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--:-- Scott Simon: Welcome to Up First. I'm Scott Simon.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And I'm Aisha Roscoe.
--:-- Scott Simon: Boeing's Starliner capsule has landed in New Mexico after a problematic test flight. But it came back without its crew, who were left behind at the International Space Station.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: That's right. NASA couldn't trust that the Starliner's thrusters would not malfunction.
--:-- Scott Simon: We'll tell you what's next with the beleaguered spacecraft. Also, competition with China, the southern U.S. border, war in the Middle East. Where do former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris stand on these major issues?
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: We'll hear from NPR correspondents covering those policy hotspots on what to listen for during Tuesday's debate.
--:-- Scott Simon: So please stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your weekend.
--:-- Scott Simon: This message comes from NPR sponsor Adobe. Introducing the all-new Adobe Acrobat Studio, now with AI-powered PDF spaces.
--:-- Scott Simon: Boeing's Starliner space capsule parachuted back to Earth early today in New Mexico's White Sands Space Harbor.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: The gumdrop-shaped capsule was supposed to work like a space taxi for NASA astronauts.
--:-- Scott Simon: But a slew of mechanical issues plagued its test flight, and NASA officials ultimately decided to bring the spacecraft back home without its crew, leaving the astronauts on the International Space Station.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: NPR's Nell Greenfield-Boyce has been following the story. Nell, thanks for being with us.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: Hey, Scott. Thanks.
--:-- Scott Simon: The story of these two astronauts caught out in orbit has captured a lot of attention. Remind us why they couldn't come home aboard the Starliner they took into orbit.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: Well, basically, NASA was worried about the spacecraft's thrusters.
--:-- Scott Simon: So, you know, thrusters are kind of important. They're how a spacecraft moves around.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And on the way to the station, some of them malfunctioned, although Starliner did dock as it was supposed to.
--:-- Scott Simon: And NASA and Boeing spent about two months analyzing data, testing hardware on the ground, trying to figure out what was going on.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And NASA officials just couldn't get comfortable sending astronauts home in it.
--:-- Scott Simon: They're worried the thrusters might fail at some critical time.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: Yeah, exactly. I mean, clearly that did not happen. I mean, Starliner got back without a hitch. Their landing seemed to be almost flawless.
--:-- Scott Simon: But NASA has lost crews in the past. Remember, Columbia and Challenger.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And so, you know, when push came to shove, officials just did not want to take what could be seen as needless risks.
--:-- Scott Simon: Having Starliner back on the ground has got to be a relief for Boeing, who's been somewhat chagrined over what's happened.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: Yeah, I mean, it's somewhat of a vindication. I mean, apparently things got pretty tense when NASA was trying to decide what to do about the return and the astronauts.
--:-- Scott Simon: But even though Starliner had this great landing, Boeing is still going to have to watch its crew, its first crew, going home in a rival company's capsule, a spacecraft built by SpaceX.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And the astronauts are still stuck there for several months, aren't they? Next year. February.
--:-- Scott Simon: They're stuck there till February.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: But NASA keeps saying they're not stranded. Don't say they're stranded because in an emergency, they could get home.
--:-- Scott Simon: I mean, the station's crew has kind of jerry-rigged a couple of extra seats in a capsule that's docked there now. So they could evacuate if they needed to.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And I happen to know, because it's been reported, they didn't pack for such a long stay, did they?
--:-- Scott Simon: No, no.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: Although, you know, NASA says the station has plenty of food and clothes and other supplies.
--:-- Scott Simon: There's sort of automated cargo flights. So, you know, they're okay.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And I mean, Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams are experienced astronauts. This is just kind of part of the job.
--:-- Scott Simon: I mean they knew it was a test flight
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And they also already helping out with the station chores and science experiments
--:-- Scott Simon: They both spent you know long missions in space before
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: Yeah, what happens next with Starliner? Do we know?
--:-- Scott Simon: So NASA and Boeing will keep looking at the thrusters.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: They'll take the spacecraft back, look it over. They'll analyze how the thrusters performed on the return trip.
--:-- Scott Simon: And, you know, NASA officials have been asked by reporters, what would you want to see before letting people go up in Starliner again?
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And they've just said it's too soon to know. They got to look at everything and think about it.
--:-- Scott Simon: What are the implications for NASA if Boeing is having these problems with what was supposed to be a reliable vehicle?
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: Well, the whole point of NASA's commercial crew program was to have, you know, the industry take over routine trips to space.
--:-- Scott Simon: And so basically they funded both Boeing and SpaceX to develop what are effectively space taxis.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And SpaceX vehicles have been operating for several years now.
--:-- Scott Simon: And so NASA has that.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And besides, you know, it's unclear how long the space station is even going to be there.
--:-- Scott Simon: NASA has plans to keep it open for how long? Till 2030.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: They've committed until 2030.
--:-- Scott Simon: I mean, NASA is really focused on the moon. The agency wants to put the first woman and the first person of color on the moon, and that's their focus.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: And Paris Nell-Greenfield-Boys, thanks so much for being with us.
--:-- Scott Simon: Thank you.
--:-- Scott Simon: There's been a lot of focus on domestic issues so far in this election. Access to abortion, inflation, gun laws. You get the point.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: But both Vice President Harris and former President Trump will have to make their positions on some pretty major foreign policy issues clear.
--:-- Scott Simon: That's right. And in the debate on Tuesday, voters could hear from them on how they'd respond to things like China's increasing economic and military strength.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: We're joined by NPR correspondents who cover those regions and the consequences of U.S. policies there.
--:-- Scott Simon: Eder Peralta in Mexico City. Eder, thanks for being with us.
--:-- Eder Peralta: Hey, Scott.
--:-- Scott Simon: Ebertraui in Dubai. Good to have you here.
--:-- Ebertraui: Thank you, Scott.
--:-- Scott Simon: And John Rewich, who covers China. Good morning, John.
--:-- John Rewich: Good morning.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Let's begin with you, Eder, because, of course, the region you cover is so directly tied into what's a key domestic issue in this election, immigration.
--:-- Eder Peralta: Yeah, I mean, if you listen to the last debate, former President Trump and President Biden, the only way that Latin America came up was through immigration and drug trafficking.
--:-- Scott Simon: And I would bet we'll hear the same this time around.
--:-- Eder Peralta: We'll hear a fairly shallow debate that focuses on immigration enforcement, who's tough, who's not tough.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: But I bet what we won't hear is a discussion of root causes.
--:-- Eder Peralta: And the reason so many people are on the move here in this hemisphere is because in many ways, Latin America is on fire.
--:-- Scott Simon: We have all out chaos in Haiti, a political crisis in Venezuela, a collapsed economy in Cuba.
--:-- Eder Peralta: In Nicaragua, we have a state that keeps banishing all of its opponents.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And in El Salvador, we have the rise of this new age authoritarian leader.
--:-- Eder Peralta: Like in Europe, the post-Cold War order is shifting and it's causing chaos and migration is just a symptom.
--:-- Scott Simon: I would like to hear a diagnosis from former President Trump and Vice President Harris.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Aya, let me get you to take a look at the Middle East. What do the countries in the region think of as the real current policy differences between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump?
--:-- Aya Batraoui: I think it really depends who you ask.
--:-- Scott Simon: So if you look, obviously, at the biggest issue right now in the region, which is the war in Gaza, many Israelis really do see a partner and a friend in President Joe Biden who has stood by Israel throughout this war.
--:-- Aya Batraoui: And that continues through. You can hear it in Harris's words.
--:-- Scott Simon: But also President Trump is seen as a staunch ally of Israel.
--:-- Aya Batraoui: You know, he moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
--:-- Scott Simon: He recognized the Golden Heights as Israeli territory.
--:-- Aya Batraoui: So there's not much seen as so different when it comes to Israel, though, when you look at what the Arab countries view, what the Middle Eastern countries view, like the Egypt or the Gulf countries, they see there are some differences in policies.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: But overall, especially when you ask the Palestinians, they see more of the same, which is staunch, unequivocal support for Israel
--:-- Scott Simon: What about the increased military presence in the Middle East How that being viewed in the Gulf states and Iran
--:-- Aya Batraoui: If you recall like at the beginning of Biden presidency he had really wanted to pivot towards China and sort of disengage the U a bit from the Middle East from Afghanistan and Iraq and all these wars that the U.S. had been mired in.
--:-- Scott Simon: And this war has really dragged the U.S. back in.
--:-- Aya Batraoui: And so here I am in the Gulf. You know, there's a lot of concern about the attacks that are happening on ships in the Red Sea by the Houthis.
--:-- Scott Simon: There's a lot of concern about Iran and how it might respond to the assassination of Hamas's leader when he was there by Israel.
--:-- Aya Batraoui: There's a lot of concern about what could come next because no one can really control right now.
--:-- Scott Simon: No one has control over the levers of where this is headed.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And we still don't see a ceasefire happening.
--:-- Aya Batraoui: And so things can really, really deteriorate quickly, whether that's before the elections or after.
--:-- Scott Simon: General, what's your sense of what China sees as being at stake in this election?
--:-- John Rewich: Well, for Beijing, this election is being seen in the context of the broader relationship and the trends in that relationship.
--:-- Scott Simon: And the China-U.S. relationship has been increasingly competitive, increasingly adversarial in recent years.
--:-- John Rewich: And Beijing believes that there is this sort of broad support in the U.S. for a tough-on-China approach.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: To the extent that China comes up in the debate, it seems pretty likely that it'll be in a sort of muscle-flexing, almost chest-thumping type of way.
--:-- John Rewich: I asked Ryan Haas about this. He's with the Brookings Institution.
--:-- Scott Simon: The leadership in Beijing views both as problematic to China's long-term interest and ambitions.
--:-- John Rewich: And I think they assume that America's domestic politics will provide a constraint upon the decision-making space of any president in the current context.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: That said, he thinks there are differences that Beijing's parsing between these two candidates.
--:-- Scott Simon: Trump has been talking about imposing new and sweeping tariffs on Chinese goods.
--:-- John Rewich: Harris has said a lot less about China and is less well-known, although her foreign policy positions, including on China, appear to be pretty consistent with the Biden administration's policies.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Either way, Beijing's planning for all kinds of possible post-election scenarios, the least likely of which is that relations are going to miraculously improve under a new president.
--:-- Scott Simon: John, what do you think Beijing's listening for when it comes to the issue of Taiwan?
--:-- John Rewich: The U.S. came to the defense of Ukraine, after all.
--:-- Scott Simon: Yeah, you know, Taiwan's interesting.
--:-- John Rewich: There does seem to be some daylight between Harris and Trump on this.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: As far as Trump's concerned, he seems to be pretty transactional on Taiwan.
--:-- John Rewich: He has said in the past that Taiwan is quite far from the U.S. and very close to China.
--:-- Scott Simon: He's also questioned why the U.S. would help Taiwan defend itself at all, given that it's so far away, and suggested that Taiwan should be paying for it.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Harris, again, hasn't said a ton on Taiwan.
--:-- John Rewich: And what she has said over the years has been quite close to Biden administration policy on Taiwan.
--:-- Scott Simon: She's met Xi Jinping once.
--:-- John Rewich: And actually, a group of Democratic congresswomen visited Taiwan in August and said that she's likely to continue with Biden's policies towards Taiwan, which is interesting because Biden has explicitly said the U.S. would help defend Taiwan.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Let me ask each of you, are there issues in the region you cover that are just not getting the attention that they might merit right now?
--:-- Scott Simon: Let's begin with you, Ada Pearl, in Mexico City.
--:-- Ada Peralta: Mexico. I mean, it just doesn't get enough attention.
--:-- Scott Simon: And right now, this country is on the cusp of amending its constitution.
--:-- Ada Peralta: Critics say that it's going to mean the end of judicial independence.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And Mexico is not just a neighbor to the United States. It is also its biggest trading partner.
--:-- Ada Peralta: These decisions could have huge economic consequences for the free trade agreement between Canada, the U.S., and Mexico, which is also, by the way, the biggest market in the world.
--:-- Scott Simon: So beyond democracy, we should be hearing about Mexico because of economic ties with the United States and what this constitutional amendment could mean to those ties.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Aya Petravi in Dubai? You know, the number one issue that has constantly come up, especially with a democratic president, with regional leaders here, and one that the U.S. was proud to bring up, was human rights.
--:-- Aya Batraoui: And I think that that has completely taken a backseat now with this war.
--:-- Scott Simon: You know, we don't hear any more about human rights concerns with Saudi Arabia.
--:-- Aya Batraoui: We hear about normalization.
--:-- Scott Simon: We don't hear any more about human rights concerns in Egypt.
--:-- Aya Batraoui: We hear about Egypt as a mediator and its importance.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And these human rights crackdowns are continuing.
--:-- Aya Batraoui: They haven't slowed down.
--:-- Scott Simon: There are people serving decades in prison over tweets and social media posts and journalists being jailed
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: The thing is the US also has lost a lot of credibility in the eyes of so many of these human rights activists who may have looked to the U to advocate for their cause and to speak out because of the huge civilian death toll in the Gaza Strip much of that by U.S. weapons.
--:-- John Rewich: I think something that's very interesting to watch is going to be Chinese influence operations.
--:-- Scott Simon: You know, there's new research out over the past week or so by an intelligence company called Graphica that says there's a Chinese state-backed social media influence operation that's impersonating U.S. voters.
--:-- John Rewich: But get this, they're not out to influence the election one way or another for Harris or Trump.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: They don't have a preferred candidate, apparently.
--:-- John Rewich: They're just trying to sow discord, to discredit the candidates on both sides, to portray the U.S. as a declining power with weak leaders and a failing system of government.
--:-- Scott Simon: And this is linked to that broader competition between the U.S. and China that is going to outlast the next president and probably the president after that.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Let me ask you all the way in. Does U.S. opinion and power have the same weight that it used to?
--:-- Scott Simon: I mean, Scott, in Latin America, the U.S. used to run Latin America.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: They orchestrated coups and installed puppet governments.
--:-- Scott Simon: And I think today the U.S. looks paralyzed in this region.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: In a lot of ways, they have been unable to affect change in Venezuela.
--:-- Scott Simon: President Nicolás Maduro, who the U.S. has called illegitimate for years, is still president.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And in Haiti, where the U.S. has been an occupying force in the past, they have been ineffectual, first at organizing an international force to go into the country.
--:-- Scott Simon: And now they have been unable to get that force to actually do something to change what's happening, the chaos in Haiti on the ground.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: You know, the U.S. is still the main supplier of weapons to this region, and it continues to be the superpower here in the Middle East.
--:-- Scott Simon: However, you have seen Saudi Arabia and the UAE buck the U.S. on several policy issues and turn to China and turn increasingly to Russia and keep their business open and their doors open to Russia, not engage in sanctions as the U.S. would have liked them to do.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And also with China, China, don't forget, brokered the rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
--:-- Scott Simon: It wasn't the U.S. that did that.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Yeah. And John Rewitsch, that feeds into the China you cover, doesn't it?
--:-- John Rewich: Yeah, it does.
--:-- Scott Simon: In Asia, the U.S. has absolutely been a force for security and stability over the past X number of decades.
--:-- John Rewich: The competition with China, though, makes a lot of other countries in the region nervous, right?
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: They want the U.S. there for security, which China wants less of, but they want to continue to trade with China and have China be their biggest trade partner.
--:-- John Rewich: The friction between China and the U.S. these days, this idea of forcing countries, partners, allies, others to choose one or the other makes a lot of countries in the region nervous.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: NPR's Ada Peralta in Mexico City, Aya Batraoui in Dubai, and China correspondent John Rewich, thank you all so much for being with us.
--:-- Scott Simon: Thank you, Scott.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Thanks so much, Scott.
--:-- [Theme music starts]
--:-- Scott Simon: And that's Up First for Saturday, September 7th.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I'm Aisha Roscoe.
--:-- Scott Simon: And I'm Scott Simon.
--:-- [Theme music continues]
--:-- Scott Simon: Fernando Naro and Martin Patience produced today's podcast.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Andrew Craig directed.
--:-- Scott Simon: Our editors were Dee Parvaz, Shannon Rhodes, and Rebecca Davis.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Hannah Glovna is our technical director with engineering support from Nisha Hines, Arthur Laurent, and Ted Meebe.
--:-- Scott Simon: Evie Stone is our senior supervising editor.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Sarah Oliver is our executive producer.
--:-- Scott Simon: And Jim Kane is our deputy managing editor.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Tomorrow on the podcast, designated wilderness areas are usually intended to be free from human habitation and intervention.
--:-- Scott Simon: But climate change and the catastrophes it brings might be changing that.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Should humans intervene or should we let nature handle itself?
--:-- Scott Simon: For the latest on the biggest stories of the day, plus books, movies, and of course the puzzle, Go to stations.npr.org to find your local NPR station so you can tune in to Weekend Edition every Saturday and Sunday morning.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Ayesha, I don't mean to put you on the spot. Do they slip the answers to you?
--:-- Scott Simon: I play. I really play. I do not look at no answers.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: All right, I'm just asking.
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