This particular Congress Investigators have also sent a subpoena to the White House and demanded that it turn over documents within 2 weeks Dan Charles n.p.r. News in New York City police say for homeless people were beaten to death early this morning David 1st from member station w n y c reports a suspect is in custody police responded to a 911 call early Saturday reporting an assault in Manhattan's Chinatown neighborhood Deputy Chief Inspector Michael Ball the Sano said they found several homeless men who were likely sleeping when they were attacked with a metal pipe so the motive appears to be right now just a random attacks it was too many no one was targeted by race age say that nature one victim remains in critical condition a 24 year old suspect is in custody he is also believed to be homeless police say authorities continue to search the neighborhood street by street for other possible victims for n.p.r. News I'm David 1st in New York in Hong Kong a group of pro-democracy legislators filed suit to block chief executive Kerry Lamb's new ban on face coverings at demonstrations it's a response to the anti-government rallies that have been taking place for months Housel member Dennis Kwok says Lem's ban is an overreach of her authority that this is serious upon the men who preach not only of our constitutional order since the handle on also a serious breach of the human rights and freedoms of the Hong Kong people protesters marched through a shopping district today wearing those masks You're listening to n.p.r. News from Washington. The Beatles album Abbey Road is back at the top of the charts in the u.k. 50 years after it was release and 49 years after the group broke up the Barker has more from London John Lennon. And George Harrison frozen in time on that pedestrian crosswalks marching back to the top of the chart. The release of an expanded anniversary edition of the Abbey Road album complete with that famous cover photo has helped propel it to number one again and the 49 year 252 day intervals since it last held that ranking marks the longest such gap in British chart history Sir Paul McCartney has tweeted It's hard to believe Abbey Road still holds up after all those years but then again he added It's a bloody cool album. For n.p.r. News I'm Vicki Barker in London one of the most photographed events in the world didn't happen today because of fog the annual Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta kicked off today but those balloons never took flight most were tethered to the ground because of the weather Fiesta officials say those wounds had already been inflated and would remain so another race which is known as America's Challenge also had to be postponed today balloon pilots say they will meet tomorrow to try and discuss or to discuss other options the Fiesta draws pilots from around the world and from 41 states in the United States. To n.p.r. News in Washington support for n.p.r. Comes from Capital One committee it's a reimagining banking offering savings and checking accounts that can be opened from anywhere Capital One what's in your wallet Capital One and a and the John d. And Catherine T.-Mac are their foundation Ed Mack founded dot org. Support comes from flat iron school teaching tech skills like software engineering data science and u.s. U.i. Design 15 week courses available online or the Denver campus in Rhino career coaching available more info at flat iron school dot com slash Denver. This is All Things Considered from n.p.r. News I'm Michel Martin we're going to start the program by looking back on an explosive week in Washington if you haven't been able to follow every twist and turn in the impeachment inquiry against President Trump will try to catch you up on Thursday former Ukrainian envoy Kurt Volker took questions from House lawmakers for nearly 10 hours during that testimony he handed over dozens of text messages between u.s. Diplomats a partial transcript of those text was later released by House Democrats that text depict a plan to tie USA to Ukraine and to suggest that President Trump would not meet with Ukraine's president unless there was an investigation by Ukraine into Trump's political opponent then and a moment that many people found shocking on the White House lawn President Trump said quote China should start an investigation into the Bidens unquote here to discuss all this is Michael McFaul He served as u.s. Ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration from 2012 to 2014 Ambassador thank you so much for joining us once again Sir thanks for having me so let's start with these text messages between diplomats and we need to be clear again that only a partial transcript has been released but what struck you about them I was completely shocked to be honest I think they are explosive in that they underscore that this was not just a phone call between President Trump and President Selenski of Ukraine it was a plan that they worked out over several months with various iterations and talks with Ukrainians to do exactly what you just said a quid pro quo you get to meet with President Trump in the Oval Office and you get to get your military assistance back as long as you do 2 things investigate my political opponent son Hunter Biden and to which is even crazier to read litigate who intervened in 2016 during that presidential election the president has a theory that it was the Ukrainians and what his stash really striking is how many people were involved in trying to put. Whether this quid pro quo that's what we get from these text messages now we've heard from a handful of Republican members of Congress over the last couple of days who are insisting a couple of things one some are insisting there's nothing wrong with this some are suggesting they didn't see evidence of a quid pro quo but others are saying in essence this is just how it works so I'm going to ask you about that latter were there from your experience is this true I mean do is this the kind of conversation that diplomats sometimes have working behind the scenes well so in addition to working in Moscow for 2 years I also worked at the White House at the National Security Council and was part of many phone calls that President Obama made with his Russian counterparts and other leaders around the world and to make things happen we did do quid pro quo but they were always in the American national interest I just want to keep stressing that So yes did we offer a visit with President Obama to Ukraine inofficial we actually did that in 2010 but it was to secure nuclear materials what is absolutely extraordinary and wrong in my view is that they were using the office of the president and military assistance otherwise known as American taxpayer money by the way to try to get something for president Trump's personal electoral prospects in the upcoming presidential election and that's just wrong and I'd never heard anything even remotely close to that during my time in government some of the president's defenders are suggesting that the president was pressing Ukraine to deal with a corruption problem that everybody agrees is a problem did you hear that no I didn't 1st of all we've had the president and candidate Trump on the record for years and now he has had more time than anybody I think in and then history as a president and as a candidate not once did he ever say fighting corruption broadly speaking is something he is concerned about let alone in Ukraine and when you single out one individual who just happens to be the son of your leg. Moral opponent that's not a fight for corruption that's using the law for your own political ends Why didn't you know it then I do want to go into what the president said on the White House lawn he seems to be insisting that there's actually nothing wrong with asking a foreign government to look into a political rival so I'm going to ask you what do you think are the implications of the president saying something like this it's wrong it's outrageously wrong go back to our founding fathers where they warned about foreign interference in our domestic affairs he is asking the president of Ukraine to help him win reelection in 2020. That other I mean I understand maybe he has that double down and defend that because he did it and by the way he had lots of people conspiring with him to do it you drag them all in but how anybody else would look at that and say well there's nothing wrong with that I just really don't understand that logic whether it's impeachable and I will let others decide that is that wrong absolutely it's wrong and should never happen again let me ask you about the role that Rudy Giuliani the former mayor of New York the president's personal attorney played in all of this this was completely outside of normal diplomatic channels I think everybody would know that and you said that his involvement in this muddied the waters and creates dangerous confusion could you talk a little bit more about that. Well 1st it's very clear from the attacks that have been released that Mr Giuliani was pushing hard to try to get the Ukrainians to open the investigation and they pushed so hard by the way that it wasn't enough just to have them open investigation of Vice President Biden's son they want the Ukrainians to put it on the record and you see in those tax that Mr Giuliani is interacting with Ambassador Volker he's interacting with the best your son to try to make this happen and I again I serve 5 years in government I can never remember a private citizen getting so involved in something related to national foreign policy generally but here it's something that obviously he's not pursuing America's national interests and the 2nd thing I find tragic just because I know some of these players I know Mr Volcker I know Ambassador Taylor who's also in these talks what you Leon he did and what Trump did was tragic our diplomats into work that that you can tell they're not comfortable with if you read those talks closely Mr Volcker chose to play along and I think he needs to be held accountable for that but there is a hero in this some bastard Taylor who is put out in Ukraine after the trumpet ministrations fire at the previous Ambassador it's clear from these talks that he knows this is wrong and he says if it goes any further I'm going to quit and I think that's a good testimony to that there are some civil servants in the foreign service that put national interest over the personal interest of the president that's Michael McFaul He was us a message to Russia during the Obama administration he's also as he also mentioned you worked in national security at the White House and master thank you so much for talking to us Sure thanks for having me and we're going to keep our focus on impeachment we were wondering since the u.s. Congress is currently on recess if the story is following members home n.p.r. National political correspondent Don Gonyea he decided to catch up with 2 members of Congress from Illinois one a Republican the other a Democrat both of whom are known for a key. Usually standing apart from their parties on certain issues he has this report Republican Adam Kinzinger represents Illinois 16th Congressional District which wraps around to the west and south of Chicago and includes both suburban and large rural areas Kinzinger was at a congressional hearing in Chicago outside his district on Thursday to talk about gun violence Well good morning everybody and for our witnesses thank you very much for being here Ken singer is among the very few g.o.p. Members of Congress whose views have shifted on guns after this summer's shootings in Dayton and El Paso he said he would support more comprehensive background checks and a ban on high capacity magazines he's still far from agreeing with most Democrats on the issue but here's Kinzinger at the hearing if we can begin to talk to each other again and respect each other again and listen to each other again I think we'll be able to make some progress but as he left the hearing and talked briefly with reporters Kinzinger was mostly asked about impeachment 1st came questions about another statement he'd made that was out of sync with the g.o.p. Party line when President Trump tweeted recently that his removal by impeachment would lead to a civil war like fracture Ken's Inger tweeted a response calling the comment quote beyond repugnant he's face backlash from some trump supporters over that I'll continue to take whatever I'm just going to do what I think is right move before but on the topic of impeachment and the formal inquiry that's been launched Kinzinger is in line with the Republican Party I think the Democrats jumped the gun on impeachment I think that's obvious by the fact they never had the transcript or even the whistleblower complaint and decided to move forward on this before any of that. They're going to have their push ahead I think it was a bad move by them now to the congressional district right next door to the web. Last Illinois 17 a place that was carried by President Trump but which has a Democratic member of Congress. This is a middle school in the Mississippi River town of Moline congresswoman Sherry booster is in an auditorium talking to 8th graders about the Constitution and paying special attention to its system of checks and balances she made it clear that current events in Washington provide context for any such discussion today so does anybody know what a subpoena is and boost also explained to the students why she supports the u.s. House all putting up in Pietschmann here I choose to look at it as a way to get to the truth this is an impeachment inquiry this is not an impeachment you know the difference between those 2 things most of us is actually only recently on board with the impeachment investigation previously she has resisted calls for an inquiry by many of her Democratic colleagues but her resistance ended less than 2 weeks ago with the whistleblower report and news of that phone call between President Trump and Ukraine's president she spoke in the hallway after her remarks I just think it keeps getting deeper and deeper when when now he's doing a shout out to China in broad daylight to interfere with our 2020 presidential election it's now this is this is beyond the pale and we've got to make sure that we're dealing with us so 2 districts side by side in Illinois each with a member of Congress willing to occasionally step away from the party line but so far not on the issue of impeachment Don Gonyea n.p.r. News. You're listening to All Things Considered from n.p.r. News. Support for Colorado Public Radio comes from Brock media's Boulder magazine fall issue features fashion food football events and arts across all of Boulder County learn more at Boulder magazine and online at get Boulder dot com. You can find just about everywhere these days coffee shops gas stations vitamin store it's derived from cannabis but it doesn't actually get you high that's one of its main strengths according to journalist Martin Lee the criticisms of medical marijuana phenomenon is just an excuse for people getting high. As part of the next you can't use that. On the latest episode of on something listen where ever you get your podcasts. I'm Janine Herbst with these headlines in Iraq officials say at least 5 more protesters have been shot and killed in anti-government demonstrations that took place in 4 neighborhoods in the capital of Baghdad that brings the day's death total to at least 14 secretary of state Mike Pompei o is calling the impeachment inquiry into President Trump's request that Ukraine investigate his political opponent Joe Biden a silly gotcha game by Peo failed to meet the deadline set by Congress to produce documents required by a subpoena and officials in Thailand say 6 wild elephants died after falling into a waterfall at a National Park 5 were trying to save a calf the fell into the falls where similar accidents have happened in the past. N.p.r. News in Washington. Support for n.p.r. Comes from this station and from mind body with the mind body app connecting users to local fitness classes spas and salons where people can find book and pay in one place the app can be downloaded at Mind Body dot io slash n.p.r. And from the financial services firm of Raymond James offering personalized wealth management advice and banking and capital markets expertise along with a legacy of putting clients financial wellbeing 1st learn more at Raymond James dot com. This is All Things Considered from n.p.r. News I'm Michel Martin now we're going to focus on a topic that probably comes up more often in religious services than in the news the topic is forgiveness you can imagine why we're talking about this earlier this week former Dallas police officer Amber Geiger was convicted of murder and sentenced to 10 years in prison for killing her upstairs neighbor both I'm John but it was what John's younger brother Brandt did in response that went viral but again I love you as a person. And I don't want anything bad I have already here. I don't know if possible but can I give her a piece of. Peace. Yes brands decision to hug and express forgiveness toward God sparked an enormous reaction much of it expressed on social media the Dallas Police Department where Geiger used to work tweeted that brand's actions quote represent a spirit of forgiveness faith and trust in the same spirit we want to move forward in a positive direction with the community unquote others had a very different reactions some were deeply pained and even affronted by what happened not so much Brant John's decision to offer forgiveness but more the sense that black people suffering for whatever reason is not accorded similar acknowledgement and you will recall that both him John was black and Geiger is white and not only that but racist texts of hers were presented during the trial where she called herself a racist disparaged black officers and mocked Martin Luther King Jr New York Times columnist Charles Blow spoke for many when he tweeted quote black people repeatedly demonstrate an otherworldly beauty in the granting of grace to the undeserving but the question remains when are innocent black people granted this grace unquote So we thought this would be a good topic to bring up in the barbershop because that's where we talk with interesting people about what's in the news and what's on their minds joining us today are she she is a lawyer and she's just been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship a so-called genius grant for her work as director of the Restored of Justice Project at impact Justice thanks so much for joining us once again have you with you today and Reverend Michael Waters is the founding pastor of Joy Tabernacle and I got paid temple African Methodist Episcopal Church in Dallas Texas Reverend Waters welcome to you as well thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for having me and last but certainly not least the Reverend Cornell Williams Brooks he is both a lawyer and a minister he's a former president of the end and now a professor at the Kennedy School at Harvard and a visiting professor at the divinity school there are books that's a pleasure to speak with you again although I'm sorry about the circumstances certainly it's good to be with you again despite that I remember some just going to ask you very briefly as briefly as you can to describe what is forgiveness certainly many many many sermons have been given about it many books have been written but as briefly as you can what does forgiveness mean. Forgiveness means being open to the the process of reconciliation it's it's taking no the wrong being willing to be in a relationship with the wrong doer and opening your arms to the wrong doer even as you acknowledge the wrong and what do you think Rev about why do you think that there's been such a reaction to what Brant John did both positive and negative Well it's because while we can in with Brant John did it saying everything about his character saying nothing about this guy goes character the fact of the matter is we are committing as a country our brand John's willingness to to give but we're not taking note of the lack of accountability by the police department and this guy or so in other words this country and police departments in particular should be asking the question why black people being called upon to forgive serially So in other words we commend black people for being moral heroes while we decline to treat them as human beings and so our police departments will commend the victim while continuing to victimize and refusing to apologize repent demonstrated accountability it would change the way we police where everyone is that where and what is your in Dallas where the crime in the trial took place and you met with the John family what do you make of the reaction to what Brant John did. Well I think it comes with a misunderstanding of why so many persons have stood not in opposition to what Brant did but to how black forgiveness is often weaponized back against the community I think you heard that in what happened with the police department who try to use this near sincere act of forgiveness as a means of buffering their irresponsibility to our community of the city of Dallas for a long time has led the nation been one of the leaders in the nation in relationship to Officer related fatalities in so instead of addressing those issues they use this act of forgiveness as a means of buffering their own thought which was manifested again and again during the trial as I think a lot of the pushback Cain not so much because of the yeah action and in fact we had the young man at our empowerment center yesterday as a family stood with us in making demands of the Department of Justice will audit now the Dallas Police Department I think the opposition came to how this was used again to be weaponized against black people can I just ask you this though Reverend Waters I mean 10 years in prison is is not small in the fact of there's it seems I would think historically there are more police officer who have been acquitted or never held to account at all in police involved shootings. Does that not seem like accountability. Well actually it's quite small in the state of Texas Amber Geiger is in the 1.9 percent of all persons who are sentenced for murdering someone in our state so she's in very small company and we've been very clear that there will over 80 percent of incarcerate serving for murder who are serving 20 years or more tend to be of the black and brown hue and so there's a great deal of concern in terms of how justice is meted out in this case in reality over the last almost 50 years of all the officer related they Taliban only 2 officers have been convicted and they will have totally served in sentence to a time of 15 years and we think that's a disgrace she sounds like you have an interesting perspective on this I mean you've been a defense attorney as we talked about last week in our conversation when you won the MacArthur award you've talked about some very emotional scenes that you've seen in the courtroom. I'm sure you've seen a lot of victim impact statements have you ever seen something like what you saw in Dallas with Randy Johnson he didn't even want Giger to go to jail and even hugged her Have you ever seen that before no I've never seen anything like that before in court I've seen it more in the restart of justice processes that have subsequently gotten gotten involved in but I think that what's been interesting about people saying I've never seen anything like it we've never seen someone express forgiveness in this way really in open court and we've also never seen the humanity of the person who's taken another person's life be so recognized right as in my years of as a being a public defender and what I've heard from other of my public defender friends. And they've never seen a judge get off the bench and hug someone who had taken someone's life right so I think that that's maybe part of the context of the anger that we're seeing about the length of the sentence and I think another thing that you know we never see is the short of a sentence just to really reiterate that you know that the length of the sentence. In homicide cases are so much data to show that it increases when the victim is white right and so that's I think an important piece to understand in terms of the context of the anger that we're seeing today this briefly as you can because I know he's a very complicated topics which I think can you just talk a little bit about the Restored of justice aspect here is forgiveness and restorative justice the same thing not at all restorative justice neither requires a risk forgiveness for participation nor is it an expected outcome and a lot of people are using the words restorative justice to talk about what happened in that courtroom and to be very clear right that forgiveness and a hug is not restored of justice right sort of justice is about face to face dialogue and collective decision making at the community level where people are held directly accountable to the person's needs as the as the community defines it right so I think if this had been a true restorative justice process it certainly wouldn't have been about you know pre-determined outcomes that many people in the community are quite unhappy with starting with I think the level of accountability route we're not seeing from the police department center in terms of changing policies and procedures so before we let you go Reverend we don't have a lot of time can you just tell me what we've we've heard earlier about steps that Reverend Waters and she Jotham would like people to take go in for the community especially to take on for what about you as a person who dealt with this on a national level what steps would you like to see going forward arising out of this moment when we don't like to do is to commend the whole but not ignore the slap in the face of African-Americans in America and these holy these police departments accountable with consent decrees only these police departments accountable with civilian review boards. Radically restructuring we police other words police cannot continue to operate as occupying armies and he's changing police departments to talk about all right well thank you so much for that the rich topic I'm sure we'll talk again that's sort of an Cornell Williams Brooks he teaches that Harvard's Kennedy School and the divinity school we also heard from she's got she's the director of the Restored of Justice Project at impact justice and the Reverend Michael Waters the founding pastor of Joy Tabernacle and Temple African Methodist Episcopal churches and Dallas Texas and I thank you all so much for talking with us today on it thank you thank you. In the Bahamas the government has announced that Haitians who fled Hurricane Dorian and are not in the country illegally will now face deportation this is a shift from the government's position immediately after the storm last month the prime minister assured Haitians that evacuees would not be subject to removal the government has also declared a ban on building on Abaco and Grand Bahama in areas that used to house thousands of Haitian and other migrants N.P.R.'s Jason Beaubien has this report from Marsh Harbor general interviews is a Haitian who's lived in Marsh Harbor off and on for the last 2 decades he rode out Hurricane door on Abaco Island and then evacuated to Nassau as soon as he could but now he's just returned saying he'd rather be in the storm ravaged Marsh Harbor than in the capital if you kudo for anything to do he was staying with hundreds of other evacuees many of them Haitians in tents at a sports complex and Nassau he couldn't find work but he says the worst part was the discrimination towards Haitians not good treatment the good. Way they treat us so even though his house was destroyed in the hurricane and there's no electricity in Marsh Harbor he spent all night on a freight boat to come back here to these currently has a work permit and says immigration officials checked his paperwork in Nassau before allowing him to board on Wednesday the prime minister who. Mystically or that anyone who is in the Bahamas illegally should leave voluntarily or they will be forced to leave just weeks earlier he said storm victims would not be subject to deportation and told a crowd of patients waiting to evacuate from Marsh Harbor all of you will be treated with respect so do not be afraid of a government all of you will be treated equally now that the immediate crisis of the hurricane is passed the government says Haitians and other migrants who are in the country illegally will face deportation the Minister of Immigration says that Haitians will not be allowed to use hurricane shelters to circumvent the law Pierre Callia behave me and Haitian descent in Marsh Harbor says this is just one more blow to the Haitian migrants many of their friends and family members died in the storm now things keep getting more difficult for them I think it is very hard for the Haitian people around us Moment after the hour we came in no legal status to live in. From police very odd sort of beaver I know what I hope somebody. Would have mercy on i Tunes As for decades Haitian migrants including Kelly's father came to the Bahamas seeking a better life prior to the storm they did much of the menial labor on the island that Bahamians wouldn't do him and rights groups have blasted the government's new position 70 same floor with rights Bahamas calls the lifting of amnesty for Haitian evacuees savage cold hearted and illegal same floor says many undocumented Haitians are among hundreds of people still listed as missing she says it's cruel to deport people who are waiting to hear about the fate of their loved ones plus she points out that there's political unrest in riots right now in Port au Prince right now presently as we speak there is an 80. And to be sending people in he added if they were like the I'm going to do it like the. Next month and wouldn't be lice but government leaders say they're going to move forward aggressively to enforce the immigration laws even if that deprives Abaco of an important source of labor for rebuilding Jason Beaubien n.p.r. News Marsh Harbor. You're listening to All Things Considered from n.p.r. News. Hollywood has been churning out superhero origin stories for decades but a new film flips the genre on its head telling the origin story of a super villain Joker stars Joaquin Phoenix as the man who would become Batman's greatest foe It's a controversial movie for the way it seems to embrace the villains of violent ways n.p.r. Critic Glen Weldon is something of a Batman expert he wrote a cultural history of him a few years back and he has this review in the comics and cartoons and on film is played by Jack Nicholson. And Heath Ledger. The Joker is an agent of chaos a gleefully violent sadist whose motivations remain mysterious unknowable director Todd Phillips new film seeks to strip away all mystery from the character and make his motivations very noble and in that much at least he succeeds meet Arthur Fleck My mother always tells me. To smile and put on a happy face. She told me I had a purpose. For the world he's a down on his luck clown for hire only he's having a little trouble getting hired Arthur has a condition that causes him to burst into laughter at random intervals. It tends to creep people out. Is something funny. Arthur gets beat up a lot in this movie once by a bunch of Wall Street pros on the subway who taunt him by singing Send In The Clowns it's really the only time in this otherwise grounded film they were asked to suspend our disbelief at all because seriously we're supposed to believe that a straight finance bro would be off book on the 2nd and 3rd verses of a sometime number come on at least Arthur has a social worker to talk to except I have some bad news feed. The cities cut the funding. This is the last. Time will be meeting he doesn't enter the city he. Is asked the same questions or. Are you having going to. See what director Phillips and his co spring writer Scott Silver are up to you couldn't miss it if you tried they want to see Arthur as a victim pushed into becoming a monster by his mental illness and by a broken government now some might find that irresponsible what it certainly is he's on Interesting sure Joker is tents Crimean claustrophobic and Phoenix's performance is already getting Oscar buzz. Guarding news of the film so desperately strives to reject comic book trappings so wants to be seen as edgy provocative adult that it simply apes the tone style and content of other better more edgy more provocative films like Taxi Driver and the king of comedy and Fight Club but those films had a point of view they had something to say that implicated us in their on screen violence and the bad choices the characters made Joker sees Arthur's transformation into a mass murderer as inevitable it's not a choice it's something the world does to him just. Or is it getting crazier there he devotes so much energy to not being about a comic book villain that it neglects being about much of anything really I'm going well. This is n.p.r. News. Hey it's Luke Burbank from livewire Each week we bring you writers comedians musicians and cultural observers. Add 8 right here. On the next on the friendship that transformed Black a former heir apparent of white supremacy. And racism is bad it was just the 1st time that I've been willing to listen to. How deeply involved somebody is in a negative ideology there is always a chance for redemption I'm Krista Tippett. I'm with these headlines secretary of state Mike pompe a.o. Is echoing President Trump's claim that his interest in Ukraine is about ending corruption and not political grease on the last leg of a 4 country European tour that has been overshadowed by the impeachment inquiry in Washington in New York City one person is in custody in the beating death of 4 homeless men as they slept a 5th person is hospitalized Police say the man in custody appears to be homeless too and at the Vatican today Pope Francis elevated 13 church men to the rank of Cardinal 10 of them are under the age of 80 making them eligible to vote for a new pope the 13 are men he says he admire and who reflect his pastoral concerns. N.p.r. News in Washington. Support for n.p.r. Comes from this station and from Warby Parker they design glasses and sunglasses crafted with materials like cellulose acetate titanium and stainless steel and each pair includes custom cut scratch resistant lenses learn more at Warby Parker dot com and from Western hotels and resorts offering a range of wellness options for guests including their Eat well menu on demand fitness gear lending program and signature Heavenly Bed learn more at Weston dot com a member of Marriott Bon boy. This is All Things Considered from n.p.r. News I'm Michel Martin from time to time on this program we've checked in with boy and slot he's the Dutch engineer and environmentalist who's been working on a contraption to clean the Great Pacific Garbage Patch that's the floating debris field in the Pacific where 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic have collected well after many many setbacks boy and slots ocean clean up project has had some success All right. So thank you all for joining us this week slot and his team presented a press conference to an online audience in a small group of journalists gathered at the group's headquarters in Rotterdam I am very proud to share with you. That we're now catching plastics. Yes I heard RINGBACK there's only 2 fans in the room is great it is great but surely not the reaction that slot expected when he 1st dreamed up his plan to clean the ocean here slot explaining his original concept the 1st time we spoke in 2016 I envisioned an extremely long network of floating barriers are like curtains floating in the ocean and because it's in it's the shape the plastic gets pushed towards the center and that's the sport where we can officially extract it from the sea water and store it before shipping it to land for recycling well as we know slots idea didn't quite work as planned the path of progress wasn't exactly a straight line and we began to refer to these issues that we had along the way as unscheduled learning opportunities and we had quite a few 1st explained at the press conference his device floated along with the ocean's current at the same speed as the debris it was meant to capture causing the system to actually not collect any plastics then late last year part of the structure itself fell apart forcing us to tow the system back to port after 6 more months of tinkering the modified prototype was redeployed to the floating garbage patch and at this week's press briefing slot was at long last able to share pictures of what the system has captured and enormous abandoned fishing net hard hats office chairs plastic forks and you know car tires no idea how that ended up there but if you're missing a wheel let us know boy in slot acknowledges that this batch of trash is only a small 1st step but by 2025 the ocean cleanup project hopes to cut the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in half. We want to get back now to the week's top story the impeachment inquiry unfolding in Washington d.c. a Lot of disinform ation has been swirling around the probe which as you know focuses on president trumps dealing with Ukraine so we're going to take a closer look now at that distance from ation in a regular segment called troll watch. Foreign domestic partisans the president himself they have all made false or misleading claims in the parallel information war playing out online all week as N.P.R.'s Hannah Alam reports the impeachment inquiry has unleashed a torrent of half baked claims and conspiracy theories every single day this week has been relentless So let's hit pause and look closer at one day Wednesday that was the day the State Department inspector general presented Congress with information that was billed as urgent sensitive inside the briefing Democrats later said that urgent matter turned out to be debunked stories and Russian propaganda about players in the Ukraine affair Here's how Maryland Democrat Cimi Raskin described the materials it's essentially a packet of propaganda and this information spreading conspiracy. Those conspiracy theories have been widely described on the same day as the briefing Trump's re-election team released a campaign ad there's ominous music Trump cast is the victim of Democrats who just can't get over 2016 and then this line about the impeachment inquiry it's nothing. And it must be stopped by that word coup in bold red is inflammatory and inaccurate given the facts of the inquiry and yet that's the description used by Trump on Twitter repeated by right wing pundits on t.v. And reinforced by an army of bots and trolls across social media one day 2 examples of how the conspiracy talk that typically swirls on the fringes is now front and center that is real power not about think about gaining power in the 21st century whether it's doing both internally so that your team wins the election or during most of the world stage so that your enemies the lives of come apart at the seams without you having That's John Kelly founder and c.e.o. Of graphic a top social media analysis firm he was speaking generally about December mation campaigns but he said the whistleblower controversy is a good illustration of what a political fight looks like in the digital age Americans in their partisan corners slugging it out over false claims pushed to them by bad faith actors here and abroad left unchecked Kelly says it weakens u.s. Democracy by chipping away at Americans trust in their institutions there's no magic bullet. But it requires a lot of different solutions on different levels that have started people think we're themes of 2 different version of reality Nina Janko it says at the Wilson Center think tank in recent years she served as a communications advisor to the Ukrainian government that was through a Fulbright Program Now she's back in Washington tracking what she calls influence operations basically that's the manipulation of information by governments political actors the us. Breeder's season hot button issues the 26000 election or police brutality then they use automated and human systems to amplify viewpoints that further their own agendas Janko it's again you take a sister and society whether that economic racial political and you just drive that Bieber and Bieber to kind of split the Friday at the edges case in point the Ukraine affair the Internet is awash with stories about whistleblower rules that supposedly change just before the complaint against Trump or backroom deals struck by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his family there's no evidence for any of it and most of the claims have been knocked down doesn't matter to those in the dissent from ation business controversy is opportunity this is a sort of a dinner bell for them to work over time Brett Schaefer tracks Russian and other information operations through a program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States he says most of the dissent from ation he sees these days isn't manufactured in a Russian troll farm it starts as partisan spin or conspiracy theory un-American sites we're doing all the work for them they are just again turning up that volume and making some of these kind of extreme talking points seem like they're a little bit more mainstream In other words Shaffer says those cracks in American society that Russia took advantage of in 2016 have now widened dissin from ation campaigns no longer need to create the polarization just exploit it which they do every single day Hannah lamb n.p.r. News Washington if you think Russia's influence in the last presidential election began in 2016 a new book argues that's wrong in blowout journalist Rachel Maddow Yes that Rachel Maddow the m s n b c host traces the rise of oil as a powerful destructive and lucrative industry to the Russian interference in the last presidential election one of the ties that binds it all together is that Amir Putin the oil industry generated tons of. And for Russia and Putin use this money to support his vision of making Russia a superpower again exerting his influence in the region and around the world Maddow argues he's been playing the long game and the 2016 election interference the trolls the bots all of it is just one aspect of it there are a lot of dots to connect in this story and here to do that is Rachel Maddow She's the author of blow out corrupted democracy rogue state Russia and the richest most destructive industry on earth and she's with us now from our bureau in New York welcome thank you so much for joining us thank you so much for having me I'm really happy to be here so you know you bring together a lot of different topics here and it isn't really just Russia I do have to say that one of the things that this book does is it you you say it yourself it's ditches together I'm reading here it says it's a thread that wraps its way around the globe from Oklahoma and Texas and Washington d.c. To London Kiev Siberia Moscow equitorial Guinea the Alaskan Arctic and to a trove of Michael Jackson memorabilia a luxury hotel in central London a divorce court in Oklahoma City a crappy office building offering its workers a free power supply in St Petersburg Russia there's a through line here and the through line is oil Yeah and I did not set out to write a book about oil and gas I didn't set out to write a book at all but I was very curious I found myself putting a lot of focus on my show on what Russia did and 2016 I was really stuck in terms trying to figure out their motive force not just for why they would want to influence our election but for why they would try to do it in that way why they would throw that kind of very innovative MacGyver to kind of wild punch at us. And I ended up getting to this issue of oil and gas and it surprised me is as much as I think it might surprise anybody but I do think that the Russian economy being a mess and being totally dependent on oil and gas does explain some of Russia's weakness and some of Russia's weakness explains why they have. Attacked us in the way they did so at the beginning kind of nugget of this is that you're trying to understand what Russia's motivation would be and what you see is that they want to use oil and gas as a tool for expressing kind of global power but your thesis is larger than that and your thesis is that Russia like a number of other countries is basically the victim of a resource curse right when you talk about what that means sure the basic idea is that if in your country you've got natural resources that somebody is going to pay to come into your country and extract and then sell on the international market that seems like something that ought to economically benefit your country you will get new revenue from the extraction and sale of your natural resources but what we see over and over again is that selling off your natural resources in the commodities market tends to kind of ruin your country it tends to leave you worse off even economically worse off and that's because it has a warping effect on your economy it's hard to have a diversified stable economy when you've got one resource that's pulling in such a big revenue stream and when you've got one resource that's pulling in such a big revenue stream you tend to end up with very rich elites who will do anything to hold on to power who stop doing the other things that government should otherwise be doing to serve the needs of the people Ok so what does this have to do with Michael Jackson's glove Well it's both the sad and all areas the side story in this the government in equitorial Guinea got all these oil revenues and they basically decided to turn the president of the country and his son into some of the richest and most Austin Taisha slee flagrantly tacky people on the globe while the people of that country suffered and got poorer and the son of the president of equitorial Guinea amassed one of the world's great super car collections and amassed mansions in the most flamboyant places in the world. And put together a really spectacular collection of Michael Jackson memorabilia all on oil revenue money that was essentially looted from the treasury of his country Meanwhile people in his country his most of the citizens are living on what pennies a day yeah and people are still as poor as sick and is under nursed and under educated as they were what 20 years ago yeah and getting worse actually as the oil revenues flooded in Decorah Tauriel Guinea the government in terms of serving the needs of the people of that country got worse and you saw everything get worse she saw the poverty rate get worse you saw the education system got worse even so the vaccination rates go down just because that stream of oil revenue so captured the elites of that country that that became all they did was fighting to stay in power to keep their clamp on that stream of revenue and that just happens over and over again all over the world what about the United States you know I mean is there a way in which this is playing out here because one of the things that you argue is that these industries throw off so much money that it becomes relatively easy to buy off the elites who benefit from it because it's in the interest of these companies to maintain stable governments and you know sad to say stability and autocracy often go hand in hand Ok but what about in the United States well I think the United States and sort of we the people of the United States have the key role in the whole world to play in this because the western oil majors not all of them but most of the important ones are u.s. Companies and even if they're not u.s. Companies they need to operate within the United States which is a rule of law country which has the opportunity to regulate them if we so choose and so I think the most important way that we function in this is that if our government chose to make oil and gas companies better international and better corporate citizens it would have a knock on effect all over the world in terms of this industry being able to prop up despotic regimes and sort of malignant bad actors around the. World we have the power to fix this if we demand that our representatives do this you say in the afterward to the book that you're never going to do this again and. I take it just because you know writing a book while hosting a daily program which you've been doing since what August of 2008 is it's not easy . You obviously have a sense of mission about it what are you hoping to accomplish with this book I am hoping to convince myself to never do it again. I do have a full time job and I don't actually have the bandwidth and the physical stamina to do a whole extra thing. But this this is did compel me and I do you know it's a it's a deep look at this and it's a book length treaties of this and the only reason I did that is because I felt like the argument here is sort of too long to put on t.v. It takes a couple 100 pages to tell it but you know this this isn't an activist book it's not a call to action it's essentially a call to be conscious of this and I do think. To look at our situation in the country broadly right now there is a growing awareness that we need to think about bolstering our democracy I think democracy is in decline globally and it is under pressure both here and around the world and what I'd like to contribute to that very sober realization we're having right now is a realization that regulating big corrosive industry is that undermine our democratic processes is part of standing up and bolstering our democracies that we do actually need to rein in some of these guys that are actual matter she's the author most recently of blowout corrupted democracy rogue state Russia and the richest most destructive industry on earth and she's also in her spare time she's the host of the Emmy Award winning Rachel Maddow Show on m s n b c Thanks so much for talking to us today Michel thank you so much. For Saturday that's considered from n.p.r. News I'm Michel Martin We're back tomorrow and thanks for listening we hope you have a great night. 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