Trump Pre-Trial Hearing, China Climate-Summit, EU-Tunisia Deal

Donald Trump is back in court, expected to use his time-tested legal strategy.

That time-tested strategy is to test the court, to buy more time. What's his case? to delay his trial until after the election?

I'm Steve Inskeep with a Martinez, and this is up first from NPR News.

Also, Europeans try for a solution to the flow of North African migrants. They are paying Tunisia to keep people where they are. How much does it matter that the money is going to a government that's undermining democracy? Stay with us, we've got all the news.

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Former President Trump is back in court today. A grand jury indicted him for taking classified documents when he left the White House and repeatedly refusing to return them.

Now, Trump has been in court many times in his life. One of his strategies is delay, and his lawyers have asked to postpone this trial. What's different this time is the election calendar. He is running for president again, which means he is running to oversee the Justice Department. His former attorney general, William Barr, spoke with NPR on Friday.

If Trump wins the primaries and is the nominee, which I do not think he will be. But if he is, and then if he gets elected, my assumption is the case would be dropped or he would have.

The case dropped. I mean, it will be a mess.

It'll be a mess.

NPR Justice correspondent Kerry Johnson has been following the case. Kerry. So what specifically is Trump saying about justifying a delay?

Trump is asking this judge he appointed to the bench, Aileen Cannon, to basically put off the trial until after the election. Because he says jury selection is going to be very difficult, and he says, the legal issues here, in this case, are challenging. Trump is running for the White House. He says he's got a busy schedule between now and next November, when he's going to be campaigning and traveling a lot around the country.

All right, Jack Smith, a special counsel investigating Trump. What did he have to say?

Yeah, the special counsel says there is no basis for postponing this trial. Jack Smith wants to select a jury this December. He says some of Trump's legal arguments are baseless and frivolous. This isn't a difficult case and that lots of defendants have busy jobs with travel and they don't get special treatment from the courts. You know, Trump has had lots of legal trouble.

The FBI found classified documents in a bathroom, a ballroom, a storage room, all at Trump's resort Mar-a-Lago. Will we see any of those papers in the course of this case?

That's not clear at this stage, we're going to learn more in the coming weeks. What's happening now is that lawyers for Trump and his valet, Walt Nauta, are getting security clearances to be able to look at some of these documents. They've signaled in court filings, they may challenge whether some of the materials should actually be considered classified. And they've also signaled there should be no secret evidence in the case, no secrets from the jury.

You mentioned Eileen Cannon, that's the judge that Trump appointed the judge in this case. How is she approaching the job so far?

Judge Cannon received a lot of criticism last year when she carved out an exemption for the former president to challenge a lawfully executed search warrant. And she was overruled by a very conservative appeals court, which included Trump appointees since then.

All right, that's NPR's Kerry Johnson. Thanks for the info.

My pleasure.

As global temperatures rise, the relationship between the U.

Kerry is the latest high-level American official to visit Beijing. The Special Climate Envoy met today with the ruling Communist Party's head of Foreign Relations. Kerry's visit is aimed at re-establishing climate change talks between the two countries. That contribute the most to the problem.

For more on Kerry's trip, we're joined by Zach Coleman, who covers climate change for Politico Zach. U.S and China never seem to be pals on policy, so what can we reasonably expect to come out of Kerry's visit?

Well, this is one area where the two countries have a common vision for what they want to do. They want to reduce emissions that are heating the planet. But we do have to set a low bar here. The relationship between the two countries were at historic, at least modern, lows. And there's a lot of work that needs to be done to repair how these two countries work together to solve this vexing issue.

Now, what are some of the issues that are complicating these talks?

I mean, these talks have been suspended since last August, when then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went to Taiwan as an affront to China. China, of course, considers Taiwan its territory. The U.S sees it as more independent from China. And that was a big no-no in China, and that has frozen the talks until now.

Now we've known that China and the U.

Well, China has a goal to install 1,200 gigawatts of wind and solar by 2030.

Where do the United States and China have common ground when it comes to climate change? Does that exist anywhere?

It does, I mean, both countries want to improve air quality for their citizens, and you do that by getting rid of dirtier fuels. Both countries are seeing these devastating impacts from climate change, especially heat waves, which are hitting not only the U.S but also China right now. Drought is a problem in China, just as it is in the U.S. So both countries see an economic advantage to transition to cleaner fuels, and also a human health advantage.

Zach Coleman reports on climate change for Politico Zach, thanks for the information.

Thank you.

The European Union is offering hundreds of millions of dollars to the Tunisian government now. It's meant to help the country's failing economy. In exchange, though, Tunisia has to help stem illegal migration to Europe.

Of which there's been a lot so far this year. According to Italy, some 75,000 people arrived in smuggler's boats. Thousands of others have died trying to make the journey across the Mediterranean, and many started in Tunisia.

NPR's Ruth Sherlock covers a region.

Hi, yeah, well. EU leaders were just there, including the Dutch and Italian prime ministers, on Sunday, to try to move this forward. And what the EU is dangling is this prospect of as much as a billion dollars in financial aid. Most of that is dependent on Tunisia agreeing to reforms imposed by the IMF. But like you said, you know, the other big piece about this is migration.

Tell us why, though, the nature of the Tunisian government is bringing out critics of this deal.

Well, so, part of it is that Tunisia's President, Kays said, has done a lot to unravel Tunisia's democracy that formed after the Arab Spring Revolution in 2011.

The most important thing about this deal is it symbolically says. We in the EU are willing to use our taxpayers money to achieve our priority in Tunisia, which is stopping migration as much as possible. No matter the cost, no matter how much, you violate human rights.

She says the deal comes across as a pat on the back for Said.

Now, speaking of human rights, one of those concerns over human rights is that in recent months, there have been attacks against Black Tunisians and migrants from other parts of Africa. What's driving that?

Well, Monica Marx and others say said, has fueled racist sentiment in Tunisia. He denies any allegations of racism, but he's given speeches that cite the conspiracy theory, also sometimes used by white nationalists in Europe and the U.S. and rooted in anti-semitism. It's known as the quote great replacement and basically alleges this conspiracy, that there's a conspiracy to overwhelm the country with Black Africans. So, this was followed by a wave of attacks in Tunisia in recent months, and Black Tunisians and migrants have been robbed and attacked and evicted from their homes. And so the irony, experts say, is that actually. This may be one of the causes for the increase in illegal migration across the Mediterranean as people try to flee Tunisia.

That's NPR's Ruth Sherlock in the U.K. Ruth, Thanks.

Thank you very much.

And that's up first for Tuesday, July 18th. I'm Imani Martinez.

And I'm Steve. Inskeep Up First is produced by Nina Kravinsky and Shelby Hawkins. Our editors are Reena Advani and Alice Wolfley, with engineering support from Stacey Abbott, and our executive producer is Erica Aguilar.

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