Syria's New Reality, Shooting Suspect's Ideology, Judges Block Grocery Merger

0:01People in Syria are slowly settling into a new reality. The fall of the Assad regime offers new opportunities but also creates big challenges. What's the priority for Syrians going forward? We'll hear from NPR's Ruth Sherlock in Damascus. I'm E. Martinez, that's Michelle Martin, and this is Up First from NPR News. The alleged gunman's motive in the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson is still unclear. I mean, we could speculate on a hundred different things. Police have been sifting through Luigi Mangione's online history since his arrest and learned more about his ideology. We'll get an update on what they found.

0:36And the proposed merger between two grocery giants hangs in the balance. Yesterday, two separate judges in two separate cases blocked Kroger and Albertsons from joining forces. Is the merger dead? Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day.

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2:17New customer offer for first three months only. Then full-price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. It's been four days since Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fled the country. And celebrations are settling down. People are starting to think about the huge challenges facing the war-torn country. NPR's Ruth Sherlock is in Damascus, and she's here to tell us more. Good morning, Ruth. Good morning. So what's the situation there like now? Well, you know, you might be able to hear the high-caliber rounds being fired behind me. It's the rebels' testing weaponry they've acquired.

2:50But apart from these explosions, they seem to be trying to keep a pretty light touch here, Michelle. You know, they swept down from this rural province of Idlib, and they seem to be trying to show Damascenes, people from here, that they can go about their business. And there's not even a lot of checkpoints, for example. And what is quite extraordinary is they seem to now be handling a relatively managed handover of power. They've formed this new transitional government. And this even includes some politicians from the old regime. They're pardoning soldiers who were conscripted into the military service, but they are dismantling the feared security apparatus, as the intelligence bases of the regime, and saying that they will bring war criminals to justice.

3:32A lot of the new faces in this new government are similar to those in the Islamist-led government in the rebel-held province of Idlib that they controlled for years. They are projecting moderate stances for now, saying women can dress as they please, for example. But, you know, many Syrians say it's still really too early to know how this will go. So we've mentioned earlier that the city seems to be quieting down. What are you hearing about people's main priorities right now? Well, look, a big priority here is the missing. You know, this regime ruled with fear, and rights groups estimate tens of thousands of people disappeared into prisons and detention centers of the regime's main intelligence agencies.

4:14And under Assad, their families weren't even told, you know, where they were being held, why they were being held, or even if they were alive. So we went to Sednaya prison. That's one of the most feared complexes known for torture, mass executions. And now it's just open. You can walk right in. And the prisoners were released by rebels in the first hours after the regime fell. But so many more are still missing. And now the prison is full of relatives. They're searching for clues about their loved ones that were taken in jail. And mainly, you know, maybe trying to find some kind of closure. One elderly man, Ratib Zamilkani, he was walking away from the prisoners we walked up and he had this rope tied like a noose in his hand.

4:59And he said he believed this was used to hang prisoners.

5:06He's saying, why did they have to put my son in cells underground? Where is he? Where is he? He asks. And he tells us he took the noose from the prison to show the world the cruelty of the Assad regime. There's some really disturbing pictures coming from there. So, Ruth, under the old regime, there was a lot of foreign involvement in Syria, mainly from Russia and Iran, but even the U.S. had troops there. What is the latest with all these different players? Well, Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes in Damascus and Iran to stop what it calls strategic weapons from falling into the wrong hands.

5:39The Russians still have their air base here and a naval port in Syria's Tartus. And the Americans are still here with a mission to help Kurdish allies fight the extremist group ISIS that is still operating in the central Syrian desert. So there are a lot of foreign countries involved here still. That is NPR's Ruth Sherlock and Damascus. Ruth, as always, thank you. Thanks, Michelle.

6:09Here's some of what we know about Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing the CEO of UnitedHealthcare last week on a Manhattan sidewalk. He is a member of a prominent Maryland family. Mangione graduated top of his class from an elite prep school and received two degrees from an Ivy League school. He also reportedly suffered a major back injury and underwent surgery a couple of years ago. Investigators and some extremism researchers have been sifting through this picture to see whether there's evidence of a clear ideology behind the killing. NPR's Odette Youssef covers domestic extremism, and she's here with us now to tell us more.

6:42Good morning, Odette. Good morning, Michelle. So you've looked at some of Mancione's social media, and you've spoken with others who have as well. What did you learn? Well, he appeared to keep several accounts on sites, including X, Facebook, and Goodreads. And there are a few things that raise questions. On his Goodreads account, for example, he posted an excerpt from the writings of Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. So we might wonder how that may relate to a trajectory toward political violence. Also, one of the pictures on his X account banner is an X-ray of a spine with four large screws inserted in what looks like major surgery.

7:20Now, we don't know for certain that this is his X-ray, but there are reports that he may have sustained this injury in a surfing accident in Hawaii. But all told, Michelle, his digital footprint really doesn't clarify much because it cut off in the spring. Here's Jared Holt of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. And six months is a long time for somebody to radicalize further, for them to fly off the rails, maybe have a mental health crisis. I mean, we could speculate on a hundred different things, but there's a big, big gap in what happened in those six months. Odette, you know, according to the police, he was found with a handwritten note.

8:00NPR has not obtained a copy, but other news outlets say they have and they've printed it or portions of it. From what you've seen, does it fill in some of those gaps? Well, from what's been shared by other reporting, this short note conveys a deep anger toward the health care industry and a feeling that someone had to do something about it. But other than that, no. You know, if some of this ties back to a possible injury that he had and perhaps what he ran into while trying to get care, it doesn't make any of those connections. Now that he's in custody, I imagine we're going to learn much more.

8:34But there is another part of this that's troubling. And that part is the valorization that we're seeing of the suspect within some of the mainstream public. Can you say more about that? What does that look like? So this killing seemed to tap into the feeling that seemingly most Americans have had at one time or another of frustration and helplessness with the healthcare industry. What really struck me, though, is that I have typically seen people who commit mass violence or political violence praised, even venerated as martyrs, in really kind of dark corners of the extremist world, you know, within online communities that emulate mass shooters, for instance, or in violent white supremacist spaces.

9:17So seeing a much wider and mainstream public call this suspect a, quote, hero is troubling. And for extremist analysts that I spoke to, you know, this really kind of speaks to how Americans have, over time, become more open-minded toward political violence. That's NPR's Odette Yousef. Odette, thank you. Thank you.

9:48It's the end of the grocery mega-merger of Kroger and Albertsons. Albertsons has now terminated the deal and sued Kroger after their merger was blocked by two separate judges in state and federal courts. It would have been the biggest grocery deal in U.S. history. Now it's turning into a bitter divorce. NPR's Alina Seljuk has followed it all. So what happened? Yeah, so the$25 billion grocery merger is over. Yesterday, the deal got a double whammy of legal losses. A federal judge in Oregon and a state judge in Washington in two separate cases blocked the merger from going through in rulings that were about an hour within each other.

10:29And this was after two years of the companies trying to get this merger approved. And they did have an option to appeal and keep fighting. But Albertsons has now walked away. Albertsons has sued Kroger, claiming willful breach of contract, failure to put in best efforts to secure regulatory approval of the merger. Now, Kroger has quickly rebutted, saying it is Albertsons that's deflecting its own responsibility. So they're now in a trading blame stage. Yeah, I mean, take us back for a second. I mean, it's been two years that they've been trying to get this merger together. Yeah, yeah. It was in late 2022 when Kroger first said it would buy Albertsons.

11:05It bid nearly$25 billion. And this would have combined the two biggest supermarket chains in the U.S. And you might know these chains under different names. Kroger runs Ralph's, Harris Teeter, Fred Meyer, King Soopers, and others. Albertsons owns Safeway and Vons. They have thousands of stores, and they knew this merger would be a tough sell for regulators. And indeed, the Federal Trade Commission sued them, so did several states, asking courts to block the merger. Overall, the process has been very expensive and a pretty unpopular deal. It's been criticized by Democrats and Republicans, and, you know, shoppers use it to air grievances about expensive groceries.

11:40Yeah. And you mentioned it was a tough sell. So what were the arguments in court? So government lawyers argued Kroger and Albertsons often compete head to head, that they keep tabs on each other's prices, store hours, quality of products. And so putting two rivals under one roof would leave shoppers worse off, fewer choices, higher prices. Kroger and Albertsons made the case that the merger was a matter of survival, that their biggest rivals are not conventional supermarkets like themselves, but giants like Walmart, Costco, Amazon. They said only together could they compete with these companies long term.

12:14And they even argued that together they would have had more power to lower prices for shoppers. Yeah, judges, though, didn't buy that. No, they did not. The U.S. district judge wrote essentially that she understood that competition with Walmart was real. It was tough, but it could not justify an otherwise illegal merger. And the judges also did not buy the company's plan to create essentially a new rival for themselves. They had planned to sell stores in markets where they overlap. and the judges did not approve of that. All right, so it seems like this chapter is done. What happens now with Albertsons and Kroger?

12:45Well, you know, given how much of a knockout, dragout legal fight it has been so far, I feel like we could be in for a pretty bitter litigation now between the two of them. There is money at stake, which is the merger breakup fee. And Albertsons was the company getting acquired, so there is a chance that Albertsons puts itself back on the block again. They might try to find someone else to buy it. Now, as far as shoppers are concerned, for now, they can keep going back to their familiar grocery stores. Yep. That's NPR's I need to sell you. Thank you very much. Thank you.

13:21And that's Up First for Wednesday, December 11th. I'm Michelle Martin. And I'm Amy Martinez. You can listen to this podcast sponsor-free while financially supporting public media with Up First Plus. Learn more at plus.npr.org. That's P-L-U-S dot N-P-R dot org. Today's episode of Up First was edited by James Heider, Andrew Sussman, Emily Kopp, H.J. Mai, and Mohamed El Bardisi. It was produced by Ziyad Batch, Nia Dumas, and Ben Abrams. We get engineering support from Nisha Hines, and our technical director is Carly Strange. We hope you'll join us again tomorrow.

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