And children have been separated from their families out of 450000 family groups that have crossed the border since October and he pays members of d h s for dealing with a surge of migrants entering the u.s. Illegally despite the scale of the challenge we face in the failure to enact legislation that would have prevented and could still in this crisis the chance has made significant strides in its efforts to secure the border and to better protect the health and safety of migrants in our custody Michael even says the vast majority of migrant families are being kept together with children only being separated due to health or safety concerns the acting head of u.s. Customs and Border Protection says the administration is considering criminal charges for Border Patrol agents involved in a secret Facebook group that mocked lawmakers and migrants as N.P.R.'s Joel Rose reports more than 60 current agents are under investigation members of the private Facebook group question the authenticity of the images of a migrant father and child who drowned in the Rio Grande and shared crude doctored images of a congresswoman performing a sex act on President Trump acting director Mark Morgan called some of the images horrendous and unacceptable we're actually looking at potential criminal charges now I don't know whether that whether the actions will satisfy any of the elements or criminal charges but that has been talked about just to show how serious we are talking at Morgan told n.p.r. That several people have already been put on leave without pay some $9500.00 current and insists it does not represent the culture of the Border Patrol troll Rose n.p.r. News Washington stocks managed to shed some of their early losses to close mostly higher today the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 3 points 227002002 the Nasdaq rose 22 points the s. And p. Gained 10 points this is n.p.r. . President Trump will reportedly nominate Eugene Scalia son of late Justice Antonin Scalia to be the next labor secretary That's according to a source close to Scully who's confirming the nomination to n.p.r. The 55 year old Scully is a partner at the Washington d.c. Law firm Gibson Dunn and Crutcher previously served as special assistant to current Attorney General William Barr in the early ninety's when Barr was also the attorney general New Hampshire's approve the country's strictest limits on so-called or ever chemicals in drinking water in New Hampshire Public Radio's any Ropeik reports of potentially harmful pollutants are not subject to federal regulation the chemicals cold pizza 3 used for decades and products like Teflon and have been linked to health risks such as kidney disease and reproductive issues among others now New Hampshire has the most comprehensive limits for p. Files of any state it's a big milestone for local activist Andrea Mico whose family was exposed to the chemicals at a former military base New Hampshire is finally realizing the need to take action even if it cost a lot of money the new rules will require local water systems to spend millions testing and treating for p. Fasts for n.p.r. News I'm Annie ropey in Concord actor Kevin Spacey may have avoided prosecution in a criminal case but his legal woes apparently are not over the 2 time Oscar winner remains mired in sexual misconduct allegations in connection with investigations in both London and Los Angeles prosecutors in Massachusetts however announced yesterday they were dropping indecent assault and battery charges brought last year against spacy that after the alleged victim declined to testify British Police meanwhile are investigating 6 allegations against the actor I'm Jack Speer n.p.r. News in Washington. This is Fresh Air I'm Terry Gross behind the migrant center horrors on the southern border agency plagued by years of dysfunction and Trump is only its latest problem I guess Garrett Graff writes that his new article the Border Patrol hits a breaking point published this week in political magazine the Border Patrol as part of the u.s. Customs and Border Protection Agency graph writes about the long standing problems within the agency including the culture of violence and corruption in spite of fiery rhetoric about the threat at the southern border graph says Trump's promises to invest in the Border Patrol have gone unfulfilled Trump's newly appointed acting director of Customs and Border Protection Mark Morgan has expressed Gratian views and supports the immigration raids that started Sunday graphic other articles in Politico about problems in the Border Patrol one published in 2016 the other in 2014 Graff is a former editor at Politico and has covered federal law enforcement for over a decade he's also contributing writer with Wired He's written several books including one about the f.b.i. Under Robert. Garrett Graff Welcome back to Fresh Air thanks so much for having me you call Customs and Border Protection and America's most troubled law enforcement agency what makes a qualified for that dubious distinction. Customs and Border Protection is the nation's largest law enforcement agency with $45000.00 gun carrying officers in Agent something larger than the n.y.p.d. It's larger than the Coast Guard and yet at the same time it has been wracked by what is now really more than a decade of an epidemic of crime and corruption and mismanagement that is unparalleled in American policing from 2005 to 2012 there was one c.b.p. Officer or agent arrested every single day and even today there's an officer or agent arrested for misconduct or violence drug smuggling even murder every 36 hours and then like a new development that was discovered is that there's a Facebook group of border protection agents with approximately 1500 members in which agents have made racist I'm a sergeant his comments on the chief of the Border Patrol has been part of that group what kinds of comments have you read these posts Yeah and this this is the latest example of what has been a very long running and actually well known insular racist and massaging mistake culture that has perv aided the work of the Border Patrol and c.b.p. Really since its founding in 2003. That agents and officers are routinely use massaging mistaken racist terms to even refer to the people that they are detaining on the border the people that they are entrusted with keeping safe and rescuing and detaining that was in probably the most egregious example it's been shown in court that agent. Actually refer to people caught crossing the border as Tonks which is a phrase that agents will tell you it derives from the sound that comes from when you hit one of them over the head with your flashlight. And there's also a new commemorative coin that was issued that I think is supposed to be satirical would you describe the coin. You know this is a commemorative challenge coin which is a series of claims that you see a lot of government agencies in law enforcement in the military and in the intelligence community trade around to honor individual units individual operations task forces and the like and this commemorative coin which is unofficial was circulating inside the border patrol and it appears to commemorate this was uncovered by Pro Publica what agents trading the coin called the new patrol which is lamenting how these agents who signed up to fight terrorists and drug cartels are actually spending their days now effectively working as humanitarian relief workers along the southern border processing asylum seekers from the northern triangle countries in Central America Hunter s. El Salvador and Guatemala Let me read how the corn was described in a Pro Publica article sure you know so on one side it says keep the caravans coming and there's an image of a massive parade of people carrying a Honduran flag the other side features the Border Patrol logo and 3 illustrations a Border Patrol agent bottle feeding an infant an agent fingerprinting a teenage boy wearing a backwards baseball cap and u.s. Border patrol van the text on that side reads feeding processing hospital transport so this is not the job the agents signed up for apparently that's part of the problem that you see at the Border Patrol the mismatch between with the agents thought they were signing up for and what the job is actually turned out to be would you talk about that a little bit yeah so this really goes back to the founding of c.b.p. And the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003 which it's hard to . Remember today just how poorly policed and secured our borders were before 911 the Border Patrol's own studies showed at the time that the Border Patrol did not have operational control over 97 percent of the border and so after 911 what you saw was this flood of new money coming into c.b.p. And in the space of just a couple of years the Border Patrol actually went down in doubled in size peaking in the early Obama years at about 21000 agents and what that recruiting effort really aimed at was trying to create this elite counterterrorism force and if you actually even today look at c.b.p. As web site catching terrorists and stopping terrorist weapons is still the 1st saying that they show on their About page and what they list as a typical duty for a c.b.p. Officer or Border Patrol agent. And so this massive new influx of agents was recruited using. These recruiting campaigns that made this look like you know effectively a new frontier cavalry lots of great toys A.T.V.'s helicopters horseback patrols and then lots and lots of weapons and that what these agents joined to do was fight terrorists and fight drug cartels fight drug smugglers and that is not what most of the Border Patrol ends up doing most of the time now for the last 6 years they have been. Dealing with this human flood of asylum seekers along the border who are not trying to run away from the Border Patrol they're actually trying to turn themselves in and I said in the piece that the problem one of the major problems facing the border patrol today is that it went out and built its ranks by recruiting Rambow when it actually turns out that what the Border Patrol needs is Mother Teresa So this gets to like another issue in terms of the hiring of people in Customs and Border Protection So the agency is created in 2004 after 911 there's a big influx of money as you just said and a lot of people are hired as agents but because there's such a rush to hire people and so much money to hire them quickly the vetting was not very good what are some of the problems that we now know c.b.p. Ran into in terms of getting in hiring agents. The problem of rapid growth in any law enforcement agency is actually well known and documented. And the police agency that tries to grow too quickly runs into integrity problems the agency actually lowered its recruiting standards it lowered its training standards sent each and out into the field without conducting adequate background checks before they were hired and under that surge of new employees basically the management process sees that integrity process sees the supervisors couldn't keep up and that even c was flooded with people who should have never been given a gun and a badge by the us government. As we discussed there were numerous arrests an epidemic of crime and corruption that hit c.b.p. One former c.b.p. Commissioner actually told me on the record that they made mistakes and in fact hired cartel members and that what you began to see by late 2009 running through 2014 was both a huge rise in on the job excessive force complaints shootings that fell far outside the protocols for modern policing and also this incredible wave of crime and corruption of agents. Participating in drug smuggling and human trafficking themselves of taking bribes looking past illegal immigrants crossing through their checkpoints it got so bad that by 2013 actually the d.h.s.s. Officer who was in charge of investigating misconduct in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas felt that he fell so far behind in investigating c.b.p. Misconduct that he began falsifying records and was indicted himself so President Trump has added new problems on the southern border but in terms of border patrol there were plenty of preexisting problems Yeah and actually the President Trump has not helped he's actually exacerbated some of these problems the Border Patrol really thought that Donald Trump was going to be the golden years for the agency the 1st time that Donald Trump actually wore his Make America Great hat it was to visit this southern border alongside the Border Patrol union to to are it to build the wall that or to talk about building the wall that became a cornerstone of his platform and Donald Trump actually won the 1st indorsement ever by the Border Patrol office agent union that became the 1st union in America to back him. And they have these grand plans that. Donald Trump was going to build the wall and grow the agency and help it become what everyone wanted it to be. And in fact Donald Trump has not delivered on that that actually while he signed an executive order calling for 5 and see today he is actually smaller and agents so far and is losing his how challenging the judgment here and then we'll talk some more if you're just joining us my guest is Garrett Graff who's been writing about the Border Patrol scene where he this is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air and if there are discovered federal law and he has a new piece this week in political magazine Tigrane center horrors Trump is you've done a couple in 2016 with what's happening cried the importance of the real question the Reagan tax migrant crisis in has scale but not by much from once 20132014 epicenter of that is largely because it is that I once and drug violence and so they. Go and the 1st place that they come to is the Rio Grande Valley and it's not uncommon hundreds of people and now in the most single border along the Rio Grande Valley and this sector of the Border Patrol is the largest in the country it has about 3200 agents whose responsibility is just this one section of the border. And what makes it so interesting and so complex is that the Border Patrol in many ways is an agency geared to lying in wait for smugglers or human traffickers and then she says them. Expecting what the patrol calls runaways rather than give up and yet for most of these last 5 or 6 years that what the Border Patrol has been experiencing on a daily basis are these give ups these families crossing these children crossing and seeking out actually Border Patrol agents that they are trying to find the 1st person on the u.s. Side of the border that they can surrender to and as you mentioned I went down to the border the week before the 2016 Republican National Convention where Donald Trump was going to be crowned the nominee to look at the reality of his plan to implement a wall and you know that night that I was out with a border patrol you know 3 years ago really at this point. We caught I believe it was 37 migrants in less than 30 minutes 7 different groups of people that we ran across and that you know these were people. Desperate to find a Border Patrol agent I mean they would have surrendered to me happily as a white guy in khakis along the border because what they were doing was they were coming here to apply for asylum and that that's a legal right that they have and they were trying to start that process as quickly as they could when they got across the border so you also right that people know the drill they had their papers ready to show it to the Border Patrol agents they had family members they would wait with while awaiting a hearing on their asylum status they know exactly how to do it I'm just wondering during this period in 2016 when you were at the Rio Grande Valley border crossing area where their cages like we're seeing now. Yes it's a cage is we're actually at that point of course c.b.p. Would not describe them as cages they were described as detention facilities but the detention facilities were in fact a good step forward because this was 2016 at that point what is really your 2 or 3 of what was then known as the u.a.e. C crisis the unaccompanied minors unaccompanied children crisis so these were children coming by themselves across the border and the Border Patrol was actually quite proud of these new facilities that they had built to deal with these asylum seekers on an industrial scale you know these were converted warehouses where they would Howes these children while they were being processed and you know the Border Patrol knew exactly what it was doing at that point you know when we were pulling up to these groups back in 2016 you know the agents are hopping out of their pickup trucks with clipboards and hands not guns because they. They knew that these people were trying to turn themselves in and that was exactly what was happening at that point for 2 years and is continuing to happen today and the Border Patrol facilities are really only meant to house these detainees for a couple of hours and what was happening back then was that these people were then getting dropped off affectively at the Macallan Greyhound station where they would take their buses to their family members inside the United States with all of the paperwork that they would need for asylum proceedings in the future at that point you know the immigration courts were a backlog for 2 or 3 years and this was this is in some ways the same situation that we're seeing today except the trumpet ministration has decreed that these people should not be released anymore and so they're being held. Really long past when the Border Patrol was intending for them to be held simply because there were rest of government is actually incapable of handling the influx of the migrants and asylum seekers and this is where I think the Border Patrol has a lot of. Righteous indignation about the bad headlines that it's getting because for all of these squalid conditions that you're seeing on the news . Well that's not what the Border Patrol was designed to do their job is to detain these folks and turn them over as quickly as they can to either ice or the Department of Health and Human Services and that in neither instance are those agencies able to take the migrants that they need to be taking in so they're being left to languish with the Border Patrol. My guest is Garrett Graff his new article and Politico magazine is titled The Border Patrol hits a breaking point we'll talk more after a break and Justin Chang will review the new remake of Disney's The Lion King I'm Terry Gross and this is Fresh Air. And. I knew our family foundation supports w.h.y. Was fresh air and its commitment to sharing ideas and encouraging meaningful conversation and support for n.p.r. Comes from this station and from Capital One committed to reimagining banking offering savings and checking accounts like can be opened from anywhere I happen to want what's in your wallet or Capital One and a. I'm from Home Advisor committed to helping homeowners find the right pro for their home projects homeowners can get matched to local pros read reviews and check project cost guides at Home Advisor dot com. And thank you for listening to 89.3 keep. Your source for n.p.r. News and music discovery. Real stories and real reporting recon Francis and use analysis in the Pacific Island times a monthly publication featuring current events didn't want to pull out c.n.n. Mine and the rest of the region Pacific Island times your home your region your paper online at w.w.w. Dot. Pacific Island dot com. This is Fresh Air I'm Terry Gross let's get back to my interview with journalist Garrett Graff He's a former editor at Politico and has written extensively for Politico about the migrant crisis on the southern border and dysfunction in the u.s. Border Patrol his new article in Politico magazine is titled The Border Patrol hits a breaking point when we left off we were talking about the terrible conditions in migrant detention centers on the southern border in the Rio Grande Valley where the majority of migrants from the Central American countries Guatemala El Salvador and Honduras crossed over into the u.s. . Is it your impression that President Trump wants the conditions to be bad as a deterrent to other migrants or do you think this is just kind of inadvertent and inadvertent crisis no point in terms of the the Cajuns I think that this is a very carefully designed crisis by the trying to administration I think it seems clear from everything that we have seen over the last 3 years that the cruelty at the border is the point of the trumpet ministrations policy what's the point of being cruel. It plays to what Trump sees as his base you know he was elected on this platform of getting tough on immigration and I think he thinks that it also discourages people from trying to make the journey in the 1st place but you know we now have years of evidence that that's not the case and in fact in many ways it seems like the Border Patrol policies along the border are actually doing more to hurt the situation than to discourage it and you know I think at its most basic level the Border Patrol and c.b.p. Is failing to meet its moral human obligation to these people showing up at our border seeking American help and protection you know it's worth noting that there have been 12 migrants who have died in c.b.p. Custody since September and in the decade prior to September not a single migrant had died in c.b.p. Custody I mean something radical has changed in the way that Border Patrol and c.b.p. Is fulfilling its mission and it's leaving these migrants in deadly jeopardy I'm wondering I don't know if you can answer this if. Many Border Patrol agents turning against President Trump because of this humanitarian crisis at the border or whether they're blaming Obama for it I think that they are becoming more and more disaffected Bonnie Donald Trump I had one in this article this week had a former Border Patrol union official say to me quote Trump is not delivering and I don't know whether that I don't know whether I could go as far as to say that agents are turning again. The president but they are certainly feeling let down by the promises that he made and has been unable to deliver on. So well a lot of the children who are seeing in cages Now not all of them but a lot of them came across the border unaccompanied by an adult but you're right that that used to be a much bigger issue than it is now that there's fewer children crossing the border on their own now than there were back during the Obama administration and yet now we see all these cages of children that we had never seen before. Exactly in that is a major impact of the Trump administration is on how children are treated as they cross the border. During the Obama administration you saw what they call this you may see crisis the unaccompanied minors children crossing by themselves fleeing Central American gang violence and drug violence and once those children crossed they were turned themselves into the Border Patrol they were processed as asylum seekers and then for the most part handed off to family members inside the United States and you know when I was down at the border you would see these children crossing you know with a telephone number you know written on their arm or carrying a telephone number for you know let's say an aunt in Chicago you know or a cousin in Texas that they should call to arrange transportation to stay with and that was a very routine part of this crisis during the Obama years. For the last couple of years though what we're seeing today and what has garnered the headlines under the trumpet ministration are what the Border Patrol and c.b.p. Calls family units so this is sort of whole families crossing together you know you see these news reports about these migrant caravans coming up together and try to time going across the border you know parents and children and sometimes even grandparents uncles cousins etc all as one unit and there are very strict court regulations about how long children can be detained inside the u.s. And so what the trumpet ministration has begun doing and this was their child separation policy that garnered so much controversy last summer was to begin to basically break apart those families and hold on to the adults hold on to the parents and let the children go off into their own separate process and the record keeping was so poor during that height of that process that the government now admits that hundreds of children are likely permanently orphaned because the government has no ability to reconstruct who they crossed with and who their parents are. How do we allow that to happen I think it is one of the single greatest scandals of the trumpet ministration and it's certainly one of the most inhumane things that I can think of America doing in modern history and this leads to another issue that you bring up which is that Customs and Border Protection you know they have a lot of armed agents and their qualifications are to do like catch to catch terrorists and catch drug smugglers a lot of the work that needs to be done at the border is administrator. And you make it seem like they need more administrative staff as opposed to like more agents who know how to use weapons Yeah and this is a 2 fold problem right so on the one hand these agents highly trained armed. Law enforcement officers are now spending a lot of their days sitting in these detention facilities processing migrants you know shuttling people back and forth to hospital care helping to feed children you know go out to the local store and buy more toilet paper and really serving as humanitarian rescue workers. In a way that they don't really need to be armed law enforcement to do it Gil Kerlikowske who was the c.b.p. Commissioner during the final 2 years of the Obama administration and oversaw what is really the sole period of real reform and progress culturally within c.b.p. Over the last decade he told me in this piece this week that he thinks it's worth reconsidering whether c.b.p. Should reinvent its workforce and add a civilian it ministry to have humanitarian wing to its employees so that those are the people who are helping to process and work on these asylum seeking migrant cases the 2nd prong of this problem is that you have these armed law enforcement officers simultaneously not doing the work that they actually are supposed to be doing which is trying to break up in interdict drug smuggling in human trafficking organizations across the southern border. Is that because they want this the processing it exactly and that and that the drug cartels know this and take advantage of this that. That these asylum seeking migrants could legally just walk up to one of the official ports of entry and ask for asylum and instead the cartels which control these sort of migrant channels up to the border send them in between the official ports of entry where they run into the Border Patrol and not the official ports of entry where they would see this so-called Office of field operations the blue uniformed agents and so the drug cartels know you know if you send a group of you know 20310200 asylum seekers across in the middle of the Rio Grande border sector then you're going to tie you up you know most of the shift of the Border Patrol agents for that period of time to help process those migrants and allow it to be easier for you as the cartel to smuggle the drugs and the human smuggling trafficking that you want to do elsewhere you know you're basically sort of forcing the Border Patrol to surge its resources to deal with what the Border Patrol calls the give ups while freeing up in the rest of the border for what the Border Patrol would call the Runaways the people who are actively trying to smuggle themselves inside the United States because they're carrying drugs or they're criminals trying to get into the United States so I understand correctly are you saying that the drug cartels are intentionally sending people over the border in the Rio Grande Valley to divert attention from the drug smugglers who are smuggling drugs in other areas Exactly and that's something that you know the Border Patrol has recognized for years and it's part of why they are so frustrated. With this current situation in crisis at the border because they say they do see the humanitarian crisis of these flood of migrants as also spawning a security crisis because it's tiny not their resources from actively fighting drug smuggling and human trafficking that is continuing along the southern border so are you saying that the drug smugglers are actually working in conjunction with the people who smuggle people across the border or that the drug smugglers are intentionally recruiting people and sending them across the border like what is their role. To cross is equally. So the drug cartels control both the narcotics smuggling and the human trafficking along the southern border on the Mexican side and so if you are someone even seeking safe passage through that region more often than not you end up in the hands of a cartel smuggling operation just to pass through the Mexican district to get to the border in the 1st place let me reintroduce you here if you're just joining us my guest is journalist Garrett Graff who's been writing about the Border Patrol since 2014 including a new piece in Politico magazine where he used to be editor We'll talk more after we take a short break this is Fresh Air. Support for n.p.r. Comes from this station and from the Epstein Family Foundation in support of the David Gilkey. A memorial fund established to support N.P.R.'s international journalists their coverage and their commitment to providing the news of the world to audiences back home. And from Viking ships that dock in the heart of their destination with access to towns and cities along Europe's Rivers a small ship experience with a shore excursion included in every port Moore at Viking cruises dot com This is Fresh Air and if you're just joining us my guest is Garrett Graff a journalist and author who's covered federal law enforcement for more than a decade and has been writing about the Border Patrol has a new piece about the Border Patrol in Politico magazine so I know related No President Trump promised to hire 5000 new agents and apparently he hasn't delivered on that. Not only has he not delivered on the 5000 new agents the Border Patrol is so beleaguered that it has actually lost 2000 agents from its peak under the Obama administration is continuing to lose a couple dozen agents every pay period right now and this is this is a huge frustration to agents as they find you know they're already overworked workforce even more overworked and it's also you know Trump has failed to deliver on what they thought were even the most basic promises that he made them during the campaign when they became the 1st union to back him in the presidential campaign where the Border Patrol remains uniquely underpaid as a federal law enforcement agency and has because of a cork in the federal pay regulations uniquely poor overtime pay for Border Patrol agents and that the overtime pay reform was actually the highest priority of the Border Patrol Union when they were backing Trump and Trump has failed to fix that at all in your estimation how much of the humanitarian crisis at the Southern Bush border is a result. Of the large numbers of people crossing over from Mexico and how much of it is a function of bad management. Policies that you describe this cruel. I think it's impossible to separate the 2 the sheer numbers would be a crisis even a will run agency but the unique cruelty of the trumpet ministrations policies has exacerbated it. The general dysfunction in the trumpet ministration in terms of leadership c.b.p. Is now on its 3rd acting commissioner just in the 3 years of the Trump administration and the acting da just secretary is actually the person who's supposed to be serving as the Senate confirmed c.b.p. Commissioner but there's no one else leading d.h.s.s. After the purge of cures to Nielsen and her deputy earlier this spring so this is an agency that is effectively rudderless at a time when it is facing what is probably the greatest crisis of its 16 year existence you know it's where it's worth noting really that across the h.s. There is not a single permanent Senate confirmed leader in any of the jobs leading our immigration reporter can protection is that intentional it seems sometimes that Trump likes to have people who aren't permanent and don't need to be confirmed by the Senate yeah so Donald Trump has made clear that he likes these temporary officials because they provide what he says is quote flexibility for him what's also true in this case is that it within d.h. Asks he is appointing temporary acting officials who are so controversial and so disliked that they would be unlikely to actually be able to win Senate confirmation themselves but that limits their authority it limits their ability to lead their organizations and it just exacerbates this room valving door of leaders across the h.s. . You've described the southern border in the Rio Grande Valley area as having a thriving border protection industry would you describe the industry for all that we hear about the need to increase border spending the need to build this big expensive wall the length of the border most people don't realize actually just how large of an industry border protection already is we spend more already on Border and Immigration protection than the combined budget of the f.b.i. The a.t.f. The u.s. Marshals the Secret Service and the entire budget of the n.y.p.d. So this is a massive spending program already and when you go down into these towns and cities along the border what you actually see is that border security is in some ways one of the biggest employers already and that we have deployed this you know relatively new army of Border Patrol agents along the southern border and invested in an incredible amount of militarization and high tech technology that includes an armed Predator drones and even what are known as arrow stats affectively blimps that patrol the southern border that have been brought back after service in Afghanistan Garrett Graff thank you so much for talking with us always a pleasure yet grass new article and Politico magazine is titled The Border Patrol hits a breaking point his next book An Oral History of $911.00 will be published in September after we take a short break just in China review the new remake of The Lion King which has computer generated animals This is Fresh Air. Wow. Wow. Wow Wow. Wow wow wow wow wow. Wow. Wow Wow. Wow. Wow Wow. Wow wow wow wow wow wow. This is Fresh Air Disney's usually successful in 1900 for a film The Lion King won 2 Academy Awards became the highest grossing hand drawn animated film of all time and spawned a long running Broadway musical Now the studio has produced a new version of the film with computer generated animals voiced by a cast that includes James Earl Jones Donald Glover and Beyonce film critic Justin Chang has this review the best scene in Disney's incredibly photo realistic remake of The Lion King Features a computer generated beetle rolling a ball of computer generated done across a computer generated African landscape. It might sound mundane but this particular ball of dung is carrying a tuft of for from the runaway lion Simba and its eventual discovery will renew hope that the rightful king of the Savannah is alive and well it's a funny touching reminder that in the circle of life every little creature and every lump of waste has an important role to play the best thing about the scene is that it's completely wordless and it convinced me that this line King would have been far better as a silent movie one that treated its newfangled visual style as more than just a digital facelift but that wouldn't have suited Disney's game plan to produce an essentially risk free remake of the 1904 animated film that remains one of its all time greatest hits the hamlet inspired plot is nearly identical to the original so are Elton John's memorable songs and Tim Rice's less memorable their acts this time sung by a solid voice cast that includes Donald Glover John Oliver and beyond say the soundtrack also includes a new beyond say a song called spirit. The crucial difference is that instead of the originals gorgeous hand drawn visuals the new movie looks and feels like live action in illusion achieved through a sophisticated mix of digital imagery and virtual reality techniques the result plays like a Hollywood blockbuster disguised as a National Geographic documentary or perhaps the world's most expensive Safari themed karaoke video the movie feels both overwhelmed by its technical virtuosity and shackled by its Adeleke to the source material it begins with a nearly shot for shot recreation of the 1st film's famous opening sequence the sun rises over the landscape the lush soaring melody of circle of life rings out and some very persuasive looking elephants zebras giraffes and other critters gathered to celebrate the birth of Simba an adorable little cub destined to succeed his father as King of the pride lands as shot by the cinematographer tail additional It's a majestic if redundant sequence a sign that we've seen this all before then the familiar plot kicks in the characters start talking and singing and your sense of wonderment returned to confusion the animals' lips may match their dialogue but there's next to nothing going on behind the eyes who knew photorealistic lines were this bad at a motoring you can't fault the actors James Earl Jones who voiced new fossil in the earlier film reprises that role here with his signature gravity and she would tell edgier for strikes the right note of menace as move Foster's brother Scar who plots to kill both father and son by luring the unsuspecting Simba down into a gorge placing him directly in the path of a will the beast stampede this cords is where all the lions come to find their role on life you might not even more fuss I came here when he was your age refused to leave and it is rule could be heard above the rim. On the way that's when you know you found it in the little practice you'll never be called a cub again. You don't get it Simba just takes time. Out check on you later. And so crown on. It's a gift you'll never forget within minutes move Foster is dead and a heart broken Simba is on the run leaving scar in his vicious hyena allies to take over the Savannah at this point the movie shifts abruptly into zany comedy mode as Simba the friends the anybody loud mouth duo of Tim own the mirror cat and the Wart Hog they're voiced by Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen and their energetic banter and their performance of that classic slacker anthem of Cooma Tata it means no worries you have the story in undeniable lift laughing at this movie is a lot easier than taking it seriously soon the grown ups now voiced by Donald Glover is reunited with his childhood friend Nala played by beyond say when they want you to can you feel the love tonight not even the actors lovely voices can bring these lions dead eyed come hither expressions to life I've never been the biggest fan of the original line king which beneath its brightly entertaining surface has always struck me as too emotionally calculated by half but it feels like a triumph of form and content next to this movie because its story about a fictional animal kingdom feel so vividly and gloriously cartoonish in every detail that the lion king is so realistic looking that paradoxically you can't believe a moment of it and although it was directed by John Fabro who previously shepherded a wild menagerie in his recent remake of The Jungle Book it has none of the imagination that made that movie more than just a high tech retread. Disney is in the midst of an ongoing campaign to upgrade its beloved animated classics for a new generation from the recent Dumbo in the Latin to upcoming versions of Milan and The Little Mermaid some of these remakes have been more inspired than others but few have felt quite as futile as The Lion King this isn't the circle of life it's more like a creative dead end. Film critic at the time. If you'd like to. Be with the New Yorker. Or Pulitzer Prize winning. Video. Songs about President were just nominated for an Emmy check out our podcast. Executive producer. Produced in edited. I'm Terry Gross. And. Support for n.p.r. Comes from the. Creator of planning an independent wealth management firm that considers each client's financial picture to create individualized plans creative. Creative planning wealth management redefined. I'm from the Kauffman Foundation working together with communities in education and entrepreneurship to create uncommon solutions and empower people to shape their lives and be more successful more on line at Kaufmann dot org. And thank you for listening to 89.3. Your source for n.p.r. News and music discovery. Real stories and real reporting comprehensive new speakers and news analysis in the Pacific Island times a monthly publication featuring current events in Guam allowance you know mine and the rest of the region the Pacific Island times your home your region your paper visit their website w w dot Pacific Island times dark Cong. Lists