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--:-- Steve Inskeep: Welcome to Up First. I'm Steve Inskeep.
--:-- Michelle Martin: And I'm Michelle Martin.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: A liquor store worker in Canada was just about to yank American bourbon off the shelf.
--:-- Michelle Martin: We felt betrayed. At the last moment, the U.S. paused its trade war.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: How's all this look from the U.S. ally to the North?
--:-- Michelle Martin: I'm Michelle Martin, that's Steve Inskeep, and this is Up First from NPR News.
--:-- Jackie Northam: An ethics watchdog who criticized the first Trump administration now watches the second.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: I've never seen the White House send their people into the agents this way in such an intrusive matter.
--:-- Jackie Northam: What is Elon Musk's authority for accessing Treasury Department records of almost everybody?
--:-- Michelle Martin: Also, NPR has details of President Trump's plans for the Department of Education.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Closing a cabinet department requires an act of Congress, so he will ask for one.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day.
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--:-- Steve Inskeep: New U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods went into effect today, and China has already retaliated.
--:-- Michelle Martin: The Trump administration imposed 10% taxes on U.S. imports from China.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: China responded with 15% taxes on U.S. goods.
--:-- Michelle Martin: China also put export controls on vital metals like tungsten.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Now, the trade war with Mexico and Canada is paused for now after the president made threats that jolted relations with a close U.S. ally.
--:-- Michelle Martin: So how does all this look from Canada?
--:-- Steve Inskeep: NPR International Affairs correspondent Jackie Northam is in Ottawa.
--:-- Jackie Northam: Good morning, Steve.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Good morning, Jackie. So how did the United States and Canada at least put off a confrontation?
--:-- Jackie Northam: Well, you know, it did come right down to the wire.
--:-- Jackie Northam: The Trump's tariffs against Canada were set to go into effect one minute after midnight, and that's the same for Mexico.
--:-- Jackie Northam: And Canada was bracing for it, you know.
--:-- Jackie Northam: It had already announced it would retaliate by imposing 25% tariffs on $100 billion of U.S. goods.
--:-- Jackie Northam: But earlier on Monday, Trump struck a deal with Mexico and then with Canada, and both sides said they would send thousands of troops to their borders to curb the illegal flow of migrants and fentanyl, which is what Trump had asked for.
--:-- Jackie Northam: But, you know, Ottawa says the amount of fentanyl coming across from Canada is a fraction of that coming from Mexico, which has led to a lot of questions here in Canada of what this was really about.
--:-- Jackie Northam: Why impose high tariffs on the country, which is one of the closest allies of the U.S.?
--:-- Ryan Robinson: I think we thought, you know, our closest ally in the world was stabbing us in the back a little bit, right?
--:-- Ryan Robinson: I think Trump was blowing things out of proportion a little bit.
--:-- Ryan Robinson: So I don't really understand his reasoning to start such a trade war.
--:-- Jackie Northam: And, you know, Steve, Canada is one of the U.S.'s largest trading partners.
--:-- Jackie Northam: But, you know, it's more than that.
--:-- Jackie Northam: This feels personal up here, especially when Trump keeps saying he wants to turn Canada into the 51st state.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Yeah, which I think people took as a joke when Trump first said that, but he keeps saying it again and again and again.
--:-- Jackie Northam: So how do the two countries move forward?
--:-- Jackie Northam: Well, you know, this is only a month-long reprieve, and I think it's fair to say that there is a trust deficit between Canada and the U.S., and the U.S. and Mexico, for that matter.
--:-- Jackie Northam: Canada faced a serious threat of recession if Trump's tariffs went ahead.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: You know, there's a fear that it's not over, at least for now.
--:-- Jackie Northam: And as you mentioned, Steve, the threat of a trade war goes beyond North America as the U.S. and China launch these tit-for-tat tariffs on each other.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: The White House says Trump is due to talk to Chinese leader Xi Jinping today.
--:-- Jackie Northam: But negotiations between the rivals could be a draw-no process.
--:-- Michelle Martin: NPR's Jackie Northam, thanks so much for your work.
--:-- Jackie Northam: Thanks, Steve.
--:-- Corey Turner: Okay, some changes are underway at the U.S. Department of Education with bigger potential moves on the horizon.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Sources tell NPR that President Trump is getting ready to issue an executive action that would do two things, move quickly to make relatively small staff and program cuts and call on Congress to close the department entirely.
--:-- Corey Turner: This comes as several dozen of the department's 4,400 workers have already been placed on paid leave.
--:-- Corey Turner: NPR's Corey Turner joins us now.
--:-- Corey Turner: Good morning, Steve.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Good morning, Corey.
--:-- Corey Turner: By your proper name, what do you know about this executive action?
--:-- Corey Turner: Well, and not a lot, at least not through official channels.
--:-- Corey Turner: The White House did not respond to a request for comment, but multiple sources have told me, folks who are not allowed to speak publicly, the Trump administration is eager to close the department.
--:-- Corey Turner: And so in the near term, it plans to use this executive action to try to move quickly to cut programs and staff that were not created by Congress.
--:-- Corey Turner: So they're not protected by law.
--:-- Corey Turner: The idea being these will be the programs that are the easiest to cut, essentially the low-hanging fruit.
--:-- Corey Turner: The problem here, Steve, is the department itself and its signature responsibilities were all created by Congress.
--:-- Corey Turner: And so they're much harder to cut.
--:-- Corey Turner: Unless, of course, you operate within the rule of law and go to Congress and ask them to reconsider that.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Yeah, so the department has a budget of around $79 billion.
--:-- Corey Turner: On the K-12 side, it administers Title I, which sends extra funding to schools in lower-income communities, both urban and rural.
--:-- Corey Turner: And it administers IDEA, that's the civil rights law that guarantees special education.
--:-- Corey Turner: And obviously on the higher ed side it manages the trillion student loan portfolio
--:-- Corey Turner: Now I have spoken with a bunch of experts over the past year who all say they really don't see how a president can make meaningful legal changes to these programs without Congress.
--:-- Corey Turner: And that's why, Steve, I'm hearing from my sources that this executive action would essentially acknowledge that by calling on Congress to either cut or move some or all of these programs to other agencies.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: The challenge for the administration is there have been plenty of past efforts to close the department and rewrite the rules of big programs like Title I.
--:-- Corey Turner: But lawmakers, including many Republicans, have always opposed them.
--:-- Corey Turner: Although that's the system, that's checks and balances, that's the Constitution.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: So what you're saying is we expect an executive order that really is just a statement asking Congress to do what the president asks, which is the way the Constitution works.
--:-- Corey Turner: At the same time, you're reporting that some education department staff are being placed on leave.
--:-- Corey Turner: What's going on?
--:-- Corey Turner: Yeah, that's right.
--:-- Corey Turner: At least 74 non-management department of education staff have been placed on paid administrative leave.
--:-- Corey Turner: They all got this email in the last few days saying they're being placed on leave because of President Trump's executive action targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
--:-- Corey Turner: In a statement I got, a department spokesperson said, quote, We are evaluating staffing in line with the commitment to prioritizing meaningful learning ahead of divisive ideology in schools and putting student outcomes above special interests.
--:-- Corey Turner: But I spoke yesterday and last night with a bunch of these employees, and they all told me they don't work in DEI.
--:-- Corey Turner: They're career staff.
--:-- Corey Turner: They work in multiple departments.
--:-- Corey Turner: The only thing they had in common was that they had all attended, at some point, a DEI workshop the department has been offering for years, including, by the way, going back to the first Trump administration.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Okay. NPR's Corey Turner will continue listening for your reporting on that.
--:-- Corey Turner: Thanks very much.
--:-- Bobby Allen: And we have an update on the actions of the Department of Government Efficiency.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Which is not actually a department.
--:-- Bobby Allen: It's more like an ad hoc group.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: But whatever you call it, it's been an agent of chaos and confusion led by the unelected advisor to the president, Elon Musk.
--:-- Bobby Allen: NPR's Bobby Allen has covered Musk for years.
--:-- Bobby Allen: Good morning, Steve.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Good morning, Bobby.
--:-- Bobby Allen: Well, just remember, Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, what have they done so far?
--:-- Bobby Allen: Quite a bit.
--:-- Bobby Allen: Musk's deputies are moving very fast.
--:-- Bobby Allen: In just the first two weeks of the Trump administration, they have intervened at the Treasury Department, which, you know, processes trillions of dollars of payments every year.
--:-- Bobby Allen: And it's not just Treasury.
--:-- Bobby Allen: DOGE is involved in the Office of Personnel Management looking for ways to slash the federal payroll.
--:-- Bobby Allen: They're analyzing the government's real estate holdings.
--:-- Bobby Allen: In sum, Doge, at the direction of Musk, is barreling into vast swaths of the federal government and promising to divide and conquer what he sees as the deep state.
--:-- Bobby Allen: Not that unlike the way Musk bulldozed Twitter.
--:-- Bobby Allen: And then when he purchased it, of course, he renamed it X.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: I would not say that this has been the most transparent effort.
--:-- Bobby Allen: We hear about things happening and we're not exactly sure what the purpose is from the outside.
--:-- Bobby Allen: How are people responding to this?
--:-- Bobby Allen: Yeah, well, in Congress, Republicans have been mostly quiet, but Democrats are sounding the alarm.
--:-- Bobby Allen: Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer called Doge, quote, a shadow government conducting a hostile takeover.
--:-- Bobby Allen: Sharp words.
--:-- Bobby Allen: And that gets at one of the questions Doge is facing.
--:-- Bobby Allen: Can Musk legally have this much access and control over the federal government?
--:-- Bobby Allen: And then there are other questions, Steve, about whether Doge creates conflicts of interest, because as we know, Musk runs six companies, including rocket company SpaceX, electric vehicle company Tesla, while Musk is also a senior advisor to President Trump.
--:-- Bobby Allen: And we learned just yesterday that the White House has made Musk a special government employee.
--:-- Bobby Allen: Which means that he does have some formal government role, I guess.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: What is a special government employee?
--:-- Bobby Allen: It essentially a temporary government job.
--:-- Bobby Allen: It can run longer than 130 days.
--:-- Bobby Allen: And Doge itself was stood up as a temporary organization to radically cut costs in government.
--:-- Bobby Allen: But Musk's exact remit is kind of unknown.
--:-- Bobby Allen: It's a little murky.
--:-- Bobby Allen: Government watchdogs, though, are worried he is going to operate with no guardrails.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Now, President Trump said Musk is acting only with the explicit approval of the White House.
--:-- Bobby Allen: And that quote, where we think there's a conflict or a problem, we won't let him go near it.
--:-- Bobby Allen: That's what Trump said recently.
--:-- Bobby Allen: But experts I spoke to aren't so sure.
--:-- Bobby Allen: Richard Painter was the White House's top ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration.
--:-- Bobby Allen: And Painter says the level of access Musk seems to have sure does look like there are very few checks on him.
--:-- Bobby Allen: I've never seen something like this happen before.
--:-- Bobby Allen: I've never seen the White House send their people into the agents this way in such an intrusive matter in either a Democratic administration or a Republican administration, including the first Trump administration.
--:-- Bobby Allen: Unprecedented is a word very much overused in this political moment, but Painter says Doge is indeed charting new territory.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Well, this raises a question.
--:-- Bobby Allen: If Congress is not going to jump up immediately and if the White House says it's on board, are people who object in some way likely to take this to court?
--:-- Bobby Allen: Doge has been hit with multiple lawsuits over its legality.
--:-- Bobby Allen: The most recent one came yesterday.
--:-- Bobby Allen: Unions representing federal employees sued to block Doge's access to the Treasury Department's payment system.
--:-- Bobby Allen: They're concerned about Musk and his deputies having direct access to millions of people's tax refunds, veterans' benefits, disability checks, and the private information of federal employees.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: So we will see, Steve, what happens in court.
--:-- Bobby Allen: But experts tell me that unless a judge steps in, Doge is expected to only grow its presence inside of the federal government.
--:-- Bobby Allen: I'm thinking about some of the things Doge has done.
--:-- Bobby Allen: There were actions over the weekend against the U.S. Agency for International Development.
--:-- Bobby Allen: Musk acted as if he was shutting down the agency, which is arguably illegal.
--:-- Bobby Allen: But it seems instead just to have been folded under Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who talks of continuing some foreign aid and just reforming the agency, which a lot of people would like.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Is it possible this agency is less radical than it seems?
--:-- Bobby Allen: Yeah, for some of the agencies in Doge's crosshairs, you know, their opening bid is to completely dismantle the agencies, right?
--:-- Bobby Allen: But what may end up happening in the end is just a smaller version of the agencies that Doge is going after.
--:-- Bobby Allen: So fewer employees and fewer resources, but still existing in some form.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: We'll just have to see.
--:-- Bobby Allen: NPR's Bobby Allen, thanks so much.
--:-- Bobby Allen: Thanks, Steve.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: And that's Up First for this Tuesday, February 4th.
--:-- Michelle Martin: There's an exclamation point written down here.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: So I'm fourth.
--:-- Michelle Martin: It's February 4th.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Let the fourth be with you.
--:-- Michelle Martin: I'm Steve Inskeep.
--:-- Michelle Martin: And I'm Michelle Martin.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Make your next listen consider this.
--:-- Michelle Martin: The team behind NPR's All Things Considered goes deep into a single news story in just 15 minutes.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Listen now on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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--:-- Announcer (Voiceover): Today's episode of Up First was edited by Tara Neal, Brett Neely, Stephen Drummond, Jenea Williams, and Alice Wolfley.
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--:-- Announcer (Voiceover): Join us again tomorrow.
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