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--:-- A. Martinez: President-elect Donald Trump is making some unconventional picks for a second-term team. Taken together, his picks could dramatically reshape America's foreign policy.
--:-- Michelle Martin: I think we have plenty of leverage with Zelensky to get them to the table.
--:-- A. Martinez: I'm A. Martinez with Michelle Martin, and this is Up First from NPR News.
--:-- A. Martinez: A U.S. jury awards $42 million to three Iraqis held by Americans during the Iraq War. The plaintiffs say they were tortured.
--:-- Michelle Martin: What does a ruling mean for accountability for wartime abuses?
--:-- A. Martinez: And world leaders are meeting to fight climate change, but don't look for the U.S. to lead this time. The U.K. is stepping up with a major pledge, but what will other countries do if Trump scales back on climate rules?
--:-- Michelle Martin: Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day.
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--:-- Franco Ordonez: President-elect Donald Trump is moving fast assembling his team for a second term in the White House. He says he will nominate former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee to be ambassador to Israel, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik to serve as U.N. ambassador, and Congressman Mike Waltz to be his national security advisor.
--:-- Michelle Martin: But some of his choices are getting a lot of attention, like his plan to nominate a television host to be Secretary of Defense. Pete Hegseth of Fox News is a military veteran, but has no senior military or national security experience.
--:-- Franco Ordonez: Here to talk about this is White House correspondent Franco Ordonez.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Franco, welcome back.
--:-- Franco Ordonez: Hi, Michelle.
--:-- Michelle Martin: So we could do a segment on each of these picks, honestly, but what about the big picture? What does this tell us about Trump's plans to change how the U.S. positions itself in the world?
--:-- Franco Ordonez: I mean, I think it's a few things. First, it clearly reflects Trump's focus on trust and loyalty. These are all big supporters, which his team does hope will eliminate some of the infighting that plagued his first transition. But they're also indicative of Trump's foreign policy priorities. It's a more nationalistic focus, more transactional.
--:-- Michelle Martin: You can expect strong opposition to China, support for Israel, and skepticism toward Ukraine.
--:-- Franco Ordonez: Right. I mean, I think we have plenty of leverage with Zelensky to get them to the table.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Here is Mike Waltz, for example, talking with our own Steve Inskip about pressing for a deal between Ukraine and Russia.
--:-- Franco Ordonez: We have leverage like taking the handcuffs off of the long-range weapons we provided Ukraine as well. And then of course I think we have plenty of leverage with Zelensky to get them to the table.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Now Waltz though is a former Green Beret who is considered to have quite a depth of foreign policy experience.
--:-- Franco Ordonez: So, well, OK, so the National Security Advisor doesn't have to be confirmed by the Senate, but some of these other roles do. Do we have a sense of how this mix of lawmakers and personalities will be received?
--:-- Michelle Martin: Although, look, I do have to point out that the president's party does control the Senate or rather will control the Senate when Trump takes office.
--:-- Franco Ordonez: It's still a bit unclear, but I spoke about some of that with former Ambassador John Simon, who served in the Bush administration. He called Walt, Stefanik and Huckabee leaders who have to be taken seriously.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Simon also mentioned Senator Marco Rubio, who is widely reported to be the top candidate for secretary of state as another who has real foreign policy credentials.
--:-- Franco Ordonez: These are people who have spent a lot of time in Congress and focused on many aspects of foreign policy, who have certainly met with a number of world leaders who are people who will be known quantities among the foreign policy establishment.
--:-- Michelle Martin: But what's surprising is Trump naming TV host and Army vet Pete Hegseth for defense secretary.
--:-- Franco Ordonez: Okay, so how are Republicans reacting to this choice? I mean, in this position, you don't just advise the president, but you have to manage a huge agency. You have to manage relationships with other defense leaders around the world.
--:-- Michelle Martin: What are Republicans saying about this?
--:-- Franco Ordonez: Well, one House Republican committee chair expressed shock, saying Hegseth was not known on the list of names under consideration.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Indiana Senator Todd Young told reporters he didn't have a sense of Hegseth's background or vision for the department.
--:-- Franco Ordonez: But he also said he wanted to give all of Trump's nominees a fair opportunity to be heard.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Which raises a key point. I mean, I'm guessing that many Republicans aren't going to want to take a stand against Trump's picks this early in the process.
--:-- Franco Ordonez: Yeah, I mean, it's not unusual for presidents to pull from out of different constituencies, but this is really an out-of-box kind of pick.
--:-- Michelle Martin: The defense secretary leads over a million active duties troops. Hexeth is a decorated veteran, but as you know, lacks the management and high-profile national security experience.
--:-- Franco Ordonez: That said, Trump really cares a lot about who those can present well on TV.
--:-- Michelle Martin: That is White House correspondent Franco Ordonez. Franco, thank you.
--:-- Franco Ordonez: Thank you, Michelle.
--:-- Michelle Martin: A U.S. jury has awarded three survivors of the Uplegre prison $42 million. The abuse of detainees by American troops there is one of the lasting legacies of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
--:-- Ruth Sherlock: The photos of that abuse, published in 2004, are shocking.
--:-- Michelle Martin: And a warning to our listeners, this story contains graphic descriptions of the torture of prisoners in U.S. incarceration.
--:-- Ruth Sherlock: Last year, NPR's Ruth Sherlock spoke with a former detainee, Talib Al-Majli.
--:-- Talib Al-Majli: They're torturing us. They're making us naked. Sometimes they threw that sound grenades on our shells, and sometimes they used the shotguns. And they used dogs to terrify us. They flooded our shells with water.
--:-- Michelle Martin: He was not involved in this court case, but the three plaintiffs in this lawsuit brought against a private U.S. military contractor detailed similar abuse.
--:-- Ruth Sherlock: NPR's Ruth Sherlock is with us now to tell us more about this.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Good morning, Ruth.
--:-- Ruth Sherlock: Good morning.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Could you just tell us more about this case?
--:-- Ruth Sherlock: Yeah, well, the jury said this U.S. military contractor, CACI or Khaki, could be found guilty because the interrogators it supplied to Abu Ghraib conspired with U.S. soldiers there to torture and mistreat the three plaintiffs.
--:-- Michelle Martin: The jury said Khaki interrogators were liable because it said they actually instructed military police officers to, quote, soften up the detainees.
--:-- Ruth Sherlock: You know, Khaki denies this characterisation. It says its employees were not responsible for nor took part in the abuse committed by military police Nabu Grabe
--:-- Michelle Martin: But just after the verdict I reached Baha Azmi the lawyer who filed the suit on behalf of the plaintiffs He with the Center for Constitutional Rights And he told me this verdict is the culmination of a 16 year long effort by the plaintiffs to tell their story to an American jury
--:-- Ruth Sherlock: That struggle has lasted 16 years, multiple trips to the court of appeals, surviving two dozen attempts for Khaki to dismiss the case and every obstacle you could imagine.
--:-- Michelle Martin: You said, well, so this is the second trial. The first trial ended in a mistrial when the jury couldn't reach a verdict on whether Khaki or the army could be held responsible.
--:-- Ruth Sherlock: Does this court victory pave the way for compensation for other Albuquerque detainees?
--:-- Michelle Martin: Well, Michelle, you know, the short answer is no. The case is specifically about these three plaintiffs.
--:-- Ruth Sherlock: I think actually what this case shows is just how hard it is for victims of U.S. military abuse to get any kind of redress.
--:-- Michelle Martin: It's the first time that a civilian jury has heard accounts directly from detainees of torture and mistreatment that has happened in this post 9-11 era detentions.
--:-- Ruth Sherlock: Talib al-Majli, the Abu Ghraib detainee we spoke to, told us how American soldiers stripped him naked, poked at his genitals, set snarling dogs on inmates, fired live ammunitions into cells. They flooded his cell with cold water, he says, and he got pneumonia.
--:-- Michelle Martin: He spent 20 years searching for a way to get compensation or even just an apology from the U.S. military. But ultimately, he hasn't been able to find a mechanism for that redress.
--:-- Ruth Sherlock: So as we mentioned earlier, this verdict is against a private military contractor, but has the U.S. military paid compensation to victims?
--:-- Michelle Martin: This is the really important point. After the photos showing the abuse of survivors in Abu Ghraib were published in 2004, Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the time told Congress that a way should be set up to compensate the victims.
--:-- Ruth Sherlock: But when we looked into this, reporting the story of Talab al-Majli, we couldn't find any examples where the US military had compensated Abu Ghraib survivors.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Human Rights Watch then followed up with a detailed investigation, and they also found that to this day the U.S. government hasn't paid compensation or even set up a mechanism for these cases to be heard.
--:-- Ruth Sherlock: That is NPR's Ruth Sherlock. Ruth, thank you.
--:-- Ruth Sherlock: Thank you very much.
--:-- Michelle Martin: The COP29 Climate Summit is underway in Azerbaijan this week. With a new Trump administration coming in, there's not as much expectation for the U.S. setting a big climate goal, but at least one major industrial country is making a big pledge to fight global warming.
--:-- Julia Simon: To walk us through this and other climate news, we have Julia Simon. She's climate solutions correspondent on NPR's Climate Desk.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Julia, good morning.
--:-- Julia Simon: Good morning.
--:-- Michelle Martin: So the U.N. Climate Summit began Monday. What are we seeing so far?
--:-- Julia Simon: So going into this climate summit, there hasn't been as much optimism for U.S. leadership. After all, the newly elected Donald Trump famously called climate change a hoax.
--:-- Michelle Martin: However, we are seeing other countries stepping up. In the next few months, countries have to announce these big targets for how much climate pollution they are going to cut to limit global warming.
--:-- Julia Simon: And the United Kingdom, they're one of those countries stepping up.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Yesterday, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, he gave this speech announcing plans to cut climate pollution at least 81% compared to 1990 levels by 2035.
--:-- Julia Simon: How does the UK plan to do it? That seems like a really ambitious target.
--:-- Julia Simon: The UK is investing in proving climate solutions, things like wind energy, solar energy, big batteries, also nuclear energy.
--:-- Michelle Martin: But the UK is really framing their climate action in economic terms.
--:-- Julia Simon: Here UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer This is a huge opportunity for investment for UK businesses for British workers if we act now to lead the world in the economy of tomorrow.
--:-- Michelle Martin: And Michelle, you hear this economic argument from other countries like China.
--:-- Julia Simon: China, they're selling their technologies like electric vehicles in emerging markets, like in Africa and Latin America.
--:-- Michelle Martin: China, the UK, they see climate solutions making business sense.
--:-- Julia Simon: OK, back to the US. President-elect Trump is in the process of naming his new cabinet. He's already named a new head or he's announced plans to name a new head of the EPA.
--:-- Michelle Martin: That is the former New York congressman, Lee Zeldin.
--:-- Julia Simon: The word Trump used when announcing his pick of Zeldin is deregulatory, that is, removing government regulations.
--:-- Michelle Martin: According to the League of Conservation Voters, Zeldin voted several times against clean air and clean water legislation.
--:-- Julia Simon: With Zeldin, many EPA rules that limit climate pollution could be in jeopardy.
--:-- Michelle Martin: And yesterday, the EPA actually finalized this rule that oil and gas companies have to pay a fee when they leak methane.
--:-- Julia Simon: That's this very potent planet heating gas under Trump and a possible Republican trifecta in Congress.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Congress may overturn that EPA new methane rule.
--:-- Julia Simon: OK, Julie, before we let you go, there's one last piece of climate news. A court in the Netherlands just overturned a ruling that the energy company Shell has to reduce its climate pollution by 45 percent.
--:-- Michelle Martin: What are the implications of that?
--:-- Julia Simon: So the court did say Shell still has this duty of care to limit planet heating emissions. But the courts couldn't figure out how big the cuts should be.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Still, the point that's being brought up by other environmental groups is that there are still lots of climate litigation claims against big oil companies, including in states like Massachusetts, Hawaii, California.
--:-- Julia Simon: Those cases are being argued in state and municipal courts, and they haven't been decided yet.
--:-- Michelle Martin: That is NPR's Julia Simon. Julia, thank you.
--:-- Julia Simon: Thank you.
--:-- Michelle Martin: And that's Up First for Wednesday, November 13th. I'm Michelle Martin. And I'm Amei Martinez.
--:-- A. Martinez: How about listening to Consider This from NPR? We here at Up First give you the three big stories of the day. Our Consider This colleagues take a different approach. They dive into a single news story and what it means to you in just 15 minutes. Listen now on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- [Up First theme music fades in]
--:-- Michelle Martin: Today's episode of Up First was edited by Megan Pratt, Lauren Medaki, Neela Banerjee, Mohamed El-Bardisi, and Alice Wolfley.
--:-- A. Martinez: It was produced by Ziyad Butch, Ben Abrams, and Julie Deppenbrock.
--:-- Michelle Martin: We get engineering support from Robert Rodriguez, and our technical director is Zach Coleman.
--:-- A. Martinez: We hope you'll join us again tomorrow.
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--:-- Announcer: You've seen the headlines, now let's go deeper. I'm Sasha Ann Simons, and I'm getting local takes from the experts and your neighbors on In The Loop every weekday at nine.
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