Up First from NPR - Rafah Airstrike Fallout, Trump Trial Closing Arguments, Summer Wildfire Jobs

Episode Date: May 28, 2024

International condemnation continues in response to an Israeli airstrike on Rafah that killed at least 45 people, according to the Gaza health ministry. Attorneys will deliver their closing arguments in former President Donald Trump's New York criminal trial. And as the summer fire season kicks off more than a quarter of the U.S. Forest Service's wildland firefighting jobs are vacant ahead of what's forecasted to be a warmer, drier summer. 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 Lauren Migaki, Krishnadev Calamur, Eric Whitney, Lisa Thomson and Alice Woelfle. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Ben Abrams and Lindsay Totty. We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott. Our technical director is Zac Coleman.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

An Israeli airstrike hit a displacement camp, set it on fire and killed at least 45 Palestinians in Rafah. The attack is sparking renewed calls for an end to the Israeli offensive. The military said it used precise munitions while the prime minister called the strike a tragic mistake. I'm Laila Fadl, that's Michelle Martin and this is Up First from NPR News. Attorneys will deliver closing arguments in former President Donald Trump's New York City hush money trial, but will the questionable credibility of Trump's former fixer and personal lawyer Michael Cohen hurt the prosecution's case? And summer wildfire season is here, but a quarter of firefighting jobs remain vacant. They can afford to take the job, but they can't afford

to live in the place they're taking the job. They have to compete for housing in the local market or live in their car. What's the plan to deal with the shortage? 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. International condemnation continues in response to an Israeli airstrike on Rafah that killed at least 45 people, that according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

The strike hit Palestinians who were sheltering in a makeshift encampment for displaced people in an area they thought was safe. Tents and people were burned. With us now is NPR international correspondent Aya Bertraui, who is following this from Dubai. And please take note of this. We are going to hear about graphic descriptions of injuries to children in this report and the sound of an explosion. And with that being said, Eya, thank you so much for being here. Thanks, Michelle. What can you tell us about the situation on the ground there?

Well, Israeli airstrikes continue to pound Gaza basically from the north to the south. But this airstrike on Rafah really stands out for a couple of reasons. It is the single deadliest attack on the city since Israel launched its offensive on Rafah against Hamas three weeks ago. Also, the attack struck families in makeshift tents. These were plastic tarps that they were using as shelter. They caught fire from the Israeli airstrike and shrapnel cut right through. It really was the stuff of nightmares. Abu Muhammad, a witness in Rafah, explains why. He says he found one kid with his stomach sliced and intestines out. Another child had been decapitated. NPR's producer Anas Baba, he says he also saw children and body parts after the attack. Now Israel's military says it used precise munitions and

didn't expect harm to civilians from this attack, which they say targeted two Hamas figures to oversee operations in the West Bank. Israel's prime minister called it a quote tragic mistake. But the UN relief chief Martin Griffiths says to call this a mistake means absolutely nothing for those killed in grieving. And here's UNRWA's director Griffiths, says to call this a mistake means absolutely nothing for those killed and grieving. And here's UNRWA's director of planning, Sam Rose, talking to NPR from Gaza. Look, regardless when you attack a tented camp such as this, as we said all along, there will be inevitable civilian casualties. It really does leave us numb and personally leaves me quite sick to the stomach. The health ministry in Gaza says now that the overall death toll from this military campaign has now surpassed some 36,000 people. The UN's top court ordered Israel to halt its offensive

on Rafah just a few days ago. Is there any sign that Israel is changing course here? Just yesterday in Rafah, Gaza's health ministry said two employees of the Kuwaiti hospital there, which is one of the last functioning hospitals in Rafah and all of Gaza, were killed at the gate of the hospital just hours after this tent encampment was struck. This hospital is also closing down now as a result of that attack. And last night, first responders in Rafah reported seven women and children killed in an attack on another house in Rafah. And there were more deadly airstrikes throughout Rafah. Have a listen to what it sounded like last night in the city.

You know, our producer Anas Baba is there, and he says this went on for hours. So families grabbed their belongings in the middle of the night. They fled on foot, adding to the roughly one million people who've already left Rafah this month, but they have nowhere to go. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in remarks to Israel's parliament yesterday that his government will not yield or surrender or end the war before achieving all of Israel's goals, which is to eliminate Hamas. And remember that, you know, Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th, killing about 1,200 people there. Hamas is still holding hostages. But do you have any sense of whether Netanyahu is feeling this international pressure? Yeah, he's under pressure at home and abroad. But also yesterday, you know, there was an exchange of gunfire between Egyptian

and Israeli soldiers for the first time since this war began, and an Egyptian soldier was actually killed. So Egypt says, you know, as this war in Gaza drags on and widens in Rafah, the dangers of its own troops now being pulled into this conflict to defend its borders is also growing. That is NPR's Aya Batraoui in Dubai. Aya, thank you. Thanks, Michelle. Attorneys will deliver their closing arguments in the trial of former President Donald Trump, the criminal trial in a New York courtroom today. Yeah, prosecutors and defense lawyers will recap weeks' worth of testimony and documents

for the jurors before they begin their deliberations. But the defense says too much depends on the testimony of Trump's former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, whose credibility they question. NPR's Andrea Bernstein is with us once again for a preview. Good morning, Andrea. Good morning. So what should we look out for today? Today is the chance for the parties to tie all the evidence together and show, or not, how it makes them case. The defense comes first. When the trial testimony began,

the defense highlighted how long ago this was, pre-COVID, they said. They said the sexual encounter with Stormy Daniels never happened. They said that Trump himself never issued false documents. He just signed checks when they were presented to him. But most of all, they said Michael Cohen is a liar and there's no way to prove Trump was fully cognizant of the crimes unless you accept Cohen's testimony about conversations with Trump. Andrea, as we've been talking about, as you have been reporting, that has been their defense for years. Did they make headway with that at trial? Cohen was an unflappably calm witness.

When he was asked straight up, did you commit crimes? Did you lie to Congress? Did you lie to banks? He said he had. But for the most part, these were old lies. There was one place where the defense may have raised a new inconsistency when they pointed out that text messages suggest one of the conversations Cohen said he had with Trump about the hush money may not have happened because Cohen at that time was being harassed by

a 14-year-old prankster. But the prosecution may have cleaned that up when they pointed out something that the defense didn't deal with. There were many conversations with Trump, including on the day the payments were wired to Stormy Daniels. So how will the prosecution deal with Cohen's history of lying? Cohen testified, and there was backup, that many of the lies, like the lie to Congress, were done to benefit Trump, in that case to hide dealings over a proposed Trump Tower Moscow. But mostly the prosecution worked hard to present all kinds of documentation they could use to back up Cohen's claims.

For example, Trump's former controller described a meeting where he was told by Trump's former chief financial officer that Cohen would be reimbursed through payments that were described as a legal retainer, which the prosecution says they were not. Ho Picks, Trump's former communications aide, testified that when Trump told her Cohen made the payment out of the kindness of his heart, she didn't believe it because Cohen's the kind of person who always wants credit. What about the meetings with Trump that only Cohen testified about? So here's one example of how the prosecution dealt with that. So years ago, Cohen testified

to Congress that Trump told him in the Oval Office in 2017, don't worry, Michael, your January and February reimbursement checks are coming. They were FedEx from New York, and it takes a while for that to get through the White House system. He said essentially the same thing in this trial, and the DA presented evidence from four current and former Trump employees that showed Cohen indeed met with Trump in the Oval Office, that it did take a while for checks to get through the system, and that Cohen did get his first check in early February. So the DA is likely to lean into all that corroboration, to say you don't have to take Cohen's word for it.

This all happened beyond a reasonable doubt. It goes to the jury tomorrow, and there could be a verdict any time after that. That is NPR's Andrea Bernstein. Andrea, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. As wildfires burn in Canada and Mexico,

fire officials in the U.S. are concerned about the upcoming season. Right now, upwards of a quarter of the U.S. government's wildland firefighting jobs are vacant. NPR's Kurt Sigler covers the country's wildfire crisis, and he's with us now from Boise. Kurt, hello. Hello, Michelle. You know, this actually sounds really alarming, given what we know about the summers getting hotter and drier due to climate change.

How big of a concern are these vacancies? Well, it's huge. Everyone from the local rural fire chiefs, who are kind of the first responders to a lot of these wildfires in the West, right up to the federal fire bosses. Everybody's talking about this. You know, the U.S. Forest Service is often called the fire service because a huge part of what they do today is they mobilize the air tankers, the smoke jumpers, the elite hotshot crews to these big fires, the ones that get away from the first

responders and are threatening lives and whole cities that are now built out into the woods in this region. They're the cavalry, so to speak. So what's being done about this? Everyone says this labor shortage isn't really new, especially since the pandemic, and nobody's surprised about this. And there's the thinking that the federal government will probably get by with what they've been doing, and that is, you know, cobbling together different private contract crews, maybe borrowing firefighter teams from Mexico or Canada, assuming they're available if things get really bad this summer, to try to shore things up and close the gap. But those aren't ideal strategies. Okay, Kirk, you're saying these vacancies aren't

new. What's the bigger picture here? What's going on? Well, the biggest thing, Michelle, is the pay. I mean, especially for rookie firefighters, it's relatively low. And the risks right now are super high. When you just look at how overgrown the forests are for 100 years or more, we've been putting out most natural wildfires. And then as you say, you add climate change, drought, the rising temperatures, it's a dangerous job. And it's also super expensive to live in the Mountain West, Boise included right now. So here's how one of the country's top fire managers, Grant Beebe, put it to me. He's over at the National Interagency Fire Center here in Boise. They can afford to take the job, but they

can't afford to live in the place they're taking the job, right? If we don't have government housing provided, barracks or something, which many of our places don't have that kind of housing, then they have to compete for housing in the local market or live in their car. Live in their car? Yeah, he's not exaggerating. In the sort of traditional firefighting towns like Boise, where I am, Redding, California, Missoula, Montana, I mean, you can now make 25 bucks an hour or more working in a restaurant or that new Amazon warehouse, and you get to go home to your family at night. So I think that the feds are really counting on people who are just dedicated and love the job to stay on right now. I met a federal hotshot crew member named Lily Barnes

from Oregon. She was out in the woods from the past week doing wildfire prevention work. Yeah, it's rewarding. We're surrounded by highly motivated, intelligent individuals. It's a good team environment. All right, Kirk, you've told us this is clearly a national problem. Is there any federal or national solution being contemplated? Yes, but it's stalled in Congress. At least the agencies trying to recruit and they're still trying to hire positions right now. They can point to a recent pay bump for wildland firefighters that President Biden first enacted in 2021. Congress did recently extend that through September. But the bills I'm talking about, they were introduced almost two years ago now to make the pay permanent and add other mental health benefits and other things. They're totally stalled. And so what we're seeing

right now is the experienced engine captains, the crew bosses, they're leaving and that experience exiting doesn't really bode well for the summer fire season. That is NPR's Kirk Sigler joining us from Boise, Idaho. Kirk, thank you. You're welcome. And that's up first for Tuesday, May 28th, 2024. I'm Michelle Martin. And I'm Leila Faldin.

For your next listen, check out Consider This. Forecasters predict another sweltering summer, and with it the potential for more climate-driven disasters. But are we ready for them? Listen to Consider This. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Lauren McGaughy, Krishna Dev Kalamore, Eric Whitney, Lisa Thompson, and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Ziad Butch, Ben Abrams, and Lindsay Totti. We get engineering support from Thank you.