Trump Organization Charges, Florida Condo Investigation, FEMA Payouts: News You Need To Know
Good morning, hope everyone's having an excellent start to their Thursday. We have a lot of important stories to bring you. Here's what's top of the agenda:
- After a three-year investigation, the Manhattan district attorney is expected to charge the Trump Organization today. The company's chief financial officer surrendered himself to authorities in New York this morning.
- Building management was aware of structural problems for years before the collapse of a Florida condo tower. Search and rescue efforts have been paused this morning due to safety concerns.
- The Supreme Court has upheld two Arizona provisions that restrict voting.
- A probe into FEMA wildfire payouts reveals wide fluctuations in approval rates.
- 🎧 On today's Up First, NPR's daily news podcast, we bring you reaction to Bill Cosby's release from prison.
— The Morning Edition live blog team
(Emily Alfin Johnson, Rachel Treisman, Joe Hernandez, Nell Clark, Casey Noenickx and William Jones)
In Striking Down California Law, Supreme Court Sides With Rich Donors Who Want To Stay Anonymous
In a 6-3 vote along ideological lines, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a California law requiring nonprofits to file a list of their large donors with the state.
The case was brought by the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, a tax-exempt nonprofit founded by Charles Koch and his brother David Koch, who died in 2019, as well as the Thomas More Law Center, another conservative group.
The court said California's law subjected donors to potential harassment, chilling their speech in violation of the First Amendment.
The Supreme Court Just Narrowed The Last Remaining Section Of The Voting Rights Act
The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld two Arizona provisions that restrict voting, in a 6-3 vote along ideological lines.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion for the court’s conservatives. Justice Elena Kagan and the court’s two other liberals dissented.
Arizona had banned so-called “ballot harvesting” as well as a policy that threw out an entire ballot if it was cast in the wrong precinct.
The court's decision deals another blow to the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which for decades served as a barrier to discriminatory procedures by requiring state and local governments with a history of racial discrimination in voting to get approval from the U.S. Justice Department for any changes in voting policies.
The act was most recently re-authorized in 2006. Seven years later, the court gutted its key provision by a 5-to-4 vote, meaning the only protections for voting rights that remained in the law were in Section 2.
More from NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg here.
Search and Rescue Operations Have Been Paused At The Collapsed Condominium In Florida
Officials have paused search and rescue operations at the site of the collapsed condominium in Surfside, Fla.
At a news briefing, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said they halted operations at the collapse site in the ‘early hours of the morning’ due to structural concerns of the standing structure.
Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Chief Alan Cominsky said that operations were paused after 6-12 inches of movement was observed in a large column hanging from the structure and slight movement in the concrete floor slabs. He said they were concerned about an additional failure of the pile.
One week after the partial collapse of the 12-story condominium, 18 people are confirmed dead and 145 others are missing.
A Team From Israel's Military Is Searching Through Debris In Florida
Search and rescue teams from Florida and beyond have been joined in Surfside, Fla., by crews from Mexico and Israel, including a team of Israeli Defense Forces personnel.
Lt. Col. Oz Gino is one of the leaders of that team, which has conducted rescue and recovery operations after earthquakes in Haiti and in Nepal. He spoke with NPR's Noel King on today's Morning Edition about what makes this effort unique:
"It's not a regular site. You can see 12 floors collapsing like a pancake. There is no space inside there because there are no walls. All the floors collapsed, one on each other."Lt. Col. Oz Gino of the Israel Defense Forces
Gino's team arrived in Florida at the beginning of this week, and has been working pretty much nonstop ever since.
"We're working around the clock, almost 84 hours, doing everything we can to try and find people. It doesn't matter what the situation is," he says.
Gino is based at a hotel where families of those who are still unaccounted for are also staying. He says his team have been gathering photos of those that are missing from these families and hearing their personal stories. Listen to the full interview here.
What To Stream This Month, According To 'Pop Culture Happy Hour'
New month, new entertainment recommendations. July is bringing tons of new movies and TV shows straight to your screen, whether via streaming services, cable subscriptions or on demand.
So which ones are worth watching, and where can you find them?
Pop Culture Happy Hour's Linda Holmes is here to help, with this guide to what you can watch from home, including:
- Season two of Ted Lasso is back to warm our hearts
- The Gossip Girl reboot
- The 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival on screen
- Marvel's first movie in two years
- A Naomi Osaka docuseries
Happy streaming.
Kim Jong Un Says North Korea Faces A Food Shortage. Here's Why That Matters To The U.S.
Kim Jong Un recently described the food situation in North Korea as "tense."
As NPR's Anthony Kuhn has reported, food shortages — in part due to economic mismanagement — are common in the country, but have been made worse by pandemic-related border closures and a harvest hampered by floods.
So what's the agenda behind this admission from North Korea's leader?
NPR's Rachel Martin spoke to Jean H. Lee, a senior fellow at the Wilson Center, about how to read between the lines. Lee is a veteran foreign correspondent who became the first American reporter granted extensive access on the ground in North Korea. You can listen to their conversation here.
Lee says it could signal an opening for the Biden administration to engage with North Korea over humanitarian aid. That could set the stage for negotiations over North Korea's nuclear program, she adds.
"Kim Jong Un is doing two things. He's both putting it out there and acknowledging that they have this food shortage, so perhaps laying the ground for if we do accept some aid this is why. He's also bracing his people for this hardship to come, and trying to get them to work harder on their own. This is the self-reliance philosophy and ideology that the North Korean regime promotes."Jean Lee, senior fellow at the Wilson Center
While Kim Jong Un blames international sanctions for food insecurity, Lee says the issue is much more complicated than that. Mountainous terrain, bad agricultural policies and North Korea's own border restrictions play a big role too.
And, she notes, monsoon season is on the horizon.
"This hits the Korean peninsula usually around June, July, torrential rains," Lee says. "And North Korea's just not equipped to handle it. And so if they have another torrential flooding situation because of the monsoons, it's going to be a very dire situation for the harvest come fall."
The Impact Of Bill Cosby's Conviction Being Overturned
Bill Cosby is a free man. Yesterday the Pennsylvania Supreme Court vacated the sex assault conviction against him and released him from prison. He'd served almost three years of a possible 10-year prison sentence.
Cosby was convicted in 2018 of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman, Andrea Constand, at his home years earlier.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that Cosby's due process rights were violated when he was charged for the 2004 assault because prosecutors had previously told the comedian they wouldn't bring criminal charges against him. More on that here.
Reaction to Cosby's release was swift and strong.
NPR's Elizabeth Blair spoke with victims and advocates after yesterday's announcement.
Blair says many of the folks she spoke to are concerned about what the news will do to victims of sexual assault.
Angela Rose is the head of a nonprofit called PAVE which stands for Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment.
🎧 More from Elizabeth Blair's conversations with victims and advocates, here.
Cosby's longtime on-screen wife, actress and Howard University dean Phylicia Rashad also weighed in, initially supporting Cosby in a tweet Wednesday, only to later clarify her support for the victims as well.
China’s Communist Party Celebrates Its 100th Birthday With Bluster
China's ruling Communist Party is ringing in its 100th birthday with a massive parade in Tiannenmen Square and a fiery speech from its chairman, Chinese President Xi Jinping.
"The Chinese people will never allow any foreign forces to bully, oppress or enslave us. Anyone who dares will have their heads cracked and their blood will flow before the steel Great Wall built with the flesh and blood of 1.4 billion Chinese people," Xi, wearing a gray Mao suit, said in front of Beijing's imperial palace on Thursday morning.
Started as an organization designed to foment revolution among rural peasants, the Communist Party has had to transform itself into a governing force overseeing an increasingly sophisticated global economy.
The centennial celebration - which included artillery fire and scores of Chinese children and party members singing patriotic songs - is the chance for a China that is largely viewed with hostility by the rest of the world to highlight the Communist Party’s growth since its founding 100 years ago.
"Back then we lagged so far behind. We could only look up at Western countries. We were standing at the bottom of the stairs when the West was at the top," said Hu Xijin, the editor in chief of the Global Times, a nationalist government paper. "Nowadays China has caught up with the rest of the world. China's economy has expanded and with it, its general power."
Records Show Surfside And Condo Officials Didn't Act On Safety Concerns In Recent Years
Exactly one week after the partial collapse of a 12-story condominium in Surfside, Fla., 18 people are confirmed dead and 145 others are missing.
President Biden plans to visit the area today, as rescue efforts continue and loved ones await answers. One of the big questions: How did this happen?
NPR's Brian Mann has learned that town officials and condo association board members shared concerns about the building's deteriorating state for years.
He's been examining documents that show that while Champlain Towers South had been inspected and monitored by government officials in recent months, building inspectors never demanded major repairs — and even reassured residents about its condition.
Town officials have declined to answer questions about their process, saying it's not the right time to do so while the search continues.
As Mann explained onMorning Edition:
- Surfside officials had interacted frequently with the building since 2018, when they received a troubling engineering report showing structural concerns.
- A safety review of the condo — required by the county for tall buildings older than 40 years — found serious problems, but saw very little follow through. As Mann says, the process "sort of almost worked" in that it identified problems but didn't fix them.
- Documents show there was little urgency even as safety warnings continued. Town officials kept ordering condo managers to make minor repairs, like fixing gates, but did not address the bigger problems like decaying concrete and steel foundations.
- Condo association board members had been aware of issues since 2018, but the city's top building inspector reassured them at a meeting that the building was in good shape. Five people on the seven-member board quit in 2019, which seems to have further delayed any work.
Britney Spears' Request To Remove Her Father From Her Conservatorship Has Been Denied
A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has signed an order denying Britney Spears' request to have her father removed from the financial aspects of her conservatorship.
This development on Wednesday comes a week after she made an emotional direct appeal to the court. You can read her full statement to the court, here.
The next hearing in the case is currently scheduled for Wednesday, July 14. It is possible Spears may submit a petition for the conservatorship to be terminated. Here is where the case could go from here.
Spears' efforts have drawn significant attention and support online. NPR's Anastasia Tsioulcas writes that she's the latest victim of the industry machine that has a long history of dominating women. More on that here.
As Western Wildfires Get More Destructive, FEMA Denies A Higher Percentage Of Claims
When someone loses their home in a fire, the Federal Emergency Management Agency says it’s there to help.
But after the Oregon and California wildfires last year, the agency denied the vast majority of applications for financial aid. NPR and member station Jefferson Public Radio in Southern Oregon wanted to figure out why.
During our months-long investigation, we obtained internal FEMA documents and interviewed more than 60 wildfire survivors, advocates and government officials.
It turns out FEMA has been routinely denying a higher percentage of wildfire claims every year, even as climate change renders those fires increasingly destructive.
After last year’s record-breaking fire season, FEMA denied roughly 70% of claims in Oregon and 86% in California, and that’s after it said it had filtered out potentially fraudulent applications.
We found FEMA is walking a fine line between preventing fraud and helping people who truly lost their homes. Sometimes, those real disaster survivors get filtered out by the automated systems FEMA uses to screen applicants because it can’t verify their identity or residence.
That’s what happened to Brenda and Francis Dairy, who lost their home in the Beachie Creek Fire last year.
Brenda says she provided copies of her husband’s Social Security card and other documents from the Department of Veterans Affairs, but FEMA said they didn’t match the records in its database.
"They kept telling us that's not his Social Security number — it does not match it. They just kept saying it doesn't match. They never offered any explanation."Brenda Dairy, who lost her home in Oregon to a wildfire last year
The Dairys aren't alone in their frustration. A 2020 FEMA survey of people who applied for disaster assistance shows that more than 1,000 comments — about a quarter of the sample — complained about poor communication, while some 50 respondents said FEMA wasn't able to verify their identity or occupancy.
In some cases, this is because applicants were unable to provide the necessary documentation — because they just lost their home and property to a natural disaster.
Read the full story and find out how FEMA is responding here.
Criminal Charges Are Expected Against The Trump Organization Today
New York City prosecutors are reportedly poised to announce criminal charges today after a three-year investigation into former President Donald Trump’s business empire.
The Trump Organization and its longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, are expected to face criminal charges for allegedly paying employees with perks to avoid taxes, according to reporters Ilya Marritz and Andrea Bernstein.
Weisselberg, a four-decade employee of the Trump Organization, surrendered to authorities in New York Thursday morning.
Those perks apparently included non-salary benefits like cars, apartments and private school tuition.
A former U.S. president has never been charged with breaking the law, but this would come close.
“Trump and his business have been in court thousands of times over the years. They have sued people, and they have been sued,” Marritz told NPR’sUp First. “Every one of these court cases has always been civil, not criminal. That’s what makes this arraignment we’re expecting this afternoon so noteworthy" .
The criminal complaint is not yet public, so it’s unclear exactly what charges Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. intends to bring.
Attorneys for the Trump Organization and Weisselberg didn’t provide any comment on the expected charges, said Marritz, who notes that the former president has always maintained his innocence and claims that this investigation is motivated by politics.