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Transcript:

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

A year ago today, Republican lawmakers passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and accomplished a longtime goal of anti-abortion-rights activists, is how Speaker Mike Johnson told the March For Life rally earlier this year.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MIKE JOHNSON: For the first time ever, we finally defunded big abortion, and it was a long time coming.

(CHEERING)

SIMON: But the defunding provision was only for a single year due to a quirk of Senate rules. As NPR’s Selena Simmons-Duffin reports, that year is up.

SELENA SIMMONS-DUFFIN, BYLINE: The way the law was written, only three large healthcare providers were affected – Planned Parenthood, Health Imperatives in Massachusetts and Maine Family Planning, which I reported on last fall, visiting a clinic in Thomaston on the coast.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

VANESSA SHIELDS-HAAS: This is our larger exam room.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOOR CREAKING)

SHIELDS-HAAS: Here we do most of our yearly wellness visits.

SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Nurse Practitioner Vanessa Shields-Haas told me that half of the organization’s patients are on Medicaid, and they come to her for all sorts of things.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

SHIELDS-HAAS: I can treat your tick bite or your bronchitis. I tell people if you cut your finger off or you’re having a heart attack, I’m going to send you to the emergency room, but there’s a lot of many other things that can be treated here. And because…

SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Medicaid already doesn’t cover abortion because of the Hyde Amendment from the 1970s. But normally, any of these other services, plus cancer screenings and STI tests, could be billed to Medicaid until the defund provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act took effect.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

SHIELDS-HAAS: We’ve been seeing all of those patients for free. We haven’t been turning them away.

SIMMONS-DUFFIN: When I called spokesperson Olivia Pennington of Maine Family Planning this week, I asked how they had weathered the year.

OLIVIA PENNINGTON: I mean, it’s been devastating to see this defund and to see the impacts that it’s had across the nation.

SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Planned Parenthood published a report this week showing that 20 of their clinics across the country closed since defunding. In Maine, they ended primary care at three clinics and lost four employees. Pennington says a few other providers left because they were nervous about their job security. But none of their 18 clinics closed. The state helped fill the federal funding gap, and even though patients were confused by the funding news, they kept coming.

PENNINGTON: We are really proud of the tenacity at Maine Family Planning and our commitment to ensuring that Mainers will continue to access healthcare no matter what comes at us.

SIMMONS-DUFFIN: There was pressure on congressional Republicans to extend the defund provision from anti-abortion groups, but with slim majorities and many other priorities, it didn’t happen before Congress went on recess. Pennington says next week, with defunding over, Maine Family Planning will start billing Medicaid again. At the same time, they’re nervous about potential cuts to federal grants for reproductive health from the Trump administration and more.

PENNINGTON: We are going to see political attacks, and we are always going to be ready to see them.

SIMMONS-DUFFIN: She says they’re dedicated to finding creative solutions to keep their doors open because they know that Mainers need them.

Selena Simmons-Duffin, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF SPARKY DEATHCAP SONG, “SEPTEMBER”)

Transcript:

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Finally, this Independence Day hour, the history of a most American song.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND”)

PETER, PAUL AND MARY: (Singing) This land is your land, this land is my land, from California to the New York island.

SIMON: The song has become a standard in our schools and around campfires since Woody Guthrie wrote it in 1940. But as our colleague Elizabeth Blair reports, it has also always carried an edge. We replay her 2019 story from the series American Anthem this 250th anniversary weekend. Elizabeth created that series as well as 50 Great Voices and the NPR 100, for which she was honored with the Peabody Award. She left NPR this week after three decades. We wish her the best and thank her for all the wisdom and feeling she brought into her work and our workplace. Elizabeth Blair’s great stories play on in our minds. Now back to “This Land Is Your Land.”

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

ELIZABETH BLAIR: To understand the song, it helps to understand the guy who wrote it. In February 1940, Woody Guthrie was sitting in his room in a midtown Manhattan hotel called Hanover House.

NORA GUTHRIE: Which was a kind of fleabag hotel.

BLAIR: Standing where that fleabag hotel once stood, the late Woody Guthrie’s daughter, Nora Guthrie, says her dad might not be keen about the corporate bank across the street, but he’d be thrilled to know what is still on the corner.

NORA GUTHRIE: And I’m sure he ate at a hot dog stand right on this corner many times.

BLAIR: And did Woody Guthrie like hot dogs?

NORA GUTHRIE: Loved (laughter).

BLAIR: Hot dogs, fries and root beer were Sunday brunch, says Nora. Woody Guthrie was a no-frills kind of guy, a deeply curious wanderer. Nora says he’d go out for a pack of cigarettes and not come home for a week or two.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND”)

WOODY GUTHRIE: (Singing) I roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps to the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts. All around me, a voice was a-sounding, this land was made for you and me.

BLAIR: When Woody Guthrie sings “This Land,” Nora says he’s not just singing about deserts and wheat fields.

NORA GUTHRIE: The whole idea of a land is your spot on earth, you know, a spot where you can claim safety, sanity.

BLAIR: Safety and sanity – growing up in Oklahoma, Woody Guthrie didn’t have much of either. Cyclones, dust storms, fire and heartbreak – a new house his father built burnt to the ground. Later, when Woody’s older sister Clara was 14, she was ironing on a kerosene stove that caught fire.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

W GUTHRIE: This one blowed (ph) up, caught fire. And she run around the house about twice before anybody could catch her. The next day, she died.

BLAIR: A choked-up Woody Guthrie told the story to folklorist Alan Lomax in 1940 for the Library of Congress.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

W GUTHRIE: And my mother – that was a little bit too much for her nerves.

BLAIR: Ten years later, Woody’s mother died in what was then referred to as a hospital for the insane. She suffered from Huntington’s disease, a genetic brain disorder that was misunderstood at the time and the same disease that later killed Woody. Woody’s father lost everything. Woody and his siblings were sent to live with friends and family.

BLAIR: Eventually, he ended up in Pampa, Texas. When the brutal dust storms hit, he headed to California. Just as the song says, he roamed and rambled across the country – walking, hitchhiking, hopping freight trains, by bus when he could afford it. Nora Guthrie says in a way, the land was Woody’s home, and he did not like to keep still, even when he recorded those sessions with Alan Lomax.

NORA GUTHRIE: And Alan would say, oh, come sit down and have something to eat. And Woody would stand up. He’d say, no, I don’t want to get too comfortable. Don’t get too comfortable ’cause you never know who’s going to take your home away.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND”)

W GUTHRIE: (Singing) As I went walking that ribbon of highway, and I saw above me that endless skyway, I saw below me that golden valley. This land was made for you and me.

BLAIR: If you look at the original lyrics to “This Land is Your Land,” Guthrie added a line at the bottom – all you can write is what you see. “This Land Is Your Land” was also a rebuttal to something he heard.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “GOD BLESS AMERICA”)

KATE SMITH: (Singing) God bless America, land that I love.

BLAIR: Kate Smith’s version of Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” was on jukeboxes and the radio everywhere during Guthrie’s journey across the country. He apparently hated it. After everything he’d seen, America was beautiful, but it was in trouble. He’d seen dust-bowl refugees fighting for their lives and working people living like rats, as he put it. He originally called his song “God Blessed America,” as in already did. One interpretation is that Guthrie felt Berlin’s anthem was jingoism. Guthrie wanted to sing the truth. In one verse that rarely gets performed, he takes a dig at wealthy landowners.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND”)

W GUTHRIE: (Singing) There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me. Sign was painted, said private property. But on the backside, it didn’t say nothing. This land was made for you and me.

BLAIR: Now, the left-leaning politics of “This Land Is Your Land” are most likely lost on the millions of kids who’ve been learning the song more than 75 years after it was written.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: (Singing) This land was made for you and me.

BLAIR: And yet politics is partly how the song spread. Woody Guthrie wasn’t a communist, but he sympathized with the cause. He was pro-union and anti-war. He also, as he put it, cussed out high rents and punk politicians. The late Pete Seeger, who became an icon of folk music, often appeared with Guthrie. He told NPR they were blacklisted as early as the 1940s.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

PETE SEEGER: We did one program on CBS Radio, and a newspaper report out said, red minstrels try to get on the networks. And that was the last job we got.

BLAIR: Nora Guthrie says for a time, the only work Seeger could get was singing for young people.

NORA GUTHRIE: Basically, every kid that went to summer camps or kindergarten or college learned “This Land Is Your Land.” And that’s how the song really became popularized – not by my father, but by people like Pete Seeger, who was blacklisted.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PETE SEEGER AND UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Singing) This land is your land, this land is my land, from California to the New York island, from the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters, this land was made for you and me.

BLAIR: “This Land Is Your Land” has been recorded hundreds of times, but most people don’t learn it from a recording. Seeger said the song endures simply because people love to sing it.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

SEEGER: That song was never played on the radio. It was never played on TV. It was a nothing of a song as far as the commercial world was concerned, but practically everybody in America knew this song.

NORA GUTHRIE: We’ve always gotten requests from so many thousands of people over the years saying, this should be the national anthem because it’s filled with beauty and love of the country.

BLAIR: But Nora Guthrie says the family disagrees. “This Land Is Your Land,” she says, belongs to the people, not the government.

BLAIR: Elizabeth Blair, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

W GUTHRIE: (Singing) This land is your land. This land is my land. From California to the New York island, from the redwood forests…

Transcript:

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

The founders complained about the summer heat in Philadelphia, but it was pleasant there on this day in 1776. Thomas Jefferson recorded 76 degrees at 1 p.m. before he, perhaps joined by Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, took the Declaration of Independence to be printed and distributed. It’s a fair bit hotter there today, of course, as a wave of high pressure traps much of the country under a heat dome. NPR’s Ron Elving joins us. Ron, thanks for being with us.

RON ELVING, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Scott, and happy Fourth of July.

SIMON: And happy Fourth to you, my friend. The heat’s causing many of today’s celebrations to be scaled back for safety’s sake. Will America’s 250th birthday be tamer – not as multipartisan than the 1976 bicentennial, which we remember?

ELVING: The day is young. It’s still too early to judge whether this heat dome will hold down the crowd sizes or shorten tempers or just put a damper on it all, but to some degree, that might be a good fit for the mood of this holiday, which seems subdued compared to earlier eras. Polls show Americans are less optimistic and somewhat less patriotic than in past years. One measure now shows Americans slightly less patriotic on average than citizens of other countries. And that’s quite a departure from the past, and it’s certainly more downbeat today than 50 years ago.

In 1976, when the nightmares of Vietnam and Watergate scandals were finally over and their memories were beginning to recede, the country was ready to move on, ready to believe its best days were still ahead. And yes, Americans were in a mood to party that summer in big cities like New York and small-town parades all over the country.

SIMON: Supreme Court wrapped up its most recent session this week and released some of their most significant decisions, didn’t they?

ELVING: Oh, my. It was quite a package, and it had gut-punches for partisans on both sides. Democrats were distressed that the court continued to dismantle restraints on campaign spending, especially those that allow big contributors to coordinate spending with candidates. But it was especially striking to see the shock and dismay on the right over the court’s decision upholding birthright citizenship.

Now, this has been around back to English common law before the American Revolution. It’s been confirmed by the high court more than once. And most legal observers expected it to be upheld once again. So many were surprised the vote was so close, and that close vote surely lends momentum to the Trump administration’s efforts to minimize and even villainize immigration.

SIMON: Mandatory financial disclosure this week revealed that President Trump made more than a billion dollars in his first year back in the White House, considerably more than the year before. Is it only responsible to ask if he has enriched himself in office?

ELVING: Donald Trump was rich long before he was president. But there was always a lot of debate about just how rich. And that debate is now over. Not all presidents have added wealth while in office, but in recent decades, with book deals and speaking fees, it’s become easier than ever for a president to cash in, but never on a scale remotely comparable to this and not with such an array of transactions that would seem to pose a conflict of interest for anyone in the Oval Office.

SIMON: And former Trump allies – Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene – say they want to create a new political party. Are we witnessing in 2026 the two-party system splintering, as more Republicans question President Trump, MAGA Republicans take on centrists and recent primary victories have produced more democratic socialist candidates in the Democratic Party?

ELVING: In a word, yes. Both sides are finding it increasingly difficult to enforce party unity, difficult even to appeal to party spirit or plead for party cohesion. The parties can’t control the actions and statements of prominent politicians who want to stand out, who want to be where the voters seem to be, and they know what gets attention. They know what builds a following, especially in the wide-open cyberspaces of social media.

SIMON: NPR senior contributor Ron Elving. Ron, thanks so very much for being with us. Good holiday to you.

ELVING: And to you, Scott. Thank you.

Transcript:

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

To Beijing now, and a story we should tell you contains mentions of suicide. It has been just over a week since a small plane slammed into that city’s tallest building. Chinese authorities have said it was a deliberate act, but there are huge questions still unanswered, as NPR’s Jennifer Pak explains.

JENNIFER PAK, BYLINE: The two-seater plane smashed into the skyscraper last Friday during evening rush hour in Beijing’s central business district.

(SOUNDBITE OF RUMBLING)

PAK: Hours later, when I went past by bike…

(Non-English language spoken).

UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER: (Non-English language spoken).

PAK: …The police still had the building sealed off without saying why. Videos and photos of debris falling were scrubbed from Chinese social media. It took 22 hours before local authorities confirmed the plane had crashed and a few more days before officials ID’d the pilot only as 66-year-old Mr. Liu (ph), who authorities say suffered from anxiety, insomnia and had suicidal thoughts. These official statements weren’t run by most Chinese state media, says David Bandurski of the China Media Project.

DAVID BANDURSKI: It looks to me like there probably was a central directive – no reporting.

PAK: This plane crash happened only a few miles from President Xi Jinping’s compound in Zhongnanhai. Shane Tedjarati is the former president and CEO of Honeywell Global. He’s also an avid aviator who has flown private planes in China. And for him, questions linger, like…

SHANE TEDJARATI: How easily this general aviation airplane penetrated one of the most restricted airspaces over the capital.

PAK: Because, he says, he’s flown in more remote areas in China.

TEDJARATI: There’s no military installations around, no major cities around. And the protocol is to fly within 3 1/2 miles of that airport and under 3,000 feet.

PAK: Beijing’s airspace is even more tightly controlled. Small drones are banned. James Fallows is the author of “China Airborne,” a book about how China controls its airspace.

JAMES FALLOWS: So the military controls much more of airspace in China than in the Western world, and especially over Beijing.

PAK: That military control has come against a push by Chinese officials to develop what it’s called the low-altitude economy – things like drones and flying cars as new economic drivers. Now, some Chinese experts say the small plane crash incident may lead to stricter policies on the low-altitude economy. Already, some private flying clubs tell NPR their planes have been grounded until further notice. Jennifer Pak, NPR News, Beijing.

Transcript:

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

For more than a century, the story of America has been told on screen.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “ON THE WATERFRONT”)

MARLON BRANDO: (As Terry Malloy) You don’t understand. I could have had class. I could have been a contender. I could have been somebody.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “WORKING GIRL”)

MELANIE GRIFFITH: (As Tess McGill) I mean, you can bend the rules plenty once you get upstairs but not while you’re trying to get there. And if you’re someone like me, you can’t get there without bending the rules.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “RAY”)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Yeah. That’s it. That’s it. Keep that up (ph).

JAMIE FOXX: (As Ray Charles, singing) Hit the road, Jack, and don’t you come back no more, no more, no more.

SIMON: “On The Waterfront,” “Working Girl,” “Ray” – all movies that explore what it takes to get ahead. And for this July Fourth, we’re going to talk about other movies and TV series that depict the American dream with Linda Holmes and Aisha Harris, cohosts of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour. Thanks so much for being with us.

LINDA HOLMES, BYLINE: Thank you.

AISHA HARRIS, BYLINE: Thank you.

SIMON: Linda, let’s begin with you. Give us a pick.

HOLMES: So the most commonly used meaning of the American dream, sort of as you said, is about getting ahead. It’s about the idea of sort of universally available economic security and upward mobility. And because that’s never really felt real to me, I decided to go to something that felt more real to me, which was the idea of a common endeavor that made me feel optimistic. And I ended up going in a different direction and chose the 1995 film “Apollo 13,” directed by Ron Howard.

(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINE BANGING)

HOLMES: Which tells the true story of the space flight in April 1970 when an explosion in one of the oxygen tanks disabled some of the systems on the spacecraft, and it became a genuine life-or-death emergency.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “APOLLO 13”)

BRETT CULLEN: (As CAPCOM 1) This is Houston. Say again, please.

TOM HANKS: (As Jim Lovell) Houston, we have a problem. We’ve had a Main Bus B undervolt. We’ve got a lot of thruster exit here, Houston.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) What’s the story with the computer now?

HANKS: (As Jim Lovell) It just went offline.

SIMON: And, Linda, where’s the American dream in this story?

HOLMES: I think space travel represents, to me, what I want the American dream to be, which is curiosity, science, knowledge, cooperation and the idea that everybody gets together to solve a problem and protect people who are vulnerable. And that’s really what it means to me in that sense.

SIMON: Aisha, I gather, you struggled a bit with several possibilities. What did you come up with?

HARRIS: In Baltimore, of all places. I went with HBO’s “The Wire,” which was created by David Simon. And, you know, when I was thinking about this, I went back to one of the original sources of the idea of the American dream, James Truslow Adams. And he’s credited with coining the phrase the American dream in his book “The Epic Of America.” And he talks about a dream of this better, richer, happier life for all of our citizens of every rank. And “The Wire,” I think, really shows how thin the line often is between criminal enterprises and law and order, and there’s often no line. It’s completely blurred.

SIMON: Is there one character in the show you think best exemplifies that tension?

HARRIS: Yeah. I mean, I look to Howard “Bunny” Colvin, who’s played by Robert Wisdom, and he’s the police chief of a district in Baltimore. He’s nearing retirement, and he’s frustrated with how this rise of the drug trade in his district has basically made it unsafe for everyone else – kids, working-class individuals, elders. And it’s interfered with his ability to do some real police work. He basically feels like a failure.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “THE WIRE”)

ROBERT WISDOM: The city is worse than when I first came on. So what does it say about me, about my life?

HARRIS: So what I love about this character is that he decides he’s going to take things into his own hands. He sets up Hamsterdam, which is this open drug market away from the neighborhoods. There’s no turf war, no violence. And at first, it works, and he achieves this idyllic version of the American dream. But it’s also rooted in reality because, ultimately, once his superiors find out, he’s admonished and the whole plan is just dismantled. You can’t get much more American than that, I think.

SIMON: What other contenders, Aisha and Linda, did you maybe have in mind?

HOLMES: Well, I thought about some of those pieces that are about that struggle for security. I thought about the film adaptation of “Fences” with Denzel Washington and Viola Davis. I thought about some of the really good comedy series that have been about working-class families, whether it’s something like “Good Times” or something like “Roseanne” – I thought about those kinds of shows. And I thought about something that might be about people trying to accomplish justice, whether it was a labor movie like “Norma Rae” or a movie like “Milk” about Harvey Milk. There are so many directions that you can go with this question that I think the best part of it for me was just exploring all the different ways that we interpreted the question.

HARRIS: Yeah. I would echo Linda in sort of what I was looking for. And I thought about “A Star Is Born.” All four versions of that movie – including the most recent iteration starring Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper – they offer kind of a gendered perspective on the pursuit of a better life. And then even in the music realm, I considered a lot of Stevie Wonder songs, but especially “Higher Ground.” It’s not specifically a song about America, but I think it does capture the good and the bad of living here and this collective resilience of people just aiming for better and richer life.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “HIGHER GROUND”)

STEVIE WONDER: (Singing) People keep on learning. Soldiers keep on warring.

SIMON: Aisha Harris and Linda Holmes from NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour. Thank you both so much for being with us and happy Independence Day.

HOLMES: Thanks, Scott.

HARRIS: And to you, too, Scott. Enjoy your holiday.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “HIGHER GROUND”)

WONDER: (Singing) So glad that I know more than I knew then. Going to keep on tryin’ till I reach my higher ground.

Transcript:

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

And I can’t wait to say and now it’s time for sports.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SIMON: World Cup knockout round. And where in the world will LeBron wind up? Sports reporter Michele Steele joins us. Michele, thanks for being with us.

MICHELE STEELE: You bet, Scott. Happy Fourth of July to you.

SIMON: And happy Fourth to you. Argentina v. Cape Verde last night, one of the great World Cup matches of all time, huh? Argentina won 3-2, but only after overtime. The team ranked 67th in the world battled the reigning World Cup winner to a draw in regulation. What stands out for you?

STEELE: Scott, it’s got to be the heart of this Cape Verde team, tiny island country. It’s about the size of Louisville, Kentucky, taking a world powerhouse, Argentina, to the brink, you know, regulation ending 1-1. Then the teams traded goals in extra time until Cape Verde lost on an own goal. in the 111th minute, a real David v. Goliath matchup. They almost prevailed against Lionel Messi. You know, they say there are no moral victories in sports, but boy, is this one close.

SIMON: It reminded me why we love sports. It was just such a great game.

STEELE: Oh, yeah.

SIMON: Egypt put Australia down under, if you please, 4- 2 on penalty kicks, and they advanced. Colombia defeated Ghana 1-0. What upcoming matches interest you the most?

STEELE: Well, Canada’s one of the host countries, and they take on Morocco today. They’ve had an absolutely phenomenal tournament so far, both of them, but Canada has had the best tournament of their history so far. Mexico-England on Sunday is the one that soccer fans are going to be circling. And, of course, how could we forget USA-Belgium on Monday? And remember, this is the knockout round, so whoever wins advances, loses, goes home.

SIMON: NBA free agency officially started this week. LeBron James back in play. Where will LeBron go? Golden State, Miami? Look, I just want to say, (singing) Cleveland rocks. Cleveland rocks.

STEELE: We’re all singing Cleveland rocks. I’m singing Cleveland rocks. I would love to see him go home, of sorts, to Akron, Ohio, to Cleveland Cavaliers and see that homecoming. But we know that, per his agent, 27 teams have reached out. That actually sounds low to me, but those teams include the Knicks, the Celtics, the Sixers. A lot of people talking about him going to Golden State with Steph Curry. San Antonio would be intriguing. Imagine pairing him with Wemby.

SIMON: Yep.

STEELE: And even NHL and NFL teams have been jokingly tweeting their offers.

SIMON: I’m not sure they’re joking. We’ve offered him something here, as a matter of fact.

STEELE: Le NPR, Le WEEKEND EDITION. That’d be great.

SIMON: Le WEEKEND EDITION.

STEELE: Yeah.

SIMON: I like that sound.

SIMON: Some tragic news this week. Chris Johnson, former star running back for the Titans, the Jets and the Cardinals, revealed that he has been diagnosed with ALS. He is just 40 years old.

STEELE: It is absolutely devastating. I remember covering him in his prime, Scott. I remember he – rushing for over 2,000 yards in 2009 when he was playing for the Titans. To see someone who, epitomized – right? – peak physical condition, diagnosed with ALS, just 40 years old, is a profound shock. He told ABC that, ALS has changed what my body can do, of course, but it has not changed who he is. He uses an eye-gaze speech device now. but I have to say – someone who covers football for a living – it was very difficult to watch.

SIMON: And I have to ask – you do cover football for a living – if we can just mark this story without noting that famous research out of Boston University, funded by the ALS Association, shows there’s a link between playing football and ALS diagnosis.

STEELE: Yeah. We should note Johnson’s doctors have categorized this as a sporadic case with no family history, but studies like the one that you mentioned have shown former NFL players are diagnosed with ALS at rates much higher than the general public. Johnson’s former teammate on the Titans, Tim Shaw, he was diagnosed with ALS back in 2014. It’s two teammates in the same locker room. It feels really personal, right? Johnson said he chose to go public – he’s very courageous to – because he wants to drive funding for treatments and early detection. I personally would love to see the league – the NFL – put the weight not just of their money, but their ability to capture the attention of millions of Americans behind the effort to end this disease and alleviate suffering for so many, Scott.

SIMON: Michele Steele. Thanks so much.

STEELE: Talk to you next time.

Transcript:

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

There’s not been a permanent director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for most of the Trump administration. The latest nominee, Dr. Erica Schwartz, is expected before the Senate later this month, and if confirmed, she will take over a CDC that has been through many challenges. NPR’s Pien Huang reports on a set of recently released emails that take us back and show the challenges ahead.

PIEN HUANG, BYLINE: The emails were provided by Dr. Deb Houry, who served as the CDC’s chief medical officer until she quit last August. In one email from last July, Houry was asked to schedule a performance review because management at the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees CDC, thought she was the CDC’s acting director, but someone else was in that role. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said as much in a congressional hearing two months earlier.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

ROBERT F KENNEDY JR: The acting director was Susan Monarez, but she is now up for permanent director. And so she’s been replaced by Matt Buzzelli.

HUANG: The confusion over who was in charge at CDC is one of several episodes documented in over 250 pages of emails showing chaos at the agency after the Trump administration took over. They were recently released by Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, and ranking member of the Senate Health Committee. He asked Houry for documents related to, quote, “Secretary Kennedy’s politicization of the CDC.” Kennedy had long questioned the safety and need for some vaccines and objected to a preservative called thimerosal.

Last June, when CDC advisers voted to recommend removing thimerosal from U.S. flu vaccines, emails show they did so against the advice of CDC’s legal counsel and career scientists. Houry talked with NPR’s Leila Fadel about this time shortly after she left the agency.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

DEBRA HOURY: You know, that was one of the first times that we really were concerned that there was interference. The vote itself wasn’t as problematic because it’s only in about 4% of flu vaccines. But to me, it was more concerning that there were changes to vaccine policy that weren’t based on data and science.

HUANG: Houry wasn’t available to speak again before the story’s deadline. But her emails show that CDC scientists pushed back against inaccurate vaccine claims Kennedy made on TV and social media. They sent line-by-line rebuttals up the chain. It’s not clear if these emails ever reached Kennedy, but the pressure continued.

Last August, shortly after Susan Monarez became the CDC’s Senate-confirmed director, she received an email from Kennedy’s then chief of staff. Susan, it read, I wanted to elevate the absolute need for political review of major policy decisions at CDC. Weeks later, Kennedy fired Monarez, and Houry quit in protest.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

HOURY: And I realized at one point, particularly when Dr. Monarez resigned that – or was fired – I no longer had that scientific leadership that was going to push back at all. She was unable to make policy or hiring decisions, essentially meaning that our CDC director would be ineffective.

HUANG: Dr. Demetre Daskalakis was a top CDC official who quit with Houry. Some of their exchanges were released in the emails.

DEMETRE DASKALAKIS: Our outcomes were that we resign but we were probably going to be fired because we stood up for what was right.

HUANG: Daskalakis says he sought to document the serious conflicts of interest and anti-science changes he was seeing.

DASKALAKIS: And frankly, like, it becomes really clear that this is public health by vibes, as opposed to public health by data.

HUANG: And the months since, Kennedy’s vaccine policy changes were largely blocked by a federal judge. But Dr. Georges Benjamin, head of the American Public Health Association, says the layers of political review remain.

GEORGES BENJAMIN: The burden is still there. The roadblocks are still there. The political agenda is still there.

HUANG: That poses challenges for Dr. Erica Schwartz, former deputy surgeon general, who’s been nominated as the next CDC director. Still, Benjamin says the political winds have shifted a bit since last year.

BENJAMIN: The president said he was going to let the secretary go wild, and he did. He’s now had to pull him back because it is creating political damage.

HUANG: Benjamin says it may give the next leader some space to follow the evidence with less political interference. HHS did not respond to NPR’s questions about the emails or the independence of the next CDC director by deadline.

Pien Huang, NPR News.

Transcript:

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

In 2024, Andy Curtis started a new job – marketing director of the city of Aspen, Colorado. His first Fourth of July on the job, his voicemail filled with angry calls.

ANDY CURTIS: I just remember one specifically was like, who do you think you are? You guys are un-American. Where is my Fourth of July fireworks? There might have been some expletives in there.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “AMERICA”)

NEIL DIAMOND: (Singing) On the boats and on the planes, they’re coming to America.

SIMON: Aspen had canceled its annual fireworks show because of fire danger. This year, again, no fireworks.

CURTIS: The reality is the last, you know, 10 years, we’ve had about seven of those fire-ban, really, really dry summers where we just couldn’t make fireworks happen even if we wanted to.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “AMERICA”)

DIAMOND: (Singing) In the eye of the storm. Home to a new and a shiny place.

SIMON: As America celebrates its 250th anniversary today, much of the western U.S. is dealing with extremely dry, combustible conditions. In the Midwest and East Coast, millions of people are under extreme heat warnings. It has forced officials across the country to change and even cancel plans. In Aspen, the rockets’ red glare of fireworks will be replaced by a drone show in the sky.

CURTIS: It’s certainly not as dynamic as a fireworks show, but it’s still pretty cool to watch these machines form images in the sky.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “AMERICA”)

DIAMOND: (Singing) They’re coming to America.

SIMON: In neighboring Utah, Governor Spencer Cox declared a state of emergency because of the, quote, “imminent threat of a fire disaster brought on by fireworks (ph).” In Draper, south of Salt Lake City, Mayor Troy Walker chose to ban fireworks altogether.

TROY WALKER: It’s a serious situation for us because these homes sit in scrub oak. They sit in dry grass. They sit on mountainsides. The scrub oak that, you know, surrounds this – these neighborhoods is just in perfect shape to ignite.

SIMON: Six years ago, there was a wildfire in the town just south of Draper.

WALKER: It was started by fireworks – kids shooting Roman candles at each other.

SIMON: As the fire spread, Mayor Walker had to order the evacuation of a neighborhood in the middle of the night.

WALKER: The big fires that we’ve had in Draper in the past have all been firework-caused.

SIMON: He says 9 out of 10 residents that he’s heard from have supported this year’s ban.

(SOUNDBITE OF ROCKY ALLEN SONG, “LAND OF THE FREE”)

WALKER: Fireworks is not a constitutional right. That’s not a requisite thing to do to be a good American or celebrate the Fourth. There’s plenty of opportunity to gather as a community with friends and family and enjoy, you know, America.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “LAND OF THE FREE”)

ROCKY ALLEN: (Singing) I grew up in a small town.

SIMON: Elsewhere, temperatures are expected to exceed a hundred degrees in parts of the Midwest and East Coast. Humidity will make it feel even hotter. In Washington, D.C., the Great American State Fair shut down for a few hours. Numerous cities called off their parades, including D.C., Philadelphia and Norristown, Pennsylvania.

MIKE TRAIL: The parade really is one of our biggest events. It’s where the whole town gets to come together. But this year, there was some cause for concern.

SIMON: Mike Trail is police chief of the town north of Philly and says Norristown wanted to go big for America’s 250th.

TRAIL: So what was about an eighth of a mile to a mile parade route jumped to 1.8 or 2 miles.

SIMON: Chief Trail says last year’s parade had several heat-related medical emergencies, and with even hotter temperatures expected this year and more veterans, children and families taking part, he says canceling the parade was just safest.

TRAIL: We felt that was the best option here, given the weather.

SIMON: The town is still holding July Fourth festivities but in a park with shade, cooling stations and easier access to water. He says the parade will return next year with more plans to try to keep people cool. But Andy Curtis in Aspen says that in the foreseeable future, in the drought-stricken West, drone shows could replace fireworks.

CURTIS: I don’t want to say fireworks will never come back, but it’s just getting harder and harder to plan for July Fourth.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “LAND OF THE FREE”)

ALLEN: (Singing) And I wanna see America, yeah, the land of the free.

Transcript:

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Aid groups across the country are organizing to try to help Venezuelans after last month’s twin devastating earthquakes. That includes people in Atlanta, which is home to one of the largest populations of Venezuelan immigrants. Member station WABE’s Lily Oppenheimer reports.

UNIDENTIFIED VOLUNTEER #1: (Speaking Spanish).

UNIDENTIFIED VOLUNTEER #2: (Speaking Spanish).

UNIDENTIFIED VOLUNTEER #1: (Speaking Spanish).

(SOUNDBITE OF PACKING TAPE UNROLLING)

LILY OPPENHEIMER, BYLINE: Volunteers in Atlanta’s Venezuelan store have spent days packing boxes with emergency supplies.

(SOUNDBITE OF PACKING TAPE UNROLLING)

OPPENHEIMER: It’s usually a bodega/restaurant stocked with Venezuelan cooking essentials, but now half the store is dedicated to the donations.

(SOUNDBITE OF PACKING TAPE UNROLLING)

OPPENHEIMER: Store owner Laurinda Pestana still has family in Caracas. Many of the regular customers do too. She says because of its faltering economy, Venezuela already had little resources. Now the earthquakes have left many people with nothing.

LAURINDA PESTANA: We have suffering so much stuff before, and now with the terremoto, it’s worse. Like, the people cannot find anything at the pharmacy.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Spanish).

OPPENHEIMER: She says one of the most important donations people can make – medications.

PESTANA: You know, Venezuela is not, like, a regular country. Like, it’s very hard for us to find medicines there – and right now, of course, worse. Tylenol, ibuprofen, alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, hygiene, (speaking Spanish).

OPPENHEIMER: Julio Camargo (ph) stopped by the Venezuelan Store to make a donation.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking Spanish).

JULIO CAMARGO: (Speaking Spanish).

OPPENHEIMER: He has family in one of the hardest-hit areas in the northern states of La Guaira.

CAMARGO: (Speaking Spanish).

OPPENHEIMER: He says, “thanks to God, they’re OK. They were trapped for a while in a collapsed building with their little dogs.”

CAMARGO: (Speaking Spanish).

OPPENHEIMER: Camargo talks about the moment of total anguish for him and his family waiting for news from his brother. He says he didn’t sleep, and witnessing the aftermath of the disaster is difficult for him.

CAMARGO: (Speaking Spanish).

OPPENHEIMER: Like both Camargo and Pestana, most Venezuelans have moved to metro Atlanta within the last decade. Pestana says now the area is a major hub for relief efforts.

PESTANA: We already send around, like, 85 boxes just for our store. Imagine another – other stores and other communities.

OPPENHEIMER: They are coordinating with Global Empowerment Mission, a disaster relief nonprofit out of Miami that was established after the Haiti earthquake in 2010. She says it’s been a surreal year. Just months ago, the U.S. military captured former President Nicolás Maduro. But now, despite the country’s vast oil reserves, Venezuelans are still dependent on foreign aid to survive this humanitarian crisis.

PESTANA: So thank God. Thank God we have a – like, a lot of community outside in Venezuela.

OPPENHEIMER: And she says it’s not just Venezuelans who are organizing. She’s seeing all kinds of people – Americans and immigrants – trickling into her shop and dropping off donations.

For NPR News, I’m Lily Oppenheimer in Atlanta.