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--:-- Michelle Martin: Pam Bondi was sworn in this week as U.S. Attorney General. One of her early memos has workers at the Justice Department worried about the possibility of mass firings. Will those who investigated the president be singled out?
--:-- A. Martinez: That's right, Michelle. And I'm A. Martinez. And this is Up First from NPR News.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Under political pressure, some big companies have quietly ended their diversity, equity and inclusion programs. We have seen companies start to decide that the reward is not necessarily outweighed by the risk anymore.
--:-- A. Martinez: Is this the end of corporate DEI? Plus, it is respiratory virus season and the flu is peaking for a second time. But there's better news on the horizon about COVID.
--:-- Michelle Martin: This is the smallest winter wave we've had since the pandemic began. Stay with us. We've got all the news you need to start your day.
--:-- Michelle Martin: This message comes from Doctors Without Borders. People are living through a moment defined by unrelenting crises and need. Civilians are caught in the crossfire of violence and war. Malnutrition threatens the lives of children. Communities depend on life-saving humanitarian aid. Doctors Without Borders is meeting this moment of overwhelming need with action. But they can't do it alone. Help provide life-saving care around the world. Learn how to donate today at doctorswithoutborders.org slash NPR.
--:-- A. Martinez: This message comes from BetterHelp. President Fernando Madeira describes how BetterHelp online therapy has helped him. For me, sometimes I just need to go and talk to somebody that is not going to judge me, right? Is going to be there and going to listen to me. And I can't start just saying, look, I'm not feeling right today. And it feels natural. I love it. To get matched with a therapist, visit BetterHelp.com slash NPR for 10% off your first month.
--:-- Michelle Martin: This message comes from Mint Mobile. If you're tired of spending hundreds on big wireless bills, bogus fees, and free perks, Mint Mobile might be right for you with plans starting from $15 a month. Shop plans today at MintMobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for a three-month five-gigabyte plan required. New customer offer for first three months only. Then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.
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--:-- Michelle Martin: This week, the Senate voted to confirm Pam Bondi as President Trump's new attorney general. Bondi takes over at the Justice Department as the Trump administration makes aggressive moves to take over the federal bureaucracy.
--:-- Ryan Lucas: Over the past few weeks, the new administration has already pushed out senior career officials at the department and at the FBI, setting off fears about mass firings.
--:-- Michelle Martin: NPR Justice correspondent Ryan Lucas has been following this. Ryan, let's start with the new Attorney General, Pam Bondi, sworn in this week in the Oval Office by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. So now that she's on the job, what has she done?
--:-- Ryan Lucas: One of the first things that she did was sign a whole bunch of memos, more than a dozen of them, that aim to advance the president's agenda and the department's role in it. These things address a whole range of topics. Bondi revived the federal death penalty. She set up an October 7 task force to focus on the threat posed by Hamas. Other memos address immigration enforcement, the drug cartels.
--:-- Michelle Martin: This sort of thing reflects the shift in priorities that we often see out of the Justice Department with the change in administration. Saying that, though, there's one memo in particular that really stood out, and it raises questions about whether the department under Bondi aims to go after the people who investigated Trump. Tell us about that memo.
--:-- Ryan Lucas: Well, the subject line is restoring the integrity and credibility of the Department of Justice. But what the memo does is establish what it calls a weaponization working group that will review the criminal and civil cases that were brought against Trump over the past four years by federal and state prosecutors. It will also look at the Capitol riot investigations and what the memo calls the pursuit of improper investigative tactics and unethical prosecutions relating to the Capitol attack.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Now, Bondi has been a fierce defender of Trump over the years. Before she was attorney general, she talked about investigating the investigators. And there are certainly concerns that that's what's going on here. And look, in the past few weeks, the department has already fired more than a dozen prosecutors who worked on Trump investigations because the new leadership said those folks couldn't be trusted to carry out the president's agenda. And there's also been turmoil at the FBI.
--:-- Ryan Lucas: So where do things stand now? Right. There's been a lot of nervousness and fear at the FBI over the past week. Remember, the FBI falls under the authority of the Justice Department. But the panic at the FBI started after the number two official at the Justice Department ordered the firing of eight senior career FBI officials and at the same time demanded a list of all FBI personnel who worked on any January 6th case. That's around 5,000 FBI employees and all.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Now, that set off fears at the FBI of possible mass firings. Sources told me about FBI agents printing out their HR files because they were worried that they'd be fired immediately. They wouldn't have access to the system. Things have settled down a bit in the past few days. The FBI handed over a list of employees who worked January 6th cases, but not the agents' names, to the Justice Department. The department says this is part of a review process related to ending what it calls the weaponization of the justice system.
--:-- Ryan Lucas: There are still concerns, though, about FBI agents' names possibly being made public. And then they or their families facing threats. Remember, Trump pardoned some 1,500 January 6th defendants, including people who were convicted of violence. Agents have actually filed two lawsuits to try to prevent agents' names from being made public. So there's a lot of concern here. There's a court hearing scheduled on those lawsuits today, so there will certainly be more to come.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Yeah, that's NPR's Ryan Lucas. Ryan, thanks for breaking it all down.
--:-- Ryan Lucas: Thank you.
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--:-- Michelle Martin: Some big companies are literally erasing diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI. GM, Pepsi, Disney, and others have scrubbed some or all of those words from their annual reports to investors. NPR business correspondent Maria Aspin is the first to report this. Maria, tell us what you found.
--:-- Maria Aspin: Hey, good morning. So as you know, we've been seeing some big companies announcing for months that they're ending or changing their DEI programs. They include Walmart, Target, Amazon. And just this week, Google told employees that it's ending its hiring targets for underrepresented workers.
--:-- Michelle Martin: But what I discovered this week is that many more big companies are backing away from the language of DEI without making a big announcement. I went digging into the new annual reports that companies have been publishing for their investors, and I compared them with what they were saying a year ago.
--:-- Maria Aspin: And I found that this year, at least a dozen big companies have all deleted or softened the language they use to talk about diversity. These companies include GM, Intel, Disney, Pepsi, and Chipotle.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Now, some of these companies wouldn't talk about these changes with me, so we don't know for sure why they've done this. We just know that they've stopped talking about DEI in public. But some of the companies did give me some clues.
--:-- Maria Aspin: Ooh, all right. What did they tell you?
--:-- Michelle Martin: Well, there's a lot going on, but a few of these companies referred specifically to President Trump's new executive orders ending DEI in the federal government. These orders also threaten to sanction private companies that are federal contractors that have what Trump called illegal DEI programs.
--:-- Maria Aspin: And Google, for example, is a federal contractor. A spokesperson this week told me that Google is evaluating the changes required by Trump's executive orders and Google I should note is one of NPR funders.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Another company I talked to was 3M It that big conglomerate that makes Post notes and chemicals and a bunch of other stuff It's also a federal contractor. 3M also deleted some references to diversity from its latest annual report, and a spokesperson specifically mentioned the executive orders when he talked to me.
--:-- Maria Aspin: Yeah, but not every company that's making these changes is a federal contractor. I mean, so what else is happening here?
--:-- Michelle Martin: So Trump's executive orders are definitely adding to the pressure, but corporate America was already facing a lot of pressure from critics of DEI who say that it is itself discriminatory.
--:-- Maria Aspin: The bigger picture here is just that big companies are pretty risk averse. I talked about this with Becky Baker, who's an employment lawyer with Vinson and Elkins. She says that DEI was a really popular buzzword in corporate America five years ago, but now it's kind of politically toxic.
--:-- Michelle Martin: We have seen companies start to decide that the reward in doing so is not necessarily outweighed by the risk anymore. So she's not surprised by the changes all of these companies are making, and she's expecting us to see a lot more.
--:-- Maria Aspin: So is this the end of DEI? Yes and no. There are still some companies that are standing by their promises to pursue diversity, equity, and inclusion, and they're still talking about it using those words.
--:-- Michelle Martin: For example, Costco said in its most recent annual report that promoting DEI is part of taking care of its employees. And meanwhile, some of the people doing this work tell me that they hope that most companies are going to continue making their workplaces more inclusive for all employees, even if they're not using words and phrases like DEI.
--:-- Maria Aspin: All right, that's NPR's Maria Aspin. Thanks a lot, Maria.
--:-- Maria Aspin: Thank you.
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--:-- Michelle Martin: Lots of people are feeling pretty crummy these days as the winter stew of respiratory viruses simmers. But there are a couple of unusual trends driving all the coughing, sneezing and fevers this year.
--:-- Rob Stein: Well, this is kind of a good news, bad news story. Let's start with the good news. This winter's COVID surge looks like the mildest since the virus first emerged.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Here's Caitlin Rivers. She's an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins. This year's winter wave is low compared to previous winters. This is the smallest winter wave we've had since the pandemic began.
--:-- Rob Stein: There are still plenty of people getting it and even ending up in the hospital or worse. So Rivers says people shouldn't let down their guard.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Now, when it comes to COVID, though, I mean, why is this winter's COVID wave, I mean, so mild?
--:-- Rob Stein: Well, one possible explanation is that we went through an unusually intense summer COVID surge that also started relatively late. So lots of people may still have some immunity from when they had COVID this summer.
--:-- Michelle Martin: And no new variant has evolved that's any better at getting around the immunity people have built up.
--:-- Rob Stein: There's also a theory called viral interference. That's when the presence of one virus kind of pushes out other viruses.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Here's Aubrey Gordon. She's an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan. It's possible that viral interference is playing a role. This year, there's a lot of influenza circulating. It may generate some nonspecific immunity, so some nonspecific protection, which then prevents people from getting other respiratory viruses like SARS-CoV-2. Sort of crowds it out.
--:-- Rob Stein: Now, you probably noticed she said there's a lot of flu out there, and that brings us to the bad news. Yeah, the flu.
--:-- Michelle Martin: So tell us what's up with the flu.
--:-- Rob Stein: Well, this year flu season started unusually early and has been pretty intense and now it looks like we getting hit by a second winter surge of flu Here Caitlin Rivers again from Johns Hopkins Influenza activity first peaked around the turn of the new year, late December, early January. Activity then declined for several weeks in a row, which is usually a sign that the season is on its way out.
--:-- Michelle Martin: But then it really took an unusual turn and started to rise again. So activity is now at a second peak, just as high as it was around the turn of the new year.
--:-- Rob Stein: So it's looking like the intensity of this year's flu season could have a long tail.
--:-- Michelle Martin: So Rob, any idea why this is happening? I mean, I'm going to try and connect two things that might not have anything to do with each other. Could it have anything to do with the bird flu?
--:-- Rob Stein: No, no, which is good news. So far, testing hasn't spotted any signs that the whirring bird flu that's infecting dairy cows and poultry is spreading widely in people.
--:-- Michelle Martin: So it's a bit of a mystery. It could just be kind of natural variation that happens with the flu.
--:-- Rob Stein: That said, the more people who catch the flu, the greater the chances that people could get infected with both viruses, the regular flu and bird flu. And that could give the bird flu the opportunity to kind of swap genes with the regular flu and evolve into something more dangerous, even potentially cause another pandemic.
--:-- Michelle Martin: That's NPR health correspondent Rob Stein. Rob, thanks.
--:-- Rob Stein: You bet.
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--:-- Michelle Martin: This Sunday on Up First, tech companies are creating AI chatbots that seem human but are not. They give you the illusion of intimacy without there being anyone home. The danger of human-like chatbots on the next episode of The Sunday Story, right here in the Up First podcast.
--:-- A. Martinez: And that's Up First for Friday, February 7th. I'm Amy Martinez. And I'm Michelle Martin. Just a reminder, Up First airs on Saturdays, too. Ayesha Roscoe and Scott Simon will have the news.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Look for it wherever you get your podcasts.
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--:-- Michelle Martin: Today's episode of Up First was edited by Anna Yukhananov, Rafael Nam, Scott Hensley, Jenea Williams, and Alice Wolfley was edited by Ben Adler.
--:-- A. Martinez: Today is Ben's last day with us, and we will definitely miss him dearly.
--:-- Michelle Martin: It was produced by Ziad Butch, Dian Dumas, and Christopher Thomas.
--:-- A. Martinez: We get engineering support from Patrick Murray and our technical director is Zach Coleman.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Our executive producer is Kelly Dickens.
--:-- A. Martinez: Join us again tomorrow.
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