Up First from NPR - Israel Targets Hezbollah Bank, DOJ Under Trump, Pennsylvania Voters

Episode Date: October 21, 2024

Israeli forces carried out a series of airstrikes across Lebanon late Sunday night targeting a Hezbollah-operated financial institution. Former President Donald Trump vows to carry out retribution against political adversaries, which could mean investigations by the Justice Department and the FBI. NPR's Michel Martin and Steve Inskeep preview some of the voices they've heard while reporting in the swing state, Pennsylvania. 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 Hannah Bloch, Andrew Sussman, Jan Johnson, HJ Mai, Lisa Thomson and Alice Woelfle. It was produced by Paige Waterhouse, Nia Dumas and Kaity Kline. 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

Israeli forces blew up banks across Lebanon, branches linked to Hezbollah. Hezbollah has been diversifying its revenue stream for a long time. How did the militant group and everybody else use the institution? I'm Michelle Martin with Steve Inskeep and this is Up First from NPR News. Former President Donald Trump is threatening retribution against critics and political opponents if he's elected to a second term. That is something that should concern all of us. What could this mean for a Justice Department tasked with carrying out his wishes?

Also, what are the big issues for voters in Pennsylvania? I think a lot of mayors would say that all politics is housing. It's the center point for everybody's experience. Michelle and I have been traveling this vital swing state and we'll bring you some voters voices. Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day. Wait wait, don't tell me. Fresh air? White House. I know this is hard to believe, but one day the election will be over. Then the winner gets a lot more powerful. It's my job to report on what they do with that power. That's public

accountability, but it's not possible without public support. So please support our work. Sign up for NPR+. Go to plus dot NPR dot org. Hey, it's Susan Davis. Yes, there is more than one election happening this year. There are 34 Senate seats up for grabs. And in the House, Republicans are clinging to a single digit majority. Those races will determine what the next president can do with his or her power. We're covering it all this year, but we can't do it without your support. So help us out and sign up for NPR Plus. Go to plus.mpr.org. Israeli forces carried out a series of airstrikes across Lebanon late Sunday night. They targeted branches of a bank operated by Hezbollah.

Israel's military says the bank is involved in financing the group's activities. So how does this fit in with the rest of Israel's military campaign? NPR's Arzu Rezvani is on the line from Beirut. Hey there, Arzu. Hi. Okay. So what exactly is this institution and how does it work? So Al-Qaeda al-Hasan is not a traditional bank.

Experts have described it to me as more of a credit union, one that's been under sanctions since 2007 because the US says it has links to Hezbollah. And how it works is people will bring in gold, often in the form of jewelry, and take out a loan against it. No one earns interest in accordance with Islamic law. Lebanese economists say this lending is pretty safe because loans are guaranteed against something concrete that retains its value well. And because Lebanon has been mired in a severe economic crisis for several years now, a few hundred thousand people have come to rely on Qad al-Hasan as a safer alternative for banking.

Okay, so I'm picturing these storefronts or branches there in cities and towns across Lebanon, and they begin blowing up as the Israeli strikes come Sunday night. Is the network destroyed? So Lebanese authorities are still assessing the extent of the damage to this banking network, but the bank has released a statement saying it had taken measures to safeguard deposits. It had anticipated eventually becoming a target. There are some 30 branches across Lebanon and many are in the south areas that have been getting pummeled by Israel. Getting to those areas has been extremely difficult, very dangerous.

We counted more than 10 strikes last night in a southern suburb of Beirut, Dahiya, which is a Hezbollah stronghold. The state has really restricted access, so it's hard to know at this point if these branches are totally gone and if there's been civilians killed or hurt in the process. The Israeli military did issue evacuation orders, but you know, sometimes it's only minutes before a strike. How vulnerable was Hezbollah on this point? In other words, how much damage can these strikes have done? Well, even if they hit all of these branches,

experts don't think that wiping out this bank will significantly debilitate Hezbollah's cash assets. And that's because it wasn't really generating much of a revenue through it. It was more of a vehicle for moving money around to pay its operatives, for example. I talked to Randa Saleem, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, and here's how she explains it.

The millions of dollars that are needed to fund Hezbollah's military operations come from Iran, come from business streams like their involvement in the sale of Captegon, that is a drug that's produced in Syria, as well as it comes from donations from Shia communities that are wealthy and work in Africa. And so Hezbollah has been diversifying its revenue stream for a long time. Salim and others think that it's really civilians who stand to lose the most after the attack of this banking institution. So how then does this fit in with Israel's larger plans?

Well this is part of the escalation in this war. The war is intensifying and targets on both sides are expanding. Beyond that, experts think an attack like this could sow divisions and turn some of Hezbollah's constituents against the group, which is all part of this bigger effort to dismantle the organization. NPR's Arzu Rezvani in Beirut, thanks so much. You're welcome. Former President Trump is exercising less and less control as he delivers the closing speeches of the presidential campaign. In Pennsylvania Saturday the

former president was expected to give a closing argument for the campaign. Instead he spent several minutes discussing the anatomy of the late golfer Arnold Palmer. He's also spoken freely about going after his enemies. He suggested the use of the National Guard or the military against his fellow Americans to quell unspecified threats on election day. Throughout this election, he's also been talking about using the Justice Department to exact retribution against his perceived enemies.

All these words raise questions about how Trump would act. So NPR national justice correspondent, Carrie Johnson is following that. Carrie, good morning. Good morning, Steve. Okay, how could this president or any president for that matter use the Justice Department?

Well, Donald Trump has vowed to carry out retribution. He's been warning about what he calls the enemy from within. That seems to mean some of his political adversaries could face investigation by the Justice Department and the FBI at different points. Of course, Trump has called for President Joe Biden to be investigated, for retired General Mark Milley to be investigated, and for members of the House Select Committee that investigated the Capitol riot to be investigated. And something has changed since then. A Supreme Court decision this past summer actually gave Trump and future

presidents sweeping immunity from prosecution, including their contacts with the Justice Department. So Donald Trump might be even more unbridled next year than he was during his first term in office. Trump has also floated the idea of pardons for many of the 1,500 people charged in connection with the siege on the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. I guess we got to note that a special prosecutor

has brought criminal cases against former President Trump. There are two at the federal level. What could happen with those cases if the defendant wins? I think the betting is they both go away. Of course, the most serious case against Trump is the federal election interference indictment here in D.C. The special counsel Jack Smith has argued Trump was acting as a candidate for office,

not the president, when he allegedly conspired to overturn the 2020 election. But Donald Trump's likely to direct new DOJ leaders to drop that case and also to refuse to proceed with an appeal in the other federal case against him. That's the one involving classified papers he hoarded at Mar-a-Lago. Remember Judge Eileen Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by Trump, actually dismissed that case in Florida on the grounds the special counsel had been appointed in an unconstitutional way. Right now the Justice Department's appealing, but Trump would likely end that appeal in its tracks.

Doesn't Trump also have an ongoing theme of unleashing, as he sees it, law enforcement generally? Yeah, he says he wants to give police more legal protection from being sued for things like excessive force and he said for years now the death penalty should be carried out against drug dealers and he wants other harsh penalties imposed on people who do things like steal from retail stores. More recently he told a campaign audience police should be allowed to get rough on some of these thieves for just one hour and the word would get out. Now that kind of rhetoric from a former and possibly future president could motivate some police to break the rules and the federal civil rights laws and that's worried a lot of people. One of them is Maya Wiley. She runs the Leadership Conference for Civil and

Human Rights and she says Donald Trump uses language about law enforcement acting as his foot soldiers. For us in the civil rights community, what we're hearing is a pattern, not just of speech, but even of policy. And that is something that should concern all of us. What Trump has been saying this year as opposed to four years ago is much more harsh and much more dark. And Paris Carey Johnson, thanks very much for your insights. My pleasure. Here's some news. Michelle and I have both taken road trips across parts of Pennsylvania.

We've been talking with voters starting in the far Western part of the state and this week we'll be together in the Far East for two public events in Philadelphia. So Steve, what have you been hearing? Well, we've been listening for the connections between people's economic lives and their voting. Well, yeah, I was thinking about the fact

that CEOs often seem to make decisions based on what's best for their companies. So that made me wonder, what about everybody else? Yeah, yeah. And this got us both going your thought about this. And I now think of Samantha Miller, Sam for short, who I met. She's a labor and delivery nurse in Pittsburgh. Seeing people have to make these decisions firsthand has really grounded my beliefs in a woman's right to choose.

Yeah, she told us stories of couples having to decide about abortion with the mother's life at stake, and she's voting for Kamala Harris, and it's informed by her work. Outside the city of Pittsburgh, we met Ben Wallace, who's part of a fracking company, you know, getting oil and gas out of the Appalachians, and he insists that his industry is safe and clean.

This is kind of an argument I give to environmental activists all the time. Show me the industry. You know, you are in the Saudi Arabia of natural gas right now. You are standing here and you don't see the industry anywhere. Yeah, most of the action is underground. We were standing in what just looked like a forest. And he also, by the way, rejects the scientific consensus about climate change. Now, does that mean he's voting on his job?

Wallace denies that. He says he doesn't vote on oil and gas. He says he actually wants freedom and a Christian nation as he understands those terms, but his view of his job clearly matches his politics and he is raising money for Donald Trump. That's interesting because we are seeing the effects of a lot of that money. The ads here in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia are wall to wall. Yeah.

I mean, you cannot turn on the television without seeing some of these ads. We spent a lot of time into so-called bellwether communities. These are areas that have a strong history of picking the eventual winners in a century of presidential elections. In Erie, we visited with students at a career fair at Gannon University and some business people who were trying to recruit them. You know what? We saw something that I think a lot of people are seeing in their own families. People were reluctant to talk about it. It feels very touchy. And in Allentown, we met Latino voters whose city is led by the first Latino mayor, Matt Turk.

I think a lot of mayors would say that all politics is housing. It's the center point for everybody's experience. And that's certainly true. We heard a lot about the high cost of rents, but in Bethlehem, we spoke with Nobeto Dominguez. He's created a Hispanic American League of artists. They are listening to everything. And the more Trump has been talking, the more you're seeing Latinos, some Latinos that were kind of leaning towards Trump, kind of backing away because they can't say what he's saying in the kitchen table.

And so it's hard to defend him when he's offending us at the same time. I really appreciate hearing this, Michelle, because it reflects something that we heard in our dozens of interviews in other parts of the state. I mean, people do vote their economic interests, it's the economy stupid as the old saying goes, but they also have a lot of thoughts about the character of the person that they're electing. And we're gonna be hearing a lot more this week and on the radio and at public events in Philadelphia this week. We're looking forward to it. Yeah me too.

And that's up first for this Monday October 21st. I'm Steve Inskeep. And I'm Yeah, me too. And that's Up First for this Monday, October 21st. I'm Steve Inskeep. And I'm Michelle Martin. For your next listen, consider, consider this from NPR. At a time when election results are routinely challenged, when losing candidates refuse to accept the results, and protestors threaten violence, what does it take to run a free, fair, and safe election?

Listen to Consider This from NPR. Today's Up First was edited by Hannah Block, Andrew Sussman, Jan Johnson, H.J. Mai, Lisa Thompson and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Page Waterhouse, Nia DeMoss and Katie Klein. We get engineering support from the ever supportive Stacey Abbott and our technical director is Zach Coleman. Join us tomorrow. As Election Day approaches, NPRs consider this podcast is zooming in on six states that could determine who wins the White House. Georgia, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and Pennsylvania. We'll ask voters in these swing states what matters to them and which way they want the country to go. Follow along with new episodes this week on

the Consider This Podcast from NPR.