--:-- Leila Fadel: Israel's government is considering expanding the war in Gaza. That's despite a growing chorus of voices in Israel calling for an immediate end to the war after 22 months.
--:-- Michelle Martin: What would be the military objective?
--:-- Leila Fadel: I'm Leila Fadel, that's Michelle Martin, and this is Up First from NPR News.
--:-- Leila Fadel: The governor of Texas has ordered the arrest of Democratic lawmakers who left the state to avoid voting on a redistricting plan, a plan designed to give Republicans more seats in the next election.
--:-- Michelle Martin: The governor has no authority outside his state, and Democrats say they won't succumb to threats.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Because it's Texas now, but it's going to continue through the rest of the states, and it's going to kill our democracy.
--:-- Michelle Martin: And the Trump administration has plans to end two NASA satellite missions that collect valuable data about carbon dioxide for scientists and farmers.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day.
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--:-- Leila Fadel: Israel's cabinet is expected to meet this week to decide on whether to expand Israel's war in Gaza, where more than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to health officials there.
--:-- Michelle Martin: That's despite the families of hostages being held there who say they fear ramping up military activity endangers the about 20 hostages still believed to be alive.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And PR's Emily Fang is with us this morning to explain more about this.
--:-- Emily Fang: Good morning, Michelle.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Good morning, Emily. It sounds like there is a lot of disagreement over what Israel's next steps in Gaza should be.
--:-- Emily Fang: Absolutely. And those tensions are right in the public eye this week.
--:-- Emily Fang: Ceasefire talk stalled late last month, and far-right elements of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's political coalition have been pressing for the full annexation of Gaza.
--:-- Emily Fang: Now, NPR's own reporting has shown that Israel's senior leadership no longer thinks a deal with Hamas is possible.
--:-- Emily Fang: I want to stress nothing militarily has been officially decided yet, but whether to pursue a bigger war in Gaza is pitting Netanyahu against the very well-respected chief of staff of Israel's military, who has taken steps that suggest he opposes extending the war.
--:-- Emily Fang: Netanyahu, as you mentioned, is also pitted against the families of the hostages.
--:-- Emily Fang: This week, Militants in Gaza released videos showing two of those hostages horribly emaciated and begging for help.
--:-- Emily Fang: And an organization representing some of these hostage families on Monday accused Netanyahu of quote "the greatest deception yet".
--:-- Emily Fang: They said the public has been sold the illusion that military pressure will bring the hostages home when it has not.
--:-- Emily Fang: And this urgency is reaching the United Nations.
--:-- Emily Fang: At Israel's request, the Security Council is holding a briefing this afternoon on the hostages situation.
--:-- Emily Fang: And Israel's foreign minister is in New York for that meeting.
--:-- Emily Fang: So what is the end goal in Gaza now? Like what military objective remains there?
--:-- Emily Fang: Prime Minister Netanyahu has vowed, quote "a total victory".
--:-- Emily Fang: But would that be a Pyrrhic victory at too great a cost?
--:-- Emily Fang: Israel has already flattened most of Gaza and dozens of Palestinians a day are being killed from Israeli gunfire or they are starving to death.
--:-- Emily Fang: And Israel's own military is strained by this long war.
--:-- Emily Fang: It is running low on recruits.
--:-- Emily Fang: It is financially under pressure.
--:-- Emily Fang: And a little bit of recent history, Israel did occupy Gaza for a nearly 40-year period, but it was hugely expensive and deadly for Israeli soldiers.
--:-- Emily Fang: And so the military occupation inside Gaza ended in 2005.
--:-- Emily Fang: How serious is this proposal to reoccupy Gaza?
--:-- Emily Fang: So a poll done by Tel Aviv University called the Peace Index found just this past July that about 45 percent of Israelis support forcibly moving Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip.
--:-- Emily Fang: And almost 40 percent of Israelis support allowing civilian settlements in Gaza again.
--:-- Emily Fang: But there's also real pushback and most notably multiple appeals from Israel's defense establishment.
--:-- Emily Fang: They argue an occupation is just unsustainable.
--:-- Emily Fang: Most recently, about almost 600 senior retired security officers signed a letter to President Trump this week calling for pressure to end the war in Gaza.
--:-- Emily Fang: And perhaps the most powerful anti-war voices have been Israeli soldiers themselves.
--:-- Emily Fang: One of these young soldiers named Ron Feiner gave this speech at a recent anti-war protest I went to in Tel Aviv.
--:-- Emily Fang: He got huge applause.
--:-- Emily Fang: He says the Israeli government does not care about the hostages rotting in tunnels.
--:-- Emily Fang: They don't care about the soldiers dying in battle.
--:-- Emily Fang: All they care about are fantasies of conquest.
--:-- Emily Fang: Feiner spent 270 days fighting in Lebanon in Israel's military last year.
--:-- Emily Fang: But when he was called to fight in Gaza this year, he refused.
--:-- Emily Fang: That is.
--:-- Michelle Martin: In Texas, Republican leaders have threatened to arrest Democratic lawmakers or kick them out of the legislature unless they come back to the statehouse.
--:-- Emily Fang: Yeah, Democrats fled the state trying to stop Republicans from redrawing the voting map.
--:-- Emily Fang: The GOP is responding to calls by President Trump to make it easier to pick up five more Republican seats in the U.S. House next year.
--:-- Emily Fang: The House currently has a narrow Republican majority.
--:-- Emily Fang: Joining us now is Laurent McGahee of the Texas Newsroom.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: She is based at member station KUT News in Austin.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Good morning, Lauren.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: Good morning.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: So let's talk about these consequences being tossed out there.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: What are Republican leaders saying they are going to do to try to make these Democrats return?
--:-- Laurent McGahee: Yeah, you know, Democrats are facing several threats for breaking quorum.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: The most immediate is the threat of arrest.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: So yesterday, the House voted to issue arrest warrants for the absent Democrats.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: And then Governor Greg Abbott authorized state troopers to round them up.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: House Speaker Dustin Burroughs says the quorum break won't prevent them from redrawing the maps.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: Let me assure you of this. While our work may be delayed, whether it's tomorrow or next week, the House will complete its required duties.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: Now the tough part there is many of these folks are in Democratic states and the troopers do not have the jurisdiction to pursue them across state lines.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: Democrats will also probably have to pay $500 a day in fines.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: And Abbott's talked about bribery charges for the support they get, and even trying to kick them out of the legislature.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: But, you know, I talked to legal experts that questioned his authority to do any of that.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: So this isn't the first time Democrats have tried this kind of move.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: In past years, it hasn't been seen as particularly successful, although some lawmakers dispute that.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: But either way, is it different this time?
--:-- Laurent McGahee: You know, I think so.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: Back in 2021, that fight was over a state voting bill, but Democrats didn't stick together.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: The quorum break failed.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: Now the fight is national.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: On one side, we have Texas Republicans who are acting on President Donald Trump's request to redraw the state's congressional maps.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: And on the other side are Texas Democrats, but this time they have allies from California to Illinois to New York backing them up.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: You know, Texas Dems feel like if they give up, it'll just be the first domino to fall.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: Trump may then ask other states to redraw their maps, too.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: In Boston, Ana Hernandez, one of the lawmakers who left the state, told WBUR it's a threat to democracy.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: Because it's Texas now, but it's going to continue through the rest of the states, and it's going to kill our democracy.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: And I should note that Democratic states like California are talking about doing their own redistricting to counter what Trump's asking for here.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: You know, this event really could just be the beginning of a years-long national battle over voting maps.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: Could you just remind us of what the stakes are here for, you know, people running in these elections, but also for the people who want to vote in these elections?
--:-- Laurent McGahee: Sure.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: You know, voting maps, voting districts determine whether elections are actually competitive.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: So Democrats say Black and Latino districts are being targeted to dilute the power of non-white voices in Congress.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: They say, you know, this rewrite is basically inherently racist.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: Texas Republicans say this isn't about race. It's about political parties, and they're allowed to redraw maps that way.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: You know, there are a couple weeks left in this special session, but the governor can keep calling more until Democrats return.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: That is.
--:-- Michelle Martin: The Trump administration is considering terminating two NASA satellite missions that measure carbon dioxide.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: That's according to current and former NASA employees.
--:-- Laurent McGahee: This despite the fact that the equipment in space is state-of-the-art, and data they collect are extremely valuable to scientists and to farmers.
--:-- Michelle Martin: NPR's Rebecca Hersher is here with more to tell us more about this.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: Good morning, Michelle.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Good morning. So why is the Trump administration considering ending these missions?
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: We don't know.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and NASA didn't respond to my questions about this.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: In a statement, the Office of Management and Budget only said that that office, quote "had nothing to do with NASA Earth Science Leadership's request for termination plans".
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: But here's what we do know.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: We know that NASA staffers who work on these two carbon dioxide monitoring missions have been asked to draw up plans that NASA could use to terminate those missions, and that's according to current and former NASA employees.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: And if NASA were to put those plans into action, which could happen as soon as early October, one of the missions would likely burn up in the atmosphere, so it would be completely destroyed permanently.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: And there's nothing wrong with this equipment that we know of.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: No.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: I spoke to a lot of scientists who use the data that these missions collect and they all said everything working great
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: There are two missions up there.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: They have identical equipment.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: One has its own free satellite orbiting the Earth.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: That the one that would burn up.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: The second one is attached to the International Space Station.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: And terminating that mission would just mean turning off the equipment on the space station.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: These things, they launched pretty recently in 2014 and 2019.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: And an official review by NASA in 2023 found that, quote "the data are of exceptionally high quality".
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: And at that point, NASA actually recommended continuing the missions for at least three years.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: And how much did these missions cost?
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: Well, here are some numbers.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: So the two missions together cost about $15 million every year to maintain.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: That's according to David Crisp, a longtime NASA scientist who actually designed the equipment that's on the missions and managed them until he retired from NASA in 2022.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: And I asked Chris to put that $15 million price tag in context.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: The two missions together cost the American taxpayer about $750 million to develop, launch into space.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: So yeah, that $15 million a year to maintain the missions up in space and get the data from them, it's a small fraction of the investment that's already been made.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: And that's before you take into account the value of the data itself.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: And what about the value of the data itself?
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: Who uses it?
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: Well, it's used by a really wide variety of people, and that's because of a surprising thing that happened with these satellites.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: So they were designed to measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: They do that really well.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: They're actually the only U.S. satellites that were built to measure greenhouse gas, so they're a crucial source of that information.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: And they've revolutionized our understanding of how carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere, which is obviously really important for understanding climate change.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: But these missions can also measure plant growth, which is totally unexpected and super powerful.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: NASA has turned that into maps that are used for agriculture, like to predict crop yield.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: So farmers actually use this information as well, and they rely on it.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: Which is the kind of thing that happens with basic research, right?
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: You research one thing, and it turns out to have a whole other use, which you might never have expected.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Rebecca Hersher, thank you.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: Thank you so much.
--:-- Michelle Martin: And that's Up First for Tuesday, August 5th.
--:-- Michelle Martin: I'm Michelle Martin.
--:-- Michelle Martin: And I'm Leila Fadel.
--:-- Michelle Martin: For your next listen, consider this from NPR.
--:-- Michelle Martin: At Up First, we give you the three big stories of the day.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Consider This takes a different approach with a focus on a single news story and what it means to you in less than 15 minutes.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Listen now on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Announcer (Voiceover): Today's episode of Up First was edited by Hannah Bloch, Larry Kaplow, Neela Bannerjee, Janaya Williams and Alice Woelfle.
--:-- Announcer (Voiceover): It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas.
--:-- Announcer (Voiceover): We get engineering support from Damian Herring.
--:-- Announcer (Voiceover): And our technical director is Carleigh Strange.
--:-- Announcer (Voiceover): We hope you'll join us again tomorrow.
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