Up First from NPR - Congress Averts Shutdown, Trump To Appear In Court, Climate Solutions Week

Episode Date: October 2, 2023

Lawmakers narrowly avoided a government shutdown by passing a short-term spending measure over the weekend. But to do that the Republican speaker of the house Kevin McCarthy had to work with Democrats. Did he put his job on the line? Former President Donald Trump will appear in court in New York on Monday. This trial, one of many, is a civil trial. He and his company are accused of of fraud. Plus the affects of this planet's warming climate can feel impossible to reverse. 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 Dana Farrington, Krishnadev Calamur, Neela Banerjee and HJ Mai. It was produced by Mansee Khurana, David West and Chad Campbell. We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott And our technical director is Zac Coleman.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

We're trying to decide on what's the better couple name for Travis Kelsey and Taylor Swift. Is it Trey-lore? No, that's terrible. Or Tay-vis? These are both very bad. Well, I mean, it's their names. There's not much we can do. Trailer? No. So Tay-vis?

Tay-vis? Can we use their last names? No. Swift-sy? Swiftiftsie? Swiftsie. Lawmakers narrowly avoided a government shutdown by passing a short-term spending measure over the weekend. But to do that, the Republican Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, had to work with Democrats. Did he put his job on the line? I'm Amy Martinez. That's Leila Fadl. And this is Up First from NPR News. Former President Donald Trump will appear in court today in New York.

The trial, one of many, is a civil trial. He and his company are accused of fraud. The New York Attorney General wants $250 million and a ban on Trump and his eldest sons running businesses in New York. Plus, the effects of climate change may feel difficult to rein in. But that's what this week on NPR is all about, solutions. We've got NPR's Julia Simon with us to share ideas on how to help as we launch Climate Solutions Week. Stay with us, we'll give you the news you need to start your day. 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. With only hours to spare, Congress averted a government shutdown. The deal came together after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy backtracked and decided to work with Democrats to pass a short-term spending measure on Saturday. We're going to be adults in the room, and we're going to keep government open while we solve this problem. But in choosing bipartisanship, McCarthy also put his job at risk. Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz says he plans to introduce a resolution to remove McCarthy as speaker as early as this week. I think we need to move on with new leadership that can be trustworthy. NPR political correspondent Susan

Davis joins us now to discuss all this. Hi, Sue. Hey, good morning. Good morning. Okay, before we get to the drama surrounding McCarthy's job, could you spell out exactly what Congress agreed to this weekend? Sure. They passed a stopgap spending measure that basically keeps the government on autopilot until November 17th. There was one add-on provision that includes $16 billion in disaster relief aid to assist with things like recovery from the Hawaii fires. Notably, Leila, what it did not include was any aid for Ukraine, despite very strong lobbying from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and obviously President Biden. The president already said publicly he believes that he has a deal with the speaker to move something separate on Ukraine. But just yesterday on CBS, the speaker said that while he might support money for Ukraine, he wanted it tied to some kind of legislation to secure the border. So it's going to be a

complicated negotiation. Okay. And as you point out, November 17th, it expires. Is Congress going to be right back at a shutdown standoff? Yeah, I mean, almost certainly. I mean, the thing that's important to remember here is stopgaps are easy. The underlying 12 annual spending bills, none of them have been passed by Congress yet. The House and Senate are on completely different pages. If you recall, the Speaker walked away from the budget deal that he cut with the President that was signed into law in early June, and the House has been passing bills with very steep cuts to domestic spending that has no chance of survival in the Senate, would never be signed by the president. So how the two chambers reconcile this, I can't answer for you. And neither can anyone on Capitol

Hill right now, not just in terms of the spending levels, but Republicans have also put into their bills a number of provisions that they say would remove the quote unquote woke from the government that will also be not going to see the light of day in the Senate. So they have about a month and a half to try to reconcile some of this, but the chances that they're all resolved and they're ready to roll in November seems highly unlikely. And then in the meantime, McCarthy, because he worked on this deal with the Democrats, is facing a possible removal from his speakership. I mean, how realistic is it that he loses his job? You know, remember, he wouldn't be in this position if he hadn't negotiated himself into this position again back in January. He had to agree to make it easier to remove the speaker

to get the votes he needed from the far right to become speaker. Now it could be used against him. I would say most Republicans still support Kevin McCarthy. They still want him to be speaker. But the political irony here is it now puts a lot of power in Democrats' hands. If all Democrats voted in mass with just, say, five or a few more Republicans, they could remove him from the job. I talked to Democrats all last week about this. They're very wary of adding to the chaos in Capitol Hill, but they don't really hold much regard for the speaker, especially as he has started moving forward with an impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden. And the big question is, if McCarthy needs Democrats to remain speaker, what do they want in return? And again, that's going to be a very, another very complicated negotiation for the speaker to figure out and maybe as soon as this week.

And PR's political correspondent, Susan Davis, I'm sure will be speaking to you again soon. You bet. Former President Donald Trump will appear in a New York courtroom today as his legal troubles enter the next phase. Trump faces a civil trial brought on by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is demanding that the former president and his company pay the state $250 million. Already, New York Judge Arthur Ngoran has found that Donald Trump and his two sons committed persistent fraud and ordered them to start taking steps to sell off large pieces of their company. NPR's Andrea Bernstein is at the courthouse in lower Manhattan, and she joins us now. Hi, Andrea. Good morning. Good morning. So explain what's at issue here, what the judge already found. So last Tuesday, surprising so far as I can tell, almost everyone,

Judge Ngoron issued a ruling that when you read it, you can practically see the steam rising. He said, based on paperwork alone, all of the defendants committed persistent and repeated fraud by lying about their property values. For example, Donald Trump lied about the size of his own triplex apartment at Trump Tower. He said it was three times as big as it actually is, worth several hundred million dollars more. And with Mar-a-Lago, the judge said Trump lied by 2,300% about the value. At one point, the judge likened Donald Trump to Chico Marx in the 1930s classic movie Duck Soup, who said, well, who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? 2,300 percent. Quite a lot.

The judge has moved to cancel the Trump company's business certificates. What does that mean? So in New York, the law is clear. If you commit persistent and repeated fraud, you can't do business. So now there's a process which begins with the cancellation of the business certificates. The idea is that Trump would have to sell some of his most iconic pieces of his business, Trump Tower, golf courses, commercial buildings. The process will move in parallel with the trial. Trump has appealed, but so far New York courts

are allowing both the trial and the cancellation of the business certificates to move forward. I guess what I'm confused about is if all of this is already happening, why is there even a trial? So the judge's ruling was only for the first cause of action. There are six more. They have to do with drawing up false documents, conspiracy, and lying to insurance companies. On top of that, the AG has to present evidence supporting her claim that Trump's company made $250 million in extra profits from these fraudulent representations. Now, Trump's team has argued no one was hurt,

that he made money, banks made money, all good. But the judge said that's irrelevant. You're not allowed to lie or commit fraud. The judge called Trump's defense, quote, legally preposterous. And so what do we expect today? So there'll be opening statements by Assistant Attorney General, Trump's lawyer, and possibly lawyers for Don Jr. and Eric Trump, who are also defendants here. First witness is Trump's former

outside accountant, Donald Bender from the firm Mazars. Bender knows a lot, so that should be interesting. Allen Weisselberg and Michael Cohen, two former executives, are expected this week. And then later in the trial, Donald Trump, Eric, Don Jr., and Ivanka Trump are all on the witness list. We're not sure how long it'll go, but one guess is that it will conclude before Thanksgiving. And Trump's there today. Will he be back tomorrow? As with everything involving a former and would-be president going on trial, it's uncharted. We'll know when we know. Andrea Bernstein, thanks so much. Thank you. This week, NPR is bringing you stories about the search for climate solutions. Just this past Friday, New York City experienced major disruptions after several inches of rain led to flash flooding.

This comes after a summer of brutal heat and deadly flooding and wildfires in several countries across the world. Julia Simon is the climate solutions reporter on NPR's Climate Desk, and she joins us now to explain what this week is all about. Julia, when I talk to people about climate change, I often hear a lot of hopelessness. So what do you say to that? Things are really bad right now. But what if we reframe the conversation? With climate change, it's actually not like there's this meteor hurtling towards Earth and there's nothing we can do about it. Humans are driving climate change, and that means we can find the solutions to change the trajectory

we're on. We actually have many solutions already. Robert Bullard, professor of urban planning at Texas Southern University, equates this moment to when our country faced past injustices. For example, slavery was an evil institution and it needed to be dismantled. I push back against any individual or organization that would say, well, we can't do anything about this challenge. We can do something about it. All right, Julia. So climate solutions, that's what this week is centered around. How do you define it? Broadly speaking, climate solutions are things that reduce greenhouse gases, renewable energy, solar, wind, batteries, energy efficiency.

And the way we use land matters. Are we burning forests, destroying mangroves? Individuals can play a role too, by eating less meat, for example. But we have to remind folks, solutions are not all about individuals. A lot of solutions come down to governments and companies. Okay, governments. Would that be something like when President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act last year? That's really the most significant piece of climate policy in U.S. history. Is that what we're talking about? Right, right. Governments can really set the agenda for climate policy. We saw this in Brazil. The new president, Lula da Silva, is really cracking down on deforestation

in the Amazon. Under his predecessor, Bolsonaro, Brazil's deforestation was surging. So some advocates see voting as a real powerful climate solution. What if, though, someone's thinking, well, OK, since the planet is already warming, then we need to adapt to that. Is that considered a climate solution? Yes, we will need to rebuild infrastructure for rising sea levels, new rainfall patterns. Adapting to climate change doesn't mean we're giving up. Adaptation is part of the solution. If we replace coal and gas plants with renewables,

we reduce greenhouse gases that warm our planet, and we also end up reducing the air pollution that is bad for our lungs. Disadvantaged communities bear the brunt of that pollution. So reducing fossil fuels would help communities of color. So it sounds like there's an equity component of climate solutions. A hundred percent. And we have to remember that some individuals and companies are more responsible for climate change than others.

So how do we hold them accountable? This summer in Montana, 16 young plaintiffs won a climate lawsuit arguing against the state's development of fossil fuels. It could have huge implications across the U.S. So accountability can be a climate solution too. Julia Simon is the climate solution reporter on NPR's Climate Desk. Julia, thanks. Thanks, A. Before we let you go, we have one more story for you this morning. California Governor Gavin Newsom is appointing LaFonza Butler to fill the Senate seat left vacant by the death of Dianne Feinstein. She could be sworn in as early as Wednesday. Butler is a Democratic strategist and was an advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris's 2020 as Wednesday. Butler is a Democratic strategist and was an advisor to Vice President

Kamala Harris's 2020 presidential campaign. Butler also currently leads Emily's List, which is a political organization that supports women who favor abortion rights. For more on this topic, listen to NPR's Morning Edition or go to Npr.org. And that's Up First for Monday, October 2nd. I'm Laila Faldin. And I'm A. Martinez. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Dana Farrington, Krista Dev-Calamore, Neela Banerjee, and H.J. Mai.

It was produced by Mansi Khurana, David West, and Chad Campbell. We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott, and our technical director is Zach Coleman. Start your day here with us tomorrow. And thanks for listening to Up First. You can find more in-depth coverage of the stories we talked about today and so much more on NPR's Morning Edition, the radio show Michelle Martin, Steve Inskeep,

A. Martinez and I host. Find Morning Edition and your NPR station at stations.npr.org.