Donald Trump challenged Hillary Clinton to release detailed medical records, meanwhile recent polls show the Republican candidate to be only a few points behind Clinton; as part of NPR's new series, "A Nation Engaged," AirTalk will look at America's role in the world throughout this week’s programming; and swimming with dolphins may soon be a tourist attraction of the past.
AirTalk politics 2016: Trump calls out Hillary’s health, the ongoing drip of the email controversy, and polls showing Trump still in striking distance
Despite his recent campaign woes, Donald Trump remains only a few percentage points behind Hillary Clinton in national polls, according to RealClearPolitics’ poll average.
One recent USC/L.A. Times poll showed a virtual tie between the two candidates. As always, polls should be taken with a grain of salt, but the numbers suggest that maybe Trump’s support hasn’t taken much of a hit despite turbulence within his campaign. Mr. Trump, who recently challenged Clinton to release more detailed medical records, is expected to give a speech this week in Arizona on immigration amid questions about his changing stance on undocumented immigrants.
On our weekly political roundtable, AirTalk’s experts dive into all of this and more as we preview the week on the campaign trail and talk about the storylines you need to know this week.
Guests:
Lynn Vavreck, professor of political science at UCLA; she tweets from
Sean T. Walsh, Republican political analyst and partner at Wilson Walsh Consulting in San Francisco
AirTalk politics 2016: Secretary of State getting word out as poll volunteers needed for November
As we close in on two months until the November election, county voter registration offices across California are scrambling to make sure polling places in their counties will be staffed on Election Day.
Here in Los Angeles County, registrar-recorder Dean Logan is calling for more than 22,000 people to volunteer on Election Day. What is the need statewide for volunteers? How is the Secretary of State’s office helping county registrars to get the word out?
Monday on AirTalk, Larry will speak with California Secretary of State Alex Padilla to find out what the statewide need for volunteers is, what his office is doing to help local registrars get the word out, and we’ll also get an update on SB 450, a bill that would drastically change the way you vote.
Guest:
Alex Padilla, California Secretary of State; he tweets from
Should airlines honor the tickets of cancelled flights from other carriers?
The practice is called “airline reciprocity” and once upon a time it was something airlines actually did of their own accord, which eventually fell out of favor.
Consumer advocates have been urging Transportation Department and Federal Aviation Administration, according to the Washington Post, to persuade airlines to honor the cancelled tickets of other carriers, particularly in situations like the computer system outage experienced by Delta Air Lines in August that stranded tons of travellers.
Guests:
Charlie Leocha, chairman and co-founder of Travelers United, a nonprofit consumer travel organization
Sharon Pinkerton, Senior Vice President, Legislative and Regulatory Policy for Airlines for America, an airline industry group
The fight to close the Santa Monica Airport
The historic Santa Monica Municipal Airport will be no more by July of 2018.
That’s according to Thursday’s city council vote, which has raised much debate between city officials and the Federal Aviation Administration, and the city’s airport association.
The council first tried to close the airport in 1981, but aviation groups fought to keep the space open because of a previous federal agreement. Airplane and jet noise are common complaints with Santa Monica residents in favor getting rid of the facility. City officials argue the airport’s environmental impact outweighs the need to keep the space running, along with concerns that the airport caters mostly to the wealthy few who can afford private jets.
What do you think of the vote to close the Santa Monica Municipal Airport?
Guests:
Ted Winterer, mayor pro tempore of Santa Monica
Christian Fry, president of the Santa Monica Airport Association
US-Russian relations for the 21st century
As part of NPR's series, "A Nation Engaged," AirTalk will look at America's role in the world throughout this week’s programming. On the hustings, one policy issue playing more prominently than anticipated is U.S.-Russia relations.
Characteristically bombastic comments from Republican candidate Donald Trump have raised the profile of America’s strategy towards the Kremlin vis-a-vis the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Last month, Trump told “The New York Times” that as president, he would only fulfill NATO obligations to protect Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia from Russian aggression if the formerly Soviet Baltic states met their financial obligations to NATO. Slashing the sacred cow of NATO was greeted with alarm by many, but some responded with support, questioning whether the alliance has value in a post-Cold War world.
Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton slammed Trump for abandoning U.S. allies to Putin’s aggression. But flip the script, and Putin’s actions are justified by a NATO that’s reneged on promises not to expand and is now inching towards Russia’s borders.
So is U.S. foreign policy at fault for Russia’s hostility, or is Putin playing this narrative to his advantage? Is NATO obsolete, as Trump claims, or is it as relevant as ever? And where do we go from here?
Here’s what AirTalk’s guests had to say.
Reaction to Donald Trump’s Comments on NATO
Warsaw office Director at the German Marshall Fund Michał Baranowski:
“Donald Trump is saying that you can’t count on the U.S. as an ally anymore. That comment undermines the policy of building alliances that served the U.S. in the last 70 years.”
Journalist Jeffrey Tayler didn’t agree with Trump’s financial justifications, but he did find NATO, especially its expansion eastward, problematic:
“I don’t think it’s a question of funding, I think it’s a question of mission. There was talk … all the way back to 1993 that without the Soviet threat, what was the point of NATO? … There really was no reason for it.”
On understanding Putin
Professor of Russian History Anton Fedyashin said certain aspects of Russian President Vladimir Putin are underrepresented in the press:
“One thing to remember about Vladimir Putin is that when he became Russian President in 2000, he was a westernizer and an integrationist… He [Putin] made it clear that he doesn’t want to take military steps, but when pushed he will do so.”
Baranowski disagreed with this characterization:
“He [Putin] clearly seeks a sphere of influence in Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and potentially the Baltic states...When is it okay for one country to take over the territory of another country? If we enter that world, all bets are off.”
U.S. strategy going forward
Tayler:
“One of the first things the United States could do is … take NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia off the table.”
Fedyashin recommended moving away from NATO:
“A collective security agreement that brings the Russians into some kind of new organization is the best way to allay their fears while at the same time ensuring the security of their eastern neighbors.”
Baranowski disagreed with this strategy, saying that Russia wasn’t onboard with open dialogue. He warned against giving Russia a sphere of influence:
“To give Russia power over its neighbors… would be very destabilizing and particularly unfair to the people who live in those countries.”
These interviews have been edited for clarity. You can listen to the full segment by clicking the blue play button above.
Guests:
Michał Baranowski, Warsaw office Director at the German Marshall Fund; he tweets
Anton Fedyashin, Professor of Russian History, American University in Washington DC
Jeffrey Tayler, author and journalist, Russia correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly; he tweets from
Series: A Nation Engaged
NPR and KPCC's coverage of critical issues facing the nation before November's presidential election. The stories seek to build a nationwide conversation around these issues, focusing on a specific question each time.
Read more in this series and let us know your thoughts in the comments section below or on Facebook.
Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.9(MDA1OTI3MjQ5MDEyODUwMTE2MzM1YzNmZA004))
Hawaii considering ban on swimming with dolphins
Swimming with dolphins may be one of the highlights of a Hawaiian vacation, but a new proposal aims to ban the tourist activity.
The National Marine Fisheries Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has proposed federal rules to stop people from swimming and coming within 50 yards of spinner dolphins.
The NOAA argues that the dolphins need rest and sleep during the day, since they do most of their hunting for food at night. This means tourists could be causing unnecessary stress and exhaustion for the animals.
Tourism businesses, large and small, will feel the negative financial impact of the ban if it goes through. Critics of the proposal argue that swimming with dolphins encourages empathy for the animals, and is doing more good than harm.
Ruling on the proposal is expected by next year.
interview highlights:
Larry Mantle spoke with Naomi Rose, Ph.D., Marine Mammal Scientist at the Animal Welfare Institute, an animal protection organization based in DC. Rose talked about the need for the ban and explained why spinner dolphins have needed the proposal for decades.
What is the stress involved for the spinner dolphins in these human-mammal encounters?
Rose: The main thing people have to realize is that these animals are coming into these in-shore areas to rest, to recover from a night time of work, which is when they're foraging. . .So this is when people go to watch them and swim with them. And it's fine when there's not that many people, but when it reaches the levels that it has in recent years, it becomes an issue. These animals are trying to rest and we are in their bedroom disrupting that.
Is there a typical way that the humans and dolphins interact?
Rose: Sometimes it can be really subtle and that's part of the problem. To a lot of the people who are out there interacting with the dolphins, the dolphins seem to be O.K. with it. But some of these reactions that the animals have can be pretty subtle. It can be that eventually they stop using an area as often as they used to, which given that they're trying to protect themselves from predators can be a serious problem. Sometimes they can be more vigilant when they're trying to rest. And [dolphin] vigilance is hard to measure for an average person who is out there on a boat. These are things that have been studied over the years. There's been a lot of research on these dolphins because of this tourism attraction and there's a lot of data to show there are these reactions.
What changes have researchers such as the NOAA seen in the dolphins as a result of this tourist attraction?
Rose: Pulse rate increases and greater vigilance, which is going to be energetically costly for them. They might be on the edge of energetic balance. . . If they are forced to burn more calories just to be more vigilant because there are so many people, that can push them over the edge.
"If [dolphins] are forced to burn more calories just to be more vigilant because there are so many people, that can push them over the edge."
-Naomi Rose
Larry also spoke with Kevin Merrill, owner of Dolphin Discoveries in Kona, Hawaii. He asked Merrill about his view on alternatives to the ban.
Have you witnessed any of the stress in question as a result of human-dolphin encounters?
Merrill: You can tell some dolphin behavior by their activity. I can't and don't know how to measure stress levels. I don't think think that there have been scientific studies of stress levels. So you can determine that by their behavior and how they react. And we rely a lot on their behavior to tell us when it's appropriate to be near them and when it's not.
What tells you the dolphins want to be left alone?
Merrill: One of the unique features about the dolphins is that they do feed at night, then they do come to these near shore areas, typically 30 to 40 feet of water with a sandy bottom. So there's a transition period, this window of opportunity between about 7 to 11 a.m. where they're quite active. They're still settling down. They spin and jump and leap. And that's a clear sign that they're not under any stress in our opinion. Then typically, they'll slow down and get into a magic carpet pattern where they start synchronizing their movements and that's definitely a rest behavior.
"we rely a lot on their behavior to tell us when it's appropriate to be near them and when it's not."
-Kevin Merrill
And is that when you pull back from them?
Merrill: At that time we'll leave them alone. We actually have a coral guidelines which are voluntary standards. Because it's kind of subjective to say when they're in a rest period and when they're not, by 11 a.m. no one's aloud to be in the water with them [in Kona].
Do you have concerns about the number of people who are coming into contact with the dolphins?
Merrill: One of the reasons why we started what we call the Coral voluntary guidelines about five years ago, was because unfortunately there is no training required for any business boat company in Hawaii to interact with dolphins. If you have a commercial permit, there's no restrictions on your ability to take people out and put them in the water.
So you'd like to see a government requirement where people would like to have special training?
Merrill: We would like to see more of a community-based solution to the problem. And the guidelines provide this outline, but rather than be voluntary, where they don't have any teeth to them, we'd like to see them made mandatory.
AirTalk listeners also weighed in on the proposal to ban swimming with spinner dolphins in Hawaii. Here's what they had to say.
Matt in Glendale:
I think this ban borders on pointless, and I'm not an animal expert, but I feel like I never hear of any negative experiences from people when it comes to swimming with dolphins--no attacks. So I can only imagine that the animals aren't that stressed and the fact that people are aloud to swim with them gives them a greater appreciation for the dolphins and marine life at-large. If we take that away, who's to say that it's not going to harm, not just appreciation for marine life, but our knowledge and our desire to study them.
Andrew in Encinitas
I grew up in Southern California and I had the opportunity to swim with dolphins a number of times in the wild and from that experience. And watching a lot of tourists that weren't necessarily very educated on the correct behavior to have around ocean wildlife, the sheer volume of people who are willing to participate in these [activities] caused an inherent amount of problems we would run into with dolphins, despite their best intentions. A lot of people don't know how to react around them safely. These are not animals that are on the number one endangered species list and need this kind of exposure in order to raise money to save them. Plain and simply, if the dolphin wants any kind of interaction, they'll make that clear.
Guests:
Kevin Merrill, owner of Dolphin Discoveries in Kona, Hawaii
Naomi Rose, Ph.D. Marine Mammal Scientist at the Animal Welfare Institute, an animal protection organization based in DC