Up First from NPR - Trump At The Superbowl, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Turmoil, Air Aid To Gaza

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

In a pre-Superbowl interview on Fox News, President Trump talked about his plans for the Department of Education and Gaza, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been targeted for closure, and details from an NPR reporter's flight into Gaza with one of Jordan's humanitarian flights into the territory. 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 Roberta Rampton, Emily Kopp, Nishant Dahiya, Janaya Williams and Alice Woelfle. It was produced by Mansee Khurana, Kaity Kline and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Arthur Laurent. And our technical director is David Greenburg.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The Eagles dominated Kansas City to win Super Bowl 59 in New Orleans. President Trump was in the audience, did a wide-ranging interview that aired during the pregame show. What did he say about his plans for tariffs, Gaza, and other issues? I'm Michelle Martin, that's Amy Martinez, and this is Up First from NPR News. Employees at a U.S. agency set up to protect consumers from financial fraud have been told to stop doing any work. They're shutting down literally the cops on the beach.

What will it mean for Americans if the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau cannot function? And the country of Jordan has started sending humanitarian helicopter flights into Gaza. Our MPR reporter took one of the flights to get a rare look inside a territory few foreign journalists have been allowed to see. Stay with us, we've got all the news you need to start your day. If you love NPR podcasts, you don't need me to tell you the value of public media in your life. To support our mission and get perks like sponsor-free podcast listening across more than 20 NPR podcasts and exclusive bonus episodes, sign up for the NPR Plus bundle at plus.npr.org.

President Trump took a trip to New Orleans last night to watch the Super Bowl. And the fans there had some mixed reaction to that. Some cheered, some booed. The game kept a whirlwind last few days for Trump and he told reporters to expect another busy week. MPR White House correspondent Franco Ordonez always gets cheered wherever he goes. He was traveling with the president joins us now. So Franco, before we get to the heavier news, let's talk about the game for a second. Tell us more about Trump taking it in. Thanks, A. Yeah, Trump took the field about an hour ahead of the game to meet with first responders and victims of the terror attack in New Orleans on New Year's Day. And he got largely a positive reception from people who saw him that first time

But later when they flashed a picture on the jumbotron in his box during the national anthem He really did get a strong mix of cheers and jeers now Trump is the first sitting president to attend the title game Ahead of the game. He said he thought Kansas City would win that obviously did not happen It was a very one-sided game. And I don't know about UA, but I was pretty surprised by that. No one expected what we saw in the actual game. Yeah, not even Vegas in the line. Now, Trump did an interview that aired during the pregame show.

What are the highlights there? Yeah, he says he's going to send Elon Musk to check out the Department of Education this week. And he expects more cuts like we've seen at USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But there was more questions that he took yesterday. He actually also brought us to the cabin on his plane on Air Force One, flying to the game.

This really doesn't happen very often. And the reason was he wanted to highlight kind of the body of water that was below us. Right now we're flying over a thing called the Gulf of America. He was actually underscoring that executive order that he signed a couple of weeks ago renaming the Gulf of Mexico. Now next to him was Doug Burgum, the Interior Secretary, and Burgum added that the team is now calling map makers like Google Maps and Apple Maps to kind of put the name change into effect. All right so what else did he talk about? Yeah he promised to slap new 25 percent tariffs on all imports of steel and aluminum

that's gonna happen today on Tuesday or Wednesday he's planning to announce reciprocal tariffs he didn't say on what countries but did promise that they would take effect almost immediately. Reciprocal tariffs and very simply, it's if they charge us, we charge them. He also addressed the war in Ukraine. He confirmed that he's been speaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin about ending the war, but he didn't want to give any details about what they discussed. Now, okay, new tariffs this week. There always seems to be a lot though in any given Trump week. So what else are you watching for?

Yeah, I think there's gonna be a lot of focus on foreign policy this week Now Trump's expected to meet with the King of Jordan on Tuesday That's important because he's calling for Jordan and other regional leaders to allow Palestinians from Gaza to live there It's a plan that the Jordanians have so far rejected now on the plane He doubled down on his commitment to buy and own Gaza. Now he didn't outright deny the possibility of Palestinians coming to the US but he did emphasize that it would be better if they stayed in the region. During those years it would take to rebuild Gaza. And just one other thing, Trump is also meeting with the Prime

Minister of India Narendra Modi. This week the two leaders are expected to talk trade and illegal immigration. That's White House correspondent Franco Ordonez. Thanks a lot. Thanks, A. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ground to a halt over the weekend. Under President Biden, the agency issued and enforced rules to cap overdraft fees and to remove medical bills from credit reports. Now employees have been told to stay home this week.

NPR personal finance correspondent Laurel Wamsley has been following this. Laurel, if the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau cannot do its work, what does that mean for Americans? Well, it's quite troubling because the Bureau is the country's consumer finance watchdog and it's an enforcement agency. I've talked with several CFPB staff and former staff in recent days and they named a few big concerns. One is that a new stop work order from its new acting director halts the agency's supervision work. They said the agency has hundreds and hundreds of employees who go across the country who

go into companies and make sure they're following important consumer protections. As Julie Margatta Morgan, who is CFPB's Associate Director of Research and Monitoring, until she left the agency last month, put it, they're shutting down literally the cops on the beach. They make sure your student loan company is actually processing your payments and that mortgage companies follow the rules put in place after the Great Recession. And there's a second big concern, which is that all of this is happening under Elon Musk,

who is the CEO of Tesla, and has talked about wanting his ex-company to be a whole commerce and payments platform. And now it looks like he has access to all of CFPB's records, including companies' proprietary information. That'd be a huge competitive advantage to someone like Musk.

And of course there are worries that that sensitive information will be mishandled. I mean, it's been a mile a minute with news out of the CFPB. What's, what's the latest? Yeah, it's been a tumultuous few days. On Friday, staff from Elon Musk's government efficiency team were seen at CFPB headquarters and they've gained access to those key internal systems. Then over the weekend, Trump tapped Russell Vogt as the new acting director. Vogt was an architect of the conservative policy agenda, Project 2025, and he sent an all staff email ordering a halt to virtually all

of their work. Shortly thereafter, Vogt posted on X that he would not be drawing the agency's next round of funding from the Federal Reserve. And then just yesterday, an email was sent to all staff and contractors saying that CFPB's DC headquarters would be closed for the week and that they have to work remotely. All this kind of sounds like what we've been seeing happening with USAID. Totally. It appears to be the same playbook. I mean, both are independent agencies that this current administration appears to be

trying to dismantle. Republicans have targeted the Consumer Protection Agency for years though. They've often accused its regulators of overreach. And then on Friday Musk tweeted CFPBRIP. Yeah I saw that tweet. Alright so what happens now? Well staffers are just bracing themselves for whatever comes next. One told me that they went to the DC headquarters yesterday just to grab some personal items before the building closed for the week and they weren't allowed in. And you know, at USCID, the vast majority of staff

were put on administrative leave before a federal judge put a hold on that. And last night, CFPB's union filed a lawsuit against Vote, the agency's new head. In terms of that funding being slashed at CFPB, we actually saw the same thing happen during Trump's first term, but then later on they went back to taking the money. And the thing is that if this whole thing is being done for

government efficiency, CFPB isn't really where you'd start. It has a relatively small budget, and since its launch in 2011, it's delivered more than $20 billion back to Americans. That's NPR's Laurel Wamsley. Thanks a lot. You're welcome. That's MPR's Laurel Wamslee. Thanks a lot. You're welcome. Israel and Hamas are maintaining a fragile ceasefire in Gaza. That has allowed more food and medicine to enter the Palestinian territory that's been

devastated by more than a year of war. It's still not enough, according to aid officials. Jordan has begun helping out, delivering medical supplies via what it refers to as an air bridge, flying helicopters to land inside Gaza. MPR's Jane Araf went on a recent flight. She joins us from Amman. Jane, so Jordan has carried out a lot of aid, air drops throughout the war in Gaza. What's different about these latest efforts? Well, those were part of multinational efforts that dropped aid from the air on pallets

with parachutes. Some of them ended up in the sea and there was also the danger of those heavy pallets landing on people. So these flights, 16 a day over 18 days, have actually landed in Gaza, although on the outskirts, which makes the aid much more targeted. Okay, now tell us about the flight you took. I mean, what were the aircrafts carrying? They were Blackhawk helicopters, and they were loaded with cardboard boxes containing anesthesia drugs, antibiotics, and other medications. They also contain things like disposable diapers and infant formula. So the helicopters can carry only a fraction of the capacity of a truck, and they are much more expensive. These airlifts are still subject to Israeli regulations, but Jordanian aid officials say they can get medicine into Gaza this way much more reliably

and much faster. Okay, what else did you see? Well, we took off from an air base about an hour from Amman and flew along the Dead Sea, then into Israel. In Israel, you can see built up communities and green fields, and then it's a very stark difference when you cross over into Gaza. From the air, we could see skeletons of buildings hit by Israeli airstrikes and others in rubble. And in the distance there was that Mediterranean coastline. So, A, we landed just within Israel's buffer zone in Gaza, not far from the city of Dara Bala. And it was a very rare glimpse of Gaza, even that limited view, because Gaza journalists have been reporting from there a great risk from the start but

Israel for the most part bans foreign organizations news organizations from Gaza Jane before we get to President Trump and who he's gonna meet this week I mean, how was it to just to see everything from the air? I mean, it's one thing to have a grounds-eye view but then to have this overview like you had what was that like? it was really surreal because I mean, it's one thing to have a grounds-eye view, but then to have this overview like you had, what was that like? 11 It was really surreal because you don't see anything living in that part of it, Daryl Bella, which has been heavily hit. I mean, really, from what we were seeing, it was just rubble. And it's important to note that Israel prevented us, according to

the Jordanian authorities, from taking photographs on the ground of what we were seeing. The only thing we could take photos of once we landed were the buffer zone and the helicopter. But to actually see it real, in real life, was really unreal. Yeah. Now President Trump last week announced that he wanted to relocate Palestinians in Gaza to Jordan, Egypt. Jordan's King Abdullah is arriving in the United States for talks with President Trump tomorrow. How are those talks expected to go? Those are going to be tough. That coveted coastline that Trump officials

have their eye on is Palestinian territory. And Jordan sees the plan as an existential threat. So Jordan is a key ally and security partner, and it's made clear. It would see Israel trying to relocate more Palestinians here as a breach of their peace treaty and a declaration of war. That's MPR's Jane Araf in Amman. Jane, thank you. Thank you. The Kansas City Chiefs attempt at a Super Bowl III, Pete, was picked apart by the Philadelphia Eagles in a 40-22 blowout.

Yeah, Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes was sacked six times and threw a pair of interceptions as Philly had a 24-zip halftime lead. At least Kendrick Demar's halftime show featuring SZA, Samuel L. Jackson and a dancing Serena Williams brought some life back into New Orleans Superdome. And Eagles quarterback Jalen Hertz was the Super Bowl's most valuable player after running for a touchdown and throwing for two more as all of Philly today will likely be saying fly Eagles fly. And that's up first for Monday February 10th, I'm Martinez. And I'm Michelle Martin. Make your next listen consider this. The team behind NPR's All Things Considered

goes deep into a single news story in just 15 minutes. Listen now on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Roberta Rampton, Emily Cobb, Nishant Dhihiya, Janeo Williams, and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Mansi Karana, Katie Klein, and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Arthur Laurent and our technical director is David Greenberg. Join us again tomorrow.