Up First from NPR - Israel Expands Military Operation, SCOTUS Hears Purdue Pharma Case, Liz Cheney

Episode Date: December 4, 2023

Israel says it expanded its ground offensive against Hamas to all parts of Gaza. This includes the occupied territory's southern areas, where people fled to in the early days of the war. What does this mean for the civilians in Gaza? The Supreme Court on Monday hears arguments for and against a bankruptcy settlement. It involves Purdue Pharma, maker of the pain medication OxyContin. And former Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney warns about the threat of a second Trump presidency.Up First was edited by Michael Sullivan, Krishnadev Calamur, Reena Advani and HJ Mai. It was produced by Lilly Quiroz, Mansee Khurana and Lindsay Totty. 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

Israel says it expanded its ground defensive against Hamas to all parts of Gaza. This includes the occupied territory's southern areas where people fled to in the early days of the war. So what does this mean for the civilians in Gaza? I'm Steve Inskeep with Michelle Martin, and this is Up First from NPR News. Today, the Supreme Court hears arguments for and against a bankruptcy settlement. It involves Purdue Pharma, maker of the pain medication OxyContin. Can members of the Sackler family limit their liability? And former Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney warns our co-host Leila Fadl about the threat of a second Trump presidency.

I think the danger is that great that that needs to be everybody's top priority. She makes the case against the Trump-led Republican Party in her new book. 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. Israel's military says it has expanded its ground offensive in Gaza and is now targeting Hamas strongholds all across the Gaza Strip. Israeli forces are telling people to flee some areas to avoid those strikes, and that is the hard part. Many civilians have already moved from

northern Gaza to the south and may now face demands to leave the same areas to which they fled. Joining us now with more is NPR's Eleanor Beardsley in Tel Aviv. Eleanor, hello. Hello. So the fighting resumed on Friday after the ceasefire broke down. Would you just start by telling us more about Israel's stepped-up operations? Yes. Well, Israel says it's hit hundreds of Hamas targets overnight as its forces push deeper into Gaza. And there were multiple strikes in and around the southern Gaza city of Han Yunis, where the top Hamas leadership is believed to be located, including Yahya Sinwar, who orchestrated the October 7th attack.

Israeli media is reporting that any fighting in Han Yunis will be complicated not only by the hundreds of thousands of people who have fled from the north, but also by the fact that some of the Israeli hostages are believed to be held somewhere around the city. Here's Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari. The IDF continues to expand its ground operation against the center. Yeah, so he says the Israeli forces are fighting Hamas terrorists face-to-face wherever they are and killing them. The Israeli military says it has found 800 Hamas tunnels since the beginning of the war, and it claims to have destroyed 500 of them. So, Honor, as we already mentioned, Israel is telling many people in the areas that it is

targeting to leave. But how and where are they supposed to go? We're already hearing that this latest evacuation warning is causing a lot of confusion and anger. Yeah, that's right. I mean, the Israeli army is claiming to have published a very detailed digital map online to help people get to safer places, and they've also dropped leaflets. You know, they're urging people to go east or west toward the sea, but you can't go any farther south, so it's difficult. NPR's producer in Gaza, Anas Baba, spoke with Gazans yesterday. Here's Basil Basuni. He's an engineer and a father. He's putting up a tent for his family in Rafah. He's

just fled Han Yunus. He says there are no words to describe the horrible conditions and what's happening. He says there are more than 100 families here, and the last two nights were the most terrible in my life, he told NPR. Bassouni says he and his five children watched as the sky was lit up with bombing. Well, what about Israelis? What are you hearing Israelis saying about this renewed fighting? Well, some Israelis will tell you that it's just time to get rid of Hamas once and for all, but here in Tel Aviv, the prevailing sentiment seems to be that

getting the hostages out is more important than the war, and it should come first. I was at a massive rally in Tel Aviv over the weekend for the more than 100 hostages still in Gaza. Hadass Calderon spoke. Her two children, ages 12 and 16, were kidnapped from a kibbutz and just released. Here she is. Mom, you're alive! Mom, we didn't, you're alive, is the first thing my kids said to me, she tells the crowd. And her kids thought she had been killed when they were separated in the October 7th Hamas attack.

And Calderon told the crowd, we can't leave the hostages there in the dark and helpless. And briefly, Eleanor, you were in the Israeli-occupied West Bank over the weekend. What are people saying there? Well, people feel frustrated and there's powerlessness over what's happening in Gaza. I spoke with 70-year-old Ahmad Omar, a jeweler in Ramallah. He described how people feel. They feel so bad about Gaza. You know, it's affecting everybody because they're Palestinians, you know, the same people. We can't do nothing about it. They bombarded it so much. We see little kids. It's hard. You know, tensions have risen in the West Bank since October 7th,

and Israeli human rights groups say that 250 Palestinians have been killed since then. One told me it was a pressure cooker ready to explode. That's NPR's Eleanor Beardsley in Tel Aviv. Eleanor, thank you. You're welcome. The Supreme Court meets the opioid crisis today. The justices hear arguments in a challenge to the bankruptcy deal that was meant to compensate victims of the addictive painkiller OxyContin. NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg is covering the story. Nina, good morning. Good morning, Steve. What's his case about? Well, you know, today we know that

Purdue Pharma actively pushed highly addictive drugs without telling people what they were doing. That's documented in court and in a documentary called Crime of the Century. This was a new drug cartel. There were drug dealers wearing suits and lab coats. By 2020, Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty to three criminal charges, and the company agreed that it owed $8 billion in criminal and civil fines, most of which were to be paid to state and local governments handling the fallout from the opioid crisis. And most of that

money was conditioned on the company reaching a deal in bankruptcy court that would reimburse the victims. Okay, so I'd heard about all of that. Is a challenge to that arrangement what the Supreme Court is now considering? Correct. The question at the center of the case is whether the bankruptcy court has the authority to release the Sacklers from liability, despite the fact that all three of the original Sackler brothers who bought Purdue and ultimately developed OxyContin were doctors, and that six Sacklers sat on the board of the company, including the board chair Richard Sackler, who closely directed the firm's aggressive and deceptive OxyContin marketing strategy.

Okay, so the question is whether the court had the power, but don't courts have a lot of power in these cases? They do, but the question of releasing from liability a whole category of guilty players is one that's not been decided by the Supreme Court. In this case, the Sacklers at first offered $4 billion for the settlement, then moved it up to $6 billion. But the Justice Department trustee who oversees bankruptcy cases in New York, Connecticut, and Vermont still objected to the deal. And defending that position today, the Biden administration will argue that the bankruptcy law does not authorize bankruptcy courts to approve or release from liability for third parties like the Sacklers who have not declared bankruptcy and still have at least half their wealth and probably more if the deal is approved.

OK, so the Biden administration is taking the view that the Sacklers shouldn't get away with whatever they still are getting away with. What are the basic arguments on each side? Those opposing the settlement deal say that the Sacklers are effectively getting the rewards of a bankruptcy at half price, but they're still able to keep more than half of their money in assets, and they can't be sued personally, so they'll never have to testify about their misdeeds. Georgetown Law Professor Adam Levitin puts it this way. Bankruptcy is supposed to provide relief for honest but unfortunate debtors. They come clean about their assets, and they give up all of their assets to their creditors. And the Sacklers are not doing either of those things.

The other side acknowledges that bankruptcies can be messy, like this one, but it's the only way to get all the players and the victims in one tent and provide some real compensation. And if the Supreme Court vetoes the bankruptcy, there's no guarantee that victims will actually be compensated because the Sacklers have hidden their wealth in foreign banks that are very difficult to access. And at best, getting to that money would take years and potentially burn millions, if not billions of dollars in legal fees. NPR's Nina Totenberg, thanks so much. Thank you, Steve. Former Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney is sounding a warning about former President

Donald Trump. Yeah, she told our colleague Leila Fadl it would be the end of democracy in this country if Trump is elected again. Cheney used to be the number three House Republican, a post she lost when she turned against Trump for his effort to stay in office after he lost the presidential election in 2020. She spoke to Leila ahead of the release of her new book, which comes out tomorrow. And Leila is with us now to give us a preview. Good morning. Good morning, Michelle. You had a pretty thorough conversation with her, and I know you read her book. What was your biggest takeaway? I mean, biggest takeaway is that Cheney's making it her mission to make sure Trump is not reelected. Let's listen to some of our conversation. Are you considering a run for the presidency in 2024? I haven't ruled it out. I look at it, though, very much

through the lens of stopping Donald Trump. And so whatever it will take to do that is very much my focus. I think the danger is that great, that that needs to be everybody's top priority. So her warning is stark. She says, as Steve said, democracy in this country is at stake if Trump is elected again. And her book, Oath and Honor, is an accounting of what happened inside her party in the weeks before and after the January 6th attack on the Capitol by supporters of the former president. And Michelle, she does not hold back, calling her former colleagues collaborators and enablers who knowingly went along with a lie that the election was stolen in 2020 and a lie that led

to the attack on the Capitol. And she writes in her book that Trump is the most dangerous man ever to inhabit the Oval Office. What about her former colleagues? I mean, you said that she doesn't hold back there. What about the Republican Party writ large, the party itself? As you know, Michelle, Liz Cheney is a through and through conservative, but she told me the Republican Party in its current form is not her party. She calls it an anti-constitutional party. And I asked her what she thought when she saw six out of eight Republican White House hopefuls in a debate raise their hands when asked if they'd support Trump as the Republican nominee if he were convicted of a crime. And here's what she said. If the party goes down the path of nominating Donald Trump, certainly the party itself will have lost any claim to be a party that is in fact supportive of the Constitution.

You know, Layla Cheney was part of the January 6th committee, which investigated the attack on the Capitol. Does she think her work with that committee accomplished what it needed to? You know, I asked her that, and she says that work was just the beginning. It's why she wrote this book, she says, in which she calls out the Republican Party leadership for being cowards who went along with Trump and risked the country's institutions, is what she wrote. And the danger, she says, is not in the rearview mirror. There was an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal recently where they suggested that even if Donald Trump were elected, it wouldn't be that bad because, of course, we have these institutions and we have these traditions and

we have the separation of powers and that people could somehow count on that to restrain him. And one of the main messages of my book is, no, you can't. You cannot count on those institutions to restrain him. Well, looking forward to hearing more of what she said. That's NPR's Leila Fano. Leila, thank you. Thanks, Michelle. You can find more of Leila's interview with Liz Cheney on Morning Edition and at NPR.org. And that's Up First for Monday, December 4th. I'm Michelle Martin. And I'm Steve Inskeep. Today's Up First was edited by Michael Sullivan, Krishnadev Kalamar, Reena Advani, and H.J. Mai. It was produced by Lily Quiroz, Manzi Khurana, and Lindsay Tate.

We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott, and our technical director is Zach Coleman. Join us tomorrow. And thanks for listening to Up First. You can find more in-depth coverage of the stories we talked about today and a lot more on NPR's Morning Edition. That's the radio show that A. Martinez, Leila Fadl, Steve Inskeep, and I host. Find Morning Edition on your local NPR station at station.npr.org.

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