Up First from NPR - The Post-Convention Campaign, Grocery Prices And Competition, New Laws In Afghanistan

Episode Date: August 24, 2024

Now that the second of the two major political conventions is over, how are the parties positioning themselves for the rest of the campaign? An anti-trust case involving the two biggest grocery retailers starts Monday. In Afghanistan, the Taliban has codified new rules with familiar strictures.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Lil Jon has left the United Center and Hulk Hogan is long gone from the Fiserv form. The second of the two major political conventions is over. What comes now in this podcast? I'm Scott Simon. I'm Aisha Roscoe, and this is Up First from NPR News. This week's Democratic National Convention in Chicago had quite a playlist, but did the DNC achieve what Democrats hope? How are Republicans reacting? Then a major merger between two grocery retailers goes to court. We have why and what it could mean for your trips to the grocery store.

And the Taliban turns back the clock in Afghanistan. How and why? Today on Up First. So stay with us. We have the news you need to start your weekend. Every weekday, NPR's best political reporters come to you on the NPR Politics Podcast to explain the big news coming out of Washington, the campaign trail and beyond. We don't just want to tell you what happened. We tell you why it matters. Join the NPR Politics Podcast every single afternoon to understand the world through political eyes. Numbers that explain the economy.

We love them at the Indicator from Planet Money. And on Fridays, we discuss indicators in the news, like job numbers, spending, the cost of food, sometimes all three. So my indicator is about why you might need to bring home more bacon to afford your eggs. I'll be here all week. Wrap up your week and listen to the Indicator podcast from NPR.

Here at Planet Money, we bring complex economic ideas down to Earth. We find weird, fun, interesting stories that explain the way money shapes our lives. Inflation, recessions, the price of gas, we've got you. Listen now to the Planet Money podcast from NPR. First to Chicago. Well, to here, that is. I've been in Chicago this week as the Democrats gathered for their national convention.

NPR provided live special coverage of the DNC and reporting and analysis both during and after the event. And now that both it and the Republican National Convention are done, it's a sprint to November. NPR's Sarah McCammon is also here in Chicago as she's been all this week. She's been following what Republicans are saying both here and nationally. Sarah, so good to be with you here. Good to be here too. Hi, Scott. Republicans were front and center at the convention, which seems noteworthy, what stood out from their speeches. Yeah, you know, their message was pretty simple. They portrayed former President Trump as a threat to democracy and tried to make the case to their fellow Republicans who were not in the convention hall to support Harris, even if they don't agree with her on everything.

So Stephanie Grisham was a former White House press secretary and an aide to then First Lady Melania Trump. When Grisham spoke on Tuesday, she described herself as a former true believer and a close friend of the Trump family. But she said that what she saw when the cameras were off, as she put it, and ultimately on January 6th, changed that. Behind closed doors, Trump mocks his supporters. He calls them basement dwellers. On a hospital visit one time when people were dying in the ICU, he was mad that the cameras were not watching him. He has no empathy, no morals, and no fidelity to the truth. Now, Grisham was one of several Republicans featured on stage at the convention, including former Congressman Adam

Kinzinger and another former White House official, Olivia Troy. Troy said that as both a national security expert and as a Latina, she found working in the Trump White House terrifying. And from everyone, the overarching message to Republicans was that by voting for Harris and Walls, they'd be voting not primarily for a Democrat, but for democracy. Sarah, do we have any sense of how effective these arguments might be in reaching voters who consider themselves Republicans or conservative leaning? Well, throughout this campaign, we've been reporting on the fact that a lot of voters across the spectrum were not happy with their choices when that choice was Trump or President Biden. Harris's entry into the race, of course, has reshuffled the campaign and Democrats hope to win over some of those undecideds or unhappy voters.

Probably the biggest name on the lineup this week was Oprah, Oprah Winfrey. She addressed the convention on Wednesday night, and Oprah made a big point of the fact that she is a registered independent, and she said she votes for her values. So I'm calling on all you independents and all you undecideds. You know this is true. You know I'm telling you the truth, that values and character matter most of all. And overall, the tone of this convention has really tacked to the center. There was a big emphasis on unity and freedom and the idea that you can have different beliefs in a democracy.

Now, I've been covering efforts by Harris supporters to win over voters who've supported Trump in the past. And one thing I've heard is that while they'd like those voters to cast a ballot for Harris, there is value even in persuading them just not to vote for Trump again. What about what I'll now call Donald Trump's Republican Party? What has been the official reaction they've registered to the DNC? So Republicans were holding daily briefings in Chicago to try to counter the DNC. Trump has been on the campaign trail talking about some familiar themes like the border and immigration. And he's been trying to paint Harris as extreme, reaching all the way back to the Soviet era,

using labels like Comrade, Kamala. So it seems like Republicans are still trying to adjust their message to the new reality. You know, just one example, Democrats have made abortion a big issue in this election. And in a post on Truth Social yesterday, Trump claimed that, quote, my administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights. Of course, that could be a tough case for Trump to make when he has also bragged about being largely the reason that Roe v. Wade was overturned. So what's the possible effect of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announcing yesterday that he's

kind of suspending his campaign and endorsing Donald Trump? Right. So RFK Jr. made this unusual announcement that he's essentially pulling out of the race in battleground states and endorsing Trump. He will still be on the ballot in some states and wants his supporters to vote for him, but not in places where it could hurt Trump. Now, the Trump and Harris campaigns have been disagreeing a bit about who this helps and who it hurts. Some polls suggest RFK being in the race might have hurt Trump slightly, so this may be good for Trump. But in reality, Scott, RFK Jr. had struggled to gain traction with this campaign and had been losing support in the polls. So this may not be a big group of people or a big impact.

By the time he withdrew or suspended his campaign yesterday, he was down to single digits. That's right. As opposed to the almost 20 percent. At one point, right. Well, NPR Sarah McCammon, thanks so much for speaking with us. Thanks so much, Scott. As president, I will bring together labor and workers and small business owners. In her address on Thursday, Kamala Harris

appealed to consumers. To create jobs, to grow our economy, and to lower the cost of everyday needs like health care and housing and groceries. Groceries is top of the mind for many Americans, and the cost of a trip to the supermarket is the subject of a court case that begins Monday. Federal regulators have sued to stop a mega merger of Kroger and Albertsons, which would combine two of America's largest grocery retailers. NPR's Alina Selyuk is watching the legal tangling and the state of the grocery industry in the U.S. She joins us now. Alina, thanks for being with us. Hello, hello. So let's start with some more details about this merger. What's going on here? Sure. So this is one of the biggest grocery deals ever. Kroger wants to buy Albertsons for about

$25 billion. Kroger has a bunch of brand names, including Harris Teeter, Ralphs, Fred Meyer, King Soopers, Albertsons, you might know also as Safeway, and Vons. This deal faces three lawsuits that want to block it. One in Colorado, one in Washington state. The chains overlap, particularly in western states, so that's why. And then there's this really big one by the Federal Trade Commission alongside nine state attorneys general, and that is the one that's going to court first. There will be more hearings and trials and other court cases in the coming weeks. For now, the deal is on pause. The companies want this. The authorities are suing. What do we know about how this merger would fit in the

grocery landscape? Like, would it help or hurt shoppers? That is exactly what the courts will be considering. That is exactly the central question here. The federal experts argue that in this case, bigger is not better, that the deal would turn these two companies into a grocer colossus with more power over suppliers, more power over workers and shoppers, simply giving us fewer choices where to get groceries. The companies make the argument that they are not the colossus. Amazon is. Walmart is. Walmart is not a grocery chain in the same vein as Kroger, but it does sell the most groceries in America. And so Kroger and Albertsons argue that together they can be a bigger competitor

to these giants or they can wilt away on their own. Well, are they actually wilting away? You know, not at the moment. They are making money, but they're not as big as Amazon or Walmart. They're not as fast growing as dollar stores. And so they are pointing to all of these companies as their competitors. And Kroger is actually doing something else that's pretty extraordinary. The company has turned the tables and gone after the federal regulators themselves. Kroger has sued the Federal Trade Commission using a recent Supreme Court ruling. It's fairly complicated, as Supreme Court cases tend to be. But just to say that Kroger is testing new legal ground, kind of questioning the federal government's authority to block mergers.

So there could be big ripple effects from this merger case all around. Meanwhile, of course, grocery prices have taken center stage in the presidential campaign. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have both claimed they would bring prices down. How are they saying they'll do that? We are lacking a lot of the specifics about their plans. So Trump blames the Biden administration for inflation for higher prices. Harris has proposed a ban on price gouging, which has been fairly controversial in the absence of specifics. Generally, food prices are an easy and appealing political target. You know, everyone eats. It doesn't matter that some grocery prices are declining. We're still comparing prices

cumulatively to pre-pandemic, which means, you know, every time I get a grocery bill, I get a jolt remembering how it used to be just a couple of years ago. So in that context, it is even harder to see how a merger that would take two of the largest supermarkets, combine them into one bigger, more powerful one, would go through without a fight. That's NPR's Alina Selyuk. Alina, thank you so much. Thank you. Finally today, Afghanistan. The Taliban has announced a wide-ranging law that all but erases women from public life there. It comes now three years since the group returned to power after U.S. and NATO forces pulled out of Afghanistan. NPR's Dia Hadid covers the country from her base in Mumbai and joins us now. Dia, thank you for being with us. Thank you, Scott. Please tell us about this

law that the Taliban announced just yesterday. Right. Well, this was announced by the Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue. The law demands women must cover their faces in public so they don't cause temptation. They can't travel without a male guardian. They can't speak loudly, even laugh in public. And one leading Afghan lawyer described it to me as horrific. Azad Ar-Raz Mohammed is at the Atlantic Council. I believe this is a continuation of Taliban's intimidation

and oppression of women, from the way we're dressed to how we appear in public, how we talk, how we even laugh. It says that women shouldn't laugh very loud and that laughing women should not be heard by a man, which is extremely horrifying to actually see that this is actually codified. And it is codified. These laws also touch on men. They must grow their beards long. They may not dress in Western clothes or sport Western haircuts. Yeah, it sounds like a lot of that was happening already in Afghanistan. What's

new with this announcement? Yeah, and in fact, Scott, if I can remind you, the Taliban have largely enforced a ban from girls studying beyond grade six, and women aren't allowed to work in most professions already. The difference is that wasn't the law. So there was room to maneuver. What's being codified now is actually more extreme, and it's been signed off by the Taliban spiritual leader. If these laws are enforced, it would be the job of officials of that very wordy ministry for the prevention of vice and promotion of virtue. But even if it isn't implemented fully, they hang over Afghans and they could be used at any moment. And some of these laws, frankly, are quite vague.

How are they vague? Some of the laws say that Muslims can't befriend a non-Muslim or help them. And that could have sweeping consequences like can Afghans still work for the UN where there's a lot of non-Muslims? Can foreign aid workers work alongside Afghans to distribute aid? Can a foreign journalist work with an Afghan reporter? There's also a ban on the broadcasting and publishing of images of people. So what happens to your passport or your identity card? Dear, why do you think this is occurring three years after the US pullout? That's a question that a lot of people

have been asking. And I put this to Ashley Jackson. She's the co-director for the Center on Armed Groups. And she thinks this might be about the Taliban supreme leader, the emir, trying to assert control. This is very much about an emir who has been thwarted time and again, in many ways, and probably knows that he's been thwarted from taking the more extreme measures that he wants. Because in fact, the emir of the Taliban is more extreme than many of his followers. So for instance, that ban on studying or women working, some officials were trying to find ways around it. But Azadeh Razmohamed from the Atlantic Council, she argues the Taliban were emboldened to do this after the UN and international community representatives agreed to meet them in June.

Afghan women were not invited to the main meeting and they were not on the public agenda. Mohamed says the Taliban took that as a sign that they enjoy impunity. And she says the international community has to rethink its approach. I think the international community has this moral and legal obligation to intervene and to stop Taliban from imposing such an oppressive system with such an impunity and to finally perhaps move from these nightmares that is unfolding before our eyes right now. A nightmare and one that isn't ending for many Afghan women. Edpiers Dia Hadid, thank you so much. You're welcome, Scott. And that's up first for Saturday, August 24th. I'm Aisha Roscoe.

And I'm Scott Simon. Fernando Narro, Martin Patience, and Gabe O'Connor produced today's podcast. Danny Hensel is our director. Our editors were Ed McNulty, Dee Parvez, Megan Pratt, Emily Kopp, and Don Clyde. Hannah Glovda is our technical director with engineering support from Stacey Abbott, Arthur Laurent,

Neil T. Vault, and Dave Biska at WBEZ here in Chicago. Tomorrow on the podcast, how two Uyghur men found themselves unwilling participants in China's state systems of control. And there's lots more today and tomorrow morning on the radio. Go to stations.npr.org to find your local NPR station. Don't waste time. Do it now.

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