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Transcript:

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

Deb Haaland’s roots in New Mexico go back well beyond the founding of this country.

DEB HAALAND: My ancestors, you know, the Pueblo Indians were the first – essentially the first inhabitants of New Mexico and other parts of the Southwest.

MARTÍNEZ: Haaland counts with a few first of her own. In 2018, she became one of the first two Native women elected to Congress, alongside Representative Sharice Davids of Kansas. A few years later, then-President Joe Biden nominated Haaland to lead the Department of Interior, making her the country’s first Native American cabinet secretary. Now, she’s arguing her case to voters in New Mexico as she hopes to become the country’s first Native American woman to be elected governor. I recently spoke with Deb Haaland about her new memoir, “A Voice Like Mine,” and in it she looks back at the winding road from working at a bakery in Albuquerque to a life in politics.

HAALAND: I wasn’t raised to be a public servant. Maybe a public servant like my parents were, right? My dad was a Marine. My mom worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. She was a civil servant. But I just thought of running for office all on my own. And (laughter) so I, you know, want to…

MARTÍNEZ: But there had to be something that pushed you, that pushed you toward that, like…

HAALAND: Well…

MARTÍNEZ: …Yeah, this is something I got to do.

HAALAND: Well, I mean, in 2014, I ran for lieutenant governor in New Mexico, and it was a terrible year for Democrats. We lost in the general election, but after that, it made me want to run for state party chair of the Democratic Party of New Mexico so I could help us to get back on track.

MARTÍNEZ: So you’re one of the first Native American women elected to Congress. Do you feel that pressure when you think about what you’ve been able to do and what you want to continue to do in public service?

HAALAND: It is kind of scary, and I feel like it’s kind of my job to help people to recognize that they can do things, right? Yes, you can do it. You can do this. You can run for office. You know, we have more of a voice than we’ve ever had, but the struggle is real, and we need to keep doing that. That’s why I’m saying we need more voices at the table. We need more voices at the decision-making table.

MARTÍNEZ: When you led the Department of Interior, you did focus on things such as restricting drilling and moving away from leasing public land just for pure extraction. Your successor in the Interior Department, Doug Burgum, is the opposite – increasing oil, natural gas and mineral leasing on public lands. What does it mean, though, for the United States’ natural resources if the policies that manage them shift that much depending on who’s in the White House?

HAALAND: Well, it’s sad because when you see what they’ve done, working to suppress clean energy projects and so forth, clean energy increases folks’ opportunities for energy, right? And I’ll give you an example. When I was secretary, we put a lot of funding toward solar energy in a place like the Hopi Indian Reservation in Arizona. Many of those homes never had electricity. We can have a diversified energy portfolio if we will work hard to move our clean energy forward, as well. And that’s something that this administration is really working to hamper, and I just don’t think that helps communities.

MARTÍNEZ: Is there any way to have an ideology-free approach to manage federal lands?

HAALAND: I mean, I think that’s what – I mean, I think that’s what we tried to do. We brought people to the table and talked to them before we made decisions. We were able to get a lot of our clean energy projects across the finish line because we really had people at the table and listened to them.

MARTÍNEZ: Now, one of the things I saw in the book is your recipe for green chili chicken pozole. I know that food and cooking are a big part of your life. Why that recipe in particular? And I think you had other recipes in there, too.

HAALAND: Sure, sure. So the green chili chicken pozole I started making when I was in law school. I just, you know, thought up the recipe myself, and I would make it, and we’d sell it by the bowl in the…

MARTÍNEZ: Oh, wow.

HAALAND: …Forum of UNM School of Law. And so that’s why I included it there because it was a favorite of the law students in the class of 2006.

MARTÍNEZ: So – OK, I was wondering about that because I know that you run – you run marathons. First of all, are you still running? I know that you’re technically running for governor of New Mexico, but I’m saying, are you actually hitting the road, either the…

HAALAND: Yes.

MARTÍNEZ: …Pavement or the…

HAALAND: I am. You know, not as often as I’d like.

MARTÍNEZ: OK.

HAALAND: But I love running. It’s especially great if I can, you know, go to the foothills of the Sandias or the Bosque Trail in Albuquerque. And yeah, it’s very peaceful, right? You see a lot of – you hear a lot of birds early in the morning, and it’s just lovely.

MARTÍNEZ: You know, America is 250 years old, and for much of that time, Native Americans have fought for land, sovereignty and rights. And as you’ve mentioned in the book, you are a citizen of the Laguna Pueblo tribe of New Mexico. So wondering, Secretary, how do you reflect on the complicated legacy between the United States and Native tribes?

HAALAND: Yeah. Our country is all ancestral homelands of Native Americans, of Indigenous people, indigenous to North America. And we love our land, and we celebrate it every day, right? We don’t need an anniversary – 250th anniversary to celebrate. We – our – the bones of our ancestors are buried here. You know, we have an obligation to those ancestors. So, you know, when I think about the 250th anniversary of the United States, I think that sometimes we’ve regressed in the way we’re supposed to treat people. And so I hope that in our own individual capacities that we recognize what our obligation is as a United States citizen is to care for our land, is to care for each other. And that’s what I will – that’s likely how I will try to celebrate the 250th anniversary.

MARTÍNEZ: That is former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland. She’s the author of “A Voice Like Mine.” Thank you very much for joining us.

HAALAND: Thank you so much for having me.

(SOUNDBITE OF TOMMY GUERRERO’S “SUN RAYS LIKE STILTS”)

Transcript:

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

Fans sitting down to a World Cup match at Boston Stadium, typically known as Gillette Stadium, noticed little squares of blue tape on their seat backs, perfectly sized to cover up the name of the shaving company. That is just one example of how hard venues have to work to satisfy FIFA’s demand for no free advertising at the World Cup. Host cities must deliver what’s called a clean stadium – no logos, no ads for anything other than official FIFA sponsors. And in a world where stadiums are also billboards for brands, that can be a tall order. Here to talk about this is Andrew Rohm, professor of marketing at Loyola Marymount University.

So, yeah. These stadiums go through great lengths to try and make these changes. For example, San Francisco Bay Area Stadium, typically known as Levi’s Stadium, they go beyond just the signage on the outside. They’re actually covering the logos of the brand names of the ketchup bottles in the press box. That is quite the feat. So why is FIFA such a stickler about all this?

ANDREW ROHM: Yeah. I mean, what we’re watching play out in this World Cup is essentially a billion-dollar branding standoff. And I think the perfect irony here is that brands like FIFA have tried to silence the, you know, brands that actually may be getting more attention than some of the brands that are official FIFA sponsors that have paid to be there. So on one hand, we can understand the case for FIFA’s debranding policy. It’s rooted in commercial logic, like official sponsors like Adidas, Coca-Cola, Visa. They pay millions of dollars for their four-year partnership deals. So there’s this fairness argument that it would be unfair to allow a brand like Gillette to benefit from stadium exposure for free when a direct competitor, like Unilever, has paid for that exclusivity.

MARTÍNEZ: But if I’m, say, the leader of a company that has paid $200 million for a 20-year naming-rights deal with a stadium, I expect my money to get me something out of that. Why can’t all of a sudden I demand that I have my money’s worth for this?

ROHM: You bring up a really good point. And, you know, on the other hand, FIFA’s execution at this World Cup is bordered on the extreme, and that’s where its policy, its debranding, its clean-stadium policy begins to undermine itself. And I think the deeper problem here is what I would call the iron-fist paradox in brand control, especially today in 2026, with the spread – widespread usage of social media. The more aggressively an organization tries to suppress a brand, the more attention it draws to that brand. Using the example of trying to erase the Levi brand from its own stadium, in doing so, it actually handed Levi’s a global marketing opportunity and moment that money could never have bought.

MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. Same thing with Gillette, right? Because the Gillette company posted a computer-generated image of its logo on the Boston Stadium covered in shaving cream. So, I mean, some brands, I guess, that’s the whole point of what marketers do. You figure out a way around it and still get the same kind of bang for your buck.

ROHM: Yeah. I think the brilliance of what Levi’s and Gillette and others have done is that they have inserted themselves very organically or naturally into a cultural moment and a cultural experience. For instance, Levi’s didn’t just post about the way they covered their stadium logo. They took that same covered logo, and they went global with it, using it in stores in Paris, London, Hong Kong, in the same white covering. So you can cover the logo, but it becomes its own conversation.

MARTÍNEZ: Andrew Rohm, professor of marketing at Loyola Marymount University. Thank you very much.

ROHM: Thank you. Appreciate it.

MARTÍNEZ: And a note – Levi Strauss & Co. is a financial supporter of NPR.

Transcript:

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Advanced tools using artificial intelligence are changing the face of political satire. Colin Jackson of the Michigan Public Radio Network has this look at what the rise in AI-generated content could mean.

COLIN JACKSON, BYLINE: The Los Angeles mayoral race may have set the tone for AI content this year, with videos like a viral ad portraying candidate Spencer Pratt as Batman taking on California’s political establishment.

(SOUNDBITE OF POLITICAL AD)

AI-GENERATED VOICE: (As Marco Rubio) You can do it, Spencer.

JACKSON: Pratt’s not the only one portrayed by AI. Here’s a fake video making fun of Democratic Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and California Governor Gavin Newsom.

(SOUNDBITE OF POLITICAL AD)

AI-GENERATED VOICE: (As Gretchen Whitmer) Can you believe it’s been eight years already?

(As Gavin Newsom) I guess time flies when you’re getting rich off the taxpayers.

(LAUGHTER)

JACKSON: Again, that’s AI and not real. Michigan is one of 30 states that regulates the use of AI in election materials. Democratic state Representative Penelope Tsernoglou co-sponsored that law.

PENELOPE TSERNOGLOU: We didn’t exactly know how the technology would evolve or anticipate some of the, well, negative uses that people would come up with.

JACKSON: One of her concerns was fake content tricking voters into thinking a candidate said or did something they hadn’t. Instead, Michigan’s seeing more over-the-top satire. Think a Senate candidate made to look buff or a Republican gubernatorial candidate chasing down Democrats with a tractor…

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “FREE BIRD”)

LYNYRD SKYNYRD: (Singing) Lord, I can’t change.

(SOUNDBITE OF CRASH)

JACKSON: …Or a group of Republican candidates and insiders making puns about gubernatorial candidate Mike Cox’s name – again, not real.

(SOUNDBITE OF POLITICAL AD)

AI-GENERATED VOICE: (As character #1) Vote for Cox.

AI-GENERATED VOICE: (As character #2) Vote for Cox.

AI-GENERATED VOICE: (As character #3) Vote for Cox.

MATTHEW BIERLEIN: That could have easily been made to be a video where those same people look very real and say things that are serious but damning of their positions and their campaigns.

JACKSON: Republican state Representative Matthew Bierlein credits the AI law, which he also co-sponsored, for avoiding a worse outcome. That goal drove the policy group Public Citizen to help write Michigan and several other states’ AI election content laws. Michigan’s law generally requires disclaimers for AI-generated political content. It’s only been used once when a state Senate candidate sued over being wrongly portrayed.

Ilana Beller with Public Citizen worries about the normalization of AI material in our elections, especially when 20 states don’t have laws to stop what she describes as a nightmare scenario of AI tricks swinging an election. Plus, AI can be a double-edged sword, she said, where it provides a scapegoat for real criticism.

ILANA BELLER: It creates cover for actual bad actors who we do have actual proof of doing something wrong to say, oh, no, that video is fake. That audio recording is fake. I didn’t actually do that thing.

JACKSON: Scott Babwah Brennen directs the Center on Technology Policy at New York University. While not all AI-generated content in politics is parody, he sees those videos in particular as a continuation of a centuries-old tradition of political satire. He says it’s important to name what makes this moment different.

SCOTT BABWAH BRENNEN: It’s the scope, the scale, maybe, like, the speed at which these things can be done, maybe the realism, which is a weird sort of concept when you’re talking about things that are obviously fake.

JACKSON: Brennen says political ads usually don’t change voters’ minds about candidates, and he’s not so sure AI-specific laws are making all that much difference. For one, he says research has shown voters typically don’t notice disclaimer labels in ads to begin with. Brennen recommends lawmakers look at policies from a technology-neutral perspective.

BRENNEN: If we’re concerned about, for example, fake deceptive content, then it shouldn’t matter if it’s AI-generated or Photoshop-generated or an actor. What matters is the deception that’s happened.

JACKSON: So far, candidates embracing AI content have seen mixed results. There’s still a lot more campaigning to go until the general election in November. So voters can probably expect more AI content, and with it, some answers and clues about what the future of AI in elections could bring.

For NPR News, I’m Colin Jackson in Lansing, Michigan.

(SOUNDBITE OF DETENTE’S “MILLENCOLLIN”)

Transcript:

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

The push to eat local has grown for more than three decades, encouraging people to eat food from nearby farms and food producers. One woman in Appalachian Ohio hopes to do the same with clothes by building a regional textile economy. Here’s Amanda Pirani from member station WOUB.

(SOUNDBITE OF RAZOR BUZZING)

AMANDA PIRANI, BYLINE: Sweat drips down Gavyn Shumard’s forehead as he leans over a large sheep at the Hocking Hills Garment Center, a local textile manufacturing facility in Ohio. He does his best to keep the animal calm, despite the razor moving around its body.

GAVYN SHUMARD: Sheep shearing’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

PIRANI: He works for Altitude Shearing, one of about 400 shearing companies nationwide, and Shumard is in high demand as older shearers age out.

SHUMARD: One year, I sheared around 13,000.

PIRANI: In Ohio, the shearing business typically takes place in the northern area of the state, where there are more farms. Artist Lisa Heinz in southeast Appalachian Ohio uses local wool for her yarn and embroidery floss. Farms there are smaller and more spread out, so she says Shumard’s company was a rare find.

LISA HEINZ: Those established shearers from the North don’t generally come down here.

PIRANI: It’s one of many problems Heinz hopes to solve in her quest to make clothes local again. She’s the founder of the Southeast Ohio Fibershed. The organization helps tackle systemic challenges for textile production in the region.

HEINZ: We’re supposed to help identify what our resources are, find the gaps and fill those gaps.

PIRANI: More than half of the material used in clothes today, including polyester and nylon, comes from plastic and often ends up in landfills after only a few years. And Heinz, who sells locally sourced yarn, says there is a demand for something more durable and sustainable – a demand that could be met by cultivating sources for local fiber, like wool. She says most farms in Ohio raise sheep for meat, and they’re throwing away fleece that could be worth saving.

HEINZ: There’s use for this wool. It’s just – it’s an education piece of how to take care of your field so that the fleece remains good enough to do something with.

PIRANI: Over time, Heinz has built relationships with farmers who sell her their fleece, but there’s another supply chain problem to grapple with – a shortage of fiber mills that process wool into yarn. Lots of local mills shut down as a result of the pandemic. Now waitlists can stretch one to two years. So Heinz put some of her wool to other uses. In her home, a machine the size of a table uses hundreds of needles to compress the fleece into sheets she can use for products like pot scrubbers or boot liners.

(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINE RUNNING)

HEINZ: And then there’s these rollers. Let’s see.

PIRANI: In her dream scenario, the Fibershed will own its own mill one day and help farmers grow natural fibers like flax or hemp. For now, Heinz is focused on making connections. The organization recently held its first meetup earlier this year. Coral Wedel, a local fashion designer, attended. She says there’s a growing interest in producing clothes locally.

CORAL WEDEL: I think it is a movement, and I think people are interested in getting back to the community and back to the roots and really understanding how things work.

PIRANI: A movement that she hopes will inspire future textile makers to use natural fabrics that come from animals or plants closer to home.

For NPR News, I’m Amanda Pirani in southeast Ohio.

(SOUNDBITE OF HOW TO COUNT ONE TO TEN’S “PARALLEL”)

Transcript:

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Seaweed is washing up on beaches along Florida’s east coast, and local communities are spending millions of dollars to deal with it. Reshma Kirpalani reports.

RESHMA KIRPALANI: The sound of the ocean…

(SOUNDBITE OF WAVES CRASHING)

KIRPALANI: …Is now accompanied by the sound of tractors on Miami Beach.

(SOUNDBITE OF TRACTOR CHUGGING)

KIRPALANI: They’re scooping up big piles of a smelly, brown seaweed called sargassum.

MARCO PIERBON: These guys, the whole morning is coming and going trying clean up the beach, but there’s a lot. You know, it’s kind of ugly.

KIRPALANI: That’s Marco Pierbon (ph), a tourist from Argentina. He visits Miami once a year on his way up to Orlando for a volleyball tournament. He remembers seeing a lot of sargassum last year.

PIERBON: But I think this year is worse.

KIRPALANI: Researchers like Chuanmin Hu agree. He’s a professor of oceanography at the University of South Florida. Hu tracks sargassum using NASA satellite data. And he said so far, in the Gulf of Mexico…

CHUANMIN HU: What we have observed was a record amount of sargassum compared to history for the same time of year.

KIRPALANI: And June marked the second-highest year for sargassum in the entire Atlantic Ocean. Sargassum is a natural habitat for a lot of marine life. Originally, it was found in a region in the Atlantic Ocean called the Sargasso Sea, but in recent years, it’s been growing and shifting. Massive amounts are now stretching from West Africa to the Gulf of Mexico.

HU: Actually, I coined the name. I call this the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt.

KIRPALANI: Each year, pieces of that sargassum belt break off. Ocean currents carry them to the Caribbean and up Florida’s east coast. This year, some have even been spotted as far north as North Carolina. Hu says that global warming plays a role.

HU: The ocean has warmed on an average 0.1 or 0.2 degree per decade. You think, well, that’s pretty small, right? But for plants, this is a lot.

KIRPALANI: The rotten-egg smell and seaweed-covered sand can ruin vacations. Sasha Ravn (ph) lives in New Zealand. She’s visited Miami Beach with her daughter since 2021. But this year…

SASHA RAVN: Why would I come to swim and spend time on the beach if there’s all this seaweed? There’s no reason.

KIRPALANI: If nothing is done to clean up the sargassum, Florida could see billions in economic losses across tourism, recreation and fisheries, says Di Jin. He’s with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, where he’s studied the impact of sargassum. Fewer tourists, he says, leads to emptier restaurants and hotels.

DI JIN: So you have this economy-wide ripple effect.

KIRPALANI: That’s why Miami-Dade County spends millions of dollars dealing with the stinky brown seaweed, but only once it reaches its beaches. They can’t touch it while it’s in the ocean.

CHRIS BUMPUS: And that’s because the waters are either federally regulated or state-regulated.

KIRPALANI: That’s Chris Bumpus with the county’s parks department. He says that they’re not allowed to put up barriers to keep sargassum from coming to shore.

(SOUNDBITE OF TRACTOR CHUGGING)

KIRPALANI: Back on Miami Beach, six hours into sargassum removal, tractors have cleared several blocks, but a thin ribbon of brown seaweed still traces the shoreline. Pierbon, the Argentinian tourist, surveys the sand.

PIERBON: The whole beach – it’s really dusty with the sargassum. You can’t go to the sea right now because it’s really ugly, right?

KIRPALANI: He looks out into the ocean, where jewel-toned emerald water is dotted with floating patches of brown seaweed, ready to come ashore.

For NPR News, I’m Reshma Kirpalani in Miami Beach.

Transcript:

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

Raptors, such as hawks and falcons, are masters of the air, effortlessly navigating the skies. New research looks at how these birds compensate for lost feathers and provide insights that may inform aircraft design. Here’s NPR’s Ari Daniel.

ARI DANIEL, BYLINE: Alfonso Martinez-Carmena spent his summer vacations growing up visiting the wild areas of northern Spain, gazing upwards at a range of birds of prey.

ALFONSO MARTINEZ-CARMENA: You got, like, kestrels, and then you have the big size black vultures, even golden eagles.

DANIEL: He’d admire the birds for hours through his binoculars, watching them glide smoothly through the air, imagining the views.

MARTINEZ-CARMENA: You wonder what the views would be being that bird when you were a kid.

DANIEL: The raptors later inspired Martinez-Carmena to pursue his Ph.D. in aerospace engineering. But when he went on to become a researcher at UC Davis, he found his way back to the birds, eager to understand a raptor’s mastery of flight, even as it molts and loses its feathers.

MARTINEZ-CARMENA: With time, feathers may get damaged. So they may have gaps in their wings, in their tails.

DANIEL: These gaps alter the aerodynamics of the birds, yet they’re clearly still able to fly. And Martinez-Carmena wanted to know…

MARTINEZ-CARMENA: How are they doing it? What can we learn from them?

DANIEL: He teamed up with the California Raptor Center at the university to work with Jack, a majestic 14-year-old red-tailed hawk.

MARTINEZ-CARMENA: It’s a very, I would say, like, patient bird. From the very beginning, I think he behaved really well at my presence.

DANIEL: Martinez-Carmena installed four high-speed cameras to record Jack in the summer as he was molting and again in the winter, once he regrew all his feathers.

MARTINEZ-CARMENA: We wanted to reproduce the 3D trajectory of the bird, so looking at the tail, looking at the wings, different points.

DANIEL: He and his colleagues were interested in how Jack managed to fly between perches, an especially athletic aerial maneuver.

MARTINEZ-CARMENA: In which the bird approaches the target, and it has to slow down from whatever speed they were flying at to almost zero and precisely land.

DANIEL: The analysis revealed that Jack subtly altered his body to accommodate the missing feathers by positioning his wings closer together during a portion of each wing beat and angling his tail farther downwards just after taking off, allowing the hawk to perch successfully over and over, even while molting.

MARTINEZ-CARMENA: Understanding, like, how birds adjust their flight may help rehab centers to tailor specific exercises to strengthen those muscles.

DANIEL: There may be broader engineering lessons as well that could inspire alternative aircraft designs or suggest how an aircraft might compensate if it were to become physically compromised. The research is published in the Royal Society publishing journal.

LYDIA FRANCE: I really love this kind of work because you not only have to be really good at flight when you’re in tiptop condition, but you also have to be able to fly when there’s things wrong with you.

DANIEL: Lydia France is a flight biologist at the University of Oxford who wasn’t involved in the study. For her, the main limitation is the work’s based on a single bird, but she says it’s an important starting point and that molting is just one difficulty a bird may face when flying.

FRANCE: They might get wet from the rain. That adds a lot of weight. There may be mud splattered on them. The females may have eggs inside.

DANIEL: So it behooves birds like Jack to be able to flex their flying behavior, accommodating a forever shifting set of variables to stay aloft.

Ari Daniel, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF HAWKTAIL’S “IN THE KITCHEN”)

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MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

The U.S.-Iran ceasefire is over. That’s what President Trump just said from Turkey this morning. He was asked by reporters after the U.S. struck Iran overnight once again. U.S. Central Command said it launched the strikes to impose heavy costs for the attacks on commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

Iran said today it responded by targeting Bahrain and Kuwait. This is all happening while President Trump is not that far away from that region, attending a NATO summit in Turkey.

MARTIN: NPR White House correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben is in Ankara, traveling with the president and is with us now. Good morning, Danielle.

DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, BYLINE: Hey there, Michel.

MARTIN: So what exactly did President Trump say this morning?

KURTZLEBEN: Well, he was blunt. He said he considers the ceasefire finished, and he had more harsh words for Iran’s leadership after that. Let’s listen.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them anymore. They’re scum.

KURTZLEBEN: However, he didn’t quite say that talks are over. When a reporter asked him if talks would continue, he said this.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

TRUMP: I don’t care. They can talk, but I think they’re wasting their time. They’re a bunch of lying guys.

KURTZLEBEN: So long story short, things are pretty unclear right now. Now, meanwhile, Trump also criticized fellow NATO members in Europe for not assisting the U.S. more in their war with Iran, as he has done in the past. For example, he said, as he also has in the past, that he wants to cut off trade with Spain, though it’s not clear how that would work. Now, all of this said, President Trump often changes his mind, so we’re going to be watching to see what more he says about this ceasefire surprise announcement.

MARTIN: And this comes in the middle of what was already not an easy summit, so tell us a bit more about that, about the context of all this.

KURTZLEBEN: Right. I mean, there’s just a – been a lot of tension between Trump and NATO for quite a while now. Now, it’s worth mentioning that this morning, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte praised Trump for his action against Iran. But these strikes extend a conflict that European countries just didn’t want to be a part of. And now Trump, of course, has said that he considers the ceasefire dead.

Now, add on to all of that the other Trump-NATO baggage, which is considerable. The White House had gone into this summit prepared to continue pushing NATO countries to spend more on defense, as they have been pushing for throughout his presidency, and Trump this morning also repeated that he wants the U.S. to take over Greenland, so taking territory from a fellow NATO member, which doesn’t go over well with other NATO members.

MARTIN: But it does seem as though Trump has revived efforts to end the Ukraine war, recently speaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin. And I understand that he is meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. What can you tell us about those discussions?

KURTZLEBEN: Well, that’s happening this afternoon, actually, in a couple hours now. The president is scheduled to meet with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. But it’s not clear where things stand here. President Trump just before this trip, like you said, spoke to both Zelenskyy and Putin, and he came away saying that he feels really optimistic about ending that war. But when reporters asked him yesterday about why he feels so good – for example, what changed his mind? – he didn’t list any specifics.

Instead, he said then, and he said today as well, that the war affects Europe more than the U.S. and that it just doesn’t affect the U.S. that much, the idea being that Ukraine is just so far away. So Trump’s message here seems to be, hey, we don’t have to help. I just want to. So this afternoon after that meeting, we’re going to see what more he has to say about Ukraine. He has a press conference this afternoon, and you can imagine news might come from that.

MARTIN: That is NPR’s Danielle Kurtzleben, traveling with the president in Turkey. Danielle, thank you.

KURTZLEBEN: Thank you.

Transcript:

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

Now, let’s get into some of these tensions with longtime NATO watcher and European security expert Carl Bildt. He’s a former prime minister of Sweden and now the co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations. He also joins us now from his home in Stockholm. Carl, President Trump, as we just heard, said the ceasefire agreement with Iran is over, and the U.S. launched strikes against targets in Iran last night. What do you think NATO’s response should be to this?

CARL BILDT: I don’t think there would be a specific NATO response because this is not a war that is conducted by NATO. NATO is a defensive alliance for the territorial defense of the member states. This particular war was launched by Israel and the United States against Iran. Yeah, we have – from the European side, we are extremely concerned because it affects the global economy. It affects the European economy. But we have no direct role in either the hostilities or the diplomacy at the moment.

MARTÍNEZ: Mark Rutte thinks that NATO allies will reaffirm that Iran must never acquire nuclear weapons. Do you think that means that NATO will either not object or always look away when it comes to whatever the president has planned for Iran?

BILDT: Well, Europe will be sort of in a sort of difficult mood over it. I mean, there have been European diplomacy for three decades on the nuclear issue, which led eventually up to the JCPOA agreement, as you know. So the European position when it comes to a non-nuclear Iran has been firm all the time. But that’s also been the firm European position. This can only be achieved by diplomatic means. There is no military solution to that particular problem.

So when now this erupts into a military issue and open conflict, different sort of faces, as we’ve seen during the last few months, I mean, there’s deep concern, because at the end of the day, they have to sit down and reach a political accommodation and a political agreement, which has to include things like inspections in Iran. And you can never achieve that by a bombing.

MARTÍNEZ: Now, Rutte has deployed over the last few months, kind of a charm offensive in his approach to President Trump, I think that’s safe to say. How do you think he’s doing in what you even called a game of survival?

BILDT: It is a game of survival for NATO, and the route of approach has been to flatter Trump, perhaps somewhat excessively. I think that’s the view of most Europeans. But he’s done that in order to keep Trump on board, to prevent Trump from doing something like walking away from NATO or doing something that would be even more detrimental to the alliance. Whether that has worked remains to be seen. The Hague summit a year ago, well, it succeeded. We’ll see if this summit succeeds. I mean, the mood has now been, of course, very much affected by the upturn or uptick of fighting in the Middle East again. But Rutte is trying to keep the boat afloat by means that are somewhat debatable at times, I would say.

MARTÍNEZ: Debatable, or would you even call them embarrassing for him?

BILDT: Sometimes embarrassing, absolutely. I think it was very embarrassing for the organization as such when he said that we should see Trump as the daddy, and listen to daddy when he tried to lecture us. I mean, that is not the way we treat an alliance between equal partners across the Atlantic. So that was somewhat embarrassing. You might argue that Trump is a very special person. It requires very special means to keep him happy. But, of course, there should be limits even to that.

MARTÍNEZ: OK, quickly before I let you go, let’s turn to Russia’s war on Ukraine. Before the summit Vladimir Putin told President Trump he was looking forward to returning to the table to try and end the fighting diplomatically. Do you believe that Vladimir Putin really wants to do that?

BILDT: I think, obviously, that Putin wants to end the war, but he wants to end the war on his terms. And he has been trying to get Trump to press those terms upon Zelenskyy ever since Anchorage. And I think there’s been an element of sort of unhappiness in Moscow with the fact that Trump has not been coherent enough, I would say, to achieve that particular end. So we’ll see where this goes now. U.S. role is, of course, somewhat limited by the fact that all of the support to Ukraine now is European. That has meant that the leverage that the U.S. has is somewhat less than it used to be.

MARTÍNEZ: Carl Bildt is the co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations and the former prime minister and foreign minister of Sweden. Thank you very much for your time.

BILDT: Thank you.

Transcript:

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

France’s right-wing populist leader Marine Le Pen says she will run for president next year. That’s after an appeals court struck down a five-year ban on her political activity. She was convicted last year of embezzling European Union funds, but possible prison time was reduced to having to wear an electronic monitoring device. NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley reports from Paris.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST: (Speaking French).

ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: The verdict came as a surprise and has dominated news coverage. Le Pen’s party expected her to be ruled ineligible and was ready to nominate its No. 2, Jordan Bardella, as their presidential candidate. National Rally leaders huddled in an emergency meeting all afternoon before Le Pen appeared in an interview on channel TF1’s nightly news show.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MARINE LE PEN: (Speaking French).

BEARDSLEY: “Tonight, I’m announcing I’m candidate for president. I’m happy that the court gave the French people back their right to choose,” she said, calling the decision a victory for democracy.

The court also transformed the possibility of any hard prison time into the wearing of an electronic bracelet for a year or less, though it did uphold her conviction for channeling around 3 million euros in EU funds to pay for her party’s political activities in France. Le Pen continues to proclaim her innocence and says she’ll appeal again – this time to France’s highest court. That appeal delays the electronic ankle bracelet, allowing her to campaign freely.

Her political opposition was outraged. Leftist parliamentarian Francois Ruffin denounced the ruling and Le Pen’s decision on news channel BFM.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

FRANCOIS RUFFIN: (Speaking French).

BEARDSLEY: “Can you imagine General Charles de Gaulle being condemned for corruption and misuse of funds and running for president?” he said.

But Le Pen’s supporters were elated. They say she was unfairly targeted. She has lost to President Emmanuel Macron twice, but he is barred by the constitution from seeking another term. Polls show Le Pen’s National Rally Party has never been stronger, with the potential support of around a third of French voters. But the French political landscape is fragmented, and many are also questioning their justice system.

(SOUNDBITE OF SIREN WAILING)

BEARDSLEY: Out on his nightly walk, 75-year-old Philippe Renaud muses about the court’s ruling and Le Pen’s repeated appeals.

PHILIPPE RENAUD: (Speaking French).

BEARDSLEY: “Well, our system does seem to be working better than in the U.S.,” he says, “where President Trump’s actions seem to be completely shielded from any consequences.”

“But all our democracies are pretty much in the same boat,” he adds, “and the political divides are only growing.”

Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Paris.

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Transcript:

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

As the dust settles on the U.S. men’s team’s loss in their home country, World Cup fans of all ages may be asking themselves, why wasn’t it enough? The money, the talent, the home-field advantage. Why couldn’t a country where soccer is the most popular youth sport field a team that could compete with Belgium, a nation a fraction of the size?

Bill Hamid is with us now to talk about this. He was D.C. United’s legendary goalkeeper. He made eight appearances for the U.S. men’s national team between 2012 and 2020, and he now coaches at the youth and professional levels. He’s been where these players are and where their coaches are, too, and he’s with us now. Bill Hamid, welcome. Thank you for joining us.

BILL HAMID: Well, thank you for having me.

MARTIN: I have to start with what happened at the match against Belgium. It was tough to watch. What do you think happened?

HAMID: For me, honestly, for a team to be top 16 in the world, I have to tip my hat to them. You know, to have gone that far, to have advanced out of your group, won your group, I would definitely say, as an insider, that progress was really made. I definitely would call them winners.

MARTIN: Obviously, the elephant in the room is President Trump’s intervention in the red card issue.

HAMID: (Laughter).

MARTIN: Some people argue that it just changed the – sort of the momentum a bit. The U.S. went from being underdogs with international sympathy to underdogs with much of the world against them because of President Trump’s intervention. And so the question becomes, does that background noise get to you on the pitch?

HAMID: Bingo. One hundred percent. There was a certain level of, like, flying under the radar. The eyes are on the Brazils. The eyes are on the Argentinas. The eyes are on the Portugals, with Cristiano Ronaldo being that it may be his last World Cup. And once our president got involved, it kind of shifted the focus to now have all the eyes in the world and to now be sort of demonized, in a way. I do feel for the guys.

MARTIN: And also, the other question I had is because Balogun wasn’t expected – he was the player who received the red card – the expectation was that he would not play. It wasn’t decided until the day before that he would be eligible to play. And I just wondered was – whether those couple of days not being expected to be in the lineup, would that have changed something for the team?

HAMID: Just in terms of a team perspective, we’ve grown up our whole lives playing this sport. Your red card happens, you know you’re not playing the next game. So you start to mentally prepare from that moment. OK, now we have to play without this player. You think, OK, Ricardo Pepi’s going to step in and he’s probably going to do a great job for the team. He’s a great striker. We may be able to change up our game plan in a way where we can do it without Balogun. But now we got Balogun. So it’s such a bad stink, in my opinion.

MARTIN: You could make the case that the momentum of the game against Belgium really shifted after a mistake by the goalkeeper Matt Freese. He came out of the box. He couldn’t get back into the goal fast enough to defend it. As a goalkeeper…

HAMID: Yeah.

MARTIN: …Is that something that kind of strikes you in your gut yourself…

HAMID: (Laughter) Yes.

MARTIN: …And…

HAMID: Yes. I felt for him in that instance. It’s a heartbreaker from a goalkeeper’s perspective, and psychologically, I hope that he’s going to do OK because the noise right now is quite loud, not in his favor. It’s a popular thing in soccer to say, just looking forward to the next game. And that next match is the catalyst that kind of gets you out of that funk.

MARTIN: Women’s World Cup is next year. It’s 2027 in Brazil.

HAMID: Yes.

MARTIN: The American women are so much more dominant internationally than the men have been. Why is that?

HAMID: I would say soccer is little girls’ main sport. You see parents more willing to put their young daughters in soccer at an early age, 4 years old, 3 years old. And I have youth girl goalkeepers. Their parents are the most invested in when it comes to, we want you to train our daughter, and it’s like that all over the country.

MARTIN: So before I let you go, what would it take for the U.S. men’s team to get to the next level, to get past the round of 16?

HAMID: It’s going to take time. We’re still youthful when it comes to the real focus and investments in soccer compared to the rest of the world. But the education is also happening from a coaching perspective. So instead of having so many coaches that don’t know the game but your kids are on the field, now we’re starting to invest in educating the coaches. So the coaches are now giving these players the right information and the right tools to be able to grow their skill set, and that will grow the national team program on both sides.

MARTIN: Bill Hamid, thank you so much for talking with us.

HAMID: I’m so happy that I got to talk to you and see you again.

MARTIN: That was Bill Hamid. He’s a former goalkeeper for the U.S. men’s national soccer team.