Transcript of Trump's Justice Department, Disappearing DEI, Flu Peaks Again

Pam Bondi was sworn in this week as US Attorney General.

One of her early memos has workers at the Justice Department worried about the possibility of mass firings. Will those who investigated the President be singled out?

I'm Michelle Martin. That's A. Martinez, and this is Up First from NPR News. Under political pressure, some big companies have quietly ended their diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.

We have seen companies start to decide that the reward is not necessarily outweighed by the risk anymore.

Is this the end of corporate DEI?

Plus, it is respiratory virus season, and the flu is peaking for a second time, but there's better news on the horizon about COVID.

This is the smallest winter wave we've had since the pandemic began.

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This week, the Senate voted to confirm Pam Bondi as President Trump's new attorney general.

Bondi takes over at the Justice Department as the Trump administration makes aggressive moves to take over the federal bureaucracy. Over the past few weeks, the new administration has already pushed out senior career officials at the Department and at the FBI, setting off fears about mass firings.

Npr Justice Correspondent Ryan Lucas has been following this. Ryan, let's start with the new attorney general Pam Bondi, sworn in this week in the oval office by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Now that she's on the job, what has she done?

One of the first things that she did was sign a whole bunch of memos, more than a dozen of them, that aim to advance the president's agenda and the department's role in it. These things address a whole range of topics. Bondi revised the federal death penalty. She set up an October seventh Task Force to focus on the threat posed by Hamas. Other memos address immigration enforcement, the drug cartels. This thing reflects the shift in priorities that we often see out of the Justice Department with the change in administration. Saying that, though, there's one memo in particular that really stood out, and it raises questions about whether the department under Bondi aims to go after the people who investigated Trump.

Tell us about that memo.

Well, the subject line is restoring the integrity and credibility of the Department of Justice. But what the memo does is establish what it calls a weaponization working group that will review the criminal and civil cases that were brought against Trump over the past four years by federal and state prosecutors. It will also look at the Capitol Right investigations and what the memo calls the Pursuit of Improper Investigating effective tactics and unethical prosecutions relating to the capital attack. Now, Bondi has been a fierce defender of Trump over the years. Before she was attorney general, she talked about investigating the investigators, and there are certainly concerns that that's what's going on here. Look, in the past few weeks, the Department has already fired more than a dozen prosecutors who worked on Trump investigations because the new leadership said those folks couldn't be trusted to carry out the President's agenda.

There's also been turmoil at the FBI. Where do things stand now?

Right. There's been a lot of nervousness and fear at the FBI over the past week. Remember, the FBI falls under the authority of the Justice Department. But the panic at the FBI started after the number two official at the Justice Department ordered the firing of eight senior their career FBI officials, and at the same time, demanded a list of all FBI personnel who worked on any January sixth case. That's around 5,000 FBI employees and all. Now, that set off fears at the FBI of possible mass firings. Sources told me about FBI agents printing out their HR files because they were worried that they'd be fired immediately. They wouldn't have access to the system. Things have settled down a bit in the past few days. The FBI handed over a list of employees who worked January sixth cases, but not the agents' names to the Justice Department. The Department says this is part of a review process related to ending what it calls the weaponization of the justice system. There are still concerns, though, about FBI agents' names possibly being made public, and then they or their families facing threats. Remember, Trump pardoned some 1,500 January 6 defendants, including people who were convicted of violence.

Agents have actually filed two lawsuits to try to prevent agents' names from being made public. There's a lot of concern here. There's a court hearing scheduled on those lawsuits today, so there will certainly be more to come.

Yeah, that's our MPR's Ryan Lucas. Ryan, thanks for breaking it all down.

Thank you.

Some big companies are literally erasing diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI.

Gm, Pepsi, Disney, and others have scrubbed some or all of those words from their annual reports to investors.

Mpr business correspondent Maria Aspen is the first to report this. Maria, tell us what you found.

Hey, good morning. As you know, we've been seeing some big companies announcing for months that they're ending or changing their DEI programs. They include Walmart, Target, Amazon. Just this week, Google told employees that it's ending its hiring targets for underrepresented workers. But what I discovered this week is that many more big companies are backing away from the language of DEI without making a big announcement. I went digging into the new annual reports that companies have been publishing for their investors, and I compared them with what they were saying a year ago. I found that this year, at least a dozen big companies have all deleted or softened the language they use to talk about diversity. These companies include GM, Intel, Disney, Pepsi, and Chipotle. Now, some of these companies wouldn't talk about these changes with me, so we don't know for sure why they've done this. We just know that they've stopped talking about DEI in public, but some of the companies did give me some clues.

All right. What did they tell you?

Well, there's a lot going on, but a few of these companies referred specifically to President Trump's new executive orders ending DEI in the federal government. These orders also also threatened to sanction private companies that are federal contractors that have what Trump called illegal DEI programs. And Google, for example, is a federal contractor. A spokesperson this week told me that Google is evaluating the changes required by Trump's executive orders, and Google, I should note, is one of NPR's funders. Another company I talked to was 3M. It's that big conglomerate that makes Post-it notes and chemicals and a bunch of other stuff. It's also a federal contractor. 3m also deleted some references to diversity from its latest annual report, and a spokesperson specifically mentioned the executive orders when he talked to me.

Yeah, but not every company that's making these changes is a federal contractor. I mean, so what else is happening here?

So Trump's executive orders are adding to the pressure, but corporate America was already facing a lot of pressure from critics of DEI who say that it is itself discriminatory. The bigger picture here is just that big companies are pretty risk averse. I talked about this with Becky Baker, who's an employment lawyer with Vincent & Elkins. She says that DEI was a really popular buzzword in corporate America five years ago, but now it's politically toxic. We have seen companies start to that the reward in doing so is not necessarily outweighed by the risk anymore. She's not surprised by the changes all of these companies are making, and she's expecting us to see a lot more.

Is this the end of DEI?

Yes and no. There are still some companies that are standing by their promises to pursue diversity, equity, and inclusion, and they're still talking about it using those words. For example, Costco said in its most recent annual report that promoting DEI is part of taking care of its employees. Meanwhile, some of the people doing this work tell me that they hope that most companies are going to continue making their workplaces more inclusive for all employees, even if they're not using words and phrases like DEI.

All right, that's MPR's Maria Aspen. Thanks a lot, Maria.

Thank you.

Lots of people are feeling pretty crummy these days as the winter stew of respiratory viruses simmers.

But there are a couple of unusual trends driving all the coughing, sneezing, and fevers this year.

Mpr Health Correspondent Rob Stein joins us now to explain. Rob, what's happening out there with all these viruses.

Well, A, this is a good news, bad news story. Let's start with the good news. This winter's COVID surge looks like the mildest since the virus first emerged. Here's Kaitlyn Rivers. She's an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins.

This year's winter wave is low compared to previous winters. This is the smallest winter wave we've had since the pandemic began.

There are still plenty of people getting it and even ending up in the hospital or worse. So Rivers says people shouldn't let down their guard.

Now, when it comes to COVID, though, I mean, why is this winter's COVID wave so mild?

Well, one possible explanation is that we went through an unusually intense summer COVID surge that also started relatively late. So lots of people may still have some immunity from when they had COVID this summer, and no new variant has evolved. That's any better at getting around the immunity people have built up. There's also a theory called viral interference. That's when the presence of one virus pushes out other viruses. Here's Aubrey Gordon. She's an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan.

It's possible that viral interference is playing a role this year. There's a lot of influenza circulating, it may generate some nonspecific immunity, so some nonspecific protection, which then prevents people from getting other respiratory viruses like SARS-CoV-2. It crowds it out.

Now, you probably noticed she said there's a lot of flu out there, and that brings us to the bad news.

Yeah, the flu. Tell us what's up with the flu?

Well, this year's flu season started unusually early and has been pretty intense. Now, it looks like we're getting hit by a second winter surge of flu. Here's Kaitlyn Rivers again from Johns Hopkins.

Influenza activity first peaked around the turn of the new year, late December, early January. Activity then declined for several weeks in a row, which is usually a sign that the season is on its way out. But then it really took an unusual turn and started to rise again. So activity is now at a second peak, just as high as it was around the turn of the new year.

It's looking like the intensity of this year's flu season It could have a long tail.

Rob, any idea why this is happening? I'm going to try and connect two things that might not have anything to do with each other. Could it have anything to do with the bird flu?

No, which is good news. So far, testing hasn't spotted any signs that the worrying bird flu that's infecting dairy cows and poultry is spreading widely in people. It's a bit of a mystery. It could just be natural variation that happens with the flu. That said, the more people catch the flu, the greater the chances that people could get It's been affected with both viruses, the regular flu and bird flu. That could give the bird flu the opportunity to swap genes with the regular flu and evolve into something more dangerous, even potentially cause another pandemic.

That's NPR Health Correspondent Rob Stein. Rob, thanks.

You bet.

This Sunday on Up First, tech companies are creating AI chatbots that seem human but are not.

They give you the illusion of intimacy without there being anyone home.

The danger of human-like chatbots on the next episode of The Sunday Story right here in the Up First podcast. That's Up First for Friday, February seventh, I'm A. Martinez.

And I'm Michelle Martin. Just a reminder, Up First airs on Saturdays, too. Ayesha Rosco and Scott Simon will have the news. Look for it wherever you get your podcasts.

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