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Transcript:

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

President Trump is attending a NATO summit in Turkey today. Speaking this morning at a meeting with the Turkish president, he reiterated his call for the U.S. to take control of Greenland. For NATO officials, this was yet another reminder of the tricky balancing act they face as they work to ensure U.S. support for the alliance amidst Trump’s ongoing criticism of its value. But in the meantime, NATO members are also eager to emphasize business continues as usual, as WHRO’s Steve Walsh found during a recent training exercise.

STEVE WALSH, BYLINE: About a week ago, the French naval vessel Dixmude was sailing off the North Carolina coast near Camp Lejeune.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: OK, be careful.

WALSH: The Navy called it the largest exercise ever held in the western Atlantic.

THOMAS: We deploy, as we see, with the Spanish, French and American amphibious ships for exercise. OK?

WALSH: Thomas is a French officer. French military policy is to only release first names. He says NATO partners are working closely together as they conduct beach landings and simulate handling mass casualties. But asked about the relationship between President Donald Trump and France’s Emmanuel Macron, Thomas is more circumspect.

THOMAS: In French military, we don’t say politics. So I don’t have an opinion on that one, OK? Sorry for that one. I think you know – I think military is the same for USA, so we don’t talk politics.

(SOUNDBITE OF HORN TRUMPETING)

WALSH: The Dixmude is carrying 160 officers in training from 16 different countries, including from the U.S. Navy. They spent two weeks off the coast of Norfolk. U.S. Admiral Doug Perry ran the exercise as head of NATO’s Joint Forces Command – Norfolk. He, too, was just as diplomatic.

DOUG PERRY: While we have challenges of sorting where we’ve been in the past to what we need to be capable of doing in the future, we are stronger than we’ve been in years. I don’t get involved in politics.

WALSH: But NATO is trying to adapt to the political climate created by the Trump administration. Soon after Perry leaves in September, a British commander will take over as head of the NATO command in Norfolk, which covers the Atlantic and the High North, including Greenland. It’s a literal example of the Europeans taking a more direct role in the alliance. News of the change in command came during the 2025 NATO summit after President Trump declared that the U.S. may take Greenland by force. Matthew Kroenig is vice president at the Atlantic Council.

MATTHEW KROENIG: That was really unprecedented, the idea that a NATO ally would attack another NATO ally and really not just any NATO ally, but the United States, the leader of the alliance. And so that really – I think it’s hard to underestimate how much that shook European leaders.

WALSH: The U.S. is reviewing the amount of forces available to Europe. As members prepare to meet in Turkey this week, there is hope among NATO leaders that the rhetoric is designed to push Europe to spend more rather than force a break in the alliance, Kroenig says. Ian Brzezinski, a resident fellow at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, is not so sure. He fears the Trump administration may have other reasons to push allies to spend 5% of GDP on defense.

IAN BRZEZINSKI: Basically using burden sharing as a camouflage to hide the real intent, which is to have an absolutely minimal posture in Europe.

WALSH: Back in Norfolk, for the last day of the Navy training exercise, Captain Wolfgang Eckmuller, commander of the German frigate FGS Sachsen, says the alliance is stepping up.

WOLFGANG ECKMULLER: Absolutely. I think it’s already happening. If you look at Germany, we boosted our defense budget by five times. And that’s quite a huge thing in Germany. We’re building so many frigates right now, and that’s really impressive.

WALSH: Whether it’s enough will be one of the questions answered in Turkey this week.

For NPR News, I’m Steve Walsh in Norfolk, Virginia.

(SOUNDBITE OF MINUTEMEN’S “COHESION”)

Transcript:

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

The Natural Resources Conservation Service is another entity keeping farmers in business. The federal agency helps farmers protect soil and water. It has been around since the dust bowl in the 1930s. But nearly a quarter of its staff was cut last year. There might be more losses coming. Eva Tesfaye with WWNO in New Orleans reports on what that means for farmers.

EVA TESFAYE, BYLINE: River Queen Greens lies next to the Mississippi River just outside of the levee, a 20-minute drive from downtown New Orleans. The farm produces certified naturally grown vegetables. But summer is the farm’s off season, which means it’s time for cover crops. Annie Moore is a co-owner. She points out a field of sunflowers that has already grown up to our shoulders.

ANNIE MOORE: We get a huge amount of plant material over, like, two or three months, and it makes a really big difference for – like, every year we come back, and the soil is so much improved in the fall.

TESFAYE: Cover crops go on the fields between plantings of the regular cash crop. They trap nutrients in the soil and help prevent weeds so that the farm doesn’t have to use chemical fertilizer or herbicides. But farmers don’t sell cover crops, so they don’t make money off of them directly, which is why farms like this rely on the Natural Resources Conservation Service, or NRCS, to pay for cover crop seeds. But Moore says, in the last year, it’s become harder for farmers in the New Orleans area to get help.

MOORE: For a brief shining moment, there was an NRCS representative in New Orleans. He was just part of the community here, which was really special to have that.

TESFAYE: In the first six months of last year, NRCS lost more than 2,500 of its 12,000 employees, and there was a threat of more cuts when the USDA proposed to eliminate another 3,000 employees next year. Here in Louisiana, that would have meant going from 37 full-time employees to just five for the entire state. The USDA said in a statement it would ensure NRCS still had the resources and personnel it needed, even with the cuts. But farmers weren’t buying it. Stephen Logan grows cotton, corn, soybeans and peanuts in northwest Louisiana. He says his family’s farm has been relying on NRCS’ experts for generations.

STEPHEN LOGAN: It’s important to have personnel, you know, available that know your farm and that can come and look at your farm because just to get on a computer and click on practices, I mean, there’s a lot more to it than that.

TESFAYE: Much of NRCS is made up of scientists and engineers. A big part of their jobs is visiting farms to make sure the conservation practices are done right. Andy Brown is the public policy director at the Louisiana Farm Bureau, which advocates for farmers. He says a lot of that institutional knowledge has been lost, not just in the last two years, but over the last 20 as people have retired.

ANDY BROWN: It’s not as easy for NRCS to just go get Joe Blow (ph) off the street and expect them to be able to provide technical assistance to farmers who are already pretty well experts in those things.

TESFAYE: NRCS offices are one of the main ways that farmers work with the USDA. Its programs are also popular with farmers, and Brown says they’ve called their representatives about the cuts.

BROWN: We have heard from our membership that there has been difficulty getting the assistance they’re looking for in a timely fashion. So we have fought back. We have a voice. We think that’s a little deeper cut than we really want to see.

TESFAYE: The agency’s fate now depends on an agriculture appropriations bill. It puts about $600 million back into NRCS, which would mean a smaller staff cut. It still needs to clear the Senate.

For NPR News, I’m Eva Tesfaye in New Orleans.

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Transcript:

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

Graham Platner was once seen as the key to Democrats flipping enough seats to retake the U.S. Senate. Now, Democratic Party leaders are withdrawing their endorsements and calling for him to drop out of the Senate race in Maine. Yesterday, Politico reported that a woman he once dated accused him of sexual assault. Platner denied the accusation and said, quote, “any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically untrue.” But this news came after other reports of unsettling behavior from women who previously dated Platner and an extramarital sexting scandal. So where does the race go from here? For that, we called Adam Jentleson. He’s a Democratic strategist and the founder and president of the Searchlight Institute, a liberal think tank. Thanks for coming by, Adam.

ADAM JENTLESON: Thanks for having me.

DETROW: Is this campaign viable anymore?

JENTLESON: No, it’s absolutely not. I’m surprised Platner hasn’t dropped out already. Maybe he drops out by the time this segment is over. But he’s gone, and, you know, the sooner, the better so – because Maine Democratic Party rules do allow the party to select a replacement as long as he drops out before Monday. So the clock is ticking. I think, you know, Democrats still have a great chance to win this seat if he drops out, so, you know, he should get out sooner rather than later.

DETROW: Platner had a lot of support from Democratic voters, even amid all those other scandals. What to you is the least terrible way to quickly choose a new nominee who the voters didn’t get behind?

JENTLESON: I think you have to figure out a claim to legitimacy for this new nominee. You know, we saw how, you know, not actually being elected by voters dogged Kamala Harris as the nominee when she was picked by, you know, essentially party insiders to be the nominee. You know, she was vice president, but she was – she did not win the Democratic nomination in the traditional way. So I think you got to apply the same standard here. You know, there were seven Democratic candidates who ran for two statewide slots about a month ago in the primary, right? There was the race for senator, and there’s the race for governor.

DETROW: Yeah.

JENTLESON: In those seven candidates, there are a lot of credible nominees, all of whom, I think, would have a solid chance at beating Susan Collins. The only one who can’t is Platner himself. You know, and all of them would have some claim to legitimacy because a lot of people cast their votes for them. I think, you know, holding a convention that you have to plan in less than a month and then, you know, crafting rules and bylaws that everybody agrees to, you could make it work, but it’s – you know, if you use subjective standards to choose the nominee at that convention, I think you’re going to run into a lot of trouble and you run a real risk of leaving the party divided, which would be a real disaster as we head into the general election against Susan Collins.

DETROW: Well, that’s what I want to ask about because a big part of Platner’s strength was that he was not an establishment figure. He did not come up in politics in any way at all, and that really appealed to voters in a way that we’ve seen in a bunch of states right now. I mean, how do you get those people who supported Platner to be on board with a mainstream politician who is chosen one way or another through a very quick process that isn’t as open as a regular primary?

JENTLESON: Well, I think there’s risk in overstating that case, to be honest with you. I think, you know, the primary that Maine had a month ago was sort of a split screen, right? Because, you know, on the Senate side, you had people casting their vote for Platner, who, as you say, is an antiestablishment politician. But on the governor side, on the same day, those voters went to the polls and elected Chellie Pingree, who’s – or, excuse me, Hannah Pingree, the daughter of Chellie Pingree, who is, you know, an establishment politician. You know, she’s wonderful. I think she’s going to be a great governor, and I think she’s got a great chance to win, you know? But she wasn’t an antiestablishment candidate, you know?

And when you look at the votes, you know, about 156,000 Mainers cast their votes for Graham Platner, you know? And the guy who is sort of positioned as the antiestablishment candidate, you know, who Graham is trying to, you know, railroad through as his replacement, Troy Jackson, only got about, you know, 45,000 votes. So 100,000 Mainers voted for Graham Platner but then supported either Hannah Pingree or Nirav Shah, as well.

DETROW: Adam, let me…

JENTLESON: So a lot of those same people who voted for him also supported some of the more estabishment politicians.

DETROW: I want to make sure we have time for one more thorny question with all of this. I’m wondering if you think the Democratic Party, the party that embraced MeToo, that talked about believing women, do you think it lost credibility or moral authority by sticking with Platner through all of the scandals leading up to this moment?

JENTLESON: Not if they get rid of him. I think, you know, one of the things the Republicans did is when they were faced with these questions, they stuck with them. They stuck with Trump. They stuck with Matt Gaetz. They stuck with any number of nominees after knowing deeply immoral things about them. So as long as we take care of business here and replace him with somebody we can all get behind, I think we can hold our heads high.

DETROW: And in 30 seconds or less, you still think Susan Collins is beatable?

JENTLESON: I absolutely do. You know, this is a very favorable national environment for Democrats. Trump’s numbers are terrible. Susan Collins has been, you know, a die-hard supporter of Trump time and again. She’s lost her independent streak. You know, we just have to get somebody in this race who can just, you know, be normal and, you know, make the case and prosecute the case against Susan Collins. And in that case, I think this seat is still very winnable.

DETROW: Put be normal on a bumper sticker. That is Adam Jentleson, Democratic strategist, founder of Searchlight Institute think tank. Thanks so much.

JENTLESON: Thank you.

Transcript:

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

President Donald Trump upended U.S. international food aid weeks after taking office. Farm-state lawmakers have since revived the country’s flagship hunger program, Food for Peace. But as Harvest Public Media’s Frank Morris reports, senators face a major decision about who will run the restructured program and whether its mission is primarily to feed hungry people or to help U.S. farmers.

FRANK MORRIS, BYLINE: The idea at the heart of Food for Peace came from a Kansas farmer more than 70 years ago, and it still has lots of support in wheat country.

MERRILL NIELSEN: It helps poorer people in the world that aren’t able to produce what they need to. And the other thing is it allows us to sell some of our crops that normally we wouldn’t have a market for.

MORRIS: Merrill Nielsen, who farms in north-central Kansas, says Food for Peace has helped to keep him in business for half a century. But on the day Trump took office, he stopped all foreign aid. Two weeks later, USAID, the agency that ran Food for Peace, went dark.

NIELSEN: It was a blow to us because the market realized – and these crops, whether it was wheat or milo, were going to be stored somewhere and be hanging over the market, which lowered the price of our crop that we could sell.

MORRIS: It also halted food shipments to millions of desperately hungry people around the globe. Days later, farm-state politicians like Kansas Senator Jerry Moran, a Republican, and Kansas Congresswoman Sharice Davids, a Democrat, launched an effort to revive Food for Peace at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

SHARICE DAVIDS: Food for Peace doesn’t just support the folks who need the food. Yes, it does that, absolutely, and Kansas farmers are proud of that legacy. But it also helps keep our farmers’ products in demand.

MORRIS: USDA certainly knows how to buy food. Food for Peace is spending $450 million on U.S. grain to ship overseas. But Dina Esposito, who led Food for Peace for six years, says there’s no evidence that USDA knows how to deliver aid.

DINA ESPOSITO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, it’s important to understand, has no humanitarian mandate. It has no humanitarian experts to determine how best to direct the food to save the most amount of lives, to monitor the programs and hunger hotspots.

MORRIS: Esposito says USDA is bypassing some of the most intense hotspots like Sudan, where 21 million people face starvation, according to the United Nations. In a statement, USDA said that Food for Peace allocations focus on regions where U.S. commodities can be delivered and monitored most effectively while ensuring strict accountability reforms and that the agency has been returned to its core function of delivering lifesaving food assistance while prioritizing American farmers. USDA has so far bought nothing but U.S. commodities. It’s pledged to deliver at least half its food relief through U.S. shippers. That’s good for American farmers and shipping companies, but Esposito says it’s bad for program efficiency, which means that fewer people get to eat.

ESPOSITO: The way the program is done and where the food goes is absolutely critical. It is a lifeline for a hungry child in a refugee camp or in a war zone. And that assistance is the difference between life and death for that child.

MORRIS: But ag industry support could mean the difference between life and death for Food for Peace. President Trump’s proposed budget would zero out funding for the program. The House passed a farm bill in April which includes permanently placing Food for Peace at USDA under the shield of powerful agricultural interests. But a Senate committee released its draft of the legislation June 23, and it does not include placing Food for Peace under USDA. Kansas Wheat Commission President Chris Tanner wants the agency transferred permanently to USDA. But he admits that Food for Peace is under the microscope.

CHRIS TANNER: I think they’re on a short leash right now in the fact that, you know, they have a couple years to make sure that they have the staff and a way to implement it that is effective. And I hope that they do it well and do it right.

MORRIS: Because if they don’t, a program dating back to the Eisenhower administration that’s fed some 4 billion people in 150 countries may come to an end. For NPR News, I’m Frank Morris in Kansas City.

(SOUNDBITE OF CURTIS MAYFIELD’S “THINK (INSTRUMENTAL)”)

Transcript:

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

Data centers are popping up all over the rural South and the Midwest, where researchers say three-quarters of new data center construction is planned. Harvest Public Media’s Abigail Bottar reports that along with the boom, there’s a corresponding rush of legislation from local and state governments trying to regulate the industry.

ABIGAIL BOTTAR, BYLINE: More than 100 people packed into tight chambers for a county board meeting in central Illinois this spring when a data center issue was on the agenda.

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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: All right. Thank you. I’m going to call this meeting of the Champaign County Board to order.

BOTTAR: Dozens of people, including Elizabeth Kirby, came to voice concerns about the massive amounts of water and energy data centers use.

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ELIZABETH KIRBY: We have an energy crisis right now. We’ve been talking about energy. We’re all, let’s fight fossil fuels. Let’s get rid of fossil fuels. And yet, we’re building AI data centers so that they can summarize my email chains.

BOTTAR: The county board hit pause and unanimously passed a one-year moratorium. In Festus, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, residents voted out half of the city council after it approved a $6 billion data center deal. Rick Belleville is one of the newly elected council members.

RICK BELLEVILLE: When somebody comes to town and says, hey, we’re going to give you millions of dollars, and we’re going to build a data center, then you need to slow down and get a full understanding of how the whole thing is going to affect their community.

BOTTAR: It’s not just local governments. Lawmakers in more than 20 states, from Ohio to Kansas, introduced bills this year to add guardrails to data center development.

DAVE OWEN: I don’t think really anybody foresaw how much of a popular backlash there would be against data centers.

BOTTAR: That’s Dave Owen, a law professor at the University of California San Francisco, who studies the energy impacts of data centers.

OWEN: So even, you know, a year and a half ago, a lot of state and local governments were very eagerly trying to court data centers.

BOTTAR: Currently, 38 states offer dedicated incentives meant to attract data centers, but several states are reconsidering. In Illinois, Governor JB Pritzker praised the passage of tax incentives for data centers in 2019. But at his State of the State speech this year, he changed his stance.

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JB PRITZKER: In the face of rising demand and surging prices, I’m proposing a two-year pause on authorization of new data center tax credits.

BOTTAR: He’s implementing that pause starting July 1. Several other states are considering a full repeal of their data center incentives. In Michigan, State Representative Dylan Wegela, a Democrat, cosponsored legislation with a Republican to repeal incentives that went into effect last year.

DYLAN WEGELA: As people especially have started to see the bipartisan local pushback, a lot of legislators have changed their mind on this.

BOTTAR: But Michigan’s governor still supports data centers. That’s one reason Wegela doesn’t think his bills will pass, but he hopes communities will take up the effort and pass their own restrictions. That’s a heavy weight for individual communities to bear, says Jonathan Coppess. He’s a professor of agricultural policy at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

JONATHAN COPPESS: I do think it’s a really difficult thing, even for states. Water flows, electricity flows across state lines.

BOTTAR: He says the federal government should step in. Federal legislation to pause data center development has been introduced, but the bill, sponsored by minority party members, is unlikely to pass in a Republican-controlled Congress. That means, for now, these decisions about data centers will continue to be based on a patchwork of local and state laws.

For NPR News, I’m Abigail Bottar in Champaign County, Illinois.

Transcript:

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

Once a year, high school students travel to Oklahoma to look at dirt. It’s part of the National Land and Range Judging Contest. The students are sharpening their eyes for land suitable for crops, grazing and home building. This year, about 750 students, members of 4-H and FFA, the Future Farmers of America, showed up for the contest. Harvest Public Media’s Anna Pope was there, too, and has this report.

ANNA POPE, BYLINE: In a windy field about 30 minutes west of Oklahoma City, teenagers are climbing into deep pits in the ground to take a look at the dirt.

(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)

CLAY CASH: You can see where it changes on you.

POPE: High school freshman Clay Cash (ph) has been judging soil since he was in the fourth grade.

CLAY: I’ve always been interested in this. I live on a farm, so kind of seeing how fertile the soil is and everything really plays a big part in my family’s life.

POPE: Oklahoma’s red clay soil is different from the ground in eastern Kentucky, where Cash is from. Last year, Cash’s team won the 4-H Kentucky State Championship. That qualified them to be part of the National Land and Range Judging Contest. He and his team drove 15 hours to join the competition.

CLAY: It’s a very big deal for me. My sister’s both done it (ph). And she’s in college now, but she got really close to making it here. But I’m glad I could kind of fulfill that dream for us.

POPE: Knowing how to assess soil is key for growing crops, raising animals and choosing where to build a house or other structures, says DeAnn Presley. She’s a soil management specialist at Kansas State University and says that’s why it’s important to understand and study soils.

DEANN PRESLEY: So that then, later on, when somebody says, well, why are we digging this hole, or what can the soil be used for, or could I put a railroad track here, you’d have something intelligent to say about that.

POPE: The National Land and Range Judging Contest has been around for nearly 75 years. Coordinator Larry Wright has been involved since 1978. He says understanding soil is crucial for a lot of industries, including environmental sciences, agriculture and civil engineering. He adds the students will take what they’ve learned far into the future.

LARRY WRIGHT: These individuals, like any contest, whether – you can go from sports to this event, is to recognize that they have a skill that is valuable.

POPE: On soil judging day, students pack into cars, vans, trucks and buses to travel to an undisclosed location for the contest. When they arrive, an enthusiastic announcer gets them ready.

UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: We did it, everybody. You’re here. Get in the zone. It’s time to compete. Follow your group leaders. We’re going to head off.

POPE: Students are given the rules – no phones and no talking. They’ll have four fields to judge and 25 minutes for each.

(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)

POPE: The contestants look at soil quality, the slope of the land and risk of erosion. They get low to the ground. They scrape and measure and squirt water on handfuls of dirt to test for permeability or how fast water will run through it. Experts have already judged these sites. The students who win come closest to those professional observations. After the judging ends, the teenagers get together to compare notes.

MADDIE WILLIS: I love being able to do this and just to be able to say that I play in dirt.

POPE: Maddie Willis (ph) is a junior with a high school FFA chapter from Indiana.

MADDIE: It’s amazing to be able to meet all these people from around the world and make new friends and build the bonds I already have with my team and get a chance to just get out and learn more about agriculture.

POPE: A contest she says that really does go far beyond just looking at dirt. For NPR News, I’m Anna Pope in El Reno, Oklahoma.

(SOUNDBITE OF POST MALONE SONG, “CHEMICAL”)

Transcript:

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Let’s go to Maine, where a high-profile U.S. Senate race has been thrown into chaos following a report that Democratic nominee Graham Platner sexually assaulted a former girlfriend five years ago. That report from Politico has led to a cratering of Platner’s support by Maine and national Democrats. Steve Mistler with member station Maine Public is here with the latest. Hey, Steve.

STEVE MISTLER, BYLINE: Hey. How are you?

KELLY: Hey. I am hanging in there. Thank you. So let’s go straight to Graham Platner, who made an early splash in this contest. He rose from political obscurity just last summer. How did we get to this point?

MISTLER: Yeah. Well, you’re right about Platner’s rapid ascension from combat veteran and oysterman to this upstart candidate who Maine Democrats chose to take on Republican Senator Susan Collins. And he secured the nomination with more votes than any Democratic senatorial candidate in state history, forcing two-term Governor Janet Mills out of the race along the way. And he also built a massive movement of 15,000 volunteers. But his campaign has been dogged by controversy since October, and this latest report appears to have been the final blow for a campaign that was pretty brazen and confident up until Monday.

KELLY: Well, and go to that, what may well be the final blow for this campaign. Because this specific allegation of sexual assault, which he denies, it has had more of an impact than previous scandals that have dogged this campaign.

MISTLER: That’s right. Almost immediately after the story was published, there was a cascade of calls for him to get out of the race from interest groups, congressional Democrats that had endorsed him and even local gubernatorial candidates who sought his endorsement prior to the June primary. Just a remarkable turn of events, Mary Louise.

KELLY: Yeah. Now, the timing here is tricky. All of this is happening just a few days before a deadline that would – that they have to meet for Democrats and the state party to be able to replace him on the ballot?

MISTLER: Yeah, that’s right. That deadline is Monday, July 13 at 5 p.m. And if Platner formally withdraws from the race with the secretary of state by then, Democrats can actually replace him on the ballot, but they have only until July 27 to do so. And that’s about two weeks away. So just like with President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race, that’s just not a lot of time for state Democrats to figure out a process to replace him.

KELLY: Have they started on that, the state party, to figure out that process?

MISTLER: Yeah, they have, but it’s still in development is my understanding, and they really haven’t shared much by way of details. You know, I will say that several of the potential replacement candidates have called for an open, transparent process, perhaps a state convention, even town halls and televised debates. And that would be important to Democratic primary voters, especially those with memories of the process to replace President Biden just a couple years ago.

KELLY: So who’s on the list as a possible replacement if – and again, it’s still if – Platner drops out?

MISTLER: Well, there’s several gubernatorial candidates who didn’t win the nomination in June. There were two others that were actually senatorial candidates last year but got out of the race when Governor Mills got in last October. And I should say that I’ve reached out to see if the governor is interested in rejoining the race, but I have not heard back from her aides one way or the other. And I also should say that there’s potential for the factional divide among Democrats that we saw while Platner was barnstorming the state. That could actually play into this replacement process. He was endorsed early by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, whose political machine has been mounting primary challenges against Democrats across the country, and that could be a factor again.

KELLY: And just in a few sentences, Steve, I’m curious about Susan Collins, a formidable opponent and the stakes in this very important race for Democrats if they want to defeat her and retake the majority in the U.S. Senate.

MISTLER: Yeah, that’s a really important question. You know, Platner brought a lot of energy and interest to the race, and it was real and organic. And it’s going to be tough, you know, for another candidate to capture that going forward.

KELLY: All right. Maine Public’s Steve Mistler, thank you.

MISTLER: Thank you.

Transcript:

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

George E. Johnson died this week. He was 99. And while you may not recognize his name, you may be familiar with some of his famous products, products like Afro Sheen.

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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: And what do you want?

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: Nothing I can’t get from Afro Sheen.

UNIDENTIFIED SINGER: (Singing) Use Afro Sheen.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Afro Sheen’s blowout kit and conditioner and hair dress. Johnson’s Afro Sheen, the largest-selling products in the natural world.

KELLY: Johnson’s company created hair care products designed for Black hair, for tight curls and coils, braids and Afros.

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

His hair care products defined the shape and style of hair for a generation of Black Americans coming up in the ’70s. But the man behind Afro Sheen and Ultra Sheen was a presence in his own right.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

GEORGE E JOHNSON: Who am I? I’m George E. Johnson.

KELLY: He and a partner started their hair care business in the 1950s, selling a chemical hair straightener to Chicago barbershops.

DETROW: Working alongside his wife, he expanded across the country, and the business became a multimillion-dollar hair care and cosmetics company. Here’s George E. Johnson speaking to Planet Money in January.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

JOHNSON: The profits that came out of Chicago enabled me to open up Indianapolis. And then the money in Indianapolis helped me to open up Cleveland. And then I could go to Detroit and then to Memphis, to St. Louis. You know, just market by market.

KELLY: Bolstered by the momentum of the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power movement, many young Black Americans decided chemically straight hair was out, and embracing their natural hair was in.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

JOHNSON: Black is beautiful. And we came out with a great product called Afro Sheen.

KELLY: And it wasn’t just Afro Sheen that made Johnson Products Company stand out on the hair care aisle.

DETROW: The company worked to build and maintain Black pride, funding Martin Luther King Jr. when his movement’s money got tight.

KELLY: Here’s Johnson describing to Planet Money the moment Dr. King received a hundred-thousand-dollar check.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

JOHNSON: Oh, he cried. He cried when we give him the – when we gave him the check.

KELLY: Johnson Products Company eventually became the first Black-owned business on the American stock market. Here’s Johnson again, talking with NPR’s Erika Beras.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

JOHNSON: We went to New York, and of course, they just, you know, they put the red carpet out. Yeah, it was really an extraordinary time.

ERIKA BERAS: Did it feel like that was the moment you had made it?

JOHNSON: Yeah. I knew I had made it then (laughter).

DETROW: George E. Johnson, pioneer in Black hair care, died in his home in Chicago on Monday.

(SOUNDBITE OF COMMON AND JOHN LEGEND SONG, “THEY SAY (FEAT. KANYE WEST)”)

Transcript:

: [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION July 8, 2026: Ukrainian athlete Vladyslav Heraskevych is incorrectly identified as a bobsled racer in this story. In fact, he competes in the sport of skeleton sled racing.]

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

The International Olympic Committee has lifted its suspension of Russia’s Olympic Committee. Today’s provisional decision appears to clear the way for Russian athletes to reemerge on the international sports stage in time for the next Summer Games in Los Angeles in 2028. This comes at a time when Russia is continuing to pound Ukraine’s cities with deadly rocket and drone attacks. NPR’s Brian Mann joins me. Hey, Brian.

BRIAN MANN, BYLINE: Hey, Mary Louise.

KELLY: How big a shift is this by the IOC?

MANN: This is huge. You know, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the IOC took a really firm stand. They condemned Moscow and sharply limited Russian athlete involvement in Olympic Games. You know, once they were a sports powerhouse, but Russia basically vanished from the Olympics. This decision today offers Moscow a big step back toward international sports legitimacy.

KELLY: So why do this and why now?

MANN: The IOC’s been signaling for months it was rethinking this policy. IOC sanctions on Russia’s ally Belarus were eased in May. That was a big signal. At a press conference today, IOC President Kirsty Coventry made the argument that a lot of countries around the world are involved in war or armed conflict, yet their athletes have been allowed to compete.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

KIRSTY CONVENTRY: I think it’s important for us to acknowledge that we don’t condone any wars, including this one, and we will continue to support Ukraine like we have since this started. I don’t believe athletes should pay the price.

MANN: The IOC, Mary Louise, has left some restrictions in place. For now, Russia still won’t be able to fly its flag or play its national anthem. But the IOC says that, too, could change before the LA Games.

KELLY: Huh. So what’s the reaction been so far to this?

MANN: Well, the timing of this is pretty stark. Russia has launched increasingly deadly strikes against Ukraine. I spoke today with Vladyslav Heraskevych. He’s a Ukrainian Olympic bobsledder.

VLADYSLAV HERASKEVYCH: Today, we have day of mourning because of before yesterday attacks. And to have this same news, like in the day of mourning, it’s wild because with that, you understand that scale of war is not getting any smaller. And it’s a very, very wrong decision, and it’s very shameful decision.

MANN: In a statement today, Ukraine’s Olympic committee noted that about 600 Ukrainian athletes have been killed since Russia’s full-scale invasion. Russia’s sports minister, meanwhile, released a statement in Moscow praising the IOC’s decision, calling it – and I’m quoting here – “a green light toward the full restoration of the rights of our athletes.”

KELLY: I suppose it’s worth noting this was not just about the war. Russia has also faced sanctions because of concerns about systematic doping, drug use by its athletes. Has the IOC had anything to say about that?

MANN: Yeah, you’re right. Russia’s official anti-sports-doping agency, called RUSADA, is still under investigation. The organization has been accused of working closely with the Russian government to actively encourage doping. Russian athletes, of course, were involved in huge scandals at the Sochi Olympics in 2014 and again at the Beijing Winter Games in 2022. The IOC does say that it’s now taking steps to make sure Russian athletes are clean when they compete in Los Angeles. But I spoke today with Travis Tygart, who heads the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, and he says he’s really skeptical that the Russian system has been reformed. He told me he fears more scandals could happen in Los Angeles.

KELLY: That’s NPR’s Brian Mann talking about Russia’s expected return to Olympic sport in time for the LA Summer Games. Thank you, Brian.

MANN: Thank you.

Transcript:

JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:

Midlife can be complicated – marriages well past the honeymoon phase, children with big questions or stony silence, careers in flux. But it can also be very, very sexy. That’s the message at the heart of Robinne Lee’s new novel, “Crash Into Me.” It’s the story of Cecilia Chen, an artist married to a director. They’ve recently moved their cat and two kids to Los Angeles after years living in Paris. It’s a rocky transition for Cecilia, but things pick up when she runs into a model named Anouk and feels instantly drawn to her. Their relationship quickly becomes physical, and when we talked, I asked Robinne Lee what made her want to explore a relationship between two women in “Crash Into Me.”

ROBINNE LEE: I did not set out to write a story about two women with this kind of relationship. I was writing about this one woman returning to America after 20 years. But the more I wrote for the characters, the more I liked them together. I liked their – it was – there’s something kind of tantalizing about the way they engage with each other. And sometimes they tell you to just let your characters speak to you and lead you, and I felt that very much with these two.

SUMMERS: There’s a question that’s central to this book about the intersection of art and commerce, and that’s something you’ve navigated throughout your own career. I wonder how it came up in the process of turning your writing and “The Idea Of You,” your first book, into a blockbuster movie.

LEE: That’s so interesting. I think that there is this (laughter) battle between, like, holding on to the artist’s vision and then finding something that’s going to sell to the mainstream or whatever that is. I very much wrote “The Idea Of You” for myself. It was a little bit of my history, a little bit of my fantasy, a little bit of the things I was encountering as a woman turning 40 in Hollywood and the way that we’re kind of written off in a certain way of no longer being desirable. And I kind of wanted to fight back with that.

And so when they adapted the book for the film, there were changes that were made to make it more commercial. And so it is – it’s something that I think about when I’m writing even now. Like, I want to be true to myself as a writer – the things that I find interesting. Like, if I find something interesting that happens to sell in a big way and feel commercial, then that’s great. But I don’t want to kind of change my idea of what would make a great story or what is good writing just to sell it in a large way.

SUMMERS: This book is a multigenerational, multiracial story. “The Idea Of You” featured white characters. And if I understand from reading previous interviews, that was a deliberate choice to get the book published. So I wonder what it was like to write this book, which has so much diversity and racial complexity.

LEE: For me, it’s harder to write a book like this because I’m layering in so many factors and elements that mean something to me. And I want it to be good. I want it to mean something. I want to be fair and honest. I would not have been fair to my characters if I was kind of writing Cecilia in a bubble. What’s really interesting is that I worked on a project prior to writing “The Idea Of You” with this Cecilia Chen character as a protagonist. And one of the feedbacks was, well, we’ve already got an interracial love story coming out this year. And so when I had the idea of “The Idea Of You,” I thought, you know what? I’m not going to give them any reason to say no to me. And if I have to make these two white or white-appearing characters, I will do that. But he was going to be British and she was going to be French, and to me, she was French and part Algerian, as well. So she kind of had this – I hate to use the term – exotic, but she just had a darker, more olive complexion.

And it’s so interesting to me how many readers would come to me and say, oh, I just pictured you. I thought, oh, this must be Robinne in the book, and she was what I envisioned. And I thought that was so interesting because being a woman – a Black woman in America, as much as I can assimilate, I can’t fully assimilate. I don’t walk into a room and no one sees what I am. And so I wanted to make that clear in this book. As, you know, privileged as you may be or as attractive as you may be or whatever it is, if you are not white-presenting in certain spaces, your narrative is different. Your experience of the world is different, and your identity is different because part of your identity is responding to how you have been perceived for your entire life.

SUMMERS: Some of the most moving parts of this book, for me, were reading the ways that Cecilia reckoned with how to talk to her kids about race in America, being Black in America. She talks about, at one point, how the conversations she’d had with her two children, Julian (ph) and Lucy (ph), had been, up until a point, historical and abstract. And I just have to say it felt like this, like, uniquely American moment in so many ways. Can you talk a little bit about that scene and those tensions?

LEE: Yeah. You know, they’ve moved back. The kids have never lived in America, and she hasn’t talked to them about race other than very superficial things. And part of that came from a conversation I had with a girlfriend who lives outside of the country. She’s African American, but her husband is not, and she’s got these mixed-race kids. And they go back every year to visit her family in the South, and they associate America with, you know, their grandparents and certain foods and, like, happy memories, and everything’s great.

And I remember her saying to me at one point, I almost don’t want to tell them what it is to be Black in America. But then she thought, I’m just putting it off and putting it off. When do I tell them? Like, if they don’t ever have to encounter it, when do I tell them? And I thought that was such an insightful thing to say. Because, I mean, my kids grew up in the states. And so our conversations, of course, started as – you know, I can’t even remember when they started.

SUMMERS: You can’t really…

LEE: Tell her – whatever.

SUMMERS: Yeah. You can’t hold it back.

LEE: It was very early on. You can’t – exactly. You can’t hold back.

SUMMERS: One of the other things that sticks out to me is just there are so many really messy marriages in this book, and there is…

LEE: Yes (laughter).

SUMMERS: …And there is something that Anouk said that stuck with me. She’s at lunch with Cecilia. They’re talking about infidelity in past relationships. And she says – I’m going to quote this here – “marriage is a compromise, yes, but if you’re both playing by different sets of rules, someone is going to get hurt – someone always gets hurt.” Was there something specific that you wanted to explore about marriages, the institution of marriage, maybe?

LEE: You know, I’m lucky. I’m in a wonderful marriage, and we’re about to celebrate 25 years together.

SUMMERS: Congratulations.

LEE: Thank you. But I’ve had a lot of friends whose marriages have not been as wonderful and many of them have ended in divorce. Some of them have not ended in divorce, but they’re surviving. They’re making it work. They’re trying to get to the other side, or they have gotten to the other side. So often we’re sold this idea from the time that we’re kids, in our fairy tales that, you know, like, the girl marries the prince and goes off into the sunset on the back of his horse – whatever – and it’s happily ever after. Yeah, in real life, it’s not happily ever after.

Relationships are work, and there are days that are incredible, and you feel like you’re on cloud nine, and you’re with the prince. And there are days that you’re exhausted or you’re tired or one of you is sick or the kid’s sick and there’s temptation. There are times when money is scarce, and so there’s frustration. And people grow – they grow apart. They grow in different directions. They grow at different speeds. All of that has to be taken into account when you’re looking to embark on something that you think is going to be your happily ever after.

If they’re just expecting that, they’re going to be very (laughter) disappointed when reality sets in. And I think the marriages, to me, that have worked are people who knew what they were getting into and were willing to work at it and grow together and communicate and take the steps they need to take to kind of be as close to the same page as possible.

SUMMERS: We’ve been speaking with author Robinne Lee. Her new novel is “Crash Into Me.” Robinne, thank you.

LEE: Thank you so much. This has been a pleasure.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “CRASH INTO ME”)

DAVE MATTHEWS BAND: (Singing) You’ve got your ball. You’ve got your chain tied to me tight.