Pentagon Leaks, Supreme Court Restores Abortion Pill Access, Recession Worries
2023-04-15 00:14:18
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President Biden says he directed the military and intelligence communities to limit access to sensitive information.
But how did a 21-year-old cyber-it guy breach the controls already in place?
We'll explain it all.
I'm Ayesha Roscoe.
I'm Myles Parks and this is up first from NPR News.
Women across the country will still be able to get the abortion pill mifepristone.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court suspended a Texas judge's ruling to limit access to the drug.
How is the latest court challenge to abortion access playing out in our politics?
And a sigh of relief. The price of groceries is going down.
Even eggs.
But don't get too excited, those recession worries are still pretty real.
What does that mean for you?
Stay with us, we've got the news you need to start your weekend.
President Biden says he's told the military and intelligence community to tighten the security of sensitive information.
That's after a massive leak of secure documents.
On Friday, 21-year-old Air National guardsman Jack Teixeira appeared before a federal judge in Boston.
He's facing charges for leaking highly classified information that included details about Russian moves in Ukraine and the strength of the Ukrainian army.
Joining us now to talk about this is NPR's Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman.
Hey Ayesha.
So what steps can the Pentagon and the intelligence community take after this breach?
Well, the first thing they'll do is restrict access to who sees this kind of information. Now, there are at least several thousand people who have access to this particular intelligence, which came out of the joint Chiefs of staff at the Pentagon. Already, the Pentagon is removing people from this information. I was talking with some folks last night who lost that access and they have high-level jobs, so this will continue. Now. How many people they restrict, we just don't know at this point.
And the larger question is, how did a 21-year-old cyber IT specialist working on an air base on Cape Cod get access to this highly classified information?
Well, that's what the investigation will determine, and neither the Pentagon nor the Justice Department is really saying much at all. I did speak with a retired senior officer who did have access to this kind of intelligence. He speculates that Tushara likely gained access to something called the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, or JWICS. Now, that's a secure internet system that would contain all kinds of this top secret information. Now, that's how Chelsea Manning remember. The former Army soldier turned whistleblower, convicted back in 2013, was able to grab thousands of documents and release them.
Now, when that happened, the Pentagon and other agencies put a lot of controls over who had access, limiting them to. On a need-to-know basis, they created separate groups, subgroups. So let's say Ayesha, you're an intelligence analyst or an officer working on Taiwan issues you would not be able to have access to. Let's say, anything related to Ukraine, or if you work the Ukraine issue. Maybe you could see some of the intelligence on Ukraine, but not maybe more sensitive information regarding what's being picked up, but let's say on Russian communications.
Well, I know a lot of listeners may be thinking like, well, if this happened before, how could it happen again? Like, especially with all these restrictions, didn't they learn something from what happened?
Well, again, no one's sure. It's only speculation at this point. But with his Cyber and It work, maybe he was not a suspect or no one thought about restricting it. People. This retired officer I spoke with said, Listen, anytime an IT person came into my office, worked on my computer with highly sensitive information. I would stand right over that person while that person did the work. This officer also said There's an alarm system, so if I'm someone downloading information, I shouldn't. A supervisor is supposed to get an email from security alerting that supervisor.
So did that happen here or not, we don't know. And here's another thing. Ayesha The big problem with the release of documents is that it obviously alerts your adversary. So the U.S. again, is picking up electronic communications, phone calls or other information that will quickly dry up now because the Russians are aware of it.
They can do forensics and figure out where the conversation, where the information came, from, which location, which command. And again, that is really dangerous because it makes it much harder for the U.S. to collect information. That's what they're really worried about.
That's NPR's Tom Bowman. Thank you so much for joining us.
You're welcome.
Once again, the fight over abortion rights is heading to the Supreme Court.
On Friday, the court temporarily suspended a lower court's ruling that would have dramatically limited access to mifepristone, the pill used in the majority of medical abortions.
So what does this mean for access to medicated abortions and also to American politics? Joining us now is NPR senior editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro. Hey, Domenico.
Hey Miles.
So what does this decision from the Supreme Court mean as far as access to this medication?
For now, it means everything is as it was, I mean, in response to the Justice Department's emergency appeal, the court put a stay through Wednesday on the controversial Texas ruling. Which had found that the Food and Drug Administration improperly approved of the abortion medication Mifepristone, despite it having been approved two decades ago. It also put a pause on a finding by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. That would cut back when the drug would be available during a pregnancy from 10 weeks to just seven, and would not allow it to be available through the mail. It's unclear what the court is going to do next. But this is another political lightning rod that's made its way to the Supreme Court. As anti-abortion rights activists in state after state continue to push more and more of these restrictive laws.
Right, you mentioned politics there, and the 2024 primary field, especially on the Republican side, is already starting to fill up. Have any candidates mentioned this?
Well, some have and some haven't. Notably, the leading Republican candidate, former President Trump, has been pretty much silent about this. Former vice president Mike Pence, who has not announced an official run yet, is the only one to explicitly praise the Texas ruling. Ron DESantis, the Florida governor, who also is expected to run, and not a candidate yet, signed a six-week ban this past week, which is not very popular nationally. But he was getting a lot of pushback from conservative activists about the 15-week ban that was in place in Florida. They believe that didn't go far enough.
And you know, there are a lot of others who are running, or might run, who seem frustrated by this or really haven't quite gotten their messages down on it.
Like, who can you dig into that a little bit more?
Well, I'm thinking about Tim Scott, in particular, the South Carolina senator who's launched an exploratory committee this week. You know, he's known to be pretty conservative and religious. Earlier this week, he said he would quote definitely sign a 20-week ban if one came to his desk as president. But he went even further, talking to NBC News.
If I were president of the United States, I would literally sign the most conservative.
Pro-life legislation that they can get through Congress.
Even if it was six weeks.
I'm not going to talk about six or five or seven or ten.
And Domenico, how is the American public kind of viewing all of this?
Well, right now, it's really clearly putting Republicans into something of a bind. You know, a lot of these red states that have been pushing some of these laws are really outside the mainstream bounds of what's been popular. Overall, you know, Americans are in favor of some restrictions on abortion, but generally overall, in favor of abortion being legal in most or all cases. You know, some Republicans we've heard from on Capitol Hill have either said nothing, or they've been saying that banning medication abortion, for example, just goes too far. Or really don't want to wade in on it, you know? A lot of Republicans have tried to push back on Democrats, saying that they're extreme. Wanting to allow abortions until birth, which isn't really true by and large.
You know, Democrats did pass a bill last year that would have essentially codified Roe. Saying nothing could be banned before 24 weeks in states, and that abortions would be legal afterward only if deemed medically necessary by a doctor. But what's happening in practice? Here are these far more restrictive bans that have been pushed in several conservative states and really hardline policies that have not been popular with the middle of the country. And you know, President Biden, who's, you know, for all intents and purposes, is going to run for reelection. Can really just stake out a middle position, while Republicans really try to out conservative each other.
NPR's Domenico Montanaro Thank you so much.
You're welcome.
The economy showed some encouraging signs this week.
Inflation eased last month and the price of eggs came down, but do not count your chickens before they hatch. Retail sales are down and more people are applying for unemployment benefits.
Is the country headed for recession? NPR's Scott Horsley joins us to sort through the mixed signals. Welcome.
Good morning.
So we know that one of the biggest engines for the economy is people going out and spending money. Is that engine starting to sputter? Or just, you know, have a little when you try to put it in the ignition and it don't really go?
It might be sputtering just a little bit. Retail sales were down in March for the second month in a row, people spent less on cars and furniture and appliances. Spending at grocery stores was flat, even though grocery prices actually came down last month for the first time in two and a half years, you mentioned that big drop in egg prices.
They were down nearly 11 last month. Tom Charlie runs a chain of grocery stores in the Pittsburgh area. He says a lot of people actually cut back on egg purchases earlier this year, when the price topped $5 a dozen.
They might not be telling you to your face that, hey, your prices are too high, but they are definitely making statements with their buying behavior.
Egg production has bounced back after a lot of the laying hens were wiped out earlier this year by avian flu. So prices have come back to earth, and Charlie says egg sales are pretty much back to normal.
It is really nice to hear that grocery prices are down a bit, but what's happening with inflation overall?
It is easing somewhat. Overall, prices in March were 5 higher than a year ago. That's the smallest annual jump in almost two years. Certainly, it's better than the 9 inflation rate we had last summer. But Chris Waller, who sits on the Federal Reserve's board of governors, says A lot of that big swing in both directions comes down to just gas and groceries.
A lot of that run-up and run-down is just food and energy, particularly energy. So it's not really telling you what's going on underneath. For kind of, all the other goods and services, core inflation has just literally gone like this sideways. We need to get that down to get closer to our 2 target.
Core inflation strips out food and energy prices, which tend to bounce around a lot, and focuses on the more persistent changes in prices. In particular, the Fed is tracking the price of services like restaurant meals and haircuts, and those categories are still seeing stubbornly high inflation. That's why the Fed is expected to raise interest rates again next month, and then that could be the last rate hike for at least a while.
Ever since the collapse of Silicon Valley and Signature Banks last month, other banks have been cutting back on lending. And Waller says that functions sort of like an additional rate hike. It slows down the economy and does some of the Fed's inflation-fighting work for it.
Well, I feel like we're always asking you this, Scott, and so I want you to get out your crystal ball. What are the chances that the economy doesn't just slow down, but we find ourselves in a recession?
A lot of people are certainly concerned about that. And some forecasters do think the odds of a recession have gone up because of that drop in bank lending. The Federal Reserve's own staff is now predicting a mild recession starting later this year, with a recovery coming next year and into 2025. Most Fed policymakers, however, are not that gloomy, at least in public.
Here's Mary Daly, who heads the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. We need to slow the economy to get things back into balance. But slowing the economy when we're on such a fast pace doesn't mean recession. It means slowing the economy back to a more sustainable pace. It's going to feel different than it did last year.
But my outlook is we don't have a recession, but we do have a substantial slowdown. Of course, some sectors are already feeling that slowdown. Manufacturing output was down last month. The housing market's taken a hit. On the plus side, we continue to add a lot of jobs every month, and the unemployment rate remains close to a half-century low.
So stay tuned.
NPR's Scott Horsley, Thank you so much.
Great to be with you.
And that's up first for Saturday, April 15th, 2023.
I'm Myles Parks.
And I'm Ayesha Roscoe.
Tomorrow on Up first, a conversation about the misogyny some say is directed towards Black women in hip-hop and how it's held back an entire culture.
Today's episode of Up First was edited by Raphael Nam, Ahmad Omar, Halima Abela, Hadil Al-Shawchi, and H.
J. Mai.
It was produced by Andrew Craig and Michael Radcliffe and directed by Danny Hensel, with engineering support from Hannah Gloveman.
Evie Stone is our senior supervising editor, our executive producer is Sarah Oliver, and our Deputy Managing editor is Jim Kane.
As always, be sure to find us on the radio every Saturday and Sunday morning on Weekend Edition from NPR News. Find your NPR station at stations.npr..org.
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