US-Iran Strikes Test Talks, Venezuela Quake Search & Rescue, Trump's Immigration Wins

0:02The U.S. and Iran spent the weekend trading fire.

0:05Rachel Martin:Iranians attacked two cargo ships. The U.S. then struck targets in Iran, and Iran followed that by firing missiles. Where does that leave a ceasefire? I'm Leila Faldil with Steve Inskeep, and this is Up First from NPR News.

0:20Coming up, we have an eyewitness account of devastation in Venezuela. An earthquake in Caracas knocked down buildings like dominoes. Our colleague Ada Peralta is there.

0:31Rachel Martin:Also, the Trump administration tells hundreds of thousands of people with temporary protected status to apply for a new status or leave. We'll actually give you a plane ticket plus roughly$2 ,100 to help you reestablish when you get there. The administration won its case in court. Did it also win the politics? Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day.

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1:56Rachel Martin:The United States and Iran spent another weekend of their ceasefire not ceasing fire. The latest exchange of missiles began in the Strait of Hormuz. Iranians say Iran alone has control. Iran opposed a U.N.-backed plan, fired on ships, starting a whole new round of attacks with the U.S. The latest missiles yesterday went after U.S. bases in Kuwait and Bahrain. NPR's Carrie Kahn is monitoring all this from Tel Aviv. Hi there, Carrie. Hi. Okay, I just got to ask, are the ceasefire peace talks, the continuing peace talks, still on? We believe so. A senior U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations told NPR last night that, quote, nothing has been canceled and talks are on track for the coming days.

2:41The Associated Press is reporting that Pakistan, a key mediator, says talks will resume Tuesday.

2:46Rachel Martin:And yet we did have this exchange of fire. What happened over the weekend? In recent days, Iran struck two ships attempting passage through the Strait of Hormuz. These ships were going through this newly coordinated route that hugged the coast of Oman, which shares part of the strait with Iran. Last week, the UN's International Maritime Organization and Oman set up this route. Iran says it is a violation of the preliminary plan for permanent peace. After Iran's attack on the first ship, the U.S. then struck multiple drone, missile, and radar sites in Iran. Then Iran fired into Bahrain and Kuwait in retaliation.

3:22Rachel Martin:Okay, if Iran is striking ships on their way through the strait, is the strait open? Well, we'll see. Traffic did drop over the weekend, according to monitoring groups. But the conflict over who controls the Strait of Hormuz continues. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was just in the region and told Gulf allies it will remain open. But yesterday, Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araqsh was adamant. He said any alternative or, quote, separate arrangements for the strait will lead to complications.

3:57The responsibility for these arrangements lies with Iran and no other entity or country, he said.

4:04Rachel Martin:Okay, so we've got two major sticking points in negotiations. One we've just been discussing, the Strait of Hormuz. The other is Lebanon, where Israeli troops remain in the southern part of the country, and they say they're going to stay there. But Israel did reach an agreement with Lebanon's government. What's going on there? Yes, a deal was reached between the U.S., Israel, and the Lebanese government late Friday. Israel says it's historic, with the Lebanese army agreeing to disarm Hezbollah. Hezbollah, however, was not part of those talks, and its leader over the weekend condemned the deal and demanded Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon.

4:41Last night, I spoke with Ofer Falk. He's the foreign affairs advisor to Israel's prime minister, and I asked him repeatedly, how is this deal going to work without Hezbollah signing on and giving the Lebanese army's poor track record? And here's what he said. There's only going to be one weapon in Lebanon. It's going to be the Lebanese government. It's historic that they recognize Israel's sovereignty. And they seek peace with Israel. They're saying that straight out. He said Israel has laid the path for the Lebanese army by greatly degrading Hezbollah's military might. But Steve, fighting continued over the weekend, too.

5:16Despite the deal, authorities in Lebanon and Israel say there were multiple deaths in Lebanon and one Israeli soldier was killed.

5:22Rachel Martin:Carrie, thanks for the update. You're welcome. That's NPS Carrie Khan in Tel Aviv.

5:34Rachel Martin:Okay, we have an eyewitness account now of earthquake damage in Venezuela. Much of the world has seen video of collapsed buildings in Caracas, a city of millions. The story hits differently when you meet some of the people who have been digging through the rubble. NPR's Ada Peralta is in Caracas. Hi there, Ada. Hey, Steve. What does it look and feel like there? It's all just really tragic. I mean, yesterday I was at the site of a 16-story building. I mean, I guess what used to be a building because, you know, now it's just a pile of rubble, like three stories high. And people there told me that a rescue crew did show up at some point, but they said it was too dangerous for them to work there.

6:16And what I saw was just a couple of dozen family members climbing through the rubble and they were just picking random places to dig. And then at times the smell of death would get stronger and they would dig faster. And I mean, look, there are helicopters in the air and there's backhoes and the Venezuelan government has deployed the military and the police and a bunch of foreign countries have sent rescue crews here. But there's just not enough of them to get to, you know, the more than 700 buildings that the government says were damaged here. You know, yesterday we also drove, we were in front of a three-story building that was completely collapsed.

6:57And I saw parents just moving pieces of concrete with their bare hands. No rescue crew had stopped to help them. But their kid was under the rubble and they just wanted to have him back. So they were just there doing the work.

7:13Rachel Martin:Aidan, you mentioned the smell of death. I just have to observe. There's a period after an earthquake or a disaster like this where you're trying to find people who may be alive in the rubble. Have we gotten past that point where it's possible? Not officially, but we have seen a shift in the past few days. Like on Saturday, there was a rush to try and get people out of the rubble. And, you know, on the highways, I saw people just on motorcycles with like shovels and picks on their back. And they were just trying to find any building that collapsed and they just started to dig. You know, there were a lot of calls for help coming from the buildings, but the hours went by and the calls started diminishing.

7:52And the smell is sort of like the hardest part of this. The streets in La Huayda, which got the hardest hit by the earthquakes, I mean, they started smelling of rotting flesh. And rescuers say that the real opportunity to save people comes in the first three days. But, you know, I think everyone who has a person who is missing, and there's thousands of reported missing, you know, I think they're just waiting for a miracle at this point.

8:22Rachel Martin:When you say there aren't enough rescue crews, how are people thinking about the way the government has responded? I mean, help is so limited here that as we saw, you know, big trucks and earth moving vehicles move through the streets, people were standing in front of them saying, no, you have to go to my building to find my people. So I think, you know, there's a lot of anger and a lot of resignation. And you see that in that people are walking through half-collapsed buildings trying to take couches out and their couches out, their refrigerators out of these buildings, knowing that it could collapse at any minute.

9:03But they feel like they're not going to get any help. So they have to get what they can out of these buildings.

9:08Rachel Martin:And Perez Eder Peralta, thanks for going there so we can see this through your eyes. Appreciate it. Thank you, Steve.

9:22Rachel Martin:Some other news now. The Trump administration says Haitians and Syrians who have been in the United States under temporary protected status now have two choices. They can apply for a new legal status. Or they can leave the country. Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen said this on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday. Either try to fill out the paperwork and be here underneath a permanent status or we'll help you get back to your country. We'll actually give you a plane ticket plus roughly$2 ,100 to help you reestablish when you get there. But temporary protective status, according to the courts and in its name itself, is not permanent status.

10:03A Supreme Court ruling last week upended more than a decade of protections for Haitians and Syrians with TPS. and it put protections for hundreds of thousands of other immigrants in question. The ruling was a win for Trump legally, but is it a win politically?

10:18Rachel Martin:Our senior national political correspondent Mara Liason has been looking into that. Mara, good morning. Good morning. Okay, before we get to the politics, let's start with the facts. What does happen here with 330 ,000 Haitians and Syrians? Well, Mark Wayne Mullen did not directly answer whether the administration has plans for mass deportations of these immigrants. And CNN's Jake Tapper pushed Mullen on whether Haiti and Syria were safe enough for people to return. Remember, the whole point of TPS, temporary protected status, is to give protections to people whose home countries are too unsafe, either from war or natural disaster or other factors.

10:59And Mullen emphasized, as you heard him say, that this program was meant to be temporary. He told Tapper, quote, maybe they can go back there and restore their country.

11:08Rachel Martin:And the Supreme Court ruled that the administration has discretion to make this decision in the way that they want. And also the court ruled on asylum cases as well, right? That's right. The court also reaffirmed the Trump administration's ability to restrict who can apply for asylum in the United States. The Constitution does give the executive branch control over immigration. and that's a power that Donald Trump has been using very aggressively. But both of these cases uphold the ways that Trump is trying to fundamentally reshape not just illegal immigration, but also the legal immigration system.

11:41Rachel Martin:But the question that's on your mind is a little different. So they're winning in court. They're getting to do what they want. Your question is whether that is politically good for the administration. Right. And that remains to be seen. You know, originally, Trump's immigration agenda was very popular because it focused on things people really cared about, securing the border, deporting undocumented immigrants with criminal records. But as time went on, it morphed into something different, like going after green card holders, people who'd been in the United States working without a criminal record for decades.

12:11Some of these people were very integrated into the economies of their communities, like Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. Remember, during the 2024 campaign, Trump expressed his long-held animus towards Haitians when he falsely accused them of eating people's pet dogs and cats. So then his immigration policy became much less popular even among Republicans. What we have to watch for now is how the end of TPS plays politically, and a lot of that is going to depend on how fast the administration moves to deport these immigrants, legal immigrants. The bottom line is that the U.S. is no longer a welcoming country for immigrants, even legal immigrants.

12:48The administration is also talking about denaturalization, taking away citizenship. And that historically has been a very rarely used

12:56Rachel Martin:tool. Now we have another case looming. Any day now we'll hear about birthright citizenship from the Supreme Court. That's right. Before the end of this term, the Supreme Court is going to rule on whether every child born on U.S. soil is an American citizen. This is written into the Constitution, but the Trump administration is challenging that idea. And we don't know if the court will agree with him. But just the fact that the issue is before the court shows how far the Trump administration has pushed the debate about who is an American, who gets to be an American. And their position could ultimately be a political liability, even if there are legal wins along the way.

13:33Rachel Martin:And Piers Mar-Eliason, thanks for the insights. You're welcome. Here's another story we're following. One of the world's most famous art detectives was on the hunt for a stolen Van Gogh and turned to an unlikely source for help. You have born soccer players, born teachers, born policemen. I'm a born burglar. This is the Sunday story from NPR News, how an art thief and an art detective set out to recover a missing masterpiece. You can listen right now to the Sunday story here in the Up First podcast from NPR News.

14:05Rachel Martin:And that's Up First for this Monday, June 29th. I'm Steve Inskeep. And I'm Leila Faldil. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Tina Kraja, Miguel Macias, Tara Neal, Dana Farrington, Mohamed El-Bredisi, and Adam Bearn. It was produced by Ziad Butch and Nia Dumas. Our director is Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott. And our technical director is Zach Coleman. Join us again tomorrow. Do you notice how in the list of names here, Layla, the name of Christopher Thomas, our director, is in huge font. Our director is Christopher Thomas. Everyone else apparently much less important.

14:41Yeah.

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