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Episode Date: May 1, 2026

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Live from NPR News, I'm Jail Snyder. Congress failed to secure a deal to reauthorize a key spy tool but did manage to pass a stopgap measure to keep negotiating for 45 days. Republicans will have to figure out how to reach consensus among themselves or rely on Democrats to put together a reform package as NPR's Eric McDaniel reports. The tool is Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, also known as FISA. U.S. intelligence agencies use it to scoop up the communications. of more than 300,000 foreign nationals located outside of the U.S. each year. The government says the intelligence collected under FISA 702 underpins a huge share of the president's daily intelligence briefings. But reformers in both parties have long been concerned about the government reviewing Americans' private information gathered as part of the surveillance

and unsuccessfully pushed for law enforcement to need a warrant before agents could do targeted reviews of the communications of U.S. citizens in the database. Eric McDaniel and P.R. News, the Capitol. President Trump has named a new nominee for Surgeon General. NPR's Ping Huang report. She's a physician and a wellness influencer. Dr. Nicole Sapphire is a radiologist and director of breast imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New Jersey. She's also written books on wellness and sells a line of herbal supplements on Amazon. On her podcast called Wellness Unmasked, Sapphire talked about the role of the Surgeon General in February.

It's a very important role because it is the nation's job. doctor. The biggest skill that this person needs is they need to be able to effectively communicate with the public, public health messaging. Sapphire replaces Dr. Casey Means, who Trump nominated last year, her confirmation got stalled by Democratic and some Republican senators who raised concerns over her lack of qualifications for the role and her views on vaccines. Ping Huang, NPR News. There was a lot of movement in big tech stocks Thursday. NPR's John Ruich reports that some of the biggest ups and downs followed earnings reports that showed ambitious plans for spending on AI. Meta sank as much as 10% before recovering some ground. Just this week, the parent company of Facebook

posted better than expected revenue and quarterly profits. But Meta also said it could spend a whopping $145 billion this year as it pours money into AI. Last week, it said it's planning to lay off a tenth of its workforce. Traders didn't like it. They did like what they saw from Google, though. It reported soaring revenue from its cloud computing division, Google also revised up its spending forecast for the year with capital expenditures of as much as $190 billion. Its shares leapt 10%. Big tech and startups alike have been investing heavily in AI, and analysts have been worried about whether or not they'll get a return on all the investment. John Rewich, NPR News. Following Thursday's rally on Wall Street, Asian shares are higher, though most markets in the region are closed for Mayday holidays.

This is NPR News. A major study finds that artificial intelligence has made big advances in medical reasoning and can outperform doctors on some common tasks. The research was published in the journal Science Thursday, and PIR's Will Stone has more. Researchers at Harvard Medical School found that an AI reasoning model developed by OpenAI excelled at diagnosing patients and making decisions about managing their care. It matched and often outperformed doctors and the earlier AI model. model GPT4. The study included actual cases from the emergency department at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Dr. Adam Rodman was one of the study authors. This is not an artifact of our evaluation methods, but it works for making diagnoses in the real world. Rodman says their study does not suggest AI should replace doctors, but it is a call to do forward-looking trials to see whether AI models can actually improve care. Will Stone NPR News. Elon Musk testified for a third day Thursday in the court case that could reshape the future of one of the world's most powerful AI companies.

Musk told the court that he sued OpenAI after deciding his co-founders put profit ahead of the company's founding mission. The case Pitts Musk against fellow Open AI founder Sam Altman. Following King Charles' state visit, President Trump said he will lift certain tariffs on Scotch Whiskey. On social media, Trump said he will soon remove tariffs and restrictions. related to Scotland's ability to work with Kentucky on whiskey and bourbon, a spokesperson for Buckingham Palace, as Charles sends his sincere gratitude, saying the move will make an important difference to the British whiskey industry. This is NPR News.