So you'll get Canadian players who've changed planes in Jamaica?

Canadian and American players, the European players. As long as they've got family ties to Jamaica, they can gain citizenship. We'll build our team around those guys, and then start adding Jamaicans as they become better at the game.

It sounds like it's less that you're trying to put together a Jamaican national hockey team so much as you're trying to make hockey a sport in Jamaica.

Well, yeah. We want to make it - we want to give the kids and the people in that country other options. You know, I've got relatives down there now. And if you want to be educated in Jamaica, there's basically three ways - you can be wealthy and pay for school, you can have relatives who can help you by sending you money or you can be able to run really, really fast and get a scholarship. So hockey will be another opportunity, as well as other sports like soccer, basketball and other sports we can bring down there.


We don't know what, if anything, he has told the investigators thus far. But we do know, as we suggested earlier, a lot of the questions. For example, where did the guns come from?Where did the explosives come from?And where did the money for those things come from?

Well, first of all, if he is coming in and out of consciousness - which is what we understand is going on right now, in the hospital room - they really can't question him. He has to be sort of sitting up and reasonably aware of what's going on. Now, this had happened in the Abdulmutallab case, in 2009. That's the young man from Nigeria who was on Flight 253, going over Detroit, and he was wearing an underwear bomb.

And for the first 50 minutes - five, zero minutes - that he was in custody, they questioned him without Mirandizing him because they wanted to know if this is part of a broader plot. But then they Mirandized him. . .

Were there other bombs on other planes?Yes.


Sorry. Sorry. Well, one more sticky issue. You got some pushback from a song - on the song, "Wish You Were Gay. "And people were hoping it would become an anthem for the LGBTQ community. But some people are actually not pleased about it. They feel that it's - there's pushback about it. And how do you think about that?

You know what I think is that everybody has a right to feel exactly what they feel. And it's not anyone's place to tell somebody that their being offended is not correct, you know?It's, like, that's a thing that you can't control. And if somebody doesn't feel OK with something, then you have to respect that and understand that and not try to fight that.

And so I knew writing that song that - it wasn't meant as an insult. And it wasn't meant to be offensive in any way. So for me, I didn't even really think about it because it was so not at all. . .

O'CONNELL: Controversial to us.

. . . Controversial in my mind because I thought of it as almost like a positive thing.


I would disagree that they are a gift. You know, for one thing, they are going not necessarily to the insurance companies. They're ultimately going to low-income Americans to help them afford their co-payments and afford their deductibles. So, you know, on that level, they don't seem like a bailout or a gift to the insurance companies. They are required by the law. The law requires these subsidies to be made. So they're really - you know, I see them as part of the Affordable Care Act and not necessarily a bailout.

The president has also said, Sarah, that the insurance companies, in his words, made a fortune with Obamacare. Is that true?What do the numbers show?

The numbers are a lot more mixed. The best data on this probably comes from the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, which looks at quarterly margins - so how much insurance companies have each quarter leftover after paying out all those claims. In 2014 and 2015, insurance companies had a quarterly margin of just about $20 a person. That's not a ton of money. It's gone up as the Obamacare markets have stabilized.

In 2016, it was about $90 a person, so it's definitely getting better. But the insurance markets - you know, I've covered them since they launched. And they've really been a very rocky experience for insurance companies financially. They didn't know how to price at first. People were sicker than they expected. It's only in the past year that insurance companies have made decent profits there, but I think of them as a mixed bag when it comes to financial performance.


Immigrants from so many impoverished and deadly places made America rich in all ways. They built America's great cities and industries, factories and schools. They made the American dream come alive in the world. As Margaret Thatcher observed from across the ocean, Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy. The immigrants who arrive today from Haiti, El Salvador, Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ghana and a hundred other places keep that dream going with their own lives.

The president's choice of language demands attention and has been denounced around the world, including by members of his own political party. But remove that one ugly sensational word from his remarks and what remains might be no less profane. When you slur and insult people from countries who have helped make America, America is smeared, too.

(Singing) If I go away, I want you to pray not for me, for the souls who have gone away before.

Leyla McCalla singing "A Day For The Hunter, A Day For The Prey. "


Good morning, Scott.

Please give us a fill - so much going on in the Mueller investigation this week.

Well, you know, it seemed like there was Mueller news pretty much every day this week, Scott. On Friday, we learned that Trump's chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, has been subpoenaed in the Mueller probe. Now, this is a man who has the keys to the kingdom, if anyone does. We also got a list of 35 witnesses who are expected to be called in the trial of Paul Manafort. Now, that's Trump's 2016 campaign manager. He is accused of money laundering and deceiving the U. S.  government. That trial was delayed until next week. But we do expect this is going to be the new refocusing of the Mueller probe in the days ahead.

Also this week, CNN reported that Michael Cohen - that's the former attorney for the president - is ready to testify that Trump knew about that June 2016 meeting with Manafort and Donald Jr.  and some Russians offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. And we also learned that Putin and the president will not meet in September because they want to wait until after the Mueller probe is over. So they're planning to exchange visits to each other's capital city next year.


Yeah. These were street fights that got very intense at some stage. And what happened is a large group of pro-Russian protesters fled into a building. I guess they were seeking shelter or looking for a place to perhaps launch their own attacks.

And what video footage shows is that protesters - other protesters began throwing Molotov cocktails at the building, which went up in flame. And many of these victims died of smoke inhalation or jumping from windows or - you know, when they were jumping from windows.

And let's try and follow up on a couple of things, too. What happens now that the European military - we can no longer refer to them as hostages. European military monitors have been released. What happens to their mission?

Well, we have to remember that these particular people who were taken captive were not part of the OSCE or - that's the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe - they were not part of this official mission that's supposed to be monitoring what's going on here. And so they will - obviously, they're not going to be back here to do what it was they were doing. They were just monitoring separately. But the OSCE mission is continuing to look at what's happening here.


Well, Bill Kristol is also a friend of mine. And I think one of the things that is very difficult when you are - he very intensely support - committed McCain supporter. We all have things we would like the election to be about. And Bill, very understandably, would like the election to be about, thank you, Senator McCain, for being right about the surge, as indeed he was right about the surge.

Unfortunately, the voters get to decide what it's about. And from their point of view, it's about financial collapse. And John McCain has never had a consistent message about that. It's way too late now. I mean, that's kind of what you have to do a year before, but that was not a set of issues that interested him. His economic message has never been strong. It's shifted a lot, and so it has been difficult to convey.

I think, at this point, yeah, McCain can talk certainly about national security and how he was right about these issues. It's hard to imagine that when 401Ks are down by 40 percent, when house values in many places are down by 20 percent and more, what voters are going to say other than - well, we'll build a statue to you for the surge, but that doesn't make you entitled to be president.

David Frum is a conservative political writer, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, speaking with us again from Washington. David, thank you.


Oh, wow, it's like turning off a switch. And suddenly I was running down these trails in the dark and I didn't know where I was and I didn't know where I was going and it was getting colder. And all I could see was the distant glow of Vegas. And I was thinking, wow, I really like that city right now. I wish I were there and I didn't know how to get there.

Yeah, you obviously were able to find your way to asphalt and you were able to get back to civilization. Very nice - of course, I'm a sucker for daughter daddy stuff in the book - but you really do say that marathon running - or the training even - reminds you of the preciousness of every moment, moment after moment.

Yeah, it does. It puts you in the minute and being out there every day - bad weather, good weather, light, dark - I started this morning about nine miles ago in the dark and it was cold. And you just find yourself saying, you know, there are things in life that are important and that are worthwhile that require a little bit of sacrifice and a little bit of struggle and a little bit of suffering. It doesn't mean you shouldn't do them. And running reminds you of that all the time.

Tom Foreman - "My Year Of Running Dangerously" - thanks so much for being with us.


It's definitely been a massive industry for Georgia in the last 10 years because about a decade ago is when they instituted these new, very generous, lucrative tax incentives which gives productions up to 30% back depending on how much they spend and whether they're willing to put a Georgia peach logo in their credits and that sort of thing. But it's really significant money back for these major studios in Hollywood.

And what has it gotten back?

There was a record 455 films and television productions that were shot in Georgia in the last fiscal year. And they represented a $2. 7, you know, billion in direct spending, which they estimate brings in $9. 5 billion in total economic impact. So these numbers are really huge. And they have been a huge destination for feature films, and not just any sort of feature films, expensive blockbusters, the biggest of those being Marvel's "Avengers" movies, which shot at Pinewood Studios in Atlanta, which is a big production facility.

As we mentioned, studios and media companies have sent some warning signals. How likely, though, is an actual boycott?


Yeah. What damage in the United States near as you can tell?

Well, we're not really aware of what the damage is precisely. I mean, that's still being accounted for. One thing interestingly for people that are dissecting what happened is that many systems are now trying to clean up the damage. So it's hard to know exactly what happened. It's kind of like cleaning up a crime scene before doing the forensics on it. One thing that is being discussed - this is possibly malware coming from the NSA. Some security experts who've been collecting samples of the malware and dissecting them have been saying that these criminal attacks are based on attacks designed by the National Security Agency and then released into the public by a hacking group called The Shadow Brokers.

You know, now, the NSA, they would have wanted to use the malware for spying purposes, right?The agency has a huge shop - we're very well aware of this - one of the world's best shops, dedicated to finding weaknesses in software and taking advantage of those weaknesses to break in and steal information for spying purposes. The problem is once you break in, you make digital keys, you can't really control who gets them. So this attack is raising one of these fundamental issues that we talk about in the security world about whether NSA surveillance protects people or creates unexpected damage that does more harm than good.

So I - so it's possible that there - it's possible that the NSA program to try and limit damage and trace people who would do harm to the country wound up doing harm across the world.


I haven't talked to him in years.

(Laughter).

Well, you know, Ron Paul - you know, he's got some oddness in his closet. But, you know, compared to Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush, Rand Paul has, like, the greatest situation in terms of family members lingering around the campaign in a lot of ways. You know, his foreign policy is distinct from his father's. Many of his economic policies are distinct. He needs to expound on what is his governing philosophy and why does restraint in foreign policy also mean restraint in domestic affairs?And why are those both good things?

As you survey the political landscape on issues like privacy or foreign policy, do you see traces of libertarian success?


If we can't see the stuff, how can we prove it?How close are we to discovering the hidden these dimensions, if they exist at all?These are the sort of things my next guest ponders at his day job, and he's here to tell us a bit about the dark side of the universe. Michael Turner is a cosmologist and professor of astrophysics at the University of Chicago in Illinois. Welcome back to SCIENCE FRIDAY, Michael.

Great to be here, Ira.

Always good to talk to you. What do you make of the idea that a particle could turn into an invisible twin of itself in a parallel world?

Well, as we often say in cosmology or theoretical physics, that idea might be crazy enough to be true.


Habib Koite is one of Africa's most recognized musicians. His music blends the diverse musical traditions of his homeland, Mali, with rock, blues and jazz. After a six-year absence from the recording studio, Koite and his band Bamada are back with a new CD, "Afriki. "

So, on this CD you have a very strong feeling about Africa, that it is not a place of just sorrow and hard times. How do you feel about the continent and the people of Africa?

Africa is a continent wanting to change something. You know, everybody have to think what to do to give best future for the Africa, give hope to the young in Africa. And African young can have hope in Africa and make something in Africa and believe in Africa.

You've seen so much of the world. But why don't you take us to your childhood in Mali. And it's a country I've always wanted to visit. I've never been there, but I love the musical traditions and the long history of it being a nation with a lot of learning. What was it like for you growing up, and when did you start playing music?


Delbert Spurlock thinks the troops are paying for decisions made by political leaders. He helped rebuild the Army under President Reagan as the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs. Today, he says the way troops are selected and prepared for service shows the U. S.  Army is broken.

Most importantly, it can no longer recruit and retain the caliber of young men and women who are necessary to carry out the functions which the Army is compelled by our policy-makers to deal with.

The Army itself really is not large enough to take care of the missions integral even to the War in Iraq. We have been forced in this conflict to rely on contract mercenaries, Blackwaters of the world. But our Army, for a century or more, has been, in whole, a moral force for good.

It's a deterrent force, and now it has lost the moral authority gained over a century.


And so the - now we know as a result, I think, of Mueller's diligence and quiet pursuit of just the facts that there were more than 80 contacts between members of the Trump campaign and Russian agents. There were - there have been - developed more than 20 meetings between people in his orbit and Russian agents. His national security advisers pled guilty. His campaign chairman's on trial. His deputy campaign chairman's on trial. And yet he continues to call this a witch hunt. And, you know, I can't help but thinking that the hunters have caught some witches here.

And for you being a target of this investigation, what else are you waiting to find out from the investigation?

Well, I'd like to see the - you know, obviously, this is going to be a difficult case to bring to trial in the United States. These are 12 foreign agents, military intelligence agents who undertook this operation as laid out in great detail in the indictment. I'd like to see it brought to justice. I can't wait for President Trump to ask President Putin on Monday whether he'd agree to extradite them to face the bar of justice. And I'd like to be in the court if they were here. I'm not holding my breath either for the fact that Trump will do that or that Putin would agree. But, ultimately, you know, I don't think those agents would probably be vacationing in Western Europe, so. . .

John Podesta, thank you very much for joining us. He - John Podesta's the former chairman of Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. Thanks much.


You mean the wall, the proposed wall.

Correct - fencing. And I believe that, in terms of targeting sanctuary cities, I think law enforcement - local law enforcement should refer to federal authorities people who they detain, undocumented immigrants who have criminal record. So I support that. At the same time, I do believe that we need to find a way to deal constructively with undocumented immigrants, the majority of whom pose no threat to our communities. And right now the Republican Party seems to be stuck, not willing to deal constructively with undocumented immigrants. And that's the key. So I'm hopeful that, you know, if we secure the border, we remove undocumented immigrants who have criminal records - that, eventually, Congress could deal in a more humane, constructive way with undocumented immigrants.

Just very briefly, do you think that this bill is a nonstarter?

I think so. I think it's not going anywhere. I think he did it to please his base, to energize his base. But, frankly, it goes nowhere.


I mean there's no logic to what he does. There's no way to anticipate what he's going to do. Often, what he ends up doing defies logic, defies everybody's expectations, defies explanation.

When you hear this from people who've been around the president, is there a but anywhere?Do they say, I love this man, but?

There used to be. Remember - so I've done - this is my second book. This is effectively a sequel. I've spent the last three years pretty much non-stop talking about Donald Trump. And there used to be buts. There are no buts now. I might make a reservation for some of the most sycophantic people around him. But even they, if you push them a little, get to the vile and ludicrous pretty quickly.

I'm thinking of a description attributed to a former senior White House official, Steve Bannon, describing the president the United States and the president of Russia, Putin and Trump, quote, "two narcissistic, cult leader-type presidents. Both had populist talents, yet both were ultimately out for their own benefit. "And then a key line here, I think - of the two, Putin was the far cleverer one. It sounds like even Steve Bannon, who did so much to promote the president's career, doesn't seem to think he's very bright.


Yeah. A chap called Paolo Campana seems to have been the first with the idea that you should eat a dish of pasta all'Amatriciana and donate some money to relief efforts - a euro, two euros, a couple of dollars. That was taken up fairly quickly by the Red Cross here in Italy. They've got a very clever campaign based on the fact that the ama in Amatriciana is love, so, you know, kind of playing on that and asking people to donate money when they eat a dish of pasta. A lot of restaurants here in Italy got on board very quickly. Paolo Campana said that he had 700 within a day of putting the idea up and lots of restaurants outside Italy.

Do you have a favorite version of the dish?

The simple one, the purest one, yeah. I don't particularly want it with onion or garlic. I think they overpower it. And I prefer just a little bit of hot pepper rather than black pepper, which is what some people put in. Interesting, you know, there's an idea to have a virtual sagre. I mean, these food festivals, they're called sagre, and they take place in every little town in Italy. And some people have put forward the idea that over the weekend, you cook a dish of Amatriciana, have some friends, post a photo, use a hashtag and donate some money to the relief efforts. That's a fun idea. You can, of course, just donate money to the relief efforts without having to cook.

Jeremy Cherfas wrote about pasta all'Amatriciana for NPR's The Salt, and he spoke to us from Rome. Thanks so much for being with us.


They do but it's almost imperceptible. They're - they have pretty soft body for ants and unless they get you in a very sensitive part, you can't even feel it. But in fire ants - fire ants have a stinger so they sting. So that's what the painful part of a fire ant sting is.

What's the future of these guys?Do you think that they're going to populate the whole South?I mean is there any limit to their migration?

Well, there are several limits, and we don't know what a lot of them are yet. One very important limit in the short term is that they do - they don't have winged dispersal. So they don't send out ants - winged ants to form new colonies, which means their spread is quite slow over land, about 200 meters a year radially.

So the only way that they can colonize distant places is when people pick them up and move them, which unfortunately people do a lot. And they do it because these ants like to live in these pre-existing cavities, like flower pots or plywoods you left on the ground too long or old boxes. So that's one limitation to their spread. Others are that - are abiotic(ph) limitations like freeze tolerance and drought tolerance. And we don't know yet what those are for this species.


I think both can be true. I think - look. It's outrageous that there's an invoice. But it's not new. The invoice was not given lately. It was given to Special Representative Yun when he went to North Korea to collect Otto Warmbier. And at that point, when you're giving that invoice, you sign, and you leave. So it's not new. That's one. Second, it's not unique, either. When. . .

It's not unique to negotiations with North Korea or. . .

Correct - North Korea specifically.

North Korea specifically has a habit of this.


This is News & Notes. I'm Tony Cox. Pink slips seem to be raining down in just about every sector and every Zip code. But are there any bright spots out there?The temporary job market may provide an answer. We're joined now by Steve Drexel. He is a labor economist and a 23-year veteran of the staffing industry. He's also a member of the Business Research Advisory Council of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Steve, welcome to News & Notes.

Thanks, it's nice to be here.

You've been following temporary staffing trends for more than two decades now. What sectors are relatively insulated from layoffs?

Well, the sectors that are most resilient are the higher-skill sectors, or if you can get into industries that are involved in education or health care or government. Those are the areas where you get the most bang. We're also seeing a nice increase in the mortgage-processing area, because one of the things the government's doing is lowering the conforming rate for mortgages. And so, there's kind of a rush to refinance.


So I always tell people, look at your many choices. Don't close any doors. But the fact is that, you know, take your passion, take it as far as you can, but understand you've got to make a living, and you've got to pay the loan back.

What about people like you, who are college presidents?What challenges are you facing in trying to make sure that you can get a broad variety of students from different backgrounds?

Farai, you know, what keeps me up at night is the young women who want to be admitted but don't have the dollars, the young women who are students who are continuing, who are saying, I need more financial aid, the young women whose parents can't take out another loan. That literally keeps me up at night. If you see me again and I'm gray, that's what did it.

I mean literally. I mean, I wake up in the - you know, I wake up in the middle of the night and say, how can I find money for these young people?It is a challenge.


So we shall see.

But I have learned a new phrase - brass-necked. Our own brass-necked Melissa Block is covering the World Cup.

(Laughter) I'm not sure if that's a compliment, Steve. But thanks.

I don't know. If it means tough, if it means on top of things, it is you, Melissa. Own it.


Don't mean to put you on the spot, but what's the best ballpark food you've had in the U. S. ?

I am not that adventurous, to be honest, when it comes to ballpark food. I had a mac and cheese hotdog with bacon on last night, which blew my mind. I just couldn't believe that that was something that someone created.

Forgive me. It's going to blow more than your mind (laughter).

Yeah. It was a lot to take on, and it was pretty messy, but I enjoyed it a lot.


What is that called again?Just remind me.

It's called "Pieces Of Her," by Karin Slaughter. But if you're waiting for the next book like that that's coming out, the hottest off the press, I would recommend "Bunny" by Mona Awad, which is also very funny and very sharp and an extremely readable page-turner, which is coming out in June.

I also think about summer reading as escapism fiction. You know, you want to go to another world or back in time or fantasy novels. What about that?

So for, you know, people who are, like, maybe missing "Game Of Thrones". . .


Given what's going on now with credit and with the world, financially speaking, do you still think you made the right choice to go there?

Oh, yeah. It's a rare day that I regret it here; very happy I made the switch. We're optimistic. Brazil goes through cycles like this. Each day's bringing us closer to the next boom.

Brian Willott is a farmer in Bahia, Brazil. Thank you, Brian.

Thank you.


You know, it's - well, my wife and I are just trying to adjust to whatever kind of a Christmas that we can have. To have this on top of all our - all the other stress and pressures going on, it's just overwhelming.

Originally, the value of your condominium was more than $200,000. Do you have any idea what it might fetch today at this auction?

I believe that the lenders are going to probably try to get the most that they can from it. So there's probably a good chance that no - there may be no takers for it. But I can tell you that the surrounding condos that are similar to that are going for well below 100,000.

So you've known for a while now that it was going to go up for auction today. How have you been getting ready for this?


And now a drought in the U. K.  has a silver lining for archaeologists. Toby Driver is an aerial archaeologist for the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales. He spends his time in a small aircraft flying over the country, searching for evidence of ancient structures. And the heat has made his job a little bit easier. Here's what he sees.

You have a shimmering sort of multi-colored fields. That's why the crops aren't ripening evenly - yellows and browns and oranges coming up in the field. And from some distance out, you can see big, dark-green circles, big, dark-green squares appearing in the fields.

Those dark-green shapes hold valuable archaeological information. Ancient structures were often surrounded by trenches for protection and drainage. Even after the structures are gone, the trenches retain moisture. So in a heat wave, when the rest of the crops turn brown, the areas on top of the structures stay green.

It's a bit like an X-ray of the field is revealed.


My pleasure.

Your Honor, take us back to your courtroom in 1999, when you convicted Mr.  Kagan of murder. You're not saying that he didn't shoot Wavell Wint, are you?

No. I'm saying he shot him, I believe, in self-defense.

Well, a lot of eyewitnesses say that, of course, the gun belonged to Donald Kagan and they saw him brandishing that gun.


Wow. All right. So that's an example of maybe law enforcement intervening just in time so he couldn't get his hands on a gun that would have been used to perhaps kill his colleagues.

That's exactly right.

OK.  How about another case?

Sure. A group of children reported a woman had just threatened to shoot them all and had pointed something that looked like a handgun at them. An officer went to the scene and then interviewed the woman, who said, yes, I did make that threat. Here is the mock handgun. I think it was a paper towel roll wrapped in electrician's tape. Here's what I pointed at them, but, officer, there is a real gun, a revolver, under my living room table. The officer contacted a judge, got an emergency restraining order, took possession of the firearm and took the woman into custody for having made the threats. While in custody, she continued to declare quite explicitly her intent to kill those children.


When you start talking about terrorists network, then of course it gets to be real big. In fact, the reason the NSA and now the FBI want to dragnet information about everybody is the bigger the network is that you perform it on, the more accurate the results you're going to get. So when you take this idea that can be applied to "Game Of Thrones" and plug it into the network of everybody that's on the internet and everybody that's using mobile phones, which the NSA can do thanks to enormous computing power, then you get results that you wouldn't be able to figure out any other way because things surface that would be otherwise lost in the sea of communications.

Have you applied this to any other endeavors?

Yeah, in fact my own institute at Stanford did this a few years ago to look at entrepreneurship and start-up companies. We did one study where we compared Stanford, Harvard, Berkeley and MIT to see which one was the most entrepreneurial and in terms of start-up companies and the companies that they - how much money they make and so forth. And in the case of that, Stanford came out way at the top of the pile, as we expected which is. . .

Oh, oh, what a surprise. Yeah.


And within hours, the guy was arrested. And we could see him being taken into a police station.

With such fear in Beijing, how were you able to report the story?

You know, we couldn't hire translators. That was dangerous. Nobody answered their phones, so we just monitored Chinese television. You know, you could listen to shortwave broadcasts. You could go out on the streets. You know, I reread the transcripts of my first day reporting. And we were out with a taxi. The taxi driver, he tapped my arm under the steering wheel because he wanted me to see all the troops in the street, but he kept his eyes straight ahead.

Then we decided that we would hire a rickshaw - one of those buggies that's propelled by a man on a bike. So I put a microphone down my sleeve and a tape recorder in my bag, and we headed off. And I'm narrating what I'm looking at. And this is what it sounded like 30 years ago.


By the way, this is a health issue, too. This is just not an economic issue - 10,000 to 15,000 more people die of pollution from automobiles today than in car crashes. This is a national security issue. People say this is a single issue. This is all of these issues. And so these are investments that the vast majority are going to come from the private sector and private companies, not from the government. But the government does have a role, as it did when we went to the moon, as it did when we defeated fascism. And we're calling for an appropriate public investment to do that.

Now, you mentioned Republicans. The sad fact is, at the moment, that we're going to have to find a way to get this done without them because right now, we still have not seen the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt. We're seeing the spirit of Mitch McConnell, who will kill any climate change bill in its cradle if he has a chance. And that means we have to get rid of the filibuster. We have to prevent Mitch McConnell from stopping climate change. We have to let majority vote - one person, one vote - be the Democratic rule in the U. S.  Senate. I'm the first candidate to say that. I hope others will follow so that we can get progress in this.

Is that a unifying message, though, in these divisive times?

Yes, it is unifying because everyone - Republicans and Democrats - have an interest in not letting America catch fire. So everyone is going to benefit from this.


(Laughter).

Did that work for you?

Yeah. I mean, because it's similar to what the TV show does. They tease some things. Some things get a few seconds. Some things are the main themes. And I felt that they really focused on two main lines here. I think, for me, they were the two main themes of this one. One is that downstairs, it turns out that the royals come with their own servants. And their own servants are very snooty. They're snootier than the king and queen. . . .

Yeah.

. . . As it turns out. And upstairs, the Dowager countess, Maggie Smith - no one else - is dealing with succession issues and who's going to run things in the future. And that also becomes an interesting plot. So those are the two main ones for me. But there's all kinds of other ones that are kind of peeking in around the edges.

I didn't think Maggie Smith could shine any more than she does in the television series, but she really did.


We're seeing - from last night, there were lots of videos showing intense artillery airstrikes on this place. It's just a few piece - few hundred yards wide. And you know, you can actually kind of look out across it - it's such a small area - with binoculars. Reporters there are seeing ISIS flags on what's left of the buildings. There's a collection of squalid tents. But people are hiding out in tunnels and caves, we're hearing.

Wow. I mean, it just - it speaks - this moment speaks so much to the larger story. I mean, if this family who might be holding these children want to stick it out and want to remain committed to ISIS and the ideology and they're not going anywhere, I mean, it just creates an impossible situation.

Exactly, for this father - and also, it's a broader lesson that, you know, it's very difficult to bomb an ideology into oblivion. A lot of the people that have been coming out of this area in recent weeks, you know, remain faithful to ISIS and especially because they've been bombed by, you know, a U. S. -backed force that they see them as the enemy now. And they've been saying that they're going to still support the group and raise their children in the beliefs of the group. So whilst, you know, ultimately this territory probably will be taken back, the broader question of ISIS as existing in its ideology continues.

NPR's Ruth Sherlock - Ruth, thanks so much.


He and his commission had better get it organized. Otherwise, the fury Nigerians are feeling today could spill into much worse. So they say the presidential vote and, of course, it wasn't just voting for president - also for governors, also for national assembly, also for the state assembly.

So we'll have the presidential next Saturday in another vote. But some other votes have been postponed till 9 of March. That's after the original second-round vote date of the 2 of March. So the electoral commission has got to get itself sorted out.

NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, thanks so much.

Always a pleasure.


We had testimony submitted to us this morning in writing by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who engineered - according to the government and himself - the attacks of 9/11. And he was questioned about the role of Salim Hamdan, and I'll just read you one paragraph from what he answered.

The question was, did Salim Hamdan ever have any role in planning, or carry out, any activities that you either directed or were involved in?, as he was the director of operations. He didn't play any role. He was not a soldier. He was a driver. His nature was primitive. He was a Bedouin one person and far from civilized. He was not fit to plan or execute. But he is fit to change truck tires, to change oil filters, wash and clean cars, and passing cargo and pickup trucks. He could tighten bolts and could select the best maintenance shop.

This is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, saying this about Hamdan?

That's right. We also had testimony from Waleed bin Attash, and as I understand it, he was responsible, or has boasted his responsibility, for the attack on the USS Cole. And he says Salim Hamdan's activities were distinctively clear, as he was seen driving the cars going and coming every day. His responsibilities were those related to driving, such as mechanical and maintenance and repairs. He was not involved in planning any attacks against the United States.


High bar, yeah. So the federal indictment is supposed to be unsealed today. What are you going to be looking for as someone who's been following this case against R.  Kelly for a long time?

Well, I'll be looking for a couple of things - one, looking to see if there are new alleged victims in here. You know, the case that's in state court, there are four alleged victims in there. Many of them were already known. They had either already come forward or - yeah, have already come forward and told their stories of alleged abuse at the hands of R.  Kelly.

I'll also be looking to see when the alleged crimes happened. You know, all of the alleged crimes in state court happened 10 years ago or more. Those kinds of cases are really hard to prove, you know, when they're that old. I'll be interested to see if any of these happened more recently, if there are any allegations that he's done anything in the last decade.

WBEZ reporter Patrick Smith in Chicago for us this morning. Thank you.


Up the street.

And how many Union?

That's - the good news and the bad news - there were lots of them but most of them on the 11ths were amateurs.

General Ulysses S.  Grant had diverted Union troops from D. C.  to make an assault on Richmond. Meanwhile, the Confederates were headed for D. C. . So, Howell says, the union quickly recruited anyone they could find.

They were government clerks. I mean, if you could imagine, you know, going down and emptying out all the government offices and telling them, grab your musket and come out and fight off professional confederates - that was the situation on the 11th - not very good for the Yankees. But General Grant, down in Richmond, who thought Jubal Early was down there in Richmond. . .


(Reading) Never let them perceive that they can vex you or make you lose your self-command.

Too late.

Do you draw lesson from any of this, Mr.  Cordell?

Yeah, I mean, one of the most interesting things to me here is the way that there are these common threads. We find a lot of sentimental stories that were widely circulated, things that are supposed to evoke emotions - usually some sadness, even. And this reminds me of many of the videos that we see of soldiers coming home from war or, you know, children who have been granted, you know, a wish - sick children in particular. And to see these threads back into the 19th century, for me this removes the idea of virality just from the platform of the Internet. You know, we often talk about the Internet enabling virality, but it seems clear to me that there's something much deeper about the kinds of things that we share and why we share them that extends prior to the technology we're working with today.


About 300 jobs will be coming back to the Granite City Works plant in Granite City, Ill.  U. S.  Steel made that announcement this past week. That's on top of the 500 new jobs U. S.  Steel announced in March. The company pointed to the Trump administration's controversial tariffs on imported steel as one of the reasons. Dan Simmons is the president of the steelworkers union in Granite City, and he joins us now. Welcome to the program.

Well, thank you.

I want to take you back a little bit to understand the context of what happened in your town. I understand the last few years have been really tough for your members. U. S.  Steel laid off hundreds of workers in 2015. What did that mean for the people there?

It was devastating. When you take their livelihood away, there's nothing out there. And what jobs are there that these guys were able to, you know, pick up, they weren't making nothing what they were making with us. And you watch the - not only these members and their families erode, you see this town erode, the community. It's like a big sucking sound, so to speak.

So what has the community's reaction been to this most recent announcement?


Christmas integration.

Multi-ethnic Christmas celebration. You know, the biggest thing that my parents did was to raise my sister and I in a very diverse neighborhood. It's really, really important, if you're going to adopt a kid that's a different race, to have neighbors that look like that kid.

You know, the study that came out I think is scaring people in thinking that you're going to have to through like a two year master program to learn how to have black kids, if you're white parents. And it's honestly, you could probably knock it out in two hours. It's really not that difficult, there's a few things that you should know. And bringing your kids up in a diverse neighborhood is the most important of that.

And then, you know, if you have friends that are the same race of your kids, you just, you ask them for questions, and it's helpful to have them as a resource, it's something you definitely want to keep next to you when you're raising your kids.


Uterine artery embolization really cuts off the blood flow. The focused ultrasound works slightly differently because it's actually a procedure that doesn't require any incisions. The high-intensity ultrasound goes through the abdominal wall and is able to destroy the fibroid. So, it really doesn't affect the blood supply, but it can zero in and destroy the fibroid tissue.

It sounds like there's been a lot of advances in how people deal with this.

There have been, and I think that many women need to know better what their options are, and even many doctors are not aware of all of the ongoing research. For so many years, we just kind of relied on hysterectomy to fix all of the problems. And I think as women are busy in the workforce and doing more activities with their family and working that the benefit of minimally invasive treatments is really evident.

Suppose that you're someone who's had fibroids and you've had them removed, is there a chance they're going to come back, and if so, what do you do then?


So, it sounds like, what you're saying, is that the two political parties, the two major political parties, have reshaped over time how they choose these representatives which then choose their representative for the race. How has this movement by the political parties set them up differently?

You mentioned a little bit about the winner-take-all system versus proportionality. What are these parties trying to do if you can kind of think in the form of a large institution?

Yes. Well, if you go back a generation or two, both parties pretty much chose their presidential candidates in what was often referred to as the smoke-filled room. In other words, you would go to the convention, there would be several people who wanted the job, they would be campaigning in a variety of ways, and they would have some delegates who they consider to be their delegates because there had been a few primaries. And there were a few primaries in certain states that go way back in our history through the 20th century - Oregon, Wisconsin, a few others.

And these people would then get to the convention - some of them pledged, some of them not pledged, most of them people who were party professionals or already office holders - and they would kind of get together at some point or another in some backroom and decide which one of the presidential candidates would be strongest. And that person, eventually, after several ballots, would get the nod.


It's lovely. And I was trying to think of things that old people do that I should do, you know, like sticking my tongue out when the spoon is only halfway to my face and stuff like that. But in actual fact, if you just behave yourself absolutely normally, you become like an old person because they're exactly the same as us.

You've gotten the opportunity to work with two of the great actresses our generation, with Judi Dench in "Mrs.  Brown" - I think a lot of people remember that - and now with Maggie Smith.

Yeah, and an absolute delight it's been, yeah - and not only that, but with Michael Gambon, as well.

Mm-hmm. He's a great actor.


I mean, of course, we don't know yet. But, yes, you can imagine this could present some big challenges they have to deal with. I mean, one big thing the - most glaring thing everyone's talking about today - is that this could serve for some voters as a reminder of Bernie Sanders' age. He is 78. The campaign is ramping up. It's only going to intensify. Campaigning is really exhausting. And so this might not rattle the diehard Sanders fans out there, but there are voters who exist - I have talked to them, my colleagues have - voters who are concerned about nominating or electing someone who is of advanced age. And so this could affect how those voters feel. And now, let's keep in mind, of course, that two of Sanders' main rivals - Senator Elizabeth Warren, former Vice President Joe Biden - they're themselves in their 70s. Now, the additional. . .

As is the president who they'd be running against, President Trump, so yeah.

Exactly, yes. And, you know, the additional challenge is that Sanders is going to want to talk about other things. He just put up some great campaign finance numbers, a new income inequality tax plan. So the next debate - October 15 - that's what we're going to be looking at to see, you know, if he can look strong, remind people of how passionate he is. That's an opportunity to put all of this behind him.

That is NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben.


And what Kansas has done is to try to turn things around once again so that not every parolee who runs afoul of an administrative rule, is immediately shipped back to prison, but instead is given another chance. And actually, the parole officer will work with them to try to keep them out of prison, as opposed to just trying to lock them - lock the cuffs on them as fast as possible.

Well, Jennifer, great to talk to you. Thank you.

Thanks so much, Farai.

Jennifer Gonnerman is the author of "Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett. "She wrote the article, "Slammed: Welcome to the Age of Incarceration. "It's the lead article in a special edition of Mother Jones magazine examining America's prison system. And she joined us from our NPR Studios in New York.


Oh, let's see. Who would be a good heating guy out there in the elements?I would say Russell Crowe, maybe.

I can see that. I can see that. . .

Yeah, I could see him with the big, frozen beard out there bearing the elements or maybe Mel Gibson. Unfortunately, I don't grow that full of a beard so I don't get that much protection, but, you know, you do what you can.

You've kept a lot of people warm and safe this year. Thank you.


How. . .

. . . they're going to get cold.

Will this rise that you're predicting be noticeable in 100 years?Will the change affect the weather then?

You know, if the driving forces are, you know, according to some of the scenarios that are out there, yes; according to some of the others, no. And it remains to be seen what climate is actually going to do.


Because they - the bystander effect being that they thought somebody else would call in, or I don't want to get involved.

Yeah.

And I think it is different from the bystander effect, because it depends on the community that you're in and what becomes normal for that community and what causes concern in that community. That changes depending upon the way the community does.

Now, having said that, I will say this. We have become a society who says, not me, not get involved. One, out of fear, because you don't want to get involved, you think you'll get hurt too. And number two, I think we've become attenuated as a society for a variety of reasons. One, because of our mobility. I don't live where my grandmother lived, where her mother lived, where my uncles and cousins and aunts are. And most people don't anymore. Not any more, but we're so much of a mobile society, and we're become a technological society. My husband yesterday called my son on his cell phone from our bedroom to his room to tell him to do something.


And then we have a Congress who just passed a bill knowing full well that this was the most likely outcome, and they chose not to even try to stop it. But now that the bill has passed, the shutdown has been prevented, the government has been funded, the president can come out and say he's going to do this now. And you have people saying that we're shredding the Constitution, that this is the end of the world, that we need to act, that we need to stop something.

Well, the time to act was before you pass a bill to give the president money to fund the government. The time to act - if you want to force a vote on this, if you want to force Republicans in the Senate to go on record if you're a House Democrat, for instance, then you put language in the bill saying the president can't use national emergency powers to build a wall.

You mean senators - well, we could list their names - Susan Collins.

Right. I mean, don't vote for a bill that is going to make something that you think is really damaging to our country, to the Republic, more likely to occur. Just don't do it, No. 1. No. 2, actually go out and try to put things in the bill to prevent the thing that you think is so damaging to our republic from happening.


That's right. We have a very messy, you might even say disorganized, approach to fiscal policy in this country, no question. But the idea of massive additional budget cuts being needed or on anyone's immediate agenda, I think that has completely faded. Our economy is recovering. Our tax revenues are up. The budget spending has been tilted a little bit in terms of its future projections. So I think the U. K.  debate will not resonate at this moment in the United States.

Well, what about in Europe, though?

Well, Europe has some other problems, very big problems, recovering from their own sovereign debt crisis. The growth forecast in Europe is still very weak. That's the IMF forecast and the European's own forecast. And now we have this new shadow of potential disruptions to gas supplies from Russia because of the Russia-Ukraine relationship. That's the new wildcard. And if the relationship with Russia gets worse and you get into any kind of tit-for-tat sanctions, it's the Europeans who are vulnerable to some sort of negative impact on their economy much more than, say, the United States.

How does the growth rate in Britain compare to that of the U. S.  right now?


So at this Fountain Hills rally he started to talk, and it's weird because he's not really saying anything. There's a lot of strange, empty assertions and kind of conservative talking points, you know, the wall and all this kind of stuff. But there is definitely an energy ripple that goes out.

And when I went out to the protesters at the time that he started speaking, they reported there was a change in the energy of the people walking by them. Suddenly there was hostility and swearing. And a woman was grabbed by the breast and thrown to the ground, and a rock was thrown. And so the correlation between his voice going out and people's behavior was observable in the place.

You ended this piece saying that you never before imagined that what you called the fragile American experiment could fail, but now you can. Why?

Well, because the way that media falls on our mind and then inflects it has changed so much. You know, as a fiction writer, one of things you learn is God lives in specificity. You know, human kindness is increased as we pursue specificity.


OK, starting with GlobalGrind. Here's the deal Farai, as you know, being in the media, it's becoming more and more niche, and people, especially what you're talking about Internet, you're talking about web communities and defining that niche. Now we're seeing more and more websites pop up where we've had black websites in the past, but GlobalGrind is this one-stop shop.

They claim, or they offer, for news, gossip, humor, entertainment. It's just about everything that users think is important. So the whole site is actually driven by users voting on other content that's happening elsewhere. And so the higher the vote of a specific piece of content, the more relevant it comes up on the GlobalGrind webpage.

Is it fun?

It is fun. It looks very clean. It's sleek. I do like the ownership behind the company, and some of the people driving it, because Navarro is a guy that ran 360HipHop. com, which was very successful that was sold to BET. I've met with their advertising people. I think they really got their handle on - they've made it mobile. They now integrate it with Facebook, which wasn't there before, which I was dinging them on. I was like, when are you guys going to get with mobile applications in a Web 2. 0 space?

All right, Mario. We have to jump in. RushmoreDrive. Give me the skinny.


How does your - your vaccine has two parts. Walk me through them.

Well, the approach that has proven successful in our hands is to essentially deliver a one-two punch with our vaccine. We prime the immune system by using a genetic vector that delivers the hemagglutinin in isolation into the muscle.

Once that DNA is introduced into the muscle, it just makes the viral hemagglutinin and induces an immune response to it.

Let me jump in right here because this part I really want to understand. So you put DNA into our bodies, and then what happens exactly on the cellular level?


Is there a way to balance - to better balance interest in public safety, the rights of defendants and also the public's interest in not burdening people with so much debt that they can't function?

The problem with approaches like this private pre-trial supervision is that they not only fail on a sort of, you know, human, moral level when you look at the impact that they're having on poor people, they also really are failing on a public safety level. They're failing in terms of outcomes. There's really nothing that suggests to us that our current approach of investing in this kind of surveillance and caging black and brown people is actually resulting in better public safety outcomes.

That's Blake Strode. He's the executive director of ArchCity Defenders. That's a nonprofit civil rights law firm in St.  Louis, Mo. Blake Strode, thank you so much for talking with us.

Thank you very much.


Well, yeah.

And - select which is the right kind of alcohol to put in there. Free test it.

Well, they - rum and bourbon.

Right.


And we've been getting reaction. President Trump has tweeted his condolences. And there's reaction coming in from around the world on this Easter Sunday. Tell us what you've heard.

Right. So this footage is just so disturbing. And so people in other time zones are waking up to the horror of this and sending in these messages of shock and condemnation. President Trump, as you mentioned, tweeted heartfelt condolences. He said, quote, "we stand ready to help" - exclamation point. Also, messages are coming in from European leaders and the prime minister of New Zealand, which sadly just suffered attacks on some of its own places of worship - mosques - last month. Pope Francis spoke at St.  Peter's Square in Rome. He said he wants to express his affectionate closeness to the Christian community in Sri Lanka and to the victims there.

Lauren, can you give us some background?There was a long civil war in Sri Lanka, which ended in 2009. What is the context for these attacks?

That's right. So what's sad is that Sri Lanka was just about to celebrate 10 years of peace - almost to the day - since that civil war ended. It was a bloody war; it lasted 26 years. Sri Lanka is a mostly Buddhist country - about 70 percent. It also has significant religious minorities - Hindus, Muslims and Christians.


Thanks for having me.

What new details did we learn with this filing?

So the new filing focuses on five extramarital affairs that Duncan Hunter had when he was in Congress, the first one starting just four months after he was elected and took office in April 2009. So he took office in January.

The longest feature in the filing is about an individual identified as Individual 14, who was a lobbyist. And they spent campaign money on things like a ski trip together, a thousand-dollar hotel tab. They went to concerts together. And they also went on a double date with another congressperson to Virginia Beach, but that congressperson has not been identified.


What does Disney get?I mean, what that had the label Fox on it goes over to Disney?

So this is a $71. 3 billion deal, and it involves two of the biggest studios in Hollywood. So there's a lot of names involved in this in TV and film that folks will recognize. So Disney gets outlets like 20th Century Fox Television, which produces shows like "Empire" and "Modern Family. "They get Fox animation and National Geographic partners. Now, Fox, meanwhile, has created this slimmed-down company to include a lot of the stuff that Disney didn't buy. So they have Fox News Channel, Fox Business network, the Fox broadcast network and Fox Sports. And in fact, the former speaker of the House Paul Ryan was named to the board of that new Fox Corporation.

So Rupert Murdoch's family which, of course, has controlled Fox - Murdoch keeps the stuff which, we can imagine, is closest to his heart, like the Fox News Channel and gets rid of some of this other stuff.

Right, a company that's a little more focused on news and sports.


So about a year ago, they were ousted by the Ethiopian invasion. And since then, there has been a gorilla war that's been going on that has left most of Somalia in constant turmoil.

Is it a forgotten crisis?

I'd say yes, for the most part, that it is. And it's forgotten at least in the United States because there is not the direct involvement of U. S.  troops. There is indirect U. S.  involvement, absolutely. But the — but when the, you notice very often in the U. S.  media that when no one from the United States is dying, a situation is not declared to be a crisis. And so in Somalia, it's the people of Somalia, as well as Ethiopian troops, that are dying, and therefore it's not on our screen.

One more thing about Somalia before we move on, talking about a split there, potential split. The Bush administration and some members of Congress are considering whether to recognize Somaliland. Tell us about that, and what concerns do you have?


But there's also wars - Syria, Libya, other places. So it's a very mixed picture. But the common denominator, I think, is that you've got several hundred million Arab men and women who are saying that the consent of the governed matters, that the citizen has rights, and we want real constitutions. And they're trying to create those with a foundational structure of social justice.

Social justice is the enormous driver of these revolutions, which is almost totally unarticulated and very misunderstood in the West.

And it certainly was in Syria. Again, the spark, the death of a small boy.

In Syria you had Hamza Khateeb, the little boy who was tortured and killed, and very badly tortured, 14-year-old kid. And the original outburst of the uprising in Daraa, in south Syria, in March 2011, was when the local government, local police officers there, tortured some young kids who had written some graffiti on the wall, like we want reform. It was something very mild, but little kids who were 10, 12, 14 years old, and they were tortured by the police.


And with a big picture on how Americans are voting on this long awaited day. We've got NPR's senior Washington editor, Ron Elving. Hey, Ron.

Hey, good to be with you, Farai.

Well, Senators Obama and John McCain cast their ballots in their home states today. So what kind of turnout are we seeing?

Big. Now we always say the turnout looks like it's heavy, and usually it turns out not to be so great. So take this with a grain of salt, but the anecdotal indicators are that we are seeing a lot of turnout, and let's remember that we've already had a big turnout election just in terms of how many people came out and voted early. More than we've ever seen before and by leaps and bounds. So when we put it all together, I think that most of the experts do expect that we will have at least 130 million American's votes cast this fall either early or today, and that that will be a new record by about eight million.


Now lots of lawyers were lining up to lead the Justice Department. So why did the White House decide to go with Lynch?

First of all, she has a reputation for working well with others. She's very understated and under the radar. Another important factor for the White House I hear from sources is that she's diverse and historic. She'd be the first black woman on the job. She descends from a long line of Baptist preachers in the south. And she has a rich, rich voice and an ability to speak and communicate a message. She's also, Linda, quite noncontroversial.

So about that. What is the reaction from Republicans in the Senate?Can she be confirmed?It's kind of late in the term.

It is kind of late in the term. She's going to have a year and a half or two years to make her mark. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican who's in line to lead the Judiciary Committee next year, says Lynch is going to get a thorough vetting. And he's going to make sure that happens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, another Republican, sounded relatively positive, too, about this election. And finally, Linda, Mitch McConnell, who's going to run the Senate as majority leader starting in January, said he is willing to consider her nomination. He wants it to happen in 2015 instead of during this lame-duck session.


And?

And it got huge. I don't know.

What happens?How does something go viral on Craigslist?I don't even know.

I don't know. I mean, I tweeted about it, and then it started getting passed around. And, you know, people started writing posts on blogs. I think someone called it, like, the most beautiful Craigslist missed connection post ever.

(Laughter) That's a very competitive category.


Yes. William Jefferson, going for his 10th term in the New Orleans district, was defeated by Anh Joseph Cao - that's spelled C-A-O - who will become the first Vietnamese American to serve in Congress. He's a Republican. He's a lawyer, very little known about him, very little campaigning done.

He is, in a sense, a kind of accidental winner here. What happened was that they had several phases of this election to winnow down an enormous Democratic field. Out of that big field, William Jefferson still emerged the favorite of the Democrats. This is a very heavily African-American district, at least historically. And he emerged as the Democratic nominee, Joe Cao as the Republican.

And here in the end, in a terribly small turnout on Saturday, in a turnout where visually, it appeared that the African-American community was very under represented, very small turnout, maybe one in 10. In that situation and with a lot, also, of the black constituents there voting for the Republican, Billy Jefferson was narrowly defeated, and we have a new congressman from New Orleans, a Republican named Joe Cao.

Well, we should note also that Congressman Jefferson is facing 16 federal indictments. Was that the main reason behind his defeat?


And the Trump administration has said that some of these many navigator programs were failing to meet their targets, that they were going to put the largest reductions on to the groups that weren't performing. How does that apply to you?

It does not apply to the Ohio Association of Food Banks and our consortia partners. We have served for four years to carry out navigator activities in the state of Ohio. And for those four years, we have met, nearly met or exceeded all of our deliverables. All of the feedback that we had received was very positive - keep up the great work. We certainly wish other states would perform to your level and standards. I believe at one point they even said that we were, quote, "rock stars. "

So I can - may I presume that you were shocked?

Shocked would be an understatement, but really deeply, deeply and profoundly disappointed and felt as though, quite frankly, we were being held hostage in the belief that it was really - appeared to be a political maneuver to damage the viability and stability of the Affordable Care Act. And at that point, our members voted unanimously to terminate our contract on navigator services in Ohio.


Well, they do do some of it. Delta in the most recent quarter had about 300 million dollars in gains from fuel hedges, but the biggest problem is other airlines just don't have the cash or the credit to put into this. Southwest has the luxury of very strong financial balance sheet so they can put their money to work years ahead of time. Other airlines, you know, if you're cutting costs, if you're fighting for survival, if your cash is tight, your employees are getting laid off, you know, it's hard to say hey, we're going to buy some fuel for 2012.

And Delta was in bankruptcy proceedings, it had to unload everything it could to deal with its debt.

That's right, very costly. Delta actually had good fuel hedges leading into the 2004 bankruptcy. They had to sell those to raise some cash in the bankruptcy, but selling early meant they lost out on a whole lot of profits that they could have had later on.

Scott, you're a travel writer but you do write for the Wall Street Journal, so maybe you can answer this question for me. On the day that Southwest reported things going very well, its stock actually fell by a dollar to just under 15 dollars a share. Now, how does that work?


So take us back. How did you go from drinking the occasional glass of wine to pursuing professional wine-drinking?

So most people have their wine epiphany as, well, drinking an incredible glass of wine. My wine epiphany happened while I was watching other people drink and in particular, because I got sucked into watch - binge-watching YouTube videos of the Best Sommelier in the World competition. And all my life, I have been obsessed with obsession. And so when I stumbled into this subculture, I was hooked. I was just fascinated by these stories.

And so you go on this journey. And one of the things that I found really interesting is that training to be a sommelier is not quite like getting day drunk with your friends. You're not just, like. . .

Yeah.


So as we talked about, there was some last-minute campaigning by the prime minister. And you might think he would be more relaxed after an Election Day, right?He's Israel's longest-serving prime minister.

Right. But you know what?He campaigned extra vigorously. He dragged a family out of their home to the polling place. He took a bullhorn, and he visited Jerusalem's main bus station and the main vegetable market. And he claimed over and over again that he could lose, that - he was claiming that right-wing voter turnout was low and left-wing and Arab voter turnout was high. Arab voters meaning Palestinian citizens of Israel, not Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. They can't vote in Israeli elections.

Then Netanyahu went back to his official residence, and he spent hours streaming live on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter. He was trying to get people to go to the polls. He called it an emergency broadcast. He was taking calls from party activists. He called on TV commentators. He called them out by name and called them liars. He even appeared in a video clip with puppets. So, frankly, Audie, he overshadowed all of the other candidates on this Election Day.

And voters - how are they responding to it?


Can you read something for us, a short passage?

Well, why don't I read just the first few verses of the Lord's Prayer that most people are familiar with?

That would be wonderful.

We say a prayer like this, I'll say. We Fada wa dey een heaben, leh ebrybody hona ya name. We pray dat soon ya gwine rule oba de wol. Wasoneba ting ya wahn, leh um be so een dis wol same like dey een heaben. Gii we de food wa we need dis day yah an ebry day. Fagib we fa we sin, same like we da fagib dem people wa do bad ta we. Leh we dohn hab haad test wen Satan try we. Keep we fom ebil.


And not to make any comparisons, but I seem to recall that there was a time when J. Crew was a catalog retailer - didn't have any real stores. And now, of course, they've got plenty of them in addition to a very ambitious online retail site.

Absolutely. The way that I've thought about these Shopify stores is they're undoubtedly strange because they're new, but their model is fundamentally not that different from, like, a big corporate enterprise. It's just that the tools have democratized the ability for people to tap into the globalized economy. And so before, it took the idea of having a supply chain and having all these people who would know factory owners in China and all these other kinds of things - that took a lot of infrastructure.

What these tools have done is eliminate the need for all that infrastructure. And so now it's this alternative way into what is a real thing about our economy, which is that many, many of the goods that we all purchase are made in Asian factories and are sold to us at a very high markup from their production costs.

So where's the coat now, may I ask?

It's hanging up in my closet, kind of towards the back - in there with the things that are too small for me to fit into now (laughter). But I'll bring it out at some point, I'm sure. Everyone needs a coat like that, you know, maybe for gardening or something.


Now, the first Crohn's gene was cofounded here at the University of Chicago by one of my colleagues. And subsequently, multiple genes for Crohn's disease have been found, most of which have to do with how the body's immune system interacts with the bugs living in the gut.

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY, from NPR. I'm Ira Flatow, talking with Dr.  Russell Cohen. And so there's more than one gene involved, is what you're saying.

Well, yes, there are multiple genes, and there's been big breakthroughs in genetic discoveries with something called genome-wide association, GWAS. So now the genes are falling out of the sky at us every time a group does a big genetic study.

Falling out of the sky. They're - is it that easy to discover them, or are there are just so many you can't really narrow down the important ones?Or are they all important?


I know I'm going to get emails, perhaps you too, from people who say, look, I am an agnostic or an atheist really specifically because I thought organized religion had a hand in racializing in our society and a history with slavery and has not had a good effect on U. S.  history.

Sure. I'm not in any way suggesting in this article that I'm telling people that they need to go to religious services. I do think we know that civic connection more broadly tends to help people weather difficulties in their lives. There are many other ways other than doing it through religious institutions.

It just happens that the church has been probably the most central form of civic engagement that Americans have had. And so when Americans disengage from church, for many of them that essentially becomes de facto disengaging from any civic institution. It's not like they're replacing church with some other form of civic institution that might fill some of that same function.

Peter Beinart of The Atlantic. Thanks so much for being with us.


I mean, there have been some high-profile examples recently of sort of ethically questionable journalism, you know, maybe at best. Do you think that - and this is sort of tangential, but do you think that that, the definition of plagiarism needs to be updated for the Web?

I mean, given that I started this thing, you mentioned the curator's code, I think about that a lot. I think plagiarism is kind of a harsh word that comes from the publishing world, you know, kind of a legacy term. And there are many layers to it. It's a little bit of a grab bag.

But online, one of the things that I think about a lot, which I think is a form of sort of neo-plagiarism as this idea of OK, you know, we live at a time where there's almost infinite information, and it takes time to find the meaningful and to separate it from the meaningless, and that's effort, and that's sort of creative labor.

And when someone does that, and let's say - you know, for example, one of my favorite sites, Open Culture, run by Dan Colman out of Stanford, he finds amazing archival stuff. You know, and he spends time in the archives looking for it. And then it gets sort of reported on, say, Huffington Post or Business Insider, just sort of regurgitated.


For them, remembering digits is much easier than remembering the Roman alphabet. Even though they learn the letters, they're often still more comfortable with numbers. And they remember them a lot more clearly.

So when they read the numbers out loud, do they have some meaning in Mandarin?

Yeah, I mean, a lot of the URLs, the strings of digits, do have some meaning. For example, there are tons of URLs that are homophones for other Chinese phrases. So you gave the example of the McDonald's URL - 4008-517-517 - that's because when you say 517 in Mandarin it's (Mandarin spoken) and that sounds somewhat (Mandarin spoken), which means I want to eat.

They sort of have infinite flexibility to spell out phrases and create these little sentences. So the example you gave of the dating website, which is 5201314. com, that string of digits means, (Mandarin spoken), which means I will love you forever. So that's something that people will use a lot when chatting online with their friends or they'll shorten it to 520, which just means I love you.


And there are two things I think that are really important to remember. The first is that those people are still held accountable. They still plead guilty to crimes. And they often do prison sentences that are very long - not as long as people who don't cooperate. But they often really do - they really do get punished for that.

The second thing is when you think about the most serious cases the president talks about all the time, like MS-13, you simply couldn't make those cases without cooperators. You need people on the inside because things like gangs are highly secretive organizations. And so you need to understand where drugs are coming from, where money's coming from, how violence is committed and by whom. And so it really is essential. You know, it's an unsavory part of the criminal justice system. But it's a part that becomes very important to get serious crimes prosecuted.

OK.  Anne Milgram, former federal prosecutor and attorney general of New Jersey, now a professor at New York University Law School, thanks so much.

Thank you.


Who works her curves fabulously.

She does.

Who actually has designed a big girl bra for Ashley Stewart, she got divorced from Lyzel who, of the song "Lyzel in E Flat", which is one of my favorites. But she's announced she's getting hitched again. Who's the lucky man?

A drummer in her band, like called Little John, but is not Little John. That Little John is. . .


Thank you. Great to be with you this morning.

Why do Republicans - who seem to believe gun laws would not reduce homicides because murders will still break the law to get guns - now seem to feel anyone's going to be deterred by a bump stock law?

Well, Scott, I think - well, we were all just horrified by the events of Las Vegas - I mean, so many killed and wounded. And you know, so of course our thoughts are with all of them and their families. But I think most of us are not only shocked by the event but shocked by the fact that somebody was able to convert, functionally, a lawful, legal firearm - or firearms into an illegal firearms, as far as I'm concerned.

I mean, automatic weapons in the United States have been banned for a very long time, as they should be. The fact that somebody can take a bump stock or some other type of device and functionally convert a semiautomatic into a fully automatic is more than concerning. And many of us believe that that must be outlawed. And. . .


Mr.  Kirn, why do you, in a couple of cases in this book, you refuse to consider yourself a victim, which I understand, even though you were duped, but you even call yourself a collaborator. Why?

Because the fact of the matter is, is that until he was convicted of these crimes, everyone believed him. I wanted to show the point of view of the dupe, of the fool. So, I was hard on myself. But I collaborated with him in the sense that every time he told a story that didn't make sense, I tried to make it make sense for him in my mind. Every time he lied and I felt a little twinge inside, I covered it up. And I had to answer the question why I did that.

And?

Well, Clark answered it for me. When I saw him in jail after his murder conviction, I said you're not going to admit to the murder - which he didn't, he had a story for that - but it's clear that you were a great conman and a great impostor for many years. What's the secret to fooling people, I said. And he looked at me and he said, Walter, three little words - I'm surprised you don't know - vanity, vanity, vanity.


OK.

. . . It's a big question.

OK. So it does seem that it's been reported that the president's advisers are at odds. His national security adviser, John Bolton, is hawkish, seems very skeptical about any negotiations with Iran while the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, seems to want to de-escalate the conflict. Now, obviously, everyone should be very careful about committing troops to any conflict, so let's just take that as a given. But how do you interpret what's going on in the administration around this very sensitive and consequential issue?Some would argue that these things should have been worked out by now.

Well, as far as any discussion with regards to the military option - and there are four instruments of national power, primarily - diplomacy, information, military, economics. It's the dying principle that we follow here as a nation. I believe and many others believe that the military option anywhere at any time should always be the absolute. . .


Yesterday, General Motors announced that it would review its contracts with ad agencies to see whether or not they should even be renewed. Let's say you were working on a car company advertising campaign. What should they do to actually get American consumers to buy cars?

Yeah, I think there's a deeper question there, Alex, to be honest, about - with the car companies. If I were pitching them right now, or I was being asked to prove that it's worth doing, I would really, really want to understand what their view of the future of their industry is. And I would want to align my marketing around their authentic view of their business, right?

What I absolutely think they should do right now?They should do a series of advertisements, purely authentic and honest, basically saying, look, for the past 30 years, they've messed up. They've run afoul of obvious economic externalities. And I think if they are authentic, and they do a mea culpa, people will regain some trust in them. That might be a futile attempt, frankly, at this point because I think that they are lumbering giants.

So, how are companies reshaping their marketing strategies to deal with customers who may not want to buy anything right now?


When she decided it was not in the national interest to grant security clearances for these 25 individuals, her supervisor overruled her and never provided any rationale for his decisions. In the past, when she was overruled on rare occasion, they would - supervisor would point out the mitigating circumstances and would work with her to assess the risk. Her former supervisor Carl Kline wouldn't speak to her, in fact would direct her not to get involved in these disputed security adjudications.

There has been reporting that President Trump got personally involved in order to grant security clearances for his son-in-law and others. Do you have any awareness of that?

My client would have no direct awareness of that. It was at a much higher level than she was operating at.

What led your client Tricia Newbold to conclude that the problems she was seeing in her office could not be addressed within the executive branch that she works for but instead needed to be addressed by Congress?


Exactly.

At the same time, she's this very sassy character. And, you know, so many of the characters here are very, you know, just sexy, kind of contemporary figures. And there's a joie-de-vivre about this, and even though she touches on a lot of heavy themes, including race and patriotism, there's a certain sass to this. Is that what attracted you to her work?

Well, I was astounded at her work. I was actually looking for something else in her cartoon that is in the late '40s. Most of her cartooning was done in the late '40s and early '50s. This one year of '37 was kind of a little different thing.

I was looking for evidence of a doll. I knew that she created a doll, and I thought I could find some evidence of that in her cartoons. And then yeah, I found the doll, but then I went on to see all of the different topics that she took on, and that got fascinating.


Yeah. In 1970, the big focus was on pollution. I mean, it was "Silent Spring" with - in 1962 that had triggered the evolution and formation of the modern environmental movement, and that was pollution-oriented. And, well, we've seen since then is a shift to focus on environmental support systems, like the natural systems, like the forests and grasslands and fisheries and so forth, and what's happening to them. And now, of course, climate change is on the issue, and water has become a major issue.

These were not on the agenda in 1970. At that time, it was largely a focus on pollution, and that was at the time when the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught fire because there was so much oil and other combustible material there. So it was pollution. Now, it's many things.

It was just a couple of months after that first Earth Day, Congress authorized the creation of the EPA, a federal agency that regulates environmental regulations. The EPA has, of course, become - gone from an agency created with great bipartisan support to one of the most partisan ideas in government.

Yeah. I think the - as I recall, the first head might have been Russell Train. . .


Well, first of all, I don't think anybody's going to negotiate very seriously with a gun to their head. And the history of these things is that presidents win and the party in Congress that causes a shutdown tends to lose. So I think the president's made it clear he's not negotiating until funding is restored to the government.

I think in Congress there's certainly, around the edges, some places that we can make some arrangements, shorten the amount of time - although I thought 30 days was short enough, all things considered - and, you know, perhaps, you know, begin negotiations elsewhere. But you literally cannot complete legislation this fast. It's not as if the Democrats, you know, have a proposal that's been drafted into legislation that I'm aware of. So sooner or later, we're going to have to reopen the government, and I hope sooner.

Didn't your party get a tax bill done pretty quickly?

No. It took months and months and months and months of - here, I mean, that lasted over a year.

I mean, they were scrawling in the document up until the last second.


You do feel a special connection with Chopin, don't you?

Actually, I do. Many things have happened to me. I don't like the word paranormal. I like the word the unknown normal because that's what it really is.

So it's extraordinary that you should discover two different versions of a Chopin waltz that was previously unknown.

I agree. I was shocked - really shocked - when I found them. And then many things happened to me with Chopin through my life.


This is going to be a really interesting hearing today. I'm going to see if the judge approves these requests from the plaintiffs who want to see more documents being released from the Trump administration as well as they want to see the judge to possibly order more depositions, more officials sitting down for questioning to try to get a bottom of this - these claims. And this could possibly affect - if there's additional documents released, additional testimony - this could affect the ruling that the Supreme Court is expected to release by the end of this month.

That's the final judge here. The Supreme Court will be ruling on this.

Exactly. We're watching to see what the justices say. And it's a very tight deadline. July 1 is when the Census Bureau says that printing has to start for the 2020 census forms.

Hansi, thanks so much.


Feel at home here.

So, you know, the oceans, they aren't just sitting there. It's not just still water. There are currents. There are winds blowing over the top of them. And in case of the circulation in the Atlantic, the wind is blowing, piles water up in the middle because of something called Ekman transport. You can look that up on Wikipedia. And it makes a big pile - a hill of water in the middle of the Atlantic.

Really?

It's about a meter high, something like that.


Now, have you been able to get through to your teams in the Bahamas?What are you hearing?

We have sporadic communications, but we did pre-deploy teams into the affected areas.

And what are you hearing?

What we're hearing is that it's a very difficult situation. There is extensive damage and extensive flooding, especially in - most of the areas close to the coast have been almost completely underwater, and many of the shelters that we have been working in and preparing - they have also started to be underwater and be flooded. So people are moving out of some of the temporary shelters, which we had in schools and churches, and are moving into some of the biggest or tallest and strongest buildings on the island. Especially in Marsh Harbor, we have reports of people moving into the government buildings because the flood waters are so high.


It's going great. I understand that spanking and Michelle Obama's fashion stuffed our inbox this week, right?

That's right. The discussions we've had about whether the First Lady should have worn clothing by black designers for her husband's inauguration is still creating a lot of traffic. Aljory Stallings(ph) wrote us this on our Web site, I am completely irritated on this trivial commentary on this issue. I wonder if the black designers who were complaining about this realize that by doing that, they are cutting off their noses to spite their faces.

Flora Gayle(ph) chimed in with this, I think she needs to get some credit for almost always wearing American designers. I am not black, but I do work in fashion. I think before we start judging this, we should look at how many black students are going to fashion school. I wish there were more.

And Dianne Truckenberg(ph) wrote in to say, I am concerned with the concept drawing lines for black versus white, for fill in whatever topic. Insistence on basing decisions on whether or not something or someone is of a certain race will certainly bring back racial tension.


The regulations and the oversight that was put in place was relatively minimal because this was going to be such a small endeavor. It was going to be a small-scale experiment for 100 schools. Well, guess what?We have 1,300 charter schools today. And we have a law that doesn't actually account for the scale of that.

That's LA Times reporter Anna Phillips. She's been investigating loopholes in California's charter school system. What she discovered is a fragmented and decentralized regulating system. In Los Angeles, Phillips encountered a case in which a wealthy Beverly Hills couple made millions of dollars by simply turning to a different school district whenever their charter schools came under scrutiny.

These charter schools had been set up as nonprofits that were publicly funded. But if you looked right kind of on the outskirts of them, the couple that had started them had essentially created a series of businesses or nonprofits that were doing business with their own schools. So for instance, this couple rented a lot of their own properties they owned. They were their own landlords.

They owned buildings that then they rented to the schools, so they were getting that income.

Exactly. And there were other ways they were getting income. The woman who ran these schools, her husband was hired on as a project manager for about $500,000 to oversee the construction of a new campus. When they wanted to bring in cafeteria meals for their students, they hired one of their own organizations. So this was public money that was coming into these schools, but the couple that ran them was financially benefiting from it.


Well, the thing that's on the drawing board right now is the economic stimulus plan, and I think we do need a very large plan that would include increases in government spending and tax cuts.

To add to this troubled economy, we now have the latest unemployment figures out this morning from major metropolitan areas. Here's how they look. In November 2007, 18 areas reported jobless rates of at least seven percent. In November 2008, that number jumped to 121. Which areas have seen the highest unemployment rate?

Well, the most significant problems are in the industrial Midwest. As we all know, the auto industry is having a great deal of difficulty, and layoffs have been very severe. Also, in parts of the country where the housing market has been hit hard - California, Florida, Arizona, Nevada - there, too, employment has fallen, unemployment has risen.

And which areas are seeing the lowest unemployment numbers?


Not so well now. We're expecting to have a peace completely after the election, but we still have a few problems here and there as far as human right is concerned. And there is also killings in some parts of the country, in the west, also in east. So, that's not good.

There are a lot of people who've used music to raise awareness about what's going on in different parts of the world. Why do you think people relate to music as a way of understanding and humanizing other people?What is it about music that's so special?

Music is very natural. We are born - our mothers sing for us. The community welcomes you with music, with singing. So, it becomes part of your being, of your nature. At the same time, when you cry, it's also like singing. So, it seems like singing and music is set of human being. So, when we sing, we cry, we shout, we just bring it outside. So, it's very natural.

And your family had a musical tradition, what was its like growing up?


And now it's letter time. Our editor Sasa Woodruff is here with me. Hey, Sasa.

Hey, Farai. How's it going?

I am doing great. So what are folks saying this week?

Well as you can imagine, we got some letters about our economy coverage. On a Bloggers' Roundtable last week, we discussed reports that some were blaming the mortgage crises on African-Americans and other minorities.


Absolutely. They are - they don't trust now any promises that they will not be prosecuted or taken in front of a judge. And also, you know, the standards of human rights internationally have changed. And there is a very active community - globally - that chases after dictators and people that have violated human rights and have committed the crimes against humanity, which is the case for many of them.

Now, isn't the logic of that - the humanitarian logic of that - that knowing they might have to face criminal charges will discourage dictators from striking out at their own people?

Absolutely. But strangely enough, we see that continuing to happen. We don't know how many thought about it and decided not to do it because they were fearful of being prosecuted internationally. But we do know that there are still many that go ahead with all kinds of crimes and violations of human rights. And Nicolas Maduro is a paramount example of that.

What about people who work for somebody who's in power and might not get the same guarantees?


Depending on how they go about it, how big of a deal could this announcement by Zara be, and what kind of an impact could it have?

Well, I think the really interesting thing about Zara's statement is they've made a public statement to back their intention, and they will be held accountable for whether they achieve that target or not over time. So the fact that they made this very public target I think is really positive. And I think hopefully what that will do is also encourage other brands and retailers to be bold and to make these statements as well.

What individual responsibility do consumers have here?

Personally, I think every consumer has some responsibility for their actions. The consumers are buying products, they are making decisions about where they're buying those products from, how long they keep those products for and what they do with those products at end of life. So I think there is definitely some responsibility that the consumers have in all of this. But I also recognize as - there is this deep-seated sort of psychological driver within our human psyche to engage in fashion.


Well, I will say he's not so much trapped. He did do the wrong thing, and he knowingly did the wrong thing for what he believed were for the right reasons. But he still did break the law. So there was going to be some sort of comeuppance in regard because I didn't want to do it where he does something illegal, and it's, like, but it's the main character. Let it slide. On the other hand, the idea was to show that once he's there, exactly where he's sending people.

And one of the reasons I found this interesting is there are comics like "Doonesbury," for example, that are known for taking on topical issues, but that has always been the flavor of "Doonesbury. "As I said before, this is a legacy comic. I mean, it started in 1952. The people who've been reading this comic aren't necessarily used to this. And I'm wondering how people - or how are your fans, how are the readers of the comic are taking it?

I - we'll use the word fans.

This is a legacy strip. And I'm not trying to go, OK, now I'm just going to make it so now, and it's going to be thing. But on the other hand, you never want any strip or anything to be caught in amber, and you do want it to always be moving and feel like it's alive. So - now, granted, we do have the fantastic elements. Assassins appear regularly in this strip. . .

(Laughter).


Because you have eggplant parmesan just in the book.

(Laughter).

You can do that as an antipasto?

Every time someone turns to that page, they're like, this is an appetizer?


We're approaching the 16th anniversary of U. S.  troops serving in Afghanistan. It's been a little more than a month since President Trump announced a new strategy to send more U. S.  troops as advisers to the Afghan military as it tries to train its own soldiers. Our Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman has been in and out of Afghanistan for the past decade. He's there again with U. S.  Marines checking out how things seem to be going. He joins us now from the Helmand Province. Tom, thanks so much for being with us.

You're welcome, Scott.

What have you noticed in your time with the Afghan troops?

Well, Scott, I was here last year with the U. S.  Army, and they were advising the Afghan army at a higher level. And now with the Marines here, about 300 Marines, they saw the need to help the Afghans down at a lower level, closer to the front lines. And they're actually going out to Afghan bases, something you didn't see the army do. The American soldiers pretty much stayed on their larger base talking with Afghan generals.


Right, well, the idea is that you just want somebody to come back to court. That is the point of bail. And so if somebody is low-risk to themselves, low-risk to society and they want themselves to be done and over with this, you know, incident, then you can just remind somebody to come and that will happen. So it could just be a text reminder - don't forget your court date. This is when it is. This is where you show up. And a lot of times that actually works quite well.

Is this part of a trend against bail in this country?

I think it is perhaps the tip of a trend against bail. Advocates have been arguing that we need bail reform for quite a long time.

Why reform?What has been wrong with the bail system up to this point?


Well, I've spent my whole life - as a entrepreneur, as a mayor, as a governor - building teams, assembling talent. We've been able to accomplish things again and again that people didn't think we could do. We got to almost universal health care in Colorado. We did the methane regulations I described. We beat the NRA with tough new gun laws. This is all through that collaborative effort of building a team and getting things done. That's very different than the legislative process.

Has Chuck Schumer called you and urged you to run for Senate?

(Laughter) I've talked to Chuck Schumer, who is one of the most persuasive people, and I have more admiration for how he does his job than words can express.

You're running as a centrist, even as much of the Democratic Party is moving to the left. How do you plan to sell your ideas to an increasingly progressive party?