Up First from NPR - Trump's National Security Picks, STI Rates Drop, COP29 Latest

Episode Date: November 16, 2024

What do President-elect Donald Trump's picks for his national security team say about his 2nd term priorities? New data shows a slight decline in sexually transmitted infections. The latest from the UN Climate Change Conference in Azerbaijan.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Experience necessary? What kind of experience? President-elect Donald Trump announces his picks for his national security team. What signals is he's sending about his second term priorities. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. And I'm Scott Simon and this is Up First from NPR News. Loyalty seems to be a common factor in Trump's choices to lead defense, national intelligence, and the CIA. More on that in a moment. And some good public health news.

Rates of syphilis, chlamydia, and gonorrhea have dropped. We'll hear the reasons why. Also, the United Nations Climate Change Conference is underway. It's a deal for wealthy countries to help developing ones getting closer to reality. So please stay with us we have the news you need to start your weekend. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else.

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There's been a lot of buzz over who President-elect Trump wants in his new administration. Several nominees for his national security team are better known for their enthusiastic support for Trump than their experience. And PR National Security correspondent Greg Myrie joins us now. Greg, thanks for being with us. Hi, Scott. Help us put some of these selections into perspective. Tulsi Gabbard nominated for director of national intelligence. She is a veteran and a former democratic lawmaker.

Yeah, she would be responsible for overseeing all 18 intelligence agencies. And you know, just four years ago, Scott, she was a congresswoman from Hawaii, ran for the democratic presidential nomination, but then she quit the party and became this huge Trump supporter. She's never worked in the intelligence community and has taken a number of very controversial foreign policy positions. Just days after Russia's massive 2022 invasion of Ukraine, she took to social media and called the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and the U.S. to, quote, embrace the spirit of aloha, respect, and love. Now, if confirmed, she'll be one of the president's top advisors on this war. And Scott, I just want to quickly mention another nominee, John Ratcliffe, to head the CIA. He served briefly as director of national

intelligence in Trump's first term, but only after a big battle with Democrats who said he lacked experience. We're hearing that same criticism again. In his first term, Donald Trump chose more traditional experience figures who were sometimes described as the adults in the room. Why the different approach now? Yeah, Trump felt he was being undermined in his first term by security officials with the Russian investigations into the 2016 presidential election. He openly quarreled with them. One really memorable moment was when Trump stood next to Vladimir Putin at a summit in

Finland and said he believed the Russian leader and not the US intelligence agency when Putin said he hadn't interfered in the US election. Trump just cycled through multiple national security officials and he increasingly chose loyalists at the end of his first term and that's where we're starting the second term. I asked Ian Bremmer, the global affairs analyst who runs the Eurasia group, how he sees Trump's new national security team. Lighter experience generally would be perceived as less capable on the national security defense and foreign policy space, but clearly more alignment, more loyalty personally to Trump.

Greg, what might have inspired Donald Trump's nomination of someone we have seen on our monitors here in the studio, Fox News host Pete Hickseth for Secretary of Defense. Well, Scott, you know, I think you've probably seen him using that perch to criticize the Pentagon brass. He says American troops are poorly served by what he calls woke generals. He says they're more concerned about diversity, gender, and cultural issues than the ability to fight wars. He's an outspoken opponent of women in many combat roles. He's aggressively

defended US troops convicted of war crimes, and Trump has actually responded by pardoning some of them. He's just 44. He was a major in the Army National Guard, served in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he's never held a senior position in national security or managed a large organization. He'd be in charge of a defense department that has about three million employees worldwide. Nat. National security issues don't take a break. And President Trump, from the moment he takes the oath of office, is going to face some

tough issues, including Russia's war in Ukraine. What should we expect? Yeah. Trump, on the campaign trail, said he could end this war, the Russian-Ukraine war, in a day, but he hasn't said how he could do this. He could cut military assistance to Ukraine or pressure that country to make territorial concessions. Now, Ian Bremmer says Trump will take a very transactional approach and he may get some

short-term victories here, but he says Trump is unlikely to worry about the broader consequences. The question is, what does that mean long-term for America's system of alliances that it's built up over many decades that comes from mutual trust and consistent commitments that the Americans uphold over time? I mean, Trump is likely to do a lot of damage to those institutions long-term. over time. I mean, Trump is likely to do a lot of damage to those institutions long term. So we've discussed Trump's more controversial picks, but we should note he has had some more experienced nominees that he's chosen that do have broad support. They include Florida Senator

Marco Rubio, chosen to be Secretary of State, and Florida Congressman Mike Waltz, tapped to be the National Security Advisor. And Piers Gr, Greg Myrie, thanks so much. Sure thing, Scott. New data from the federal government shows that cases of sexually transmitted infections are coming down. And Piers, Will Stone joins us now. Will, thanks for being with us. Sure thing, Scott. What can you tell us about these latest numbers?

So this report focused on syphilis, chlamydia, and gonorrhea cases from last year. Overall, there were over 2.4 million of these three sexually transmitted infections in the U.S. And that represents a slight decrease of about 2% compared to 2022. So we're not talking about a massive change year to year, but just to put this in context, Scott, infections had climbed in recent years to historically high levels. Overall, they're up about 90% over the last two decades,

which means the fact that cases seem to be slowing down now is actually quite promising. Do we have any sense of why things are improving? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is still sorting through the data, trying to figure that out. A few things do stand out. Gonorrhea cases are down for the second year. Also syphilis appears to be slowing down after years of significant increases.

Here's what Dr. Bradley Stoner from the CDC told me. I think that we're seeing a prevention impact of work that's going on in communities all over the country and it's really starting to show some benefit but also there's tremendous amount of work left to do so we just can't waste the momentum. When you look at who is being most affected, a couple trends are clear. People in their teens to mid-20s account for about half of the cases. Men who have sex with men are disproportionately affected. There are also racial disparities with new cases

affecting black Americans in particular. Dr. Stoner mentioned prevention efforts. What do those look like exactly? So this is the work that happens on the local level with health departments. There's education and awareness, access to testing and treatment, and having more people who do the frontline public health work.

They're known as disease intervention specialists. Basically, they investigate outbreaks and help patients navigate the healthcare system. David Harvey thinks they had a big part to play in this improvement. He leads the National Coalition of STD Directors, which the CDC calls STIs now, and says there was funding from Congress in response to COVID several years ago that supported this workforce, that ended up benefiting STI prevention work too. We think it's a meaningful outcome

from this investment of additional dollars, and we don't think this will be sustained. In other words, without more investment, he expects the numbers will go up again, and he points out the base funding for the CDC on STI prevention is half of what they think it should be. He said there are some really troubling trends, notably around congenital syphilis, literally thousands of babies being born with syphilis in a year. Well, what are the prospects for this work continuing, given the changes in Washington,

D.C.? Yeah, obviously, Scott, there are questions about funding priorities with the new Congress and administration, especially in the realm of public health. That said, the first Trump administration took interest in this issue. It actually started the Ending HIV Initiative and came up with the first federal STI action plan, which is due for an update. So there will certainly be wrangling over the budget, but Harvey is cautiously optimistic that this should be a bipartisan work.

And Paris Wilstone, thanks so much. Thank you. The annual UN climate meeting, COP29, is at the halfway point in Baku, Azerbaijan. Negotiators are working out details for how wealthy countries will help developing nations in a warming world. Jeff Brady from NPR's climate desk joins us. Jeff, thanks for being with us. Good morning, Scott.

What have negotiators accomplished so far this week? You know, from outside, it doesn't look like much. There's a lot of technical work going on behind the scenes right now to get to a financial agreement in the next week. But some of the most compelling moments have been speeches from leaders of developing nations. Here's the Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Davis reminding that global warming is everyone's problem. The fires that devour your forests, the hurricanes that shatter our homes are not distant misfortunes,

but shared tragedies. What we endure, you endure. What we lose, you lose. And if we fail to act, it will be our children and grandchildren who bear the burden. And that underscores the goal of these negotiations, which is getting wealthier countries to commit many billions of dollars to help developing nations. These are countries like the Bahamas that did little to cause global warming, you know, burning fossil fuels, but they're suffering the consequences.

Country signed the Paris climate agreement almost a decade ago that aims to limit how warm the planet will get. How's the world doing so far? The Paris goal is to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, that's 2.7 Fahrenheit, over pre-industrial temperatures. And scientists tell us that's what's needed to avoid some really bad climate effects. We're already experiencing some of them, more severe storms, you know, flooding, extreme heat. Wealthy countries agreed to cut greenhouse gases first, but the world is not on track to meet that Paris Agreement goal and will

likely push past that goal. The U.S., for example, is supposed to cut climate pollution in half by 2030. We're on track for about 40% now, but you know scientists say every little bit of warming we avoid will make a big difference in the future. Jeff, do countries face any penalties if they don't meet those commitments and if not, what are these COP meetings trying to do? There aren't penalties. This process is more about countries agreeing to do things and then holding each other accountable. For example, at last year's UN climate meeting in Dubai, countries pledged to triple renewable energy by the end of

this decade. This year the International Renewable Energy Agency came back with a report showing countries are not on track to meet that pledge. So now there's pressure for countries to step up construction of things like wind power and hydropower and geothermal energy. And of course, America's just elected a president. Now president-elect was called climate change a hoax. Donald Trump says he'll pull the US out of the Paris agreement again.

How does that affect the talks in Baku? You know, it's part of the discussion, but not as big a topic as I expected. One reason is that it takes a year to withdraw from that agreement. So the US is expected to be back at COP in Brazil next year. There's talk about who will step up, you know, to fill the US leadership gap in the meantime. Maybe China, maybe the European Union. But there are some unknowns here. The CEO of ExxonMobil, he recently asked Trump not to pull out of the Paris agreement.

He says business needs certainty and we're going to see what President-elect Trump decides there. Meantime, at the UN climate meeting, there's still some optimism. There'll be some sort of finance agreement announced in the next week or so. Jeff Brady from NPR's climate desk. Thanks so much for being with us. Thanks for having me. And that's up first for Saturday, November 16th. I'm Ayesha Rasca. And I'm Scott Simon. Cast of dozens makes this podcast possible. Our producers Michael Radcliffe with help from Lauren Magocchi, Fernando Naro and Ryan

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