Trump Visits Kerr County, Trump And Putin, DOGE And Farmers' Data

Speaker 1 President Trump is headed to Texas today to meet with families affected by the floods.

Speaker 2 We're grateful for the support he's given us, along with other organizations.

Speaker 3 Hundreds of volunteers have also shown up to help with the relief effort there.

Speaker 1 I'm Michelle Martin. That's a Martinez, and this is Up First from NPR News.

Speaker 1 The cozy relationship between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin may be coming to an end. Trump's been increasingly critical of Putin recently.

Speaker 1 He publicly criticized Russia's conduct in the war with Ukraine and social media and lobbed some personal attacks at Putin. So, what changed?

Speaker 3 And an NPR investigation discovered that a single Doge staffer at the Department of Agriculture has the power to control government loans and payments to American farmers. Stay with us.

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Speaker 3 It was just about this time, exactly one week ago, that the magnitude of the flooding in central Texas began to come into focus.

Speaker 1 At least 120 people have died and more than 170 others are listed as missing. President Trump is heading to Kerk County, Texas today to see some of the worst damage firsthand.

Speaker 3 NPR's Frank Morris has been in Kerk County. Frank, what will the president be seeing and doing during his visit today?

Speaker 7 He's going to have a pretty busy afternoon here. A.
He'll be meeting with first responders who've been working non-stop for a week.

Speaker 7 Also get a briefing from local elected officials, then hold a roundtable discussion. And President Trump's also planning to meet with family members who are directly affected by this terrible flood.

Speaker 3 What do the people who live around there think about the president's visit?

Speaker 7 You know, I think most people directly affected by the flood have been too busy to really think about it. In Hunt, where some of the worst damage is, lots of people don't have internet.

Speaker 7 They do have a ton of immediate pressing problems. The government response has been forceful.
FEMA's in town, though the agency's acting director, David Richardson, has been absent.

Speaker 7 The Secretary of Homeland Homeland Security has been here along with other federal responders.

Speaker 7 The main road along the Guadalupe River is just chock a block with police and fire personnel, Texas game wardens and other.

Speaker 7 Adi Fell, who lives in Hunt, says she's delighted that Trump is coming.

Speaker 2 You know, we're grateful. We're grateful for the support he's given us, you know, along with other organizations, the governor.

Speaker 2 I feel like from what I've seen just being here, they've done an excellent job with response and help.

Speaker 7 Of course, there have been some complaints from residents who feel the response has been spotty. That's pretty common after these disasters.

Speaker 7 It's easy for a victim to feel ignored if they don't personally see a first responder.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Still, though, it is a major relief effort happening there.
So people whose homes are damaged, how are they faring?

Speaker 7 Well, you know, they're getting by with lots and lots of volunteers. I'm not talking about hundreds of people making food.
teams of volunteers searching for victims still.

Speaker 7 Volunteers cutting trees, volunteers operating shovels, and volunteers running heavy equipment.

Speaker 7 Bryce Flowers from Kerrville has been out here in the heat running his skid steer loader for 10 hours a day since the flooding, scooping up debris from people's homes.

Speaker 7 He says that hundreds of people from all over Texas and several other states are working just as hard.

Speaker 8 We've got groups that have made contact with us that we don't even know who they are. They've been down here for three or four days.
We still haven't even seen their faces.

Speaker 8 We've just communicated and directed them to the spot that needs the most help and they've just jumped right in and gone.

Speaker 8 So it's a huge, huge thing for people to come together, not just from our community, but from those around us.

Speaker 7 And of course it's a huge, huge job ahead of them too. The destruction along miles and miles of the Guadalupe Beaver is just breathtaking.

Speaker 3 And for a lot of those people, I mean, they're right there in the front lines trying to clean things up and doing their best to search for bodies.

Speaker 3 I mean, the psychological toll for them has also has to be pretty enormous.

Speaker 7 Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 7 Volunteers are out there there looking for bodies. Sometimes they find one and they're not in good shape.
I saw a community leader yesterday break down just looking at the river.

Speaker 7 You see people shoveling out houses with tears in their eyes. And all the deaths, at least 36 children, primarily little girls washed away from Camp Mystic.
That hits people.

Speaker 7 Alicia Strater is eight months pregnant with a girl. And Strater says she and her husband have been in a kind of limbo.

Speaker 9 We've been having a really hard week, you know, kind of coming to terms with hearing the little girls' names and then trying to be excited too about, you know, having a baby next month.

Speaker 7 Yeah, she says it's been really heavy for them. And of course, the psychological damage from a catastrophe like this can just linger on for years.

Speaker 3 MPR's Frank Morris in Central Texas. Frank, thanks.

Speaker 7 You bet, eh?

Speaker 3 From his first presidential campaign until today, President Trump has been more closely tied to Russian President Vladimir Putin than any other foreign leader.

Speaker 1 But Trump has been sharply critical of Putin in recent days. Has the relationship of the two leaders, some people have called it a bromance, now turned cold?

Speaker 3 For more, we're joined by NPR national security correspondent Greg Myri. So, Greg, what do you make of the president's shift in tone toward Vladimir Putin?

Speaker 4 Trump's relationship with Putin has clearly gone downhill since Trump came into office six months ago and has tried to do business with the Russian leader. Trump proposed a ceasefire in Ukraine.

Speaker 4 Ukraine agreed. But Putin keeps setting all sorts of conditions and has ratcheted up airstrikes on Ukraine to the highest level ever.

Speaker 4 Trump went from complimenting Putin to pleading with him on social media about the airstrikes. He wrote at one point, Vladimir, stop.

Speaker 4 And now Trump has moved on to harsh criticism this week, using some salty language about Putin and saying he's very nice to us all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but what does that mean then? I mean, is Trump going to start taking some concrete steps against Russia in support of Ukraine?

Speaker 4 Well, Trump hasn't committed to substantive actions, and he's always prone to changing his mind.

Speaker 4 He says he's considering sanctions, and in the Senate, Republican Lindsey Graham says he has more than 80 co-sponsors to sanction Russian oil sales. But what's more critical is the U.S.

Speaker 4 weapons pipeline to Ukraine, which is running low. The Pentagon appeared to be pausing weapons shipments to Ukraine last week, but then Trump said there was no pause.

Speaker 4 Here's what he said earlier this week about Ukraine.

Speaker 10 They have to be able to defend themselves. They're getting hit very hard now.

Speaker 10 They're getting hit very hard. We're going to have to send more weapons.
Yeah, defensive weapons, primarily.

Speaker 4 So Trump hasn't provided specifics, though NBC News says it spoke with the president by phone on Thursday and that he plans to sell U.S.

Speaker 4 weapons to NATO countries, which would then give them to Ukraine.

Speaker 3 This Trump-Putin relationship goes back a number of years. Can you take us through the history a little bit?

Speaker 4 Yeah, many people, of course, recall the controversy surrounding the 2016 presidential election and Trump's largely friendly relations with Putin during his first term.

Speaker 4 I actually go back to the late 1990s when I was based in Moscow and thinking about both of these men. There was periodic talk of Trump building a Trump tower in Moscow, though that never happened.

Speaker 4 And Putin, meanwhile, became the Russian prime minister in 1999 and very shortly afterward launched a war in Chechnya.

Speaker 4 So Putin and and Trump weren't linked to each other then, but those developments a quarter century ago do seem relevant today.

Speaker 3 Oh, how so?

Speaker 4 Well, Trump then and now was looking to make a high-profile deal with leaders in Russia, and he's seen Putin as a leader that will eventually come around and accept his offer, in this case, a ceasefire deal.

Speaker 4 And Putin, meanwhile, remains fully committed to a military objective, taking Chechnya then and taking Ukraine now.

Speaker 4 There's a strong perception that Putin has been stringing Trump along, pushing him as hard as he can in Ukraine, and waiting to see if Trump will push back.

Speaker 3 So Greg, if the Trump-Putin relationship has indeed soured, then what can we say about Trump's relationship with Ukraine's leader, Volodymyr Zelensky?

Speaker 4 Well, that relationship has stabilized, at least for now, over the course of recent meetings and phone calls. In his first term, Trump didn't get along with Zelensky.

Speaker 4 Trump's first impeachment was linked to withholding military aid to Ukraine.

Speaker 4 And of course, Trump basically kicked Zelensky out of the White House back in February after an argument over how to handle the war in Ukraine.

Speaker 4 Now, Trump's criticism, at least this week, is directed at Putin, not Zelensky. I want to stress this is a change in tone for now.
We'll have to see if it plays out as a change in policy.

Speaker 3 That is MPR's Greg Myri. Greg, thank you.

Speaker 4 Sure thing, eh.

Speaker 3 The Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge, is still hard at work burrowing into U.S. federal agencies despite the departure of Elon Musk.

Speaker 1 At the Department of Agriculture, one Doge staffer recently got a lot of power.

Speaker 1 He can now review and cancel tens of billions of dollars in government payments and loans for American farmers and ranchers.

Speaker 1 That's a group that makes up a big chunk of President Trump's political base.

Speaker 3 NPR's Jenna McLaughlin has the exclusive reporting. So, Jenna, tell us a little bit more about what you found about what Doge is up to.

Speaker 11 Sure, A. So, NPR has a team covering government restructuring, and we've been tracking Doge since February.
After seeing some of our other reporting, a source at the U.S.

Speaker 11 Department of Agriculture reached out to me. They told me that Jordan Wick, who's a young software engineer, he used to work for the self-driving car company Waymo.

Speaker 11 He got high-level access to this government system that controls billions of dollars in subsidies and loans for millions of U.S. farmers and ranchers.

Speaker 3 Where does that government system live?

Speaker 11 So, it's at a part of the USDA called the Farm Service Agency. Think of it kind of like the agency's bank.

Speaker 11 They do loans, but they also dole out money for disaster relief, like if there's a big storm or during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Speaker 11 Basically, it's a lot of sensitive data, and that's part of why the source asked to be anonymous.

Speaker 3 Okay, now you found out that Jordan Wick is in that system, so what can he do with all that access?

Speaker 11 Turns out a lot. He can see all the sensitive personal and financial data, but he can also write onto the system.
That means he can change information. He can basically cancel loans if he wants.

Speaker 11 That's in line with a memo that went out to USDA staffers announcing that Doge would be reviewing a big chunk of loans to farmers. Basically, it's a really powerful level of access.

Speaker 11 My source says no other individual at USDA has it. It goes against access control policies for employees.

Speaker 11 That same level of access for Doge at agencies like Social Security and the Treasury Department. It's been challenged in the courts a couple times.

Speaker 11 A USDA spokesperson confirmed to us that Wick and others on the so-called efficiency team are now full-time USDA employees.

Speaker 11 The spokesperson continued to say that they're working to fulfill President Trump's executive order to find fraud.

Speaker 3 Canceling loans, is Doge really doing that or messing with this database?

Speaker 11 It's a really hard question to answer, but not yet. I spoke to Scott Marlowe, who used to run FSA programs under President Biden.

Speaker 11 He said that unless the farmers are keeping a very close eye on their files with USDA, it might actually be really hard to figure out what went wrong or why they aren't being paid.

Speaker 11 Actually, some payments are seasonal, so they aren't even issued very often.

Speaker 11 Meanwhile, the source says there aren't really any safeguards or controls that would keep track of what WIC and Doge are up to in the system.

Speaker 3 Wow, that could sound problematic. Jenna, do we know how farmers and ranchers are feeling about all this?

Speaker 11 Honestly, it's a tough time to be a farmer in general. There's tariffs, cuts to government programs, ongoing climate-related disasters, and so much more.

Speaker 11 But specifically related to some of this news, I spoke to Zach Duchenau. He's the former head of the FSA under President Biden.
He's also a rancher from South Dakota.

Speaker 11 His family has had a ranch on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation for decades. He summed it up pretty succinctly.

Speaker 7 The challenge that our producers are facing is

Speaker 3 uncertainty.

Speaker 11 He tells me that having inexperienced people come in and hold up or threaten farmers' loans, that only adds to the uncertainty and could disrupt entire growing seasons or wipe out small farms.

Speaker 3 Wow, that's NPR's Jenna McLaughlin. Jenna, thank you.

Speaker 11 Thanks, Dave.

Speaker 3 And that's Up First for Friday, July 11th. I'm A.
Martinez.

Speaker 1 And I'm Michelle Martin. The Trump administration is pushing to bring manufacturing back to America.
But what happens when one multinational company actually tries to set up shop in small town, USA?

Speaker 10 Nobody in their right mind ever thought that it would get this bad.

Speaker 3 This week in an upfirst, how a battery factory ignited a political firestorm and what happens when the global economy meets small-town democracy.

Speaker 1 Tune into the Sunday story right here in the Up First podcast.

Speaker 3 Today's episode of Up First was edited by Russell Lewis, Andrew Sussman, Janea Williams, and Adriana Gallardo. It was produced by Ziad Buch, Nia Dumas, and Christopher Thomas.

Speaker 3 We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott. Our technical director is Zach Coleman, and our executive producer is Jay Shaler.
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