Up First from NPR - Federal Worker Confusion, European Leaders In DC, German Election, Greenpeace Lawsuit

Episode Date: February 24, 2025

Federal workers are experiencing confusion after receiving an email demanding a list of their work accomplishments, the French President and British Prime Minister are meeting with President Trump this week in Washington to try to sway him on Ukraine, Germany is getting a new Chancellor, and the environmental group Greenpeace is is facing a multimillion dollar lawsuit for allegedly disrupting construction of an oil pipeline. 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 Ryland Barton, Kevin Drew, Neela Banerjee, 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 Stacey Abbott.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

An email to every federal employee asked, what did you do last week? And Elon Musk threatened they would lose their jobs if they didn't answer. You can't interpret silence to be a resignation. Do labor laws protect these workers? I'm Leila Faldon, that's Amy Martinez and this is Up First from NPR News. The leaders of France and Britain are visiting Washington this week on their agenda convincing President Trump not to abandon Ukraine. Can they sway him? Plus conservatives won the German election and the country's far-right

party made its strongest showing in decades. And Greenpeace goes on trial today. They're being sued by a Texas energy company for disrupting the construction of an oil pipeline. Everybody's afraid of these environmental groups and the fear that it may look wrong if you fight back with these people. Stay with us. We've got all the news you need to start your day. Donald Trump is back in the White House and making a lot of moves very quickly.

Keep track of everything going on in Washington with the NPR Politics Podcast. Every day we break down the latest news and explain why it matters to you. The NPR Politics Podcast. Listen every day. My defining characteristic for him is love. I'm Jesse Thorne on Bullseye Kelsey Grammar on the thing that makes Frazier Frazier. That he loves so deeply that it almost harpoons him. Plus sideshow Bob, cheers, and so much more on Bullseye for MaximumFun.org and NPR.

Planet Money is there. From California's most expensive fires ever. That was my home home. Yeah. Grew up there. From California's most expensive fires ever. That was my home, home. Yeah. I grew up there. It's ashes. To the potentially largest deportation in U.S. history. They're going to come to the businesses. They're going to come to the restaurants. They're going to come here. Planet Money. We go to the places at the center of the story. The Planet Money podcast from NPR. What did you accomplish last week?

Well, that's the question that hundreds of thousands of government employees have until tonight at 1159 PM to be exact to answer, or they could lose their jobs. The deadline was laid out in a three line email sent Saturday from the Office of Personnel Management. Elon Musk, President Trump's cost cutting chief and an unelected billionaire threatened on X, the failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.

Suzanne Summerlin is a federal sector labor attorney in Washington DC. She says ignoring the email likely would not be grounds for firing and. You can't interpret silence to be a resignation. Resignations in the federal service must be made voluntarily by the employee and the employee has until the date of their resignation to rescind it. Summerlin and others also question the legality of the demand.

She says the office of personnel management must respect the chain of command within government agencies. OPM seems to be running an in-route around that chain of command and directly dealing with employees. This is a violation of collective bargaining laws, unfair labor practice laws. On Sunday OPM said the emails were part of the Trump administration's commitment to an efficient and accountable federal workforce. To add to the confusion, some agency leaders appointed by Trump at the FBI, the State Department, and the Department of Defense are instructing employees to disregard the email.

Still, the directive has prompted a new sense of uncertainty and confusion among federal workers. So far, in a little over a month into the Trump administration, thousands of government employees were dismissed, including some by mistake. Music French President Emmanuel Macron is in Washington today where he will meet with President Trump in the Oval Office. Yeah, European leaders were stunned by President Trump's abrupt reversal of alliances last week. He accused Ukraine of starting the war with Russia.

Ukraine did not start the war and Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a dictator while letting Russian President Vladimir Putin off the hook for its full-scale invasion of its neighbor. In meetings today, Macron will try to keep Trump on board with the U.S.'s traditional allies. MPR's Eleanor Beardsley is in Paris following all this. So Eleanor, what arguments will he try to try and get through to President Trump? Well, yeah, A, Macron is going to try to convince Trump that it's in America's strategic interests

not to make some deal with the Russians without involving the Europeans. He'll present a European action plan to help achieve a peace deal that is durable with solid guarantees that Russia won't use the time to build up its forces and invade Ukraine again, Macron must make Trump understand that Russia poses an existential threat to Europe. And to do this, he'll be relying on his personal friendship with President Trump.

Macron is probably the closest to Trump of all the European leaders, with the exception of Hungary's Viktor Orbán. And he's going to appeal to Trump's ego and inner dealmaker. In fact, Macron actually told us what he would say to Trump in a live question and answer session broadcast on Instagram last week. Let's have a listen. You can't be weak in front of Putin. I'm going to tell him, you can't be weak in front of Putin.

That's not you. He said he'd tell Trump, that's not your brand and it's not in your interest. How are you going to be credible in front of China if you're weak in front of Russia? Macron said he would also emphasize that Trump cannot help someone, i.e. Vladimir Putin, who's actually helping Iran develop the nuclear bomb. All right, so what are European leaders like Macron proposing? Well, last week there were two emergency meetings out of Paris after Trump's comments about the war. A couple dozen leaders attended.

France and Britain, who are Europe's only nuclear powers, are said to be ready to provide the backbone of a European military force to secure any peace deal in Ukraine. That would include boots on the ground in the air and even ships at sea. Other countries that could join include Finland, Sweden and the Baltics. The problem is Putin has said any European troops in Ukraine is a red line. Now British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is also expected to meet with Trump this week. I spoke with Gazena Weber, she's expert in security and defense at the U.S. German Marshall Fund in Paris and she said at first McCraw and Starmer planned to meet together with

Trump but now they have separated their visits. Let's listen. It could be smart to have the sequencing of the visits to reinforce the message and potentially also adapt it and coordinate it. So if Macaul manages to speak for the Europeans and Starmor manages to speak for the Europeans, that can actually be a message amplifier. But some analysts say it's already too late for the Europeans because Trump so wants to cut a deal with Putin. Trump has demanded that Europeans contribute more to their security. So are they willing to do this long term?

Well first of all, we have to say Europe has given more for the war in Ukraine if you add military, financial and humanitarian. But yes, this is a big wake up call. For the second time, their transatlantic ally looks like it might not always have their back. So they are ready to increase. Many nations are spending more and say they will, but everything is going on at such an accelerated pace now,

and it's gonna take time to get those defense industries going. That's NPR International correspondent, Eleanor Beardsley in Paris. Eleanor, thanks. Thank you. Germany is getting a new chancellor. Yeah, results this morning indicate that Friedrich Meret's center-right Christian Democrats will be able to form a new government with only one coalition partner. That will likely return the country to a more stable two-party government that ran Germany

for most of the past three decades. NPR's Berlin correspondent Rob Schmitz joins us now to talk about the results. So Rob, Chancellor Olaf Scholz is on his way out, which means Europe's biggest economy will have a new leader. So what was the big issue that decided this election? Well for the most part it was the struggling German economy. Scholz's government collapsed over a dispute about how to revive it. But it was also Schulz himself who's been the problem for voters. His slow, methodical approach to governing did not suit the chaotic times that Europe is in with a war on European soil and an economic downturn. These challenges require decisive action, and his three-party

coalition government had a difficult time rising to the occasion. So it's clear from the results that Germany will likely return to a two-party coalition government. How is it gonna be different than the last administration? Well, Scholz's center-left social democrats will likely remain in the government, but it's the center-right Christian democrats under Friedrich Merz that will be in the driver's seat now and Merz seems ready to move fast. He wants a government formed by mid-April which is very quick for Germany and he says he has big plans. He said last night that his number one priority is to strengthen Europe as

quickly as possible so that it can achieve independence from the United States. He went on to say I never thought I'd be saying this but after Donald Trump's statements last week It's clear the Americans or at least this administration is indifferent to the fate of Europe I want to point out here that Germany has long considered the US as its most important ally So this is truly an astonishing statement from an incoming German Chancellor Yeah, and one thing we should say here is that the far-right Alternative for Germany party came in a strong second place. Say will not though be in government.

Why not, Rob? No, you know, Germany's parties in the political center have vowed never to govern with the AFD, the party's acronym in German. The AFD is under domestic surveillance for the threat it poses to Germany's democracy. Its members routinely trivialized German atrocities in World War II. Last night, Meritz derided the AfD saying it was not interested in real solutions and that the AfD is happy to see Germany's problems get worse. He also criticized the AfD for its cozy relationship with

Elon Musk. Oh and how did the AfD respond? Well the party's co-chair Alice Vitals said Merz's incoming government will not last long. Here's what she said. So she's saying here Merz won't be able to form a stable government without the AfD and that he will face the consequences when his government crashes and fails. But will Merz have a stable government? So I pose that question to the US German Marshall Fund's Suda David-Wilp. Here's what she said. And now it's going to be difficult for this sort of grand coalition, but it needs to deliver reform. Otherwise, the AFD may be even stronger during the next German election. And even now it cannot be

ignored because it will be the largest party in the opposition. So she said what this means is that Merz's incoming government will need to move toward the right to address voter concerns like migration and a slowing German economy. And it's clear Germans really care about these things because voter turnout was 84%. That is the highest turnout since Germany's reunification in 1990. That's MPRs, Rob Schmitz. Rob, thanks. Thank you.

The environmental group Greenpeace USA faces a $300 million lawsuit that could force it to shut down. This is related to Native American-led protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline about eight years ago. The company that built the crude oil pipeline is suing Greenpeace. Jury selection begins this morning in North Dakota. Jeff Brady joins us now from NPR's climate desk. So Jeff, why is the pipeline

company suing Greenpeace? Yeah, the company is Energy Transfers based in Dallas and it claims Greenpeace and other activists conspired to raise money, incite protests, hurt the company's reputation and delay construction of its Dakota Access pipeline. Energy Transfers didn't respond to our interview request, but co-founder and now executive chairman Kelsey Warren did answer questions on CNBC back in 2017. Everybody's afraid of these environmental groups and the fear that it may look wrong if you fight back with these people. But what they did to us is wrong and they're going to pay for it.

This was when Energy Transfer filed a federal lawsuit. That case was dismissed and the company filed a similar case in state court. That's the case headed to trial now. So how did the protests wind up affecting the pipeline construction? There were thousands of protesters who traveled to North Dakota and camped out near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation. The pipeline route is just north of there. There were clashes with police. At one point, officers used water cannons on protesters and below freezing temperatures. Still, the 1,100-mile pipeline was finished

and it's been transporting oil since 2017. Construction was delayed, Kelsey Warren estimated, about 90 days in that interview. Okay. So what is Greenpeace saying about this case? And actually, I mean, how does it plan to defend itself? Greenpeace calls this a SLAP suit, and SLAP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. Essentially, a wealthy company takes a less wealthy critic to court, forcing them to spend time and money defending themselves rather than protesting.

Sushma Raman is the interim executive director at Greenpeace USA and says this is a free speech issue. This case is simple. Big Oil wants to silence its critics. We will not be silenced. We are fighting back. Greenpeace says the goal here is to win and dissuade other companies from filing cases like this. Yeah these slap suits have been an issue across the country. Some states have even passed laws to counter them. So what's the situation in North Dakota? Yeah, 35 states and the District of Columbia have anti-SLAPP laws now. That makes it easier to get cases dismissed and recover attorney fees from plaintiffs. But North Dakota is one of 15 states that does not have such a law. That means even

if Greenpeace wins this case, it'll have to pay for its own defense. The organization hasn't disclosed how much that'll be, but a spokesperson says what they've spent so far is in the millions. Okay, so jury selection begins today. How long might this trial last? It's expected to last about five weeks. Should go to the jury at the end of March or beginning of April. We haven't seen any hint of settlement talks yet. Both sides seem pretty dug in on their positions here. So once there's a decision, I suspect an appeal is pretty likely.

All right, that's Jeff Brady from NPR's climate desk. Jeff, thank you very much. Thanks for having me. And that's up first for Monday, February 24th. I'm E. Martinez. And I'm Leila Faldin. 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 podcasts. Today's Up First was edited by Rylan Barton, Kevin Drew, Neela Banerjee, Janaya Williams, and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Ziad Butch, Neha Dumas, and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Arthur Laurent, and our technical director is Stacey Abbott. Join us again tomorrow. There is a lot happening right now in the world of economics. You may have heard about the president's desire for a sovereign wealth fund. If your country is small, well governed and has a surplus, it is probably a good idea. We are not any of those.

We're here to cover federal buyouts, the cost of deportation, and so much more. Tune in to MPR's The Indicator from Planet Money. Technologist Pau Garcia is using AI to create photos of people's most precious memories. How her mother was dressed, the haircut that she remembered. We generated tens of images and then she saw two images that was like, that was it. Ideas about the future of memory. That's on the Ted Radio Hour podcast from NPR. On the embedded podcast.

No, no. It's called, denying a freedom of speech. It's misinformation. Like so many Americans, my dad has gotten swept up in conspiracy theories. These are not conspiracy theories. These are reality. I spent the year following him down the rabbit hole, trying to get him back. Listen to alternate realities on the embedded podcast from NPR. All episodes available now.