A new tractor often costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, but one thing not included in that price is the right to repair it. That has put farmers on the front lines of a battle pitting consumers against the makers of all kinds of consumer goods, from tractors to refrigerators to smartphones.

Modern tractors, essentially, have two keys to make the engine work. One key starts the engine. But because today’s tractors are high-tech machines that can steer themselves by GPS, you also need a software key — to fix the programs that make a tractor run properly. And farmers don’t get that key.

“You’re paying for the metal but the electronic parts technically you don’t own it. They do,” says Kyle Schwarting, who plants and harvests fields in southeast Nebraska.

He previously ran auto shops fixing cars and trucks. So when he started farming, he thought he’d be a natural to do the mechanical work himself.

Even a used combine like his Deere S670 can cost $200,000 or $300,000. As he lifts the side panel on this giant green harvester, he explains that the engine is basically off limits.

“Maybe a gasket or something you can fix, but everything else is computer controlled and so if it breaks down I’m really in a bad spot,” Schwarting says. He has to call the dealer.

Only dealerships have the software to make those parts work, and it costs hundreds of dollars just to get a service call. Schwarting worries about being broken down in a field, waiting for a dealer to show up with a software key. If he had that key, he could likely fix the machine himself.

Schwarting says some farmers want this software so badly, they’re using a pirated version from Europe to basically hack their way into their own tractors.

“You know, without getting too self-incriminating there’s countries out there that have this software,” Schwarting says and laughs. “You got to keep going when you got to keep going and guys are going to find a way no matter what they have to do to do it.”

Gay Gordon-Byrne heads The Repair Association, a group advocating for consumers to be able repair the products they buy. While she didn’t know farmers were hacking tractors she isn’t surprised.

“It’s not extreme,” she says. “I mean, if you have something and you can’t fix it and you get on the Internet and find a way to fix it, I don’t blame anyone for trying it.”

But she says there should be an honest way to do it. Eight states, including Nebraska, Illinois and New York are considering bills requiring manufacturers to sell repair software. Not only for tractors but also phones, computers and appliances.

Car makers started selling repair software after a similar law passed in Massachusetts. The U.S. Copyright Office says it is legal for consumers to repair most products, but Gordon-Byrne says manufacturers can get around that with user agreements. Inside those end-user license agreements that we sign, “there’s things like you won’t open the case, you won’t repair,” she says.

Andy Goodman of the Iowa-Nebraska Equipment Dealers Association says there’s a good reason for that: farmers could damage the machines, like bypassing pollution emissions controls to get more horsepower. That could put dealers in a difficult position.

“When we resell that machine we have guaranteed to someone that it’s going to perform within certain standards,” Goodman says. “Those that are stated by the manufacturer but also those that are required under law.”

Of course, equipment dealers have also cornered the repair market. And as tractor sales slump, their businesses rely even more on service calls.

Schwarting says when the farm economy was strong a few years ago, farmers could afford to call the dealer and share the wealth. But it’s lean times for most farmers now.

“Guys can’t afford to do that anymore,” he says. “Three-dollar corn doesn’t buy new combines very fast. So, guys are going to have to work on them.”

Because when a farmer spends hundreds of thousands of dollars for a tractor, he’d like to save some money on the repair bill.

In telecom circles, Comcast’s plans and efforts to wade into the mobile market go back years. On Thursday, the company finally revealed the specifics of what its new service will look like.

Comcast is calling its cellphone program Xfinity Mobile, expected to launch in the next few weeks. Its target audience is existing Comcast customers — the company hopes they’ll be drawn by the savings from adding mobile service to a home Internet service or bigger bundles.

Here’s a quick rundown of the offer from The Wall Street Journal:

“Unlimited talk, text and data is $65 per line. But if you have one of Comcast’s more expensive internet and cable bundles, which start at $150 a month, the price for each unlimited line drops to $45.

“Comcast will also offer a pay-as-you-go option for $12 per gigabyte — a very cheap option for people who don’t use much data. … The prices are generally lower than what the major carriers charge. … But unlike Verizon or AT&T, adding more wireless lines doesn’t bring the price down.”

Both the Journal and Bloomberg have really handy price-comparison charts. A couple of caveats include a prerequisite, for now, that customers must purchase a new phone (options include Apple, Samsung and LG) and a note that unlimited plans may face slower speeds after 20 gigabytes.

Comcast is the largest cable operator, but its competition includes AT&T-DirecTV and Verizon FiOS, both of which are part of large — and growing — telecom conglomerates. Bloomberg reports that Charter, which recently bought Time Warner Cable, plans to launch a wireless service in 2018. The entire industry is trying to figure out how to make money in new ways, as people’s TV-viewing and data-consumption habits keep changing.

Comcast’s new wireless service will rely on Comcast’s own Wi-Fi network and Verizon’s phone network, for which Comcast struck a resale contract years ago. (Charter has a similar deal.) Major wireless companies already rely on Wi-Fi hot spots to offload some wireless traffic to mitigate congestion, and some companies have tried to do a cellphone service fully based on Wi-Fi.

As The Associated Press points out, Comcast’s “pay-per-gigabyte approach is similar to what Google is doing with its wireless service, Google Fi. … But Google Fi hasn’t caught on, in part because it works with only a few Google-branded phones and uses networks from T-Mobile, Sprint and U.S. Cellular, which aren’t as robust as Verizon’s.”

Comcastwill benefit from access to Verizon’s network, and for now, Comcast says phone calls won’t travel over Wi-Fi. The company has 16 million hot spots around the country, a network built largely through consumer hot spots. Comcast says Xfinity Mobile users will automatically connect to hot spots and toggle between Wi-Fi and mobile broadband. Wi-Fi reliability remains a challenge for all companies attempting this.

Roger Entner of Recon Analytics says Comcast’s new wireless service might boost the company’s bottom line, while having a relatively low impact on competition.

“I just don’t see Xfinity Mobile being designed to be a market disrupter,” he says. “I think the rest of the wireless industry breathed a collective sigh of relief after this announcement.”

By the time bidding closed Tuesday, there was no lack of companies competing to build the wall President Trump has proposed for the border between the U.S. and Mexico. In fact, by The Associated Press’ count, upwards of 200 organizations had expressed interest in designing and building it for Customs and Border Protection.

Despite their common goal, the companies submitting bids have followed some radically different paths in their approach.

Among the submissions are walls with solar panels, wire mesh and sloped, slippery surfaces. There are even walls that are no walls at all — statements standing instead as protests of a policy that from the start has drawn a lot of resistance.

As NPR’s Richard Gonzales reports, the CBP plans to announce the finalists for the contract in June, at which point the companies still in the running would be expected to build a prototype roughly 30 feet long and anywhere from 18 to 30 feet tall. The AP notes the prototypes are expected to cost about $200,000 to $500,000 each; estimates for the cost of the wall covering the 2,000-mile border, however, range up to $38 billion.

Here’s a glimpse of just a few of the designs vying to stand between the U.S. and Mexico, complete with renderings and explanations of how they could take shape.

The WireWall

The proposal from Riverdale Mills Corporation employs wire mesh, which is already used along the Mexican border with California and Arizona. Riverdale says the material can be manufactured up to 20 feet tall and installed up to 6 feet below ground, to prevent tunneling.

“The configurations of the wire mesh make it virtually impossible to climb or cut,” Jane Meehan Lanzillo, director of corporate communications for Riverdale, tells NPR in an email.

Solar Panels

“I like the wall to be able to pay for itself,” Thomas Gleason, managing partner of Gleason Partners LLC, tells the AP.

The company’s proposal sets solar panels on sections of the wall, generating what it says would be approximately 2.0 megawatts of electricity per hour, according to the wire service.

Maximum-Security Wire Mesh

Composed of high-density steel packed into double wire mesh, the Penna Group’s proposed wall takes its cue from maximum security prisons. “Nearly impossible to climb,” it would also be built to withstand pick axes, acetylene torches and other handheld weapons, with the first 12 feet of its 30-foot height packed more densely.

Michael Evangelista-Ysasaga, CEO of the Penna Group, speaks to the aesthetics of the U.S.-facing side of the wall, telling NPR “the wire mesh panels will be emblazoned with the Seal of the United States.”

The Security Curtain Wall

With its face pitched at an angle, the proposed wall put forth by San Diego Project Management, PSC, borrows medieval concepts to give to give guards a better view of possible “villains” approaching the wall — and with its walkway toward the top, it gives those guards a place to patrol from a height.

“The surface finish on the south side of the wall is of the same quality as the finish on a smooth floor slab,” Patrick J. Balcazar, principal and managing partner at SDPM, writes in his proposal. “Smooth surface on the glacis [sloped] and [vertical] surfaces make climbing harder, and there are no handholds.”

Hadrian’s Wall

It’s impossible to avoid: For a man bidding to build a massive wall, Rod Hadrian has a rather serendipitous name. Namesake of the Roman emperor who built the wall that once marked off the northernmost edge of the ancient empire — the wall that still stands in ruins in the U.K. today — Hadrian Construction Company has proposed a wall constructed in prefabricated panels.

Its Tridipanel design makes for something of a zig-zag shape, which he says would create a 30-foot wall that’s at once lightweight and strong.

Adorned With Decoration

The border wall should be “a piece of art,” Russ Baumgartner, CEO of Concrete Contractors Interstate of San Diego, tells the AP. The wire service says the company’s proposal calls for stones and artifacts set in polished concrete, reflecting the areas the wall wends through and rendering both sides “aesthetically pleasing” — unlike the CBP’s callout, which asks only that the U.S. side be pleasant to look at.

Above, you can see a detail of the kind of decorative stones Baumgartner has in mind.

The Wall To End All Walls

It is reasonable to conclude that this proposal is not exactly what Trump has in mind for his signature campaign promise.

“We propose a trans-national ‘New Deal’ to build an innovative shared co-nation based on local economic empowerment, energy independence and revolutionary infrastructure and transit,” says the MADE Collective, a cross-disciplinary team that argues for the creation of what it calls the Otra Nation — a “regenerative co-nation shared by citizens of both Mexico and the United Stated and co-maintained by respective governments.”

Far from a boundary between two states, the Otra Nation proposal envisions the construction of a hyperloop transit system and the rights to cross open borders of the three North American countries without impediment.

The Wall Of Sound

One of at least three protest proposals ginned up by J.M. Design Studio of Pittsburgh, this one calls for “a semi-continuous wall of nearly 10 million pipe organs.” The long line of 30-foot organs breaks in regular intervals, offering border-crossers the opportunity to walk straight through — but not before playing a ditty of their choosing.

Jennifer Meridian — an artist who says Trump’s actual border wall is “preposterous for so many reasons,” according to the Wall Street Journal — also proposes a wall of hammocks and a wall of refugees’ gravestones for passersby to “consider the danger, terror, and horror they must have faced in trying to cross.”

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka laid out his vision for organized labor Tuesday, taking on both political parties for catering to moneyed interests instead of focusing on the plight of American workers — the hallmark of the presidential campaign.

“Republicans, and too many Democrats, have rigged our economy to enrich a select few,” the union chief told an audience at the National Press Club.

“Give every worker out there the right to bargain with their employer for better wages, better working conditions whether you have a union or not,” he said.

Trumka’s cautionary messages about allowing corporations to enrich themselves at the expense of workers, and the dangers of deregulation struck a familiar theme for unions. But the speech was also notable for the way it veered from traditional party politics, calling attention to a growing rift in the once-solid relationship between unions and the Democratic Party.

“We’ll stand up to the corporate Republicans who attack working people and the neoliberal Democrats who take us for granted,” Trumka said. During the last election, 37 percent of the AFL-CIO’s membership voted for Trump. Both parties, he argued, are struggling with an identity crisis.

In the early days, Trumka and other union leaders supported the Trump administration’s position against the Trans-Pacific Partnership and its promise to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. But more recently, he said, the administration has lost its focus on workers in favor of relaxing rules on employers.

“There is a Wall Street wing that seeks to undermine Donald Trump’s promises to workers, and there’s a competing wing that could actually win some progress that working people need,” he said. “I’m concerned that the Wall Street wing of the White House is starting to hijack the agenda.”

Unions are not what they were during Trumka’s childhood in Pennsylvania coal country, when about a third of all American workers were members of unions. That declined to about 20 percent in the early 1980s. Now, it’s half that. Trumka himself referenced unions’ efforts to reverse that trend, including organizing efforts with white collar workers such as graduate students and technology professionals, as well as hotel and fast-food workers.

Trumka also called on workers to advocate for their interests with their employers, whether or not they can join a union.

Aparna Mathur, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, said the message is a big departure from the decades-long emphasis unions have had on increasing membership.

“I think it is a recognition that, at some level, what unions did 50 years ago is not what they are able to do today,” she said.

Mathur said there are pragmatic realities facing unions. There is less interest in union membership among workers. Now, 28 states have right-to-work laws that prohibit unions from compelling the payment of dues or representation.

Unions are weaker, she said, and Trumka is trying to keep the worker movement going, with or without unions.

With an oversized check for $78,333, written to the National Park Service, White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Monday took the first step in fulfilling President Trump’s pledge to give away his presidential salary.

Spicer said that the sum equaled Trump’s salary for the first quarter of 2017, and that similar charitable contributions will be made each quarter.

But a five-figure check is pocket change compared to the wealth of Trump’s business empire — businesses now held by the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, and a newly released document opens new holes in the ethics wall between the president and that wealth.

Trump lawyer Sheri Dillon said, at a January press conference, that the revocable trust would prevent conflicts of interest.

“President Trump wants there to be no doubt in the minds of the American public that he is completely isolating himself from his business interests,” she said.

This afternoon, however, after Spicer brought out the big check, he had to fend off questions as to just how isolated from the Trump empire the president is.

He said he didn’t know of any changes in the trust since January. “I’m not aware there was any change,” he said. “Just because a left-wing blog makes the point of something changing doesn’t mean it actually happened.”

It wasn’t a left-wing blog, but rather Pro Publica — a nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative journalism outfit — that first reported the change. A document dated Feb. 17 lets Trump draw out profits and principal from his businesses.

It says the trustees “shall distribute” funds to Trump at his request. It also requires them to send him money when appropriate and for “his maintenance, support or uninsured medical expenses.”

Essentially, the president can take money from his businesses whenever he wants.

Spicer dismissed a question of whether Trump already has done so, saying, “The idea that the president is withdrawing money at some point is exactly the purpose of why the trust — a trust — is set up regardless of the individual.”

But the purpose of presidential trusts has been to avoid conflicts of interest.

The new document also sheds new light on how the trust works. It’s run by two trustees, Donald Trump Jr. and an executive of the Trump Organization, who cannot give the president reports on the trust’s finances. But Trump’s second son, Eric, can do that as chair of the trust’s advisory board, and told Forbes magazine last month that he plans to give his father big-picture financial briefings every quarter or so.

Before Trump, recent presidents sold their assets or put them into a blind trust
when they took office.

“This is a ploy, okay?” said Kathleen Clark, a professor of law and ethics at Washington University in St Louis. “It’s a public relations ploy to give people the impression that Trump has done something meaningful about the massive conflicts of interest he faces.”

Those conflicts center mainly around his hotels and brands overseas, U.S. environmental laws that affect his golf courses, and his Washington, D.C., hotel.

A look at what President Donald Trump’s first face-to-face meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping looks like from Beijing.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Now we’re going to get a different view of the summit this time from Beijing. We turn to NPR’s Beijing correspondent Anthony Kuhn. Anthony, greetings. Thanks so much for talking with us.

ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: You’re very welcome, Michel.

MARTIN: So what does China want to get out of the summit?

KUHN: Well, remember, Michel, that this is a political transition year for China. President Xi Jinping is due to get a second five-year term this fall, so they do not want ties with Washington blowing up or getting in the way of that. They want high-level contacts with Washington to be regular, and they want more stability in their relationship than they’ve had so far under this administration.

Also remember Donald Trump was the candidate that I think most Chinese wanted to see win, and many Chinese like the fact that he’s a businessman. And they think they can negotiate with him. Some believe that he may even give China a chance to advance its global interests, perhaps, at the U.S.’s expense.

MARTIN: That actually leads me to where I wanted to go next. I mean, on the one hand, both Xi Jinping and Trump think of themselves as different from their predecessors. On the other hand, Trump had very strong language about China over the course of the campaign, and, you know, does any of that affect the chemistry at this meeting – or what do you think about that?

KUHN: Right. Well, you could, I suppose, argue that both of these men consider themselves sort of political strongmen, really stronger than men who came before them. They’ve both tried to increase the power of their offices and demanded loyalty from their subordinates. But I don’t think that’s necessarily enough to spark a budding bromance. Just because they have these ambitions it doesn’t mean that either of them will succeed in achieving them.

MARTIN: And Xi Jinping has made comments suggesting that China is poised to fill the vacuum that the U.S. says it wants to leave by pulling out of international commitments. What does he mean by that?

KUHN: Well, on a couple of occasions, you know, President Xi Jinping has spoken out for free trade, open markets, globalization, the Paris agreement on climate change, and Xi has been using these opportunities to show China as a heavyweight in global governance, providing public goods for the international community and defending the international order.

One thing I think that is pretty clear is that many people in China believe that the U.S. is losing soft power and moral high ground. So when the U.S. government hammers China over issues like torture, press freedoms, treatment of ethnic minorities, nepotism, corruption and conflict of interest in government, it rings pretty hollow. And we know this because we’ve been reading months worth of sort of crowing, jeering commentaries to that effect in China’s state-run media.

MARTIN: OK. So North Korea – nuclear weapons, wouldn’t that be a shared item of interest and a very pressing issue on the agenda for both countries? Is there anything that they can really hope to accomplish in this meeting?

KUHN: Well, they’ve got to do something about it because time is really running out before North Korea will get missiles with nuclear warheads capable of targeting U.S. territory. The problem is there is so much daylight between the U.S.’s and China’s positions. Both sides think the other side has to do the heavy lifting on this problem.

As far as Beijing is concerned, it wants the U.S. to provide North Korea with some sort of security guarantee in exchange for either freezing its nuclear programs or denuclearizing, as it’s already promised to do. The other problem is that both sides realize that the North Korean nuclear issue is tied into so many other things. So if Washington and Beijing get into a spat over trade, over Taiwan, over the South China Sea, the chances of cooperation on the North Korean nuclear issue will be very slim.

MARTIN: That was NPR’s Beijing correspondent Anthony Kuhn joining us from Beijing. Anthony, thanks so much for speaking with us.

KUHN: You bet, Michel.

Copyright © 2017 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.

Helene Cooper’s new book “Madame President” takes a detailed look at the life and career of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first female president of Liberia.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

As the story has been told over the years when Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was born, a street prophet told her family this child will be great. This child is going to lead. But he didn’t really say it that way. What he really said was in Liberian English, a patois that sounds utterly familiar to an American ear in one minute, incomprehensible in the next. The same could be said of Sirleaf, as it’s told in a new biography by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Helene Cooper. In her rise to the presidency of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has seen, experienced and accomplished things that most of us can only imagine. Helene Cooper’s new book is called “Madame President: The Extraordinary Journey Of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.” Helene Cooper joined us earlier this week in our Washington, D.C., studios. And I started by asking her to tell me what the prophet really said.

HELENE COOPER: What he said was (foreign language spoken). The literal translation is ma is her mother, who he’s talking to. The picken – picken is child. (Foreign language spoken) is what we say in Liberia when we want to say you’re pretty cool (foreign language spoken).

MARTIN: That’s interesting, though, that that was repeated to her throughout her childhood. And yet, you write in some ways her story at the beginning was all too familiar. For example, she was married very young and was physically battered. Can you just talk a little bit about that? And the fact that she was willing to talk about this is in itself remarkable.

COOPER: It is, although getting her to talk about it was like pulling teeth. I will say that she was married at 17 to a 24-year-old, much more mature. He’d gone to Tuskegee and come back to Liberia and spotted her at a party or something. And because at the time her family had a change of fortunes, it didn’t look like she could go to college. And so she went for the next best thing and got married to Doc, who she fell in love with, and then followed him to the United States when she got a college scholarship after having four boys, one after the other, by the age of 21.

She left the boys in Liberia with their parents and followed Doc to Wisconsin where she got a degree at Madison business college. And that’s where the trouble started between the two of them. He was very jealous of her studies, and he started to hit her then. They went back to Liberia, and the abuse continued until he threatened to kill her in front of their 8-year-old son Charles, which is sort of – was sort of the straw that broke the camel’s back for her, and she left him. It was a very interesting and not really normal start to her life and her career. She got a job at a very young age as a debt official at the Ministry of Finance, and that just sort of started her on her way.

MARTIN: She started to understand, you know, the economy of the country and what its needs were. How did her activism start?

COOPER: She was working at the Ministry of Finance as a very junior official when she caught the eye of this visiting economist from Harvard, and he was organizing this big economic conference in Liberia. I think it was, like, 1965. And he was really struck by her and asked her to give a speech at his conference. Now, his conference was a big deal. The president was there. All these high-ranking Liberian officials were there. And she struts up to that microphone and announces that the country has been taken over by kleptocrats. And they’re all looking at her like what the – I know you didn’t just stand there – and she completely took apart the government in this first speech to the point that this Harvard professor afterwards came up to her and said it might be a good idea for you to get out of the country. She left and went to Harvard and got her degree.

MARTIN: You know, we don’t have time to talk about all the amazing and horrifying things that she has seen, witnessed and done. But I do want to talk about the fact that I think many people may forget now that she was imprisoned for a year at a time when there was bloodletting going on, you know, all over the country. How did she survive that period when so many of her colleagues did not?

COOPER: She really is a cat when it comes to the number of lives she seems to have. In 1980, there was a military coup in Liberia. At the time, she was minister of finance. There was a military coup in Liberia. Samuel Doe and 28 enlisted soldiers in the army overthrew the government. They killed the president in his mansion, and within a week, they executed the vast majority of his Cabinet on the beach by a firing squad – everybody with the exception of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Now, there are two reasons why I think they spared her. They spared her because she was a woman. Women were to be raped, to be attacked but not to be killed like that in a public way.

And the second reason is because of all those speeches she had been making, complaining – in which she criticized the government. She was viewed by even people opposed to the government as having some street cred. So she was spared, and then Samuel Doe made himself president and invited her to join his government. She did so, but she only lasted a few months before she quit and realized that she couldn’t work for him. Five years later, she’s in Philadelphia. She gives a speech before a group of ex-pat Liberians in Philadelphia in which she calls President Doe an idiot. The next day, she flies to Liberia, and you can imagine what happened immediately (laughter). You know, they trotted her straight over to their mansion and put her under house arrest, and that house arrest quickly turned into real arrest.

She was in jail for almost a year, and that was a seminal period for Ellen Johnson Sirleaf because the first night that she was in that jail cell, there was a 19-year-old Gio girl who was gang raped by soldiers outside the cell. And then they threw the girl into the cell with Ellen. And Ellen is trying to comfort her that entire night, and she talks about this night with great emotion. You know, that, in many ways, for Ellen JohnsonSirleaf was sort of the moment that I think she realized that this is a country that she wanted to lead, to get to the point where this sort of stuff is not done to women. And that kind of fed the fuel of her women’s movement inside of her but also what became a women’s movement, you know, 20 years later.

MARTIN: One of her most remarkable achievements was getting Liberia’s immense debt, international debt, cancelled. How did she do that?

COOPER: She…

MARTIN: And I know that sounds so boring, but it is so important.

COOPER: And it’s so – it actually ended up not being boring because when she became president, Liberia had $4.7 billion in debt. It was apocalyptic. There was no electricity, no running water. The country was literally in tatters. One of the reasons why I say the smartest thing that Liberians collectively ever did was to elect her president is there is no other Liberian who is remotely capable of getting that debt forgiven like she was.

This is a woman who worked for the IMF, for the World Bank, for Citibank. She was a global banking bureaucrat. She worked for the United Nations. She knew how to play one international banking institution against the other. And that was a Herculean task, and she was able to do it in a way that no – certainly the football player who she beat for president in 2005 could never have gotten that done.

MARTIN: On the other hand, she’s been criticized for nepotism, giving her son’s high-level government positions. How does she respond to those criticisms?

COOPER: Well, those are all completely apt and real and true criticisms, and she deserves them. Corruption in Liberia is still endemic. It is a part of life in Liberia. She has not done enough to crackdown on that. She fires officials who are corrupt, but she doesn’t prosecute them. Nepotism – she’s pushed her sons and her defense of that, which I don’t think is much of a defense, is that she trusts them. She’s very good at taking criticism because we now have freedom of speech and freedom of press in Liberia to an extent that we’ve never had before. And you don’t have political dissidents being thrown in jail whenever they complain about the government. So Liberians have taken to this with delight.

MARTIN: What do you want the world to know about her that they perhaps do not know?

COOPER: I think Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is representative of African women everywhere who carry that continent on their backs, the women who are out in the fields while the men are out fighting and at war who are tending the fields and who are making market and who are being attacked all over the place and having the babies of their rapists and going back to the market stalls and tending – the economy of this entire continent I think is carried on the backs of these women. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is a representative of that, and what she stands for, I think, is the realization of these women that they can turn their economic power and their economic drive into political power.

MARTIN: Helene Cooper’s latest book is “Madame President: The Extraordinary Journey Of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.” She’s also the Pentagon correspondent for The New York Times and a Pulitzer Prize winner. And she was nice enough to stop by our studios in Washington, D.C. Helene Cooper, thanks so much for speaking with us.

COOPER: Thanks for having me, Michel.

Copyright © 2017 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.