Hegseth Defends Iran War, Powell Stays On As Fed Chair, SCOTUS Voting Rights Case

0:00Rachel Martin:One of us feels that it's kind of cold in here. Is it within our power to do anything about that? What if we just light a little fire? A campfire? A trash fire. I think we should. A trash fire. That'd be even better. Give it a little pungent smell. Put an edge on the program today. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth testified about the first$25 billion spent on the war with Iran. What would you pay to ensure Iran doesn't get a nuclear bomb? What would you pay? How much higher does the price go as the economic damage keeps climbing? I'm Michelle Martin. That's Steve Inskeep. And this is Up First from NPR News.

0:42Jerome Powell says he will stay on the board of the Federal Reserve for now, even after his stint as chairman ends. I am confident that the Fed will continue to make its decision based on analysis. But we've had to fight for it.

0:54Rachel Martin:By staying on, Powell denies President Trump the chance to name a replacement. Also, the Supreme Court changes the rules, making it harder to create black majority voting districts. The ruling allows Louisiana to redraw its congressional districts. How many other states might follow? Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day.

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2:39Rachel Martin:We have an initial price for the war in Iran. The Pentagon estimates the U.S. military has spent$25 billion so far on ammunition and jet fuel and other expenses. A Pentagon official offered that number in testimony before Congress. Defense Secretary Pete Hankseth testified, too. What would you pay to ensure Iran doesn't get a nuclear bomb? What would you pay? I reclaim my time. It's not clear the U.S. has ensured Iran will never get a bomb. $25 billion is an initial cost and does not include the economic damage that we are following this morning. The U.S. and Iran continue blocking traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, and NPR national security correspondent Greg Myrie is following that standoff.

3:18Rachel Martin:Greg, good morning. Hi, Steve. What's happening in the strait as of today? Well, not a lot. Shipping traffic remains at an almost total standstill. Both sides say they're inflicting economic pain, and they are, and both believe the other side will blink first. Now, I spoke with Kevin Donegan. He's a retired Navy vice admiral. A decade ago, he commanded the Fifth Fleet, which is based in Bahrain. He says the U.S. could keep this blockade going indefinitely. It's very sustainable with the forces they have in the region now, because they can even peel some of that back and move others into the region and do a rotation.

3:55And Iran also believes it can maintain its blockade using a combination of mines at sea and drones and missiles from the shore.

4:03Rachel Martin:Does the U.S. have the capability to clear those mines and defend against those drones? Well, it does. And Donegan says a negotiated agreement would be the best, safest way to reopen the strait. And those talks are stalled at the moment. Now, he says the Navy can clear the mines, though it takes time to do this and to further weaken Iran's forces on land. He's now at the Middle East Institute in Washington, so he doesn't have access to the Navy's plans. But based on his experience, he believes the U.S. is relying on unmanned vessels to clear mines. Remotely controlled surface ships and remotely controlled, I wouldn't call them submarines, they more look like big torpedoes, so to speak, and they can find any mines that are there.

4:46So you basically open two good passageways through, one coming in, one coming out.

4:52Rachel Martin:Okay, if you open passageways, would the Navy then escort oil tankers? Well, yes, he says they could do that, but there would still be risks. And right now, it doesn't seem the U.S., either the Navy or the the military at large is prepared for this, and the shipping companies don't seem to have the appetite for that level of risk. Also, this would be a partial solution at best. You wouldn't see the same level of pre-war shipping traffic, not even close, according to Donegan. He says before the war, more than 100 ships sailed through the strait daily, to and from Iran, to and from Arab countries carrying oil, natural gas, and other key components of the global economy.

5:32Rachel Martin:Okay, hard to get up to that level again. How long has the U.S. been planning for a scenario like it faces now? Well, a long time, Steve. The U.S. naval presence in the Gulf dates to 1949. The Fifth Fleet was formally established in Bahrain in 1995, specifically to protect the flow of oil. Here's Donegan again. It's the forefront of everything that we did in the Fifth Fleet, including knowing that if we carried out military operations, this would be a card that the Iranians would play. It's completely expected that this is what they would do and is built into your planning process. So Iran's move was no surprise to the U.S.

6:10Navy. If there was any surprise, it's that the Gulf has remained open despite all the Middle East turmoil over the decades.

6:17Rachel Martin:NPR's Greg Myrie, thanks so much. Sure thing, Steve.

6:28Rachel Martin:Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is not walking away from the central bank yet. Powell says he plans to remain on the Fed's governing board for some period of time after his term as chairman ends next month. That is unusual, and it highlights both the economic and political pressure the Fed has been facing in recent years. NPR's Scott Horsley has chosen to remain at NPR's business desk for the time being. Scott, good morning. Good morning, Steve. What did Powell say exactly? Powell had been very guarded up until yesterday about what he would do when his term as chairman expires. Fed chairs usually step aside at that point.

7:01But Powell has the option to remain on the Fed's governing board through early 2028. And at his last news conference as chairman, Powell said he's going to exercise that option, at least for a while, in an effort to safeguard the Fed's ability to operate without political pressure. President Trump has really tried to break down those boundaries. He's threatened to fire Powell. He tried to fire another Fed governor. The Justice Department even launched a criminal investigation of the Fed. Powell and his colleagues have resisted those efforts up until now, but Powell says the battle's not over, and that's why he's sticking around.

7:33I am confident that the Fed will continue to make its decision based on analysis, rigorous analysis, and not on political considerations, but we've had to fight for it. Powell did say he plans to keep a low profile once he's no longer a chair, He won't be competing with Kevin Warsh, who appears to be headed for Senate confirmation, to be the next leader of the central bank.

7:53Rachel Martin:Okay, the thing that affects us most directly here is interest rates. The Fed didn't change them on Wednesday. Kevin Warsh has been talking about lowering them. But what about the other people who vote on this? Yeah, they're not going to go along right away, I don't think. We're in this tricky environment where inflation is getting worse, not better, partly because of the war with Iran, which has triggered a sharp spike in energy prices. The average price of regular gas jumped another seven cents overnight. So far, those high gas prices don't seem to be forcing most families to cut back spending elsewhere.

8:23Chief Economist Mark Zandy of Moody's Analytics suspects one reason is a lot of people just got their tax refunds. And because the GOP tax cuts, those refunds are bigger on average this year than last. I do think the tax refunds were really critical. I mean, particularly in the month of March, that's kind of the peak of the refund checks. That really does help, particularly lower middle-income households who are more cash-strapped. That refund goes right into spending. But, of course, tax refunds come only once a year. So if gas prices stay high, we could see some erosion in families' abilities to keep spending on things like restaurant meals and vacations once we get into the spring and summer.

8:58Rachel Martin:How's the broader economy doing? You know, we're going to get a report from the Commerce Department this morning on GDP for January, February, and March. So that's a little dated because the wartime price hikes only began in the last of those three months. overall, the reports expected to show the economy was stronger in the first quarter than it was at the end of last year when we hit the speed bump of the government shutdown. A big part of what's driving the economy right now is spending by wealthy families who feel good about the booming stock market and home values. Zandi notes the richest 20 % of families in the country account for about 60 % of all personal spending.

9:37Wow. That gives you a real clear sense of how top-heavy consumer spending in the economy is. And, you know, when things are going well and stock markets hitting record highs on a daily basis, that's going to provide a lot of juice to the spending by that group. And it's going to keep the economy moving forward. But it feels like it would be much more healthy if we saw a broader distribution of spending. GDP is also getting a boost from all the business investment in data centers and artificial intelligence. The housing market is still in a slump, though. So the residential portion of GDP looks pretty weak.

10:06Rachel Martin:NPR Scott Horsley, thanks as always. You're welcome.

10:15Rachel Martin:A Supreme Court ruling could alter election maps across this country. On Wednesday, the court's conservative Republican supermajority made it much harder to apply the Voting Rights Act. Voting rights advocates have long considered the law the crown jewel of the civil rights movement. NPR's Hansi Lo Wang covers voting rights and is with us. Hansi, good morning. Good morning, Steve. OK, so this is a ruling concerning a specific congressional district, just one in Louisiana. But what is the most important thing to think about as this is applied elsewhere? This ruling reinterprets longstanding protections against racial discrimination and redistricting.

10:51And it's going to make it much, much harder to challenge voting maps, not just for Congress, but at all levels of government, with claims that the maps unfairly weakened the collective voting power of racial minorities in places where white majority voters and minority voters of color tend to prefer different candidates.

11:09Rachel Martin:Yeah, okay, so the idea of the Voting Rights Act in the 1960s was if black voters had their voting power diluted by gerrymandering, you could draw new black majority districts to correct that. That was the operation before. What's the rule after the Supreme Court opinion? Well, the conservative justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion for the court and Alito said the focus of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which is a section at the heart of this Louisiana case. Alito said the focus of it should be intentional racial discrimination, intentional racial discrimination. That's the change.

11:43Yes. Congress amended the Voting Rights Act decades ago to say that Section 2 should focus on any discriminatory effects of a redistricting plan. And, you know, one legal expert I talked to yesterday was Ativa Ellis at Case Western Reserve University. And Ellis said that proving intentional discrimination, this new standard, is notoriously difficult. We, in essence, are asking plaintiffs now to find a smoking gun, the proof of the racist intent that is sort of objectively and consciously articulated in order to prove their case. The problem with discrimination cases is that most legislators in this context know better than to say that.

12:26So in practice, Satiba Ellis and other legal experts say these Section 2 protections may now end up being basically impossible to enforce.

12:33Rachel Martin:So you could have a discriminatory effect but still struggle to prove that it was a discriminatory intent. Is there an immediate effect ahead of the midterm elections we have this year? Well, Republican-controlled states, especially in the South, could try to eliminate some Democratic represented House districts that the Voting Rights Act was likely protecting. But it is late April, and we are past most state candidate filing deadlines for this year's midterm election. Now, that hasn't stopped Republicans in places like Louisiana, Georgia, and Tennessee from urging their state's maps to be redrawn as soon as possible.

13:05I should note there's a request in for the Supreme Court to speed up certifying its rulings so that Louisiana can try to redistrict. But again, the timing makes this tricky to do this year. This could be a multi-year redraw in the end. And whenever this redistricting happens, part of the bottom line here is that with the further weekend Voting Rights Act, the United States may be headed towards seeing the largest ever decline in representation by black members of Congress.

13:31Rachel Martin:This ruling comes just as Florida is the latest state to redraw its or try to redraw its maps. Yes, Florida's Governor Ron DeSantis said he expected this ruling from the Supreme Court and the governor's office cited the ruling yesterday to make a case for this new map. But the map was unveiled earlier this week, and it doesn't really try to dismantle the districts that were likely protected by Section 2. What's clear is that this new Florida map is trying to give Republicans four more U.S. House seats, and it makes Florida the latest state to jump into this mid-decade gerrymandering fight that President Trump started.

14:05Rachel Martin:Hansi, thanks so much. You're welcome. That's NPR's Hansi Lo Wang.

14:12Rachel Martin:And that's Up First for this Thursday, April 30th. I'm Steve Inskeep. And I'm Michelle Martin. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Andrew Sussman, Raphael Nam, Ben Swayze, Mohammed Elbardisi, and Ali Schweitzer. It was produced by Ziad Batch and Nia Dumas. Our directors, Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Nisha Hainas. Our technical director is Carly Strange. And our deputy executive producer is Kelly Dickens. We hope you'll join us again tomorrow.

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