Trump Drops Plan To Host G-7 Summit At His Miami Resort
Trump abandoned his plan to host the next G-7 summit at his Doral, Miami, golf resort, on Saturday.
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Alex Sanz/AP
President Trump announced that he’s dropping his plan to host next year’s Group of Seven meeting of the leaders of the world’s biggest economies at his Miami-area golf club.
In a series of late-night tweets on Saturday, Trump blamed the reversal on what he described as “Media & Democrat Crazed and Irrational Hostility,” following bipartisan claims that he’s exploiting his presidency for personal profit.
“I announced that I would be willing to do it at NO PROFIT or, if legally permissible, at ZERO COST to the USA. …” the president tweeted. “[B]ased on both Media & Democrat Crazed and Irrational Hostility, we will no longer consider Trump National Doral, Miami, as the Host Site for the G-7 in 2020.”
He again touted his resort’s “grand” acreage, ample rooms and its proximity to the Miami International Airport as an ideal venue to host international leaders.
Trump said his administration “will begin the search for another site, including the possibility of Camp David, immediately.”
Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney had announced on Thursday that Trump National Doral would be the site of the 2020 summit. The selection revived accusations about Trump’s ability to use his office for financial gain and claims that he’s violated the Constitution by collecting payments from foreign governments going to businesses he owns.
Since the early days of his presidency, Trump has faced multiple ongoing lawsuits alleging he is violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which prohibits a sitting president from accepting payments from foreign governments.
Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, one of the groups suing Trump over the emoluments issue, said Trump’s Saturday announcement was “a bow to reality, but does not change how astonishing it was that a president ever thought this was appropriate, or that it was something he could get away with.”
Democratic House leaders had planned a vote as early as this week to rebuke Trump over the decision. They also planned investigations into the selection process and suggested they would prevent government money from being spent at Trump properties. A number of Republicans in Congress had also voiced concerns with the Doral choice.
An hour before Trump canceled the Doral plan, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden issued a rebuke on Twitter.
“Hosting the G7 at Trump’s hotel? A president should never be able to use the office for personal gain,” the former vice president wrote.
During Thursday’s press briefing, Mulvaney dismissed the possibility of returning to Camp David to hold the gathering, describing it as “too small” and “too remote.”
“I understand the folks who participated in it hated it and thought it was a miserable place to have the G-7,” he said.
NPR’s Brett Neely contributed to this report.
Saturday Sports: World Series
It’s all about baseball as NPR’s Scott Simon talks with ESPN’s Howard Bryant about the World Series matchup, and about Yankees fans behaving badly.
Congo’s KOKOKO! Makes Joyful Dance Music From Instruments Made Of Junk
KOKOKO!, a band from the Democratic Republic of Congo, performs at an NPR Tiny Desk Concert that will be posted at a future date.
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Bob Boilen/NPR
Before the members of Congolese music collective KOKOKO! take the stage at Washington, D.C.’s Rock & Roll Hotel, they slip into bright yellow jumpsuits.
The fashion choice, they explain, has utilitarian roots: That’s what a lot of workers in Congo wear. Their instruments have a similar no-frills style — they were crafted from kitchen pots, tin cans and air-conditioner parts.
“It started out because commercial instruments in Kinshasa [where they live] are too expensive to buy and also too expensive to rent. So it started with the necessity of creating your own guitar or your own bass,” says member Boms Bomolo.
The group’s name reflects their humble origins. “KOKOKO” means “knock knock knock” in the local language, Lingala. When they were getting started in 2016, they picked it as a call-out for somebody to open the door and let their music in.
And the door is definitely open for their joyful dance music, with energetic percussion, electronic beats and call and response vocals between the band members and audience. Even if the crowd at Rock & Roll Hotel doesn’t understand the Kikongo, Lingala, French and Swahili lyrics, they eagerly repeat the words back to singer Love Lokombe.
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In their first two years, KOKOKO! toured the world and released a slew of singles and an EP. They dropped their debut LP, Fongola, in July to rave reviews. Earlier this year, their performance at South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, caught the attention of NPR’s All Songs Considered. Now wrapping up their first big tour across North America, they stopped by NPR’s Tiny Desk on October 1.
During the concert, the group’s instrumental inventory included rows of plastic containers, pots and pans and a guitar fashioned out of two cans and a wooden fretboard. Some of the objects were ready to be played with no adjustments, like the metal kitchen pots used for percussion. Others, like the drum kit that features parts of an old air-conditioning unit, took a bit more assembly — the musicians had to go out, collect scraps and combine them into one cohesive instrument.
Perhaps their greatest creation is a “monumental human-size bass harp,” as described by member Xavier Thomas — made from a wooden cross, metal cans and a plastic barrel. They call it “Jesus Crisis,” a humorous reference to evangelical churches in Congo, which Thomas says can get quite “inventive” with their religious interpretations. The harp was made by group member Dido Oweke, who, according to his bandmates, visualizes the instruments he wants to make as sculptures first.
KOKOKO! member Dido Oweke built the “Jesus Crisis” bass harp in 2016.
Xavier Thomas
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Xavier Thomas
“We brought [the harp] once on tour, but it’s so hard to transport. It’s like moving a house,” says Thomas, also known as Débruit when he does solo electronic music projects. Thomas, originally from France, is the only member of the band not from Congo; he acted as the interpreter for the other musicians interviewed for this story.
Thomas met his bandmates while working on a music project in Kinshasa. They jammed together at a block party in 2016 and formed the group shortly after.
The music itself, which combines homemade instruments with electronic synths, channels the sounds and spirit of KOKOKO!’s birthplace. Kinshasa, home to an estimated 12 million people, has a rich aural landscape, according to Bomolo, Thomas and percussionist/vocalist Makara Bianko. Street vendors clink nail polish bottles together. Shoeshiners call out to customers. Megaphones blast recorded advertisements for cellphone credits on a perpetual loop.
“With your eyes closed, you can tell who’s where — at what distance,” Thomas explains. “Boms is inspired by the sonic chaos and reorganizes it into music.”
KOKOKO!’s high-powered performance, yellow jumpsuits and all, is a demand to be seen and heard in the middle of Congo’s vibrancy — but they also make a point on their website and during the interview to highlight the challenges faced by Congolese people.
The world sees Congo as an Ebola hotspot — the country is currently is facing the second largest outbreak in history. But the musicians say the virus does not play into daily life in Kinshasa, which is more than a thousand miles away from the affected area. The members of KOKOKO! have other concerns, like violence, corruption and poverty. The World Bank estimates that 73% of Congo’s population lived in extreme poverty in 2018.
Congo is rich in natural resources, making it a top producer of metals like cobalt and coltan. But Bianko believes that the wealth from those resources mainly profits industrialized nations and the multinational corporations that mine in Congo.
“Every time the industry needed something in the world, they found it in Congo, but they didn’t leave anything behind,” says Bianko.
The Congolese way is to not let those struggles haunt their everyday life, says Bianko. People in Kinshasa maintain a spirit of resistance, the group explains — of not letting the financial and political turmoil affect their ability to get dressed up, go out, have fun. Or make music.
That’s why the magic of KOKOKO! is not just that they worked with what they could find to make music. It’s that they dove deep into the research of harnessing sounds from unusual objects and became a project of sonic revolution in the process.
“Now, this is what makes our sound, these instruments,” says Bianko, noting that they’re still adding new objects to their repertoire with every tour. “We wouldn’t switch back [to traditional instruments] because these instruments are the identity of the band.”
The “knock knock knock” of their names has evolved as well. As political instability rocked Congo in 2017, they were literally knocking on the doors of embassies across Kinshasa, trying to get visas approved so the band could tour internationally.
Now, they say, they’re knocking on people’s consciousness “to open up to the kind of musical innovation we’re proposing.”
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PHOTOS: Why Lynsey Addario Has Spent 10 Years Covering Maternal Mortality
Addario’s coverage of maternal mortality took her to a remote village in Badakhshan province, Afghanistan in 2009, where she photographed a midwife giving a prenatal check in a private home. “In these areas someone will announce that a doctor and a midwife are coming, and any pregnant and lactating women within a certain radius come if they want prenatal or postnatal care,” she says.
Lynsey Addario
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Lynsey Addario
Editor’s note: This story includes images that some readers may find disturbing.
When photojournalist Lynsey Addario was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship in 2009, she took it as a chance to work on a topic that many photographers and editors shied away from: maternal mortality. Her photos of overcrowded hospitals, bloody delivery room floors and midwives in training illustrate the challenges women face in childbirth and what the global health community is doing to overcome it. The series was featured at this year’s Visa Pour L’image festival in Perpignan, France.
Addario has borne witness to some of the most intense global conflicts of her time. She has worked for publications like The New York Times, National Geographic and Time Magazine and has covered life under the Taliban in Afghanistan and the plight of Syrian refugees. She has been kidnapped twice while on assignment, most recently in Libya in 2011 while covering the civil war.
Every two minutes, a woman dies from childbirth or pregnancy-related causes, and many of these deaths are entirely preventable. While the global health community has made great strides bringing down the rate of these maternal mortalities since efforts intensified in the early 1990s, the reality for many mothers is still harrowing.
We spoke to Addario, author of the 2015 memoir It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War, about what drives her work and what she’s witnessed over a decade of reporting on this topic. The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Addario recalls visiting Tezpur Civil Hospital in Assam, India, “where there’s tea plantations all around. In that area I was looking at the conditions for women, and you can tell that [the hospital] is grossly overcrowded. There were women waiting to deliver, some had already delivered — there were even women sleeping in the hallways of this hospital on the stairs leading up to the main ward.”
Lynsey Addario
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Lynsey Addario
How did you get interested in the topic of maternal mortality?
In 2009 I was named a MacArthur Fellow. It was the first time in my career where I was given money to work on a project without an assignment, so I could choose something that I felt was important to cover. I started learning about the incredible number of women who were dying in childbirth every year. It wasn’t a story that was easy to get published — I think most editors felt it wasn’t a sexy topic. Most people just don’t realize what a big deal this is.
[Early in the project,] in the very first hospital I walked into outside of Freetown, Sierra Leone, I literally watched a very young woman, Mamma Sessay, hemorrhage in front of me on camera and die. And I knew that it was a story I had to continue with.
You write in your book Of Love & War that what compels you to do photojournalism is “documenting injustice.” How does that apply in this series?
If you’re a poor woman living in a village where there are no medical professionals around, and you don’t have enough money to get to a hospital, then you run the risk of dying in childbirth. That’s injustice. I think everyone is entitled to a safe delivery. In 2019 there should be medical facilities within reach for anyone to be able to access them, or mobile clinics.
“This is a fistula repair in Kabul, Afghanistan, with two surgeries going on side by side,” Addario says. “A fistula is a tear, often between the vagina and the anus. It’s common in many countries with child marriage, or where women have birth very young. It’s quite a shame — often women are shunned from their houses or don’t get care — there’s often a smell associated with fistula.”
Lynsey Addario
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Lynsey Addario
Were you a mother when you started the project?
No. In fact I always used to joke around on the delivery ward that I would never become a mother because I had photographed so many women delivering, and I knew it was such a painful and difficult experience. Then in 2011 I gave birth to my first son, so I ended up doing it anyway. Even though this project made me more scared to actually deliver because I know how many things can go wrong.
Ironically my own delivery in 2011 was not a great experience. I moved to London when I was 32 weeks pregnant and delivered at 37 weeks. I had no doctor, basically just showed up at the hospital nine centimeters dilated and delivered with whatever midwife was on duty. Now that I’ve been doing this project for 10 years, there are so many things I would suggest to first-time mothers — or second-time mothers.
Like what?
Like maybe have a doula or have someone with you who can be an advocate — who can explain to you what’s going on with your body, who can help you navigate the pain. Someone who can understand if something’s going wrong, like the symptoms of preeclampsia: headaches, sweating, swelling. There’s so much that we just don’t know, that we’re not taught. People take childbirth for granted.
What is it like talking to your male colleagues about this project?
Most of them just haven’t paid attention to this work. Colleagues have said things to me about some stories — like the woman giving birth on the side of the road in the Philippines and the Mamma Sessay story — because they’re sensational, but no one really asked me about the work, which is interesting in and of itself. I think people sort of shy away from talking about birth, you know? Unless it’s something happy and positive.
“This is part of Dr. Edna Ismail’s team doing outreach in a remote village in Somaliland,” Addario says. “They do a similar thing like in Afghanistan, where they make an announcement for any pregnant and lactating women to come for a prenatal check. That’s essentially the only way women can get care unless they walk or are able to get transport to the nearest hospital or clinic.”
Lynsey Addario
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Lynsey Addario
What has surprised you while photographing this series?
How much access people give me. I’ve photographed — I can’t even count how many — probably three or four dozen births. The women invite me into very intimate spaces. I obviously try to be very respectful of how I photograph something like this. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever witnessed, watching a baby be born. It’s something delicate to photograph because it’s so incredible and at the same time it’s very graphic. It’s hard, and it’s always surprising to me how many people have let me in.
That word “graphic” jumps out at me. I’m looking at one of your photos now, where there’s blood on a delivery room floor, and it’s uncomfortable in a way that’s different than looking at blood from violence.
A mother receives postnatal care in a Somaliland hospital. “She was brought [there] in a wheelbarrow,” Addario recalls. “She delivered her baby stillborn then started hemorrhaging. It was extraordinary for me to witness — it was very similar to what I’d seen a decade earlier when Mamma Sessay died but in this case the woman survived because there were trained midwives who knew exactly what to do.”
Lynsey Addario
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Lynsey Addario
It is different. It’s different because no one thinks of childbirth like that. They think of childbirth as Hallmark pictures, but there’s a lot that’s not beautiful about it.
You’ve been working on this project for 10 years now. What has changed?
The statistics [for maternal mortality] have gone down, which is incredible, and there’s a lot more awareness. There are so many organizations — like Every Mother Counts, which is Christy Turlington’s organization, and UNFPA and UNICEF — working to fight maternal death. There’s more information, but it’s still too many — one woman a day is too many.
California Can Expect Blackouts For A Decade, Says PG&E CEO
A car drives through a darkened Montclair Village in Oakland, Calif., after Pacific Gas & Electric shut down power last week to prevent wildfires.
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Noah Berger/AP
The CEO of Pacific Gas & Electric Corp. told California energy regulators that the state will likely see blackouts for another 10 years like the one imposed last week that left as many as 800,000 customers without power.
The revelation by corporation CEO Bill Johnson came Friday at a California Public Utilities Commission meeting at which he said his company is trying to reduce the chances of wildfires by trimming more trees and using technology to target smaller areas of the grid when fire dangers require power outages.
But Johnson said it could take 10 years before such outages are “really ratcheted down significantly.”
PG&E has come near universal criticism for its lack of planning in shutting off power and its failure to adequately handle customers’ questions while the outages lasted. PUC president Marybel Batjer blasted utility officials saying, “what we saw play out by PG&E last week cannot be repeated.”
During the blackouts, Johnson admitted that his company had not been prepared for the impact of the outages, including the crashing of the utility’s website and call centers being overwhelmed with customers’ concerns.
But Johnson still maintains that the outages, which the company calls Public Safety Power Shutoff events, were necessary to insure safety in the face of seasonally high winds that can damage power lines and lead to wildfires.
“We recognize the hardship that the recent PSPS event caused for millions of people and want to continue working with all key shareholders to lessen this burden going forward,” Johnson wrote in a letter to the PUC prior to the hearing. “At the same time, we ask our customers, their families, and our local and state leaders to keep in mind that statistic that matters most: there were no catastrophic wildfires.”
The utility estimates that each customer household represents about three people, so that the power outages left roughly 2 million people in the dark.
In the hearing, Johnson tried to separate PG&E’s rationale for the power outages from the company’s execution.
“Making the right decision on safety is not the same as executing that decision well,” Johnson said. “PG&E has to be better prepared than it was this time.”
Last week California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the utility’s management of the outages “was unacceptable.” He called PG&E to issue rebates of $100 for residential customers and $250 credits to small businesses affected by the outages.
Johnson said PG&E is studying the request, but is concerned about setting a precedent.
Opioid Case With 2 Ohio Counties As Plaintiffs Set To Go To Trial Next Week
The first federal case against the opioid industry goes to trial Monday. Some companies have settled to avoid trial, others will get their day in court.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Local governments across the country want the drug industry to pay for the damage from the opioid crisis. Thousands of counties, cities, Native American tribes and other parties have sued manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies. Opening arguments are scheduled to begin next Monday in the first set of claims to go to trial. Two Ohio counties will serve as plaintiffs. And all the while, attorneys continue to negotiate possible settlements. From member station WCPN, Nick Castele reports.
NICK CASTELE, BYLINE: Eric Stimac’s path to addiction began with a work injury. Several years ago, he says, he was working a side job on a day off.
ERIC STIMAC: It was some stage flooring. We were unloading off of the back of a box truck. And it fell off of the lift gate and then landed on my foot and crushed my foot.
CASTELE: Stimac was prescribed opioid painkillers, he says, and grew addicted. After a close friend died of a heroin overdose, Stimac describes reacting in a way that may seem surprising.
STIMAC: My first thought was, well, if, you know, if this was something that they were willing to give their life over, what’s the deal with it, you know? So that’s when I tried heroin for the first time.
CASTELE: After an arrest, Stimac sought treatment at IBH Addiction Recovery Center, where we talked on a porch overlooking the campus. It’s a residential facility in Summit County, Ohio, one of the two plaintiffs in the upcoming trial. Stimac is now part of a post-treatment volunteer program that he says has given meaning to his life.
Many people have gone down the same road, beginning with prescription pills before moving to street drugs, such as heroin or fentanyl. That’s why counties say drug companies are responsible for lighting the fuse of an addiction crisis that exploded and strained local services.
JONATHAN WYLLY: An average episode here is going to cost between $15-20,000.
CASTELE: Jonathan Wylly is the executive director of IBH. Treatment centers like this one often bill Medicaid for those costs, he says, and also receive funding from county addiction and mental health boards. Wylly says no amount of money can truly match the damage that people have suffered here.
WYLLY: There’s no number they can come up with that’s going to meet at the societal cost of what the opiate epidemic has meant to this state.
CASTELE: There’s the cost to medical examiners for toxicology reports after overdose deaths, to the foster system to care for children who have lost parents, to local jails and courts that handle drug cases. An expert witness for the plaintiffs says damages in these two Ohio counties could run higher than $200 million. The counties have accused drug companies of marketing painkillers aggressively while underplaying the risk of addiction and of failing to control suspicious orders of pills.
ANDREW POLLIS: This case, the facts of the case are just incredibly strong. They’re devastating.
CASTELE: Andrew Pollis is a law professor at Case Western Reserve University.
POLLIS: They demonstrate, really, a profit-driven desire to exploit the fact that opioids are inherently physically addictive.
CASTELE: Companies didn’t make representatives available for interviews. But in court filings, they’ve said counties can’t pin the crisis on the industry. They say they plan to argue that they complied with a changing set of federal rules and that they can’t be blamed for the damage of illegal drugs. Abbe Gluck is faculty director of the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy at Yale Law School.
ABBE GLUCK: I would predict that we’re going to see a lot of attention to this question of causation. Can we really say that all of these different defendants caused the harm that they’re being sued for causing?
CASTELE: She says defendants may point out there are many decision-makers in the drug supply chain, including the FDA, doctors and patients.
GLUCK: And what the defendants have been saying all along is that it’s impossible to trace any one of their actions to any one overdose or any one addiction problem.
CASTELE: Manufacturers have largely settled with the two Ohio counties, allowing them to avoid trial. And settlement negotiations have gone down to the wire with opioid distributors. Those possible nationwide agreements could be worth billions of dollars.
For NPR News, I’m Nick Castele in Cleveland.
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Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
Nearly 50,000 General Motors Employees May Soon Be Headed Back To Work After Strike
A tentative agreement between the United Automobile Workers and General Motors will allow for the closure of three plants. Union leaders are deciding whether to put the agreement to a full vote.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Nearly 50,000 General Motors employees are not going back to work just yet. A month into a labor strike, local UAW leaders voted to approve a tentative contract with GM. But the general membership still has to approve it, and until then, the strike continues. They’ve been hashing it out behind closed doors in Detroit all day. Michigan Radio’s Tracy Samilton has been following these negotiations, and she joins me now.
Hey, Tracy.
TRACY SAMILTON, BYLINE: Hi, Ailsa.
CHANG: So give us a little more of an idea of what happened at the meeting today.
SAMILTON: Well, what we know is that they did approve the tentative contract, but it took them a lot longer than most of us were expecting. We don’t know what exactly was holding it up, but it seemed to be a real fight perhaps over whether the strike should end or whether they should keep folks out on the picket line while the voting is happening.
CHANG: OK. And so far, union leaders are calling this proposed contract a win.
SAMILTON: They are.
CHANG: Is that fair, to call this a win? I mean, what exactly are they getting out of this?
SAMILTON: It totally depends on your point of view. There are definitely some things that I was surprised to see because GM did agree that, for its temporary workers, it’s going to give them a path to full-time jobs if they are temps for three years or longer. They’re also going to get some paid time off, which they did not have before. So they’re going to have a week paid time off after they work for a year, and then they have another half a week of unpaid time off.
Now, they held the line on health care. GM initially wanted to increase their out-of-pocket costs. They held the line there. There’s a big bonus, $11,000 ratification bonus, if they vote to approve it. And then the time that it takes for a lower-paid person to get all the way up to the top wage is going from eight years to four years.
CHANG: OK.
SAMILTON: So there’s definitely some things in here that are good.
CHANG: Yeah. But I also understand they didn’t get everything they wanted.
SAMILTON: Oh, no (laughter).
CHANG: What did they not get?
SAMILTON: Well, GM closed four plants this year, and they did not get those plants reopened, except for a product that’s going to eventually come to Detroit Hamtramck. But the other plants – Lordstown, Ohio; Baltimore Transmission and Warren Transmission – are going to stay closed. And there’s also no – as far as we can tell, there’s no actual product allocation guarantee here for the plants that are open now.
CHANG: What does that mean?
SAMILTON: And so what that means is that job security for the folks who are at open plants is – it’s an open question.
CHANG: Have you had the chance to talk to workers – not in the union leadership, but union members? I mean, what are you hearing from them?
SAMILTON: Well, we had quite a few folks from Lordstown, Ohio, come here, drive here to protest, and I spoke to a few of them. And as you can imagine, they are not at all happy about this. They felt that GM betrayed them, asking them to work very hard and closed the plant from under them. And now they’re feeling betrayed by the union because they all have to relocate around the country if they want to keep their jobs.
CHANG: So what happens going forward? What happens if, say, the union leaders don’t get approval?
SAMILTON: Oh, my (laughter). That would be – if the rank and file vote it down, that’s going to be a huge problem here. This – GM has already lost $1.5 billion. The workers have lost $835 million, both GM workers and supplier workers. So you’re talking a big, big problem…
CHANG: Yeah.
SAMILTON: …with the cost to both sides.
CHANG: That’s Michigan Radio’s Tracy Samilton.
Thanks so much, Tracy.
SAMILTON: Sure thing.
Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
Heading Out On The Ice With Adam Rippon
Last year, Adam Rippon accomplished one of his biggest goals: heading to the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.
He medaled, even though he was a decade older than his teammates.
And while he was there, he became a star. He started by calling himself “America’s sweetheart.” And soon enough, he was.
His viral moments and charm offensive didn’t stop with the Olympics. He turned heads and made headlines when he wore a leather harness to the 2018 Oscars. And he brought his dynamic grace to “Dancing with the Stars.”
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He officially stopped skating earlier this year. Now, he’s out with a new memoir called Beautiful On The Outside, and has a brand new show cooking about celebrity throwback moments.
Rippon joins us to talk about his road to the Olympics and beyond.
Produced by Chris Castano and Gabrielle Healy.
Democratic Candidates Tackle Issue Of Income Inequality In 4th Debate
Presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders would both like to impose higher taxes on the wealthy. That idea came under attack during Tuesday’s debate.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Well, one of the many issues the Democrats tangled over last night is what’s known as a wealth tax. That is the idea of taxing accumulated wealth to help pay for a variety of government programs. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have both advocated for it. Critics say their proposals are unwieldy and warn that rich people will find a way to get around the tax. NPR’s Scott Horsley is here for a fact-check.
Hey, Scott.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Hi, Ari.
SHAPIRO: First, explain what Warren and Sanders are actually talking about when they call for a wealth tax.
HORSLEY: Their plans differ in the particulars, but they’re both calling for an annual tax on big fortunes. In Warren’s case, she wants to tax fortunes worth $50 million or more. So there are about 75,000 families in the U.S. that would fall under that tax. They would be taxed 2% on everything they own above $50 million and 3% on any wealth over a billion dollars. Now, during the CNN debate, Warren said chipping away at those enormous fortunes would help address inequality and also raise a boatload of money, which she and Sanders are counting on, to fund their ambitious government programs.
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ELIZABETH WARREN: Taxing income is not going to get you where you need to be the way taxing wealth does. The rich are not like you and me. The really, really billionaires are making their money off their accumulated wealth. And it just keeps growing.
SHAPIRO: OK. Well, one of the candidates who pushed back against Warren on this was Andrew Yang. Let’s listen to that.
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ANDREW YANG: The wealth tax makes a lot of sense in principle. The problem is that it’s been tried in Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden, and all those countries ended up repealing it because it had massive implementation problems and did not generate the revenue that they projected.
SHAPIRO: Scott, did all those countries repeal it?
HORSLEY: They did. He is right that a lot of countries have tried a wealth tax. A lot of them gave up on it. In fact, 11 of the 15 developed countries that had a wealth tax back in the mid-’90s have gotten rid of the levy. Only a handful are still collecting it. Part of the problem is it really is hard to administer a wealth tax. You know, assets like stocks and bonds are easy enough to account for, but if rich people put their money into, say, jewelry or art, it can be hard to know what it’s worth. And that can make a lot of extra work for the IRS. What’s more, the wealthy can hire very good lawyers and accountants to avoid or minimize their taxes. That’s one reason a lot of countries did find that a wealth tax didn’t generate quite as much money as they’d been hoping for.
SHAPIRO: So what’s the alternative? Like, what’s Yang proposing, for example?
HORSLEY: Yang is actually calling for a kind of federal sales tax, what’s known as a value added or VAT tax. That’s something a lot of countries do have, and it is very simple to administer and can raise a whole lot of money. Critics, though, say a VAT tax falls most heavily on the poor and middle class because they tend to spend more of their income while, as Warren said, the really wealthy let their money just pile up.
SHAPIRO: That’s NPR’s Scott Horsley.
Thanks a lot.
HORSLEY: You’re welcome.
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Hospital Giant Sutter Health Agrees To Settlement In Big Antitrust Fight
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, along with 1,500 self-funded health plans, sued Sutter Health for antitrust violations. The closely watched case, which many expected to set precedents nationwide, ended in a settlement Wednesday. Above, Sutter Medical Center in Sacramento, Calif.
Rich Pedroncelli/AP
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Rich Pedroncelli/AP
Sutter Health, a large nonprofit health care system with 24 hospitals, 34 surgery centers and 5,500 physicians across Northern California, has reached a preliminary settlement agreement in a closely watched antitrust case brought by self-funded employers and later joined by California’s Office of the Attorney General.
The agreement was announced in San Francisco Superior Court on Wednesday, just before opening arguments were expected to begin.
Details have not been made public, and the parties declined to talk to reporters. Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo told the jury that details likely will be made public during approval hearings in February or March.
There were audible cheers from the jury following the announcement that the trial, which was expected to last for three months, would not continue.
Sutter, which is based in Sacramento, Calif., stood accused of violating California’s antitrust laws by using its market power to illegally drive up prices.
Health care costs in Northern California, where Sutter is dominant, are 20% to 30% higher than in Southern California, even after adjusting for cost of living, according to a 2018 study from the Nicholas C. Petris Center at the University of California, Berkeley, that was cited in the complaint.
The case was a massive undertaking, representing years of work and millions of pages of documents, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said before the trial. Sutter was expected to face damages of up to $2.7 billion.
Sutter Health consistently denied the allegations and argued that it used its market power to improve care for patients and expand access to people in rural areas. The chain of health care facilities had $13 billion in operating revenue in 2018.
The case was expected to have nationwide implications on how hospital systems negotiate prices with insurers. It is not yet clear what effect, if any, a settlement agreement would have on Sutter’s tactics or those of other large systems.
Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit, editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation. KHN is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
