A partial government shutdown is under way after Congress missed its funding deadline, with lawmakers advancing a plan to reopen most agencies while negotiations over Homeland Security and immigration enforcement continue. A federal judge ruled the Trump administration can keep its immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis going, even as plans to draw down agents haven’t materialized and residents see ongoing arrests and protests. And President Trump says the performing arts center built as a memorial to President John F. Kennedy will close for two years for a massive renovation.
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Today’s episode of Up First was edited by Anna Yukhananov, Russell Lewis, Mohamad ElBardicy and Adrianna Gallardo.
It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Ava Pukatch and Christopher Thomas.
We get engineering support from Neisha Heinis. Our technical director is Carleigh Strange.
(0:00) Introduction (01:54) House Shutdown Vote (05:34) Minneapolis Immigration Operations (09:16) Trump Kennedy Center Closure
Tom Homan, President Trump’s border czar, traveled to Minneapolis a few days ago with a message: the faster local officials cooperate with federal immigration agents, the faster those agents will leave.
Hamed Aleaziz and Ernesto Londoño, New York Times reporters, explain why that kind of cooperation is so difficult to pull off.
Guest:
Hamed Aleaziz, who covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy in the United States for The New York Times.
Ernesto Londoño, a reporter for The New York Times based in Minnesota.
An avalanche of Jeffrey Epstein documents raises new questions about his relationships with the world’s elite. A 5-year-old boy has been sent back to Minneapolis with his father after spending days in a migrant detention center. And reports of a $500 billion investment in a Trump-backed crypto fund prompt concerns about conflicts of interest at the White House.
In the high Andean grasslands 4,500 meters above sea level, Quechua alpaca herders live on the edges of glaciers that have retreated more rapidly in the past fifty years than at any point in the previous six millennia. Women are the primary herders, and their specialized knowledge and skill is vital to the ability of high-elevation communities to survive in changing climatic conditions. In the past decade, however, these herders and their animals have traversed a rapidly shifting terrain.
Drawing on the Quechua concept of k'ita, or restlessness, Restless Ecologies: Climate Change and Socioecological Futures in the Peruvian Highlands (University of Arizona Press, 2025) explores how herders in the community of Chillca in the Cordillera Vilcanota mountain range of the southeastern Peruvian Andes sense and make sense of changing conditions. Capricious mountains, distracted alpacas, and wayward children deviate from their expected spatial and temporal trajectories. When practices of sociality start to fall apart--when animals no longer listen to herders' whistles, children no longer visit their parents, and humans no longer communicate with mountains--these failures signal a broader ecological instability that threatens the viability of the herder's world.
For more than two years, the author herded alongside the women of the Cordillera Vilcanota, observing them and talking with them about their interactions with their animals, landscapes, and neighbors. Emphasizing the importance of Indigenous knowledge and traditional ecological practices, Caine argues that Quechua understandings of restlessness align with and challenge broader theoretical understandings of what it is to be vulnerable in a time of planetary crisis.
Allison Caine is an environmental anthropologist and an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Wyoming.
Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.
Melissa, Kate, and Leah break down the various legal cases arising from ICE’s occupation of Minnesota, including a bid to end DHS’s Operation Metro Surge and a case from citizens seeking to block the abusive use of tear gas and pepper spray. Then, the hosts welcome Crooked’s Tommy Vietor to talk about all things foreign policy: Trump's blatant disdain for international law, the so-called “DonRoe Doctrine,” the President’s wildly incoherent and pointless tariffs, and why Trump’s claim that he’s ended eight wars is beyond laughable. Finally, a deeply concerning FBI raid on the Fulton County elections office supervised by Hawaii's least favorite daughter, Tulsi Gabbard.
President Trump is still not over the fact that he lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, which might be why last Wednesday, the FBI executed a search warrant on an election facility in Fulton County, Georgia. Agents seized hundreds of boxes containing ballots and other documents related to the 2020 election. But this raid is just one of many ways the President has challenged the American election system since taking office a year ago. With the midterms just months away, we spoke with Marc Elias, the founder of the voting rights news and election-tracking site Democracy Docket.
And in headlines, the government is partially shut down as Congress debates reining in immigration enforcement, the Trump administration does damage control after the latest and largest batch of Epstein files, and the five-year-old boy and father detained by immigration officers in Minnesota have been released.
Congress is supposed to have a legal right to tour ICE detention centers and provide oversight on these facilities, where 32 people died in 2025. But this representative’s attempt to tour a facility in her New Jersey district led to her being charged with assaulting a federal officer and facing a 17-year prison sentence.
Guest: LaMonica McIver is the U.S. representative for New Jersey's 10th congressional district.
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.
PFAS make pans nonstick, clothes waterproof and furniture stain resistant. They're so ubiquitous, they're even inside of us. Now, researchers are looking for more insights in firefighters' blood.
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