Up First from NPR - Israel May Delay Rafah Operation, Social Media SCOTUS Case, Another Shutdown Looms

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to move ahead with a ground offensive in the border city of Rafah, even though a ceasefire deal may delay the operation. The battle over free speech on social media reaches the U.S. Supreme Court, and Congress faces yet another government shutdown deadline this week.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 Krishnadev Calamur, Mark Katkov, Ben Adler and HJ Mai. It was produced by Claire Murashima, Ben Abrams and Julie Depenbrock. 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's prime minister sets conditions to pause fighting in Gaza. Benjamin Netanyahu says he doesn't want to call off a new ground offensive and is only willing to delay it. I'm Steve Inskeep with Michelle Martin, and this is Up First from NPR News. The battle over free speech on social media reaches the U.S. Supreme Court. These cases are going to define the future of the internet. Will the justices let Florida and Texas force Facebook and other platforms to carry content they deem objectionable? And Congress faces yet another government shutdown deadline this week. Why is it so hard for lawmakers to fulfill their most basic responsibility, funding the government?

Stay with us. Here comes 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. Two initiatives in Gaza are on a collision course. Negotiators are inching toward a new temporary ceasefire with an exchange of Israelis held hostage by Hamas for Palestinians detained in Israel.

Those are the elements of the deal. Despite American objections, Israel's military could launch a new offensive into crowded southern Gaza where displaced Palestinians have been seeking refuge. Now Israel's prime minister says even if there is a ceasefire, he will not call that off. He will only delay it. NPR's Daniel Eshren is in Tel Aviv to tell us more. Good morning, Daniel.

Hi, Michelle. Good morning. So could you just start by telling us what we know about Israel's intentions for Rafah? Well, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is still insisting that Israel's next military objective is Rafah. This is the southernmost city in Gaza. And as Israeli troops have been sweeping from north Gaza to central Gaza to south Gaza, this is the last part of Gaza where Israeli troops have not yet entered. It's where Israel says most of the remaining Hamas battalions are left. And here is what Prime Minister Netanyahu said this weekend on CBS. Once we begin the Rafah operation, the intense phase of the fighting is weeks away from completion. Not months, weeks away from completion.

But the U.S. has been warning against this operation. This is an area where more than a million Palestinians have been sheltering. And so last night, the Israeli military presented plans to Israel's war cabinet, plans on how they will evacuate Palestinians from that area and their battle plans there as well. So all of this is Israel signaling to the U.S. that, you know, despite the objections of its most important ally, Israel doesn't tend to move forward in Rafah. Could you just now tell us more about that deal being negotiated? Where do the talks stand now? And what are the main points of agreement so far as we know? Well, we have heard from an Egyptian official close to the talks who spoke with NPR that the next stage of the negotiations are going to be held in Qatar. Israeli, Egyptian and US intelligence officials will be meeting. And they're following up on a meeting held late last week in Paris.

And they're working off of a basic framework here, which would be a six-week ceasefire and the release of some Israeli hostages, exchanging them for some Palestinian prisoners. So the Israeli media are now reporting that what they're going to be working out are some of the details, like the number of Palestinian prisoners they're willing to release. Also, part of these talks we're hearing are discussions for a new technocratic Palestinian government to manage all of the Palestinian territories, Gaza and the West Bank, when the war is over. And to that end, the Palestinian Authority government submitted its own resignation today. There is this sense of urgency, Michelle, to reach some big deal here for at least a temporary ceasefire before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins in just two weeks. And Daniel, finally, but certainly not least important, can we hear more about the conditions

in Gaza? I mean, we're nearly five months into this, and there's been massive destruction, as you've been reporting, elsewhere in Gaza. Tell us about conditions. Yeah, the United Nations is reporting significant food shortages and extreme hunger. The last time the UN was able to deliver food to northern Gaza was more than a month ago. And the Israeli cabinet discussed plans to try to get aid safely to northern Gaza. Part of the problem has been when aid enters from Egypt into Gaza, Palestinians have stolen aid from the trucks. It just shows that sense of desperation there. Israeli strikes continue. We could see a grim new milestone by the end of the week. It's approaching 30,000

Palestinians killed, according to Gaza health authorities. That is NPR's Daniel Estrin in Tel Aviv. Daniel, thank you so much. You're welcome. Today, the Supreme Court hears a case that could help define the future of the internet. Legal experts say it's one of the most important First Amendment cases in a generation. The question is whether states like Florida and Texas can force social media platforms to carry content they find hateful or objectionable. NPR Justice Correspondent Carrie Johnson has been covering the case,

and she's with us now to tell us more about it. Good morning, Carrie. Good morning. Okay, could you just start by telling us more about these state laws and how they came to be? Florida and Texas passed these laws months after the riot at the Capitol in January 2021. At that time, several social media platforms booted former President Donald Trump after the riot, fearing that his messages could provoke more unrest. But the state said they worried about big social media companies

censoring conservative views. Here's Texas Governor Greg Abbott as he signed the law back in 2021. There is a dangerous movement by some social media companies to silence conservative ideas and values. This is wrong, and we will not allow it in Texas. These state laws prevent social media companies from banning users based on their political viewpoints. And a separate law in Florida prevents the social media platforms from rapidly changing their policies, and it requires them to explain to users about why their posts have been edited or removed. How are the social media sites responding to these laws? These laws apply to most of the big platforms.

These are name brand companies like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and X. Two trade associations sued over the laws. They say these laws interfere with steps the sites take to remove posts that are racist or sexist or disgusting. Carl Szabo is a lawyer at NetChoice, one of those trade groups. This is all about whether government can come in and force you, me, or anyone listening to say something we don't want to say or carry somebody else's speech we don't want to carry. Legal experts say this is one of the most important First Amendment cases in years. Yes, listening to this, it just seems like you can't really overstate just how much is at stake here. Yeah, there have been a flurry of court filings before the Supreme Court, mostly

from groups that are siding with the social media companies. And that's been across the political spectrum, from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Americans for Prosperity, which is affiliated with the Koch brothers, to the ACLU. A bipartisan group of national security experts also wrote the justices. They warned about how terrorist groups and extremists here at home can use the internet to attract converts and broadcast violence. Here's Rupa Bhattacharya, a former Justice Department lawyer. Social media content moderation plays a really important role in keeping some of the worst of the hate and the violence off of the Internet.

She says if the Supreme Court upholds these laws, content moderation as we know it is dead. Carrie, before we let you go, do you have any sense of how the justices might evaluate these issues that are at the center of this case or these cases. The 11th Circuit Appeals Court struck down Florida's social media law, but the very conservative Fifth Circuit shocked First Amendment scholars when it upheld the Texas law. A lawyer for Net Choice, that big trade association for the social media platforms, sounded pretty confident the Supreme Court would invalidate these sweeping state laws. Keeping them in place would have major consequences for the First Amendment and social media as we know it. That's Keri Johnson. Keri, thank you. My pleasure. Congress is supposed to pass laws to fund the government every year, and that's supposed to

happen by the end of September. The end of September. Well, it's now February, late February, and still nothing. They keep pushing back the deadline to avoid calamity. Lawmakers have another self-imposed shutdown deadline on Friday, which is likely to result in one of two things, a shutdown or another continuation of the spending plans authorized a very long time ago, back in 2022. NPR congressional reporter Eric McDaniel is here in the studio with us again to tell us more about this again. Good morning. Good morning again. So, you know, you've been covering Congress since October, and I already feel like we've talked about this three or four times, but it keeps happening. Why is that? This is actually so important for people to understand. And the answer is kind of simple, but kind of sad. Congress is broken, right? Passing

funding legislation is the core responsibility of the legislative branch. We're sitting here in the richest country in the world. You've probably heard this called the power of the purse. And instead of coming together to figure out how the United States should best use the money it collects from citizens and taxpayers, it's relied on decisions made back in 2022 just to keep the lights on. But the world is different now, right? Inflation has limited how far dollars go. It prevents every single part of the government from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to the Department of Education from doing long-term planning with the key context of, you know, knowing how much money they'll have to devote to their programs. Okay, so for people who may not remember their kind of high school civics class,

this is the most essential part of Congress's job. So why haven't lawmakers done it? I've said it before, I'll say it again. It's true that House Republicans have a very narrow majority. That means in order to pass anything with just Republican votes, which is typical when you've got the gavel, when you've got the power, they have to keep everyone in a very divided party on the same page. But I actually think that's just sort of half the story. The fuller answer here is about systems. House Republicans changed the rules at the beginning of this Congress last January. So in practice, it only takes three or four people out of more than 200 to fire their boss, Speaker Mike Johnson.

But working with Democrats to keep the government open will upset more than just those three or four people because there's a faction of the Republican Party that sees anything less than sort of passing their ultimate conservative priorities as a failure, who see bipartisan legislating as a failure. But Congress right now is under bipartisan control. The Democrats have power in the Senate, and those two stances are sort of irreconcilable. Is there a path out of that? I'll give you a short-term answer and a longer-term answer. Lawmakers will meet with the White House on Tuesday, but they've also got other stuff to tackle. Ukraine and Israel aid a possible Biden impeachment, even after a central witness was just charged by prosecutors who say he was lying about some of the things he told them.

The Senate also has to deal with the impeachment of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. But on funding, every one of these short-term extension bills we've been talking about, in fact, every major piece of legislation in the 118th Congress, has passed with more House Democratic votes than House Republican votes, even though Republicans are in the majority. These full-year government funding bills, for all the reasons we've talked about, won't be any different. And as far as I can tell, the only way I can see to move forward is for Speaker Johnson to put the most conservative plan that can still get Democratic votes up for a vote on the House floor, even if that means

risking his job, which it definitely does. The long term answer here is this is kind of how the House of Representatives is designed to work right now. There are just 20 or so of the more than 400 seats that have competitive races because of how maps are drawn and how party primaries work. Really encouraging compromise would probably take changes to those systems. That is NPR congressional reporter Eric McDaniel. Eric, thank you. Thank you. And that's Up First for Monday, February 26th. I'm Michelle Martin. And I'm Steve Inskeep.

Today's Up First was edited by Krishnadev Kalamar, Mark Katkoff, Ben Adler, and H.J. Mai. It was produced by Claire Murashima, Ben Abrams, and Julie Deppenbrock. We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott, and our technical director is Zach Coleman. Join us tomorrow. 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 is the radio show that Laila Fadal, A. Martinez, Steve Inskeep, and I host. Find Morning Edition on your local NPR station at stations.npr.org.