Gaza Pressure On Israel, Texas Redistricting, NASA Carbon Dioxide Satellites

Israel's government is considering expanding the war in Gaza.

That's despite a growing chorus of voices in Israel calling for an immediate end to the war after 22 months.

What would be the military objective?

I'm Leila Fauldil.

That's Michelle Martin, and this is Up First from NPR News.

The governor of Texas has ordered the arrest of Democratic lawmakers who left the state to avoid voting on a redistricting plan, a plan designed to give Republicans more seats in the next election?

The governor has no authority outside his state, and Democrats say they won't succumb to threats.

Because it's Texas now, but it's going to continue through the rest of the states and it's going to kill our democracy.

And the Trump administration has plans to end two NASA satellite missions that collect valuable data about carbon dioxide for scientists and farmers.

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Israel's cabinet is expected to meet this week to decide on whether to expand Israel's war in Gaza, where more than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to health officials there.

That's despite the families of hostages being held there who say they fear ramping up military activity endangers the about 20 hostages still believed to be alive.

And Pierre's Emily Fang is with us this morning to explain more about this.

Good morning, Emily.

Good morning, Michelle.

It sounds like there is a lot of disagreement over what Israel's next steps in Gaza should be.

Absolutely, and those tensions are right in the public eye this week.

Ceasefire talks stalled late last month, and far-right elements of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's political coalition have been pressing for the full annexation of Gaza.

Now, NPR's own reporting has shown that Israel's senior leadership no longer thinks a deal with Hamas is possible.

I want to stress nothing militarily has been officially decided yet, but whether to pursue a bigger war in Gaza is pitting Netanyahu against the very well-respected chief of staff of Israel's military, who has taken steps that suggest he opposes extending the war.

Netanyahu, as you mentioned, is also pitted against the families of the hostages.

This week, militants in Gaza released videos showing two of those hostages horribly emaciated and begging for help.

And an organization representing some of these hostage families on Monday accused Netanyahu of, quote, the greatest greatest deception yet.

They said the public has been sold the illusion that military pressure will bring the hostages home when it has not.

And this urgency is reaching the United Nations.

At Israel's request, the Security Council is holding a briefing this afternoon on the hostages situation, and Israel's foreign minister is in New York for that meeting.

So what is the end goal in Gaza now?

Like, what military objective remains there?

That has been the ultimate question.

What is the end goal in Gaza?

Prime Minister Netanyahu has vowed, quote, a total victory, but would that be a pyrrhic victory at too great a cost?

Israel has already flattened most of Gaza and dozens of Palestinians a day are being killed from Israeli gunfire or they are starving to death.

And Israel's own military is strained by this long war.

It is running low on recruits.

It is financially under pressure.

And a little bit of recent history, Israel did occupy Gaza for a nearly 40-year period, but it was hugely expensive and deadly for Israeli soldiers.

And so the military occupation inside Gaza ended in 2005.

How serious is this proposal to reoccupy Gaza?

So a poll done by Tel Aviv University called the Peace Index found just this past July that about 45% of Israelis support forcibly moving Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip and almost 40% of Israelis support allowing civilian settlements in Gaza again.

But there's also real pushback and most notably multiple appeals from Israel's defense establishment.

They argue an occupation is just unsustainable.

Most recently, about almost 600 senior retired security officers signed a letter to President Trump this week calling for pressure to end the war in Gaza.

And perhaps the most powerful anti-war voices have been Israeli soldiers themselves.

One of these young soldiers named Ron Feiner gave this speech at a recent anti-war protest I went to in Tel Aviv.

He got huge applause.

He says the Israeli government does not care about the hostages rotting in tunnels.

They don't care about the soldiers dying in battle.

All they care about are fantasies of conquest.

Feiner spent 270 days fighting in Lebanon in Israel's military last year, but when he was called to fight in Gaza this year, he refused.

That is Empress Emily Fang in Tel Aviv.

Emily, thank you.

Thanks, Michelle.

In Texas, Republican leaders have threatened to arrest Democratic lawmakers or kick them out of the legislature unless they come back to the state house.

Yeah, Democrats fled the state trying to stop Republicans from redrawing the voting map.

The GOP is responding to calls by President Trump to make it easier to pick up five more Republican seats in the U.S.

House next year.

The House currently has a narrow Republican majority.

Joining us is Lauren McGahie of the Texas Newsroom.

She is based at member station KUT News in Austin.

Good morning, Lauren.

Good morning.

So let's talk about these consequences being tossed out there.

What are Republican leaders saying they are going to do to try to make these Democrats return?

Yeah, you know, Democrats are facing several threats for breaking quorum.

The most immediate is the threat of arrest.

So yesterday, the House voted to issue arrest warrants for the absent Democrats, and then Governor Greg Abbott authorized state troopers to round them up.

House Speaker Dustin Burroughs says the quorum break won't prevent them from redrawing the maps.

Let me assure you of this.

While our work may be delayed, whether it's tomorrow or next week, the House will complete its required duties.

Now, the tough part there is many of these folks are in Democratic-led states, and the troopers do not have the jurisdiction to pursue them across state lines.

Democrats will also probably have to pay $500 a day in fines.

And Abbott's talked about bribery charges for the support they get and even trying to kick them out of the legislature.

But, you know, I talked to legal experts that questioned his authority to do any of that.

So this isn't the first time Democrats have tried this kind of move in past years.

It hasn't been seen as particularly successful, although some lawmakers dispute that.

But either way, is it different this time?

You know, I think so.

Back in 2021, that fight was over a state voting bill, but Democrats didn't stick together.

The quorum break failed.

Now the fight is national.

On one side, we have Texas Republicans who are acting on President Donald Trump's request to redraw the state's congressional maps.

And on the other side are Texas Democrats, but this time they have allies from California to Illinois to New York backing them up.

You know, Texas STEMs feel like if they give up, it'll just be the first domino to fall.

Trump may then ask other states to redraw their maps too.

In Boston, Ana Hernandez, one of the lawmakers who left the state, told WBUR it's a threat to democracy.

Because it's Texas now, but it's going to continue through the rest of the states, and it's going to kill our democracy.

And I should note that Democratic states like California are talking about doing their own redistricting to counter what Trump's asking for here.

You know, this event really could just be the beginning of a years-long national battle over voting maps.

Could you just remind us of what the stakes are here for, you know, people running in these elections, but also for the people who want to vote in these elections?

Sure.

You know, voting maps, voting districts determine whether elections are actually competitive.

So Democrats say black and Latino districts are being targeted to dilute the power of non-white voices in Congress.

They say this rewrite is basically inherently racist.

Texas Republicans say this isn't about race.

It's about political parties and they're allowed to redraw maps that way.

You know, there are a couple weeks left in this special session, but the governor can keep calling more until Democrats return.

That is Lauren McGahey of the Texas Newsroom.

Lauren, thank you.

You're welcome.

The Trump administration is considering terminating two NASA satellite missions that measure carbon dioxide.

That's according to current and former NASA employees.

This despite the fact that the equipment in space is state-of-the-art and data they collect are extremely valuable to scientists and to farmers.

And parents Rebecca Hirscher is here with more to tell us more about this.

Good morning, Rebecca.

Good morning.

So why is the Trump administration considering ending these missions?

You know, we don't know.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and NASA didn't respond to my questions about this.

In a statement, the Office of Management and Budget only said that that office, quote, had nothing to do with NASA Earth Science Leadership's request for termination plans.

But here's what we do know.

We know that NASA staffers who work on these two carbon dioxide monitoring missions have been asked to draw up plans that NASA could use to terminate those missions.

And that's according to current and former NASA employees.

And if NASA were to put those plans into action, which could happen as soon as early October, one of the missions would likely burn up in the atmosphere.

So it would be completely destroyed permanently.

And there's nothing wrong with this equipment that we know of.

No, I spoke to a lot of scientists who use the data that these missions collect, and they all said everything's working great.

There are two missions up there.

They have identical equipment.

One has its own free-flying satellite orbiting the Earth.

That's the one that would burn up.

The second one is attached to the International Space Station.

And terminating that mission would just mean turning off the equipment on the space station.

These things they launched pretty recently in 2014 and 2019.

And an official review by NASA in 2023 found that, quote, the data are of exceptionally high quality.

And at that point, NASA actually recommended continuing the missions for at least three years.

And how much do these missions cost?

Well, here are some numbers.

So the two missions together cost about $15 million every year to maintain.

That's according to David Crisp, a longtime NASA scientist who actually designed the equipment that's on the missions and managed them until he retired from NASA in 2022.

And I asked Crisp to put that $15 million price tag in context.

The two missions together cost the American taxpayer about $750 million

to develop, launch into space.

So, yeah, that $15 million a year to maintain the missions up in space and get the data from them, it's a small fraction of the investment that's already been made.

And that's before you take into account the value of the data itself.

And what about the value of the data itself?

Who uses it?

Well, it's used by a really wide variety of people, and that's because of a surprising thing that happened with these satellites.

So they were designed to measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

They do that really well.

They're actually the only U.S.

satellites that were built to measure greenhouse gas.

So they're a crucial source of that information.

And they've revolutionized our understanding of how carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere, which is obviously really important for understanding climate change.

But these missions can also measure plant growth, which is totally unexpected and super powerful.

NASA has turned that into maps that are used for agriculture.

like to predict crop yield.

So farmers actually use this information as well and they rely on it.

Which is the kind of thing that happens with basic research, right?

I mean you research one thing and it turns out to have a whole other use, which you might never have expected.

That is NPR's Rebecca Hirschman.

Becky, thank you.

Thank you so much.

And that's Up First for Tuesday, August 5th.

I'm Michelle Martin.

And I'm Leila Faldele.

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