Up First from NPR - Student Protests Continue, The Week In Trump Trials, UNRWA Report

Episode Date: April 27, 2024

Campus demonstrations in support of Gaza have spread to schools unaccustomed to such activism. In New York City and Washington, D.C., Donald Trump's attorneys defended him and made some extreme claims. An independent investigation finds Israel has not supported claims that a significant number of workers at the The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East are members of Hamas.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I am not afraid anymore. So why should the administration be? Students speak out about Gaza, Israel, and one another. As the schools they attend scramble to respond. I'm Aisha Roscoe. I'm Scott Simon, and this is Up First from NPR News. Today on the podcast, ongoing demonstrations on college campuses across the country. We have the latest. And the weekend former President Trump's legal maneuvering, both at his trial in New York and at the Supreme Court, where his attorneys took some extreme positions.

And the findings of an investigation into a humanitarian group devoted to Palestinians. The report concerns one of two controversial claims about UNRWA. Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your weekend. 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. First up today, students protest on college campuses across the country. At schools like Columbia University, Yale, and Harvard, demonstrations of solidarity with the people of Gaza. Many of these students have formed encampments. Hundreds have been arrested. And here is Jasmine Garst has been covering the protest and joins us from New York.

Jasmine, thanks for being with us. Hi. Please bring us up to date on where situation stands with Columbia University. Yeah, I was there all day yesterday and it's very calm. That wasn't the case a week ago when NYPD got called in to disperse the encampment and over 100 students were arrested. The president of Columbia, Manoush Shafiq, has come under fire for calling the police. And many Colombia faculty members have condemned the decision.

Earlier this week, I spoke to Professor Thomas Howley. The way the university escalated by reaching immediately for the nuclear option of police force has attracted more radical elements that are not part of our student protest community and don't share the values of our students. Shafiq has defended her decision to send in NYPD, but she's also acknowledged that it was ultimately ineffective. She said the university is focusing on negotiating with students. What about other campuses across the country? Well, protests have spread nationwide with similar demands that the universities disclose financial ties to Israel and divest. Now, what's really

unprecedented here is that while you expect this type of activism at schools like, I don't know, UC Berkeley, the protests have also moved into schools like University of Southern California or Cal Poly, which are not historically associated with this kind of activism. A couple of schools have experienced similar aggressive police response. There were over 100 arrests at the University of Texas in Austin and the University of Southern California. Emory University's student newspaper reported that the Atlanta police deployed gas into a crowd of protesters. There have been charges of anti-Semitism at some of these protests. What did you find on campus? So yesterday at a press conference hosted by Columbia, Barnard Hillel, several pro-Israel students expressed fear and anger. Here's Noah Fay.

No one is above the law. Arrest the students on Butler Lawn and discipline those that continue to call for the death of my friends and family. Look at me, the Jew facing this. I am not afraid anymore. So why should the administration be? She pointed out that one of the leaders of the Colombia encampment in a social media video called for the death of Zionists. He's since apologized and been barred from campus. Now, a few days ago, I also had a chance to sit down with Sarah Boris. She's one of the students who were arrested last week at Columbia. She's been suspended. She can't go back on campus. She herself is Jewish. And she says the only thing making her feel unsafe right now is the heightened police presence. In my capacity as a Jewish

student, I feel safe, but not with all of the militarization of our campus. I don't think anyone feels safe on our campus because of the way that Manoush Shafiq and the administration have escalated this situation. And what she told me is she feels protesting Israel's mass killings makes her a better Jew. And graduation's right around the corner, isn't it? Yes. So the University of Southern California has canceled its main graduation ceremony. And speaking to students from different colleges, I've heard of speakers stepping down, venues canceling. It's going to be a very different graduation season. As for Columbia, they're hoping to continue negotiating with the students

and getting that encampment cleared in time for graduation on May 14th. And President Jasmine Garth, thanks so much. Thanks for having me. It's the end of another busy week in court as a former president finds himself needing to mount defenses on a number of fronts. This week, a tabloid publisher told a New York jury about his efforts to pay off people with salacious stories about Donald Trump before the 2016 election. And the U.S. Supreme Court debated whether Trump should get a legal shield for his actions pertaining to the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. NPR Justice Correspondent Kerry Johnson is following all of this. Kerry, thanks so much for being with us. Good morning, Scott. And let's begin with the U.S. Supreme Court. How do you read what happened there? Well, the justices are considering whether Trump should enjoy absolute immunity from criminal prosecution. This would be for his

efforts to cling to power after the 2020 election. And Donald Trump's lawyer, John Sauer, took some heat this week for his extreme positions. Things like arguing Trump might be able to use the military to mount a coup attempt or to kill a Trump rival. But most of the conservative justices seemed a lot more concerned about tying a future president's hands than about violence at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Here's Justice Samuel Alito talking to the government lawyer Michael Dreeben. Presidents have to make a lot of tough decisions. You don't think he's in a special,

a peculiarly precarious position? Making a mistake is not what lands you in a criminal prosecution. That's what the government lawyer said, but others, including the Chief Justice John Roberts, really seem worried about prosecutors hounding a future president, even though the lawyer for the Justice Department said the country hasn't faced these kinds of questions since Richard Nixon. That was the view from conservatives who were on the high court. What did some of the more liberal justices say? Justice Elena Kagan said the founders really knew how to write immunity for the president into the Constitution, but that they had decided not to do that because they didn't want some kind of all-powerful monarch.

Justice Katonji Brown Jackson said she feared giving a president too much power, giving him a get-out-of-jail-free card. Here's more from Justice Jackson. I'm trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the Oval Office into, you know, the seat of criminal activity in this country. And she also tried to focus the court on the specific allegations against Donald Trump, who's charged with subverting the will of voters while he's running to return to the White House this year. Trump, of course, has pleaded not guilty. But the Supreme Court ultimately decides and when could make or break that federal January 6th case against Donald Trump.

Carrie, can you venture any inferences from the questioning you heard this week? It's always dangerous, but it seemed like at least four of the conservative justices wanted to give the president some protection from criminal prosecution. And they may want to draw some lines between actions that a president takes as a part of his job and ones that are simply personal. Now, that kind of opinion could take a long time to write, especially if the justices want to send the case back to the lower courts for more fact-finding. The chances for a trial in Washington, D.C. for Donald Trump before the November election now seem pretty slim to none. Donald Trump couldn't make his own Supreme Court case because, of course, he had to be in New York

for his criminal trial. That jury in Manhattan has been hearing evidence in the case about accounting for hush money payments. What did they hear? Jurors heard from the first witness from the district attorney. That would be former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker. He described himself as a longtime friend to Trump, but he offered some pretty damaging testimony. He said he knew about or took part in payoffs to people who had stories to sell about Trump's personal behavior before the 2016 election. David Pecker said Trump was not worried about his family finding out, but he was worried about his political standing if stories about his alleged womanizing got published. Trump's lawyers tried to suggest Packer was acting to benefit his own company, not Trump. Kerry, what are you going to be watching for this week?

This week, the judge in New York, Juan Merchan, is considering whether Donald Trump should be fined for repeatedly violating a gag order and verbally attacking potential witnesses in the case. Right now, a money penalty seems to be on the table, but if Donald Trump does not stop posting negative information about his former lawyer Michael Cohen, this judge may have to consider harsher measures. And Pierce, Kerry Johnson, thanks so much. My pleasure. Finally today, an independent review says that Israel has not provided evidence to support its accusation that a significant number of employees of a UN relief agency in the Gaza Strip are members of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that attacked Israel last October. That agency is UNRWA, officially the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. And the accusation

led to a loss of vital international funding at a time when Gaza is on the brink of famine. NPR international affairs correspondent Jackie Northam has been following the details of this story and joins us now. Hi, Jackie. Morning, Ayesha. So, first of all, can you tell us a few more details about this review? Well, it was led by former French Foreign Minister

Catherine Colonna, and she was charged with looking into whether UNRWA was ensuring that there was no complicity with Hamas. And the review started in late January after Israel made accusations of terrorist links among UNRWA employees. And, you know, after that, more than a dozen international donors, including the U.S., suspended about $450 million in employees. And, you know, after that, more than a dozen international donors, including the U.S., suspended about $450 million in funding. And, you know, that's money that's desperately needed right now. UNRWA is the main agency in Gaza providing aid and social services. And these are critical at this moment when there are dire shortages of, you know, food and water and sanitary conditions because of the Israeli military campaign. And, you know, food and water and sanitary conditions because of the

Israeli military campaign. And, you know, some countries have restored funding, Germany most recently following this latest report, but, you know, Congress has suspended U.S. financial support until at least March 2025. So late January until this week, this review took about nine weeks. What are some of the key findings? Well, the review found that, in fact, UNRWA was doing everything in its power to ensure its neutrality. However, it also found some employees had expressed political views and said critical breaches of neutrality could include the discovery of weapons and tunnels, which the agency always protests. I spoke with William Dury, and he heads UNRWA's Washington representative office, and he felt that the report was fair and balanced. Here he is here.

Foreign Minister Colonna said, you know, confirmed that we actually have procedures and mechanisms in place to address neutrality better than any other UN agency or NGO. And that's, as she noted, because of the politically challenging part of the world in which we operate. But like anyone, you can do better. And hence the recommendations that she included in the report. You know, and some of the recommendations include better training, a more robust screening of employees. You know, until just recently, Israel received lists of UNRWA employees, but without Palestinian identification numbers. And then in March, the list did have ID numbers. And that's when Israel says a significant number of employees were members of terrorist organizations. But you know, Aisha, the report

said Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence of that. Israel, for its part, dismissed the findings of the review, saying it doesn't deal with the, quote, scope of Hamas's infiltration into UNRWA. Now, this is just the first of two UN Commission reports on UNRWA. What about the other one? Right. So the other investigation is looking at Israel's claims that about a dozen UNRWA employees actually took part in the October 7th attack on Israel that killed about 1,200 people. It's being conducted by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services. And, you know, shortly after Israel made those accusations, UNRWA terminated the contracts of 10 of those workers. Another two were confirmed

dead. But no word yet on when that report is due. NPR's Jackie Northam. Jackie, thank you so much. Thank you. And that's a first for Saturday, April 27th, 2024. I'm Scott Simon. And I'm Aisha Roscoe. Danny Hensel produced today's podcast with help from Martin Patience and Fernando Nara. Michael Radcliffe directed. And Ed McNulty edited, along with Krishna Dev Kalimer, James Heider, and Catherine Fox. Our technical director is Hannah Gloven with engineering support from Carly Strange, Nisa Hainas, and Joby Tenseko. Evie Stone is our

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