Public Opinion on Immigration, New Power Plant Rules, College Cost Sharing
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Polling on President Trump's immigration policy shows a divided country. Support for deportation changes depending on exactly who is being deported and how the government does it. What are the numbers? I'm Steve Inskeep with Michelle Martin, and this is Up First from NPR News.

The Trump administration plans to get rid of limits on greenhouse gases emitted from power plants. The EPA says this step will help fulfill a promise to unleash American energy. Some disagree. This action would be pretty laughable if the stakes weren't so high. So what are those stakes? And the Republican megabill proposes putting colleges on the hook for their students' loans. Will the math add up? Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day.

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President Trump won a second term in part because of what he had to say about immigration. Now the country is seeing exactly how the administration is following through. The president's actions have provoked a lot of protest, as we've been hearing all week, and also considerable support. And we're going to start with the voices of Americans who generally support the president. Stefano Forte is president of the New York Young Republican Club. He says on immigration... We need to take a pause.

And then later on down the line, we can decide if we want to open the United States up. But for right now, the United States is full. In Miami, George Pita says he's an independent, that he voted for Trump, and he's torn down the middle. It's rough because I'm Hispanic myself, and I see my people being treated like this. I'm in agreement with having to deport massly because a lot of illegals did come through.

I just don't like the way it's being done. Julie Cantwell is a Republican running for state representative in Rineyville, Kentucky. They want to deport, you know, the violent criminals. But, you know, a lot of people also feel that as strong Republicans that we don't want to rip families apart because, you know, we do believe in family values. Catherine Katari, a longtime Republican voter in Brooklyn, says she would welcome the Marines to her city. I think...

Hoorah! Simplify. Hoorah! Lead the National Guard, sit them down on the sidelines and bring the Marine Corps in. My son-in-law has a business in Soho. We work hard for everything. And you're breaking my window? Hell no. So for more on public opinion about immigration and politics, we're going to turn to NPR senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro. Domenico, good morning. Hey, Michelle. So where does the polling stand on this and how has it changed over time?

Well, whether or not people think immigration should increase or decrease, you know, tends to depend on the number of immigrants who cross the border illegally. You know, what I mean by this is that Gallup has been polling for decades about this sentiment and found last year, for example, that in its latest survey with this question in it, that 55% of people wanted immigration to decrease. That's the highest it's been since 2001. And that was a very different political moment just after 9-11, where

But it was also the last time encounters at the southern border were as high as they were in the last couple of years. So President Trump has certainly made immigration a key part of his message. I mean, that's, you know, since his first run for the presidency. But how do people view how he is handling it now?

Well, we've gotten some conflicting messages from poll respondents on this across various surveys. For example, just this week, a CBS poll found 54% approved of his deportation policies. But just yesterday, a Quinnipiac poll showed 56% disapprove. What that tells us for people who watch politics closely is that there's volatility in the numbers. And that means a certain percentage of people are open to being swayed. And that's when circumstances and political messaging here are really important. Okay, what kinds of circumstances?

While Trump certainly is at risk of going too far, just because overall people say that they're in favor of deporting those without permanent legal status, there's a difference between the kinds of hardened criminals that the administration said it would focus on and those who are hardworking members of communities and construction or restaurants or elsewhere. We've seen some pushback from within Congress.

the president's own party even, warning that it should be cautious in how far they go. But cultural hardliners in the White House like Stephen Miller disagree. They have the president's ear and they're going to focus on any violence as a result of the protests and try and make that the focus. And what about how the Democrats talk about this? What are you hearing about how they should be responding?

Well, Democrats had really been having trouble finding their sea legs in talking about immigration. Trump focused on immigration during the campaign. Democrats lost. And some of them have shied away from making a strong case in favor of immigration. But in this moment, there seems to be some early signs of coalescing about how Democrats should talk about this. Joel Payne's a Democratic strategist. He says that he's starting to see some Democrats talk about it in a way that he thinks is politically palatable. The American people, I think,

want a Democratic Party that understands the value of managing the border, but also does not abandon the value of supporting and uplifting immigrant communities.

I don't think anybody in the country sees a mom getting picked up from a school pickup line

by masked agents in unmarked vans and think, ah, yeah, that's what I voted for. That's what I want. That's humane. I don't think that matters if you're progressive, moderate, or Republican. I think that's just basic...

common sense about where we want the country to be. You know, with the deportation policy shift toward workplaces, the narrative from Republicans is changing from one about border security to targeting criminals, which polls very well, to something very different. And the further Trump goes, Democrats feel like the easier it is for them to have a message and appear to be united on this. That is NPR's Domenico Montanaro. Domenico, thank you. You're welcome.

The Trump administration plans to repeal limits on greenhouse gas pollution from the country's fossil fuel power plants. These are coal and gas generators, and they are the second largest source of climate-heating greenhouse gases behind transportation. Jeff Brady is here from NPR's Climate Desk with more. Good morning, Jeff. Hello, Michelle. So what is the Trump administration proposing?

They are removing any responsibility that fossil fuel power plants have under current rules to help with reining in climate change. If this rule is finalized, there will be no limits on greenhouse gases for existing coal-fired power plants and new gas-fired ones.

And this is all part of President Trump's effort to move away from the climate policies of the Biden administration and refocus on exploiting more domestic fossil fuels. Here's Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin at yesterday's announcement. Rest assured, President Trump is the biggest supporter of clean, beautiful coal. We will use coal for power generation, to mine for critical minerals, and to export to our allies.

Today, we are taking an important step towards putting America back on track. To justify lifting these limits on climate pollution, the EPA argues that U.S. power plants are a small and declining part of global greenhouse gas emissions, around 3%.

So the agency argues they're no longer a significant contributor to the problem. But, you know, I recently looked at one analysis that showed if U.S. power plants were a country, they'd be the sixth largest contributor to global climate change or global climate pollution, really. I see it. So what kind of reaction is this getting from the fossil fuel industry on the one hand and environmental groups on the other?

I talked with Meredith Hankins, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. This action would be pretty laughable if the stakes weren't so high. This administration is actually trying to argue that the largest industrial source of carbon pollution is somehow insignificant.

to the problem of climate change. Hankins and others say the Trump administration is propping up the coal industry at a time when Americans are experiencing the effects of a hotter planet, you know, more intense storms, flooding, heat waves, and wildfires. Coal and gas companies, though, you know, they're big fans of the Trump administration's energy policies, including this one. And like the president, they see opportunity in tapping more of the country's fossil fuel reserves. And so where does this leave the U.S. in the global fight against climate change?

These power plant rules have gone through a couple of different evolutions. They started with President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan back in 2015. His administration took that proposal to the United Nations Climate Meeting in Paris that year to show that the U.S. was serious about addressing greenhouse gas pollution and to encourage other countries to sign the landmark Paris Climate Agreement, which, of course, they did.

In that agreement, countries laid out how they're going to reduce their climate pollution to avoid the worst effects of a hotter planet. And Trump is once again removing the U.S. from the Paris Agreement. Repealing these limits on power plants is part of that withdrawal from the global fight against climate change. So what happens next with these power plant rules that the EPA has proposed? There's going to be a comment period, maybe a rule by the end of the year. And shortly after that, I suspect they're going to be challenged in court. That's NPR's Jeff Brady. Jeff, thank you. Thank you.

Tucked inside House Republicans' mega bill is a bold idea to hold colleges accountable for student loans. The concept is called risk sharing. The college has to share the risk. The proposal would order colleges to assume some financial responsibility for the debt that their students do not pay off. The Congressional Budget Office estimates this full proposal could save the government more than $6 billion over the next decade if it gets through the Senate.

With us now to talk more about this is NPR education correspondent, Corey Turner. Corey, good morning. Good morning, Michelle. So how exactly do House Republicans want to hold colleges accountable here? Well, the proposal would divide up a school's student loan borrowers by program. So imagine separating English majors from biology or computer science majors, and then they'd calculate for each program in a given year how much borrowers were supposed to pay toward their federal student loans but didn't. Uh,

After some more pretty complicated math, colleges would then have to reimburse the federal government for a share of that unpaid student loan debt. And Michelle, there's one extra twist here, which is that these penalties would then be recycled into bonuses to reward the schools that give low-income students the biggest bang for their buck. So Corey, you talk to sort of experts who look at things like college financing all the time. What are they saying about this?

Yeah, so there is pretty broad consensus around the idea that we need some kind of accountability for colleges. But I heard several really key worries about this plan. One of them is that it would require a ton of data. And the education department, which would have to collect it, has half the staff that it had before President Trump took office. There's another problem I heard with the math behind these school penalties.

Dominique Baker at the University of Delaware says the math has a hole in it. The amount that would get charged for this would not include loan balances that were in default, which is very odd. That's right. The plan to punish schools for burying students in debt would exclude loans once they go into default.

Multiple experts told me, Michelle, this was likely done out of fear that including defaults would basically make the penalties too painful for some schools. So do we know which colleges would be hardest hit by these changes?

Yeah, we have some idea. The conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute has been crunching the numbers and estimates the schools on the hook for some of the biggest penalties would mostly fall into two categories. You've got the for-profit college chains like Strayer University and University of Phoenix, and then big private non-profit schools, including the University of Southern California, or USC, not because of their undergraduate debt, but because of their popular high-priced grad programs. So

So before we let you go, what are the chances of this plan getting through Congress? Well, I mean, it needs a simple majority to get through the Senate. But earlier this week, Republicans there released their own version of college accountability. So basically, like everything else in this bill, House and Senate Republicans are going to have to find a middle ground or give up on the idea. That is NPR's Corey Turner. Corey, thank you. You're welcome. Thank you.

And that's Up First for Thursday, June 12th. I'm Michelle Martin. And I'm Steve Inskeep. For your next listen, consider Consider This from NPR News. Up First gives you three big stories of the day. Consider This dives into a single news story and what it means to you in less than 15 minutes. Listen now on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Today's episode of Up First was edited by Dana Farrington, Neela Banerjee, Nicole Cohen, Lisa Thompson, and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Ziad Budge, Nia Dumas, and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Nisha Hynes and our technical director is Carly Strange. We hope you'll join us again tomorrow. ♪

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