Democrats' Shutdown Pressure, SNAP Deadline, Nuclear Testing

0:02There's mounting pressure on lawmakers to get the government open. It's not just Democrats. Republicans are suffering, too. We ought to come together and negotiate. Several unions are calling on the Democrats to give in. Will they? I'm Martinez. That's Leila Faddle. And this is Up First from NPR News.

0:22Millions of Americans could lose snap food benefits tomorrow. The Trump administration says it cannot legally dip into emergency funds. That claim, though, is now in court. Will a judge force the White House to refund the program? And President Trump says he wants the U.S. to test nuclear weapons again for the first time in decades. If we were to start explosively testing nuclear weapons again, so would Russia and China, and they would be able to close the technical gap with the United States. So why now? Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day.

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1:36See TotalWine.com for details. Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly. B21. This message comes from the Natural Resources Defense Council. Remember seeing plentiful bees buzzing around gardens and fields? Chasing monarch butterflies through the park? Building snowmen after the first snowstorm? These are the moments of wonder NRDC is fighting to preserve for future generations. Donate to support them at nrdc.org slash first, and your gift will be matched five times. This message comes from Monarch. Most people don't even know how many financial accounts they have or their net worth.

2:15And when you're not paying attention, you're leaving money on the table. The solution is Monarch, an all-in-one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface on your laptop or phone. Link your accounts in minutes, see your full financial picture, and say goodbye to manual spreadsheets forever. Get a full year for half off, only$50 with promo code VALUE at Monarch.com. Tomorrow, things are going to get a lot worse for many Americans in the midst of this shutdown. Snap food benefits will run out for about 42 million people. Saturday is also when open enrollment begins on federal insurance exchanges, and premiums are expected to more than double on average.

3:01Democrats want to extend health care subsidies to keep those costs down. But Thursday, major airlines asked Congress to pass Republicans' stopgap funding plan. Here's United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby. It's been 30 days, and while I don't have a position on which partisan side and how things should be settled with health care, it has been 30 days. I also think it is time to pass a clean CR. The largest union for federal employees already made a similar call. So how long can Democrats continue to hold out? NPR congressional correspondent Barbara Sprunt went to a town hall in Maryland last night to hear what Democratic Senator Angela Ulso Brooks and her constituents had to say.

3:39Good morning, Barbara. Good morning. First, I just want to know, are Democratic lawmakers the only ones feeling pressure right now? Well, you know, on Capitol Hill, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are talking a lot about the consequences of this shutdown. People going without pay, the impending loss of some nutrition assistance. But that hasn't translated to any concrete action. Both sides remain incredibly dug in. And so at this town hall last night, I asked the senator, so how does this end? I think that the pain that has been allowed to grow impacts all of us. It's not just Democrats. Republicans are suffering, too.

4:14And I think some of my colleagues will soon find out that their constituents are suffering as well and that we ought to come together and negotiate. So you just asked me about pressure. It seems like Democrats are banking on Republican constituents applying pressure to Republican lawmakers. Okay, so you're at this town hall. We heard unions already calling on Democrats to pass the continuing resolution from the Republicans and get it over with. Is that also the sentiment you heard from voters? No. I mean, in fact, the people that I spoke with at this event told me they want Senate Democrats to hold that line when it comes to withholding their votes, hoping to get negotiations on health care.

4:52Here's Christina Thompson, one of the attendees. I think they should hold out as long as possible. It's clear whose shutdown this is. You know, the Republicans hold all the leverage and all the cards. And if we back out now, then, you know, we're just showing again that the party has no backbone. Now, this is on track to become the longest running government shutdown. The last long one was in 2019 for 34 days. What are some of the ways that make this shutdown feel different? Well, Democrats have traditionally been hesitant to shut the government down. And we don't even have to cast too far back down a memory lane here.

5:30Back in March, there was a sense that Democrats may hold out on supporting a bill that would fund the government. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer ended up voting alongside Republicans. A shutdown was avoided. And I was with a lot of House Democrats at a retreat when he made that announcement signaling his support. And they were very upset about it. Their thinking was, as the party in the minority, they have very few opportunities to force a negotiation. And they view the shutdown as one of the only, if not the only, ways to influence the process. So that brings us to today. And since the shutdown began, we have seen Democrats really united.

6:05They are exerting this one leverage point, as they've called it. They don't appear to be backing down. And they seem to think that Republicans will take the blame, not them. And what about Republicans? What's their response? Their message has been, hey, we are holding votes to fund the government. Democrats aren't voting with us. If they care about things like funding nutrition aid and paying air traffic controllers, then they should vote with us. Here's Senate Majority Leader John Thune earlier this week. This isn't a political game. These are real people's lives that we're talking about. And you all just figured out 29 days in that, oh, there might be some consequences.

6:41And we should say the Senate has quite literally left the building. They've left for the weekend. That's NPR congressional correspondent Barbara Sprunt. Thank you, Barbara. Thank you. As we just heard, 42 million people will start to get cut off from SNAP benefits tomorrow as the shutdown drags on. That's never happened before. A federal judge is deciding whether to order the Trump administration to find other ways to get people money to buy food. Here to tell us more about all this and what's at stake is NPR's Jennifer Ludden. Hi, Jennifer. Hi there. Okay, so remind us why the administration said it had to cut off SNAP benefits, and what's the legal challenge to that?

7:18Well, a week ago, the Agriculture Department posted on its website that the well has run dry. In a memo, the agency said because of the shutdown, it doesn't have enough money for SNAP benefits for November, and it said it cannot legally use what's in a contingency fund. It argued that is meant for emergencies like natural disasters. Now, Democratic governors and attorneys general from about two dozen states sued. They said SNAP is an entitlement. It can't just be cut off, and doing so would cause irreparable harm. Judge Indra Talwani in Boston seemed to agree with the states. She put it bluntly.

7:56Congress put money in an emergency fund, and it is hard for me to understand how this is not an emergency. The judge said lawmakers clearly wanted to protect the American people in the event of something like a shutdown. And their intent, she said, I'm quoting here, we're not going to make everyone drop dead because it's a political game someplace else. So a not really veiled reference there to the blame game between Republicans and Democrats over the shutdown. Yeah. So millions of people who depend on SNAP food aid won't get it tomorrow. Assuming the judge does rule in favor of the states, when will people actually get the money they need?

8:31It's a good question. Even if the ruling comes today or very soon, there will still be some delay. Normally, the federal government sends this funding to states well before the first of the month, and then it takes days to get onto the debit like cards people use at stores. But there's an added complication. Full SNAP funding for November is about$9 billion. There's only$5.5 billion in the contingency fund, according to the administration. And it has said recalculating for partial payments would be a logistical nightmare, could take weeks. So, you know, people will have to wait. We don't know for sure how long and they'll get less money.

9:07Meanwhile, I should add there's a second lawsuit filed yesterday over cutting off SNAP payments. Oh, what's that one about? So this is a federal suit in Rhode Island by eight cities around the country, also nonprofits and business groups. They say ending SNAP payments would harm not only people but also local economies. And that includes small businesses who really rely on grocery sales from shoppers using SNAP. In the meantime, states and cities have been scrambling to try and fill the gap or at least help fill the gap during this delay. Can you give us a sense of what they're doing? Yeah, they've got states like Virginia and Vermont who shifted money to actually pay people directly, at least temporarily.

9:47Others are stepping up donations to food banks or looking to help people who may fall behind on their bills. And, you know, people in these places really say they're dealing with a cascade of cutbacks, not just the shutdown, but, you know, mass federal layoffs and funding cuts that have been happening all this year. NPR's Jennifer Ludden. Thank you, Jennifer. Thank you.

10:15President Trump said on Thursday that he wants to test a nuclear weapon. The decision could have huge ramifications. The U.S. hasn't conducted such a test in decades. So how would a test like that be done? Let's ask NPR science and security correspondent Jeff Brumfield. So Jeff, where first would these tests be? Well, there's only one place these tests can be done, and that's on the desert outside of Las Vegas, Nevada, at a place called the Nevada National Security Site. It's this big, sprawling complex. It's bigger than the state of Rhode Island, actually. Scientists would drill a shaft probably thousands of feet into the ground.

10:53They'd drop a nuke down there. Then they'd fill it up with dirt and rock and hit the button. So why has it been so long since the U.S. tested a nuke? The world's major nuclear powers have observed a moratorium on testing since the 1990s. That was the end of the Cold War, of course. And it was kind of a goodwill gesture, also helped to ensure stability, that there wasn't an arms race. the U.S. embarked on a program that uses science at that time. And so the idea was to make sure the weapons work without testing. And a lot of that science has been done in the very same tunnels in Nevada where they used to test.

11:31And I had the very, very unusual opportunity to go underground last year, 1 ,000 feet. I saw these sophisticated experiments the U.S. was doing down there instead of nuclear testing. And while I was there, I met Don Haynes, a physicist from Los Alamos National Laboratory. That's, of course, the lab that made the first bomb. At the time, Haynes told me there was no need for a systems test of a nuke. Our assessment is that there are no system questions that would be answered by a test that would be worth the expense and the effort and the time. But Haynes was very quick to add that, you know, a decision on testing was above his pay grade, as he put it.

12:12And it was down to people like President Trump to make that choice. Yeah. So why does President Trump want to test now? We're not actually sure. But earlier this week, Russia said it had tested some very controversial systems. One was a nuclear-powered cruise missile. The other was a nuclear-powered underwater torpedo that could be used to attack U.S. cities. Both of these weapons could evade Trump's proposed Golden Dome missile defense systems. And many experts thought that could be the reason why Trump wants to test. Now, I should point out they're nuclear-powered. Those weren't nuclear weapons tests, but still.

12:49So if the U.S. does indeed resume nuclear testing, what could the possible consequences be? Many experts basically said the consequences would be bad. For one thing, the U.S. did way more nuclear tests during the Cold War than Russia and China. So John Wolfsall at the Federation of American Scientists told me this. We have a huge technical advantage over both those countries. And if we were to start explosively testing nuclear weapons again, so would Russia and China, and they would be able to close the technical gap with the United States. And there are environmental consequences as well. You know, Las Vegas has expanded massively in the past 30 years.

13:28Even if the radiation is contained underground, as scientists expect, the shaking from a bomb, even all that way away, could be enough to damage buildings near the site. That's NPR's Jeff Brumfield. Jeff, thanks. Thank you.

13:44That's Up First for Friday, October 31st. Happy Halloween. I'm Leila Faldin. And I'm Martinez. Families around the world are not having as many kids as they used to. Researchers say women are having half as many children now than they did in the 1970s. I don't need another one. I don't want another one. I love having only one child. This weekend on The Sunday Story, why are so many families making this choice and what exactly does it mean for our future? That's this Sunday right here in the Up First podcast. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Katherine Laidlaw, Kelsey Snell, Brett Neely, Mohamed El-Bardisi, and Ali Schweitzer.

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