Up First from NPR - Tariffs And Inflation, Epstein Conspiracy Theories, Public Broadcasting Cuts

Episode Date: July 16, 2025

Escalating import tariffs are beginning to show up in the prices that consumers pay. The President has backtracked on his promise to release government's files on sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and the Senate has approved a cut of more than one billion dollars for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting – which provides money to NPR, PBS and their member stations.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 Rafael Nam, Brett Neely, Gerry Holmes, Janaya Williams and HJ Mai. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from David Greenburg. And our technical director is Zo van Ginhoven. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

How are you adjusting to the hours by the way, Sarah? The hours? Yes. You know, what is sleep? I like how you had to think about that. Like what time is it anyway? I mean, I feel kind of like 20 years ago, almost when I had a new baby, but it's fine. It's fine, Steve.

This program is your baby now. This is now the baby. We have a forecast for prices in the second half of the year. I think people are in for at least another six months or so, of slowly increasing inflation. It already crept up a little, so how much are tariffs to blame? I'm Sarah McKemmon, that's Steve Inskey, and this is Up First from NPR News.

Republicans in Congress have supported President Trump all the way, until it came to the matter of the Epstein files. It's a very delicate subject, but we should put everything out there and let the people decide it. What makes so many Trump supporters doubt the administration? Also, the Senate considers the president's request to claw back funds for foreign aid and public broadcasting.

So far, they've had to drop some cuts and get a tie-breaking vote from Vice President Vance. Why did some Republicans object? Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day. This message comes from Wise, the app for doing things and other currencies. With Wise, you can send, spend, or receive money across borders, all at a fair exchange rate, no markups or hidden fees.

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do any of those other activities or while doing them. We bring you the stories you need to know in just five minutes, every hour of every day. Listen now to the NPR News Now podcast. President Trump is repeating his complaints about the Federal Reserve, pressing its leader Jerome Powell to cut interest rates more quickly. The president's own tariffs are making it harder for the Fed to bring inflation under control. A new report from the Labor Department shows inflation heated up last month.

Economists say part of that price increase can be traced to the president's double-digit tariffs. NPR's Scott Horsley is covering all this. Scott, good morning. Good morning, Steve. This is a really interesting topic for me because the president has, by design, trampled a lot of the limitations on his power in the executive branch, has not yet directly interfered with the Federal Reserve, but he certainly talks about it a lot.

What's behind that? Yeah, presidents often want lower interest rates to juice the economy and make it cheaper for families and businesses to borrow money. In Trump's case, he's also trying to cut the federal government's own interest expense, which is closing in on a trillion dollars this year and could go even higher as a result of the tax cuts and spending increases that congressional Republicans just passed. So Trump is unhappy that the Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and his colleagues have not moved more quickly to cut interest rates.

Here's the president speaking to reporters outside the White House yesterday. He's way late. That's why I call him too late. Jerome Powell is too late. He's way late. Interest rates should be coming down. We have a very, very successful country. We should have the lowest interest rate anywhere in the world, and we don't.

But in almost the same breath, Trump boasted about the tens of billions of dollars that the government is collecting in tariffs, and those tariffs are one reason the Fed is cautious about cutting interest rates. Well, talk me through that. How is it that tariffs would affect inflation? Well, the effects have been fairly muted so far, but in the June inflation report which came out yesterday, we saw that inflation was higher than the month before and some of that reflects Trump's tariffs on imported goods like toys

and clothing and appliances. Steven Cates, who is a financial analyst at Bankrate, says, rising inflation makes Powell and his colleagues almost certain to hold interest rates steady at their next meeting a couple of weeks from now, despite the full court press from the White House. The Fed's got a couple months here to just watch and wait and see exactly how quickly inflation is rising. I think at this point, it's cinched. There will be no cut in July.

Now, that's going to be a disappointment for the president. But if it weren't for Trump's own double digit tariffs, the Fed might well be in a position to cut interest rates right now. How would inflation be affected if the president goes through with the multiple much higher tariffs that he threatened on multiple countries for August 1st? Yeah, that could push prices even higher, although right now investors are skeptical that the President's actually going to follow through on those tariff threats. If Trump actually were to triple the import tax on goods from the European Union, for

example, as he threatened to do, there would likely be a big sell-off in the stock market and the Europeans would probably retaliate with tariffs of their own. But you know, even if tariffs don't go any higher, import taxes are already the highest they've been in almost a century. And so far, only some of that cost has been passed along to consumers. Kate says we are likely to see more tariff-driven price hikes in the months to come. Well, I think people are in for, you know, at least another six months or so of slowly increasing inflation. But I think by the end of the year, we're probably not going to be any higher than somewhere between three and three and a half percent.

Now, that's not nearly as high as the 9% inflation we saw back in 2022, but it's still higher than the Fed would like. And it's not the direction Trump promised to take prices when he was on the campaign trail last year. NPR's Scott Horsley, thanks. You're welcome. House Speaker Mike Johnson is the highest profile Republican to call for the Trump administration to release more information about Jeffrey Epstein. It's a very delicate subject, but we should put everything out there and let the people decide it.

Speaker Johnson said that to the podcaster Benny Johnson. Epstein, of course, was the convicted sex offender with connections to many rich and famous people. Epstein died by suicide while in jail during the first Trump administration. Pete Slauson NPR's Shannon Bond is following the story. Shannon, good morning. Shannon Bond Morning, Steve. Pete Slauson Okay, Speaker Johnson says it's delicate. It is for a lot of reasons, one of them being the politics that involves President Trump.

So how did he phrase his argument? Well, Johnson singled out Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has been a target for many in the MAGA movement who are feeling betrayed by the administration overall this Epstein business, but who don't seem willing to pin that blame on the president. So back in February, Bondi told Fox News that Epstein's alleged client list was on her desk for review, indicating she would want to release that. But now the Justice Department says there is no list. They're not going to release more information.

And Bondi now says she was referring to the entirety of the Epstein files. Mike Johnson said Bondi needs to, quote, come forward and explain that to everybody. Now Bondi has brushed off questions about her handling of this material and so far Trump is defending her. Yesterday, the president said she's been handling this all quite well, but he also said quote, whatever she thinks is credible, she should release, which sounds a lot, Steve, like what many of his supporters have been calling for. What has made this case so important to so many people who are Trump supporters?

Well, for many conspiracy theorists, Jeffrey Epstein's story is really this striking example of what they believe is a satanic cabal of pedophiles who are entrenched among the world's most powerful people. That is the central belief animating the QAnon conspiracy theory, which also posits that Donald Trump is destined to defeat that cabal. And Trump and his allies have in the past embraced some of these ideas. Trump promised to release the government's files about Epstein while he was on the campaign trial last year. He appointed FBI leaders who had helped promote conspiracy theories about Epstein and his death.

So since the Department of Justice said last week, look, nothing to see here, case closed, many of those who have bought into this conspiratorial worldview, they've been trying to make sense of this administration's backtracking. How's that going for them? Well, it's been a challenge

because Trump himself is so core to this belief about an existential battle with the so-called deep state. I spoke to Mike Rothschild, a journalist and author who focused on conspiracy theories. It's trying to reconcile two things that both cannot be true at the same time and finding a way to make both of them true. And for many people, this process involves pivoting to new explanations. And this is what Trump himself did on Truth Social this weekend. He spun up a new baseless conspiracy theory that actually the Epstein files were created by President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the Biden administration.

Then there's others who have been pivoting to another iteration of the deep state conspiracy, which is often anti-Semitic. They're claiming without evidence that Epstein was involved with Israeli intelligence. And then for still others, the administration's failure to release the files is just further proof that the deep state is just too powerful for Trump to overcome even as president. And so even as Trump is telling his supporters to forget about Epstein, they are demanding that the administration release whatever it is that they have on him. Adjusting the theories to account for new inconvenient information. Shannon, thanks so much.

Thanks, Steve. That's NPR's Shannon Bond. Today, the Senate debates a measure to take back funding that Congress already approved. Most of it is foreign aid and some of it is two years worth of funding for the corporation for public broadcasting. Most of that money goes to local public radio and TV stations, including those that carry NPR News. Lawmakers made some changes to the proposal yesterday and then just barely got it through

a test vote. Here to talk about the vote and what it means is NPR correspondent Scott Newman. Good morning, Scott. Good morning. And a note, under NPR's protocol for covering itself, no NPR corporate or news executive has had a hand in this coverage. So Scott, just how close was this vote? Really close. In fact, Vice President Vance had to break a 50-50 tie. Senate Democrats all voted no. They say the cuts would have a devastating effect on public radio and TV

stations. But Democrats were joined by three prominent Republicans former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky Alaska's Lisa Murkowski and the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee Senator Susan Collins of Maine Now NPR gets about 1% of its funding directly from the federal government, which also funds the member stations But they get a bigger chunk of their budgets from the federal government through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Republicans want to cut funds to NPR and PBS because what they say is political bias, a charge that the networks strongly deny.

Murkowski defended the foreign aid programs, but ahead of yesterday's vote, she also expressed support for public broadcasting. If you don't like what's going on within NPR, you think that there's too much bias there, we can address that. We can address that, but you don't need to gut the entire corporation for public broadcasting. But Murkowski, McConnell, and Collins all expressed concern about the White House Office of Management and Budget not making clear how the cuts would be applied. McConnell spoke briefly with reporters after the vote. He said he doesn't know where

he'll come out in the end, but he thinks the White House needs to make a stronger case for the cuts. They would like a blank check. That's what they would like. And I don't think that's appropriate. Murkowski also expressed concern about the whole idea of rescission, which blurs the separation of powers by stepping on Congress's power of the purse. We mentioned this bill already passed the House. How does the bill moving forward in the Senate compare with that?

Aren't there some key differences? Right. One program that's been on the chopping block was PEPFAR, an HIV AIDS program started by President George W. Bush. It's credited with saving millions of lives in the developing world. That program was saved from rescission by the Senate Appropriations Committee. And some Republicans from states that are underserved by commercial broadcasters have criticized the cuts to public broadcasting, which they say their constituents rely on for information and emergency alerts. One of them is South Dakota Republican Senator Mike Rounds. He said yesterday that he'd helped broker

a deal with the White House outside the rescission package to directly fund 28 rural public radio stations in nine states that serve mostly Native American listeners. But other foreign aid food and health programs are still part of the package and could be threatened. Okay, so what's what's next year? Well, the clock is ticking. The Senate debate is expected to begin this morning, followed by a vote. But if additional changes are made, they'll need to be vetted first by the Senate parliamentarian. Then the whole thing goes back to the House for a final vote. If it passes, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will lose the funding that Congress appropriated for it for fiscal years 2026 and 2027. All right, that's NPR's Scott Newman.

Thank you, Scott. Thank you. And that is a first for this Wednesday, July 16th. I'm Steve Inskeep. And I'm Sarah McCammon. You can listen to this podcast sponsor free while financially supporting public media with Up First Plus. Learn more at plus.npr.org. That's plus.npr.org. Today's Up First was edited by Rafael Nam, Brett Neely, Jerry Holmes, Janae Williams, and H.J. Mai. It was produced by Ziad Bach, Nia Dumas, and Christopher Thomas. And we get engineering support from David Greenberg. Our technical director is Zoe Vangenhoven.

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