Measles Outbreak, Foreign Aid Cuts, Bolsonaro Charges

Speaker 1 People around Lubbock, Texas are watching the spread of measles.

Speaker 2 Could it grow? Absolutely, it could.

Speaker 3 Other places have seen it too. So, what's behind the return of a disease health officials once thought they had eradicated?

Speaker 1 I'm Leila Faldel. That's Steve Inskeep, and this is Up First from NPR News.

Speaker 1 It's common for countries like China to criticize U.S. efforts to spread democracy.
Now, democracy advocates say the Trump administration speaks the same way.

Speaker 4 The geopolitical information warfare is no longer something that's happening halfway across the world, but is happening within our own governments.

Speaker 1 Who's gaining from that information war?

Speaker 3 Also, Brazilian authorities filed charges against a former president for a coup attempt. Do they put a former president on trial? Stay with us.
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Speaker 3 Measles is spreading across parts of West Texas.

Speaker 1 Health officials thought they had eradicated this disease 25 years ago, but it's occasionally returned most recently to five counties around Lubbock, Texas.

Speaker 3 Which is where we find Samantha Larnett of our member station KTTZ. Samantha, good morning.

Speaker 7 Good morning.

Speaker 3 What's it like there?

Speaker 7 There is a lot of anxiety around this. In the past week, measles cases have more than doubled.
We now have 58 confirmed cases.

Speaker 7 Here in Lubbock, it's just one, but it's the first one the city has seen in more than 20 years.

Speaker 7 Zach Holbrooks is the executive director of South Plains Public Health District, which serves Gaines County and Terry County.

Speaker 7 Outside of Lubbock, where most of these cases are being reported, he expects cases to continue rising.

Speaker 2 Could it grow? Absolutely, it could. We're trying to educate and get as much information out as possible so that people realize what the stakes are.

Speaker 7 A majority of the cases are among school-aged children, and the state health department says most of the measles patients are either unvaccinated or have an unknown vaccine status.

Speaker 7 Measles can be dangerous, even deadly, especially for babies and children.

Speaker 3 Okay, you mentioned vaccines there. Do health authorities feel they understand how this particular outbreak got going?

Speaker 7 Public health officials have described communities in Gaines County as vaccine hesitant.

Speaker 7 The vaccination rate there is just under 82 percent as compared to the state of Texas, which has a vaccination rate of 90%.

Speaker 7 Catherine Wells is the director of public health here in Lubbock, where there is that one case.

Speaker 7 And she says the process of confirming measles cases is a lot quicker in a city than in those remote rural areas like Seminole, which is an hour and a half away from here, where a majority of those cases have occurred.

Speaker 8 The quickest way to get that measles test done is in the state public health lab in Austin,

Speaker 1 which is fine when you're in Lubbock because we have overnight delivery to Austin.

Speaker 3 Okay, I guess she's saying that it's a little bit harder to catch up to this disease and track and isolate it when you're in some of the rural areas.

Speaker 3 I'd like to know, though, is this outbreak in West Texas representative of things going on around the country?

Speaker 7 Well, like Texas in the past month, there's been cases in Georgia, Rhode Island, New York City, and Alaska. And this is all coming as Robert F.
Kennedy Jr.

Speaker 7 is getting started leading the Health and Human Services Department. Kennedy was critical of the measles vaccine for years before he was nominated.

Speaker 7 Health officials say the vaccine is 97% effective at preventing measles even after exposure.

Speaker 7 Some of the people who are at risk are those with compromised immune systems, like pregnant people and babies under one year old who can't receive the vaccine. Dr.

Speaker 7 Ron Cook is the health authority for the city of Lubbock, and he says the vaccine is safe.

Speaker 2 I tell my pediatric moms and dads, if they get a rash after the MMR, it's okay. It's not measles,

Speaker 2 it's just your body's reaction to the vaccine.

Speaker 7 There haven't been any deaths so far with this outbreak, but providers are concerned about continued spread from those who might not know that they have measles.

Speaker 7 And MMR vaccines are available across the state.

Speaker 3 Samantha, thanks so much.

Speaker 6 Thank you.

Speaker 3 Samantha Larnett is a reporter with member station KTTZ in Lubbock, Texas.

Speaker 3 President Trump's drive to cut back the federal government includes cuts to a traditional tool against China.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the United States has promoted democracy and human rights abroad, and it's been seen as a way to counter the influence of authoritarian countries, especially China. Now, the U.S.

Speaker 1 is blocking those efforts as part of an effort led by Elon Musk, the presidential aide, who is the world's richest man.

Speaker 3 NPR's Emily Fang has covered China for many years and is on the line. Emily, good morning.

Speaker 9 Hey, Steve, good morning.

Speaker 3 Okay, so why would the administration back off democracy promotion now?

Speaker 9 Well, part of the reason given by Musk and other people close to Trump is that the agencies that fund these groups you're talking about are wasteful.

Speaker 9 Musk has accused specifically the aid agency, USAID, of being behind a, quote, hoax about Russian influence in the Trump administration without giving evidence. The U.S.

Speaker 9 has also paused human rights and civil society-related grants at the State Department. And the latest funding phrase I've been tracking is at the National Endowment for Democracy, or NED.

Speaker 9 Interestingly, some Republicans, like Marco Rubio, who is now U.S. Secretary of State, had previously seen groups they funded as essential to U.S.

Speaker 9 national security because they build soft power by promoting U.S. democratic ideals abroad.
But since Rubio's joined the Trump administration, he's defended these massive cuts.

Speaker 3 Okay, so this is worldwide, the effects of these changes, but a good portion of the funding was supporting Chinese dissidents, some diversity of opinion within China.

Speaker 3 So, what does China think of that?

Speaker 9 They have not said much publicly, but this is a huge windfall for China because these are all organizations Beijing found a nuisance.

Speaker 9 And I found signs that China is trying to co-opt some of these groups now. At least two human rights organizations that are China-focused but based here in the U.S.

Speaker 9 tell me they've actually been approached by people within the Chinese government, offering to introduce them to new China-based funders.

Speaker 9 And this has specifically happened in just the last few days since they've faced losing funding from the U.S.

Speaker 9 I also talked directly with a Chinese state representative who answers to the government there, who requested anonymity because they're not authorized to speak publicly.

Speaker 9 They reached out to at least one China-focused civil society group that is at risk of losing their funding and proposed to them.

Speaker 9 Instead of criticizing people and organizations in China publicly, perhaps they could facilitate private conversations with China to achieve social change.

Speaker 9 And one of the groups he was in contact with said, you know, this feels like a tactic to buy their silence, though the Chinese state representative argued to me it would be a more effective way for organizations to work.

Speaker 3 Wow, thanks for all that reporting. So what are some of these groups that risk getting their funding cut?

Speaker 9 They're the exact kind of the groups that China and other authoritarian governments criticize. These are women's rights groups, human rights research groups, legal aid nonprofits.

Speaker 9 One of them is New York-based China Labor Watch. It was started by a researcher named Li Tsiang, and his group investigates labor rights abuses.

Speaker 9 He says here he's chosen to go on the record with me because he left China when he felt he could not speak freely there.

Speaker 9 So he says now, if he stays silent on the funding cuts, what was the point of coming to the U.S.?

Speaker 3 Well, how does this affect Americans?

Speaker 9 Well, for better or worse, the U.S. is competing with China on social influence and soft power.

Speaker 9 And some human rights workers say they're worried about this convergence between how Trump administration officials talk about democracy and how governments like China describe it.

Speaker 9 Francisco Benkozme is USAID's former China policy lead.

Speaker 4 The geopolitical information warfare is no longer something that's happening halfway across the world, but is happening within our own governments.

Speaker 9 For example, Musk called NED a scam and then cited a story on X: a takedown of the U.S. Foundation from the Foreign Ministry of China.

Speaker 3 Emily, thanks so much.

Speaker 9 Thank you, Steve.

Speaker 3 That's NPR's Emily Fang.

Speaker 3 Okay, Brazil's former president could be facing a long prison sentence for his participation in what authorities say was an attempt to overturn the country's election in 2022.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Brazil's attorney general indicted the far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro, accusing him of plotting a coup to stay in power, as well as inciting violence and even approving a plan to poison the current president.

Speaker 3 NPR South America correspondent Kerry Khan has been following all of this. Kerry, good morning.

Speaker 10 Good morning.

Speaker 3 Wow. A coup attempt inciting violence, poisoning.

Speaker 3 What more can you say about these accusations?

Speaker 10 They're stunning charges.

Speaker 10 The standout points, prosecutors say that Bolsonaro and 33 others were, they said it was this vast criminal organization to keep him in power after he narrowly lost to the current president, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva.

Speaker 10 On top of that, there was also this outline to poison Lula, kill his vice president and a Supreme Court justice who Bolsonaro has feuded with.

Speaker 10 The idea was to create this constitutional crisis, and then the military would have to take over to calm any unrest, and Bolsonaro would be reinstated.

Speaker 10 Investigators say they even found a speech that Bolsonaro was to give once he was back in power.

Speaker 10 In the indictment, the prosecutor said that, quote, the plan was conceived and taken with the knowledge of the president, and he agreed to it.

Speaker 3 Well, the draft of the speech, I guess, would be pretty strong evidence, but what has Bolsonaro said about the allegations?

Speaker 10 He's always, always denied them.

Speaker 10 His defense did release a statement saying that the former president never, ever supported any movement to deconstruct the democratic rule of law in any way and called the charges a neft.

Speaker 10 In a statement to the New York Times, Bolsonaro went further saying the accusations are, quote, a weaponization of the justice system and jailing him as a desperate attempt to criminalize his political movement and silence millions of Brazilians.

Speaker 10 And if you're thinking the comparisons between Bolsonaro's case is similar to President Trump's false claims of the 2020 election being stolen from him, Bolsonaro did that himself.

Speaker 10 He said the legal fight against him is just like the same strategy used against President Trump, which he pointed out failed.

Speaker 10 The two men were close allies when Bolsonaro was in power, and supporters of Bolsonaro have been emboldened by Trump's return to power. They've been saying that the U.S.

Speaker 10 President is even going to help them bring Bolsonaro back. He's been barred from running for office for at least eight years.
His supporters in Congress are trying to get a bill.

Speaker 10 bill through to grant pardons to Bolsonaro's supporters who rioted the Capitol on January 8th of 2023. And they say they will get Trump's support.
They're hoping the bill will also apply to Bolsonaro.

Speaker 10 The Supreme Court here, however, has been one of the key institutions aggressively ruling against Bolsonaro and his right-wing movement.

Speaker 10 They've been overseeing investigations, even ordering the removal of social media posts that they say are anti-democratic.

Speaker 3 Well, these events took place almost two years ago.

Speaker 3 Had people been waiting for these charges a long time?

Speaker 10 Yes, they were. This has been a very lengthy investigation.

Speaker 10 Late last year, we got a glimpse of the evidence against Bolsonaro when police turned over their investigation to the Attorney General Prosecutor's Office. That report was nearly 900 pages long.

Speaker 10 It's based on testimonies, phone records, and also plea deals with close allies of Bolsonaro.

Speaker 10 Bolsonaro's running mate, also charged in the case, has been in custody as well as other close confidants of his.

Speaker 10 And there are also hundreds of cases against the rioters who were charged and tried for ransacking the Capitol on January 8th.

Speaker 3 Okay, so long investigation, plea deals, 900-page reports. Now we have the criminal charges.
Where do we go next?

Speaker 10 It's now up to the Supreme Court. They will decide whether they will arrest Bolsonaro and put him on trial.

Speaker 10 You know, such a trial like that could start this year, and it would definitely be an explosive political event in this deeply divided country.

Speaker 10 And if convicted of the charges, which are quite serious, Bolsonaro's sentence could be anywhere from 12 years to as much as four decades, Steve, in prison.

Speaker 3 And Pierce Carrie-Kahn, thanks so much.

Speaker 10 You're welcome. welcome.

Speaker 3 And that's up first for this Wednesday. And that's up first for this.

Speaker 3 We should have kept that in. I should have just kept going.

Speaker 1 Just a little hacking. A little bit of hacking.

Speaker 3 Exactly. Exactly.
Got to wake up. That's all there is to it.

Speaker 3 And that's up first for this Wednesday, February 19th. I'm Steve Inskeep.

Speaker 1 And I'm Layla Falden. Make your next listen, Consider This.
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