Expanding Presidential Power, OSHA Heat Proposal, Cyberattacks On Car Dealerships

The Supreme Court assured former President Trump and future presidents of immunity from prosecution for many acts.

Did they need to go that far? Nina Totenberg says the ruling reshapes widespread ideas of presidential power.

I'm Steve Inskeep with Leila Fadl and this is up first from NPR News.

And cybercriminals are stepping up ransomware attacks on critical services like hospitals and schools. The latest targets are car dealerships nationwide. Stay with us, we'll give you the news you need to start your day.

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We're working to understand the implications of a Supreme Court ruling.

The court found that former President Donald Trump is, quote, absolutely immune from prosecution for many of his acts, while president and the court says a lot more to protect presidential power. So we brought in our colleague Nina Totenberg to find how it is reshaping the presidency for the future. Hi there, Nina.

Hi there.

OK, So how does this change the scope of presidential power compared to what people thought it was before?

Well, it gives the president broad immunity from prosecution for his official acts, and the breadth of official acts is pretty sweeping. It also gives the president more powers than when it came to an actual challenge to presidential power. In this case, the court's conservative majority said to Trump Basically, we're giving you almost everything you wanted powers no other president thought they had, and even some things you didn't ask for.

OK, so here's my question, could the court have done something else here and still satisfied the requirements of the case as they saw it?

There were lots of things the court could have done, for example, a bunch of big Republican former Justice Department officials and former Senator John Danforth. They filed a brief that urged the court not to reinvent the wheel of presidential power that has served us well. As they put it, all you have to say is that the president has no power with respect to the electoral count and the certification of electors. Because nowhere in the Constitution is he authorized to play any role in that. Instead, the court gave the president sweeping powers that he is untouchable for any official act, and that, even after leaving office, he's presumptively immune from prosecution unless the government can show that he's criminally liable for a private act, which, by the way, the court made very difficult to prove.

There's been an enormous reaction to this, especially on the political left, but not only on the political left. Do you think the justices realized how much resistance there would be to this?

Well, justices, by and large, aren't good politicians, but the chief has been. He either didn't realize what the blowback would be, or he didn't care. I talked to constitutional scholar Akhil Amar at Yale, whose books are required reading on the constitution in a lot of law schools. And he's a big fan of the Chief Justices. He said. If he had wanted to get a greater breadth of consensus, he had three liberals who would probably have voted with him. He had at least one of the Conservatives, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who had a more narrow view, and he could have had a five-justice majority for a cross-ideological decision.

NPR Legal Affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg Thanks for the insights.

Thank you.

The White House announced a proposed rule this week to protect workers across the country from heat.

It wouldn't take effect for a year or more, but the move comes in a record-breaking summer of extreme temperatures.

Alejandra Barunda, from NPR's Climate Desk, is here to explain what's in the proposal. Alejandra, Good morning, good morning. So what would this proposed rule do to help workers?

It would do several things, starting with requiring employers to come up with plans to deal with heat. Like, what do they do if someone gets sick? Where can people go to cool down? The second big thing, it gives workers some rights to water, shade and breaks. When it's hot, the water and shade requirements kick in above 80 degrees on the heat index. That's the feels-like temperature.

Okay, seems pretty straightforward.

Yeah. David Michaels is an epidemiologist at George Washington University and a former director of the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, or OSHA. He puts it this way.

This is a common-sense proposal.

Many employers take steps like these already, and the science is really clear that these kinds of interventions help keep workers safe.

So who would be protected under this rule?

Yeah, more than 35 million people who work both outdoors and indoors. That includes agricultural and construction workers, and also people in warehouses and restaurants. Researchers know that heat is hurting and even killing workers like postal worker Eugene Gates Jr. who died from heat stroke while delivering mail last summer in Dallas. And the Department of Labor estimates that there have been about 34,000 injuries caused by heat in the past 10 years alone. And probably many more worker advocates. They've been asking for federal heat rules since the 1970s, but climate change is now making summers hotter, and that's really increasing the urgency here.

You know, I'm listening to you and I'm kind of surprised that water and breaks aren't something that are already required. Are there any protections in place now?

I know, and there's not really. At the national level, OSHA has something called the General duty Clause, which requires safe workplaces. And sometimes that has been used for heat, but it's rare, and only five states have any heat protections for workers, including Oregon and California. Christina Dahl is a climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

If you don't work in one of those states and you're exposed to the heat, then you are at the mercy of your employer.

And recently, Florida and Texas have actually blocked local jurisdictions from writing their own heat rules. They've been concerned that patchworks of rules are hard for employers, and said, if heat is such a problem. OSHA should make clear rules that apply to everybody, so OSHA is giving them a rule.

So typically, a rule like this takes a while to come to fruition. Or in an election year, will this rule even be implemented if the administration changes?

It could take well over a year or longer, or under a different administration, it could stall or be pulled entirely. So at this point up next is a public comment period and then a lot of administrative steps. But overall, it's moving much more quickly than a normal OSHA rule, which takes, on average, seven years. Michael says. That signals it's a high priority.

I've never seen a major OSHA proposal go through White House clearance as quickly as this proposal did.

Meanwhile, millions of workers are living through another blisteringly hot summer.

That's Alejandra Barrondo with NPR's Climate desk. Thank you, Alejandra.

Thanks so much.

Have you had trouble buying a car lately or picking up a prescription at the pharmacy?

If so, you may have cyber criminals to thank because ransomware is becoming a global crisis.

NPR cybersecurity correspondent Jenna McLaughlin joins us now to talk about recent trends. Good morning Jenna.

Hey Lila.

So can you quickly remind us what ransomware is and why it's such a problem?

Absolutely so. Ransomware is a type of malicious code that's designed to lock up its victims files, and that poses a couple of different problems here. First, we've got privacy.

Okay, 15,000 dealerships, that's a lot, but having trouble buying a car, it doesn't really sound that dire. Is this a big deal?

Yeah, it's one thing. When it's an inconvenience, you can't buy a car, maybe the school is shut down, the kids can't go in.

You say it's only getting worse? I mean, is that what the numbers are showing? is this problem getting worse?

Yeah, I wouldn't blame people for feeling that way. Based on some of the examples that we're talking about, yeah, I spoke with Kendall McKay. She studies cybercrime at Cisco.

We're not seeing these actors exploit zero-day vulnerabilities, quite the contrary, we're seeing pretty unsophisticated techniques.

And Layla? For the non-cyber nerds out there. Zero-day is a flaw in the code that's been there from the beginning, from day zero, that's never been previously exploited. So these hackers are not doing things like that, it's phishing, basic stuff.

Okay, so not so advanced. Is that good news? Can they be stopped?

Yeah.

You know, it's kind of a boring answer, unfortunately, but people need to be using two-factor authentication password managers, not clicking on sketchy links. That's not to say that this problem won't get harder because cybercriminals advance. They really want to get paid. And this malicious code is leaked all over the internet and amateurs are using it. Some of this is for governments to figure out.

Okay, so what about the average person, though? Where does that leave them?

They need to care about this, it's getting hard for them to ignore. When thinking about making choices about healthcare, where you're spending your money, you need to think about if these companies are doing enough to protect you, if you can rely on them. Plus, these simple hacking techniques can be used against anyone.

And PR's Jenna McLaughlin Thank you, Jenna.

Thank you.

We're also following the Democratic Party's deliberations over President Biden after his debate performance last Thursday. Nancy Pelosi, the former House Speaker, still a top Democrat, is saying that Biden should show his fitness by doing multiple interviews, and the president has scheduled one. He talks Friday with ABC News. By the way, Biden has not done an interview with NPR News since December 2019, although our discussions with the White House continue.

And that's a first for Wednesday, July 3rd. I'm Laila Fawzi.

And I'm Steve Inskeep. Your next listen is Consider this from NPR. The Civil Rights Act is 60 years old. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed it in July 1964, calling it a way for America to honor a promise of liberty.

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