Baltic Cable Cut, Trump's NATO Ambassador, Republican Voter Turnout

0:00Before we get to all the news, we want to hear from you. Our audience survey is your chance to tell us what you like and what you don't like about Up First. Help us shape this podcast to fit your mornings even better. Just head to npr.org slash Up First Survey. Wait a minute. I can tell you what I don't like? What if there's one of the hosts I have a problem with? Don't think I just opened the door for people to do that. The door's locked open. Let's go to music. European investigators are asking how two cables were cut beneath the surface of the Baltic Sea. A German official calls it sabotage, affecting the type of cable that carries 90 % of the world's data traffic.

0:41Who are the suspects? I'm Stephen Schieff with A. Martinez, and this is Up First from NPR News. The president-elect chose a loyalist as ambassador to NATO. Matthew Whitaker has no foreign policy experience, but served in the first Trump administration. You can be a brilliant expert on European security, but if you have no access to the president, it's not going to do that much for you. So how could the ambassador and his boss approach the war in Ukraine? And with record high voter turnout helping Republicans win this election, will the GOP start to rethink their stance on policies that make voting easier?

1:16Stay with us. We've got all the news you need to start your day.

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2:06It's designed to maximize study time with immersive 10-minute lessons and audio practice for your commute. Plus, tailor your learning plan for specific objectives like travel. Get Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership for 50 % off and unlimited access to 25 language courses. Learn more at rosettastone.com slash NPR. This message comes from Warby Parker. What makes a great pair of glasses? At Warby Parker, it's all the invisible extras without the extra cost, like free adjustments for life. Find your pair at warbyparker.com or visit one of their hundreds of stores around the country. Undersea cables carrying internet traffic across the Baltic Sea in northern Europe were severed earlier this week.

2:49And European investigators are still trying to piece together what happened. Germany's defense minister calls this an act of sabotage. The Danish Navy stopped a Chinese cargo ship in the region investigating a possible connection. NPR's Berlin correspondent Rob Schmitz joins us now. So Rob, Steve mentioned that Chinese cargo ship. What makes investigators think it had something to do with this? Yeah, this Chinese vessel named the Ipeng-3 left a Russian port on the Baltic Sea six days ago, and according to investigators, it passed over an undersea fiber optic cable connecting Sweden and Lithuania Sunday morning, and shortly after that, the cable operator noticed that it had stopped working and later found out that the cable had been severed.

3:29Then, on Monday morning, investigators say the same ship passed over a telecommunications cable connecting Finland and Germany, And two minutes after that, that cable stopped working. And its operator discovered it had been cut as well. And that's why Swedish officials are investigating the Epung-3. But they say they're also looking into other ships, saying there could be more parties involved. Okay, so the cables were severed. Did it lead to any communications outages in Europe? There was a temporary reduction in internet service in Lithuania after this happened. But the local operator rerouted traffic and it all improved.

4:02But according to Moritz Baraka, a marine security expert, What's most important here is that this type of action, which he believes was intentional, should be considered an attack. Here he is speaking to German public media.

4:18And he's saying here over 90 percent of the world's data traffic runs over sea cables like these, he said. And this means someone is trying to destroy the connectivity of our societies. Someone wants to show us we can disconnect you all. And we need to show in return that we are not going to let ourselves be bullied. OK, so what are the Chinese saying about this? Well, the company that owns the Yipeng 3, Ningbo Yipeng Shipping, is not responding to requests for comment. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman in Beijing said the Chinese government requires Chinese ships to adhere to relevant laws.

4:48But it is worth mentioning here that a year ago, another Chinese ship destroyed undersea cables and an undersea gas line connecting Finland and Estonia in the same region of the Baltic Sea. A Finnish investigation found that the ship had been dragging its anchor for hundreds of miles, scraping the bottom of the sea. China's government admitted that the vessel was responsible for all that damage, but claimed it was all an accident. An accident. Any suspicion that the Chinese ship was somehow in cahoots with Russia? Well, there might be suspicion about that, and social media is sort of abuzz with all sorts of speculation.

5:19But at this moment, authorities have not released any evidence about any such connection. And it is important to reiterate here that this is still very much an open investigation. OK, so where does that investigation go now? So Swedish investigators are now being joined by investigators from the other countries involved. And a real-time GPS map of shipping traffic shows that the Chinese cargo ship has not moved in the day that it's been there. And there's a Danish Navy patrol boat floating beside it. This investigation could likely take a week or longer to conclude due to the bad weather in the region.

5:50And to add a layer here, I mean, this comes at a time where there's some pretty heightened tensions in Europe. Yeah, the U.S. evacuated its embassy in Kiev yesterday, bracing for Russian attacks. Ukraine has used both American and British long-range missiles to attack Russia after President Joe Biden authorized Ukraine to attack targets inside of Russia for the first time. So it's clear that tensions in Europe are heating up. That's NPR's Rob Schmitz. Rob, thanks. Thank you.

6:21NATO is one of the many national and global institutions that President-elect Donald Trump has criticized over the years, specifically how much money other countries spend on defense. The president-elect has suggested that Russia could, quote, do whatever the hell they want to members that don't pay their fair share. He's threatened to leave the alliance at times, And now he's named a new ambassador with no foreign policy experience to represent America's interests in NATO. NPR's Stephen Fowler joins us now. So Donald Trump, Stephen, announced he's nominating Matthew Whitaker to that role. Who is Matthew Whitaker and what does Donald Trump want him to do?

6:53Whitaker's a lawyer. He once served as a U.S. attorney in Iowa, but more recently served as chief of staff to Trump's first Attorney General, Jeff Sessions. He later spent three months as acting AG. Whitaker has no national security experience, no foreign policy experience, no diplomatic background, and is unlike other NATO ambassadors. But what he does have is an intense loyalty to Donald Trump. He's been very active in blasting Trump's criminal investigations, especially through appearances on Fox News. And Trump said in the announcement, Whitaker, quote, will strengthen relationships with our NATO allies and stand firm in the face of threats to peace and stability.

7:31he will put America first. Okay, now is Whitaker's selection a signal of Donald Trump taking a tougher stance toward Europe? Whitaker comes in with a blank slate that will immediately be filled with Trump's mandate. Now, Trump's main beef with NATO, A, boils down to the U.S. paying an outsized financial and organizational role in a European alliance. So I called a few experts to ask what posture Whitaker may take. Anatole Levin is with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. They're a think tank that calls for restraint in U.S. foreign policy. He pointed out that Trump's top foreign policy priorities in the Middle East require having friends elsewhere.

8:10America is not a European country. It's thousands of miles away. The U.S. Mediterranean fleet needs a base in Italy and Greece. The U.S. Air Force needs a base in Germany. I also spoke with Michael O 'Hanlon with the Brookings Institution. He studies international alliances and highlighted the part of Trump's statement about strengthening relationships suggests he would not pull out of NATO, but rather pull back America's role in European geopolitics. I think that if Trump threatens allies with the possibility of weakening the U.S. commitment to NATO, but still stays in the alliance and keeps U.S.

8:46troops in Europe, then we'll be OK. The thing is, though, Trump has promised to end the war in Ukraine quickly, and Ukraine's key focus of NATO resources. I mean, how does this pick fit into that? Well, A, when dealing with NATO and conversations around the war in Ukraine, O 'Hanlon with the Brookings Institution says Whitaker may have one advantage that's arguably very important, Trump's ear. You can be a brilliant expert on European security going back to the Middle Ages, but if you have no access to the president or limited access even to the secretary of state, it's not going to do that much for you.

9:20Trump has signaled that the America First agenda includes some doubt about how much the U.S. will commit to Ukraine and the war effort. It's also possible that his proposed peace plan could be different from NATO's goals, especially if Trump suggests Ukraine give up some of its territory. So all of this aim makes the NATO ambassadorship one of Trump's picks that has a more immediate impact as soon as he takes office in January. All right. That's NPR's Stephen Fowler in Atlanta. Stephen, good to talk to you again. Thank you.

9:57Hey, folks, you showed up. The turnout rate in this year's presidential election looks to be the third highest in 100 years. Yeah, and Republicans did really well. They won control of the House, Senate, and the presidency. That directly contradicts conventional political wisdom that high turnout inherently favors Democrats. NPR's voting correspondent, Miles Parks, has been looking into this, and he's in our studios. Good morning, Miles. Hey, Steve. Thanks for coming by Studio 31. How do you think now about this general idea for many years that high turnout favors Democrats? So this idea was never a hard and fast rule.

10:31It centers on people who only vote usually in big presidential races or every once in a while, people known as low propensity voters. Research has found that these sorts of people are generally less educated, are poor people generally. And those sorts of people have tended to vote for Democratic candidates. Therefore, higher turnout brings out more of these sorts of people, helps Democrats. But Trump seems to have really changed the game here. Exit polls found that he did really well among people without a college degree and also won people who said it was the first time they'd ever cast a ballot.

11:02So the question now is whether this is going to change how Republicans feel about voter turnout and also, critically, policies that make voting easier since those policies have been shown to help low-propensity voters the most. Oh, and up to now, Republicans as a party have fought efforts to make voting easier. In fact, that was the heart of their complaints about the 2020 election was voting was too easy. Right. And generally, those complaints have been centered on election security. But politics have always played a role as well. I talked with John Merrill, who is the former top voting official in Alabama.

11:34He's a Republican. And he told me how he used to argue with fellow Republicans about whether registering new voters was a good idea. I had people when I would speak to some Republican groups, they tell me I don't like that. I don't think it's a good thing. And I'm like, why would you say that? And they're like, because you're going to get more blacks and you're going to get more Democrats. It is not usually said out loud that explicitly. But Trump himself in 2020 said he thought higher voting levels would mean that Republicans would have a harder time getting elected. I'm really interested to see if his views on that change now that he seems to have benefited from a high turnout election.

12:13And there is this longstanding kind of conservative line of argument that maybe not everybody should vote because a lot of people aren't paying attention. and maybe you really don't want their participation. But that was the old way of thinking. So is this shift to a new way for Republicans to think really happening? I think it's helpful to think about the Republican Party in different kind of groups or factions, right? Some conservatives have argued for years that making it harder for people to vote was actually bad for the party. And this year we saw a real shift in strategy compared to 2020, specifically with many Republican campaigns embracing the idea of early voting and mail voting, telling voters to vote that way.

12:47But what I heard from experts as I reported the story was that the Trump right, the most kind of MAGA right, may still struggle with the idea of access a little bit. Here's how Charles Stewart, who's a voting expert at MIT, put it to me. If you're a Republican strategist, it does require you to kind of rethink some of these things. If you're part of the Republican Party that really is motivated by nativism and nationalism, I think it's going to be harder to make that leap. There is just a clear opposition among some in the Republican Party to widening the tent of American politics. We see this in survey data.

13:25And over the last couple of years, I've listened to a bunch of grassroots election integrity sort of meetings. And you can hear skepticism about bringing new people into the electorate. And Piers Miles Parks turned out in our studios this morning. Thanks for coming by. Thanks, Steve.

13:43And that's up first for Thursday, November 21st. I'm E. Martinez. And I'm Steve Innskeep. Remember, you can take our audience survey, your chance to tell us what you think about Up First. It helps to make this podcast better. Just go to npr.org slash Up First Survey. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Miguel Macias, Megan Pratt, Ben Swayze, Mohamed El Bardisi, and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Zia Butch, Nia Dumas, and Milton Guevara. We get engineering support from Robert Rodriguez, and our technical director is Zach Coleman. Join us again tomorrow.

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