Federal Worker Email Confusion, UN On Ukraine, Colorado River, France Surgeon Trial

0:00Good morning. We're having a heated discussion in here, not really heated, about the apostrophe in its. IT apostrophe S versus ITS. And the discussion consists of, I wrote it wrong. You were wrong. I'm sorry. The discussion is Layla's wrong. It sounds the same. Layla's rarely wrong. That's true.

0:24The United States broke with allies at the UN, refusing to blame Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. Is the U.S. burning its allies? Oh my God, you did it a third time. I eliminated two of the apostrophes. and there's yet a third one. Oh, my gosh. Why do you got to point out all my flaws, Steve? No, I'm sorry. That's terrible of me. The United States avoids blaming Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. U.S. allies differ at the U.N. The terms of the peace must send a message that aggression does not pay. Is the U.S. breaking with its friends? I'm Steve Inskeep with Leila Fadal, and this is Up First from NPR News.

1:05The Colorado River drought could get worse. The Trump administration put billions of dollars aimed at keeping the river flowing on hold. These are not woke environmental programs. These are essential to continued ability to divert water. OK, can the money be found elsewhere? And a surgeon is on trial in France. He's accused of abusing hundreds of his patients, most of them children. Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day.

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2:44Rinse. It's time to be great. This message comes from Dell Technologies. The new Dell PC with Intel Core Ultra helps you fast forward through busy work, leaving more time for you time. Get a new Dell PC at dell.com slash ai dash pc. The deadline for that what did you do last week email that federal workers received has come and gone, but everyone's still confused about who should have responded and what's next. Yeah, I don't know if you've been following this. An email went out over the weekend, supported by a post on social media by Elon Musk telling federal workers to reply with five things that they did last week.

3:27And Musk publicly saying, if you don't do this, we're going to count it as your resignation. A number of cabinet agencies told their employees to ignore this email or to reply to the management of the agency. Various things. And now the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management has issued guidance, clarification, although things are not that much clearer. Charles Azel wrote that the agency should, quote, review responses and evaluate non-responses, not explicitly saying that you should or shouldn't write the email. He added it's up to agency leaders to decide how to proceed. So federal workers were in this position of should I reply, should I not reply, and getting all these mixed messages.

4:10Elon Musk and President Trump weighed in again yesterday. Here's the president in a conversation with journalists in the Oval Office. I thought it was great because we have people that don't show up to work and nobody even knows if they work for the government. So by asking the question, tell us what you did this week, what he's doing is saying, are you actually working? And then if you don't answer, like you're sort of semi-fired or you're fired because a lot of people are not answering because they don't even exist. Is there evidence that there's a bunch of federal workers that don't exist? Well, administration people have quoted a survey finding that only 6 % of federal workers are coming into work, but that turns out to be false.

4:51And it turns out the vast majority do show up for the office, and a limited number have hybrid schedules or work from home.

5:04The Trump administration has been shifting course on Ukraine so much that it was at odds with allies in Europe in votes at the United Nations. Yeah, the United States opposed a resolution at the Security Council that demanded that Russia withdraw from Ukraine. American diplomats instead put forward a differently worded resolution that called for peace without blaming Russia for anything. Here's how U.S. Ambassador Dorothy Shea put it. Our draft resolution is elegant in its simplicity, a symbolic, simple first step toward peace. And the Security Council did approve it with the United States, Russia, and China all voting yes.

5:43Britain and France abstained. The exact choice of words matters because what the Security Council approves carries the force of international law. NPR's Michelle Kellerman joins us now to talk about all this. Good morning. Good morning, Lola. So first, Michelle, why were the Europeans hesitant to join what the U.S. calls a simple step toward peace? Yeah, because the resolution didn't recognize the reality that Russia started this war, nor did it even call for a just peace based on the U.N. charter, which Russia is violating. British Ambassador Barbara Woodward told the Council that no one wants peace more than Ukraine, but the terms matter.

6:19And the terms of the peace must send a message that aggression does not pay. This is why there can be no equivalence between Russia and Ukraine in how this council refers to this war. And while the U.S. says this is just a first step to support a peace process that will eventually include everyone, There's just a lot of concern about how the Trump administration is going about this. President Trump himself doesn't seem to agree to the reality that Putin started the war and is the aggressor. Yeah, and that wasn't the only vote at the UN yesterday. Tell us about what happened in the General Assembly.

7:01Yeah, I mean, this whole thing started because the Ukraine and its European allies wanted the UN to mark the third anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion by voting on a much longer statement, one that called on Russia to pull out, to stop targeting Ukraine's energy infrastructure, to return civilians, including Ukrainian children who were forcibly deported to Russia during the course of this war. Now, the Trump administration did not like that, and that's why they drafted their own resolution, you know, challenging anyone to say we don't support peace. And in the end, 93 countries supported Ukraine's version in the General Assembly, And it was amazing to look at the board to see the names of the 18 countries that voted no on that.

7:45The U.S. was in league with Russia, Belarus, North Korea, just to name a few. Wow, very different than past votes. Does any of this really make a difference, though? Well, it's mostly symbolic. I mean, because the resolution that the U.S. drafted didn't actually demand anything of anyone. It just called the conflict awful and implores a swift end to it. They didn't even call for a ceasefire or anything, you know, concrete. But what all of this kind of diplomatic theater did show is how far the Trump administration has come to embrace Vladimir Putin and how at odds that is with America's allies in Europe.

8:25I mean, the allies are still trying to influence him. The French president was at the White House yesterday and the British prime minister is meeting Trump later this week. NPR's Michelle Kellerman. Thank you, Michelle. Thank you.

8:44President Biden set aside$4 billion to keep the Colorado River flowing. President Trump has now put that money on hold, which leaves the river's big water users asking what's next. Alex Hager with member station KUNC covers the drought crisis on the Colorado and joins us now. Good morning, Alex. Good morning. Thanks for having me. Thank you for being here. Okay, this money President Biden put aside basically pays farmers, cities, tribes, and others to not take water they own out of the Colorado River. Why? Well, climate change is shrinking the river to record lows. So at the nation's biggest reservoirs, that's Lake Mead and Lake Powell, water levels could drop low enough that they wouldn't be able to generate hydropower or even send water downstream.

9:28So the Biden administration has been telling farmers if they hit pause on growing some crops, the government will give them money to help replace any income they lost by leaving some water in the reservoirs. And that money came from the Inflation Reduction Act. And one of President Trump's first executive orders was to revoke that act in large part. So is that money just completely gone now? Water users have been told that their grants are under review, but they're not hearing much from their contacts with the federal government. And I'll note that NPR's questions about all this to federal agencies went unanswered.

10:01Some are confused as to why their funding is caught up in this freeze because it doesn't seem to be related to the Trump administration's stated priorities, like eliminating diversity programs and developing American energy production. I talked about that with Ann Castle, who helped manage water under Presidents Biden and Obama. These are not woke environmental programs. These are essential to continued ability to divert water. And without money to incentivize water savings, we're likely to keep seeing steady demand on reservoirs that are already dangerously low. Okay, so what happens if these big Colorado River users don't get the money President Biden promised?

10:42No one can say for sure, but I talked to a number of representatives for big water users, and they told me there's just a lot of question marks about what's going on or what might be next. But if they go back to using water like they did before the Inflation Reduction Act, that steady demand is going to make it more difficult to keep Lake Mead and Lake Powell from shrinking. Worth noting that the IRA also funded longer-term work to keep the whole Colorado River Basin ecologically healthy. So that's hundreds of millions of dollars for things like preventing wildfires and restoring habitats. I talked to folks who do that work on the ground, and they say if the federal funding goes away, it'll leave a gap that's too big to be filled by donors or local governments.

11:24Okay, so the seven states that use the river in the middle of tense talks about new rules for sharing its shrinking supply, how will this impact negotiations? Yeah, well, this is likely to make those talks harder. There's less water in the river than there used to be, and states know they need to cut back on their demand accordingly. So far, some of the biggest cutbacks on demand have only been possible because of federal incentive programs. So now the states might need to figure out new ways to make those difficult cutbacks to farms and cities whose economies and people depend on the Colorado River.

11:59That's Alex Hager with member station KUNC in Colorado. Thank you, Alex. Thank you.

12:11A massive child sex abuse trial has begun this week in the west of France. A once-respected surgeon admitted to abusing hundreds of minors over decades, most of them while under anesthesia. The trial is set to last four months. Victims' advocates hope this will prompt a hard look at the failure of the system that should have prevented such abuse. We go now to NPR's Eleanor Beardsley to hear more. And just a warning that you're about to hear some disturbing details about this case. Good morning, Eleanor. Good morning, Leila. So just break down the case for us first. Who is this surgeon? Where did he practice?

12:48Who did he abuse? Okay, his name is Joël Lesquarnac. He's 74 years old now, and he was a prominent surgeon in Western France specializing in appendectomies, abdominal, and gynecological surgery. He's accused of abusing 299 of his patients over three decades, both girls and boys, and the average age was 11. He carried out the abuse mostly when they were anesthetized, when he was alone with them in the operating theater or recovery room. And damningly, he was flagged for possessing child pornography in 2004. The FBI actually alerted French authorities after his credit card was linked to a pornography site.

13:22But the French judge imposed a four-month suspended sentence with no restrictions on his practice or mandated therapy. He went on to serve in many hospitals and continued his abuse until 2017, when he coaxed his six-year-old neighbor into his backyard and abused her. He's now serving 15 years for that and facing another 20 for the new abuse cases that have come out since because he kept meticulous diaries of his abuse and named his patients. I spoke with Francesca Sata, a lawyer representing 10 victims and families. Here she is.

13:56She says he benefited from an omerta, a silence, both personal and professional. He abused his own nieces, and Sata, like many believe his then-wife, among others, must have suspected something. I mean, you describe him getting caught around child pornography in 2004, and then his abuse continues for nearly over a decade. Why was he not stopped? Yeah, well, that's the question. You know, I spoke with freelance journalist Hugo Lemonnier, who just wrote a book about it. He says this trial, if it's only about this one man, will be a failure. Because the point, he says, is we continue to allow LeSquarnik to be alone with children.

14:33No one asked questions, likely because of his high position in society as a surgeon. Here's Lemonnier. After he was found guilty of child pornography, nothing has changed. Because nobody wanted to see him as a danger. Nobody wanted to see the predator. And even though he's admitted his guilt, Leila, in France, the trial proceeds despite a confession unlike in the U.S. And this comes after another very covered trial internationally that documented a pattern of sexual abuse in France, a different trial, right? That's right. Last year, the world watched the trial of a Frenchman and many other men who drugged his wife and brought these men into their home to rape her over a 10-year period and filmed it all.

15:19And just like in that case with the husband, this surgeon has admitted guilt. Yesterday, as the trial opened, Lesquanek told the court, if I'm appearing before you, it's because one day when most of these people were just children, I committed hideous acts. But this trial is missing what the other one had, which made it possible really to get through it for everyone watching. A hero, the wife Giselle Pelico, who bravely demanded that it be public so that society could progress, and that has led to a shift in mentalities and actually concrete changes in rape laws. people are hoping that this trial will have a similar effect.

15:50NPR's Eleanor Beardsley in Paris. Thank you for your reporting. Thank you, Leila.

15:59And that's Up First for Tuesday, February 25th. I'm Leila Faldin. And I'm Steve Inskeep. If you'd like, make your next listen, consider this. The team behind NPR's All Things Considered goes deep into a single news story in 15 minutes. You can listen now on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Tara Neal, Eric Whitney, Kevin Drew, Jenea Williams, and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Ziad Butch, Nia Dumas, and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Arthur Laurent, and our technical director is Carly Strange. Join us again tomorrow.

16:30Yeah.

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