Immigration Crackdown, Health Officials Muted, Oscar Nominations

0:02On day four of his presidency, Congress is giving Trump his first legislative win. A bill was sent to the president's desk that will make it easier to detain and deport people without legal status. I'm Leila Falded. That's Michelle Martin. And this is Up First from NPR News.

0:19Scientists around the country started getting emails yesterday. The National Institutes of Health was canceling meetings where scientists try to figure out what research needs federal funding. It was pretty vague. It said that it's canceled, that they can't offer any further explanation at the time. How will this impact health research? And after two delays because of wildfires in the L.A. area, today Oscar nominations are finally announced. Who will make the list? Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day.

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2:14GoodRx is not insurance, but if you have insurance or Medicare, GoodRx may beat your copay. Save time and money on prescriptions at GoodRx.com slash upfirst. President Trump's promise to crack down on illegal immigration is moving forward on two more fronts this morning. Yeah, NPR has learned the Pentagon will be sending roughly 1 ,500 active duty troops to the U.S. border with Mexico. And on Capitol Hill, Congress passed the Lakin-Riley Act, a bill that makes it easier to detain and deport anyone in the U.S. without legal status if they've been charged with a crime. NPR immigration policy reporter Ximena Bustillo has been following all this, and she's with us now in our studios in Washington, D.C.

2:56to tell us more about it. Good morning, Ximena. Good morning. So let's start with the Lakin-Riley Act. This will be the first immigration bill that President Trump will sign. When exactly will it do? The bill makes it easier for federal immigration authorities to detain and deport anyone without legal status for crimes like shoplifting, assaulting a police officer, or causing bodily harm to another person. The bill is named after a Georgia woman who was killed last year by a Venezuelan man who was in the U.S. without legal status. Supporters argue that this will increase public safety. The man who was sentenced to life in prison for killing Riley had previously been charged with shoplifting.

3:30Proponents say that if he had been detained by immigration officials sooner, Riley might still be alive. But others oppose the bill and say that it bypasses due process, since a person won't have to be convicted of a crime to be detained or deported. Immigrant rights groups also argue that research shows immigrants commit fewer crimes than those born in the U.S. These same advocates say the bill also pushes a false narrative about a connection between crime and immigration status. You know, most Democrats opposed the bill, but some did support it. I mean, enough that it can credibly say it passed with bipartisan support.

4:03What does that say about the politics of immigration right now? Right. This time around, 46 Democrats in the House joined Republicans in supporting it. When the bill passed the Senate, 12 Democrats voted for the bill. That is one sign of how some Democrats are shifting on immigration, especially after Trump made immigration a central plank of his campaign. So in terms of enforcement, immigration and customs enforcement, or ICE, will have to do a lot of heavy lifting here. How well will they be able to implement this? Do they have the resources to do all this? It's going to be very difficult. ICE is one of the federal agencies responsible for deportations.

4:36In a memo obtained by NPR, the agency warned that implementation of the bill was impossible to execute within existing resources. They said that it would cost$26 billion to implement in the first year. This money is needed for more than 100 ,000 new beds and hiring more than 10 ,000 enforcement and removal personnel, which all, of course, takes time to scale up. The agency also warns that it expects some state and local law enforcement agencies to refuse to cooperate. And have Republicans answered this? What have they said about this concern? Republican senators told me last night that they're looking to give ICE the resources it needs through the budget process.

5:12Okay, let's turn back to those troops that are headed to the southern border. What do we know about what they're going to be doing there? What's their assignment? The acting secretary of defense said on Wednesday that roughly 1 ,500 ground personnel, as well as helicopters and intelligence analysts will be going to the southern border to increase detection and monitoring efforts. They will also help with building physical barriers along the border and provide military airlifts to support the Department of Homeland Security with deportation flights. This comes after the White House effectively closed off asylum at the southern border, ordering agents to immediately deport anyone who crosses between ports of entry.

5:48That is NPR's Germana Bustillo. Germana, thank you. Thank you.

5:58Turning now to science, researchers around the country are concerned after the National Institutes of Health canceled key meetings. The move comes after federal health officials were told to halt all public communications until they could be reviewed by a Trump appointee. And Paracelina Simmons-Duffin is here to tell us more. Good morning, Selena. Morning, Michelle. So what do we know about what's behind these cancellations? Well, what happened is that scientists around the country started getting emails yesterday about travel and meetings that had been set up being suddenly canceled with very little explanation.

6:30Remember, NIH is the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world. It invests more than$40 billion in research every year, and it gathers together scientists outside the agency into what are called study sections to help them figure out how to spend that money, what research is the most important to fund. Dr. Crystal Starbird is a cancer researcher and a professor at UNC Chapel Hill. And yesterday, she got an email about her study section that was scheduled for next week. It was pretty vague. It said that it's canceled, that they can't offer any further explanation at the time, and it thanked us for our service to the NIH.

7:07Okay, this may be basic, too basic, Selena, but could they be rescheduled a little later on? Well, Dr. Starbird told me that these are not the kinds of meetings that can easily be rescheduled. There are a lot of moving parts, different institutions, different timetables, and a delay, especially an indefinite delay like this one, could really have a negative impact on important cancer research. The full scope of these cancellations isn't clear at this point, but a lot of scientists are concerned that biomedical research of all kinds could be disrupted. Also this week, the Department of Health and Human Services put a freeze on external communication.

7:40Could that be the reason that these meetings were canceled or suspended or postponed? We don't know yet if it's related, but yes, the acting HHS secretary on Tuesday sent a memo instructing the leaders of NIH and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, all the other health agencies to refrain from most external communication until they can be approved by, quote, a presidential appointee. NPR obtained that memo and several internal emails that indicate travel is suspended for HHS staffers as well, in addition to the government-wide hiring freeze. So workers I've heard from at HHS are quite concerned about all of this.

8:19Several said they weren't sure if information in papers that were set to be submitted and published this week will be delayed. So we're waiting to see if infectious disease dashboards will be updated on schedule. And, you know, Michelle, looming over all of this is the fact that in Trump's first term, there were instances of political appointees attempting to alter CDC reports on COVID-19. So some worry that these developments are a sign that political appointees intend to exert a new kind of control on the federal health and research agencies. And all this is coming while the leadership at HHS is still in limbo.

8:51What do we know about what's next for Trump's nominee, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? Well, his confirmation hearing was just scheduled for next Wednesday. There has been a big lobbying effort to block his confirmation. It's not clear if he does have the support in the Senate to be confirmed, particularly because of his positions in favor of abortion access. and against vaccine requirements. And adding to that uncertainty is an ethics document posted online yesterday that appears to show Kennedy can still financially benefit from lawsuits against Merck's vaccine that prevents cervical cancer. So definitely it's going to be an interesting hearing next week, and I'll be here to cover it.

9:27That is. And here's Selena Simmons-Duffin. Selena, thank you. You're welcome.

9:39After a series of delays due to the wildfires in Los Angeles, nominations for the 97th Oscars were announced this morning. Emilia Perez received 13 nominations, followed by Wicked and The Brutalist, with 10 each. Here to tell us all about it is NPR pop culture correspondent Linda Holmes. Linda, good morning. Welcome back. Thank you so much. So let's start with Emilia Perez, one of the clear favorites heading into today. Yes, absolutely. It picked up 13 nominations. It is the most ever for a film that is not in English. Carla Sofia Gascon becomes the first out trans actor to be nominated. This is also obviously a big deal for Netflix, which has wanted for many years to get a Best Picture win, has never gotten won.

10:24I'm sure they're feeling quite good about that. Amelia Perez was nominated not just in those kind of top line categories, but also for things like score and cinematography. It was just broadly embraced by the people doing the nominating. It was kind of a divisive movie that a lot of people didn't like, but Academy voters absolutely went for it. It's part of an increasing embrace of non-English language movies at the Oscars. You can count films like Roma and Parasite. last year, both Anatomy of a Fall and Zone of Interest. So this is in some ways an extension of that. And we should note, by the way, that The Brutalist and Wicked all got 10 nominations each, which in any other year would be newsmaking totals also.

11:07It's just a year where a small number of movies took up a lot of the oxygen. Anything you were surprised about? The only real surprise in the Best Picture category is probably I'm Still Here, which is a Brazilian drama about a woman coping with the death of her husband who was a political dissident. Voters chose that film over things that were maybe a little bit more favored, like A Real Pain, which is kind of a road movie about two cousins with Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin. I was really surprised that the excellent score of the tennis movie Challengers wasn't nominated. That was my favorite score of the year.

11:43Same goes for the cinematography of the drama Nickel Boys, which is wonderfully evocative and creative and wasn't nominated. And Marianne Jean-Baptiste wasn't nominated for the Mike Lee film Hard Truths. I think that was a heartbreaker for a lot of folks. Probably my happiest, maybe, surprise was the original screenplay nomination for Sing Sing, which is a wonderful film about the theater program at Sing Sing Prison. Some of the real incarcerated people who were part of that theater program appear in the film and helped work on the screenplay. And it was wonderful to see some of those names in the nominations list.

12:23Right, right. Coleman Domingo for Best Actor for Sing Sing. 100%. That movie is great. I hope everybody will seek it out. It's wonderful. It's always, I don't know, surprising is the right word, but 10 pictures nominated for Best Picture, but only 5 nominees for Best Director. And so you're always wondering, okay, so you got Best Picture nominee, but not the director. Like for Nickel Boys, for example, he wasn't nominated even though. Absolutely. And as I said about the cinematography, that's just a wonderfully creative film. They did some amazing things with the visuals of the filmmaking. Another one I hope people will seek out.

12:54But yeah, you're absolutely right. Ten best pictures, only five directors. Okay, so when do we find out who won? So the ceremony is on March 2nd. And while there have been a few rumbles about whether they should go ahead with it, given obviously the fires that have been causing so much devastation in the L.A. area, it looks like that will go ahead right now. So there's a little more than a month for a fresh round of speculating about which of these nominations will actually emerge as winners. That is Linda Holmes. She hosts NPR's podcast, Pop Culture. Happy Hour. Thanks, Linda. Thank you, Michelle.

13:29And that's Up First for Thursday, January 23rd. I'm Michelle Martin. And I'm Leila Faldin. For your next listen, consider, consider this. The team behind NPR's All Things Considered goes deep into a single news story in just 15 minutes. Listen now on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Jason Breslow, Diane Weber, Claire Lombardo, Olivia Hampton, and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Ziad Butch, Chris Thomas, Milton Guevara, and Claire Murashima. We get engineering support from Zach Coleman and our technical director is Carly Strange. We hope you'll join us again tomorrow.

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