Up First from NPR - Trump Foreign Policy, Abu Ghraib Ruling, Cop 29 Climate Summit

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

President-elect Donald Trump's unconventional picks for his second-term team signal a shift in U.S. foreign policy. A jury awarded $42 million to three Iraqi men tortured at Abu Ghraib, holding a military contractor accountable for its role in their abuse. And, as the Trump administration signals rollbacks on climate action, the UK is stepping up with ambitious plans to combat global warming. 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 Megan Pratz, Lauren Migaki, Neela Banerjee, Mohamad ElBardicy, and Alice Woelfle.It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Ben Abrams and Julie Depenbrock.We get engineering support from Robert Rodriguez. Our technical director is Zac Coleman.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

President-elect Donald Trump is making some unconventional picks for a second-term team. Taken together, his picks could dramatically reshape America's foreign policy. I think we have plenty of leverage with Zelensky to get them to the table. I'm Amartinez with Michel Martin, and this is Up First from NPR News. A U.S. jury awards $42 million to three Iraqis held by Americans during the Iraq War. The plaintiffs say they were tortured. What does a ruling mean for accountability for wartime abuses? And world leaders are meeting to fight climate change, but don't look for the U.S. to lead

this time. The U.K. is stepping up with a major pledge, but what will other countries do if Trump scales back on climate rules? Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day. money internationally and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit wise.com, T's and C's apply. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, offering over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Hand-selected for their inherent craft, each hotel tells its own unique story through distinctive design and immersive experiences from medieval

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you listen. President-elect Donald Trump is moving fast, assembling his team for a second term in the White House. He says he will nominate former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee to be ambassador to Israel, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik to serve as UN ambassador, and Congressman Mike Walz to be his national security adviser. But some of his choices are getting a lot of attention,

like his plan to nominate a television host to be Secretary of Defense. Pete Hegseth of Fox News is a military veteran, but has no senior military or national security experience. Here to talk about this is White House correspondent Franco Ardonez. Franco, welcome back. Hi, Michelle. So we could do a segment on each of these picks, honestly, but what about the big picture? What does this tell us about Trump's plans to change how the U.S. positions itself in the world? Right. I mean, I think it's a few things. First, it clearly reflects Trump's focus on trust and loyalty. These are all big supporters, which his team does hope will eliminate some

of the infighting that plagued his first transition. But they're also indicative of Trump's foreign policy priorities. It's a more nationalistic focus, more transactional. You can expect strong opposition to China, support for Israel, and skepticism toward Ukraine. Here is Mike Waltz, for example, talking with our own Steve Inskeep about pressing for a deal between Ukraine and Russia. We have leverage like taking the handcuffs off of the long range weapons we provided Ukraine as well. And then of course, I think we have plenty of leverage with Zelensky to get them to the table. Now, Waltz though is a former Green Beret

who is considered to have quite a depth of foreign policy experience. So, well, okay, so the National Security Advisor doesn't have to be confirmed by the Senate, but some of these other roles do. Do we have a sense of how this mix of lawmakers and personalities will be received? Although, look, I do have to point out that the president's party does control the Senate or rather will control the Senate when Trump takes office. It's still a bit unclear, but I spoke about some of that with former ambassador John Simon,

who served in the Bush administration. He called Walt, Stefanik, and Huckabee leaders who have to be taken seriously. Simon also mentioned Senator Marco Rubio, who is widely reported to be the top candidate for Secretary of State, as another who has real foreign policy credentials. These are people who have spent a lot of time in Congress

and focused on many aspects of foreign policy who have certainly met with a number of world leaders who are people who will be known quantities among the foreign policy establishment. But what's surprising is Trump naming TV host and army vet Pete Hegseth for defense secretary. Okay, so how are Republicans reacting to this choice? I mean, in this position, you're not just you don't just advise the president, but you have to manage a huge agency, you have to manage relationships with other

defense leaders around the world. What are Republicans saying about this? Well, one House Republican committee chair expressed shock, saying Hegseth was not known on the list of names under consideration. Indiana Senator Todd Young told reporters he didn't have a sense of Hegseth's background or vision for the department, but he also said he wanted to give all of Trump's nominees a fair opportunity to be heard. Which raises a key point.

I mean, I'm guessing that many Republicans aren't going to want to take a stand against Trump's picks this early in the process. Yeah. I mean, it's not unusual for presidents to pull from out of different constituencies, but this is really an out-of-box kind of pick. The defense secretary leads over a million active-duties troops. Hexeth is a decorated veteran, but as you know, lacks the management and high-profile national security experience. That said, Trump really cares a lot about who those can

present well on TV. That is White House correspondent Franco Ardenius. Franco, thank you. Thank you, Michelle. A U.S. jury has awarded three survivors of the Abu Ghraib prison $42 million. The abuse of detainees by American troops there is one of the lasting legacies of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The photos of that abuse published in 2004 are shocking. And a warning to our listeners, this story contains graphic descriptions of the torture of prisoners in U.S. incarceration. Last year, NPR's Ruth Sherlock spoke with a former detainee, Talib al-Mujli.

They torturing us. They making us naked. Sometimes they threw that sound grenades on our shells and sometimes they used the shotguns when they used dogs to terrifying us. They flooded our shells with water. He was not involved in this court case, but the three plaintiffs in this lawsuit brought against a private US military contractor detailed similar abuse.

NPS Ruth Sherlock is with us now to tell us more about this. Good morning Ruth. Good morning. Could you just tell us more about this case? Yeah, well the jury said this US military contractor, CACI or Khaki, could be found guilty because the interrogators it supplied to Abu Ghraib conspired with US soldiers there to torture and mistreat the three plaintiffs. The jury said Khaki interrogators were liable because it said they actually instructed military police officers to quote soften up the detainees. You know

Khaki denies this characterization it says its employees were not responsible for nor took part in the abuse committed by military police in Abu Ghraib but But just after the verdict I reached Bahar Azmi, the lawyer who filed the suit on behalf of the plaintiffs. He's with the Center for Constitutional Rights and he told me this verdict is the culmination of a 16-year long effort by the plaintiffs to tell their story to an American jury. That struggle lasted 16 years, multiple trips to the Court of Appeals, surviving two dozen attempts for Khaki to dismiss the case and every obstacle you could imagine. You know, you said, well, so this is the second trial. The first trial ended in a mistrial when the jury couldn't reach a verdict on whether Khaki or the army could be held responsible.

Does this court victory pave the way for compensation for other Abu Ghraib detainees? Well, Michelle, you know, the short answer is no. The case is specifically about these three plaintiffs. I think actually what this case shows is just how hard it is for victims of US military abuse to get any kind of redress. It's the first time that a civilian jury has heard accounts directly from detainees of torture and mistreatment that has happened in this post 9-11 era detentions. Talib al-Mujli, the abrogate detainee we spoke to, told us how American soldiers stripped him naked, poked at his genitals, set snarling dogs on inmates, fired live ammunitions into cells. They flooded his

cell with cold water, he says, and he got pneumonia. He spent 20 years searching for a way to get compensation or even just an apology from the U.S. military, but ultimately he hasn't been able to find a mechanism for that redress. So, as we mentioned earlier, this verdict is against a private military contractor, but has the U.S. military paid compensation to victims? This is the really important point. You know, after the photos showing

the abuse of survivors in Abu Ghraib were published in 2004, Secretary Donald Runsfeld, at the time, told Congress that a way should be set up to compensate the victims. But when we looked into this, reporting the story of Talib al-Majli, we couldn't find any examples where the US military had compensated Abu Ghraib survivors. Human Rights Watch then followed up with a detailed investigation, and they also found that to this day the US government hasn't paid compensation or even set up a mechanism for these cases to be heard.

That is NPR's Ruth Sherlock. Ruth, thank you. Thank you very much. The COP29 climate summit is underway in Azerbaijan this week. With a new Trump administration coming in, there's not as much expectation for the U.S. setting a big climate goal, but at least one major industrial country is making a big climate goal, but at least one major industrial country is making a big pledge to fight global warming. To walk us through this and other climate news, we have Julia Simon. She's climate solutions correspondent on NPR's climate desk.

Julia, good morning. Good morning. So the UN climate summit began Monday. What are we seeing so far? So going into this climate summit, there hasn't been as much optimism for US leadership. After all, the newly elected Donald Trump famously called climate change a hoax. However, we are seeing other countries stepping up. In the next few months, countries have to announce these big targets for how much

climate pollution they are going to cut to limit global warming. And the United Kingdom, they're one of those countries stepping up. Yesterday, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, he gave this speech announcing plans to cut climate pollution at least 81% compared to 1990 levels by 2035. How does the UK plan to do it? That seems like a really ambitious target. The UK is investing in proving climate solutions, things like wind energy, solar energy, big batteries, also nuclear energy, but the UK is really framing their climate action in economic

terms. Here's UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. This is a huge opportunity for investment, for UK businesses, for British workers, if we act now to lead the world in the economy of tomorrow. And Michelle, you hear this economic argument from other countries like China. China, they're selling their technologies like electric vehicles in emerging markets like in Africa and Latin America. China, the UK, they see climate solutions making business sense. Okay, back to the US. President-elect Trump is in the process of naming his new cabinet. He's already named a new head or he's announced plans to name a new head of the EPA.

That is the former New York Congressman Lee Zeldin. What do we know about him? The word Trump used when announcing his pick of Zeldin is deregulatory. That is removing government regulations. According to the League of Conservation Voters, Zeldin voted several times against clean air and clean water legislation. With Zeldin, many EPA rules that limit climate pollution could be in jeopardy. And yesterday, the EPA actually finalized this rule that oil and gas companies have to pay a fee when they leak methane. That's this very potent planet heating gas. under Trump and a possible

Republican trifecta in Congress, Congress may overturn that EPA new methane rule. Okay, Julia, before we let you go, there's one last piece of climate news. A court in the Netherlands just overturned a ruling that the energy company Shell has to reduce its climate pollution by 45%. What are the implications of that? So the court did say Shell still has this duty of care to limit planet heating emissions, but the courts couldn't figure out how big the cuts should be. Still, the point that's being brought up by other environmental groups is that there are still lots of climate litigation claims against

big oil companies, including in states like Massachusetts, Hawaii, California. Those cases are being argued in state and municipal courts, and they haven't been decided yet. That is NPR's Julia Simon. Julia, thank you. Thank you. And that's Up First for Wednesday, November 13th. I'm Michelle Martin. And I'm A Martinez. How about listening to Consider This from NPR? We here at Up First give you the three big stories of the day.

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