Author: NPR Staff

Sen. Joe Manchin On Why He Can’t Support Trump, But Isn’t Sold On Biden

West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin talks to NPR’s Michel Martin about Joe Biden, Donald Trump and Nikki Haley, and his decisions against another run for the Senate or a new bid for president.

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At 76, West Virginia senator Joe Manchin waves off the concerns of some of his colleagues about a candidate’s age and how it might affect their ability to carry out the responsibilities of office.

“I don’t look at age,” the democratic senator told NPR’s Michel Martin. “I look at [candidates] person by person. And with Joe Biden, every time I’ve been with him, we’ve talked, I’ve had no problem whatsoever”.

He is, however, reluctant to back the President in the 2024 election.

“I’m hoping that the Joe Biden that I know, the Joe Biden that I’ve known for a long time will come back,” Manchin told Morning Edition.

As a self described “conservative Democrat,” Manchin has frequently played spoiler to some of Biden’s key legislative initiatives – in 2021 he refused to support the Biden administration’s Build Back Better bill, even after the White House made multiple concessions in an effort to assuage his concerns. He similarly withheld his vote from Biden’s federal voting rights, climate-change agendas and tax reform policies by refusing to join with fellow Democrats in an evenly divided Senate.

“I can tell you it’s difficult being in the middle,” Manchin said. “…A 50/50 Senate, it’s not an enviable place to be at all.”

Last week, the senator announced that he won’t be running for the presidency in 2024 after flirting with a third party bid for months. During his announcement, he declined to endorse Biden or any other candidate, although he did offer praise to Trump’s lone GOP rival, the former U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley.

“I think Nikki is spot on,” Manchin said, regarding Haley’s remarks critical of Trump in a speech on Tuesday.

Senator Manchin joined Michel Martin days after announcing his own decision not to seek the presidential nomination in 2024. He spoke of his legacy after 15 years in elective office, and his hesitancy to endorse another 2024 presidential hopeful – at least for now. Below are some of the highlights from that interview.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

On why he isn’t planning to run for president

It’s hard with the Democratic Party and Republican parties being the businesses that they are in Washington today, and I mean businesses, these are big billion dollar businesses that have picked their product.and pretty much have gone in the direction of choosing who they think that would be their strongest product, if you will. And that’s what they’re going to go with. And I, I just don’t fit in the Democrats process and they are doing things or the Republican process. I’ve always been independent minded.

And so I thought about that. And I’ve been with the No Labels Group since 2010, because I think they’re a wonderful group. They are trying to always give an opportunity for that middle minded person to have a venue. I’ve appreciated that they’ve been working and moving towards putting a unity ticket together. I think that it’s trying to give an option, which is good. I just believe right now this timing wasn’t right for me and I didn’t want to be a spoiler.

On why he won’t support President Biden

I think President Biden and his team have to look around them and ask, how did he win in 2020? Look at the rhetoric that was used back then. It’s not extreme. Everything that was said and everything he showed people was what he’d done through his experience being in the Senate and then being vice president. And [voters] said, “Yeah, this man is more moderate than most, he’s easy to work with. He looks at the facts and makes decisions.”That’s what he had been known for. And now I think people believe that he has gone too far to the left.

I think [we should be] putting ourselves back in a moderate, centrist position where people feel comfortable – they don’t think they’re being pushed and being overregulated. They don’t think that you have the finger or your thumb on the scale and are moving things too far to the left.

I think about how we deal with how we deal with crime in this country, how we deal with the border, how we deal with the fiscal responsibilities that we have. I think that no one’s taking the debt of this nation as seriously as they should. I think the greatest challenge that we have is getting our finances under control. And that means you just can’t spend like a drunken sailor.

[Biden’s team] keeps playing to the base versus where the voters are going to be. This next election will be decided by moderate, centrist, independent voters. They’re not talking to them.

On why he won’t support former President Donald Trump

I have said there’s no way I could support or vote for Donald Trump. I think it would be very detrimental to our country, and to our world standing. We have enough things in upheaval.

I just thought it was horrendous when a former president could not have condolences to a family that lost a 47 year old husband, a father and a son in a country that basically just eliminates their opposition. And when former President Trump couldn’t even say ‘my heart goes out to the Navalny family’ It’s wrong. There’s nothing right about this. But he keeps very silent and doesn’t say a word. It seems like he kind of admires the people that operate and govern that way, such as Putin. It scares the bejesus out of me.

I would consider anyone that truly puts their country before themselves and wants to bring people together. But you when you start denigrating and villainizing other people. And when hatred and revenge is going to be basically your mode of operation. That’s not right. There’s nothing normal about that.

On the legacy of his last term in Congress

It’s a shame to go out and the 118th Congress will go down as absolutely the least productive Congress in the history of the United States of America. That’s a sad scenario. Only 39 bills have been passed so far. We usually pass an average of about 523 bills every two years.

The 117th Congress was one of the most productive and one of the most monumental 118th will be the worst. And that’s a shame.

I have been very adamantly supportive of trying to give every American a chance to have a quality of life, no matter what the race to matter what their religion, no matter what their sexual preferences. But when you try to normalize, those are on the extremes which might be on a different path or taking in life, that makes it hard. When [the government] tries to push that into the mainstream, people reject it. And that’s not the government’s role. And I’ve said this all my life. I never have believed the government would be my provider. Government was my partner, whether it be local, municipalities, local, county, local and a state government. They were not my provider, nor did I expect them to be. But I hope [government] had the compassion and the moral values of helping those who couldn’t help themselves. That’s basically who I am and what I’ve always tried to do and what I always will do.

The audio version of this interview was produced by Kaity Kline and edited by Mohamad ElBardicy. The digital version was edited by Jacob Conard

Millions Of U.S. Apples Were Almost Left To Rot. Now, They’ll Go To Hungry Families

Many growers across the country have been left without a market due to oversupplied apple processors. West Virginia rescued its surplus, with a plan that donates apples to hunger-fighting charities.

By Alan Jinich

NPR Staff

Listen to this story and see more photos on npr.org.

It’s getting late in the harvest season in Berkeley County, West Virginia and Carla Kitchen’s team is in the process of hand-picking nearly half a million pounds of apples. In a normal year, Kitchen would sell to processors like Androsthat make applesauce, concentrate, and other products. But this year they turned her away.

“Imagine 80% of your income is sitting on the trees and the processor tells you they don’t want them,” Kitchen says. “You’ve got your employees to worry about. You’ve got fruit on the trees that need somewhere to go. What do you do?”

For the first time in 36 years, Kitchen had nowhere to sell the bulk of her harvest. It could have been the end of her business. And she wasn’t the only one. Across the country, growers were left without a market. Due to an oversupply carried over from last year’s harvest, growers were faced with a game-time economic decision: Should they pay the labor to harvest, crossing their fingers for a buyer to come along, or simply leave the apples to rot?

Bumper crops, export declines and the weather have contributed to the apple crisis

Christopher Gerlach, director of industry analytics at USApple, says the surplus this year was caused by several compounding factors. Bumper crops have kept domestic supply high. Exports have declined 21% over the past decade, a symptom of retaliatory tariffs from India that only ended this fall.

Weather also played a role this year as hail left a significant share of apples cosmetically unsuitable for the fresh market. Growers would normally recoup some value by selling to processors, but that wasn’t an option for many either – processors still had leftovers from last year sitting in climate-controlled storage.

“Last year’s season was so good that the price went down on processors and they said, ‘let’s buy while the buyings good,’ ” Gerlach says. “These processors basically filled up their storage warehouses. It’s just the market.”

While many growers in neighboring states like Maryland and Virginia left their apples to drop. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia was able to convince the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to pay for the apples produced by growers in his state, which only makes up 1% of the national market.

A relief program in West Virginia donated its surplus apples to hunger-fighting charities

This apple relief program, covered under Section 32 of the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1935, purchased $10 million worth of apples from a dozen West Virginia growers. Those apples were then donated to hunger-fighting charities across the country from South Carolina and Michigan all the way out to The Navajo Nation.

A nonprofit called The Farmlink Project took care of more than half the state’s surplus – 10 million pounds of apples filling nearly 300 trucks.

Mike Meyer, head of advocacy at The Farmlink Project, says it’s the largest food rescue they’ve ever done and they hope it can serve as a model for their future missions.

“There’s over 100 billion pounds of produce waste in this country every year; we only need seven billion to drive food insecurity to zero,” Meyer says. “We’re very happy to have this opportunity. We get to support farmers, we get to fight hunger with an apple. It’s one of the most nutritional items we can get into the hands of the food insecure.”

At Timber Ridge Fruit Farm in Virginia, owners Cordell and Kim Watt watch a truck from The Farmlink Project load up on their apples before driving out to a food pantry in Bethesda, Md. Despite being headquartered in Virginia, Timber Ridge was able to participate in the apple rescue since they own orchards in West Virginia as well. Cordell is a third-generation grower here and he says they’ve never had to deal with a surplus this large.

“This was unprecedented territory,” Watt says. “The first time I can remember in my lifetime that they [processors] put everybody on a quota. I know several growers that just let them fall on the ground. … The program with Farmlink has really taken care of the fruit in West Virginia, but in a lot of other states there’s a lot of fruit going to waste. We just gotta hope that there’s funding there to keep this thing going.”

At the So What Else food pantry in Bethesda, Md., apple pallets from Timber Ridge fill the warehouse up to the ceiling. Emanuel Ibanez and other volunteers are picking through the crates, bagging fresh apples into family-sized loads.

“I’m just bewildered,” Ibanez says. “We have a warehouse full of apples and I can barely walk through it.”

“People in need got nutritious food out of this program. And that’s the most important thing”

Executive director Megan Joe says this is the largest shipment of produce they’ve ever distributed – 10 truckloads over the span of three weeks. The food pantry typically serves 6,000 families, but this shipment has reached a much wider circle.

“My coworkers are like, ‘Megan, do we really need this many?’ And I’m like, yes!” Joe says. “The growing prices in the grocery stores are really tough for a lot of families. And it’s honestly gotten worse since COVID.”

Back in West Virginia, apple growers, government officials, and Farmlink Project members come together in a roundtable meeting. Despite the existential struggles looming ahead, spirits were high and even some who were skeptical of government purchases applauded the program for coming together so efficiently.

“It’s the first time we’ve done this type of program, but we believe it can set the stage for the region,” Kent Leonhardt, West Virginia’s commissioner of agriculture says. “People in need got nutritious food out of this program. And that’s the most important thing.”

Following West Virginia’s rescue program, the USDA announced an additional $100 million purchase to relieve the apple surplus in other states around the country. This is the largest government buy of apples and apple products to date. But with the harvest window coming to an end, many growers have already left their apples to drop and rot.

Annotation: Donald Trump Jr.'s Emails About Russia Meeting

Donald Trump Jr. tweeted images of emails regarding his 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer on Tuesday.

An intermediary said he could connect Trump Jr. with people who had information “that would incriminate Hillary [Clinton]… and would be very useful to your father.” 

Trump Jr. agreed to the meeting, which former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Trump son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner also attended in June 2016. They met with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya, whom Trump Jr. said ultimately did not provide the promised material on Clinton.

In the emails, Trump Jr. corresponds with publicist Rob Goldstone, who represents the son of an Azerbaijan-born billionaire who has also done business with the Trumps. Trump Jr. forwarded the thread to Kushner and Manafort.

Here, the text appears in chronological order; headers were added by NPR. See the text as tweeted here, combined into one pdf. NPR journalists have annotated the text below with context and analysis.

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Congress Tracker: Trump's Refugee And Immigration Executive Order

Last week, President Trump signed an executive order suspending new-refugee admissions for 120 days and blocking travelers from seven Muslim-majority…

Last week, President Trump signed an executive order suspending new-refugee admissions for 120 days and blocking travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries — Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia — for 90 days. Syrian refugees are banned indefinitely.

The move caused immediate controversy, sparking protests in cities and airports around the U.S. as federal authorities began enforcing the ban, preventing hundreds of travelers from boarding planes over the weekend. Other travelers and refugees landing in the U.S. have been detained or sent back. Federal judges quickly weighed in to issue temporary stays, and the future of the executive order will very likely be determined in court. The Trump administration has also come under criticism from scores of countries, including close allies.

At the same time, a recent poll by Reuters/Ipsos shows public opinion narrowly backing Trump’s action, with 49 percent of Americans agreeing with the order while 41 percent disagreed.

NPR and dozens of member stations wanted to help the public understand where its lawmakers stand on the issue. Collectively, we searched for public statements on Twitter and Facebook, on lawmakers’ websites and in interviews with us in public media or other news organizations. We did this for each of the 536 members of Congress — 100 senators, 435 voting members of the House, and the District of Columbia’s nonvoting House delegate.

Overall, strong partisan lines are clear on the issue, with Democrats in Congress overwhelmingly opposed to the new travel restrictions; many of them joined in the airport protests, and some called it a “Muslim ban.” On the Republican side, members generally support the order, although significant numbers did not make public statements. A few Republicans, especially in the Senate, stated their opposition or offered mixed messages, with some critical of how the order was carried out.

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