McMahon Ed Secretary, FEMA Chief Testifies, X-odus Fuels Bluesky, Gaza Sniper Drones
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President elect on trump picks the co founder of the W W. E to n the department of education.

The man ran a small business administration during transfer term but has little experience in education. And it's a department that .

many conservative to shut down as and this is up first from npr news. Female is the far some republicans accused agency of playing politics with disaster aid .

family essentially reached the homes of president truman supporters as if they were homes of people with vicious dogs.

Could this jeopardize future funding for disaster relief?

And a large number of people have left the social media platform, a smaller platform 和 blue sky。 Seeing a in, users can IT become the next twitter stay with us. We ve got all the news.

You need to start your day.

President elect dot trumps cabinet nominations continue to roll in. And we got one more late yesterday.

lindeman man from the U. S. Department of education. And that's an agency that conservatives have. I want you to shut down for years. He is probably best known as a co founder of the W W. E, the professional reston company.

For more on this, we're joined by M P. R. correct. NER, so correct us about lindemulder. En.

yeah. SHE is a surprise in so far as there were a handful of education candidates out there, a with real conservative credentials, and men is not one of them. He is cofounder and former C E O, world wrestling entertainment.

But I known as W W E. As you said, she's been friends with Donald trump for many years. Going back to those early restless days, she's also twice run as republican for A U.

S. Sentenced in connective, but he lost both times. During trump's first term, he picked my man to run the small business administration.

In fact, when he spoke at the R. N. C before this past election, SHE talked mostly about taxes and terrace.

President trump is a job creator and the best friend american workers have ever had in the White house.

You know, I think it's clear present elect trump really trust linder, mic man, uh, he has also been coaching his transition team.

So SHE is on tap to be his education secretary. What experience a Linda man have in education or education policy?

Yeah, not a lot. That's obvious. A um SHE did serve briefly on the connective stayford of education. In fact, I found her testimony and SHE was nominated. SHE told the committee sh'd gone college with plans to become a teacher um he also mentioned several initiatives that he had pushed while he was running W W E, including a program to encourage kids to read. But but SHE resigned from the statement ard after about a year to mount her first senator.

More recently, SHE has chair the board for the amErica first policy institute, which supports school choice across the country and then includes letting parents spend public dollars in private schools. But it's hard know how involved he was in that part of their prebble portfolio. What is clear is that he is a very successful, no nonsense business woman who has a ton of experience dealing with some pretty big personalities yeah.

that he does, which might come in handy if she's confirmed. So and let's talk about trump's big promise to close the education department.

How is you going to do that? Yeah, look, a bipartisan group of experts have told me over the past week, closing the department is one restless match that make man probably cannot win, or really any secretary. And that's because the department was created by congress, and only congress can abolish IT.

And doing that, we will require sixty votes in the senate to overcome the phillip ster. But here's the thing in in trumpet statement announcing man's nomination, he said he expected to be a champion for school choice and IT would be hard for her to do that without an education department from first education secretary Betty. Divorce was also an outspoken navigate for school choice.

SHE can struggle to get much done nationally, but because school choice policies tend to happen at the state level, they are very pretty be um one thing man could try to do is use the department to insana vize more states and communities to embrace some kind of school choice republicans. The senate have also been pushing this new tax credit that would fund scholarships to students to help pay for private school tuition. But again, it's it's early and IT is hard to know how feasible these ideas will be even with republicans controlling congress.

M. P. R. Corry Turner, thanks. Sorry.

you welcome.

The bite administration wants more money for disaster recovery, but the agency that responds to natural disasters, fema is fending off attacks in congress.

Yes, the administration is seeking nearly one hundred billion dollars in additional funds after this is on slot of hurricanes, flash floods and wildfires. Meanwhile, fema administrator D. M. Chris, well spent tuesday on capital hill SHE, had to defend against accusations that the agency responded slowly to disasters and discriminated against some hurricane victims for political reasons.

M P. R. debi. Eli is covering the story. Debby Chris wal testified before two house committees. So what remember the congress press on?

Well, specifically, this was about famous response to harricane Helen in milton, catastrophic storms. You'll remember that struck the southeast in late september. In the early october, back to back, more than two hundred people were killed in the storms, caused billions of dollars in the image, but there's one particular incident that prompted the scrutiny and now fired famous supervisor, directed workers who were doing dorter or camping and late plastic florida to skip over houses that had trump campaign signs in the the plane.

Melton, now that former cruel what he was, marni washington has sense, claimed SHE was following standard protocol to avoid hostility in the field, something workers did face after disinformation spread in the wake of hurricane hole in. So the focus of these hearings is whether there is a wider cultural problem at fema. Hair house oversight committee chairman James comer, a republican from kentucky.

the same employee, illegal TV, that this was not an isolated event, and that fale essentially reached the homes of present truth supporters as if they were homes of people with vicious dogs. This is unacceptable. Americans, the main .

and accountability, he says this incident amounts to the weapon zone of government um comer also into into the record and another reported incident of a household in georgia being told by a female contractor that they should remove any term campaign material. Now that's something in pr has not .

verified so how did the theme .

achieve respond um in both the house oversight committee and then earlier before the transportation and infrastructure panel dan Chris wl repeatedly denied any wide issue in the way that theme idols out disaster red SHE says um marni washington s instruction to disaster assistance teams to avoid homes quote advertising. Trump was reprehensible and at odds with the agencies mission. Here's part of our testimony before the housework .

sight committee. This type of behavior and action will not be tolerated at female, and we will hold all people accountable if they violate our standards of conduct.

I do not .

believe that these employees actions are indicative of any widespread cultural problems at fema.

Now, democrats on the panel, like ranking member jami raskind of maryland, tried to point out that president elect trump and his allies had pushed conspire theories about the hurry ane response.

Female aid workers have been forced to work under a cloud of propaganda and lies concocted to erode public trust and female. Because of this disinformation, many victims of hurricanes have rejected a federal assistance, and others have even harassment and threaten female kers.

So we know one female supervisor has been fired for orring workers to skip over homes with trump signs. Could there maybe be more fallout from this incident?

Well, that's a good question. Chris well says an internal investigation is underway, and she's also ask for an independent probe by the inspector general for the department of homeland m. Security to determine whether this was an isolated incident or whether others at the agency or also IT falt. In the meantime, he says they identified about twenty homes that worse kept over an absence, sent workers to help them registered for aid. If they qualify, we should also know that Chris was also named in a federal discrimination lawsuit that .

was filed by florida attorney general.

Well, thanks.

It's become known as the x of us. Since down trump on the election, at least one hundred thousand people have left x. The social media site owned by elon must last.

of course, was a vocal trump circuit and a major donor and now one of trumps key advisors. And lately, x has become overrun with posts about musk and trump. Many looking for an alternative have turned to a site called blue sky.

Were joined by M, P, R. tech. Correspond, bobbi Allen to hear all about IT. So we know by now that elon mosques made many changes at the site, formally known as twitter. But why are so many people believing now?

Yeah, you know, the election might have something to do with IT right after trump one, many on x noted an optic and protein content, leaving up to the election mask, tinker with the algorithm to give his own posts a boost. And musk was posting a lot about trump. But to those who are, you know, not fans of trump, x became too flooded with thump backs. Ers, there have always been conservatives on the attack when I was twitter, but users said, this time around it's just stop being a mix of views and just started being post about trump and post about us.

For some people, that was a turn off. So then a blue Bobby. I wanted to call the blue sky, but I know IT is a blue sky.

I know IT is blue sky. Very chipper name, I admit, when I log onto IT Bobby, I can looks like eggs. So what's different?

IT does IT looks a lot like x. When you log on, there's A A feed of text posts from people you follow. So the look and feel feel reminds you of x slash twitter.

But the differences, blue sky users have more choice about what they see and who they talk to. If you don't like what you see on the APP, you can actually build your own feed or search a data abase of fees. There are more than fifty thousand to choose from, say, a feed full of cat and dog photos, or feed ful news only about the los Angels slappers, whatever you want. I talked to the CEO blue guy, heard him is jane graber, and he says this, choose your own adventure quality of the APP really puts the power in the hands of the average ser.

My concern with the internet is it's just become too controlled by a few powerful interests, and people don't have enough ability to control their own fate. And so we wanted to build social that built by the people, for the people.

right by the people, for the people. So how many people have actually gone blue? Guys of are well .

so far it's pretty tiny um grave or says since the election you've added a million people a day, which is a remarkable number but overall they have about twenty million users which is quite small compared to matters x competitor threads which has hundreds of millions and x itself which also has hundreds of millions. But blue sky a is really where all the energy is right now.

I mean, celebrities, politicians, influences, you name IT are opening accounts on blue sky. IT is too early to say that IT is a new twitter, but blue guy fans are sure hoping so. So then what.

if anything, is standing in the way of blue sky becoming the new twitter?

Well, right now there, staff and infrastructure are just quite limited, and they will need money to support growing. And they haven't shared a long term business plan. They have said that a blue sky will never display advertisement, that IT won't harvest user data.

Those two are usually how social media companies make money about. Blue guys are going to do either right now. Blu sky is just Operating off of investor money. And when I talked to gravy, SHE told me that, you know, they hope to do a subscription model to generate some revenue. But as IT stands, a that is the .

big question facing the thanks.

I witnesses tell M P R that the israeli military is using a new type of drone in its war agains homos in gaza. A snipper drone from on cpr has collected more than a dozen accounts from people who have seen these snipers drones being used in gaza, and many say they have seen them used to shoot and sometimes kill civilians. For more on this, for joined by M P S. Cat lunch door of cats. So why did you start looking into this?

Yeah, when I first heard about these drones, the summer, we interviewed a man named a deep, shocked fa who was in gosa. He was telling us about an incident at the end of may when he was walking on a quiet day with a thirty two year old sun, and a small drone appeared and shot his son in the head. He told us two men rushed to help his son, and the drone shot them too.

One of those men was killed along with shocker us. Sun, we know that drugs s are using gaza for surveilLance and even to drop bombs by the israeli military. But when I first heard this, my editor, I had this moment like, wait, a dra.

Drone shot to them. We thought maybe we didn't understand correctly. Ly, so I started looking into IT.

That's what did you find.

So I pretty quickly figured out that this technology does exist. It's been on the market for several years and there are a few different companies making IT. Many of them are based in israel or have tied to israel or the israeli military.

And just you can picture IT, these are small drones with multiple reuters on the top. They kind of look like the drones that anyone could buy, like an electronic store, but a little bit bigger. And then they've got a camera touch them so that whoever out Operating the drone can see what's in front of front of the drone.

And then there's a long rifle barrel l attached and that gun can be fired remotely and the drone is designed to compense for the recoil of the weapon while its covering. Um I should say that emir repeatedly asked the israeli military if I was using this knipperdolling chinese gy in gaza. IT didn't respond our question, but it's very common that a military won't disclose what weapons they're using, especially in active warfare. And like I said, several of the companies we found have tied israel, and the israeli defense ministry has touted the technology in the past.

What did you hear from people in goys about how this snipper .

drone is being used? What we heard a lot of pretty disturbing stories. You know, that these drones appear quickly and quietly, that they come in after air strikes and shoot people trying to pull people out of the rubble.

They come in hospitals. They come to camps of display people, and many people told us stories about them being used to shoot civilians, sometimes children. I talked with doctor mei sia. She's an american emergency trauma r and traumatic tor, who are worked in goza recently. And he told me that he would see multiple a day, many in pediatrics, with single gunshot wounds to the head.

Every time someone would come in, they would be brought my family. But IT was my routine practice to ask what happened. And at every time, IT would be a drawn, quick ter shot helicopter and drug shot.

So he said he saw this day after day, people coming in from different parts of goza talking about a quick ter drown shooting from different incidents. People in goza talk about these drones all the time. We started noticing IT after interview, after interview. And IT seems like they become really, really common. We asked the israeli military about several of the individual incidents we heard about, including the first I told you about IT said I was unaware of the incidence and said that any suggesting that israel intends to harm civilians is, quote, unfounded and baseless.

The mp s cat, londres cat.

thank you very much. Thank you.

And that's the first for wednesday.

november twenty a. Martina and i'm a tile Martin. Your next listen is, consider this from npr.

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