyone under the age of about 35 living in Chicago their whole lives has probably never heard the snow squeak like this because the last time it was this cold here was 1985.
RICHARD VARGAS: Oh, this cold is very dangerous. Hypothermia can set in within minutes.
SCHAPER: Richard Vargas is with The Salvation Army in Chicago.
VARGAS: So if someone's out here and they're exposed or don't have the adequate amount of clothing on, it could be very treacherous actually.
SCHAPER: In addition to providing hot meals out of their large, red, canteen food trucks...
UNIDENTIFIED SALVATION ARMY EMPLOYEE: You've got gloves, bro?
SCHAPER: ...The Salvation Army is handing out gloves, scarves and hats, giving rides to warming shelters and making extra nighttime trips out to check up on homeless camps. And this kind of outreach is going on in cities all across the Midwest, as the coldest weather in decades drops temperatures well below zero and will likely keep them there for days. The polar vortex, which usually sits over the Arctic, is being pushed south by an unseasonably warm air mass to the north. National Weather Service meteorologist Rich Otto says that bitterly cold air is being whipped by strong northerly winds, creating dangerous wind chills.
RICH OTTO: Values as cold as minus 30 to minus 50 degrees in a couple of locations - and even colder as you get farther north into parts of Minnesota, where some of those wind chills could get down to minus 60.
SCHAPER: Wind-chill warnings and advisories stretch from the Dakotas to western Pennsylvania. Airlines have canceled thousands of flights as they tried to limit outdoor workers' exposure to the cold. And the governors of Wisconsin, Michigan and Illinois have declared emergencies. Here's Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
J.B. PRITZKER: This is very serious weather, and my administration is not underestimating the gravity of this in how we respond. We are undertaking a coordinated effort to keep people safe, but we need all Illinoisans to do their part.
SCHAPER: Colleges - from the University of South Dakota to Kent State in Ohio - are canceling classes. Schools in Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, St. Louis and Minneapolis are all closed. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz considered shuttering all schools statewide but decided against it.
TIM WALZ: In many cases, these local officials know best. And one of the things that I'm concerned about is - is when you close a school sometimes, that is the place of warmth and food that is not available elsewhere.
SCHAPER: The U.S. Postal Service is suspending mail delivery today in Minnesota, Iowa, western Wisconsin and western Illinois. But not everyone is dreading this deep freeze.
STEVE FAIVRE: We were generally pretty happy to see it coming.
SCHAPER: Steve Faivre farms with his family in northern Illinois.
FAIVRE: These frosts are really kind of good - these deep-cold cycles - because it'll generally help freeze out and knock off some of the pests in the field. It also helps break up the soil with the freezing and thawing.
SCHAPER: The other good news is that forecasters call for a heat wave this weekend with temperatures in Chicago expected to climb into the 40s - above zero. David Schaper, NPR News, Chicago.
(SOUNDBITE OF MICHITA'S "MIZORE")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This morning, we're going to bring you everything you need to know about not one, Steve, not one but two different sets of high-stakes negotiations taking place in Washington today.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
OK. Republican and Democratic leaders are meeting to discuss border security. They need to agree on measures that can pass Congress and win the signature of the president in order to avoid another partial government shutdown in a couple weeks. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell describes himself as flexible up to a point.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MITCH MCCONNELL: I'm for whatever works that prevents the level of dysfunction we've seen on full display here the last month and also doesn't bring about a view on the president's part that he needs to declare a national emergency.
INSKEEP: There's a little warning at the end there since the president has threatened to bypass Congress to have a border wall built by declaring an emergency. So that's one negotiation. The other is, if anything, a much bigger deal. Chinese negotiators are in Washington to discuss a way out of a trade war.
MARTIN: Oh, yeah, that. So NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson is with us this morning. Hi, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Hi, Rachel.
MARTIN: Let's start with the trade negotiations - U.S. top trade negotiators sitting down with their Chinese counterparts. What is supposed to happen today?
LIASSON: Well, the U.S. wants two things. The first thing is they want the trade deficit with China to come down. They want China, in other words, to buy more U.S. soybeans and other commodities. The second thing they want is harder to get. They want China to stop intellectual property theft, stop forcing U.S. companies to turn over their technology secrets. They want to stop China requiring U.S. companies to have a Chinese partner. In other words, they want China to change its business model. That's harder to do.
The big question is will Donald Trump settle for the first thing? In other words, will he just settle for China buying more soybeans, or will he insist that China makes these structural changes? And then, if the Chinese do agree to do that, how do you verify that?
MARTIN: Right. And, of course, all this is happening against this backdrop of, you know, the Chinese CFO of Huawei was arrested and all this international - or intellectual property theft that you referred to. I mean, are they - is the U.S. delegation expecting some kind of win out of this, or is this an incremental development?
LIASSON: Well, nobody says that this will be easy. The big question about the Huawei indictments is will that become a bargaining chip in these trade talks? Or to put it another way, how does it not become a bargaining chip? And we don't know the answer to that yet.
MARTIN: Let's pivot and think about the negotiations on Capitol Hill to keep the government open. The team of 17 lawmakers has been tasked with finding a solution that they couldn't find for over a month. President Trump, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, gave this effort a less than 50/50 chance of succeeding. So, I mean, he's undercutting them before they even get going.
LIASSON: Right. Well, the big question is Democrats now have not ruled out spending some kind of money for border security - barriers, a smart wall. They don't want what they say is President Trump's medieval wall. And the president is no longer demanding 2,000 miles of sea-to-shining-sea concrete barrier. He wants a couple billion dollars a year for 200-plus miles of border wall. And the question is, can they come up with a compromise that fudges this difference where both sides can say they won?
MARTIN: Do you see that opening?
LIASSON: I am not sure. I think it's possible we're headed for another impasse, but I don't think we're headed for another shutdown.
MARTIN: There's just not the appetite for that.
LIASSON: So you heard Mitch McConnell say he doesn't want the president to declare an emergency. He doesn't - didn't say I'm worried the president will shut down the government again.
MARTIN: NPR's Mara Liasson. Thanks, Mara.
LIASSON: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MARTIN: All right. Let's shift our focus over to Venezuela. There are more protests expected there today and more pressure on President Nicolas Maduro to step down.
INSKEEP: Yeah. These will be the first mass protests since the opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself as president or was declared by the legislature as president. They said they were following the constitution. Guaido does have the support of the United States and other countries. He - however, President Nicolas Maduro has ordered authorities in Venezuela, the Supreme Court, to put a travel ban on Guaido, and all of his bank accounts have been frozen.
MARTIN: NPR's Philip Reeves joins us from Caracas, where he's covering all of this political drama. Hey, Phil.
PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: Hi.
MARTIN: We've got a delay on the line. We should just note that. So the opposition led by Juan Guaido is calling for these protests. Is there an expectation they could get violent today?
REEVES: Well, there is, yeah. He's calling for people to walk out for two hours out of their homes and offices and shops and so on. And he's calling for it to be a nonviolent protest. You know, he successfully summoned hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets last week, so I expect this will be large. Some areas, we're expecting crowds; others may just be people on the streets banging pots and pans. We don't know how Maduro's security forces are going to react. According to the U.N. Human Rights Office, 40 people have been killed since this crisis really erupted nine days ago, most by Venezuela security services. And yeah, the worry is that there will be more bloodshed.
MARTIN: I mean, Maduro has told the Supreme Court to put this travel ban on the opposition leader, Juan Guaido. At the same time, Maduro says he's open to negotiating, but that doesn't seem like a negotiating kind of posture, to tell your opposition that, you know, your bank accounts are frozen and you can't go anywhere. What are the odds that these two men actually get in a room?
REEVES: Well, let's not forget that Maduro accuses Guaido of staging an attempted coup with U.S. collaboration. So a travel ban (laughter) is kind of rather a light response. Most countries, you would be in jail if you were also at the same time summoning huge crowds out in the street to support you. So I think Maduro is trying to feel his way here. He talks about negotiating, but, you know, I can't see how the opposition will do that with a man they don't recognize as president, unless it's a specific discussion about his departure.
MARTIN: Meanwhile...
REEVES: And also there's no sign that Maduro's interested in a discussion about his departure, I should add. I mean, Maduro is standing firm when it comes to the issue of his departure.
MARTIN: Meanwhile, the U.S., the Trump administration, has cut off Maduro's revenues from oil and is exerting a lot of influence in Venezuela in hopes of pushing Maduro out of power. How is that being received? I mean, what do Venezuelans on the street, the protesters, make of the U.S. involvement?
REEVES: Well, I think the protesters appreciate it, but I think a lot of people are also very worried. It's very hard to see how we can avoid a very violent situation evolving here. Let's say, best-case scenario, that Maduro goes, but what happens then? Will the police and the national guard just show up for work the next day, saying that, you know, the Venezuelan socialist experiment's over, we work for someone else now?
There's a very high risk there'll be a vacuum for a while while these security forces figure out who's in charge and while the strongly pro-Maduro elements disappear. And, remember; this country's got a population that's very hungry and very poor, mightily abused and angry. I don't see how you could avoid a situation where, in those circumstances, there will be mass looting. And that's in the opposition's best-case scenario.
MARTIN: Thanks so much...
REEVES: It could get much worse than that.
MARTIN: Right. Thanks so much, Phil. NPR's Phil Reeves in Caracas for us.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MARTIN: OK. Back in this country, Democratic presidential hopefuls are already staking out their positions on critical issues, including health care.
INSKEEP: Democratic Senator Kamala Harris spoke in a CNN town hall meeting earlier this week and supported Medicare for all.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KAMALA HARRIS: It is inhumane to make people go through a system where they cannot literally receive the benefit of what medical science can offer.
INSKEEP: Yeah, in the town hall, she supported not only government insurance for everybody but also eliminating the private insurance industry. Who needs it, she effectively said. Afterward, her campaign walked that back, saying that she would be open to more modest reforms, which suggests just how politically tricky health care remains.
MARTIN: All right. We have got NPR health policy correspondent Alison Kodjak with us this morning. Hey, Alison.
ALISON KODJAK, BYLINE: Good morning, Rachel. How are you?
MARTIN: I'm well. This is a big question to start off our day here. But what does Medicare for all mean exactly?
KODJAK: Well, it depends on who you talk to. But the plan that Senator Harris says she supports is the one that was proposed last year by Senator Bernie Sanders. And this would be a national health program that would, as she said, replace the private health insurance system. Here's how she described it.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
HARRIS: Well, listen; the idea is that everyone gets access to medical care, and you don't have to go through the process of going through an insurance company, having them give you approval, going through the paperwork, all of the delay that may require.
KODJAK: So her idea is that everyone gets a Medicare card just like the one that my mother has, and doctors have to sign an agreement each year to be part of the program.
MARTIN: This is the same as when people say single payer.
KODJAK: Exactly. Exactly. The government is that payer.
MARTIN: How does she want to pay for this, or any Democratic candidate for that matter?
KODJAK: Exactly. I mean, that's a big unknown. It's going to cost a lot of money. Harris said in that town hall, and when I asked her staff, they didn't respond. She didn't respond, and she didn't describe it. In his proposal, Senator Sanders didn't put in a pay for, but he outlined some options. He said that overall as a country, we spend $3.2 trillion a year on health care, and that includes Medicare, Medicaid and our private insurance system. And he says Medicare for all will cost a lot less.
Another analysis I've seen says the federal government will pay $32 trillion over 10 years to pay for Medicare for all. So the pay-for proposals mostly include maybe a tax increase on employers, similar to Social Security tax. One proposal is a 4 percent tax on everyone's income. There's basically tax increases on higher earners. It's a way of increasing taxes and replacing what we spend right now on health care premiums.
MARTIN: Since then, as Steve noted, though, Kamala Harris' campaign backed down a bit on this and said, wait a second, she also might be willing to consider other more moderate proposals instead of an altogether single-payer system, clearly indicating this is a political bugaboo for Democrats. It's not like they're all in line for this.
KODJAK: Yeah. No, it's really tricky. I mean, a lot of people co-sponsored that bill, including other presidential candidates, Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren. But it's tricky because people like the idea of Medicare for all. But once you talk about the tax increases, it becomes much, much less popular.
MARTIN: NPR's Alison Kodjak for us this morning. Thanks, Alison. We appreciate it.
KODJAK: Thanks, Rachel.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The former CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, said on our program yesterday that he is considering running for president as a centrist independent.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
HOWARD SCHULTZ: I know for a fact that there are very good people on both sides of the aisle, Republicans and Democrats, who unfortunately cannot vote with their heart and their conscience and do the right thing.
MARTIN: There are real structural challenges to any independent bid for the White House. And our next guest argues there just aren't enough voters out there who would align with what an independent like Schultz might offer. Brendan Nyhan is a political scientist at the University of Michigan, and he joins me now.
Good morning.
BRENDAN NYHAN: Good morning.
MARTIN: So every presidential cycle, the media gives a lot of attention to people pining for a third way, some kind of break from the duopoly that is the two-party system. Is there a real constituency out there for that?
NYHAN: It's much smaller than people think. Almost all Americans lean towards one of the two major parties and vote for them pretty consistently. They're, in other words, closet partisans. What that means is that the constituency for a centrist independent campaign is much more limited than you might think, especially the particular mix of issue positions that someone like Schultz is offering. The independent candidacies that have done the best often have had a kind of populist orientation or capitalize on a particular issue where the parties are out of step with the public.
It's not clear that either of those applies to Schultz. He's no populist. And the issue he's emphasized most in his initial conversations about running is the national debt, which very few Americans are interested in. And in particular, there's very few who are socially liberal like Schultz but economically more right of center.
MARTIN: Although we hear a lot of those people talk on TV, come on the radio - the punditry is often made up of people who are so-called fiscal conservatives but may be more socially liberal.
NYHAN: That point of view is highly overrepresented in the media and among Beltway elites. Those folks are often very excited about the prospect of a socially moderate, economically conservative candidate. But the public at large doesn't share their enthusiasm. And that's why, for instance, candidates like Michael Bloomberg, when they've taken a look at the polling over the years, have repeatedly declined to run. They've seen that the constituency for that kind of a candidacy is quite limited and there's not a clear path to victory.
The Electoral College is a winner-take-all system. You only get the votes if you win that state. And even if you succeed in creating an Electoral College deadlock, the House of Representatives is going to decide who the president is. And the House of Representatives is not going to pick a candidate who's not from either of the major parties.
MARTIN: Looking ahead to 2020, is it explicitly clear yet which party has more to lose from an independent bid from Schultz or someone else?
NYHAN: It's possible that he could run a campaign that would draw votes from Donald Trump. It's possible that he could run a campaign that would, on net, draw votes from a Democratic candidate. There are certainly reasons for concern. For instance, in 1992, there's research indicating that Ross Perot's candidacy, on net, drew votes away from Bill Clinton, who was the challenger to an unpopular incumbent. It introduces a lot of risk and uncertainty. The odds of being a spoiler for a candidate like Schultz are much higher than the odds of actually winning, given the vast advantages the major parties have.
The prospective winners here are Schultz's book publicist and his consultants, both of whom would be thrilled with the prospect of him running. Unfortunately, you know, billionaire neophyte political candidates often have people whispering in their ear about how they can win. And that may lead them down a road that ultimately isn't as promising as they were led to believe.
MARTIN: Brendan Nyhan of the University of Michigan - political science professor there - thank you so much for your time.
NYHAN: Thank you.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Some other news now - Chicago police are investigating a possible hate crime against a cast member of the TV show "Empire." The actor is Jussie Smollett, who's 36. The alleged attack sent Smollett to the hospital, and police are now looking for suspects. From Chicago, WBEZ's Maria Ines Zamudio reports.
MARIA INES ZAMUDIO, BYLINE: Jussie Smollett plays an openly gay character on the Fox network show "Empire." In real life, he's also a gay activist. Smollett told police he was attacked while walking near the river in downtown Chicago around 2 am yesterday. The 36-year-old actor said two men approached him and started yelling racial and homophobic slurs. Then they started hitting Smollett before pouring an unknown substance on him. But the attack didn't end there. One of men reportedly wrapped a rope around the black actor's neck. Chicago police officer Jessica Rocco says detectives are trying to identify both the attackers and witnesses.
JESSICA ROCCO: Given the severity of the allegations, we are taking this investigation very seriously and treating it as a possible hate crime. Detectives are currently working to gather video, identify potential witnesses and establish an investigative timeline.
ZAMUDIO: Police say the actor told them his attackers yelled, this is MAGA country, in apparent reference to President Trump's campaign slogan Make America Great Again. Smollett was able to eventually get to Northwestern Memorial Hospital where he was treated and released. Rich Ferraro is with the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. He says attacks like this one are also common.
RICH FERRARO: Sadly what happened to Jussie is not unique in today's America, and there are countless LGBTQ people and people of color, as well as people who belong to both of those communities, who are faced with hate-motivated violence on a near daily basis.
ZAMUDIO: Ferraro says 2017 was the deadliest year on record for the LGBTQ community, and he wants to raise awareness.
FERRARO: It's up to our law enforcement and our elected officials to create a culture and to create cities where you can be out and proud and not have to worry and fear for violence to be subjected against you.
ZAMUDIO: Rich Ferraro and Jussie Smollett have worked together in the past to advocate for the LGBTQ community. He says the actor will continue to fight against homophobia and won't let this attack affect his activism. For NPR News, I'm Maria Ines Zamudio in Chicago.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GOOD ENOUGH")
JUSSIE SMOLLETT: (Singing) I just want you to look at me and see that I can be good enough. I just want you to look at me.
INSKEEP: The chief communications officer for the Chicago Police tweeted an update last night saying police have not found video of the attackers, but they're still looking.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Prime Minister Theresa May won this vote. Parliament crushed her Brexit plan but voted yesterday to support her trying again. She now heads off to Brussels to try to get better terms for leaving the European Union.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
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.
INSKEEP: One divisive issue is what to do along the border with Ireland. Martina Devlin is following that part of the story, along with the rest of it. She joins us this morning from Dublin, where she is an author and columnist. Welcome to the program.
MARTINA DELVIN: Thank you.
INSKEEP: Would you just remind us what the worst-case scenario is. What would happen in Ireland if Britain leaves the EU with no deal at all?
DELVIN: Well, the worst face - the worst-case scenario is a cliff-face Brexit, and that would mean a hard border on the island of Ireland between Northern Ireland and the Republic. And a hard border would be a gift to dissident republicans. In turn, that could reignite loyalist violence. So no deal compromises the Good Friday Agreement, which has delivered harmony on the island of Ireland for the past two decades, and it has been good for unionist and nationalist alike.
INSKEEP: So by emphasizing the divide in this historically divided island, it would threaten the reignition of violence on the island there. That's what you're saying.
DELVIN: That's right. And there were 30 years of violence, and they impacted on all sorts of ways on daily life and on people's ability to earn a living - led to emigration - all sorts. I mean, I grew up in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. And the - you know, the island was divided in the most arbitrary way. So you'll get, for example, a petrol station with the forecourt in the Republic of Ireland and the pumps in the north of Ireland. There are villages in the Republic that you can only access by driving into Northern Ireland and out again. And it was done in an arbitrary way without consultation. And there were signs miles all along the border. And bear in mind, the border runs for 300-odd miles. These signs say hard border, soft border, no border. And they're intended as a warning and not a plea.
INSKEEP: OK, so tell me here because the one question is, how does Britain figure out a way that this is a border but not a border between two different trading zones and yet still open? And the Brexit Minister - the government's Brexit Minister was on BBC, and the headline that came out of that in The Irish Times, by the way, is "Brexit Minister Unable To Say What Alternative To Irish Backstop Is." He was asked, what is your plan? And what came out was word salad. Do you feel confident that Theresa May has got this one?
DELVIN: I don't feel at all confident. I think that Ireland didn't figure at all when Britain handed its delusions by taking back control. And the penny is now dropping very slowly. But because the DUP, which is a party of Northern unionists, is holding the balance of power in Britain. They're refusing to do anything which divides Northern Ireland from Britain. They want to maintain what they call the precious union. But, you know, there will have to be a boundary set up, and it will have to be policed and checked. It will be imposed, and it will have repercussions - the violence that I referenced earlier.
The reason it will be imposed is because - to protect the single market. Otherwise, Britain could do a deal, say, for a cheaper South American beef, which doesn't adhere to the same standards about hormones in the meat. And this meat could then enter the EU through the border in Ireland. And that would be detrimental for Irish farmers but also for EU farmers. Sooner or later, there'll be checks. It's inevitable.
INSKEEP: OK, Martina Devlin, thanks very much for your insights - really appreciate it.
DELVIN: Pleasure.
INSKEEP: She is an author and columnist in Dublin.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Hurricane Michael destroyed thousands of homes and apartments on Florida's Panhandle, and rebuilding there will take years. In Panama City and surrounding communities, officials are struggling to find housing for families who, more than three months after this storm, are still homeless. NPR's Greg Allen has the story.
GREG ALLEN, BYLINE: In Panama City, the Macedonia Garden Apartments are now mostly vacant.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOG BARKING)
ALLEN: Debris litters the grounds. One building lost its walls and much of its second floor. Most other buildings have severe roof damage. There were about 100 families living here when the storm hit. Lorraine DePriest was staying in her brother's apartment. After the storm, she says everyone was told they had to leave.
LORRAINE DEPRIEST: People didn't leave right away because some people been here 30, 40 years - all their life. They really didn't want to leave, but they had to leave, you know.
ALLEN: Because there's no power, no water?
DEPREIEST: Nothing.
ALLEN: DePriest was lucky. She found another place to live nearby. Her brother and his wife relocated to California, and she doesn't know when they'll be able to return. Their apartment and the entire complex, she says, is a mess.
DEPREIEST: When they had the power on, there was bugs coming out of the J building. And then they had to turn off the gas. And then there was a water leak. So, see, we're stuck.
ALLEN: Several other similar apartment communities were also devastated in the storm, including two public housing complexes. Greg Brudnicki is Panama City's mayor.
GREG BRUDNICKI: In our community here, 66 percent of our housing within the footprint of the city of Panama City is subsidized, OK. It's a huge percentage - 2 out of 3. And we had a lot of those places that were destroyed.
ALLEN: Many of those without a place to live have had to leave the area. Robert Carroll, a Bay County commissioner, says even before the storm there was a shortage of affordable housing in Panama City and surrounding communities. Some 70 percent of those who live in this small city are renters. To help them, Carroll says, FEMA has found several sites where it's bringing in hundreds of mobile homes.
ROBERT CARROLL: We're going to do whatever means we need to to keep the people here. We need to keep them going to the same schools, keep them in the same communities - anything that can keep them to have a sense of being at home because once they've displaced and they're moved - they've found new jobs, they won't come back.
(SOUNDBITE OF CONSTRUCTION NOISE)
ALLEN: On this site in Panama City, crews are leveling the lot and bringing in trailers from FEMA. There's about a dozen trailers here now. A few dozen more are expected. They're going to be used mostly, they say, to house people who had been renting.
RON DESANTIS: I think they're going to be here - what? - 18 months, yeah.
ALLEN: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis recently toured one of the FEMA mobile home sites. It's close to the Macedonia Garden Apartments and other damaged subsidized housing complexes. DeSantis says the trailers are temporary - a place to live while permanent housing is repaired and rebuilt.
DESANTIS: The good news is is that there will be some people who won't be here 18. They'll be here for a couple of months and move on. There'll be some who will need assistance after 18 months.
ALLEN: Officials believe that about a 1,000 trailers placed on several sites will provide a temporary solution to the housing shortage. What's uncertain is how long it will take to repair and rebuild public housing and private apartment complexes. A housing official says that's a process that typically takes one-and-a-half to two years. Panama City Mayor Greg Brudnicki acknowledges it's a tight timeline.
BRUDNICKI: So we've got to get started yesterday on getting all this public housing and subsidized housing started and built and ready because I can't throw somebody out of a place if they don't have someplace to go.
ALLEN: Florida has already released $30 million to help build subsidized housing in communities affected by the hurricane. Brudnicki is now lobbying to have the area designated as a federal opportunity zone, which would spur rebuilding by giving developers generous tax breaks. Greg Allen, NPR News, Panama City, Fla.
(SOUNDBITE OF SIGNAL HILL'S "WANDERERS")
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep with a story of a hardcore dog rescue. A woman was running in a marathon in Thailand when she saw runners step over something - a puppy, which seemed lost. She picked it up and carried it all the remaining 19 miles of the marathon. There's video of this. She seems a little tired, but she triumphantly holds up the puppy in one palm while running. She has since adopted the dog and named it in honor of the marathon where they met.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Apple has reported that iPhone sales fell 15 percent in the last three months of 2018. And while this bad news was not entirely unexpected, it does mark a new low point for the tech company, whose iPhones, obviously, revolutionized the mobile phone industry. Joining me now to talk about what all this means for the company - NPR's Laura Sydell. Good morning, Laura.
LAURA SYDELL, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: What's going on with Apple? I mean, it was just last year that the company became the first American public company to hit a trillion-dollar valuation, right?
SYDELL: I know. It's amazing. But since the fall, the company has lost about a third of its value. And there are a few factors that are playing into what got us to this moment. There is China, which, along with Taiwan, analysts say, brings in close to 20 percent of Apple's business. And the Chinese economy's slowing, so customers there are buying fewer iPhones. In fact, many Chinese are turning to cheaper smartphones made by native companies like Huawei and iPhone knockoffs. In an earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook also pointed out that the dollar has been really strong. And that's raised the price for the phone outside of the U.S. And I will say it's not just China. People in the U.S. and other developed countries are also buying fewer new iPhones.
MARTIN: Well, why's that happening in the U.S.? I mean, the U.S. economy's doing pretty well, right? People still aren't buying iPhones then.
SYDELL: No. In the earnings call yesterday, Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, blamed a couple of factors for that. One is that the phone carriers, like AT&T and Verizon and so forth, have actually stopped subsidizing new phones. And this has been happening slowly over the past few years. So now when you go and buy a phone, the price of the phone service has gone down but you actually have to pay for your own new phone. And a new iPhone can cost you, like, a thousand bucks, right?
MARTIN: Right.
SYDELL: So there are a lot of people who are just holding onto their phones longer. Cook also said the company's decision to replace iPhone batteries at a cheaper price means a lot of people have just decided to hang onto the phone they have.
MARTIN: OK. So I want to go back to something you said earlier. You mentioned the company Huawei. And there will be people in our audience who recognize that name because that's the name of the Chinese telecom that the U.S. Treasury has sanctioned - right? - for intellectual property violations. Is...
SYDELL: Absolutely.
MARTIN: How does this connect to decreasing iPhone sales?
SYDELL: You know, it doesn't directly connect other than today, there are high-level Chinese officials coming to Washington for trade talks with the Trump administration. And since Apple would prefer we had better relationships with China...
MARTIN: Right.
SYDELL: ...Of course, it might not bode well for the talks because the Chinese might be in a bad mood. I will say, though, the other thing is it isn't just Apple. There are other companies who are feeling the slowdown. Nvidia already - its quarterly outlook said their sales were slowing because of China. Also, Caterpillar, the industrial equipment maker, also ran into that. So there's a lot riding on China.
MARTIN: Meanwhile, on top of all the bad news for Apple about the iPhone sales, the company got bad publicity this week because a 14-year-old discovered a security breach. What can you tell us?
SYDELL: Yes, he was playing a game. And he's - he was a 14-year-old in Arizona. And he discovered that when he called a friend using FaceTime, which is Apple's video conference call, he could eavesdrop on his friend before his friend actually picked up the call. His mother spent more than a week trying to bring the problem to Apple's attention before Apple finally acknowledged it and began working to fix it. Researchers say it should not have taken that long. And Apple has banked a lot on security and privacy, saying, we're the company for security and privacy.
MARTIN: Right.
SYDELL: And then this happens.
MARTIN: It doesn't bode well for them.
SYDELL: No, it doesn't look good.
MARTIN: NPR's Laura Sydell, thanks so much.
SYDELL: You're welcome.
(SOUNDBITE OF MARLEY CARROLL'S "SEVEN CROWS")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
After a final 32-hour push that took him through Christmas night, adventurer Colin O'Brady made history by becoming the first person to cross the continent of Antarctica unaided.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
COLIN O'BRADY: 2:25 p.m. local time Chilean on December 26, 2018 - I just made history. This was such a hard journey.
MARTIN: Indeed, it was. The Oregon native had spent 54 days dragging a sled across Antarctica's vastness, covering more than 930 miles, with no help from wind kites, no supply drops. He is now back home in the slightly warmer climate of Portland, Ore. And I had a chance to catch up with him.
What were the biggest threats in your mind setting out? And then, did those match the reality of what the threats actually were?
O'BRADY: We named our project The Impossible First, and the reason we named it that is it's sort of been talked about, as well as written about, as this project is impossible. And so for me, that was the biggest challenge was getting the food right, getting the nutrition right, getting my body in a place that could not only carry the weight but it meant that I had to - I couldn't take any days off. If I took a day off, I'd be eating food in my sled and using my supplies, and there was already such a limited amount. So it meant every single day, I had to get up and move no matter what the weather was doing. You know, 50, 60-mile-per-hour winds, I was out there, which meant, you know, windchill of minus 70, minus 80, minus 90 degrees, you know, whiteout conditions. I was moving all day.
MARTIN: As I still try to wrap my head around this whole endeavor and what you accomplished, did you not have any low points? I mean, was there not a moment when you thought, I don't know if I can do this right now? I don't know if I can put one foot in front of the other.
O'BRADY: Oh, there was tons of low points. You know, early in the expedition, I even, you know, called up my wife and I said, you know, I think we named our project the right thing. And she's like, excuse me? I was like, I think it might be impossible...
(LAUGHTER)
O'BRADY: ...You know, just literally, you know, crying in my ski goggles, you know, with the tears freezing on my face from just how cold it was, how hard it was, how heavy my sled was. Early on, you know, dragging 375-pound sled, getting my body used to that, my mind used to the long days and the blank canvas of the endless white was extraordinarily challenging. And then even as far as the, you know, 48th or 49th day, I think there's a video clip.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO)
O'BRADY: I'm kind of down in my mind right now. This is - even though I'm so close, day 48, this is the first time in the project I'm feeling like I just wish I could quit. I'm not doing good but trying to hold it together.
At that point, there was a storm that had gone five or six days in a row. I hadn't seen anything but complete whiteout. And I can't even see one step in front of me. And I'm getting out of my tent to walk, you know, 12, 13 hours every single day, dragging my sled.
MARTIN: Can you tell me about the final push? Because you had, like, a pace. You were setting out to do a certain number of hours every day. And near the end of it, you just decided that you were going to push way further than anyone even on your team expected you to. right?
O'BRADY: Yeah, absolutely. So I calculated and I thought, you know, I'm about 32 to 36 hours away from finishing this thing. And so it just kind of came over me just this deep knowledge. I was like, wait, I'm not going to stop until I get to the end. And so I went from Christmas morning at 6 a.m. straight through the night. Of course, it's endless sun, so the light just - the sun just stays overhead. But I ended up going 32 1/2 straight hours and nearly 80 miles in one single push to finish this project.
MARTIN: Wow. So you were actually racing against one other man, a former British army captain named Lou Rudd. He ended up finishing two days behind you, but you waited for him, I understand, at the finish line. What was that reunion like? You two had just clearly done something so incredible.
O'BRADY: Yeah. You know, although it was, you know, a competition of sorts, and clearly we were both pushing as hard as we could to become the first to make this crossing, you know, there's a deep camaraderie between two people setting off on a journey like this. When we said goodbye to each other at the drop-off point, we gave each other a big hug and said, hey, hope to see you on the other side safe, sound, successful. Both of us are aware of the risks out there. So in the first week, he went ahead of me, you know, gained a bit of a lead in the first week. And although that was a little bit, you know, challenging mentally, I was also like, OK, stick to my own plan. I actually brought more food than he did. I had a heavier sled because I thought that in the back end I wanted to make sure that I had more energy and didn't run out. And that, you know, compromised a little bit of my speed on the front end.
But by day six, I had caught up to him. And it was the one time that we saw each other while we were out there. I walked past his tent and in this bizarre, you know, two men in the middle of nowhere in Antarctica just kind of gave this quick wave, walked past him. And I ended up staying in front of him for the rest of the time, all the way through the finish when I became first. And so as I finish this and have been alone for so long, I realized I didn't just want a plane to come pick me up and, you know, cheer my success of being first but rather, you know, give respect and compliment to someone who had completed this journey just a couple days slower than me.
And so it was an incredible reunion when we saw each other. You know, as he goes back to the U.K. and I go back to the U.S., we didn't know each other before this trip and, you know, it's not like we'll be talking every single day, but we certainly will always carry this bond of both having completed this. And it was an extraordinary job by him to make it across as well.
MARTIN: You had a bad accident about a decade ago. Can you talk a little bit about how that pushed you to want to do this journey?
O'BRADY: Yeah. So 11 years ago, I was in Thailand on a small beach, and, unfortunately, I got really badly burned in a fire. You know, a flaming rope wrapped around my legs, lit my body on fire completely to my neck, had to jump in the ocean to extinguish the flames, which saved my life but not before about 25 percent of my body was burned, predominantly my legs and feet. And the doctors in Thailand warned me that I would never walk again normally. And, you know, through the recovery process of that really guided by my mother, who came into my hospital room and sat with me for many months when I couldn't walk and said not only are you going to walk again, but dream about what you want to do with your life. And so I thought to myself, you know, one day, I want to race a triathlon. One day, I want to be mobile. One day, I want to, you know, do these things.
And so through this long road of recovery, not only did I race raised my first triathlon, but I actually ended up winning my first-ever race 18 months after this burn accident in the Chicago Triathlon. And that just kind of illuminated for me the power that we have that I believe that we have inside of all of us to achieve and accomplish amazing things, particularly when we shift that mindset towards a positive and not be victimized by a situation externally.
And certainly, if you look over the last 10, 11 years of my life and now being the first person to cross Antarctica solo, unsupported, unaided, it just goes to show that maybe one day someone will tell you you'll never walk again normally, but you never know if you keep pushing forward one step at a time what lies for you on the other end of that perseverance.
MARTIN: Your mom sounds awesome.
O'BRADY: She's amazing.
(LAUGHTER)
MARTIN: Colin O'Brady - we've been talking about his historic journey across Antarctica. Colin, thanks so much, and congratulations.
O'BRADY: Thanks so much.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
For the leader of Venezuela's opposition, time is growing short. Juan Guaido says he is the interim president of Venezuela. An opposition-led legislature says Guaido is to replace Nicolas Maduro, who kept power in a disputed election. President Maduro, though, has shown no sign of stepping down or allowing a new election. And instead, the chief justice of Venezuela's Supreme Court, who is aligned with Maduro, has begun what he calls a preliminary investigation of the opposition leader. Things are getting tense as the opposition prepares big protests. And NPR's Philip Reeves is on the line to tell us about it. Hi there, Philip.
PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: Oh, hi, Steve, yeah.
INSKEEP: What has it been like to walk around Caracas the last few days?
REEVES: It's strange. It's subdued. It's very tense. People who support the opposition - and there are a very large number of people who deeply loathe Maduro - are clearly very happy and hoping that this is the moment after a very long time when they're actually going to get the change that they have wished for for so long. But at the same time, the - they've had many previous disappointments. And you see also just genuine fear in people's eyes. And when they talk to you, they talk about how worried they are, about the safety of their family and whether this whole thing is going to melt down into violence.
INSKEEP: Well, let's talk about that because obviously the opposition leader hasn't been arrested yet. He's still walking free. But if the Supreme Court is beginning motions against him, it clearly leans in that direction. What is the plan of Juan Guaido, the opposition leader, to actually take power having claimed it?
REEVES: Well, he's piling on the pressure. He's calling for people to walk out today, out of their homes and offices, for a two-hour nonviolent protest. And then he's also called for a mass demonstration nationwide on Saturday. Remember; he successfully summoned hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets last week. So I expect today's event to be large. And the big question is, how will Maduro's security forces react? Forty people have been killed since this crisis erupted just over a week ago, mostly by Venezuela's security services, according to the U.N. Human Rights Office. And, you know, the worry is that there'll be more bloodshed. But he is piling on pressure.
INSKEEP: And can you describe President Maduro's approach to staying in power? Forty people killed sounds devastating, but we have not reached that moment of the military killing hundreds or thousands at Tiananmen Square kind of incident yet. We have not reached the moment of the opposition leader being in chains. What is Maduro doing?
REEVES: Well, I think he is faced with a very, very serious challenge to his position. And he's having to feel his way forward. It's true the Supreme Court has now frozen Guaido's bank accounts and that he's been banned from leaving the country. But this is a man who Maduro says is attempting a coup with the collaboration of the United States. So you can see that those measures, when you consider that, are carefully calibrated by Maduro.
As for what he's doing, I mean, turn on the TV here, the state-run TV, which the government entirely controls and uses as a channel for propaganda, and you see these days Maduro in front of his Army troops, you know, attending parades and urging them to fight to the end and to be loyal and so on. So that is how he is proceeding in this crisis that he faces. It's got a lot worse now that the U.S. has cut his oil money. So he has to deal with how he's going to, you know, handle that, too.
INSKEEP: Let's remember, the United States is not just supporting the opposition leader. They've formally recognized him as the president, the interim president, of Venezuela, in addition to cutting the oil money and taking other steps. I'm curious, Philip. As you talk with people on the streets of Caracas, do you have any sense of people hoping for or expecting bigger U.S. intervention?
REEVES: Yes. I mean, one of the things that's quite interesting here is that you often meet people who lean to the left but who rather apologetically explain to you that they are very much in favor of the Trump administration because they're very glad to see this happening in Venezuela after so long. And they appreciate the intervention. But at the same time, this concern exists about what's going to happen. You know, if Maduro goes, Steve, it's unlikely to be a clean break with his military and security apparatus all transferring their allegiance to a new interim government.
There are hard-line elements here. In the National Guard, there are these colectivos who've got - who are basically armed pro-government militias with a reputation for committing atrocities. There are elements in the police and intelligence services who've tortured and kill. And they know that the amnesty that's being offered at the moment by the opposition may not apply to them. And there are numerous criminal gangs, Steve, dealing in drugs and gold who flourish out in the countryside where the government grip is very weak. And add all that together, and you have an alarming picture.
INSKEEP: OK. That's NPR's Philip Reeves. Philip, thanks very much.
REEVES: You're welcome.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was at the border in San Diego yesterday. She's promoting a new policy for some people who seek asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. They're being told to stay in Mexico during their application process. Here's reporter Max Rivlin-Nadler.
MAX RIVLIN-NADLER, BYLINE: Last week, DHS announced that the new policy - dubbed the Migrant Protection Protocols - would begin with the return of 20 asylum-seekers to Mexico this past Friday. But it didn't return any of them until Tuesday morning, when one man was escorted out of the U.S. Alyssa Isidoridy, a lawyer, described the scene.
ALYSSA ISIDORIDY: The journalists swarmed him immediately. And the Mexican official was ushering him on the way to the van, where they promptly put him in the van and drove him away.
RIVLIN-NADLER: No other asylum-seekers were returned to Mexico on Tuesday. In another shift, the U.S. increased the daily number of asylum-seekers it accepted into the country. Eighty people crossed the border - around double the average over the past few weeks. In a statement after her tour of the port of entry, Secretary Nielsen said the new policy will be a huge step forward in bringing order to chaotic migration flows. But several legal organizations are already looking into challenging the new policy. Judy Rabinovitz is with the ACLU.
JUDY RABINOVITZ: This raises real questions under both the statute and under international law, you know, to be returning people to such dangerous conditions.
RIVLIN-NADLER: Asylum-seekers will now be in a separate country from their lawyers, who are trying to figure out how this can work. Andrew Nietor, a San Diego-based attorney, represents asylum-seekers.
ANDREW NIETOR: It's not clear to me whether I'm allowed to go to Mexico and legally engage in the practice of law.
RIVLIN-NADLER: Nietor believes his clients already face an uphill battle for asylum and that this new policy will further discourage people from making asylum claims.
NIETOR: From step one, it seems that the administration has tried to do everything they can to put as many hurdles in front of these individuals and make it as hard as possible for them to make their claim.
RIVLIN-NADLER: Secretary Nielsen says the new policy will discourage fraudulent asylum claims. For NPR News, I'm Max Rivlin-Nadler in Tijuana.
(SOUNDBITE OF WHALE FALL'S "JULIA, TRAIN, SLOW DOWN")
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We have a long view now of the turbulent news media. It comes from Al Hunt, a journalist for half a century. He recently took a half step back from daily journalism and paused for a moment to reflect on people entering his profession.
If approached today by a young person who said, I aspire to be a Washington journalist, would you tell them to run away?
AL HUNT: No, I wouldn't. I'd tell me do it.
INSKEEP: That advice may sound surprising at this moment. Thousands of journalists have lost their jobs in recent years, including many just last week at Gannett newspapers, BuzzFeed and elsewhere. That is an odd development considering that journalists are also being told their work is vital to democracy. Yet Al Hunt still finds the job meaningful for those who remain in it.
Since coming to Washington in 1969, Hunt has covered scandal-ridden presidencies for The Wall Street Journal and then for Bloomberg. Many things have changed. But just as when he started, he says, journalism is about trying to find out what powerful people do behind closed doors.
HUNT: You know, the media was profoundly different. But the reporters, I don't think, were that different. I mean, yeah, you can see distinctions. But I think the trade is really quite the same.
INSKEEP: I guess we should note that the press corps at that time was overwhelmingly white men.
HUNT: There were no - when I joined the Wall Street Journal bureau here in 1969, Steve, there wasn't a single woman in the bureau, and there were no people of color anywhere. Now, the Post and Times had a few women - not very many. So it was a much different environment.
INSKEEP: What were you doing during Watergate?
HUNT: I was covering Congress. And I covered the urban committee a little bit. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield set up a special Watergate committee, in 1973, headed by a very conservative North Carolinian named Sam Ervin, who had a great reverence for the Constitution. And what that committee really did is it really set the stage for an impeachment proceeding to begin in the House the next year.
INSKEEP: Did the system work in 1974?
HUNT: Yes, it absolutely worked. They did it right. It had public support. The president did go quietly into the night. I mean, Nixon must be given credit. He didn't try to stay beyond when he could stay. He didn't try to rouse the people to the streets. I'd worry about that today. And...
INSKEEP: He didn't send a single tweet after leaving office in 1974.
HUNT: The - oh, God.
INSKEEP: Did the system work in the 1990s when Bill Clinton was impeached and then acquitted by the Senate?
HUNT: No. It was a sham because it wasn't a serious job. It was a political job to begin with. And look. Clinton lied. Clinton did some things. My view back then was, Clinton should have been censured by the Congress - that they should have said, you know, this is unacceptable. He lied about sex. I'm not excusing any kind of lying. I just doubt very much that rises to an impeachable offense.
Nixon had done things with the CIA and the FBI and the IRS that were unlawful and unconscionable - far, far greater sins. And I think that became an embarrassment, too, for the Republicans. It backfired. And it just - no one can look on that as a model that you'd ever want to emulate.
INSKEEP: How well is the system working now?
HUNT: Not well. Steve, when I came here 1969, the Vietnam War was raging. Civil rights was still a huge issue. Watergate was on the horizon. Nixon was a divisive president. And then there were people of, you know, strongly different views, but there was a certain comity in Congress and in Washington. Today I don't think the stakes are nearly as big, and there's far, far less comity.
You know, Daniel Patrick Moynihan one time said of academic politics, it's so bitter because so little is at stake. And sometimes you think that today. I mean, the bitterness is just over a wall. I mean, the - it's just - it's insane, Steve. It really is. And so in that sense, the system is not working.
INSKEEP: Is the country in danger?
HUNT: Yeah, I think the country is in danger. I've never thought that before. I didn't even think it would Nixon. But I do think there were people around Nixon who, whatever he...
INSKEEP: Restrained him.
HUNT: Yeah. And I worry about that today, particularly with Jim Mattis gone.
INSKEEP: And the danger is what? What is it you're afraid of? Because somebody listening - many people, maybe millions of people are listening who think the president is not a danger at all. They support him, or they just don't think it's that bad. They don't think it's that big a deal.
HUNT: No, I know. And they will point to, you know - so he's been in office for two years, and we think some good things have happened. And what are the bad things? The problem, Steve, is that he doesn't know much and he doesn't really care to know much. He really hasn't faced a crisis. Presidents...
INSKEEP: These have been good times.
HUNT: These have been really good times - and not just at home but on the foreign front. I mean, there hasn't been a crisis. He talks about what he's done in Korea. He created a crisis, to some extent, in - he exacerbated the crisis on the Korean Peninsula.
So when a crisis occurs, we're not sure, A, how he'll react and, B, what kind of advisers he will have around him and what kind of advice they'll give. When you read about the 13 days, John F. Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis, one of the things that's striking - they made mistakes. But one of the things that is striking is how good the advice was from some people back then. And I'm not sure what would happen today if we hit a crisis.
INSKEEP: Al Hunt, thanks so much for coming by.
HUNT: Thank you, Steve.
INSKEEP: Al Hunt, formerly of The Wall Street Journal and of Bloomberg, who has left daily journalism after half a century - though, in this 21st century, he is now, with James Carville, starting a podcast.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Singer James Ingram has died. His longtime friend, the actor and dancer Debbie Allen broke the news to her Twitter followers yesterday saying, quote, "I have lost my dearest friend and creative partner."
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Ingram was a fixture on the pop and R&B charts in the '80s and '90s.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JUST ONCE")
JAMES INGRAM: (Singing) Just once, can we figure out what we keep doing wrong?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ONE HUNDRED WAYS")
INGRAM: (Singing) Love her today. Find 100 ways.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I DON'T HAVE THE HEART")
INGRAM: (Singing) I don't have the heart to hurt you.
INSKEEP: He was in demand as a collaborator. He co-wrote the Michael Jackson hit "P.Y.T." And as a duet partner, he sang with everyone from Michael McDonald...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YAH MO B THERE")
JAMES INGRAM AND MICHAEL MCDONALD: (Singing) Yah mo b there (ph)...
INSKEEP: ...To Patti Austin...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BABY, COME TO ME")
PATTI AUSTIN AND JAMES INGRAM: (Singing) Baby, come to me...
INSKEEP: ...To Linda Ronstadt.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SOMEWHERE OUT THERE")
JAMES INGRAM AND LINDA RONSTADT: (Singing) Somewhere out there, if love can...
MARTIN: He was born in Akron, Ohio. James Ingram was discovered by Quincy Jones, and that partnership led to instant success. Ingram was nominated for two Oscars in his lifetime and more than a dozen Grammys.
(SOUNDBITE OF JAMES INGRAM AND LINDA RONSTADT'S "SOMEWHERE OUT THERE")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Various Democratic presidential hopefuls are getting behind an idea long thought to be on the outer edge of progressive politics - so-called "Medicare-for-all." Senator Kamala Harris endorsed the idea the other night in a CNN town hall. She also suggested getting rid of all private insurance.
Clearly health care is going to be a major issue in the Democratic primary and seems like a good moment to have NPR's health policy correspondent Alison Kodjak on to educate us. Good morning, Alison.
ALISON KODJAK, BYLINE: Good morning, Rachel.
MARTIN: We've heard this phrase for a long time, but it's worth explaining it again. Can you just describe what exactly is "Medicare-for-all"?
KODJAK: Yeah, so what Senator Harris says she is supporting is a bill that was proposed by Bernie Sanders, and that would create a national single-payer health plan that would replace the whole private insurance system. And here's how she described it.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KAMALA HARRIS: Well, listen; the idea is that everyone gets access to medical care. And you don't have to go through the process of going through an insurance company, having them give you approval, going through the paperwork, all of the delay that may require.
KODJAK: So everyone would get a Medicare card just like the one that my elderly mother has, and doctors would have to sign an agreement to participate in the program.
MARTIN: And as you point out, this is the same thing as the single-payer system. So everyone may hear "Medicare-for-all" and think, oh, this is just for, you know, elderly people. But this is actually - what she's proposing is a much more substantive overhaul of the current health care system.
KODJAK: Yeah, it's huge. It would change everybody's health insurance.
MARTIN: How would it be paid for?
KODJAK: Well, that's the big unknown.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
KODJAK: I mean, it would clearly have to be through some sort of tax increase. Harris didn't specify what she wanted to do in her town hall, and Sanders, in the proposal that he put on the table, did outline some options. Right now we spend about $3 1/2 trillion a year on health care, and Sanders says his - making "Medicare-for-all" will cost less. But the proposals to pay for it would be maybe a tax increase on employers to replace what they're now paying for health insurance premiums like a Social Security tax or maybe a tax increase on personal income tax. And then there are always proposals to increase tax rates on the wealthy high-earners and reduce their deductions.
MARTIN: So we know Kamala Harris is behind this idea. What about the other candidates who've thrown their hat into the ring thus far?
KODJAK: Yeah, well, we have Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Elizabeth Warren who both also co-sponsored Senator Sanders' bill, so the - that Democratic crowd is pretty much all in. You have two so-called moderate billionaire businessmen who are testing the waters, those centrist candidates. Howard Schultz, the former CEO of Starbucks - he called this program not American because it would eliminate the health insurance industry. Mike Bloomberg - he says a "Medicare-for-all" plan would, quote, "bankrupt us." So those two potential candidates aren't quite as supportive as the three senators who have already co-sponsored Senator Sanders' bill.
MARTIN: I mean, we should just point out it wasn't that long ago that there was an overhaul of the American health care system that gave birth to the Affordable Care Act. So - and these Democrats are arguing that didn't go far enough. But this is a very politically difficult issue. I mean, how does it poll with the public? Do Americans want a single-payer system?
KODJAK: You know, conceptually they do. Fifty-six percent of people in a recent poll said they were supportive. But when you get into the nitty gritty - like, you're going to have to change your insurance, and if you like it, you won't get to keep it - people don't like that. People never like to hear that they're going to have to pay more taxes even if it replaces their insurance premiums. And of course the insurance industry is going to fight this like crazy...
MARTIN: Right.
KODJAK: ...If it gets to that point.
MARTIN: NPR's Alison Kodjak - thanks, Alison.
KODJAK: Thank you, Rachel.
MARTIN: One correction now - earlier we described the Kamala Harris campaign as backtracking from one aspect of "Medicare-for-all." Her campaign has said that in fact she remains supportive of the "Medicare-for-all" bill she co-sponsors with Bernie Sanders.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Rachel Martin. Maybe you've heard it's winter. And it's cold outside, exceptionally so in parts of the Midwest, which are seeing temperatures in the minus double digits, which is why the Warrensburg Police Department in Missouri would like everyone to cut them a break. They posted on their Facebook page, asking the public to keep crime to a minimum over the next three days because it's just too cold. Go do yourself and us a favor. Stay inside, be nice to each other, and watch reruns of "Say Yes To The Dress."
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Had things gone according to the original plan, we would have been analyzing President Trump's State of the Union speech this morning. It was supposed to come last night. It was delayed because of the partial government shutdown. It comes next week. That gives us an opportunity to talk about famous speeches that have taken place over the years inside that chamber of the House of Representatives. Here's Franklin Roosevelt's famous call for a declaration of war.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT: Yesterday, December 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
INSKEEP: The president speaking to silent members of Congress at that sober moment. The history of speeches in the House is our topic this week for commentator Cokie Roberts. We ask Cokie each week about how politics and the government work.
Hi, Cokie.
COKIE ROBERTS, BYLINE: Hi, Steve.
INSKEEP: And here's our first question from the audience.
ANDREA ROBERSON: Hi, Cokie. This is Andrea Roberson from Washington, D.C. Has any U.S. president ever delivered the State of the Union address in an alternate venue outside of the House chamber? If so, what were the circumstances?
ROBERTS: Well, yes. George Washington and John Adams did because the capital was in New York and Philadelphia, respectively, until 1800. Jefferson sent up the speech in writing. And he set the tone for every president after him until Woodrow Wilson in 1913. He decided to deliver it. He set the pattern for most of the presidents following him. But the State of the Union isn't the only speech given before a joint meeting of Congress. There are lots of others, like the one from Roosevelt we just heard.
INSKEEP: And we have tape here of General Douglas MacArthur after he had been fired during the Korean War. He was - he had a lot of public support, was given an opportunity to address Congress.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DOUGLAS MACARTHUR: I address you with neither rancor nor bitterness in the fading twilight of life with one - but with one purpose in mind - to serve my country.
ROBERTS: Then he finished with the line, old soldiers never die. They just fade away. A half a million people lined the streets as he approached the capital. And the invitation to let him speak was a direct affront to the president. There've been a few of those over history, Steve. Back in 1864, the Radical Republicans brought in, of all things, the first woman to address the Congress...
INSKEEP: Wow.
ROBERTS: ...As a challenge to Abraham Lincoln. Twenty-one-year-old abolitionist Anna Dickinson was, apparently, a spellbinder out on the trail. She successfully campaigned for Republicans. The Democrats complained and tried to pass a resolution, saying, you can't use the hall for such partisan purposes. So that's hardly a new issue.
INSKEEP: Well, I have a question for you, Cokie. What's your favorite speech that's taken place in the House?
ROBERTS: Queen Elizabeth in 1991 - it was so symbolic. And she entered the chamber to such applause. And then she looked so small standing there.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
QUEEN ELIZABETH II: Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, distinguished members of Congress, I know what a rare privilege it is to address a joint meeting of your two houses. Thank you for inviting me.
ROBERTS: You know, this was a symbolic moment. There was the historic joint appearance of Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein in 1994 that was such a hopeful moment and was exciting to be in the chamber. But I also just love the hall, Steve. My earliest memory of it was when I had just turned 5 years old, took the oath of office on opening day.
INSKEEP: Wait a minute. You took the oath of office at age 5?
ROBERTS: Well, why not? I was there.
(LAUGHTER)
INSKEEP: OK, Cokie, thanks so much.
ROBERTS: Good to talk to you.
INSKEEP: Commentator Cokie Roberts - you can ask Cokie your questions about how politics and the government work by tweeting us with the #AskCokie.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BREATHING EFFECT'S "VISIONS")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
U.S. and Chinese negotiators are in Washington, D.C., today for the start of high-level trade talks to try and bring an end to the trade war between the world's two biggest economies. NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson joins us now. Good morning, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Hi, Rachel.
MARTIN: What is supposed to happen in this meeting? - incremental or are there big expectations?
LIASSON: What's supposed to happen is the U.S. is going to press China on two fronts. The first is getting the Chinese to lower the trade deficit between the two countries, buy more American stuff - commodities like soybeans. The second goal is much harder. It's to address these structural issues. The U.S. wants China to stop intellectual property theft, stop what they call forced technology transfer. That means forcing American companies to hand over their technology secrets. They don't want China to require U.S. companies to have a Chinese partner when they operate in China. In other words, the U.S. wants China to change its business model. So the big question about these talks is, will Donald Trump be so eager for a deal that he'll settle for China buying some more soybeans and not push harder on the structural issues? What I'm being told is even though the president started out being pretty obsessed with the trade deficit...
MARTIN: Yeah.
LIASSON: ...Which economists will tell you is really not the most important metric, he is now very focused on these structural issues. And tomorrow, when he sits down with the Chinese vice premier, he will have a chance to press these issues.
MARTIN: So why the change? I mean, I guess the question is...
LIASSON: Because that's what's - oh.
MARTIN: What has the pain been like? And is that...
LIASSON: Well...
MARTIN: ...Tipping the scales here?
LIASSON: I think the change is just that the president has come to understand that these structural issues are the real problem and the trade deficit - just getting China to buy more soybeans from the U.S. wouldn't really solve the problem. But in terms of the pain, there is a trade war - maybe a low-level trade war - right now between the U.S. and China. The president has put 25 percent tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese imports, another 10 percent tariffs on $200 billion worth. And then on March 1, he is threatening to raise that to 25 percent if they don't get a deal. And that could really affect the world economy. These are the world's two largest economies.
MARTIN: And, of course, all this is complicated by the fact that the Justice Department brought charges against the Chinese tech giant Huawei - big, huge, Chinese telecom. I mean, how's that going to play into these negotiations?
LIASSON: That's a very good question. The treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin says the indictments against Huawei and the Chinese trade talks are on two separate tracks. But the question is, will the Huawei indictments become a bargaining chip in the trade talks? How will they - how can they not become a bargaining chip in these trade talks?
MARTIN: Right. Mnuchin may want them on separate tracks. But is...
LIASSON: Right.
MARTIN: Are the Chinese going to look at it that way?
LIASSON: No. The Chinese, clearly, will want to roll them together. But these talks are probably not going to come to a resolution this week. But the Huawei indictments, at some point, I think, will affect them.
MARTIN: NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson for us this morning, talking about these trade talks happening in Washington between U.S. and Chinese negotiators. Mara, thanks. We appreciate it.
LIASSON: Thank you.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
On Monday, federal employees who had been furloughed during the government shutdown went back to work. Today, a group of lawmakers starts work to make sure those federal employees keep getting paychecks. The group is supposed to come up with a compromise deal on border security and avoid another government shutdown. The key though is coming up with something President Trump will sign. He told the Wall Street Journal the committee's chances for success are about less than 50/50. The group is made up of Republicans and Democrats from both chambers. Congressman Chuck Fleischmann is one of them. He's a Republican of Tennessee and joins us in our studios this morning. Thanks for coming in, Congressman.
CHUCK FLEISCHMANN: Good morning.
MARTIN: The process starts without a lot of confidence from the White House. What tone does that set going forward?
FLEISCHMANN: Well, I'm the eternal optimist. And let's face it. We have worked on this situation since December, since the 115th Congress. And I look at the makeup of the room. What we have are appropriators, people who serve on the Senate and House Appropriation Committees respectively. I am now the ranking member - the highest Republican on the House Homeland Security Subcommittee. So I start any endeavor with optimism, with a positive outlook. I hope there's going to be a lot of civility in that room today. So I want to work to try to restore the American people's faith in our process. So I'm going to start with a can-do attitude.
MARTIN: Which I'm sure is appreciated - you mentioned appropriators. Those are people who are known to have to compromise. That is the work of doing appropriations. Where do you see the compromise? You're a Republican, so I'm going ask about your party. Where do you see the compromise happening on the GOP side here?
FLEISCHMANN: I think from the 115th Congress and throughout the shutdown - and even to today - I see a tremendous amount of flexibility and actually diversity in our conference. Let's face it. We have a lot of members who served border communities. We have a lot of very diverse ideas. And I think that's a good thing. We have had an internal discussion - I won't say a debate. I'll say a very productive discussion as to where we are. We know where the administration is, and we know we're pretty much most of the folks in the Senate are. We have a track record of what has not worked. So now perhaps we can focus on what will work.
MARTIN: Let's get into some of the specifics because you have been at it for so long, and now the pressure is on to really get to a compromise. Are you going to get to the nuts and bolts of what is actually needed on the border? We heard from the mayor of El Paso this week, who says he's been frustrated because he hasn't actually seen the Department of Homeland Security lay out - this is where you need fencing. This is not where you need fencing. Are you going to get those details in this committee?
FLEISCHMANN: I think we have had those details in the House and the Senate as we've negotiated it. The White House has had those details. The Department of Homeland Security, the secretary, who I know very well, has actually laid those out in meetings that I have not been present in. Remember. Prior to this, we have basically had leadership as opposed to appropriators in these meetings. What I mean by that is Senate and House leaders from both parties negotiating with the administration. In those meetings, as I understand it, they made a very good case - the Department of Homeland Security - for what was very relevant there factually. But, yes, I think we all need to press - not only in a bipartisan way but in a bicameral way to make sure that we get the facts so that we can make the best agreement possible for the American people.
MARTIN: Is it still going to cost $5.7 billion?
FLEISCHMANN: Well, ultimately probably more than if we go down that path - bear this in mind. Whether we call it a wall, a barrier, a deterrent, that is only one aspect of the full border security situation. Yesterday, I met with a company that used drone technology and other technologies. That particular company was wall-agnostic. What I mean by that is - where there was a wall, their technology worked, but where there was not a wall, their technology worked. So as we grow into this process, I don't think we should just focus on one issue in a very parochial way. There's a lot of issues that have to be dealt with with the full Homeland Security Subcommittee. I mean, we have got Coast Guard. We've got TSA. And we have other bills to deal with.
MARTIN: Just briefly, are DACA protections - permanent DACA protections on the table?
FLEISCHMANN: I don't believe so. I don't think anything permanent is on the table. But I do think DACA discussions are on the table. So when I come to a table to negotiate - I practiced law for 24 years, and I remembered going into mediations where we were miles apart. I don't think we're miles apart. I think there's a lot of common ground. I think there is a lot of very strong passions in the room. But I think we have to see where everyone is, start that communication, start those negotiations and then hopefully get something to the administration that we all can live with.
MARTIN: The question is whether or not the president will sign on to that. Congressman Chuck Fleischmann of Tennessee, a Republican from that state, thank you so much for your time.
FLEISCHMANN: Thank you, ma'am.
MARTIN: We are joined now by NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson, who was listening into that conversation. Mara, what did you hear in there - the congressman clearly optimistic about the the options for compromise out of this.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Right - optimistic, very practical. I think that Congress, left to its own devices, could come up with a solution. I think they did before. The problem is that after the Senate passed that almost unanimous bill to keep the government open, the president changed his mind and rejected it. And that's the big question. What will the president accept from Congress? The White House has already said that he's showed some flexibility. He doesn't insist on a 2,000-mile concrete barrier from sea to shining sea. He's asking for 200-plus miles, several billion dollars a year. And the Democrats haven't completely ruled out spending money on some kind of barrier. So a compromise should be possible. But he's also saying, if he doesn't get one he likes, he will declare a national emergency and build the wall himself.
MARTIN: NPR political correspondent Mara Liasson for us - thanks so much, Mara.
LIASSON: Thank you.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
And now this - Americans have something to say about proposed rules for investigating campus sexual assault. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos offered the change. She wants to overturn rules from the Obama administration in a way that she says would better protect the accused. The rule-making process typically involves an invitation for public comment, which is why the administration now has some homework - about 100,000 public remarks to read. NPR's Tovia Smith reports.
TOVIA SMITH, BYLINE: While many comments praise the new rules for restoring sanity and fairness to the process, many more are critical. They range from short expletives and insults aimed at DeVos to horrific accounts of sexual assaults and pleas to not return campuses to the bad old days when incidents were swept under the rug. Activists have been mobilizing their troops with a social media blitz, comment-writing pizza parties and college events.
SAGE CARSON: I'm wondering, are you all going to hear me OK? I'm, like, trying to assess the room virtually.
(LAUGHTER)
CARSON: So if...
SMITH: Sage Carson with the survivor advocacy group Know Your IX video conferences with Boston University students for a kind of crash course in commenting.
CARSON: What this is is it's pretty much, like, a short persuasive essay in which you say why you support or oppose what they want to do to Title IX.
SMITH: She points students to a website, Hands Off IX, that allows for easier commenting with a Mad Libs kind of template and then forwards the entry to the Department of Education.
CARSON: So you'll go in. And it will say like - hi,; my name is blah-da-blah (ph), and I am blank. That could be - I'm a student, I'm a student-survivor, I am a...
SMITH: Students then pick from a list of concerns - for example, the proposed rule that schools don't automatically have to investigate incidents in off-campus apartments or reports made, say, to a coach. And then there's data students can pick to bolster their case.
CARSON: It takes about five to 10 minutes is what we've heard from people. It's super simple. And it's like this can have real-world implications.
BLAIRE THOMAS: OK. So this, like, gives you an outline. OK. Do I have to use these sentence starters? Or...
SMITH: After the meeting, sophomores Blaire Thomas and Julia Mullert both decide to write about the off-campus exclusion.
JULIA MULLERT: I do live in off-campus housing. And the fact that, you know, you could be minutes away and that can change everything, that's really devastating. But you know, it also motivates you to want to push back against it and fight harder.
SMITH: Activists hope the sheer volume of comments will force the administration to pay attention. There's no official count of pros and cons. But even those who favor the new rules concede they're getting beat. Cynthia Garrett is co-president of FACE, a group representing those who say they were wrongly accused.
CYNTHIA GARRETT: We know we will never match the number of comments of victims' advocates. But I think the department is smart enough to understand that quality is more important than quantity.
SMITH: Garrett's been encouraging comments from accused students who say they were victims of an unfair system that left them kicked out of school with dashed prospects, ruined reputations and, in many cases, severe depression.
GARRETT: We have a kid who planned to paddle out on his surfboard with a concrete block. We have another one - the mother came home, opened the garage door. And the kid was standing on a stool with a rope in his hand. I mean, this is very devastating.
SMITH: Garrett says the new rules better protect the wrongly accused - for example, by allowing schools to demand more proof of wrongdoing, guaranteeing the right to cross-examine accusers and narrowing the definition of sexual harassment. Fighting these issues through agency regulations, once the domain of wonky lawyers, is something of a newer frontier in political activism, says Harvard Law professor Jacob Gersen.
JACOB GERSEN: Parties and activists have gotten good at this over the years. They recognize that the bureaucracy and the administration is actually where the power is. That's a much more effective place to spend your political energy.
SMITH: Success, however, is hardly a gimme. Past campaigns - for example, on net neutrality - failed to change policy. Survivor advocates maintain that comments created by templates are heartfelt and valid, and they're vowing a legal challenge if the department doesn't heed them. But Joe Cohn with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education says comment quantity should not drive policy.
JOE COHN: Constitutional rights aren't decided by a majority vote. Due process is not subject to the whims of the masses.
SMITH: Officials may take months to review the comments and respond. And it could be close to the 2020 election before they take effect, so that may be what ultimately decides the issue.
Tovia Smith, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Tesla sells electric cars - expensive electric cars - and it's finally making money doing that. Yesterday Tesla announced its second quarterly profit in a row, which might be great for the company if CEO Elon Musk wanted to make money just selling expensive cars. He doesn't. NPR's Camila Domonoske explains.
CAMILA DOMONOSKE, BYLINE: Musk called it his secret master plan. The secret part is a joke. He talked about it all the time. But the master plan, he was serious about. Step one was selling a super-fancy electric sports car, the $100,000 Roadster. Step two was using that money to make cheaper and cheaper cars. Musk spoke directly to his customers at the unveiling of the Roadster back in 2006. The video was posted by Netscape and Autoblog.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ELON MUSK: Anyone who's considering buying this car is - you know, you're not just buying a sports car. You're actually helping pay for development of the mass-market vehicles.
DOMONOSKE: Cheap electric cars - and a lot of them - that would sell so well, it would push all carmakers toward going electric. That was always Musk's goal because what he really wanted was to save the world. The master plan was to fight climate change. Here's Musk at the unveiling of the Model X in 2012.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MUSK: The world desperately needs sustainable transport. If we don't solve this problem this century, we are fracked.
DOMONOSKE: So that was the vision. But making mass-market electric cars is really hard. Tesla is producing a less-expensive car, the Model 3. But the process of ramping up production was painful, and the Model 3 is still only sold for way more than the target of $35,000. Brian Moody is the executive editor for Autotrader. He thinks Tesla should just admit that it's a premium carmaker.
BRIAN MOODY: We can just be honest and call them luxury cars. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
DOMONOSKE: Tesla has shown it can turn a profit off cars that cost $50,000 and up.
MOODY: They've created something great that people love. Good. Congratulations. You should enjoy your success and keep doing more of that.
DOMONOSKE: Tesla is not interested in doing more of that. The company recently announced it's laying off thousands of people.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MUSK: We have to be relentless about costs in order to make affordable cars and not go bankrupt. That's what our headcount reduction is about.
DOMONOSKE: That was Musk on a call with investors yesterday. And Tesla's building a new factory in Shanghai in addition to its factory in Fremont, Calif., again, to help make that affordable car. We should note this is not only about fighting climate change.
JESSICA CALDWELL: At the end of the day, Tesla is a for-profit company, right? It's not a nonprofit.
DOMONOSKE: Jessica Caldwell is the executive director of industry analysis at Edmunds. She says, yes, the company is idealistic.
CALDWELL: Elon Musk and Tesla having this grander vision for humanity and civilization is certainly different than the way that other auto companies, you know, run their business day to day.
DOMONOSKE: But making cheaper cars would also be good business. It means a bigger pool of potential customers. And if it's going to happen, it's got to be soon, she says.
CALDWELL: Tesla's up against the wall. There are some real business pressures.
DOMONOSKE: Tesla has said for years that the cheap car was just around the corner. But it never actually turned that corner. Now traditional automakers are investing serious money in bringing new electric cars to market and would-be Tesla buyers are waiting to see if the company can keep its promises.
MARK VIDAURRI: Instead of getting an Infiniti, I would rather get a Tesla. You know what I'm saying?
DOMONOSKE: Mark Vidaurri (ph) in San Antonio, Texas, test drove a Model 3 a few weeks ago. He loved it, but he felt let down by the fact that the price is still much higher than $35,000.
VIDAURRI: I mean, even if you were to go with all the cheapest options, you're looking at, like, $600 to $800 a month. With a monthly payment like that, you know, in everyday life, with me and my wife working - I mean, we work full-time jobs - it's just not in the cards.
DOMONOSKE: He hopes that cheaper car is coming.
VIDAURRI: I believe advancements in technology shouldn't be a luxury. It should be something that is discovered and being able to distribute across every class of citizen.
DOMONOSKE: Including people like Vidaurri, who dreams of a Model 3 in his driveway someday. Camila Domonoske, NPR News.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Growing up in Louisiana, Dawn Richard dreamed of making it big as a singer. So she auditioned for the TV show "Making The Band," where the producer, then known as P Diddy, assembled a group of unknown singers to make them superstars. Richard was a standout. She even gave the group their name, Danity Kane.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DAMAGED")
DANITY KANE: (Singing) So how you gonna fix it, fix it, fix it? How you gonna fix it, fix it, fix it?
MARTIN: Danity Kane racked up two No. 1 albums before breaking up. And while music fans were falling in love with this new star, behind the scenes, Dawn Richard's life was falling apart. Noel King talked with her recently.
NOEL KING, BYLINE: Danity Kane released their first No. 1 album in August of 2006. That was a year after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, which is Richard's hometown. For a while after the storm, her family was homeless. And then they settled on the East Coast. Richard has a new solo album out now. It's released under her first name, Dawn. And she says it's inspired by the resilience of the people of New Orleans. She told me what she remembers about the day Katrina hit.
DAWN RICHARD: We left Sunday. It happened on Monday. And we stayed in the contraflow.
KING: What's the contraflow?
RICHARD: The contraflow is they keep the highway one-way.
KING: Oh, wow. So while the hurricane was happening, you and your family were...
RICHARD: We were in the car, yeah.
KING: ...In the car.
RICHARD: Yeah, I'll never forget it. My dad had a wedding to sing for. He did it. We got in the car. Usually it takes - what? - six, seven hours to get to Dallas. It took us 15 hours. We got to Texas. And there were no rooms available. So then they told us, go to Biloxi. We went to Biloxi - sold out - drove to Houston, a whole day, all sold out. So finally, my dad just said, we're just going to stay here. They gave us a red ticket. And a red ticket was like a refugee ticket. You get a ticket, and you get clothes and food.
KING: Wow.
RICHARD: And we sat in the car for about a month. And then my brother finally got us. He was crying. And he was like, please, just come to Baltimore. So we took our little car. And we drove to Baltimore. My dad never slept. He just drove. And it's - we stayed. My mom and dad were in Baltimore for 10 years with no friends. And on the 10-year anniversary, my brother and I was like, enough. Go home. Like, you guys should retire. Just go. And they finally listened.
And so I visit quite often because I miss it. I miss my friends. I miss the feel of it. I miss what we were - because I've been a lot of places in life. And I've never seen anything like New Orleans. It's such a beautiful city. It's something so different. I took it for granted because I thought it always would be there.
And then when I got home, I said, you know what? I'm going to make an album that tells people why I am the way I am and why we are the way we are. And maybe it could connect to those other breeds out there who are like us. In the midst of the worst of times, we find a way to dance.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NEW BREED")
RICHARD: (Singing) I am, I am, yeah. I am the new breed. But your crown don't fit me. I am, I am, I am, I am, yeah. I am the new breed. But your crown don't fit me.
KING: What did you want to do with this album, "New Breed"?
RICHARD: "New Breed" is special. I've put out three other albums. I did a trilogy before this. And once I finished that, I was exhausted because I had no label, no management team. I was getting rejected a lot because they just didn't get the vision. So then I went home for the first time in a long time. And it was the first time I could breathe and feel like I was in the same place I was on "JonLee Drive." And I realized at that moment I had to tell this story.
KING: One of the most striking songs on this album is the first song. It's called "The Nine." It's named after the 9th Ward of New Orleans, where you grew up...
RICHARD: Yep.
KING: ...Which, of course was devastated by the hurricane. And for an album that is so fun in places and so empowered overall, this song is really nostalgic. And it's really heartbreaking in a lot of ways.
RICHARD: Yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE NINE")
RICHARD: (Singing) I want to go back to JonLee Drive, where Shanda and Sonja used to kick it every time. I wanna go back, yeah.
KING: I couldn't quite tell if this song is about trying to get back to a place that you can't access anymore because it's gone or if it's about going home and seeing that even though much of it has been washed away, the place itself, at its core, is still there.
RICHARD: It's both. It's a feeling of maybe never feeling it again. But it was so great that it can never really disappear.
KING: Does that make you sad, or does it make you homesick? Like, what's the feeling that comes with that?
RICHARD: When it happened, I was sad. But now it's a little bit of a bitter sweetness, you know, because I am proud of my city because even though we've lost everything, we are still moving. We are still dancing. It's no different than the celebration of a funeral. So even though we have a funeral, we dance in the streets because we know that the person we love is going to a better place. That is us. That is what we are as a city.
KING: It's so interesting to think that if you were from a different city that had been destroyed...
RICHARD: It would be jarring, yeah.
KING: Yeah, you would be a very different artist.
RICHARD: Yeah.
KING: You would somebody who might not be able to find joy...
RICHARD: Yeah.
KING: ...In ruin.
RICHARD: That's real. You know, and because of that, I've handled every experience that I've dealt with - whether it be sexual abuse, whether it be my boss in music industries that have treated me a certain way, whether it be me not having a label - I've handled that same situation like that with everything.
KING: You have references to New Orleans all over the album, as you say.
RICHARD: Yeah.
KING: The drums on the song "New Breed" kind of...
RICHARD: Yeah.
KING: ...Borrow from New Orleans bounce music...
RICHARD: Absolutely.
KING: ...Which is this very hype form of hip-hop. I want to ask you about one of those songs. "Jealousy" is a track...
RICHARD: Yeah.
KING: ...Where you're talking to a woman who we assume is your boyfriend's ex.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JEALOUSY")
RICHARD: (Singing) I know you feel he may be comin' back to you. He won't. He won't, he won't, he won't, won't. I know you feel like he'll come around. He won't. Oh...
KING: Is there New Orleans in that?
RICHARD: Yeah.
KING: Or is - there is. Where's the New Orleans there?
RICHARD: So people make fun. And they say, you know, something about them New Orleans girls.
KING: (Laughter).
RICHARD: Because there's a level of strength - right? - in us that is, I wouldn't say arrogant. It's confident. No matter where we come from - we don't need money - we hold ourself at a standard. And we expect something, right? The women that I knew from New Orleans, the women that walked like they - they'd talk like that. I'm on fire, you know?
KING: Yeah.
RICHARD: Like, that's how I want to walk in my relationship. And I know a lot of people out there who understand that. I know a lot of women who relate to the idea of being unapologetically open about saying, no, I'm not accepting anything but this because I am worth it. And I wanted to make an album that spoke to those things.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WE, DIAMONDS")
RICHARD: (Singing) And even though we're broken, that don't mean we ain't diamonds.
KING: I've been talking to Dawn. Her new album, "New Breed," is just out. Dawn, thank you so much.
RICHARD: Thanks, guys.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Do not accuse Pete Buttigieg of thinking small. He is the Democratic mayor of South Bend, Ind. He is 37 years old, and he is running for president.
PETE BUTTIGIEG: And I'm also conscious, as someone from a new generation, somebody living in a part of the country that has been neglected but, in many ways, holds the key to, I believe, our social and political life, that I have something to offer that is different.
INSKEEP: Pete Buttigieg has spent two terms as mayor. And during that time, he took a leave to serve with the Navy Reserve in Afghanistan. He is openly gay. And he is author of a new memoir called "Shortest Way Home."
Analysts assume Buttigieg is a long shot in a crowded presidential field. But when you talk with him, you hear the thinking of a Democrat who may have a long career ahead.
BUTTIGIEG: The biggest thing that has happened is we transformed the trajectory of our city. This is a community that was written off as dying at the beginning of this decade. Now it's growing again.
Any executive role, especially the presidency, there are three parts to it. It's competently running an administration. It's implementing good policies. And above all, it's calling people to their highest values in tough times and bringing them together. I think a good mayor does that. I think we've been able to do that in South Bend. I think that's missing in the White House right now, and that's got to change.
INSKEEP: What was your approach to creating jobs?
BUTTIGIEG: Well, we tried to make sure that we were diversifying our economy. We recognized that the auto industry that built our city was not going to come back in its old form. And so we had to conquer the temptation to do what's sometimes called smokestack chasing - you know, a giant, lucrative economic incentive in order to land the big facility or factory that's supposed to be the salvation to our problems.
Don't get me wrong. We're still doing manufacturing. We're still growing an industry. But we recognize that it's increasingly automated, and there's got to be more to the story. That's why we're growing an industry in data centers and industries that didn't even exist when our town was making Studebakers back in the '60s.
INSKEEP: So we have a source native of South Bend who says that in spite of the job growth in South Bend that you have a persistent homeless problem. Is that correct?
BUTTIGIEG: It's certainly the case that we have issues with homelessness. And we've worked very hard on that. I'd also say my administration has acted more aggressively and committed more resources to this issue than at any time since, I think, our city first got its Center for the Homeless in 1988.
INSKEEP: You've had to break up 10 cities, from time to time?
BUTTIGIEG: Not exactly, but we did have to do cleaning operations and really discourage encampments from forming.
INSKEEP: Oh, meaning you moved them. They didn't want to go, but you felt it was for their own good, as well as the city's own good.
BUTTIGIEG: Well, actually, constitutionally, somebody's within their rights to be in a public right of way. But we did come through and do cleaning with areas where it was clearly becoming unsafe.
But what we tried, most of all, to do was to make sure that people understood that there were alternative resources and to increase the availability of permanent supportive housing. So for example, one of the locations where we saw the most people in camp two winters ago, we found now that more of those people are indoors, thank goodness.
INSKEEP: When I was getting ready for this interview, I ran across a photograph, and it shows Mayor Pete Buttigieg walking down a street in South Bend with a person described as his Harvard classmate, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. How well do you know him?
BUTTIGIEG: Fairly well. He decided that he wanted to visit all 50 states. When I met him, I told him if he was going to visit Indiana, he really should come see what's going on in South Bend. I was eager to show off our tech sector. He seemed more interested in the Juvenile Justice Center.
INSKEEP: What did you see in the Juvenile Justice Center?
BUTTIGIEG: One of the most striking things, actually, is the role that social media played in their lives. And shockingly, one of the top origin stories for a lot of cases of violence often affecting young people is disagreement. And a lot of that plays out on social media now.
INSKEEP: In your judgment, is Zuckerberg doing enough to improve the public debate that takes place on Facebook?
BUTTIGIEG: I think he's taking those responsibilities seriously. But I think he's also confronted - and every one of these big companies - with the reality that their corporate policy decisions are now public policy decisions. And I don't know if he's fully been able to master that, and I don't know that anybody in the sector has.
INSKEEP: If they are public policy decisions, would you, if elected president, be moving to regulate companies such as Facebook?
BUTTIGIEG: There's no question that the U.S. needs a comprehensive data policy. And I would look across the Atlantic here. Many countries have been very intentional about establishing people's rights when it comes to data. Even just clarifying that you are the owner of your data has a lot of implications, and I think it's something we need to look at.
INSKEEP: Meaning you would favor something like the European standard for data protection.
BUTTIGIEG: Something like that. We have to have that conversation.
INSKEEP: What would you say if Zuckerberg called you back and said, listen; I had a nice tour of the juvenile justice system, but I'm really concerned about what you're saying here about data?
BUTTIGIEG: Well, I think that as somebody who cares about what his product is doing for and to the country and the world that he should take these questions seriously. I imagine that he does, and I think that this is a legitimate and important public policy conversation that we simply have to have. We can't allow one of the most important dimensions of our citizenship, of our life and society to be left in a complete Wild West environment.
INSKEEP: Is there one issue you want to leave us with that you expect to be the centerpiece of the 2020 campaign, whoever the nominee might be?
BUTTIGIEG: I think the big issue has to do with intergenerational justice. There is a question now of what kind of world this is going to be in 2054, which is when I'll reach the current age of the current president. And we have got to change the trajectory that we're on so that mine is not the first generation to be worse off economically than my parents' was. And if there's one center of gravity to all of it, I think it's this question of the future.
INSKEEP: Pete Buttigieg is the mayor of South Bend, Ind., Democratic presidential candidate and author of a book called "Shortest Way Home." Thanks so much.
BUTTIGIEG: Thank you.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Embarrassments continue for Facebook over its collection of users' data. Both Facebook and Google have been offering cash and gift incentives to users, persuading them to share information about almost everything people do on their phones. At least in this case, unlike some others, Facebook did ask first. But some targeted users were as young as 13, which is awkward. Although, apparently, it's only awkward up to a point for Facebook because the company also posted record profits on Wednesday. NPR's Jasmine Garsd reports.
JASMINE GARSD, BYLINE: According to an investigative report by the news site TechCrunch, Facebook has been paying young users up to $20 a month to install a Facebook research app since 2016. It gives Facebook unlimited access to their phones. Katie Moussouris is the founder and CEO of Luta, a cybersecurity company. She says Facebook's motivation is that it's losing ground among young people.
KATIE MOUSSOURIS: If teenagers are sharing a lot of memes, Facebook would then say, OK. You know what? We should build something into the platform that lets you share memes a lot easier. And then maybe we can attract those users back.
GARSD: This is not the first time Facebook is accused of going to extreme lengths to get user data. Back in 2013, Facebook bought a company called Onavo and allegedly used the Onavo app to get more information about a competitor, the messaging platform WhatsApp, which Facebook ultimately bought. The term corporate espionage was thrown around. And Apple was not happy that all this was happening on its app store. Here's Apple CEO Tim Cook on MSNBC indirectly chastising Facebook's disregard for privacy.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TIM COOK: We could make a ton of money if we monetized our customer. But you are not our product.
GARSD: Apple forced Facebook to remove Onavo from the app store, but Facebook came right back under a different guise. Will Strafach is a mobile security researcher. He studied the app for TechCrunch's recent expose.
WILL STRAFACH: To use it this way and under their own name is just amazing to me because I don't understand what they thought they were doing or how they thought they could get away with this.
GARSD: Apple has banned Facebook's research app. And it's clearly not happy about what happened yet again. It was widely reported yesterday that Apple dropped some of Facebook's in-house apps - apps that Facebook employees use to look up bus schedules and lunch menus. Facebook is not the only tech company to be caught in this way. Yesterday, Google pulled the app Screenwise Meter, which basically collects information on how people use the Internet. And while a lot of users might find this shocking, Katie Moussouris from Luta Security is not surprised. What she does wonder about is a generation that would give any amount of access to their private lives. She gets why.
MOUSSOURIS: Some of these children have grown up with virtually no privacy at all. Their photos were shared by their parents, by their families before they could ever consent to it. So I think for them, it feels - it probably feels like there's nothing left to hide.
GARSD: You want big tech to change its behavior. Time and again, it hasn't. Moussouris says change will come from users figuring out when enough is enough. Jasmine Garsd, NPR News, New York.
INSKEEP: And in the interest of full disclosure, we note that Facebook is an NPR underwriter.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
How cold has it been in the Midwest?
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We already know it is so cold that mail service was suspended in many places. And now we can add this. In Minneapolis, it is so cold, UPS driver Brendan Pena (ph) was told the decision to deliver packages is just up to him.
BRENDAN PENA: Boss has basically told us, at any point you feel like you don't want to work or it's too cold you can't feel your fingers, you can't feel your nose, your face, come back to the building.
INSKEEP: Good rule of thumb.
MARTIN: Right.
INSKEEP: Or of nose, anyway.
MARTIN: In nearby St. Paul, Minn., firefighters were told to work in 10-minute rotations. They are fighting a fire, with all the heat that it produces, and it was still so cold that 10 minutes was the maximum they could be outside. Even in places where it was a bit less cold, National Weather Service meteorologist Trent Frey has this warning.
TRENT FREY: Frostbite becomes a major concern for any exposed skin on the matter of about 15 minutes or so. You know, any prolonged exposure can be deadly in this case.
MARTIN: We should say at least eight people have died in connection with this cold weather. It is a good day to check on people who are home alone.
INSKEEP: Which is why I called my mom in Indiana, where temperatures were 6 below zero this morning, which would seem warm compared with La Crosse, Wis., where it is 30 below today. And that is where we find Wisconsin Public Radio's Hope Kirwan. Hope, good morning.
HOPE KIRWAN, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: I guess this is the moment when you could say, oh, it's Wisconsin, we're used to cold weather. Are you saying that?
KIRWAN: No, I don't think people are saying that here in the state. Actually, Governor Tony Evers issued a state of emergency - declared a state of emergency earlier this week because of the cold temperatures. You know, we saw some wind chills get down to -55 degrees; that's 55 below zero. And so, you know, that's obviously a huge risk to people's health. And, you know, a lot of things were canceled yesterday and into today.
INSKEEP: You know, I noticed that here, where the temperatures were above zero but in the teens, it actually feels kind of nice if there's no wind blowing. But the second there's the slightest puff of wind, you want to get out of there. Is that what it's like there, only worse?
KIRWAN: Yeah. I mean, it's definitely that classic you feel just kind of your face freezing - any exposed skin that's, you know, exposed to the cold definitely constricts. And, you know, you immediately feel it as soon as you step outside.
INSKEEP: I would imagine that this is immediately a perilous situation if somebody's heat goes off. How are authorities making sure the heat stays on in Wisconsin?
KIRWAN: Well, we did see some outages - some power outages on Wednesday morning just due to power lines breaking because of the heat. But, you know, really, people are just encouraging people to keep their thermostats at a comfortable level and to just constantly check on pipes - water pipes and faucets, as well. That can be another, you know, just kind of infrastructure-related problem. And so people are just really, you know, encouraging people who are low-income to keep their thermostat up and worry about paying the utility bill later.
INSKEEP: In my hometown, I was told the schools are closed, of course, but the school buildings have remained open. People can go there if the heat goes off. Are people doing things like that where you are?
KIRWAN: Yeah, a lot of places have opened as emergency warming shelters. A police department in the town where I'm at actually opened, and it's open to anyone who needs to have a warm place.
INSKEEP: OK. Hope, I hope you are somewhere warm, at this moment, anyway.
KIRWAN: I am.
INSKEEP: OK. Hope Kirwan of Wisconsin Public Radio.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
INSKEEP: Is Facebook really paying a price for a string of data privacy scandals?
MARTIN: The social media giant faces yet another one. Both Facebook and Google, we should note, were exposed for getting around efforts to limit their harvesting of data. The companies offered cash and other gift incentives to users who would then allow apps on their phones that monitor almost everything that they do on their phones. Facebook was targeting users as young as 13 with this.
It is the latest in a string of revelations about privacy issues the company has faced, but they're still making money. Facebook announced record profits in its fourth quarter yesterday.
INSKEEP: NPR's Jasmine Garsd has been covering this story from New York. Jasmine, good morning.
JASMINE GARSD, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: First, what does this mean - an app on your phone that monitors almost everything?
GARSD: Yeah, so both - in both these cases, these were apps which users gave permission for their data to be collected. And the point is for these companies to understand users better. Now, in the case of Facebook, it was particularly invasive. I mean, participants were giving permission to have pretty much everything monitored - social media messages, Internet activity, what other apps you have on your phone.
INSKEEP: Although somebody might say, well, people opted in to do this and got some kind of compensation for it. Why is that a big deal?
GARSD: Well, absolutely. I mean, in the case of Facebook, they were targeting a very young audience, some as young as 13. And there's the argument that, yeah, they knew what they were getting into. I mean, but really, who is reading the fine print? That's what tech activists would say. It's probably not a 13-year-old.
And then there's the fact that Facebook keeps breaking Apple's terms and conditions with this kind of behavior.
INSKEEP: Oh, let's remember here, of course, Apple, huge maker of iPhones. They like to promote the iPhone as a refuge, a relatively private place. And they'd been trying to keep Facebook from doing this sort of thing. What's Apple have to say now?
GARSD: Well, you know, on Wednesday, Google took down its own app, and Apple banned Facebook's app. It also banned several of Facebook's internal apps - you know, the ones used by employees in-house. Facebook and Apple have reportedly had a very chilly relationship precisely because of this - because Apple is uncomfortable with Facebook's constant disregard of privacy issue. There's a history here. Here's Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly chastising Facebook.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TIM COOK: We could make a ton of money if we monetized our customer. But you are not our product.
INSKEEP: Just a different business model.
GARSD: Yeah.
INSKEEP: And so what is - when you say there's a history here, how have the two companies argued back-and-forth over time?
GARSD: Well, essentially, Tim Cook has said, you know, we don't want people to be our product. And Facebook very much gets its profit off of advertising. That's where Facebook's money comes from. And so Facebook is constantly in this conundrum of how to respect people's privacy while still making a profit.
INSKEEP: OK. So you just mentioned profit. Help me understand this. Facebook faces way more than a year - a couple years of horribly embarrassing headlines, congressional hearings, yet another scandal, and they just posted record profits.
GARSD: I think this is the big question of our moment. At what point do users say, enough is enough? I mean, the reality is whether or not people knew exactly what they were getting into with these apps, a lot of people, and a lot of young people, signed up to have a certain amount of their privacy explored by these companies and, in the case of Facebook, for just $20 a month. And I think it speaks to a younger generation that grew up with a very different concept of privacy than the rest of us. And they're going to have to grapple with this question of, when is it enough?
INSKEEP: Because as the profit notation demonstrates, Facebook does know how to make money off of the data that they are gathering on you.
GARSD: Absolutely.
INSKEEP: Jasmine, thanks so much.
GARSD: Thank you.
INSKEEP: NPR's Jasmine Garsd.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
INSKEEP: Some other news now - how much pressure does China really face to end a trade war?
MARTIN: The U.S. and China are in trade talks this week. President Trump is demanding big changes. He's already imposed tariffs on many billions of dollars' worth of Chinese imports. He is threatening to raise those tariffs in these talks that are happening this week and if those talks fail to force big changes in Chinese economic policies. Economists have pointed out that it's really American consumers who pay the taxes on imports, but it's also true China's economy is slowing down.
INSKEEP: NPR's Rob Schmitz joins us now from Shanghai. Hey there, Rob.
ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: OK. So these talks are taking place in Washington, right? There's a Chinese delegation here, where I am. And the head of that delegation meets President Trump himself. What's on their agenda?
SCHMITZ: So the head of the delegation is Liu He. And he's looking for a couple of things for China today. He's going to gauge President Trump on what China needs to do to make Trump comfortable about making a trade deal. He's also looking for how serious President Trump is on making that deal.
I spoke with China expert Bill Bishop about this, and he pointed out that from Liu's perspective, the Chinese delegation thought they had a deal in 2017 after meeting with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. And last year, they thought they had a deal with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. But...
BILL BISHOP: In both cases, President Trump said, it's not enough, and blew up the deal. And so I think they're very nervous that, unless they can get in the room and get the president to say, we're done, that they're going to be basically embarrassed yet again.
INSKEEP: This is something that the president's allies in Congress have had the same complaint about - that it's hard to know what he really wants, hard to get him on the record and keep him there.
SCHMITZ: Yeah, Steve. And what Bill means by getting him in the room here is that he thinks one of Liu's goals today will be to convince President Trump to meet with Xi Jinping to make a deal. And if you look at the president's calendar, he does have an outstanding meeting planned with Kim Jong Un somewhere in Asia in the near future, so perhaps the thinking here is to have President Trump swing by Beijing at that time to put an end to this trade war once and for all.
INSKEEP: The hope of imposing these tariffs is that China would feel pain and feel more and more pressure over time to make a deal. Is it working out that way?
SCHMITZ: China's economy is hurting. Just last night, in fact, more than 400 Chinese companies posted profit-loss warnings for 2018. And the impact from the trade war has only started. So the Chinese are likely prepared to make some concessions on items, like IP protection and reducing the trade deficit.
What's probably not going to happen that the U.S. is looking for is China making structural changes to its economy and reducing the power of its state-owned enterprises that are blamed for creating this unfair playing field for U.S. businesses. China's Communist Party exerts economic and political control through these companies. And Xi Jinping is unlikely to cede that to the Trump administration.
INSKEEP: Oh, OK. So structural changes - no. What about changes to the use of trade secrets or the stealing of trade secrets or the handing over of trade information? Is China willing to change that?
SCHMITZ: I think that's definitely going to be a part of what the Chinese will offer. This is something that the Chinese have already talked about when you look at their policy changes going forward - that they want to help IP protections inside of China, not only for U.S. businesses, but, you know, Chinese companies are now making stuff that's worth stealing, too, and so they want to protect their own business.
INSKEEP: OK. Rob, thanks so much. Really appreciate it.
SCHMITZ: Thank you.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Rob Schmitz.
(SOUNDBITE OF B-SIDE'S "LOST DREAMS")
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The things that scare us sometimes reveal a lot about who we are. Member station WNYC recently asked people to list their biggest fears, and we've been sharing a few of them. Today we hear from Janet Napolitano. She served as secretary of Homeland Security under President Obama. She is now president of the University of California system. Here are some of her fears.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
JANET NAPOLITANO: Being in the dentist's chair and listening to the drill. Did you ever see the movie "Marathon Man?" Yes? Remember the scene with the dentist? You know, is it safe? Is it safe? Ugh. Yeah. I think that's maybe the most chilling movie scene of any. (Laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
NAPOLITANO: An incident of domestic terrorism. What I worry about is not so much that a 9/11-style attack could occur, but a plot where terrorists, for example, go into shopping malls. Maybe they're actually organized to do several cities all at once. And think about, you know, not only the possibility of death or injury to those who are out just shopping, but also then the damage to our economy and to our national psyche.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
NAPOLITANO: Snakes. And I'm talking a reptilian snake, not a human snake. I remember one time I was backpacking with some friends in New Mexico, and I was pitching my tent and I had pegged down the four corners. And I was laying out the mattress, and all of a sudden, I see this thing kind of squirming underneath the floor of the tent. And I had actually pitched it over a baby rattlesnake.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
NAPOLITANO: Having to eat broccoli. (Laughter). I can't stand broccoli. I've never been able to stand it. I'm probably offending every broccoli farmer in the United States today. But it's the one thing I think I share in common with George Bush. I'm just not in the broccoli fan club. You know, protocol and good manners require that you eat what's put in front of you so I'm pretty lucky that I like most foods.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MARTIN: That was former secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano. It's an excerpt from the new podcast 10 Things That Scare Me. It comes from WNYC studios. You can hear the rest of Napolitano's fears, and other episodes, wherever you listen to podcasts.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
It is brutally cold across much of the country. And now at least eight deaths have been linked to the record-breaking temperatures. It was around -27 degrees in Minneapolis - so cold that a train track actually cracked. In Detroit, at least two dozen water mains froze. In Chicago, temperatures dropped to around -23 degrees, making it colder than Alert, Canada, one of the northernmost inhabited places in the world. And in southern Wisconsin, windchills this morning expected to be in the -40s. That includes Milwaukee, where windchills are -42 degrees. Debra Gonzalez has been spending her nights this week driving through that city. She's the founder of Feeding His Flock Street Ministry. And she's looking for those in need of help.
Debra, good morning.
DEBRA GONZALEZ: Good morning.
MARTIN: You've been going out every night this week. You were out last night, I understand, for a few hours. Did you see many people out in the elements?
GONZALEZ: We actually did not, luckily. There's many of us groups out here picking up people. And I think a lot of them stayed in the warming shelters that we had seen Tuesday night. Some of our shelters were able to stay open during the day yesterday. So - and, actually, yesterday, I was out from 8 in the morning until 8 in the evening, having been previously out Tuesday night until Wednesday morning - 12:30.
MARTIN: Wow.
GONZALEZ: So...
MARTIN: So...
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
MARTIN: Luckily, the message is getting through to people that there are these places where they can come and get shelter and get warm. But earlier in the week, when people weren't taking this as seriously, perhaps, or didn't know where to go, I imagine the story was different. Can you tell us...
GONZALEZ: It was.
MARTIN: ...Just about who you saw, some of the more dire circumstances?
GONZALEZ: Well, we came across a gentleman who was parking his car. And it was frozen solid on the inside. The frost was about two inches thick on the inside of his car.
MARTIN: Wow.
GONZALEZ: The car - the doors were hard to open. He had no power. He had no gas left because he had used it all trying to stay warm in there. So we called a tow truck and got him a tow truck over there and got him to a gas station, defrosted him and convinced him to go inside.
MARTIN: Wow. I mean...
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
MARTIN: Did he have a cell phone? I mean, if you hadn't come...
GONZALEZ: It was dead.
MARTIN: ...Upon him, what would have happened?
GONZALEZ: He probably would've, unfortunately, froze to death on Wednesday night.
MARTIN: Wow. So he was living in his car.
GONZALEZ: He spends nights in his car or nights in his hotel because he's homeless, yes.
MARTIN: Yeah.
GONZALEZ: When he has money, he goes to hotels. And when he doesn't, he sleeps in his car, no matter if it's 36 degrees below zero or not.
MARTIN: Right. Do people sometimes tell you no? Are they reticent to come with you for whatever reason?
GONZALEZ: They do. I actually - he said no. But just prior to him, I had got a phone call from the Journal Sentinel here in Milwaukee. And they said there was a gentleman at such and such place. So I went, and I finally got him into the car. But he wanted to stop and get a bus pass. And as I turned around - I stopped at a stop sign. I turned around, and he was bailing out of the car. And I was like, where are you going? And he's like, oh, I got to get a bus pass. I got to get a bus pass. I'm like, no, honey. I'm driving you. You can stay in the warm car. I'll get you a bus pass.
MARTIN: So he just didn't...
GONZALEZ: He got...
MARTIN: ...Believe that...
GONZALEZ: He got out of the car.
MARTIN: ...You were there to help?
GONZALEZ: Yeah. He got out of the car and started walking the other way. And, you know, we tracked him for a good 20 minutes. And finally, I called our friends over at the Milwaukee County outreach team and said, you know, he just will not come in. You guys really got to check on him tonight. I believe they called the police to have them go check on him because he would not come with us. You know, a lot of mental illness keeps them out because they can't be in a confined area.
MARTIN: Yeah. Are you going back out tonight or today?
GONZALEZ: Well...
MARTIN: You got to sleep sometime, I imagine.
GONZALEZ: (Laughter) I slept actually in till - from 8:30 last night until 4 o'clock this morning. I do need to check on a couple people this morning before I, actually, go to my real job. But yeah, the temperature right now is -22. So the shelters are going to stay open today until, like, noon. Some of them will stay open till 4. And then they will close again around 7 p.m. tonight - or tomorrow night.
MARTIN: OK. Well, hopefully, people are taking advantage of that. Debra Gonzalez...
GONZALEZ: Yes.
MARTIN: ...Founder of Feeding His Flock Street Ministry in West Allis, Wis. Thanks so much for talking with us, Debra.
GONZALEZ: You're welcome. Have a great day.
MARTIN: You too.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We cover so much news about the U.S.-Mexico border crossing that it is fitting that we also cover this. Border crossings have increased - crossings by monarch butterflies. The butterflies migrate north and south across the Americas, and Mexico's conservation efforts are paying off. Millions of monarch butterflies have made it back to winter in the forests of central Mexico, with numbers up a stunning 144 percent. NPR's Carrie Kahn reports from Mexico City.
CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: Environmentalists burst into applause as this year's better-than-hoped-for monarch butterfly census figures were announced to a packed conference room.
(APPLAUSE)
KAHN: Andrew Rhodes, Mexico's commissioner for natural protected areas, says the migrating monarchs covered nearly 15 acres of pine and fir forests in the center of the country. Last year, that number was a little more than 6 acres.
ANDREW RHODES: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: "The amount of territory that filled this year gives us much hope for the future of the species," says Rhodes.
Mexico calculates the number of acres the butterflies inhabit instead of counting individuals. Researchers say they haven't seen this many butterflies return to Mexico in more than a decade. In fact, the numbers in recent years have been falling so dramatically that just five years ago, a little more than an acre of forest was covered with the insects.
Officials say the stellar census numbers are due in part to a successful crackdown on illegal logging in the monarchs' protected forest reserves. But Chip Taylor, an ecology professor at the University of Kansas and director of Monarch Watch, a butterfly tagging program, says it's too soon to celebrate one year's good numbers.
CHIP TAYLOR: In effect, we dodged a bullet this year. We had very, very good conditions. We can't expect that to happen again - perhaps never.
KAHN: He said last spring was an unusually cool one in Texas. The temperature shift gave the butterflies a few more weeks to hatch their eggs, increasing the entire migratory population's numbers. However, Taylor says climate change and increasingly warmer temperatures makes a repeat successful season highly unlikely.
And while he applauded efforts in the U.S. and Canada to plant more milkweed, the butterflies' food source, Taylor says it's nowhere enough to make up for the millions of acres of monarch habitat already lost to modern agriculture practices, roadside construction and pesticides.
Carrie Kahn, NPR News, Mexico City.
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RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Good morning, I'm Rachel Martin. And I will admit to you, sometimes I procrastinate. It can be especially hard if you're working from home and there's no one there to hold your feet to the fire, which is where this thing called Focusmate comes in. The program pairs you up with another procrastinator online for 50-minute virtual working sessions. According to The Boston Globe, you just introduce yourself, state your goals and then get to work on your respective stuff. Productive? Maybe. Creepy? Absolutely.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Michigan State University's failure to protect students and athletes apparently extends well beyond the Larry Nassar scandal over sexual assault. The U.S. Department of Education says that in a new report. It shows Michigan State University repeatedly failed to report a variety of crimes as required. Michigan Radio's Kate Wells is covering this story. Good morning.
KATE WELLS, BYLINE: Hey, Steve.
INSKEEP: And I guess we should note, this is not strictly about crime. It is looking at a failure by the University or University officials to report crimes that they heard about. What happened?
WELLS: Well, so yes, it is about reporting. But the report points out here as well that when it is a matter of students and athletes and even minors going to people who work for the university - coaches, administrators, trainers - and saying, in the case of Larry Nassar, hey, I think this is sexual abuse, if those people don't report it or don't even know that they should report it, you're basically able to let a serial sexual predator get away with it for 20 years. And that's - that's what this report found.
INSKEEP: Wow. And so we have the Larry Nassar example, this horrifying example involving many, many women and people who were even girls at the time. But does it go beyond Nassar himself, when we talk about crimes that were not reported?
WELLS: It does go beyond Nassar. This report not only finds new instances in which additional athletes that we didn't even know about until now had reported Larry Nassar to as high up as an associate athletic director as recently as 2016; it also finds that when there are other kinds of crimes growing - going on, like burglaries or robberies, MSU did not do what it's federally required to do, which is let the campus know that there could be an ongoing safety threat here.
INSKEEP: Oh, they should have at least - I don't know, what? - sent an email around and said, by the way, we have a security situation, which is something that happens in many workplaces.
WELLS: Yeah. In 2013, to give you an example, there was a rash of burglaries happening. And nobody could figure out how it was going on. Somebody was getting into, you know, campus dorm rooms that were locked. They didn't say anything. And it turns out later that the suspect had actually a master key set. And that's how this person was getting into rooms. But as, you know, each victim didn't know that this was ongoing - the police were just responding individually - there - there was no warning on campus.
INSKEEP: I'm trying to think about why it would be that various coaches or other campus officials would fail to report. I remember with the Larry Nassar case, there were people who just didn't quite believe that this esteemed and respected doctor could be doing the things that he was accused of doing. But that can't be the case all the time. What are some other reasons that people would not spread the word?
WELLS: These are great questions, Steve. And I think the report raises that specifically. The - you know, the most damning terms that they use in here are federal terms that sound really boring to us. But they're a big deal in terms of federal funding. Lack of institutional control, lack of capability to essentially follow the federal regulations. And this - this could have real, serious implications for Michigan State University, which gets $423 million a year in federal funding.
INSKEEP: I think you also said in passing earlier some people maybe didn't know. Is that really true? There were people who didn't know they were required to do something.
WELLS: So this report definitely finds that there was not a good system for letting, essentially, mandatory reporters know that the - A, they were mandatory reporters and how to - you know, what to do when that happens, when they get a report. But it even found - you know, we were talking about the incident in 2016. A former athlete calls up her strength and conditioning coach, says, Larry Nassar touched me inappropriately. That strengthening coach had been trained and told investigators he ignored his training and didn't report it.
INSKEEP: Kate, thanks for the update, really appreciate it.
WELLS: Thanks, Steve.
INSKEEP: Kate Wells of Michigan Radio on a new Department of Education report on Michigan State University and failure to report crimes.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
President Donald Trump says the senior-most intelligence officials in the country are, quote, "naive." That's his word. In fact, he said on Twitter, they are wrong, and suggested that they should, quote, "go back to school." The president made those remarks about his own intelligence officials the morning after they testified about global threats on Capitol Hill. The group included Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, who said North Korea is unlikely to abandon its nuclear weapons program.
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DAN COATS: Its leaders ultimately view nuclear weapons as critical to regime survival. Our assessment is bolstered by our observations of some activity that is inconsistent with full denuclearization.
MARTIN: That is contrary to what President Trump has said about North Korea and the threat it poses in the past. Trump posted to Twitter that the North Korea relationship is, quote, "the best it has ever been." John Sipher spent 28 years in the CIA's National Clandestine Service and joins us in our studios this morning. Thanks for being here, John.
JOHN SIPHER: Thanks - my pleasure.
MARTIN: We have gotten somewhat accustomed to the president lambasting members of his own team. But from your vantage point, what are the consequences when he so directly and publicly contradicts and insults his top intelligence officers?
SIPHER: (Laughter) Well, there's certainly a problem if you insult your own leaders because they are responsible to their workforce. And they have to - I mean, and the intelligence community's a bright line. You can't skew intelligence. You have to provide truth to power. And therefore, they're doing their jobs. And the people that work for them expect them to do that. So that if - if the president challenges on that - them on that over and over, it makes it harder for them to do their jobs.
MARTIN: It also, I imagine, doesn't send a great message to our friends - allies or otherwise - globally when you see the president so publicly diverging from the facts on the ground.
SIPHER: Well, the president seems to be diverging also from, you know, the Republican congressmen and many of the policies put out by his own administration. And the intelligence that our leaders provide is often informed by our allies providing their intelligence to us, too. So they're doing their best job to lay it out clearly for people. And if the president disagrees, that's certainly fine. There is a bright line between policy and intelligence. And intelligence professionals understand that.
MARTIN: The intel officials directly contradicted the president on North Korea, as we noted - also about the threat from ISIS. President Trump has said that threat has been contained, which is not the consensus of the intelligence community. Does that affect practically how the United States deals with the terrorism threat? Or will the intel chiefs just work around him?
SIPHER: Well, the intel community will continue to do their job. They'll continue to provide intelligence. That's what they do. For many years - you know, if policymakers choose to do things different, that's fine. Intelligence is just but one input into the policy-making process. However, when you attack the intelligence process, it really puts pressure on those chiefs with their workforce.
MARTIN: Do you get the sense that these leaders are feeling freer to counter the president's false claims about national security issues and threats? I seem to remember Dan Coats, in a previous hearing, walking a line more carefully than he did just the other day.
SIPHER: I don't know if they're freer. I think they're doing their jobs. They really don't have much of a choice. The culture in the intelligence community is professional. It's to provide intelligence to policymakers even if it's inconvenient. And so they don't have much of a choice. If they don't do that, they really are hurting themselves with their workforces, with their legacy, you know, inside. So I think they're just doing what they have to do.
MARTIN: How are the rank and file in these agencies dealing with this? Do they just block out the noise? Or does it start to chip away at morale?
SIPHER: Well, over time, it's got to chip away. And it makes you worry about your bosses if the bosses are being attacked. But, you know, frankly, these institutions are pretty resilient. The people - they like their jobs. They take it seriously. They will continue to provide intelligence - unvarnished intelligence. But nonetheless, you know, the president is sending a signal around the world that he has his own views of things and that he doesn't really - is not comfortable taking advice.
MARTIN: Is America less safe because the commander in chief disagrees with the director of the CIA?
SIPHER: (Laughter) No - well, not necessarily. I mean, the issue here is the president can think what he wants. But the adversaries get a say, right? The biggest problem, really, is not the disagreement here. But it's the president's unwillingness to explain his policy. He's attacking people, but he's not dealing with the substance here. If he truly believes differently, he should make it really clear why he believes the things he believes. But he just - chooses not to do that for some reason.
MARTIN: John Sipher, former member of the CIA's National Clandestine Service. Thanks for your time this morning. We appreciate it.
SIPHER: Appreciate it - thank you very much.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
There's a deadline looming today for survivors of last fall's deadly Camp Fire, the fire that destroyed nearly all of the town of Paradise, Calif. The last Red Cross shelter is scheduled to close in nearby Chico. Disaster relief officials are racing to find temporary shelter or housing for dozens of people who are now facing homelessness. Here's NPR's Kirk Siegler.
KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE: A lot of the folks who are left at the shelter here at the Chico fairgrounds were already living on the economic margins before the Camp Fire destroyed whole towns and rural mountain neighborhoods.
NICHOLAS SOTO: We fled the fire only to jump into hell.
SIEGLER: Nicholas Soto jumped into a new hell, moving from shelter to shelter. Since early December, he and his wife have parked their RV along this fence crammed with other campers abutting a Chevron station.
SOTO: You get tired of getting pushed from one place to another, told, you can't be here, you can't be there. It's just a little tiring.
SIEGLER: A little tiring, pushed from one place to the next. Soto's voice cuts in and out. He's got chronic lung disease. He's almost 70, with long salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a ponytail. He's also diabetic and often has to use a wheelchair.
SOTO: Come here, Milo (ph).
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SIEGLER: Soto's rescue dogs - they're crammed inside the camper.
SOTO: When you're living with four dogs, two cats, it's crowded. It's - mentally, it's hard on the mind, you know?
SIEGLER: Hard on the mind, hard to sleep. And the conditions outside are getting more desperate, especially when it storms. At least today's shelter closure deadline isn't firm. If it were, local officials worry this would exacerbate an already bad homelessness crisis in Chico.
CINDY HUGE: They will all have a plan before they leave the shelter.
SIEGLER: Cindy Huge is the Red Cross spokesperson.
HUGE: Whether that be a permanent house, temporary housing, they will all have a recovery plan. We just don't put them out and say, we're closing the shelter. Red Cross doesn't do that.
SIEGLER: This week, Butte County did get a million-dollar grant that will go to help those who remain here find new housing, likely out of state. There was already a housing shortage in this rural area before 14,000 homes burned overnight.
Nicholas Soto hopes to leave the shelter and drive up to Oregon in the next few days. He's just waiting for his FEMA money to come through. He's one of some 26,700 federal aid applicants here. Today is also the deadline to register with FEMA.
SOTO: There's worse things that could've happened to us. And we got our lives, and we got our fur babies. And that's what's...
SIEGLER: We got our lives and our fur babies. His voice trails off. He's overwhelmed with emotion. Kirk Siegler, NPR News, Chico, Calif.
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RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Patience - Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell came back to that word several times when he spoke yesterday about the Fed's decision to hold off on raising its key interest rate.
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JEROME POWELL: In this environment, we believe we can best support the economy by being patient in evaluating the outlook before making any future adjustment to policy.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The Fed raised rates four times in 2018. But yesterday, Powell gave reasons to pause.
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POWELL: Including Brexit, ongoing trade negotiations and the effects from the partial government shutdown in the United States.
MARTIN: To be clear, the Fed still thinks the U.S. economy is strong - just not strong enough to need another interest rate hike right now.
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POWELL: The U.S. economy is in a good place, and we will continue to use our monetary policy tools to help keep it there.
INSKEEP: Now, the Fed's decision is surely what President Trump wanted. He's been hammering the Fed over higher rates, which might affect the economy and, not incidentally, the president's re-election chances. Powell insists, though, that Trump was not a factor.
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POWELL: We're never going to take political considerations into account or discuss them.
INSKEEP: The president once wrote on Twitter that the Fed is like a powerful golfer who can't score because he has no touch.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Today the people who could end the U.S. trade war with China get in a room together. President Donald Trump is expected to meet with China's vice premier. This is the highest level negotiation since the start of December. But there's a fast approaching deadline here. In March, the Trump administration is set to further increase tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods. Economies in both countries have been impacted by the trade war. So what kind of effect would yet another escalation have on businesses? Arthur Kroeber advises Fortune 500 companies on trade. He is the head of research for Gavekal Dragonomics, a financial services firm based in Hong Kong. And he joins us this morning from our studios in New York.
Thanks for being with us.
ARTHUR KROEBER: Good morning - glad to be here.
MARTIN: Do you think these talks can avert the Trump administration's next stage of tariffs?
KROEBER: Well, not the talks that are going on today - it's a very complicated set of negotiations. And I think it's probably going to go right down to the wire at the end of February or beginning of March.
MARTIN: Why?
KROEBER: Because the U.S. is asking not only for moves by China to reduce the trade deficit but for - also for deep, structural reforms in the economy, to change its mechanisms of industrial policy and technology policies. And these are things that the Chinese aren't terribly interested in doing.
MARTIN: Do you think, though, that, ultimately, that's the right position for the administration to take if it wants to actually stop the intellectual property theft of China, that it needs to demand these larger structural changes? Or it's just a Band-Aid solution.
KROEBER: No, I think it makes sense. U.S. companies - and not just U.S. companies but companies from all over the world - have had serious problems with Chinese industrial policies and tech transfer policies for a long time and various other regulations that make it difficult to do business in China. So I think it's perfectly reasonable for the U.S. to apply a lot of pressure. But the issues are so complicated. I don't think it's terribly realistic to think that you'll get a full deal solving all of these problems in a matter of weeks.
MARTIN: What is the U.S. willing to concede in order to get those big, structural changes to China's economy?
KROEBER: Well, that's a really interesting question. I think from - if you look at this from the Chinese standpoint, they're concerned because the U.S. has put very high tariffs on a large number of Chinese goods and is threatening to put more on at a time the Chinese economy is slowing.
So from their standpoint, they need a deal under which these tariffs will be removed or rolled back either immediately or in a fairly short period of time. But from the U.S. perspective, the tariffs are really what brought China to the table. They're the leverage. So from their standpoint, this is something that, I think, would be very difficult to concede. And I think that's one of the big sticking points.
MARTIN: As I noted, it is your business to advise corporations about how to navigate this moment when it comes to the trade war between the U.S. and China. What are you saying right now?
KROEBER: Well, we're saying that it's all very confusing and complicated.
(LAUGHTER)
KROEBER: And the problem...
MARTIN: Which it has been.
KROEBER: Yeah. The problem is that there are deep structural problems that will take a long time to resolve. And you have President Trump, who's a very mercurial, volatile character, who might press for a deal very quickly for political reasons but a deal that would not necessarily address all of the underlying concerns.
MARTIN: Arthur Kroeber is head of research at the economics research firm Gavekal Dragonomics. Thanks so much for talking with us.
KROEBER: My pleasure.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
You cannot follow the political crisis in Venezuela without also following diplomatic moves by the United States. The U.S. has supported an opposition leader who is seeking to replace President Nicolas Maduro. And this week in Washington, Vice President Mike Pence welcomed a new top diplomat from Venezuela to the White House. NPR's Michele Kelemen reports.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: Washington has rolled out the red carpet for the Venezuelan lawyer and political activist Carlos Vecchio. The State Department calls him ambassador. He represents national assembly leader Juan Guaido, who the U.S. and many other countries are backing as they pressure Nicolas Maduro to step aside.
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CARLOS VECCHIO: (Speaking Spanish).
KELEMEN: Vecchio is making clear this is not a fight between the U.S. and Maduro. This, he says, is a fight between democracy and dictatorship. Carlos Vecchio is a smooth-talking former Fulbright scholar who's been charged with incitement back home. He's been living in exile in recent years and is now working with U.S. authorities to track down and freeze Venezuelan government assets.
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VECCHIO: We want to protect first our assets, to preserve those assets in favor of our people because otherwise, they will destroy them. And one of them is our embassy right here. And we want to do that in a progressive manner, orderly and following the legal procedures of this country.
KELEMEN: Maduro called his diplomats home. The U.S. downsized its embassy in Caracas for security reasons but kept a core team there to support interim President Guaido. As for Venezuela's assets, the Trump administration's point person, Elliott Abrams, says those accounts should be under Guaido's control.
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ELLIOTT ABRAMS: They are making an effort now to find out, well, what are those assets? Where does the government of Venezuela, of last week, have accounts that can be reached? Obviously, if they have an account in Moscow, we're not going to get at it.
KELEMEN: Abrams says the interim leader wants to use government accounts for humanitarian aid, but he's not sure how much is really there.
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ABRAMS: There are not large amounts of assets in the account of the embassy in Washington, certainly not enough for a very significant humanitarian program. So they - we are all looking around the world to see what other assets there are, whether in bank accounts or, you know, holdings like gold.
KELEMEN: Elliott Abrams has a long and complicated history in the region. He was President Reagan's point person on Latin America and pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress during the Iran-Contra affair, though he was later pardoned. Abrams says it's no surprise that Maduro's foreign minister raised that during a public U.N. meeting last weekend.
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ABRAMS: But you didn't hear that from any democratic country because we are not focused on the events of the 1980s. We are focused on the events of 2019.
KELEMEN: Abrams says the U.S. and others in the region are hoping there will be a peaceful transition of power in Venezuela. And he warns it will be an extremely foolish move for the regime to move against Guaido. As for Guaido's envoy, Vecchio says this is a temporary job on behalf of the national assembly until new elections are held.
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VECCHIO: (Speaking Spanish).
KELEMEN: "I told them this will be the shortest post of my life," he says, "because we are all waiting to go back to Venezuela." Michele Kelemen, NPR News, the State Department.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Good morning, I'm Steve Inskeep. The United States has proven again it is the world leader in innovation. Kentucky Fried Chicken is reportedly testing a new sandwich, the Cheetos sandwich, a chicken sandwich loaded with the orange, cheese-flavored snack. It's a limited edition sandwich. But who knows? It could be the future. It saves you the effort of having to reach separately for the Cheetos. And if they're on the bun, you don't get your fingers covered with that orange stuff that doesn't wash off.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Today in California, bankruptcy lawyers start sorting out the future of PG&E, one of the country's biggest utilities. The company filed for Chapter 11 protection this week, faced with potentially billions of dollars in liability over recent wildfires. One of the many big questions is this - will PG&E's troubles end up hurting California's ambitious goals to address climate change? Lauren Sommer of member station KQED and NPR's Energy and Environment team explains.
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LAUREN SOMMER, BYLINE: California governors, over and over, have pushed the state to add more renewable energy to the grid.
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ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER: California's spurring clean technology.
JERRY BROWN: There's the overarching threat of a warming climate.
SOMMER: Now the goal is 100 percent clean energy by 2045. But it's actually up to utilities to make it happen.
RALPH CAVANAGH: PG&E's the largest investor in the state of California in energy efficiency, in renewable energy.
SOMMER: Ralph Cavanagh is with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. He says California utilities are well on their way to getting a big share of their electricity from renewables like solar and wind.
CAVANAGH: We've made them our essential clean energy partners, and a federal bankruptcy judge has the ability to disrupt that in many ways.
SOMMER: A judge looks at all the money a company owes and decides who gets paid what. And PG&E owes billions of dollars to solar and wind companies who it signed contracts with.
CAVANAGH: Suddenly, those are at risk. That is causing consternation across the renewable energy sector, understandably.
SOMMER: The sticking point for a judge could be the cost. PG&E signed some contracts for solar power more than a decade ago, back when the technology was still pretty expensive. That's changed, says Ethan Zindler, an analyst with Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
ETHAN ZINDLER: The price of renewables has dropped really dramatically since when they signed these contracts.
SOMMER: A judge may not honor those original high prices.
ZINDLER: It could undermine confidence in California as a clean energy market going forward.
SOMMER: Already, some renewable energy projects that sell to PG&E have had their credit ratings downgraded.
ZINDLER: It's not necessarily life or death for them instantly, but it's not good news for them.
SOMMER: So some companies are taking matters into their own hands.
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JOHN KETCHUM: Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our fourth-quarter and full-year 2018...
SOMMER: Last week, John Ketchum, CFO of NextEra Energy, sought to assure investors that its renewable energy contracts with PG&E would not affect the bottom line.
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KETCHUM: Even if all of that cash is trapped, we expect to be able to meet our financial expectations.
SOMMER: But the company also went on the offensive.
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KETCHUM: Obviously, we are not going to sit on our heels. We're going to pursue all avenues.
SOMMER: It asked federal regulators to get involved. And on Friday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ruled that it needs to review any changes to those renewable energy deals.
CATHERINE SANDOVAL: This has been a tussle that has already been playing out in bankruptcy courts all over the nation.
SOMMER: Catherine Sandoval is a law professor at Santa Clara University. She says a big jurisdictional fight is probably on the way between the bankruptcy judge and federal regulators. California will have its own case to make to defend its renewable energy goals, she says, something like this.
SANDOVAL: Wait, Judge. We have, in California, adopted a number of laws regarding environmental protection, and the bankruptcy law gives you no authority to displace that.
SOMMER: If California loses that argument, it's hard to see how it would reach its ambitious climate change goals without help from the state's biggest utility. For NPR News, I'm Lauren Sommer in San Francisco.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is hoping to avoid another partial government shutdown. During a shutdown that lasted more than a month, the Senate majority leader supported and protected President Trump, refusing to consider any bill his fellow Republican did not approve in advance and yielding only at the end, when he said other Republicans were rebelling. But Politico reports McConnell hates shutdowns and doesn't want to do it again.
He reportedly told members of a conference committee, you were supposed to find a deal on border security. We're praying for you. Get this done. One member of that committee, Republican Representative Chuck Fleischmann, tells us he is optimistic.
CHUCK FLEISCHMANN: We know where the administration is. And we know where pretty much most of the folks in the Senate are. We have a track record of what has not worked. So now perhaps we can focus on what will work.
INSKEEP: OK. What is that? Democrats and, privately, many Republicans have scorned the president's insistence on building a border wall. Yesterday, the president said the committee is wasting its time unless they're discussing that wall. So was it a waste of time? Representative Pete Aguilar, Democrat of California, is on the committee and on the line. Congressman, good morning.
PETE AGUILAR: Good to be with you, Steve.
INSKEEP: Is your committee any closer to a deal than it seemed a few days ago?
AGUILAR: Well, I like the tone and the tenor of where the conferees were yesterday. And I think, obviously, if left to our own devices, appropriators would welcome that dialogue and discussion and negotiation and try to find a solution here.
INSKEEP: It does seem to me as an outsider that this is not a debate about very much if it were not for the symbolic importance that everybody's putting on border wall, right? Because the president has admitted he can't get a border wall all the way across. I assume you guys wouldn't mind a couple of miles of border wall. Is there a solution somewhere in the middle?
AGUILAR: Well, there's 654 miles of existing border wall. So I think we need to understand the scope of what we're talking about here. We have physical barriers. If the Republican administration doesn't feel that those work, we're happy to talk about added technology and other force multipliers that will help us solve this issue. But what we're not interested in is, you know, doing this just so the president can fulfill a campaign promise.
INSKEEP: Or not, I guess, since he said Mexico would pay for the wall. But I'm curious. Are Democrats still in the position that this is basically a racist symbol - we will not accept one inch of border wall? Or are Democrats now in a position where they would accept some?
AGUILAR: Well, Homeland Security has billions of dollars that they still haven't spent on replacement of that existing barrier. So I think what we'd like to see is for them to carry out what Congress has asked them to do in prior budget years before we start talking about additional infrastructure and barriers. So - but we're happy to have, you know, conversations with our colleagues. But I think it's important to note that we want just smart and effective border security. We don't just want symbols. We want smart and effective border security.
INSKEEP: What are Republicans saying when you are telling them, why don't we just get Homeland Security to fix or improve the existing walls first?
AGUILAR: Well, I think they acknowledge that. They acknowledge that there are billions of dollars that have not been spent by Homeland Security. But I think that they're boxed in a corner because the president has clearly said that he wants more. And I think many of our colleagues are wrestling with that.
INSKEEP: Well - oh, so then the question becomes, what is a formula under which you can walk out of the room, and everybody can really say they won or really got something good for the country, or at least they can pretend they won?
AGUILAR: Well, I think what we're more concerned about rather than who gets to claim credit is what's effective. And we want smart and effective border security. Right now, there's 1 percent of vehicles at the southern border - personal vehicles - are scanned. Seventeen percent of commercial vehicles are scanned. You know, if we really want to get serious about human trafficking, about drugs coming across our borders, those are things that we can invest in and add technology to help solve that problem.
INSKEEP: I think you're telling me that technology at legal border crossings is way more important than walls in places where you're not supposed to cross. Totally get that. Sounds like you've probably got a lot of Republican colleagues who would agree that much. But what is a formula under which you can go in that direction and still come up with something the president would sign?
AGUILAR: Well, you know, our job is to legislate. And we are a coequal branch of government. So our job is to negotiate this deal, find a compromise and put something on the president's desk.
INSKEEP: Can you describe it at all, what that compromise is?
AGUILAR: We're going to lay out our principles. We have - Lucille Roybal-Allard, our chair, has laid out those principles. Increased technology, filling vacancies within the department, those are things that we're concerned about - not barriers, but additional technology and true border security that's effective.
INSKEEP: You know, Congressman, I don't think I hear you yielding at all.
AGUILAR: Well, (laughter) you know, what I'm saying is there's plenty of dollars that Homeland Security hasn't spent. You know, let's have a conversation with them on how we fix this issue. I'm happy to do that. They don't have the greatest track record of being truthful all the time. But I'm happy to listen to outside voices and experts on what we need to do to secure our southern border. And then our job is to legislate and to put something across the president's desk.
INSKEEP: OK. Congressman Pete Aguilar, Democrat of California, appreciate the update.
AGUILAR: Thanks, Steve.
INSKEEP: And NPR's Domenico Montanaro, our lead political editor, has been listening along with this. Domenico, good morning.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: What do you hear there?
MONTANARO: It sounds like we've - we pretty much are where we've been. You know, you have Democrats who are essentially unyielding on a border wall or fence and, you know, Republicans who at least want to be able to try to give President Trump something that he can say is a win. Now, I wouldn't say that Aguilar sounds like he's completely shut-off to the idea of potential border fencing or fixes.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
MONTANARO: I think he just wants the focus and priority to be on what he talks about being technology and the fact that a small percentage of cars and vehicles, commercial vehicles in particular, that come across the border are actually scanned for drugs and contraband.
INSKEEP: Yeah. You know, the more I think about it, the more I think I even hear something else. It sounds like the Democrats are saying, this has to be based on facts. This has to be based on need. Prove it, Republicans, that the wall is needed because first you got to spend money on fixing walls that you've already got appropriated. You've got all these other technological things you can prove are needed. Prove that the wall is in that mix somewhere.
MONTANARO: Yeah. The problem with that is that we've got about two weeks until the government would shut down again. You know, this is right after Valentine's Day on the 15 when the government would shut back down. We have the president going to deliver the State of the Union Address on Tuesday. And certainly it looks like this is going to be another political, you know, hot potato that the president's going to try to use to try to pummel Democrats with. And this is going to be the focus of the State of the Union because there doesn't sound like there's going to be a deal before that.
INSKEEP: Domenico, thanks for the reminder that Valentine's Day's coming up.
MONTANARO: (Laughter) Well, happy Valentine's Day, Steve.
INSKEEP: That is NPR's Domenico Montanaro.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
British Prime Minister Theresa May is expected to head to Brussels to try and renegotiate her Brexit withdrawal agreement with the European Union. Some of the sharpest opposition to her plan comes from the country which would be most affected, Ireland, which, as NPR's Frank Langfitt reports, is in a very difficult position.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: On Tuesday night, the U.K. Parliament voted to try to reopen the Brexit withdrawal agreement. Irish officials were quick to quash that idea. Here's Deputy Prime Minister Simon Coveney speaking to the Irish broadcaster RTE.
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SIMON COVENEY: The EU position and the Irish position is clear. It took two years to put that negotiated withdrawal agreement together. It's not going to be reopened now.
LANGFITT: The sticking point, as always, is how to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland. The European Union and Ireland, which is a member, insist the U.K. remain in a customs arrangement with the EU until they can find a solution. But the British Parliament has balked, fearing the U.K. could get stuck inside such an arrangement for years. Speaking before the European Parliament yesterday, Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, warned that the U.K.'s bid to renegotiate was unwise.
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JEAN-CLAUDE JUNCKER: (Through interpreter) Allow me to tell you very clearly that yesterday's vote has further increased the risk of a disorderly exit of the United Kingdom.
LANGFITT: Which would damage both the British and Irish economies. The U.K. is one of Ireland's top trading partners. If the U.K. crashes out of the EU with no deal at the end of March, Irish officials say it could cost their economy 1.5 percent in GDP growth. Simon Coveney said the threat of a mutually damaging outcome puts Ireland in an odd position.
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COVENEY: That's like saying, you know, in a negotiation, well, either you give me what I want, or I'm jumping out the window.
LANGFITT: The reaction in Dublin to the recent turn of events?
BEN TONRA: Stunned bemusement, I think, is probably the best response.
LANGFITT: Ben Tonra is a professor of international relations at University College Dublin and runs the Institute for British-Irish Studies. He says the willingness of Prime Minister May and more than 300 members of Parliament to vote against a deal her own government negotiated shows a lack of realism.
TONRA: There's a large proportion of the British political establishment that really has not yet come to terms with the implications of what Brexit means and the reality that you cannot withdraw from the European Union without costs.
LANGFITT: The EU has backed Ireland's position on the border. Tonra says that's partly due to the fact that the Irish government began strategizing before the Brexit referendum in 2016 and then snapped into action after U.K. voters passed it.
TONRA: Ireland entered into a very assiduous and very well-planned-out campaign, amongst all 26 member states, basically setting out what was for Ireland its existential interest in this issue.
LANGFITT: The fear that a hard border would partition the island once again and could trigger a return to political violence in Northern Ireland. That argument had natural appeal to the EU, which was created in part to prevent conflict on the continent.
TONRA: Talking about peace in Europe has much greater and more powerful resonance than the equivalent British demand, which was for free trade and our rights and our money.
LANGFITT: But not everyone in Dublin thinks the Irish government has played the Brexit border issue wisely. Dan O'Brien is chief economist of the Institute of International and European Affairs, a think tank. He thinks Ireland and the EU have driven too hard a bargain, insisting that Northern Ireland might in certain circumstances have to stay aligned to some rules in the EU's single market, which many British lawmakers say would violate the sovereignty of the United Kingdom.
DAN O'BRIEN: That was a tactical error. In any negotiation, if you put something on the table that you know the other side won't be able to accept, you end up increasing the risk that everyone will walk away from the negotiation with no deal.
LANGFITT: O'Brien says Ireland and the EU have taken a position that actually makes the worst-case scenario for all parties more likely.
O'BRIEN: I thought it increased the risk of a no-deal Brexit, which would ultimately bring about a hard border, damage relations between Ireland and Britain, cause much greater economic damage.
LANGFITT: And with less than 60 days to go before the U.K. is scheduled to leave the EU, O'Brien says such an outcome seems frighteningly real. Frank Langfitt, NPR News, London.