Up First from NPR - Trump's Defense Pick, United Healthcare CEO Killed, Mass Deportations And Jobs

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

President-elect Donald Trump's embattled nominee for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, faces a tough path to confirmation in the Senate. New York City police are searching for the person who killed the head of America's largest health insurer. And, the conclusions of an economist who studied the impact of mass deportations on the job market.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, Russell Lewis, Alfredo Carbajal, Lisa Thomson and HJ Mai. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Kaity Kline. We get engineering support from Neisha Heinis. And our technical director is Carleigh Strange. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The embattled nominee for Secretary of Defense quotes President-elect Trump as offering support. It's a fight. They're coming after you. Get after it. So how is Pete Hex-Seth answering claims about his conduct over the years? I'm Michelle Martin, that's Steve Inskeep, and this is Up First from NPR News. New York City police are searching for the person who killed the head of America's largest health insurer. This was a premeditated, preplanned, targeted attack. What do we know so far about the shooting?

Also we look at some of the side effects of mass deportations. When there is an increase in deportations in a county that does not lead to more job opportunities or higher wages for U.S. born workers. Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day. This message comes from Made In Cookware. Did you know that many popular dishes in Tom Colicchio's craft restaurant are made in Made In Cookware. Did you know that many popular dishes in Tom Calicchio's Craft Restaurant are made in Made In Cookware? Their carbon steel cookware combines the best of cast iron and

stainless clad, gets super hot, and is tough enough for grills or open flames. Remember what great dishes on menus worldwide have in common. They're made in made in. For full details, visit madeincookware.com. That's M-A-D-E-I-N cookware.com. Have you ever been on a date with someone and suddenly found yourself disgusted by something they did? Well, you might have gotten the ick. On It's Been A Minute, we're asking the big questions about dating. Like, what's actually happening when we get the ick? And is it about them or about you? To find out, listen now to the It's Been A Minute podcast from NPR. On the embedded podcast from NPR, what is it like to live under years of state surveillance?

So many people have fear. Fear of losing their families. For years, the Chinese government has been detaining hundreds of thousands of ethnic Uyghurs. This is the story of one family torn apart. Listen to The Black Gate on the embedded podcast from NPR. President-elect Trump's pick for defense secretary is fighting to save his nomination. Pete, Hegseth is defending himself against allegations of heavy drinking, mistreatment of women, and the financial mismanagement of two veterans' charities.

The former Fox News host sat yesterday for an interview with another former host at that network, Megyn Kelly, for her show on SiriusXM. He insisted that Trump pledged his support in these words. Hey Pete, I got your back. It's a fight. They're coming after you. Get after it. I think he'll be delighted that we're talking today and we're going to do more talking.

Hegseth is a veteran who wrote in books about purging woke culture from the Pentagon. Now he's the latest of Trump's nominees to run into trouble. NPR senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith is covering all this. Tam, good morning. Good morning. How is Hegseth defending himself when he steps out in public? He's saying that all of these allegations are part of a smear campaign from anonymous sources who don't like what he would do with the Defense Department.

He also said he doesn't have a drinking problem, but he did promise to stop drinking if he's confirmed. Okay. He's meeting privately with the senators who will decide his fate. And he's also doing something very unusual for a nominee. He's posting on social media, published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal and did that Megyn Kelly interview.

Even his mom sat for an interview on Fox and Friends yesterday to make a direct appeal to female senators, saying her son is a changed man. My colleagues on the Hill are reporting that while no Republican senators have said that they are a no vote, enough have expressed reservations to potentially sink his nomination. Well, now the question is, I guess, how far Trump wants to push this fight. We heard Hegseth quote Trump as purportedly offering support in private.

What's he saying in public? Trump hasn't said anything in public. He hasn't weighed in. But yesterday, he did announce more than a dozen other picks for administration jobs, continuing what has been just this incredibly fast pace of making these announcements. Hegseth isn't the only headache though. Trump's pick to lead the Drug Enforcement Administration withdrew this week. And then of course, there was Matt Gaetz for attorney general who had to withdraw because

he didn't have the votes to be confirmed. How does that record compare with past presidents? You know, it's almost expected that at least one of a president's initial nominees will fail before getting to a Senate vote. It happened with Trump. It happened to Biden, Bush, Clinton. Obama actually had three picks withdraw. But this is really, really early for two picks to be out already. Part of the reason is Trump has bypassed some of the typical vetting procedures. Max Steyer

heads the Partnership for Public Service, which has long worked to improve presidential transitions. Haste makes waste. There's been some attention paid to the speed of the intended appointments, but you don't actually go fast if you don't do the necessary preparation work to make sure you're going well. And there is no prior incoming administration that has seen intended nominees blow up at the speed at which we've seen so far. You know, the Trump transition only just agreed to FBI background checks earlier this week, more than a month late.

Usually this sort of vetting is done quietly before picks are named to avoid embarrassment. And this time you have a cloud of self-inflicted chaos around the Trump transition because of the way they chose to do it. I'm interested in hearing that they've agreed to the FBI background checks. They initially seem not interested at all. And then senators quietly said, we will be hearing from nominees who have been vetted only.

And I guess they changed their minds. Yep. NPR's Tamara Keith in West Palm Beach. Thanks so much. You're welcome. Police in New York City are searching for the person who killed the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. Brian Thompson led the largest health insurer in the United States and he was shot the morning of his employer's annual Investors Conference. Authorities said he was targeted and the shooting was planned.

And Pierce, Maria Aspin is covering this story. Maria, good morning. Good morning, Steve. What have you learned? So this was shocking. Yesterday morning, just before 7 a.m., Brian Thompson was shot as he approached a hotel in Midtown Manhattan. And I have to say, a lot of companies use this place for big meetings.

I've been there for these sorts of events many times. Police say this wasn't a random act of gun violence. The person who shot Thompson was waiting outside specifically for him. This is NYPD Police Commissioner, Jessica Tisch. Every indication is that this was a premeditated, preplanned, targeted attack. Police released surveillance footage

and pictures of the alleged gunman. He was wearing dark clothing and a mask, and he used a pistol that appeared to have a silencer. Police say the gunman was waiting on the sidewalk for Thompson and shot him several times from behind as he walked by. Thanks for the detail about the silencer. I looked at that weapon on the video and thought, wow, that's a long barrel and wondered if

that's what that was. So thank you for that. Now, as far as the victim, who was Thompson? So he was 50 years old. He lived outside Minneapolis with his wife and two kids, and he was a longtime executive at United Health Group. He joined that company two decades ago and worked his way up as the company grew bigger and more powerful. Three years ago, Thompson took over the unit called United Health Care, which is the largest health insurer in the United States. It has

tens of millions of customers and it made almost $300 billion in revenue last year. But it's important to point out that as big as this insurance business is, it's just part of the larger United Health parent company, which isn't a household name necessarily, but it's one of the largest companies in the United States. Yeah. And of course, we're asking these questions because we don't know who the gunman was. We don't know what the motive was, but of course, you look into the affairs of this person who was shot. So what else does United Health own? It touches pretty much every part of the US healthcare experience, Steve. Another big business it owns is Optum, which manages pharmacy benefits, or you might remember

the change healthcare hack earlier this year. That's also owned by UnitedHealth. United is also the largest employer of doctors in the entire country. It said last year that it employs or is affiliated with 90,000 physicians. That's one out of every 10 doctors in the country. So with this size and scale, United Health has drawn a lot of criticism and scrutiny from consumers and regulators and lawmakers, sometimes over how it wields its power. Just last month, we saw the Justice Department file an antitrust lawsuit trying to block

UnitedHealth from buying yet another business for $3 billion. Health insurance companies make a lot of people angry. They reject claims. They do a lot of things that enrage people. Isn't that, don't they get a lot of threats? Yes, healthcare executives receive a ton of threats. And part of that, Steve, as you said, is the general anger and frustration so many feel over healthcare in the United States. The country has the most expensive

healthcare in the developed world and some of the worst health outcomes and since United Health is the biggest healthcare company, it's a key part of that system. So it gets blamed by a lot of people when the system doesn't work. And Bers Maria Aspen in New York City. Thanks so much. Thank you. Maria Aspin in New York City, thanks so much. Thank you. Okay, if President-elect Trump succeeds in deporting millions of people from the United States, his administration will not be the first. Yes, in fact, the U.S. has deported millions of people in the past, and that gives us a chance to answer a question.

When you deport a lot of workers who are not citizens, does that improve the job market for people who are, and other people in the US legally? NPR immigration correspondent Jasmine Garst has been studying that. Hi there, Jazz. Hi. What does the history show here about this idea, which is one of the reasons that the new administration gives for a mass deportation?

Yeah, so the Obama administration did a historic number of deportations, more than three million removals. I spoke to economist Chloe East at the University of Colorado in Denver. She studied the effects of many of those deportations. So we see really clearly that when there is an increase in deportations in a county, that does not lead to more job opportunities or higher wages for US-born workers. Her work also focused on something we rarely hear about, which is immigration as a way to create new jobs for American-born workers. How could immigrants, whether they're here legally or illegally, create jobs for American born workers. How could immigrants, whether they're here legally

or illegally, create jobs for American workers? Yeah, so let me give you an example. Earlier this year, I was interviewing business owners in Florida, and the owner of one roofing company told me, if I could hire more immigrant workers to do the roofing, then I could take on more jobs, which means I would need to hire a manager. I would need to hire and expand my accounting team and all those jobs would go to

U.S. citizens. So we don't talk about this a lot, but economists do talk about this trickle-down effect. Okay, so that doesn't mean that it is right or proper that you have to agree with people coming here illegally or through asylum or anything else. But in any case, it doesn't seem to cost Americans jobs. It may actually add American jobs if there are more people here and working. Exactly. So what Professor East says is that for every half a million people deported, she estimates there were 44,000 fewer jobs for American-born workers.

The presidential campaign also touched on the idea that people here illegally are using resources, taking up housing, that this affects citizens. Are there findings about that? So we don't know what mass deportations are going to look like, right? But I wanted to bring it down to the day to day. We know immigrant labor is inextricably linked to our food supply. So consider farm workers in California, where a lot of US vegetables come from. Now, over 90% of those workers are foreign born, mostly undocumented. I asked Professor East what could happen to, for example, the price of tomatoes, most of which come from California.

Mass deportations in the Central Valley in California would reduce the number of people who are able and willing to pick tomatoes and also reduce the number of people who are able and willing to pick tomatoes, and also reduce the number of people who will drive the trucks from the tomato farms to the grocery stores. And when there are fewer of both types of workers, there will be fewer tomatoes at the grocery store at all, which will make the price of tomatoes go up. So basically what she's saying is, if you're worried about the price of food now, you should

be worried about mass deportations. NPR's Jasmine Garst, thanks so much. Thank you. And that's up first for this Thursday, December 5th. I'm Steve Inskey. And I'm Michelle Martin. For your next listen, why not consider Consider This from NPR? We here at Up First give you the three big stories of the day.

Our Consider This colleagues take a different approach. They dive into a single new story and what it means to you in just 15 minutes. Listen now on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Today's Up First was edited by Roberta Rampton, Russell Lewis, Alfredo Carbajal, Lisa Thompson, and H.J. Mai. It was produced by Ziad Bach, Nia Dumas, and Katie Klein. We get engineering support from Misha Hines, and our technical director is Carly Strange.

Join us tomorrow. Consider This is a daily news podcast, and lately the news is about a big question. How much can one guy change? What will change look like for energy? Schools? Healthcare? Follow coverage of a changing country on Consider This, the afternoon news podcast from NPR. Lately on the NPR Politics podcast, we're talking about a big question.

How much can one guy change? What will change look like for energy, school, healthcare? Take the Department of Education close it. Healthcare. Better and less expensive. Follow coverage of a changing country. Promises made, promises kept. We're going to keep our promises. On the NPR Politics Podcast.