Up First from NPR - Gaza Hospitals, Biden-Xi Meeting, Looming Government Shutdown

Episode Date: November 13, 2023

Israeli troops advance on Gaza City's Al-Shifa Hospital, where Hamas militants allegedly maintain a command center. President Joe Biden prepares to speak to his Chinese counterpart for the first time in more than a year. Short-term funding for the federal government faces opposition from Democrats and Republicans.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Israeli ground troops approach Palestinian hospitals fighting Hamas as they go. The United States does not want to see firefights in hospitals. An easy thing to say and apparently hard to stop. How can the world protect patients? I'm Leila Faldil with Steve Inskeep and this is Up First from NPR News. President Biden meets China's leaders this week. He hasn't spoken with Xi Jinping for a year. And if the U.S. has been tough on China, it reflects voter preferences. We saw that a majority, some of it's a slim majority, but of Republicans, Democrats, and independents all see China as a threat.

What can the president do to keep the rivalry from going too far? Also, Congress faces another deadline to keep the government open. The last Republican House speaker lost his job over this, so what can his replacement do? Stay with us. We've got 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. Israeli ground forces are battling Hamas on the streets of Gaza City with heavy fighting now around the main hospital called Al-Shifa. Israel and Hamas have made competing claims about hospitals, with Israelis and their U.S. allies asserting Hamas fighters hide under hospitals. Here's National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. is operating in a way that's outside the bounds of any civilized concept of how you would think about using a hospital, using human shields. Now, Hamas denies this, and we may find out soon whose claims are true since Israeli ground troops are nearby. In the meantime, patients and doctors are caught in the crossfire. And that is the story we're going to focus on this morning.

What is it like for patients and doctors inside that hospital? And Pierzia Batraoui is in Cairo, has been talking with people inside. Hi, there, yeah? Hi, Steve. What are you hearing? Well, there are about a dozen hospitals facing these evacuation orders, and several have gone dark already over the weekend. There have been attempts by me and others to reach people in Gaza City and these hospitals, and we weren't able to. But some hospitals have also already been hit, and some including by airstrikes. So they've also come under attack. And Gaza's largest hospital, El Shifa, on Saturday ran out of fuel completely.

And that means that about 40 babies were taken out of their incubators, and at least two died already. Nurses at El Shifa are trying to keep them warm, putting them next to one another on hospital beds. Doctors Without Borders has, nurses at El Shifa are trying to keep them warm, putting them next to one another on hospital beds. Doctors Without Borders has medical teams at El Shifa. This is what the group's emergency coordinator, Paul Kaney, told me today. Our staff is saying there's no electricity. People are staying in the corridors because of sniper fire near the windows

and that they cannot move any, pardon me, none of the patients due to no ambrosia. So Israel has not allowed any fuel to enter Gaza in over a month, but it did offer 300 liters of fuel to al-Shifa on Sunday for its neonatal department. But statements from the Palestinian health ministry say there's no safe way for them to collect this fuel and that it wouldn't have powered the hospital for more than half an hour. So the offer was rejected, and patients are suffering inside. Okay, so Israel says it offered fuel. What else is Israel saying about the crisis at that hospital? Well, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with CNN,

and he again alleged that Hamas is using al-Shifa Hospital as a command center for terrorism. Israel hasn't provided evidence for that claim, and Hamas denies this. But we may soon find out whose claim is true, since Israeli forces are closing in on these areas in Gaza City. Netanyahu also put full responsibility for this war on Hamas. He said that the hospital is not under siege and that people can leave if they want. And he insisted again that the aim of this war is to destroy Hamas. That's the group behind the October 7th attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people there. And he's rejecting calls for a ceasefire, saying around 240 hostages should be released first. Okay, so Netanyahu has said people can leave if they want.

I guess we should add if they are able. So let's interrogate that a little bit. I know there are now these humanitarian pauses with a kind of corridor going from Gaza City to the south, which people can take if they are able. What's happening with people, whether they're in a hospital or not? Are they getting out? Well, the UN Relief Agency, Steve says, there are still hundreds of thousands of people in the north, and they are struggling to survive. Food is running out for them. And again, a lot of these people cannot make this journey along this main road that Israel has designated for people to leave on because they have to walk for miles by foot. And so there are elderly and disabled people and, again, critically injured people and others

who just cannot make that journey. And also they can't get to that road safely. They're not able to evacuate the areas that they're in in northern Gaza and Gaza City to get there. And anyways, the South isn't that much safer for people. The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza says that of more than 11,000 people killed in this war already, including more than 4,500 children, at least 40% of these deaths were from airstrikes in the south where people have been forced to flee.

An update on one aspect of the Israel-Hamas war from NPR's Aya Batraoui. Thank you so much. Thank you. This week, President Biden focuses on the issue he's placed at the center of his foreign policy. It's not the wars in the Middle East or Ukraine. It's countering China. To Biden, how to push back on an authoritarian rival is a big problem for the future. It's also a political challenge now. Republican candidates have made slogans about China part of their campaigns. NPR senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith will travel along as the president attends a summit of Asian leaders, including China's Xi Jinping. Hey there, Tam. Hey. What are the leaders of the U.S. and China doing? Well, they're set to meet on Wednesday

in the Bay Area for in-depth discussions on a whole range of issues that are causing tensions from unfair trade practices to the military buildup in the South China Sea. And Xi and Biden have not had a conversation since the last time they met a year ago in Bali. Things have been pretty tense. Biden says he wants to manage competition and open communication to reduce the chances of conflict. But China is also something that he talks about in the context of domestic policy, like the big subsidies he's promoted for electric vehicles. Last week, he brought that up to a crowd of United Auto Workers union members in Illinois. China is determined to dominate the electric vehicle market by using unfair trade practices. But I will not let them.

I promise. Well, China is a domestic issue in another way, in that Republican presidential contenders like Ron DeSantis talk about it a lot. Yeah, and that reflects concern among Americans about the threat posed by China. It has reached that concern record levels. Those concerns have been tracked since 1990 in a survey done by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and they shared their latest results exclusively with NPR. They found 58% of Americans see the rise of China as a, quote, critical threat. Here's Dina Smeltz from the Chicago Council. It's also the first time in any of our polls that we saw that a majority, some of it's a slim majority, but of Republicans, Democrats and independents all see China as a threat.

And it's especially pronounced among Republicans. 71 percent see it as a major concern and an overwhelming majority of them say U.S. leaders aren't paying enough attention. Although, let's be frank, I mean, a lot of voters don't truly pay that much attention to foreign policy when it comes to voting, do they? That is true. Just because they're concerned about this doesn't mean that it's going to be what drives them to the polls or makes them decide to vote for one party or one candidate or the other. Voting issues are more likely to be things like abortion or the economy or just sheer partisanship. I talked to Elizabeth Saunders at Georgetown about this. She says, when it comes to foreign policy, there is a lot of evidence in political science

that voters pick a candidate they like and then adopt their views. And of course, the frontrunner in the GOP race, former President Donald Trump, has been talking about the threat from China since 2016, and he is still talking about it. Saunders told me that China is one of these issues where candidates can try to paint a narrative to show that they're tough. And that's part of the reason why Republican candidates were duking it out over China on the debate stage last week. And Xi expects that Republicans are already crafting their attacks on Biden for this week's meeting with Xi, saying it shows that he's weak. Well, what's your week going to be like, Tam? Well, I expect to be part of the small group of reporters known as the pool that gets a look inside the room where the two leaders are meeting. It'll be a quick look,

but I'll be there shouting questions. Okay, we will listen for the answers. Tamara, thanks so much. You're welcome. And Pierce, Tamara Keith. Now, government funding runs out on Friday if Congress cannot agree on a plan to keep the government open. And right now, that's a big if. Speaker Mike Johnson unveiled his short-term funding proposal on a call with Republicans yesterday, but that plan is already facing opposition from Democrats, as well as some of Johnson's fellow Republican lawmakers. NPR congressional reporter Eric McDaniel has been tracking these developments.

Eric, good morning. Good morning. And it's great to have you here, former Up First podcast producer, now a congressional correspondent. So what is the speaker's proposal? Well, like Leila said, it's another short-term funding bill. It's meant to buy folks more time to work out full annual budget bills over the next few months. But it funds some parts of the government, including the Departments of Agriculture, Energy, Transportation through January 19th, and funds the rest of the government, including the Defense Department, through February 2nd. So that two-tiered bill is a goal to pass, you know, more federal budget bills by the end of those deadlines. There are 12 of them, so they don't have to keep relying on short-term extensions, which really upset House conservatives. Yeah, but they're doing short-term extensions now with different deadlines. Why?

I mean, it's a pretty good question. It hasn't really been tried before. The proposal is mostly a gesture of goodwill to the Republican Party hardliners in the House. These are the House Freedom Caucus. And it would give House Republicans more time than just a simple extension through, say, December to get the budget bills across the finish line. In the past, the House has gotten jammed with whatever big bipartisan bill the Senate proposes sometime in December and doesn't have time to change much. But it's worth saying, you know, just like the short-term bill, passing the full budget bills in the House won't be easy. Last week, they had to pull two bills just before voting because they didn't have enough Republican support to pass. Isn't a short-term bill like this

the very thing that got Kevin McCarthy ousted as Speaker of the House? Yeah. And in fact, a lot of the folks who were upset about that short-term bill are also upset about this one. There are already at least three Republican defections. In fact, Speaker Mike Johnson himself was one of the 90 Republicans who voted against the last short-term bill. But now, of course, he's in leadership and spent the last week trying to cobble together a different approach.

And we more or less ended up back where we started. OK, let's think this through. If Mike Johnson can't unite almost all Republicans, he would end up relying on Democrats, as Kevin McCarthy had to do. How have Democrats responded to all this maneuvering? So the Biden administration called the proposal unserious. They accused House Republicans of wasting precious time setting up a shutdown. Congressional Democrats are also pretty skeptical. Democratic lawmakers on the Appropriations Committee called the bill extreme and irresponsible. But it's worth noting here, the proposal from Johnson could have been much,

much more controversial. It doesn't contain any so-called poison pills or new conservative policy positions that would lead House Democrats to dismiss it out of hand. So there is a world in which this could pick up Democratic votes, which is great news for Johnson, because as you said, it appears he'll need them. The Senate hasn't proposed anything of its own yet. We should remember there's another chamber here and obviously time is running out. I'm sure I'll have more to share soon, though, because the House is set to vote on Johnson's funding bill tomorrow. You will be covering this story a lot. Eric, congratulations on the new gig. Thank you.

That's NPR's Eric McDaniel. Here's a bit more political news. Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina is out of the presidential race. He said this last night on a Fox News program Sunday night in America. I am suspending my campaign. I think the voters who are the most remarkable people on the planet have been really clear that they're telling me not now, Tim. Scott announced his run in May, campaigning on his Christian faith and experience as a black man growing up with a single mom in the South. He said his outlook was sunnier than some other candidates. But in recent months, he failed to gain traction in national polls.

And that's Up First for this Monday, November 12th. I'm Steve Inskeep. And I'm Leila Faudel. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Tara Neal, Michael Sullivan, Roberta Rampton, and Kelsey Snell. It was produced by Claire Marashima, Shelby Hawkins, and Ziad Butch. We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott and Arthur Laurent. And our technical director is Zach Coleman. Start your day here with us tomorrow. And for a deep dive on one story, consider Consider This. In the Consider This feed right now,

a year out from the next presidential election, new battle lines are emerging for 2024. Listen to Consider This wherever you get your podcasts.