Stephen Skeap
Appearances
Up First from NPR
House Budget Plan, DOGE Resignations, Battle Against Bird Flu
Well, the White House says everyone is working as a team, but there's a few people claiming to be captain here, especially around this attempted restructuring of the federal government. Think of it this way, Steve.
Up First from NPR
House Budget Plan, DOGE Resignations, Battle Against Bird Flu
There's a Venn diagram of what Elon Musk says and does and posts, what the government has said in many court cases challenging Musk's decrees, and what federal agencies have actually done. And that Venn diagram has very little overlap right now.
Up First from NPR
House Budget Plan, DOGE Resignations, Battle Against Bird Flu
Thank you for watching. And for the purposes of this request, neither is the agency that sent the email, the Office of Personnel Management. In fact, OPM previously noted in a privacy assessment, these government-wide emails are totally optional to respond to.
Up First from NPR
House Budget Plan, DOGE Resignations, Battle Against Bird Flu
And after some agencies told their people to ignore the request, other people said do it, OPM muddied the water even more with a memo that had more contradictory guidance about how to respond and or not respond and or maybe punish employees who didn't. Did you get all that?
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House Budget Plan, DOGE Resignations, Battle Against Bird Flu
Well, so to that point, yesterday, White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt wrapped it all up with this sort of walk back into some semblance of harmony.
Up First from NPR
House Budget Plan, DOGE Resignations, Battle Against Bird Flu
Now, Levitt did say that a million workers responded by the deadline, but we just don't know what that means or what comes next for them there.
Up First from NPR
House Budget Plan, DOGE Resignations, Battle Against Bird Flu
Well, this cabinet meeting is going to be worth watching because it's one of the first major public sources of tension between the Trump administration and the implementation of Musk's Doge effort. But there's some other simmering conflicts in the background.
Up First from NPR
House Budget Plan, DOGE Resignations, Battle Against Bird Flu
Many of the actions that Musk and Doge have taken are in court after running afoul of very particular and explicit set of rules and laws that govern the government.
Up First from NPR
House Budget Plan, DOGE Resignations, Battle Against Bird Flu
And on the same day the White House acknowledged someone else is nominally running the U.S. Doge service, nearly two dozen people who worked for the precursor USDS say they're quitting instead of using their skills to, quote, compromise core government systems.
Up First from NPR
House Budget Plan, DOGE Resignations, Battle Against Bird Flu
Finally, as we await more details about a planned reduction in force of the remaining workforce, last night the Merit Systems Protection Board issued a stay on the firing of six probationary employees.
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Trump And Gaza, Migrants At Guantanamo, USAID Staff On Leave
I'm Steve Inskeep with A. Martinez, and this is Up First from NPR News. The first plane load of migrants from the U.S. landed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Critics think they know why.
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Trump And Gaza, Migrants At Guantanamo, USAID Staff On Leave
He says he wants the U.S. to take over Gaza, the current home of many Palestinians. Trump brought up the idea during a visit to the White House by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
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Trump And Gaza, Migrants At Guantanamo, USAID Staff On Leave
Turn it into seaside real estate. The president did not rule out the possibility of using U.S. troops while sending the current residents to live somewhere else not yet named. In just over two weeks since his inauguration, the president has called for the U.S.
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Trump And Gaza, Migrants At Guantanamo, USAID Staff On Leave
to take over a total of four countries or territories, Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal, and now a war-torn 25-mile strip of land on the Mediterranean.
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Trump And Gaza, Migrants At Guantanamo, USAID Staff On Leave
We'll hear how the White House explains the move.
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Trump And Gaza, Migrants At Guantanamo, USAID Staff On Leave
The first plane load arrived yesterday. White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt gave this reason.
Up First from NPR
Trump And Gaza, Migrants At Guantanamo, USAID Staff On Leave
The president has said he wants to make room for 30,000 migrants at Guantanamo.
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Trump And Gaza, Migrants At Guantanamo, USAID Staff On Leave
Yeah, the workers are told to go on administrative leave by Friday at 11.59 p.m., according to a new directive sent to agency staff globally and posted on the website. This comes after more than two weeks of chaos at the agency, as the president and Elon Musk said they were in the process of shutting it down.
Up First from NPR
Trump And Gaza, Migrants At Guantanamo, USAID Staff On Leave
And I'm Stephen Skeap. Don't forget, you can hear this podcast sponsor-free while financially supporting public media with Up First Plus. Learn more at plus.npr.org, plus.npr.org.
Up First from NPR
Intelligence Officials Testify, Trump's Auto Tariffs, DOGE Access
Well, court filings show it's a Doge employee named Akash Boba. He's one of a few people that's been given carte blanche access to see all of these different sensitive financial and personal data repositories across multiple federal agencies. A, it is normal for a small group of employees to be able to have complete access to these databases.
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Intelligence Officials Testify, Trump's Auto Tariffs, DOGE Access
And Trump's Doge executive order did direct agencies to set up teams to look through the data to find, quote, waste, fraud, and abuse. But these sources are all supposed to be compartmentalized.
Up First from NPR
Intelligence Officials Testify, Trump's Auto Tariffs, DOGE Access
The people who access Social Security's master beneficiary record are not the people who can see everything about student loan borrowers, are not the people who can go through the government's HR files until now.
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Intelligence Officials Testify, Trump's Auto Tariffs, DOGE Access
So piecing together all of the different lawsuits and combining what we know from there, there's a few different buckets that all point towards this. Doge giving conflicting answers about what data is accessed, who has that access, and most importantly, why.
Up First from NPR
Intelligence Officials Testify, Trump's Auto Tariffs, DOGE Access
One, records show these staffers were sometimes brought on board without having proper training on handling personally identifiable information. Two, there have been filings where the government admits it can't account for when or how these Doge staffers access the data.
Up First from NPR
Intelligence Officials Testify, Trump's Auto Tariffs, DOGE Access
And that also includes a revelation that one person sent personally identifiable information to other government employees outside the agency. Which brings us to three. It's something called the Privacy Act that's in place to ensure information included in these databases is not disclosed to anybody who does not need to know.
Up First from NPR
Intelligence Officials Testify, Trump's Auto Tariffs, DOGE Access
The government's response has been Doge needs to know to be able to find waste, fraud and abuse, which they haven't found yet either. And the White House never responded to our questions about whether Doge was following privacy laws or whether this level of access should concern Americans.
Up First from NPR
Intelligence Officials Testify, Trump's Auto Tariffs, DOGE Access
They largely have not seen why Doge needs everything everywhere all at once instead of a more tailored approach. I mean, one judge even called it like hitting a fly with a sledgehammer shortly before blocking Doge from Social Security data. Another judge warned that, quote,
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Intelligence Officials Testify, Trump's Auto Tariffs, DOGE Access
And on Monday, a different judge temporarily halted Doge from accessing data on millions of union members through the Office of Personnel Management, Treasury and Education Departments, finding that the Doge employees had, quote, no need to know the vast amount of data shared. There's more than a dozen cases dealing with access right now, and these rulings aren't the end all be all right now.
Up First from NPR
Intelligence Officials Testify, Trump's Auto Tariffs, DOGE Access
But it's one of many things about government restructuring we're keeping track of in coming weeks.
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Trump and Zelenskyy Feud, DOGE Savings Claims, Hamas Releases Four Hostage Bodies
So Monday, a savings page on doge.gov went live. It says there's been savings so far of $55 billion. What's included in that? Doge says things like, quote, fraud detection, deletion, workforce reductions, programmatic changes, and regulatory savings. Exactly how those changes fit into the overall savings estimate is still TBD. They promise to keep adding more information.
Up First from NPR
Trump and Zelenskyy Feud, DOGE Savings Claims, Hamas Releases Four Hostage Bodies
What we do have shared for now is a list of some of the government contracts Doge says were canceled in recent days, what they call a wall of receipts that adds up to about $16 billion in alleged savings.
Up First from NPR
Trump and Zelenskyy Feud, DOGE Savings Claims, Hamas Releases Four Hostage Bodies
The Doge website, Michelle, is actually less transparent about these contracts than other public government data sources. So I had to search through 130,000 plus contracts that have been changed from January 20th to Monday to see if I could match them up with what Doge shared. But the claims weren't off by just a little bit, but rather overstated by billions.
Up First from NPR
Trump and Zelenskyy Feud, DOGE Savings Claims, Hamas Releases Four Hostage Bodies
Half of the savings claimed in these receipts comes from what Doge said was actually a typo entered into the federal contract database a few years ago. that made a listing worth up to $8 million look like $8 billion. That typo was fixed in the system a few weeks ago, but only fixed on the Doge website yesterday.
Up First from NPR
Trump and Zelenskyy Feud, DOGE Savings Claims, Hamas Releases Four Hostage Bodies
I will note here, Doge has not responded to multiple requests from NPR to get clarity about their process.
Up First from NPR
Trump and Zelenskyy Feud, DOGE Savings Claims, Hamas Releases Four Hostage Bodies
Here's three big things I found. One, more than half of the contracts listed haven't actually been canceled yet. Two, a third of the entries don't actually result in any savings by Doge's own accounting. These are contracts that were already maxed out and couldn't see any more spending in the future.
Up First from NPR
Trump and Zelenskyy Feud, DOGE Savings Claims, Hamas Releases Four Hostage Bodies
Three, the terminations I could verify only add up to about $2 billion saved, mainly through cuts that accompany the attempted dismantling of the Education Department, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and USAID.
Up First from NPR
Trump and Zelenskyy Feud, DOGE Savings Claims, Hamas Releases Four Hostage Bodies
Well, for you or me or even a nice business, yes. But the federal government spent more than $6.7 trillion with a T and a lot more zeros in the last fiscal year. Here's Jessica Riedel with the Manhattan Institute. She studied ways to cut wasteful spending from the budget from a conservative policy perspective.
Up First from NPR
Trump and Zelenskyy Feud, DOGE Savings Claims, Hamas Releases Four Hostage Bodies
Basically, Riedel says any meaningful cuts to federal spending has to come from Congress having hard debates over how to do it.
Up First from NPR
Trump and Zelenskyy Feud, DOGE Savings Claims, Hamas Releases Four Hostage Bodies
Well, it's not about pinching pennies. It's about a manifestation of President Trump's overarching vision to remake the federal government by making it a lot smaller and a lot more aligned with his worldview.
Up First from NPR
Trump and Zelenskyy Feud, DOGE Savings Claims, Hamas Releases Four Hostage Bodies
Thank you.
Up First from NPR
LA Wildfires, Carter's State Funeral, Trump's Agenda
Does the region have the resources to bring the ongoing disaster under control? I'm Stephen Skeap with Michelle Martin, and this is Up First from NPR News. President Biden delivers the eulogy today at funeral services for former President Jimmy Carter here in Washington, where even remembrances can carry political messages.
Up First from NPR
LA Wildfires, Carter's State Funeral, Trump's Agenda
The fires have sometimes destroyed whole neighborhoods. They wrecked the homes of celebrities. Billy Crystal says he lost the house where he's lived with his wife since 1979. Several people are dead that we know of so far, and new fires appear as desert winds blow embers around the region. We're joined now by NPR's Adrian Florido in Los Angeles.
Up First from NPR
LA Wildfires, Carter's State Funeral, Trump's Agenda
Wildfires in Southern California reduced entire neighborhoods to ashes.
Up First from NPR
LA Wildfires, Carter's State Funeral, Trump's Agenda
Carter lived to be 100, leaving a mark on this country and the world, extending beyond his four years in the White House. Even as he traveled the world over the decades, he kept living in Plains, Georgia, a comparatively simple life. But presidential funerals are grandiose, and Carter's will be no different.
Up First from NPR
LA Wildfires, Carter's State Funeral, Trump's Agenda
How will the former president be remembered?
Up First from NPR
LA Wildfires, Carter's State Funeral, Trump's Agenda
And he also met with Republicans to talk about strategizing for legislation.
Up First from NPR
LA Wildfires, Carter's State Funeral, Trump's Agenda
So he says, but is there a path ahead?
Up First from NPR
LA Wildfires, Carter's State Funeral, Trump's Agenda
And that's Up First for Thursday, January 9th. I'm Michelle Martin. And I'm Steve Inskeep. You can listen to this podcast sponsor-free while also financially supporting public media with Up First Plus. Learn more at plus.npr.org. That's plus.npr.org. Why don't they just let you press the plus sign? That doesn't matter. Anyway, go on.
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Who Will Win at the Oscars
How will we ever make an accurate prediction from this field?
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Who Will Win at the Oscars
Cynthia Erivo for Wicked. Erivo plays Elphaba in this origin story about the Wicked Witch of the West. Ah! Fernanda Torres for I'm Still Here. Torres plays a mother, an activist whose life is upturned when her politician husband goes missing during the military dictatorship in Brazil. Mikey Madison for Anora. Madison plays a New York sex worker who marries the son of Russian oligarchs.
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Who Will Win at the Oscars
Carla Sofia Gascon for Amelia Perez. Gascon plays the titular Amelia Perez, a trans cartel leader who leaves the criminal underworld to begin a new life. She's the first openly trans actress or actor of any gender nominated in an acting category. And then we've got the presumed frontrunner. Aisha, I don't think you need the SAG Awards to predict this one. Demi Moore for The Substance.
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Who Will Win at the Oscars
Moore plays a TV aerobics instructor who turns to a mysterious black market drug to stay young.
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Who Will Win at the Oscars
If you're looking for any kind of dark horse in this race in terms of somebody who has the potential to win, I wouldn't 100% rule out Fernanda Torres, who gives a pretty magnificent performance in I'm Still Here, who really carries that film, and who is a very... Again, a veteran actress who has done a ton of great work.
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Who Will Win at the Oscars
I don't think she will win against Demi Moore, but this is definitely one of the most heralded performances of the year and one that I could see slipping through.
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Who Will Win at the Oscars
I went with Mikey Madison for Onora. I think the movie falls apart if she doesn't give a great performance. I think she manages to bring just huge amounts of charisma and energy. This performance could so easily have dipped into caricature and maybe Linda thinks it did dip into caricature. I don't know.
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Who Will Win at the Oscars
But I really found this to be just like a very vibrant and committed performance from somebody I can't wait to see in more movies.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
I think one thing I would add to that is that he has been campaigning his rear end off for months and months. And that does come into play. I mean, you talked about SNL, where he appeared on SNL as the host and the musical guest performing Dylan songs. Like he is really trying to win this award. And that does factor in.
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Who Will Win at the Oscars
Look, I think Timothee Chalamet is going to win an Oscar at some point. I'm not sure if it's for this film. I'm a little higher on this film than Linda is. I really love really all three of the central performances in this film. For me, I mean, Adrian Brody, it is a great Oscar-winning performance. He's terrific in it.
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Who Will Win at the Oscars
Even if I think that film kind of careened off the rails in that second half, his performance is so solid at the center of it that it never crashes into the ditch.
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Who Will Win at the Oscars
There's not as much contradiction there as you think. Mystified. I think Brody will and should, but I do want to put in a word for that Coleman Domingo performance, which I think is magnificent in Sing Sing, a movie I would have loved to have seen in the best picture field. I think it's a terrific performance and a very, very good movie.
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Who Will Win at the Oscars
I don't think that's what that movie does. No, not at all.
Up First from NPR
Who Will Win at the Oscars
It's an interesting crop of Best Picture director and acting nominees, and we're talking about who we think will win and who we think should take home those shiny gold statues. I'm Stephen Thompson.
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Who Will Win at the Oscars
You're missing the point. It's not that they're staging Hamlet. Hamlet is just a tiny part of that bonkers production. It also has Freddy Krueger. Yeah. Yes.
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Who Will Win at the Oscars
Say it. We're right. You've actually fully talked me into this. I was on the fence.
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Who Will Win at the Oscars
No, you know what? If you're going to bully me in any direction, bully me in the direction of Coleman Domingo, who's genuinely one of the best actors in the world.
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Who Will Win at the Oscars
Sure. We've got Wicked, set before the events of The Wizard of Oz. This musical is the origin story of the Wicked Witch of the West. It stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo. Hey!
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Who Will Win at the Oscars
Never let it be said that that movie does not end on a strong note. The other big, big, big blockbuster, you've got Dune Part 2. Timothy Chalamet returns as Paul Atreides, who must now contend with a group called the Harkonnens, who have seized control of the planet. May thy knife chip and shatter.
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Who Will Win at the Oscars
Did you try to read the Wikipedia page about Dune Part 1 before going into Dune Part 2? Because I was more lost than I was going in. Try the books.
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Who Will Win at the Oscars
Well, we've got Anora, Sean Baker's movie about an enterprising sex worker who marries the immature son of Russian oligarchs.
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Who Will Win at the Oscars
This accent. Yes. Duh. And then there's Emilia Perez. It is about a trans-Mexican cartel boss who disappears from the criminal underworld and eventually reunites with her family after creating a new life as a woman.
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Who Will Win at the Oscars
I feel almost word for word the same way Linda does. I feel that The Brutalist is going to wind up reaping a lot of the benefit of some of the blowback against Amelia Pettis. It's a great man, historical epic, running more than three and a half hours in length. What could be more Oscars than that?
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Who Will Win at the Oscars
And I think that is maybe what hurts Amelia Pettis the most. There may be a passionate contingent putting it first, but there are going to be a lot of people who rank at 10th. Not just me, and I'm not even an Oscar voter. Yeah.
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Who Will Win at the Oscars
You've just got me piggybacking off people who share my opinions. Yay! Now, there are several other films in this field that I really dearly love. And I could make a case for Conclave. I could strangely make a case for The Substance. In spite of some plot issues that I had with it, a movie that has really stuck with me and I suspect will continue to stick with me.
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Who Will Win at the Oscars
But Onora, to me, is made with such verve. And for me, it just felt like such a victory lap for Sean Baker, who's been making great movies for a long time now without necessarily a ton. ton of major awards consideration. For me, this is a film that I really, really dug. And it's not, again, I'm going to keep harping on this point, it's not a typical Oscar movie.
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Who Will Win at the Oscars
Cinematography. Yeah. How did this not get nominated for cinematography?
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Jimmy Carter Remembered, Syria-Israel Relations, South Korea Plane Crash
Good morning. How did Jimmy Carter emerge on the national scene? Well, first, Carter was born in this tiny southwest Georgia town called Plains. He joined the Navy. He was a lieutenant, the only U.S. president to have qualified on submarines. And after he left the service, he ran his family's peanut farm. Then he became a state senator before becoming governor of Georgia.
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Jimmy Carter Remembered, Syria-Israel Relations, South Korea Plane Crash
He was a rural religious white Southerner, but also said in his gubernatorial inaugural address that, quote, "...the time for racial discrimination is over." He had an unorthodox campaign style. While he was governor, he befriended popular Georgia musicians like the Allman Brothers, who played concerts for him.
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Jimmy Carter Remembered, Syria-Israel Relations, South Korea Plane Crash
And he had a peanut brigade of friends and family and volunteers who fanned out across the country to spread his message. Carter's presidential inauguration also came after the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, so many saw him as the right person at the right time for the mood of the American people.
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Jimmy Carter Remembered, Syria-Israel Relations, South Korea Plane Crash
Well, that's arguably an understatement, Steve. I mean, there were signature achievements when Carter was in office, like the Camp David Accords that brokered peace between Israel and Egypt. He also did a ton to reorganize how the executive branch operated. He elevated the role of the vice president and did things like establish the Department of Education, but he had issues with Congress.
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Jimmy Carter Remembered, Syria-Israel Relations, South Korea Plane Crash
He dealt with rampant inflation and soaring energy costs, and there was also the Iran hostage crisis. Carter faced a shellacking in his re-election campaign, and he left office as one of the most unpopular presidents in history.
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Jimmy Carter Remembered, Syria-Israel Relations, South Korea Plane Crash
He didn't stay in politics, but he didn't shy away from using his platform either. You could see Jimmy Carter building affordable housing with the Habitat for Humanity nonprofit. He taught at Emory University in Atlanta, and for years, He would speak to first-year students, answering questions about politics and things like, what's your favorite type of peanut butter?
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Jimmy Carter Remembered, Syria-Israel Relations, South Korea Plane Crash
But his signature work with the eponymous Carter Center, along with his late wife Rosalind, bowed to, quote, wage peace through work on democracy, global health, human rights, including effectively eradicating this parasitic disease, the guinea worm in Africa. He was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
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Jimmy Carter Remembered, Syria-Israel Relations, South Korea Plane Crash
He'll get a state funeral. It'll be a week plus of events. President Biden set January 9th as a national day of mourning, and the plans have been in place and more will be revealed soon, including at the Carter Center here in Atlanta, just down the road from me.
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BONUS: America's Shifting Alliances
First of all, he's not an isolationist. He's an ardent nationalist and much more comfortable with autocratic leaders than with leaders of liberal democracies. It's Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia.
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BONUS: America's Shifting Alliances
And I think in Trump's mind, a perfect world would be one where powerful leaders can get together and cut deals and then impose them on others without paying too much attention to the rule of law.
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BONUS: America's Shifting Alliances
If the United States is no longer a reliable ally, if it actually seems to be hostile to liberal democracy in Europe, then I think we're going to find that the countries we've been counting on in the past to support us on many international initiatives are going to be much less willing to do so.
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BONUS: America's Shifting Alliances
Well, there's no question Europe should be more responsible for its own defense and the United States should be shifting its attention and resources elsewhere. I think I agree with that.
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BONUS: America's Shifting Alliances
But that should be done in a responsible, cooperative way and it should be done gradually over a period of five to ten years because Europe is going to need some time to develop its own security institutions, build up its forces.
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BONUS: America's Shifting Alliances
We should be moving in that direction but we should be doing that by treating them as our allies so that ten years from now we still have a good relationship with Europe and we can count on their diplomatic support and count on cooperating with them when unexpected events happen. Trump appears to be burning up the alliance.
Up First from NPR
BONUS: America's Shifting Alliances
First of all, he's not an isolationist. He's an ardent nationalist and much more comfortable with autocratic leaders than with leaders of liberal democracies.