Last Saturday night’s attempted attack on the White House Correspondents Association Dinner felt shocking. Gunshots popped. Politicians and media figures in formal clothes dove for cover under white-clothed tables, alongside catering staff and hotel workers.

The attacker was stopped before anyone was seriously hurt, and it was, of course, headline news.

Here are some other stories from last weekend the you may not have heard.

The afternoon before the correspondents’ dinner, 16-year-old Marquise Byfield was shot and killed inside a deli in Brooklyn. Police say there have been 15 shootings since the beginning of the year just within that precinct.

Later that night, 17-year-old Trashawn Foster was shot near a park in Homestead, Florida, just south of Miami. He was airlifted to a hospital, and died.

Early Saturday morning,16-year-old Kha’Mari Harrison was shot and killed in an apartment complex in Hope Mills, North Carolina. Her family wrote, “we grieve not only the loss of her presence but also the beautiful life that was still unfolding before us, full of promise, joy and love.”

Mid-morning Saturday, a robbery suspect who had been arrested and brought to a hospital on the north side of Chicago allegedly shot two police officers and escaped. Officer John Bartholomew, a 10-year veteran of the department, died. Police Superintendent Larry Snelling told reporters, “This is a very, very, extremely dangerous profession, but our officers go out there every single day.”

Saturday night, just after the Washington DC attack was thwarted, Abdul Saleh, who ran Sal’s Deli & Grocery with his brothers in New York’s East Village, was shot along with another man. Abdul Saleh died. He was 28 years old. Eby Castro, who lives nearby, told NY1, “They’re all amazing brothers, honestly. If you were hungry and you didn’t have money, they would not let you go hungry.”

It is discouraging to note that it was an average weekend for gun violence in our times.

President Trump has called on the White House Correspondents Association to reschedule the dinner soon, with tighter security. But gun violence strikes America every day, threatening those who lack the protections of metal detectors and Secret Service, and who just want to walk safely where they live.

QAMISHLI, Syria — The children running through the courtyard of a school in this northeastern city are a blur of motion. But they’re not students at recess — they are members of displaced families living here since public schools were turned into shelters in January.

Instead of a school bus, there is an ancient red Nissan pickup truck with black flames painted along the sides. It’s a U.S. export, evidently — according to the large sticker of the American flag depicting 14 states and the year 1791 when the Bill of Rights was enacted. On the windshield above the green faux fur glued to the dashboard, “Allah” (God) is written in flowing white Arabic script.

Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was toppled in late 2024 by Turkish-backed opposition fighters. But the repercussions are still rippling through Syria, particularly here in the Kurdish-led breakaway region where Syrian government forces retook territory amid fighting in January.

The pickup truck brought two displaced families — 15 people in all — to safety in January when Syrian forces advanced near the Kurdish city of Afrin.

“We squeezed all the children on top of us and in the back of the truck and I put all our stuff on top,” says the displaced father, a former shopkeeper. For most of the families here who came from the Tabqa displacement camp, it was at least the third time they have been uprooted.

This Kurdish region in northeastern Syria, which ran its own autonomous territory for 12 years after breaking away from the Syrian regime in 2012, is now in play again.

A U.S.-brokered ceasefire halted the fighting this year but the terms of the ceasefire — the Syrian government taking over Kurdish-held borders, security and oil fields in exchange for promises of Kurdish rights still have not been fully implemented.

The owner of the red pickup holds a 2-year-old girl wearing a fuzzy pink jacket. Her blonde hair is tied in a ponytail spout on top of her head.

“We nicknamed her Trump as a joke because she’s blond,” he says of the toddler, whose real name is Barfi.

The shopkeeper was afraid to give his because of the risk of retaliation by government security forces. Near the entrance to the school, he has set up a small table selling snacks.

“I used to like Trump but not anymore,” he says of the U.S. president. “You saw what he did to us — he sold us out.”

The White House did not respond to an NPR request for comment about Kurdish accusations that the U.S. had abandoned them.

Syrian Kurds provided the ground forces fighting alongside the U.S. military to defeat ISIS seven years ago. Kurdish leaders say at least 10,000 Kurdish fighters were killed in battle. Iraqi Kurds and Iraqi forces helped defeat the militant group in Iraq.

In January, when Turkish-backed Syrian forces moved in on Kurdish-held territory, the U.S. declared it no longer needed Kurdish help in fighting ISIS; effectively green-lighting the advance.

In a Kurdish-led region besieged for over a decade by the Syrian regime, the Russian military, Turkish forces and ISIS, the perceived betrayal is keenly felt.

Loss, hardship and unanswered questions

Families here say conditions in the other camps were harsh but the school shelter is particularly difficult. There are small kerosene–powered heaters in the classrooms but no fuel for cooking. Not only is it cold but it means there is no way to cook the donated rice and lentils or even boil water for tea.

In one of the classrooms turned into living quarters, Said Mohammad Mustafa, 63, a sanitation worker from Afrin, has collected a few sticks to burn. When he can’t find those, they set old clothing on fire with a bit of gasoline and burn them.

He and his wife, Sabah Hassan Biro, were among the last to leave the camp they were displaced from in January. They had been looking for their 15-year-old daughter, Zaynib, who had heart surgery a year ago, and were given just two hours’ notice to leave.

“Since then we completely lost contact with her,” says Mustafa. “So we don’t know if she was killed or what happened to her.”

Biro says since they haven’t seen a body, she doesn’t believe what they were told by their daughter’s friends: that the girl joined Kurdish fighters and was killed in an ambush by Syrian forces.

“What is important is that they bring us her body so we will know,” she says.

A few weeks later the parents did receive the body. The teenager was buried in mid-April in Qamishli along with four others given martyrs’ funerals.

Return for some, limbo for others

In mid-April, 800 displaced families returned to Afrin under the ceasefire deal in which Syrian government forces have taken over formerly Kurdish-held areas. The families at this school in Qamishli were not among them.

After multiple displacements, most people here have almost nothing. Mustafa and Biro had no transportation and fled the camp on foot on the night Syrian forces approached.

“We were running and under bombardment. Sometimes we had to lie on the ground,” says Mustafa.

When Biro couldn’t walk anymore she told her husband to leave her. He refused and they finally got a ride in a truck carrying sheep — sitting on a urine-covered truck bed in the rain wedged in between the animals.

Schools have not been in session since the fighting in January and in the courtyard a group of children are hanging around. Many seem traumatized by displacement they experienced almost a year and a half ago when the regime was toppled.

“They were all dead,” says Hassan Hussein, who is 10, describing a roadside scene near Afrin in December 2024.

His aunt, Gulestan Rashid, who helps run the shelter, says they saw bodies of regime soldiers being burned by the side of the highway when they were evacuated from Shahba camp near Afrin.

“When he saw those bodies he got very sick for three days — he was in hospital,” Rashid says of her nephew. “They have seen everything.”

Kemmerer, WYO – The infamous Wyoming wind is whipping an American flag hoisted above the construction site of what’s only the fourth nuclear reactor to be built in the U.S. this century, and one of the first in a new generation of advanced designs.

“We’re building an advanced nuclear plant but so many aspects of the plant and of the business are the same as the sixty-year-old coal plant that’s down the road,” says Chris Levesque, Terra Power’s CEO, as he gestures to the west where the old Naughton plant stands.

The Washington state-based Terra Power, founded by Bill Gates, says this will be the first of many, part of a new nuclear renaissance they want to bring to long time energy exporting states like Wyoming. Levesque says the company’s “advanced reactor” technology makes nuclear plants safer and quicker to build.

“There is an energy crisis, it’s concerning,” Levesque says.

The recent beginning of construction here comes amid forecasts that an artificial intelligence boom means that data centers in the U.S. are going to need about 130% more energy by 2030. That’s according to the International Energy Agency.

To help meet that demand, Big tech companies and the federal government are partnering to invest billions of dollars in new nuclear power plants.

Nuclear boosters think its NIMBYism problem is in the past

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave Terra Power final approval to begin construction in March. This capped five years of studies and safety demonstrations and a decision to site the plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming which won bids over numerous other western towns.

“There is a whole different story to begin with, is communities vying for a nuclear power plant,” Levesque says. “The old story on nuclear was more of a ‘not in my backyard thing.'”

Levesque, who came to Terra Power after a career in the legacy nuclear industry, thinks new technologies and demand for low emission power is changing this. Almost everything here will be buried underground and they’ll use liquid sodium metal instead of water to cool the reactor.

“Milestones like this really show people that, yeah, this is a new technology but we’re doing it,” he says. “It’s real and people can start to work this into their plans.”

If all goes to plan and the plant is online by 2031, Terra Power says it will make enough electricity for a utility to power almost half a million homes – likely in nearby Salt Lake City. The company has also inked agreements with META for several more reactors to power the tech company’s data centers specifically.

“Since we were selected by the Department of Energy, we’ve had a project going for five years that’s switched administrations, switched parties, switched multiple controls of Congress,” Levesque says.

Rocky Mountain states join the race to win DOE nuclear hubs

A recent press release from the company marking the beginning of full-scale construction in Kemmerer included quotes praising the project from Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon and the state’s entire congressional delegation.

The Department of Energy pilot program that spurred Terra Power’s first project began during the first Trump administration. Then, the Biden-administration’s Infrastructure Law fronted half of the costs of construction, about two billion dollars.

Wyoming’s Republican Senators voted against that bill. But the state is eagerly courting nuclear energy plants and new uranium mines. So is neighboring Idaho, home to a federal nuclear lab, and Utah, where Governor Spencer Cox recently staged a press conference in the barren scrubland west of Salt Lake City.

“If you are serious about energy abundance, you have to be serious about nuclear energy,” Cox said, as he went on to unveil Utah’s application to be one of the U.S. Department of Energy’s new nuclear hubs.

It’s billed as a “nuclear life cycle innovation campus” where they’d enrich nuclear fuel, recycle it and store its waste, including one day possibly that generated by the Kemmerer plant.

Cox noted that nuclear already supplies roughly a fifth of all the electricity on the U.S. grid.

“This should not be controversial,” the Republican says. “America built the nuclear industry.”

Some environmentalists question how green nuclear is

But nuclear still is controversial, especially in the West with its legacy of abandoned uranium mines and radioactive waste particularly in Indian Country. And Salt Lake City was downwind from Cold War Era nuclear weapons test sites.

“This area has been considered a sacrifice zone for a long time,” says Lexi Tuddenham, executive director of Healthy Environment Alliance Utah, or HEAL.

Tuddenham is alarmed that Utah wants to site its proposed nuclear hub some ten miles from the western shore of the drying Great Salt Lake. She says nuclear is being rebranded as green but that ignores the ongoing problem of where to store its radioactive waste.

“Bill Gates is paying for this first one, we as taxpayers are also paying for this first one, I will say,” Tuddenham says. “But what about the next one and the next one? How much are we going to be on the hook for as taxpayers, as rate payers, as we go down this path?”

Terra Power says like conventional nuclear reactors, its plant in Wyoming will store its spent fuel on site until a permanent repository is approved by the feds. They say it’s safe and the “advanced nuclear” tech produces less waste than legacy plants.

An old coal town is eager for a nuclear rebirth

In Wyoming, the country’s top coal producing state, one thing that’s not in dispute is that Kemmerer is eager for any sort of energy boom. When the West Coast divested from coal, national headlines all but wrote off this town of 3,000 as dying.

“That’s what we were concerned about is no longer being an exporter of power, cause that’s a majority of our jobs,” says Brian Muir, city administrator in Kemmerer.

But today he says there’s relief and optimism around town. Hundreds of skilled jobs are being created. Due to the high demand for electricity, the old coal plant isn’t completely shutting either. Some of its generators are being converted to natural gas which will preserve about 100 existing jobs.

“I’ll just say, when Bill Gates came here, he talked about our high energy IQ,” Muir says. “We know about all forms of energy and the benefits and the costs and the risks and the footprints and all of that, we understand that.”

Muir says Kemmerer is already lobbying Terra Power to build a second nuclear plant here.

A federal appeals court has restricted access to one of the most common means of abortion in the U.S. by blocking the mailing of mifepristone. A panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is requiring that the abortion pill be distributed only in-person at clinics. Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed enforcement of abortion bans, prescriptions by mail has become a major way that abortions are provided — including to states where bans are in place. The decision sets up a likely appeal to the Supreme Court.

A federal appeals court has restricted access to one of the most common means of abortion in the U.S. by blocking mailing of prescriptions of mifepristone.

A panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is requiring that the abortion pill be distributed only in person at clinics.

“Every abortion facilitated by FDA’s action cancels Louisiana’s ban on medical abortions and undermines its policy that ‘every unborn child is human being from the moment of conception and is, therefore, a legal person,'” the ruling states.

Judges have long deferred to the Food and Drug Administration’s judgments on the safety and appropriate regulation of drugs.

FDA officials under President Donald Trump have repeatedly stated the agency is conducting a new review of mifepristone’s safety, at the direction of the president.

The judges noted in their ruling that FDA “could not say when that review might be complete and admitted it was still collecting data.”

In a court filing, Louisiana’s attorney general and a woman who says she was coerced into taking abortion pills requested that the FDA rules be rolled back to when the pills were allowed to be prescribed and dispensed only in person.

A Louisiana-based federal judge last month ruled that those allowances undermined the state’s abortion ban but stopped short of undoing the regulations immediately.

Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed enforcement of abortion bans, prescriptions by mail have become a major way that abortions are provided — including to states where bans are in place.

“This is going to affect patients’ access to abortion and miscarriage care in every state in the nation,” said Julia Kaye, an ACLU lawyer. “When telemedicine is restricted, rural communities, people with low incomes, people with disabilities, survivors of intimate partner violence and communities of color suffer the most.”

Mifepristone was approved in 2000 as a safe and effective way to end early pregnancies. It is typically used in combination with a second drug, misoprostol.

Because of rare cases of excessive bleeding, the FDA initially imposed strict limits on who could prescribe and distribute the pill — only specially certified physicians and only after an in-person appointment where the person would receive the pill.

Both those requirements were dropped during the COVID-19 years. At the time, FDA officials under President Joe Biden said that after more than 20 years of monitoring mifepristone use, and reviewing dozens of studies involving thousands of women, it was clear that women could safely use the pill without direct supervision.

Friday’s ruling sets up a likely appeal to the Supreme Court.

The conservative-majority high court overturned abortion as a nationwide right in 2022 but unanimously preserved access to mifepristone two years later.

That 2024 decision sidestepped the core issues, however, by ruling that the anti-abortion doctors behind the case didn’t have legal standing to sue.

The Irish hip-hop trio Kneecap got their start rapping about drugs and their ire toward the British government. They’re still doing that. But according to member Mo Chara, their new album, Fenian, is a bid to be taken more seriously as musicians, to “not just be seen as a parody act.”

Given the album’s subject matter, it’s easy to imagine Kneecap has made progress on that front. The song “Palestine,” featuring Palestinian rapper Fawzi, is a message of Irish solidarity amid Israel’s war in Gaza. Another track, “Irish Goodbye,” honors one of the bandmates’ mothers, who died by suicide. “Carnival” details Mo Chara’s legal troubles last year, complete with real recordings of fans shouting “Free Mo Chara” outside the courthouse.

Fenian is the group’s third album, and on it, they’re reclaiming a word from their native tongue. “Fenian” originally referred to an ancient Irish warrior. Then, in the 18th and 19th centuries, the word was embraced by Irish rebels fighting for freedom from the British. More recently, it evolved into a pejorative term.

“In modern times, it was used as a derogatory slur against Irish people in the North,” says Kneecap’s Móglaí Bap, referring to the divide between Irish republicans and British loyalists in Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K. “If you’re Irish and called a Fenian, it was like you were backwards or uncivilized.”

The power and politics of language have always been at the center of Kneecap’s work. The Belfast-based group raps primarily in Irish, with English woven throughout.

“I don’t think a lot of people know that young people in Belfast speak Irish willingly, and I think that’s a big part of our music, is this identity that needs to be seen and heard,” Móglaí Bap says.

Kneecap’s political messages extend beyond Ireland. The trio is perhaps best known for their pro-Palestinian activism — and for being outspoken critics of Israel.

“The Palestinian cause is very close to the Irish people’s hearts, for obvious reasons in my opinion,” Mo Chara says. “After 800 years of colonialism, we watch what’s happening in the Middle East and we relate to it.”

The group has endured backlash for their viewpoints. Several countries, including Canada and Hungary, have banned them from entering or performing there.

There’s also been legal trouble. While recording Fenian, Mo Chara spent time in court in London over a terrorism charge for allegedly displaying a Hezbollah flag during a show. He denied the charge, saying he picked up a flag that was thrown onto the stage without knowing what it represented. The case was ultimately dismissed.

Mo Chara says his legal problems disrupted the making of the album — but also shaped it.

All Things Considered host Juana Summers sat down with Mo Chara and Móglaí Bap to discuss what drives Kneecap to keep making music.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

JUANA SUMMERS: Who are your musical influences? What did you listen to growing up that’s helped you kind of make your own sound?

MÓGLAÍ BAP: Ireland is such a small country, like we’re kind of influenced by so many different genres. One of the genres would be rebel music, which is a type of folk music that’s geared towards rebellion, which is a big thing in Ireland. Of course, there’s a band called The Rubberbandits, which were a hip-hop duo from Limerick, who were one of the first hip-hop groups to use Irish accents and Irish colloquial terms in their hip-hop. So that was definitely a big influence when I was growing up in my teens, of like, how can we depend on our own culture, on our own craic, to create music?

MO CHARA: Everybody who was rapping in Ireland at the time were using American accents or emulating American culture. So [The Rubberbandits] were the first to do it that wasn’t all braggadocious. Because I don’t know how much you know, but Irish people … we’re very, very self-deprecating. We’re the opposite of braggadocious. So like, as much as we love hip-hop and storytelling, being braggadocious is not something that comes naturally to us. Therefore, whenever we’ve seen The Rubberbandits being able to talk about… [how] horses are more superior than cars and stuff that were Irish, that was something that we gravitated towards very, very quickly.

SUMMERS: I know that at the time you were creating this album, Mo Chara, you were dealing with some legal challenges, terrorism charges. What was it like creating new music while also facing that sort of legal pressure and uncertainty?

MO CHARA: It was fantastic. No, I’m joking. There was a lot of pressure, as you can assume. It was a hindrance. A lot of bands are able to lock themselves away for a load of weeks and make an album that they’ve already [written]. But for us, we had to split [those] seven weeks in half and go to the Magistrates’ Court in London. We also had, as another hindrance as we put it at the time, a massive gig in Wembley [Stadium]. In hindsight, they weren’t hindrances at all. They were actually massive inspirations and influences for the album. We were able to go to the court and get samples from outside the court [of fans saying] “Free Mo Chara.”

SUMMERS: What do you say to the critics out there who suggest that your music “amplified political violence,” as a Canadian Parliamentary secretary said last year when you were banned from entering Canada?

MÓGLAÍ BAP: I think they’re very fast to criticize us and not so fast to criticize all these factories that create weaponry that is used in Israel. And I think [weapons manufacturers] are the biggest people who need to be criticized, not bands. But I think [government officials] want to look at bands instead of looking at the actual people who benefit from this. There’s a big profit being made in this war, and [weapons manufacturers are] the people who should be criticized.

SUMMERS: Your band has become well known among fans as well as critics for your outspoken comments about Israel’s war in Gaza, the plight of the Palestinian people. Can you talk about that? Do you have any regrets about being so vocal?

MO CHARA: What would I regret?

SUMMERS: I mean, you guys have seen consequences, for example, losing your North American visa sponsor. There’s been media scrutiny.

MO CHARA: That never happened. We didn’t lose our North American visas. There’s massive miscommunication and misinformation about that. What happened is, we did have our promoters at the time, and we kind of decided, you know, mutually to move along to another promoter. And then we decided, OK, let’s not apply for visas right now. We were never denied visas or had our visas stripped. But you have to understand, and I think what I’m about to say may be very, very hard for Americans to understand this, but we are Irish. And we grew up as Britain’s first colony. We had 800 years of colonialism. At the end of the day, we understand colonialism. We have been subject to forced starvation, which was called a famine, the same thing that we witnessed a few years ago in Gaza and still witness. That is something that, as an Irish person, it sparks something in your DNA. It’s not in your nature and you’re not willing to stay silent and watch this happen to another people. So you have to understand, we’re not doing this for no reason. We watch what’s happening in the Middle East and we relate to it. Maybe it’s not on the exact same level because of how technology has advanced. We were never bombed from the skies. But I would push Americans to at least strive to understand where we’re coming from there.

Editor’s note: Israel has denied accusations that its policies have led to starvation in Gaza and says restrictions on food aid were designed to prevent it from falling into the hands of Hamas militants.

SUMMERS: Politics are so present throughout this album. I want to ask you about the song “Palestine.” It features a Palestinian rapper and lyrics that say, in part, “We won’t stop until everyone is free.” Tell us about that song.

MÓGLAÍ BAP: Palestine has been something that we’ve been involved with, like, before Kneecap, and growing up as a teenager, we used to go to protests and stuff. In 2018, we helped my brother who started a gym at the Lajee Center, at the Aida Refugee Camp in Palestine, in the West Bank. We helped, with other bands, to raise money for that gym. So then he met his fiancée there. She’s from Ramallah and she was friends with [the rapper] Fawzi. He had a song called “Castro” that we liked a lot. Obviously we talk about Palestine and other international solidarity, but it was very important for us to have a Palestinian on the album because they know better than anyone else. And to give them an opportunity to use our platform. So it was very important for us to make that connection. We haven’t met Fawzi yet, but online, on the internet, we had conversations with him and we were able to make that connection. Again, it’s to show the parallels between Irish history and Palestinian history. To hear them both side by side, I think, is a very powerful thing.

SUMMERS: What do you think people misunderstand about Kneecap?

MO CHARA: We get that question a lot. And for me personally, I don’t like to think about that too much. I think people like to be outraged. I think people get more of a kick out of being outraged than the kick they get out of relating to somebody. Regardless of what I say on this interview or any interview, the same people will be upset and outraged. And you know what? People have a right to disagree. People have a right to protest. And that’s understandable. For me, I just hope people understand … [we were] friends long before this band. We believe in what’s right and we do what we can. And now that we’re lucky enough to have a platform, we use that platform for what we believe is good and just and right [and] unfortunately, we believe that certain mainstream media, for example, would like to portray us in a certain other way. That’s not who we are as people. I think if you scratch at the surface, you’ll get to know who we are from interviews in general. But yeah, I like to not dwell on other people’s opinions too much because I don’t think it’s beneficial to anyone.

SUMMERS: Do either of you have a favorite song on this album?

MÓGLAÍ BAP: Oh. Hmm. That’s a tough one. I have a few.

MO CHARA: “Irish Goodbye” is the best. But I can’t give you the description why.

MÓGLAÍ BAP: That’s because I’m on it.

SUMMERS: Tell us about “Irish Goodbye.”

MÓGLAÍ BAP: So we were in the studio with [producer] Dan [Carey] and somebody sent me a documentary, which featured us as children with my parents. And it was the first time I seen my Ma in, like, a video with us as children. So that kind of inspired the idea of “Irish Goodbye.” She’s been dead a few years now, but I think it’s only after a few years that you get to process death and look back at fun times or just normal times. And the song is kind of a reflection on [how] it’s not all the crazy moments you miss in life with people — it’s the mundane, boring stuff you miss, like sitting after dinner, talking after dinner, walking to the shop or walking around the park. So it’s kind of reflecting [on] how much you miss the mundane stuff in life when you share it with somebody that you love.

SUMMERS: I know that last year you all had to cancel a planned North American tour with a lot of sold-out dates that a lot of people were excited to see. You have such a big fan base here in the United States. Do you see yourself being able to come back and tour in the United States anytime soon?

MO CHARA: Of course we’ll be back. Look, I mean, it’s worth remembering: No member of Kneecap has ever been convicted of any crime ever. We are not what the media portrays. So there’s no reason why a government should be stepping in and saying what the American listenership should consume. I just don’t think it’s a good place for governments to start stepping in and telling people, which is apparently the land of free speech, of what they should be able to listen to.

Good morning. You’re reading the Up First newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox, and listen to the Up First podcast for all the news you need to start your day.

Today’s top stories

The Trump administration faces a deadline today to seek Congressional approval for its military action in Iran. It does not appear to be seeking that approval. According to the War Powers Resolution of 1973, Congress must declare war or authorize the use of force within 60 days. If the president requests an extension, Congress has 90 days to act. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asserted that the current ceasefire doesn’t count toward the 60 days. The administration plans to continue confronting Iran through the dueling blockades of the Strait of Hormuz.

• 🎧 Iranians have proposed reopening the Strait and negotiating nuclear restrictions later. President Trump convened his national security team to review the proposal, but he remains adamant that a nuclear deal must be included, NPR’s Franco Ordoñez tells Up First. Alexander Gray, the former Chief of Staff at the National Security Council during the first Trump administration, says the blockade gives the U.S. “maximum leverage.” Gray says the blockade is all about which side blinks or gives in first. “I think the Iranians are going to blink because they’re losing 400 plus million dollars a day to the U.S. Navy’s blockade,” Gray says. The problem is the Trump administration has been arguing that if they just put enough military and economic pressure on Iran, Tehran would capitulate, but that hasn’t happened, Ordoñez says.

The House of Representatives voted yesterday to reopen the majority of the Department of Homeland Security, ending the longest agency shutdown in U.S. history. The House passed a bill funding DHS, excluding dollars for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. The measure was approved through a voice vote on the 76th day of the shutdown. After federal agents killed two U.S. citizens in January, Democrats pulled their support for a massive bipartisan spending bill that included DHS in order to push for reforms in the way agents do their jobs.

• 🎧 The Senate passed a plan five weeks ago to fund DHS except for some immigration enforcement divisions. House Speaker Mike Johnson initially called that bill a joke, but later reached a deal with the more conservative members of his conference, who were holding out for full funding of DHS, NPR’s Claudia Grisales says. Republicans have been crafting a partisan legislative vehicle known as a reconciliation bill that includes funding for immigration enforcement for the remainder of Trump’s term. Initially, Johnson sided with the conservatives, but later changed his stance as reconciliation dragged on. He said now that reconciliation is moving, Republicans could also approve additional funding.

Trump has nominated Dr. Nicole Saphier to be the new surgeon general, the official responsible for public health advisories in the U.S. Saphier works at one of the nation’s top cancer centers as a radiologist specializing in breast cancer. She is expected to be a more acceptable pick to Republican lawmakers, who stalled the confirmation process for the president’s last nominee.

• 🎧 The surgeon general is tasked with promoting science-based measures that keep people healthy, according to NPR’s Pien Huang. In February, Saphier discussed the job on her podcast, saying the main role is public health messaging. Huang describes Saphier as the originator of the Make America Healthy Again movement, before Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took it on. The slogan was actually the title of a book Saphier published in 2020. Trump’s previous pick, Casey Means, faced pushback from some Republicans over her views on vaccines. She’s not against all vaccines and doesn’t think they cause autism. But she’s also said she supports medical freedom and individuals’ right to choose whether and when they want to get vaccines.

May Day demonstrations are expected to draw crowds across the U.S. today. Organizers are calling for a boycott of work, school and shopping to protest the Trump administration’s policies and what activists label as a billionaire takeover of the government. The “May Day Strong” events aim to commemorate International Labor Day. These protests follow the nationwide anti-Trump movements under the “No Kings” banner, which organizers say have mobilized millions of people. Unlike Labor Day celebrations in the U.S. in September, May 1 is traditionally a day of protest.

Today’s listen

Dean Roy is running for governor in Vermont at only 14 years old. His candidacy marks the first time someone under 18 has made it onto the state’s general election ballot for governor. While most states require people to be at least 30 years old to run for governor, there’s no age requirement to hold office in Vermont. With that in mind, Roy took it upon himself to start a movement to get more young people involved in politics. To support his cause, Roy started a new political party called “Freedom and Unity.” Although he doesn’t expect to win, he hopes his campaign will be the start of a life in politics. Listen to the teen explain why he decided to run for governor and what he wants to see in the future of politics.

Weekend Picks

Check out what NPR is watching, reading and listening to this weekend:

🍿 Movies: The Devil Wears Prada 2 reunites Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci 20 years after the beloved original. Ahead of the sequel, fashion critic Robin Givhan explains what the original film got right about the fashion industry in an interview with Morning Edition‘s Michel Martin.

📺 TV: The new Netflix crime comedy Big Mistakes tells the story of an offbeat family that entangles itself with the mob. The show starts frolicsome and then morphs into a farce that grows more than a little hellish, NPR critic John Powers writes.

📚 Books: Cartoonist Gemma Correll’s latest graphic memoir, Anxietyland, walks readers through her brain’s not-so-amusing amusement park. Grimes uses theme park rides like the Emotional Roller Coaster and the Worry-Go-Round to explain her relationship with anxiety.

🎵 Music: Olivia Rodrigo’s “drop dead” has debuted at No.1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, marking her fourth time reaching this feat. Her album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love is set to arrive in June.

🎮 Gaming: The representation of South Asians in gaming is on the rise, partly thanks to stars and developers from the diaspora. PlayStation’s recent release of the roguelike short Saros, featuring British actor Rahul Kohli, is set to be a hit.

❓ Quiz: This week has seen the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool get a makeover, the president’s face set to make an appearance on a commemorative item and a record-breaking run. Think you have been paying attention? Put your memory to the test.

3 things to know before you go

1. Three octogenarian Austrian nuns who fled their care home and broke back into their old convent last year went to Rome this week for a general audience with Pope Leo XIV.
2. J. Craig Venter, a scientist who played a critical role in sequencing the human genome, has died, his namesake research institute announced. He was 79.
3. At 19, Rebecca Stuhlmiller felt her life was falling apart. She moved from Montana to Arizona on a whim, but she still felt stuck. One day, while she was sobbing behind the wheel at a stoplight, a man in the car next to her honked and gave her a thumbs-up. That small gesture from an unsung hero lifted her spirits and has stayed with her as she tries to pass that kindness on to others.

This newsletter was edited by Suzanne Nuyen.

WASHINGTON — Many Republicans who have been uneasy with President Donald Trump’s war in Iran emphasized that there would be a May 1 deadline for Congress to intervene. But the date is now set to pass with no action from GOP lawmakers who continue to defer to the White House.

Under the War Powers Resolution of 1973, Congress must declare war or authorize the use of force within 60 days — a deadline that falls on Friday — or within 90 days if the president asks for an extension. But Congress made no attempt at enforcing that requirement, leaving town for a week on Thursday after the Senate rejected a Democratic attempt to halt the war for a sixth time.

The Trump administration has shown no interest in seeking congressional approval at all. It is arguing that the deadlines set by the law don’t apply because the war in Iran effectively ended when a ceasefire began in early April.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Thursday he doesn’t plan on a vote to authorize force in Iran or otherwise weigh in.

“I’m listening carefully to what the members of our conference are saying, and at this point I don’t see that,” Thune said.

The reluctance to defy Trump on the war comes at a politically perilous time for Republicans, with public frustration mounting both over the conflict and its impact on gas prices. Still, most GOP lawmakers say they are supportive of Trump’s wartime leadership, or are at least willing to give him more time amid the fragile ceasefire.

Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota says he’d vote for an authorization of war if Trump asked for it. But he questioned if the War Powers Resolution, passed during the Vietnam War era as a way for Congress to claw back its power, is even constitutional.

“Our founders created a really strong executive, like it or not like it,” Cramer said.

Still, some GOP senators made clear that they eventually want Congress to have a say. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski said in a floor speech Thursday that she will introduce a limited authorized use of military force when the Senate returns from the one-week recess if the administration has not yet presented what she called a “credible plan.”

“I do not believe we should engage in open-ended military action without clear accountability,” Murkowski said. “Congress has a role.”

Some Republicans signal they want a vote

A handful of GOP senators have said for weeks that Congress should assert its authority over the war at some point. One of those senators, Maine’s Susan Collins, voted for the first time with Democrats on Thursday to halt the war. She said in a statement she wants to see a defined strategy for bringing the conflict to a close.

“The president’s authority as commander-in-chief is not without limits,” Collins said, adding that the 60-day deadline is “not a suggestion, it is a requirement.”

In addition to Collins and Murkowski, Republican Sens. John Curtis of Utah, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Josh Hawley of Missouri, among others, have said in recent weeks that they would eventually like to see a vote.

Curtis said he would not support continued funding for the war until Congress votes to authorize it.

“It is time for decision-making from both the administration and from Congress — and that can happen in league with one another, not in conflict,” Curtis said.

Thune suggested the White House step up its outreach to lawmakers with briefings and hearings if it wants continued support from Capitol Hill.

“Obviously, getting readouts from our military leadership on a somewhat regular basis I think will be helpful in terms of shaping the views of our members about how comfortable they are with everything that’s happening there, and the direction headed forward,” Thune said.

Trump administration argues deadline doesn’t apply

The War Powers Resolution of 1973 states that a president has 60 calendar days after notifying Congress that the U.S. is engaged in military hostilities to either end the military campaign or gain approval from Congress. The White House can use a 30-day extension to safely withdraw forces, but Congress must be notified.

The 60-day window will expire Friday, but Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said during a hearing Thursday, “We are in a ceasefire right now, which our understanding means, the 60-day clock pauses or stops.”

Meanwhile, a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s position, said for purposes of the war powers law, “the hostilities that began on Saturday, Feb. 28 have terminated.” The official said the U.S. military and Iran have not exchanged fire since the two-week ceasefire that began April 7.

The administration is making that argument even though Iran maintains its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz and the U.S. Navy is maintaining a blockade to prevent Iran’s oil tankers from getting out to sea.

Democrats scoffed at the suggestion that May 1 is not the real deadline. “I do not believe the statute would support that,” Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine told Hegseth in the hearing.

Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., argued that the military is still operating warships and other military assets even though it has stopped bombing Iran during the ceasefire.

“Ceasing to use some forces while using others does not somehow stop the clock,” Schiff said.

Yet, the development came as little surprise to at least one House Democrat who oversees the military.

Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told The Associated Press: “Is the expectation that the Trump administration is going to follow the law? I do not have that expectation.”

FORT COLLINS, Colo. — President Trump granted a key approval Thursday for a major new oil pipeline that would carry oil from Canada into the U.S. where it would be exported and refined.

The 3-foot-wide Bridger Pipeline Expansion would carry up to 550,000 barrels (87,400 cubic meters) of oil a day from the Canadian border with Montana down through eastern Montana and Wyoming, where it would link with another pipeline.

The project would require additional state and federal environmental approvals before construction, which company officials expect to start next year. Environmentalists hope to stop the project over worries that the pipeline could break and spill.

At peak volume, the 650-mile pipeline would move two-thirds as much oil as the better-known Keystone XL pipeline that got partially built before President Joe Biden, citing climate-change concerns, canceled its permit on the day he took office in 2021.

“Slightly different from the last administration. They wouldn’t sign a pipeline deal. And we have pipelines going up,” Trump said after signing the Bridger Pipeline Expansion cross-border approval.

Trump in his first term approved the Keystone XL project in 2020 over the concern of Native American tribes about possible spills and environmental groups about fossil fuels’ contribution to climate change.

Biden’s Keystone XL permit cancellation the following year frustrated Canadian officials, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, after Alberta invested more than $1 billion in the project.

Sometimes called “Keystone Light,” the Bridger Pipeline Expansion would not cross any Native American reservations. More than 70% would be built within existing pipeline corridors and 80% on private land, Bridger Pipeline LLC said in a statement.

The Casper, Wyoming-based company operates more than 3,700 miles (5,950 kilometers) of gathering and transmission oil pipelines in the Williston Basin of North Dakota and Montana and the Powder River Basin of Wyoming.

A subsidiary of True Companies, Bridger Pipeline could avoid a reversal by a future administration if it’s able to complete its project before Trump leaves office. It hopes to start construction in the fall of 2027 and finish it by late 2028 or early 2029, Bridger spokesperson Bill Salvin said.

Trump’s term ends Jan. 20, 2029.

True Company subsidiaries have been responsible for several major pipeline accidents including more than 50,000 gallons (240,000 liters) of crude that spilled into the Yellowstone River and fouled a Montana city’s drinking water supply in 2015, a 45,000-gallon diesel spill in Wyoming in 2022 and a 2016 spill that released more than 600,000 gallons (2.7 million liters) of crude in North Dakota, contaminating the Little Missouri River and a tributary.

Subsidiaries of True agreed to pay a $12.5 million civil penalty to settle a government lawsuit over the North Dakota and Montana spills.

Salvin said the company has developed an AI-driven leak detection system that allows it to be notified more quickly when there are problems. It also plans to bore 30 to 40 feet (9 to 12 meters) beneath major rivers including the Yellowstone and Missouri to reduce the chances of an accident. The 2015 accident occurred on a line that was constructed in a shallow trench at the bottom of the river.

“We designed the pipeline with integrity and safety in mind. We have emergency response plans should something happen where oil happens to get out of the line, which is fairly rare,” Salvin said.

Environmental groups opposed to the project include the Montana Environmental Information Center and WildEarth Guardians.

“The biggest concern we see right now is the concern inherent in all pipeline projects which is the risk of spills,” said attorney Jenny Harbine with the environmental law firm Earthjustice. “Pipelines rupture and leak. It’s just a fact of pipelines.”

The Black Eyed Peas spoke to a generation in the 2000s with tracks like “I Gotta Feeling,” “Let’s Get it Started” and “Where is the Love?”

Lately, however, co-founder will.i.am has been speaking to a new generation – quite literally – with his three-hour-long, weekly classes for Arizona State University on the theme of “agentic AI.”

Either beamed in on screens from Arizona State’s main campus, or right there with him at the lecture theater he built as part of his business complex in Los Angeles, the roughly 80 students enrolled in will.i.am’s class are each trying to build their own AI agent – a software system that can perform tasks autonomously, without requiring a human prompt.

The art of future-proofing

As someone who has long projected a tech-forward image – it was will.i.am who came up with the much quoted lyric, “I’m so 3008. You’re so 2000 and late” from the Peas’ 2009 song “Boom Boom Pow” – the pop star turned philanthropist, entrepreneur and educator is now working to equip young people for an employment marketplace that’s being reshaped by technology.

“You are a company, Dave. You’re not just like a creative dude,” will.i.am said during a recent class, sounding more like a motivational coach than a college professor as he addressed individuals in the tiered seating around him. “You’re a company – Claudia – Karen.”

Students told NPR they get a lot out of will.i.am’s approach.

“Not everybody that’s coming inside this class has a tech background,” said undergraduate Ren Flint. “He’s been able to break AI down and make it accessible to everyone.”

“Some people might think what he’s talking about might be weird,” said graduate student Luke Azariah. “But this guy is future-proofing a lot of us.”

Realizing wild ideas with tech

In an interview with NPR a few hours before class, will.i.am said humans cannot hope to compete with AI unless they are hyper-creative.

“It’s the greatest time to dream and materialize concepts that haven’t been materialized,” he said.

Realizing wild ideas with tech is basically what will.i.am has been up to for most of his life. Born William Adams in 1975 in a working-class Los Angeles neighborhood, will.i.am said he was 12 years old and experimenting with stage names – his first moniker was “Will Chill” – when he took his sister’s Barbie and the Rockers cassette tape, recorded his own rap loops over it, and then played the mix back through his sister’s cassette-tape-powered, animatronic Teddy Ruxpin toy bear.

“My sister was pissed,” will.i.am recalled.

The musician and entrepreneur said there’s a direct link between this early experiment and “MÖFO” – or “Modular Omni Function Operator” – the AI agent-powered Teddy bear he developed in partnership with Qualcomm and showed off at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The agent is not a toy, will.i.am said, but is intended to improve productivity and learning. But he said the cute exterior helps to humanize AI.

Foreseeing the “boom boom pow”

It’s too early to tell if “MÖFO” will take off. But the man seems to have a knack for predicting the technological innovations most likely to go “boom boom pow.”

Take AI music.

It’s become big news over the past couple of years. But will.i.am was playing around with it well over a decade ago, as seen in the music video for the 2010 Black Eyed Peas song “Imma Be Rocking That Body.”

“I just type in the lyrics. And then this thing sings it, says it, raps it, talks it,” he says to his bandmates in the video.

Singer Fergie is visibly upset.

“We’re not robots!” she exclaims, before storming out of the room. Then the music starts, accompanied in part by images of friendly, dancing robots.

Competing interests?

Today, the cultural backlash against AI and AI music is widespread. So will.i.am devotes a lot of time in his Arizona State class to discussing ethics and accountability. A video played during class warns of the risks: “You’ve seen how corporate agents are used. You’ve seen what happens with no guardrails.”

Yet will.i.am has also embraced corporate tech. He’s an investor in AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI, as well as the AI music creation platform Udio, and has partnered with Apple, Intel and Nvidia, among other Silicon Valley giants.

“He was a great brand ambassador,” said Deborah Conrad, a former chief marketing officer at Intel who hired will.i.am as the company’s Director of Creative Innovation in 2011.

Tech journalist Brian Merchant said it’s hard to reconcile these seemingly competing interests.

“That line between passion for technology, passion for the idea that it could make people’s lives better, and just expanding his market portfolio and his salience as a pop cultural icon, gets pretty blurry in there,” Merchant said. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s not genuine in his goal to try to figure out a way to get AI to work.”

will.i.am is not the only high-profile musician to have ventured into the world of tech. He co-founded Beats Electronics with Dr. Dre (and record industry executive Jimmy Iovine), which was sold to Apple in 2014 as part of a deal that also included Beats Music for $3 billion. Nas, Snoop Dogg, Brian Eno and Justin Bieber have also invested heavily in tech.

Nate Sloan, an assistant professor of musicology at the University of Southern California and co-host of the podcast Switched on Pop, said will.i.am stands out from the pack. “willi.am has made it more a part of his identity and more of an integral part of his career than anyone else I can think of,” he said.

Alongside all this, will.i.am’s music career is still going. The Black Eyed Peas are heading out on an overseas tour in June. Beyond his work with the Peas, will.i.am also released the anti-ICE anthem “East LA” last year, though it’s been a few years since he released a hit single or album as a solo artist or with the group.

He seems more focused these days on his entrepreneurial and educational pursuits. Among other projects, he’s developing a car with an AI agent. And he said he’s hoping to teach a second semester at Arizona State.

“The joys of making music and singing on stage, we’ll always do that,” will.i.am said. “But teaching is this different calling. This is just the first year, and it’s dope.”

J. Craig Venter, a scientist who played a critical role in the sequencing of the human genome, has died at the age of 79, according to his namesake research institute.

Venter’s company, Celera Genomics, famously began a scientific race, trying to completely sequence the human genetic code before the government-funded Human Genome Project achieved the same feat. He pioneered new, cheaper, faster approaches such as the “whole genome shotgun method” that critics initially said wouldn’t work.

In a 2003 interview with NPR, when Venter was asked about how he felt about being often called a scientific “maverick,” he said that it “depends on how it’s meant by most people, but in the context of stodgy science, I consider it a tremendous badge of honor.”

Maverick or no, Venter’s successes and provocations made him a scientific superstar. In 2000, when scientists gathered at the White House with President Bill Clinton to mark what was basically the completion of efforts to sequence all human genes, Venter was standing next to the president and celebrated for his rival sequencing effort.

Indeed, Venter left an indelible mark on his chosen field, according to Drew Endy, a synthetic biologist at Stanford University.

“Craig was not only an extraordinarily innovative scientist,” Endy said. “He also willed important ideas forward into reality and practice. The more I understand how difficult it is to cause actually new things to happen the more I am in awe of what Craig was able to accomplish.”

Venter attributed his interest in biology to his work as a young man serving in the U.S. Naval Medical Corps in Vietnam, where he said that he learned how tenuous life could be.

He later became the first person to sequence and publish his own individual genome. And his research team advanced the field of synthetic biology by creating a bacterial cell controlled by lab-synthesized DNA.

The statement from the J. Craig Venter Institute that announced his death said that Venter had been hospitalized following unexpected side effects that arose during treatment for a recently diagnosed cancer.

At the White House event in 2000, he said that some had argued that sequencing the human genome would diminish humanity by taking the mystery out of life.

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Venter said. “The complexities and wonder of how the inanimate chemicals that are our genetic code give rise to the imponderables of the human spirit should keep poets and philosophers inspired for the millennium.”