Up First from NPR - Biden & Trump Go Down To Georgia, Aid to Gaza, Nigerian Students Kidnapped

Episode Date: March 9, 2024

President Biden and former President Trump both hold campaign events in Georgia today. For Biden, it's part of his post-State of the Union tour of swing states. The humanitarian crisis continues in Gaza, with no ceasefire before Ramadan. Nigerian officials say more than 250 students were abducted from school.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Four years later, what's still on their minds? Georgia. President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump campaigned there today. And also on Biden's mind, motivating voters who turned swing states blue in 2020. I'm Scott Simon. I'm Ayesha Roscoe, and this is Up First from NPR News. The holy month of Ramadan begins soon, but likely without another ceasefire in Gaza. More Palestinians there face starvation. The U.S. military is planning to get more aid into the Strip by sea with a temporary port and a floating pier.

But what is being done right now to help? And a Nigeria official say more than 250 children have been abducted. Gunmen attacked while they were in school. We'll learn more about Nigeria's second mass kidnapping in a week. So please stay with us. We have the news you need to start your weekend. Now Our Change will honor 100 years of the Royal Canadian Air Force and their dedicated service to communities at home and abroad. From the skies to our change, this $2 commemorative circulation coin marks their storied past and promising future. Find the limited edition Royal Canadian Air Force $2 coin today. President Biden is taking his message from the State of the Union out on the road.

He's got a busy travel schedule over the next week, hitting key states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Georgia. But he started off his tour yesterday in another battleground state, Pennsylvania. And our White House correspondent, Deepa Shivaram, was along for the ride and joins us now. Deepa, thanks for being with us. Hey, thanks for having me. And what did the president focus on in his speech in Philadelphia? Yeah, I mean, there were a lot of similarities from the speech that Biden gave in Philly and his State of the Union address. He really followed the same themes, particularly on what he called kitchen table issues, which

is namely lowering costs for Americans. One thing was different, though. On Thursday night, we heard Biden refer to former President Trump as his predecessor multiple times. He didn't actually name him, but he talked a lot about the differences between him and Trump. Last night, though, the gloves came off. Biden called out Trump by name several times. He blamed him for restrictions on reproductive rights, and he blamed him for some of the ways he says America has changed. When you ride down the street and there's a Trump banner with an FU on it and a little,

and a six-year-old kid putting up his middle finger. Did you ever say, no, I'm serious. Did you ever think you'd hear people talk the way they do? Look, it demeans who we are. That's not who America, that's not America. A couple things he didn't mention on the road version of this speech was the war in Gaza. And I will note there were a lot of protesters outside the middle school where he gave that speech. He also didn't talk about immigration either. He's taking some heat from progressives lately and advocates for immigrants because on Thursday night, he referred to an undocumented immigrant arrested for a crime as an illegal. We asked him yesterday if he regretted using that

term and he kind of sidestepped it and said, you know, quote, technically he's not supposed to be here. Day, you're traveling with the president to Georgia, obviously another swing state. Its primary is Tuesday. What do you know about the rally in Atlanta tonight? It's focusing on three key groups representing communities of color who are going to be formally endorsing Biden today. That's the Latino and AAPI Victory Funds, which are organizations that bring out voters in their communities, and Collective PAC, which organizes Black voters. And these coalitions are really critical for Biden in the state of Georgia. He won it by a very narrow margin in 2020. But it's not just Georgia where this matters. Overall, we know that this election is going to be decided by small, small numbers. And in these

key swing states like Nevada and North Carolina, Michigan, voter turnout from communities of color could very well decide the course of this presidential race. And keep in mind, this is all kind of coming at a time when enthusiasm for Biden among Black and Latino voters especially has been lower. So he needs to drum up more support. And it's not so much here that these voters are turning to Trump, right? It's that they just could not show up and vote at all in November. And that would be detrimental for Biden. Georgia, of course, is the home state of Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. She had what I'll call a cameo the other night at the president's State of the Union address.

She did. Yeah. Biden often uses her as a bit of a foil to talk about right wing supporters of Trump. And on Thursday, she was wearing that red MAGA hat and heckling him during the State of the Union. So Biden started off his remarks yesterday in Philly talking about her, and the crowd there got really fired up about it. So I wouldn't be surprised if she becomes a bit of a regular punchline, if you will, on the road as Biden keeps traveling. And speaking of that, he's got a lot of travel planned this week, New Hampshire on Monday, then Milwaukee and Saginaw, Michigan in the middle of the week. And there are $30 million in ads going up over the next six weeks for this campaign. So

it's really kicking into high gear for Biden. And Paris Deepeshivrim, thanks so much. Thank you. Talks to secure another ceasefire in Gaza before the start of Ramadan seem to have stalled, and there are fears that conditions there will continue to worsen. More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war between Hamas and Israel, according to Gaza's health ministry. We're joined now from Jerusalem by NPR's Fatma Tanis. Fatma, thanks for being with us. Thanks for having me, Scott. Please tell us what it looks like in Jerusalem there at the moment. Well, Scott, for Palestinians here, there's a lot of anticipation over what the coming month

is going to look like. You know, there are concerns for Gaza if Israel decides to invade Rafah in the south, where most people in Gaza are huddled. There's an overall feeling of hopelessness for the war. But, you know, they also have their own concerns here. Since the war began, Israel has imposed a lot of restrictions on Palestinian movement. They spend hours at checkpoints every day. And especially when it comes to accessing Al-Aqsa compound, which is one of the holiest sites for both Muslims and Jews. At the moment, Palestinians from the West Bank and men under the age of 40 are not allowed to go in without a special permit, and very few people can actually get those. They're generally afraid and uneasy. Now, Israel says that it will allow access

to everyone, as it usually does, at least during the first week of the holy month. And there's been some politics around that. Israel's far-right Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gavir, had advocated for a near-blanket ban on Palestinian worshippers. He was overruled. It seems that senior officials in Israel do not want to provoke further tensions during time of war. And Al-Aqsa has often been a flashpoint, hasn't it? Not just in Israel and the Palestinian territories, but across the region. That's right. So Al-Aqsa compound, you know, includes the mosque, the iconic Dome of the Rock, there's museums and other institutions there. Now with the Israeli government's shift to the far right in recent years, there's been a slow shrinking of Palestinian spaces.

I was actually there yesterday and saw something unusual. There was heavy presence of police, and they were standing close to the worshipping sites. They normally stand a bit further back. So there's a real fear among Palestinians that they won't be allowed to worship, and during Ramadan that becomes a more sensitive issue. Now, when you add that to the backdrop of the war in Gaza, any tensions could easily further inflame an already tense region, including in Iraq, where Iranian-backed militias have been attacking U.S. troops, and in the Red Sea, where Houthi rebels in Yemen have been firing missiles at international shipping and killed sailors this week. Let's now turn to Gaza. The United Nations

says nearly two million people face starvation there. President Biden said in a State of the Union speech that the U.S. military will provide a floating harbor to ship aid in. What's been the local reaction to that? Well, it's seen as a sign of growing frustration with Israel, not just in Washington, but among aid groups as well, that Israel is not prioritizing humanitarian aid and that Israeli officials don't understand the responsibility to help civilians. Now, Israel says it's not putting any limits on aid. Meanwhile, there's been mixed reaction to President Biden's announcement, you know, the harbor won't be ready for weeks. Longer term, it could make a difference.

I spoke to Jamie McGoldrick. He's the UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories. Here he is. Any supplementary possibility of bringing in aid through either airdrops or by sea is helpful. But the main part of it has to be done by road. That's the only way we can deliver bulk and at scale to populations inside Gaza, especially in the north. So, Scott, it won't help with the immediate crisis. Now, the UN says that children are starving to death as we speak, and it will get much, much worse if aid doesn't start flooding in immediately.

And for that, McGoldrick says that Israel needs to open more border crossings and also allow aid groups access to secure roads in Gaza. And Piers Fatmatanis in Jerusalem, thanks so much. Thank you. Nigerian officials say that more than 280 students have been kidnapped in the northwest of the country. They are between the ages of 8 and 15. One witness told the BBC that the children were taken from school Thursday morning by dozens of gunmen on motorbikes. This mass kidnapping echoes another abduction a decade ago when Boko Haram militants abducted hundreds of schoolgirls from the town of Chibok. We're joined now by Alexis Akwajirim, the managing editor for Africa at the news website

Semaphore. He spent years reporting from Nigeria. Thanks so much for being with us. Thank you. What more can you tell us about this mass abduction? First of all, nobody's claimed responsibility for this mass abduction, although some people in various quarters are blaming Ansaru, which is a breakaway faction of the Boko Haram militant group. What we do know is that students were taken along with a teacher.

Parents say that local vigilantes tried to repel the gunman but had been overpowered. In these situations in the northwest where there are lots of these criminal gangs coming out kidnapped for ransom you do often see vigilante groups springing up because these things are happening in vast ungoverned spaces and so the police can't necessarily intervene but in this case the vigilante group were unable to repel the gunman and this is effectively the largest mass abduction that we've seen in Nigeria for about three years. I mean, the last one on this scale was in the summer of 2021, and around 150 children were taken then. How is the Nigerian government responding to this abduction? Well, President Bolotinibu said he was confident that the victims will be rescued,

and he's directed the security forces to find the students. As well as that, there's a system of state governors as well. The Kaduna state governor, where this happened, has also visited the town and he's promised to get the students released. So the security forces have these directions, but I mean, it's going to be tough for them to respond. And to be honest, this is the typical response

from the Nigerian government in this situation. They always say they're confident, and they always say that they're going to do their best to rescue the children. And yet we, I guess, have to remind ourselves, many of the girls who were taken in the Boko Haram kidnapping are still missing. How common are mass abductions like these? So mass abductions have become less common, but there was definitely a spate of them in northern Nigeria around four years ago. And there were these copycat attacks and schools were being hit with hundreds of children being taken. But you're absolutely right, the abduction of the Chibok girls, which is almost to the day a decade ago, sparked this. And as a result of that, clearly criminal gangs saw that there was an opportunity

to make money for Kidnap for Ransom. Now, even though mass abductions are becoming less common, Kidnap for Ransom has become a lucrative industry for criminal gangs in Nigeria. And it's become a problem at a lower level, whereby these gangs were mostly concentrated in the northwest of the country, will kidnap ordinary people and shake down the families for money. And if it's a high-profile series of attacks, then maybe the state government might get involved as well. As I mentioned before, these are vast swathes of land that are effectively ungoverned spaces. And so these criminal gangs set themselves up in forests, and they rove around different parts of the region on motorcycles, and they're heavily armed,

and it's very, very, very hard to stop them. Mr. Akwajiru, what's it like to live in Nigeria? It's the most populous nation in Africa, and yet in your description, large parts of it are essentially lawless. I think it's very difficult for Nigerians at the moment. It's a massive country. It's got more than 200 million inhabitants, and security forces are overstretched. So at the moment, they're tackling different challenges simultaneously. So in the northwest, you get these bandits who kidnap ordinary people. In the northeast, you've got a

long-running Islamist insurgency that's lasted for about 15 years. And then in various other parts of the country, there are issues. In the Southeast, there's an insurgency in terms of separatist movements. And it's just hard. Wherever you are, there is likely to be some kind of issue, and it's hard for the security forces to keep on top of all of it. Alexis Equigerum from the news site Semaphore, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. And that's up first for Saturday, March 9th, 2024. I'm Ayesha Roscoe.

And I'm Scott Simon. Martin Patience and Andrew Craig produced today's podcast. It was directed by Danny Hensel. Our team of editors are Roberta Rampton, James Heider, Claire Lombardo, Shannon Rhodes, Adil El-Shalchi, and Melissa Gray. Our technical director is Jay Sizz, and we've also had engineering support from Misha Hynes and Zach Coleman. Evie Stone is our senior supervising editor. Sarah Lucy Oliver is our executive producer. And Jim Cain keeps his eyes on us like a hawk, like a hungry wolf, Scott.

Yeah, Aisha. And you know, we're the rabbits. And that's because he is deputy managing editor, and that's what they do. So go ahead, Jim. Go ahead. Rawr. Also, tomorrow on, that's not they do. So go ahead, Jim. Go ahead. Rawr! Also tomorrow on, that's not a wolf sound.

Anyway, tomorrow on Up First, Pop Culture Happy Hour, pre-Oscar party, as Asha Harris and Linda Holmes talk about the movies and stars they think will get those little gold statuettes. I forget what they're called offhand. Oscars.

But for more... Why would they name them after hot dogs? But go ahead. But for more... Why would they name them after hot dogs? But go ahead. But for more news, analysis, interviews, and books and music on the weekend, you can always tune in to Weekend Edition on NPR, of course, and get more of me and Scott. I'm not sure that's the way to sell us, but find your NPR station at stations.npr.org.