Up First from NPR - Canada Tariffs, Education Department Targeted, DOGE

Episode Date: February 4, 2025

At the last moment the US paused its trade wars with Canada and Mexico, the Trump administration is reportedly targeting the US Department of Education for closure and questions are being raised about the amount of government access given to Elon Musk and his DOGE entity.Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.Today's episode of Up First was edited by Tara Neill, Brett Neely, Steven Drummond, Janaya Williams and Alice Woelfle. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Arthur Laurent. And our technical director is Carleigh Strange.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

A liquor store worker in Canada was just about to yank American bourbon off the shelf. We felt betrayed. At the last moment, the U.S. paused its trade war. How's all this look from the U.S. ally to the North? I'm Michelle Martin, that's Steven Schiepp, and this is Up First from NPR News. An ethics watchdog who criticized the first Trump administration now watches the second. I've never seen the White House send their people into the agents this way in such an intrusive matter.

What is Elon Musk's authority for accessing Treasury Department records of almost everybody? Also NPR has details of President Trump's plans for the Department of Education. Closing a Cabinet Department requires an act of Congress, so he will ask for one. Stay with us, we've got the news you need to start your day. Our long national nightmare is over. Beyoncé has finally won the Grammy for Album of the Year. How and why did it take so long for Beyoncé to win the top prize at Music's Biggest Night? We're talking about her big wins and breaking down the Grammys for Kendrick Lamar, Chappell Roan, and Sabrina Carpenter.

Listen to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR. New US tariffs on Chinese goods went into effect today and China has already retaliated. The Trump administration imposed 10% taxes on U.S. imports from China. China responded with 15% taxes on U.S. goods. China also put export controls on vital metals like tungsten. Now, the trade war with Mexico and Canada is paused for now after the president made threats that jolted relations with a close U.S. ally.

So how does all this look from Canada? NPR International Affairs correspondent Jackie Northam is in Ottawa. Jackie, good morning. Good morning, Steve. So how did the United States and Canada at least put off a confrontation? Well, you know, it did come right down to the wire. The Trump's tariffs against Canada were set to go into effect one minute after midnight and that's the same for Mexico. And Canada was bracing for it, you know, it had already announced it would retaliate by imposing 25% tariffs on $100 billion of US goods but earlier on Monday Trump struck a deal with Mexico and then with Canada and both sides said they would send thousands of troops to their borders

to curb the illegal flow of migrants and fentanyl which is what Trump had asked for. But you know, Ottawa says the amount of fentanyl coming across from Canada is a fraction of that coming from Mexico which has led to a lot of questions here in Canada of what this was really about why impose high tariffs on the country which is one of you know the closest allies of the US. Yeah I am thinking the Canadians made new measures at their border before the threat of tariffs. Now they've made even more, apparently, or promised something, and still the threat of

tariffs hangs over them for 30 days. How are people responding? Oh, you know, I've been talking with Canadians for the past couple of weeks since Trump first announced he was going to do this, and the responses have been anger and disbelief and really wanting to hit back. You know, there's a campaign that got underway to avoid buying any American products here. And Canadians were booing during the singing

of the Star Spangled Banner, a major sporting event. And liquor stores in some provinces were going to pull American bourbon and wine from their shelves. And you know, I dropped in at a liquor store here in Ottawa last night. And one of the workers, Ryan Robinson, said they were all ready to remove American bourbon off the shelves. Here he is.

We felt betrayed. I think we thought, you know, our closest ally in the world was stabbing us in the back a little bit, right? I think Trump is blowing things out of proportion a little bit. So I don't really understand his reasoning to start such a trade war. And you know Steve, Canada is one of the US largest trading partners. But you know, it's more than that. This feels personal up here, especially when Trump keeps saying he wants to turn Canada into the 51st state. Yeah, which I think people took as a joke when Trump

first said that, but he keeps saying it again and again and again. So how do the two countries move forward? Well, you know, this is only a month-long reprieve and I think it's fair to say that there is a trust deficit between Canada and the US and the US and Mexico for that matter. Canada faced a serious threat of recession if Trump's tariffs went ahead. You know there's a fear that it's not over at least for now and as you mentioned Steve the threat of a trade war goes beyond North America as the US and China launch these tit-for-tat tariffs on each other. The White House says Trump is due to talk to Chinese leader Xi Jinping today, but

negotiations between the rivals, you know, could be a drawn-out process. MPOs Jackie Northam, thanks so much for your work. Thanks Steve. Thanks, Steve. Okay, some changes that are underway at the U.S. Department of Education with bigger potential moves on the horizon. Sources tell NPR that President Trump is getting ready to issue an executive action that would do two things, move quickly to make relatively small staff and program cuts, and

call on Congress to close the department entirely. This comes as several dozen of the department's 4,400 workers have already been placed on paid leave. And P.R.'s Cory Turner joins us now. Tori, good morning. Good morning. Good morning, Steve. Cory, good morning.

Anyway, Cory, good morning by your proper name. What do you know about this executive action? Well, and not a lot, at least not through official channels. The white house did not respond to requests for comment, but multiple sources have told me folks who were not allowed to speak publicly, the Trump administration is eager to close the department. And so in the near term, it plans to use this executive action to try to move quickly to cut programs and staff that were not created by Congress. So they're not protected by law.

The idea being these will be the programs that are the easiest to cut, essentially the low-hanging fruit. The problem here, Steve, is the department itself and its signature responsibilities were all created by Congress. And so they're much harder to cut. Unless of course you operate within the rule of law and go to Congress and ask them

to reconsider that. So what are the responsibilities that could be targeted by executive action? Yeah, so the department has a budget of around $79 billion. On the K-12 side, it administers Title I, which sends extra funding to schools in lower income communities, both urban and rural, and it administers IDEA. That's the civil rights law that guarantees special education. which sends extra funding to schools in lower-income communities both urban and rural and It administers IDEA. That's the civil rights law that guarantees special education and obviously on the higher-ed side it manages the 1.6 trillion dollar Student loan portfolio now I have spoken with a bunch of experts over the past year who all say they really don't see How a president can make meaningful legal changes to these programs without Congress.

And that's why, Steve, I'm hearing from my sources, that this executive action would essentially acknowledge that by calling on Congress to either cut or move some or all of these programs to other agencies. The challenge for the administration is there have been plenty of past efforts to close the department and rewrite the rules of big programs like Title I, but lawmakers, including many Republicans, have always opposed them. Although that's the system, that's checks and balances, that's the Constitution. So what you're saying is we expect an executive order that really is just a statement asking Congress to do what the president asks, which is the way the Constitution works.

At the same time, you're reporting that some education department staff are being placed on leave. What's going on? Yeah, that's right. At least 74 non-management Department of Education staff have been placed on paid administrative leave. They all got this email in the last few days saying they're being placed on leave because of President Trump's executive action targeting diversity equity and inclusion programs in a statement

I got a department spokesperson said quote. We are evaluating staffing in line with a commitment to prioritizing meaningful learning ahead of divisive ideology in schools and putting student outcomes above special interests. But I spoke yesterday and last night with a bunch of these employees, and they all told me they don't work in DEI. Their career staff, they work in multiple departments. The only thing they had in common was that they had all attended at some point a DEI workshop

the department has been offering for years, including, by the way, going back to the first Trump administration. Okay. NPR's Corey Turner will continue listening for your reporting on that. Thanks very much. You're welcome.

And we have an update on the actions of the Department of Government Efficiency. Which is not actually a department, it's more like an ad hoc group, but whatever you call it, it's been an agent of chaos and confusion led by the unelected advisor to the president, Elon Musk. NPR's Bobby Allen has covered Musk for years. Bobby, good morning. Good morning. Well, just remember, Department of Government Efficiency, DOJ, what have they done so far?

Quite a bit. Musk's deputies are moving very fast. In just the first two weeks of the Trump administration, they have intervened at the Treasury Department, which processes trillions of dollars of payments every year, and it's not just Treasury. DOJ is involved in the Office of Personnel Management, looking for ways to slash the federal payroll. They're analyzing the government's real estate holdings. In some doge, at the direction of Musk is barreling into vast swaths of the federal

government and promising to divide and conquer what he sees as the deep state. Not that unlike the way Musk bulldozed Twitter and then when he purchased it, of course, he renamed it X. I would not say that this has been the most transparent effort. We hear about things happening and we're not exactly sure what the purpose is from the outside. How are people responding to this? Yeah, well, in Congress, Republicans have been mostly quiet, but Democrats are sounding

the alarm. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer called Doge, quote, a shadow government conducting a hostile takeover. Sharp words. And that gets at one of the questions Doge is facing. Can Musk legally have this much access and control over the federal government? And then there are other questions Steve about whether Doge creates conflicts of interest because as we know Musk runs six companies including rocket company

SpaceX, electric vehicle company Tesla, while Musk is also a senior advisor to President Trump and we learned just yesterday that the White House has made Musk a special government employee. Which means that he does have some formal government role, I guess. What is a special government employee? It's essentially a temporary government job. It can't run longer than 130 days and Doge itself was stood up as a temporary organization to radically cut costs in government, but Musk's exact remit is kind of unknown.

It's a little murky. Government watchdogs, though, are worried he is going to operate with no guardrails. Now, President Trump said Musk is acting only with the explicit approval of the White House and that, quote, where we think there's a conflict or a problem, we won't let him go near it. That's what Trump said recently. But experts I spoke to aren't so sure. Richard Painter was the White House's top ethics lawyer in the George W Bush

administration. And Painter says the level of access Musk seems to have sure does look like there are very few checks on him. I've never seen something like this happen before. I've never seen the White House send their people into the ages this way in such an intrusive matter in either a Democratic administration or a Republican administration, including the first Trump administration. Unprecedented is a word very much overused in this political moment, but Painter says Doge is indeed charting new territory. Well, this raises a question.

If Congress is not going to jump up immediately and if the White House says it's on board, are people who object in some way likely to take this to court? Yes. Doge has been hit with multiple lawsuits over its legality. The most recent one came yesterday. Unions representing federal employees sued to block Doge's access to the Treasury Department's payment system. They're concerned about Musk and his deputies having direct access to millions of people's tax refunds, veterans benefits, disability checks, and the private information of federal employees. So we will see, Steve, what happens in court, but experts tell me that unless a judge steps

in, DOJ is expected to only grow its presence inside of the federal government. I'm thinking about some of the things DOJ has done. There were actions over the weekend against the US Agency for International Development. Musk acted as if he was shutting down the agency, which is arguably illegal, but it seems instead just to have been folded under Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who talks of continuing some foreign aid and just reforming the agency, which a lot of people would like. Is it possible this agency is less radical than it seems? Yeah, for some of the agencies in Doge's crosshairs, you know, their opening bid is to completely dismantle the agencies, right? But what may end up happening in the end is just a smaller

version of the agencies that Doge is going after. So fewer employees and fewer resources, but still existing in some form. We'll just have to see. And here's Bobby Allen, thanks so much. Thanks, Steve. And that's a first for this Tuesday, February 4th. There's an exclamation point written down here. So I'm fourth, it's February 4th. Let the fourth be with you.

I'm Steve Inskeep. And I'm Michelle Martin. Make your next listen consider this. The team behind NPR's All Things Considered goes deep into a single news story in just 15 minutes. Listen now on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcast. Today's episode of Up First on February 4th was edited by Tara Neal, Brett Neely, Stephen Drummond, Jenea Williams and Alice Wolfley.

Produced by Ziad Bach, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Arthur Larendon. Our technical director is Carly Strange, who also deserves an exclamation point in my opinion. Join us again tomorrow. Want to hear this podcast without sponsor breaks? Amazon Prime members can listen to Up First, sponsor free, through Amazon Music. Or you can also support NPR's vital journalism and get up first plus at plus dot NPR dot org. That's plus dot NPR dot org.