Up First from NPR - Trump Pre-Trial Hearing, China Climate-Summit, EU-Tunisia Deal

Episode Date: July 18, 2023

Former President Trump has a pre-trial hearing for his alleged mishandling of classified documents. The world's two biggest polluters are meeting in Beijing hoping to revive efforts to address climate change. And Europe is offering much-needed money to Tunisia in an effort to stem a wave of migration. Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.Up First is produced by Nina Kravinsky and Shelby Hawkins. Our editors are Reena Advani, Dana Farrington, Michael Sullivan and Alice Woelfle. Our technical director is Zac Coleman with engineering support from Stacey Abbott.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Donald Trump is back in court expected to use his time-tested legal strategy. That time-tested strategy is to test the court to buy more time. What's his case to delay his trial until after the election? I'm Steve Inskeep with A. Martinez, and this is Up First from NPR News. No nation does more than China to emit gases linked to climate change. The United States is second. And during this summer of record heat, U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry meets a leading Chinese diplomat. How much can they work together?

Also, Europeans try for a solution to the flow of North African migrants. They are paying Tunisia to keep people where they are. How much does it matter that the money is going to a government that's undermining democracy? Stay with us. We've got all the news you need to start your day. Now, our change will honor 100 years 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. Former President Trump is back in court today. The grand jury indicted him for taking classified documents when he left the White House and repeatedly refusing to return them.

Now, Trump has been in court many times in his life. One of his strategies is delay, and his lawyers have asked to postpone this trial. What's different this time is the election calendar. He is running for president again, which means he is running to oversee the Justice Department. His former attorney general, William Barr, spoke with NPR on Friday. If Trump wins the primaries and is the nominee, which I do not think he will be, Department. His former attorney general, William Barr, spoke with NPR on Friday. If Trump wins the primaries and is the nominee, which I do not think he will be, but if he is, and then if he gets elected, my assumption is the case would be dropped or he would have the case dropped. I mean, it will be a mess. It'll be a mess. NPR justice correspondent Kerry Johnson has been following the case. Kerry, so what specifically is Trump saying about justifying a delay?

Trump is asking this judge he appointed to the bench, Aileen Cannon, to basically put off the trial until after the election because he says jury selection is going to be very difficult. And he says the legal issues here in this case are challenging. Trump is running for the White House. He says he's got a busy schedule between now and next November when he's going to be campaigning and traveling a lot around the country. All right, Jack Smith, a special counsel investigating Trump, what did he have to say?

Yeah, the special counsel says there is no basis for postponing this trial. Jack Smith wants to select a jury this December. He says some of Trump's legal arguments are baseless and frivolous, this isn't a difficult case, and that lots of defendants have busy jobs with travel and they don't get special treatment from the courts. You know, Trump has had lots of legal trouble. He often goes all the way to the Supreme Court to try to get his way. And what's left unsaid in these court papers is that putting off this trial until after the election could threaten the whole case itself. If Trump wins, he could direct his attorney general to drop the indictment or even try to pardon himself in 2025. The FBI found classified documents in a bathroom, a ballroom, a storage room, all at Trump's resort, Mar-a-Lago. Will we see any of those papers in the course of this case?

That's not clear at this stage. We're going to learn more in the coming weeks. What's happening now is that lawyers for Trump and his valet, Walt Nauta, are getting security clearances to be able to look at some of these documents. They've signaled in court filings they may challenge whether some of the materials should actually be considered classified. They may have also signaled there should be no secret evidence in the case, no secrets from the jury. Defense lawyers are not giving any ground here. They apparently balked at a protective order the Justice Department tried to file yesterday to prevent classified documents. It's giving to the defense from being shared, including with the defendants themselves.

That order is pretty typical, according to former prosecutors. It's basically trying to make sure no one releases classified information they get in the course of all this trial preparation, including the defendants. And if they do, those people could be subject to further prosecution and contempt charges. You mentioned Eileen Cannon. That's the judge that Trump appointed, the judge in this case. How is she approaching the job so far? Judge Cannon received a lot of criticism last year when she carved out an exemption for the former president to challenge a lawfully executed search warrant. And she was overruled by a very conservative appeals court, which included Trump appointees since then. She's proceeded pretty conventionally. A lot of people are watching her next moves.

The Justice Department has not moved to recuse her based on alleged appearance of impartiality issues. And right now, I do not expect that to happen. All right, that's NPR's Carrie Johnson. Thanks for the info. My pleasure. As global temperatures rise, the relationship between the U.S. and China appears to thaw. Yeah, John Kerry is the latest high-level American official to visit Beijing. The special climate envoy met today with the ruling Communist Party's head of foreign relations. Kerry's visit is aimed at reestablishing climate change talks between the two countries that contribute the most to the problem.

For more on Kerry's trip, we're joined by Zach Coleman, who covers climate change for Politico. Zach, U.S. and China never seem to be pals on policy. So what can we reasonably expect to come out of Kerry's visit? Well, this is one area where the two countries have a common vision for what they want to do. They want to reduce emissions that are heating the planet. But we do have to set a low bar here. The relationship between the two countries were at historic, at least modern lows. And there's a lot of work that needs to be done to repair how these two countries work together

to solve this vexing issue. Now, what are some of the issues that are complicating these talks? I mean, these talks have been suspended since last August when then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went to Taiwan as an affront to China. China, of course, considers Taiwan its territory. The U.S. sees it as more independent from China, and that was a big no-no in China, and that has frozen the talks until now. There's also just basic human rights concerns. A

lot of the solar panels that are made in China are made with what we would consider forced labor from the minority Uyghur population in Xinjiang. And there is a lot of economic competition. In the years since the Pelosi visit to Taiwan, the U.S. has put hundreds of billions of dollars out the door to try to arrest a lot of this battery semiconductor and clean energy manufacturing from China and back to the U.S. Now, we've known that China and the U.S. are the two largest contributors to a rising global temperatures. And we tend to hear a lot about the United States' ambitious climate goals. But what is China doing to combat climate change? Well, China has a goal to install 1,200 gigawatts of wind and solar by 2030, and they're projected to hit that next year. And for context, that's about six times as much as the U.S. has installed.

So they are an enormous installer of renewable energy, and they're an enormous producer of it as well. So they have put more renewable energy onto the marketplace than any other country as well. So they do a lot there, but they are backsliding on coal, and coal is the biggest contributor to climate change. It is dirty, it is heating the planet. And if China cannot ditch coal faster, then we are not going to hit our temperature targets

to keep the world from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050. Where do the United States and China have common ground when it comes to climate change? Does that exist anywhere? It does. I mean, both countries want to improve air quality for their citizens. And you do that by getting rid of dirtier fuels. Both countries are seeing these devastating impacts from climate change, especially heat waves, which are hitting not only the US, but also China right now. Drought is a problem in China, just as it is in the U.S. So both countries see an economic advantage to transition to cleaner fuels and also a human health advantage. Zach Coleman reports on climate change for Politico. Zach, thanks for the information.

Thank you. The European Union is offering hundreds of millions of dollars to the Tunisian government. Now, it's meant to help the country's failing economy. In exchange, though, Tunisia has to help stem illegal migration to Europe. Of which there's been a lot. So far this year, according to Italy, some 75,000 people arrived in smugglers' boats. Thousands of others have died trying to make the journey across the Mediterranean, and many started in Tunisia.

The deal means the European Union will be helping to fund a government that has undermined Tunisia's once hopeful young democracy. NPR's Ruth Sherlock covers a region, joins us now from the UK. Ruth, tell us more about this deal between the EU and Tunisia. What is being offered? Hi. Yeah, well, EU leaders were just there, including the Dutch and Italian prime ministers on Sunday to try to move this forward. And what the EU is dangling is this prospect of as much as a billion dollars in financial aid.

Most of that is dependent on Tunisia agreeing to reforms imposed by the IMF. But like you said, you know, the other big piece about this is migration. So the EU, especially Italy, where lots of migrants arrive, is desperate to stop the smugglers boats that keep coming across the Mediterranean Sea. Even more boats are setting off from Tunisia these days than from Libya. And the EU wants to strengthen the Tunisian Coast Guard and encourage Tunisia to also send home migrants that arrived there trying to get to Europe. Tell us why, though, the nature of the Tunisian government is bringing out critics of this deal. Well, so part of it is that Tunisia's President Kays Saeed has done a lot to unravel

Tunisia's democracy that formed after the Arab Spring Revolution in 2011. He was elected on a promise to fix the economy, but he since then centralised power to himself, weakened the mandate of parliament, jailed prominent opponents, and critics like Monica Marks, a Tunisian expert and assistant professor at New York University in Abu Dhabi, well, she told me that in dealing with Said, the EU is sacrificing its principles. The most important thing about this deal is it symbolically says we in the EU are willing to use our taxpayers' money to achieve our priority in Tunisia, which is stopping migration as much as possible, no matter the cost, no matter how much you violate

human rights. She says the deal comes across as a pat on the back for Said. Now, speaking of human rights, one of those concerns over human rights is that in recent months there have been attacks against black Tunisians and migrants from other parts of Africa. What's driving that? Well, Monica Marks and others say Said has fueled racist sentiment in Tunisia. He denies any allegations of racism, but he's given speeches that cite the conspiracy theory also sometimes used by white nationalists in Europe and the US and rooted in anti-Semitism. It's known as the quote, great replacement, and basically alleges this conspiracy, that there's a conspiracy to overwhelm the country with black Africans. So this was followed by a wave of attacks in Tunisia in recent months, and black Tunisians and migrants have been robbed

and attacked and evicted from their homes. And so the irony, experts say, is that actually this may be one of the causes for the increase in illegal migration across the Mediterranean as people try to flee Tunisia. And there's this concern that actually in backing Qais Saeed's government, that plan may actually backfire

and there may actually be more migration to Europe. That's NPR's Ruth Sherlock in the UK. Ruth, thanks. Thank you very much. And that's Up First for Tuesday, July 18th. I'm E. Martinez. And I'm Steve Inskeep. Up First is produced by Nina Kravinsky and Shelby Hawkins. Our editors are Rina Advani and Alice Wolfley, with engineering support from Stacey Abbott, and our executive producer is Erika Aguilar.

Don't forget to start your day here with us tomorrow, and thanks for waking up with NPR. Your NPR station makes Up First possible each and every single morning. You can support them and support us at donate.npr.org slash up first. Thank you.