Federal Worker Surveillance, Trump's Team In Europe, Elon Musk And Mars

0:02Workers will be under heavy surveillance of the General Services Administration. The agency that manages almost all government contracts is also having its budget cut in half. Is this the plan for other agencies too? I mean, Martinez, that's Leila Fadal, and this is Up First from NPR News. A White House team is traveling through Europe this week. The vice president, defense secretary, and secretary of state are meeting with European leaders to discuss transatlantic issues. What's their main message? And sending astronauts to Mars is a key goal of Elon Musk, who also has the president's ear on the subject.

0:37That means the U.S. may become closer than ever to putting a human on the red planet. This is quite a singular moment for the prospects of getting to Mars. Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day.

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2:16GoodRx is not insurance, but if you have insurance or Medicare, GoodRx may beat your copay. Save time and money on prescriptions at goodrx.com slash upfirst. The General Services Administration manages most of the federal government's contracts and real estate, but its budget will soon be cut in half. The remaining employees have been told they will be closely watched while they're on the clock, and this could be a model for what might happen across much of the entire federal government. That's according to reporting from NPR's Jenna McLaughlin, who joins us this morning. Good morning. Hi, Leela.

2:51Hey, so the GSA probably isn't a household name for a lot of people. Just walk us through why it's so important. Sure, yeah. GSA doesn't often make the headlines, but it is really important. A source told me to think about it this way. It's basically the federal government's circulatory system. It pumps blood to the rest of the body. Without GSA, federal agencies would have a really hard time doing things like buying anything or accomplishing their mission. They buy real estate, they get supplies for the government, but also manage nearly all of the government's contracts. So it runs kind of like a business.

3:26If GSA is impacted, that's going to trickle down to the rest of the government and eventually to normal people who are seeking public services. Okay, so you describe these really important functions. So what does a 50 % budget cut at an agency like GSA look like? Yeah, so sources at GSA spoke to my colleague Shannon Bond and I on condition of anonymity about all this. they're not allowed to speak to the press, and they were really scared of being further retaliated against by Trump officials. But listen, Leila, what they told us is that there's going to be big job cuts, canceled contracts, terminated leases.

3:58They're still figuring out the particulars of how to get to that 50 % number, but there will be three requirements to keep your job. Is it required by law? Is it critical to the mission? And lastly, does it generate revenue? Remote work is all going to be over by March 3rd, but it is kind of unclear where employees around the country will actually go into the office. That's because GSA wants to consolidate all its regional and local office space into four or five major hubs across the country. Inevitably, there's going to be more and more legal challenges to what's going on. The deferred resignation offers we've been hearing about and these firings that have been happening without cause or notice.

4:36But everything's moving so fast, it's hard to keep up. Yeah. And by the way, at the end of the day, it's unclear how much all these major changes are going to cost. So a lot changing, a lot unclear. We're hearing from a lot of federal workers. They're not taking that resignation offer. They don't trust it. What happens to the people who are left when the dust clears? Yeah, that's really important. Our sources told us that GSA employees in some departments have been specifically told by their managers that going forward, everything they do on their work devices is going to be heavily surveilled.

5:08You know, of course, most government and corporate-owned devices are subject to some monitoring. That's part of the deal of being employed. But this is really above and beyond. One of the most disturbing things sources told us is that employees would have what's called a key logger put on their computers. Those programs track every single thing that you type. Wow. It's super invasive, yeah. But technical experts at GSA also told us it's a big cybersecurity risk, depending on whether things like passwords or other sensitive information is retained or stored elsewhere. Other surveillance might be monitoring of when employees log in, their badge swipes, their chats.

5:41Meanwhile, staff in D.C. can't just swipe into the office anymore. They have to go through a full security screening. So really a sense of being constantly watched. How does all of this fit in with the larger changes that the Trump administration is making across the federal government? One of our sources said that they were told this is the Trump plan for the rest of the federal government, with some small exceptions. So the 50 percent cuts, the ramping up of pressure, this constant surveillance we've been talking about. You know, Laila, we might be having the same conversation again soon about a different agency.

6:14NPR's Jenna McLaughlin, thank you for your reporting. No problem.

6:23Top officials from the Trump administration are in Europe this week. They're there for talks their counterparts hope will shed light on U.S. policy on Ukraine, commitment to NATO, and other transatlantic issues. Terry Schultz reports from Brussels, where Defense Secretary Pete Hexeth meets allies today. Good morning, Terry. Good morning, Leila. So just walk us through who's going where and why. Yeah, it's a busy week in transatlantic relations. And just to start off, Leila, I have to note that as his officials were on the way to Europe, President Trump went ahead with announcing 25 % tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

6:58So Europeans may have been smiling through gritted teeth as they welcomed their American counterparts here. But in sum, the travel plans look like this. Vice President J.D. Vance spoke yesterday at an international summit on artificial intelligence in Paris. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is here at NATO today to join a meeting of some 50 countries that support Ukraine. after he met U.S. troops in Germany yesterday. And Friday, Vance will be joined by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and members of Congress for the biggest annual foreign policy gathering in Europe, the Munich Security Conference.

7:30Okay, so quite a lineup there, Terry. What are their main messages for the European partners? Well, it ranges obviously based on the venue and the audience. In Paris, with leaders from Europe and Asia in attendance, Vice President Vance asserted, Washington will be dominant in crucial ways, including production of the all-important microchips. He warned Europe it should drop its focus on regulation, which has meant investigations into American companies, including Elon Musk's X platform, and has meant fines on some of them, such as Google, which Trump has blasted publicly as unfair. While he was in Germany, Hegseth gave a preview of what he'll say at NATO.

8:06This kind of urgency of this moment requires There's friends talking to friends about capabilities, about leadership, about stepping up, about burden sharing. But it ought be those in the neighborhood investing the most in that collective individual and collective defense. OK, so what will NATO allies hear and take away from remarks like that? Well, first off, I'm sure they're relieved he describes this as friends talking to friends. And I'm not even joking. Europeans are so on edge here, wondering if Trump's well-known animosity toward NATO in his first term will carry over. Added to that now, remember, are these Trump threats against two NATO allies.

8:44That he may seize Greenland, which is a territory of Denmark, and that he wants Canada to become the 51st state. Diplomats tell me those issues are not expected to be raised here, in part because they're so inflammatory and no one wants to torpedo this first meeting. So, back to Hegseth's remark on burden sharing. This is exactly what Europeans are expecting to hear. They'll explain that they are increasing their investment. 23 of 32 countries now spend 2 % of their GDP on defense. That's NATO's old target. They're expecting Hegseth to repeat Trump's new demand that this be raised to 5%. And what about concerns that the U.S.

9:19will pull out military support from Europe? That's particularly important for those countries along the front line of the war in Ukraine. But Hegseth was also fairly reassuring about that yesterday. Let's have a listen. We would be remiss in not reviewing forced posture everywhere. But it would be the wrong planning assumption to say, oh, America's abandoning something or America's leaving. Now, that doesn't mean there won't be decisions to move some U.S. troops, but he seems to be trying to tamp down fears of anything abrupt. If these are the kind of things he repeats at NATO over the next two days, allies will be relieved.

9:50And the fact that he's attending this Ukraine defense contact group meeting today is also reassuring. They'd be happy to see Hegseth lead the group, which was set up by his predecessor Lloyd Austin, but they weren't sure if he'd even come. So I think they'll be considering this a good start. Okay. Terry Schultz in Brussels. Thank you, Terry. You're welcome.

10:15And now let's consider Mars. The red planet got a shout out in President Trump's inaugural address. We will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars. NPR's Nell Greenfield Voice is here to talk about what the new administration might do in space, especially in terms of future Mars missions. Hey, Nell. Hey there. So I feel like people have been talking about going to Mars forever now. Why would President Trump mention Mars specifically? Is it because of Elon Musk? Well, Elon Musk definitely wants to colonize Mars.

10:53That's why he founded SpaceX. He wants the human species to be multi-planetary. And, you know, as you know, he's been shaking up the government. President Trump picked one of Elon Musk's associates, Jared Isaacman, to run NASA. Isaacman went to space twice in SpaceX capsules. So people who have been watching this and who want a Mars mission see some real opportunity here and also some peril. Okay, opportunity and peril. Let's start with opportunity. What's that? So right now, NASA is really focused on the moon. I mean, there's been delays, but astronauts are supposed to orbit the moon next year, and a landing is planned the year after that.

11:29Now, in this program, it was always like to the moon, to Mars, and Mars was theoretically going to follow, but the connections have never really been made clear. And so the opportunity is to sort of push NASA to really figure out the links and get a space program that's more directly targeted to a future human Mars mission. And here you've got Elon Musk. So he's actively test flying a vehicle and a rocket that's designed to go to Mars. He's got the ear of the president. You know, here is this close ally of the president who has spent years and years actively working to get people to Mars. Yeah, and a lot of money.

12:05So what's the peril? Well, one issue is that if this is seen as an Elon Musk program, it could be polarizing and get pushback. So, you know, there's been some concerns about things like financial conflicts of interest. There could be political opposition. NASA and space travel has long been seen as nonpartisan. I was talking with Robert Zubrin. He's head of the Mars Society, and he said this is really a singular moment in terms of potential Mars exploration. As he put it, if it's seen as an Elon Musk hobby horse rather than a national program, it could set back the dream of going to Mars for another generation.

12:42Okay, so why has it been a dream for so long, and why hasn't it happened? It's really hard. It takes months to get there, more than half a year, one way. I mean, compare that to the moon, which is just a three-day trip. NASA has been struggling to mount a mission just to go to Mars and collect a Mars rock and bring it home, so-called Mars sample return. By the way, the Trump administration is going to have to make a decision about that soon. That's a mission with a price tag of billions of dollars that would take years. And like that's just some rocks, not people. So when will we know about that and when will we hear if there's going to be changes about where astronauts go?

13:17Trump's pick for the head of NASA, Jared Isaacman, still hasn't been confirmed. NASA is kind of in limbo until that happens. In the meantime, everything out there is being searched for meaning by the space community. For example, Boeing announced possible layoffs among employees who work on NASA's moon program. A NASA spokesperson told us, NPR, that they're looking forward to hearing more about the administration's plans for the agency. All right, now keep us posted. Thank you. That's NPR's Nell Greenfield Voice.

13:53And that's Up First for Wednesday, February 12th. I'm Leila Faldin. And I'm A. Martinez. Why don't you consider making your next listen consider this? The team behind NPR's All Things Considered goes deep into a single news story in just 15 minutes. Listen now on the NPR app or wherever you get those podcasts. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Brett Neely, Ryland Barton, Giselle Grayson, Jenea Williams, and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Ziad Butch, Nia Dumas, and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from David Greenberg, and our technical director is Carly Strange. Join us again tomorrow.

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